Australia reports 1st coronavirus death, a Diamond Princess cruise ship passenger

wipeout:

“It's not possible to confirm asymptomatic spreading before human-to-human transmission is confirmed. Human to human transmission wasn't confirmed until January 20th. An infection case involving a (former) Diamond Princess passenger became known on January 31 or February 1 (it was announced to passengers on February 1).”

Chinese and other medical authorities were canvassing asymptomatic and minimally symptomatic viral transmission well before January 20. It was completely irresponsible, bordering on culpably negligent of Japanese authorities to claim ignorance about what others with hands on experience of dealing with coronavirus were saying about possible viral pathways. At the very least, they should not have proceeded, as they seemingly did, on the assumption that asymptomatic transmission was unlikely. Through their ignorance, they created a vector par excellence, only to be proven spectacularly wrong later, by which time the damage had been done and a number of passengers were dead.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-reports-first-case-of-coronavirus-spread-by-asymptomatic-person/

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/high-profile-report-on-asymptomatic-spread-of-coronavirus-based-on-faulty-information-health-officials-say/

Abu,these people should of been given anti viral medicine, it would stop the virus from reproducing inside their body ,even if they did not have symptoms

If this virus spread like wildfire, the WHO and health organization are way off-guard. The people spend so much on health service, disgraceful health providers.

@Ossan

Also needs to be understood that letting them all off would have risked infecting the population ashore.That's how quarantines work, the goal is to isolate the contageous group from the larger population.

No, it’s patently false to assume that the only two scenarios are “On the ship” vs “Amidst the population”. There is such a thing as quarantining people on land, e.g., in medical centres or residences set aside for this purpose. Indeed some of the Japanese repatriated from China were put in such lodgings; why not the cruise ship passengers? Only because slow-moving Japanese bureaucracy couldn’t handle it. Not because such arrangements were actually impossible to make.

This story about “they were kept on the ship to avoid infecting the population” is just a bizarre story spoonfed to the public by the Japanese government officials early on and needs to be quashed as the false statement and coverup of incompetence that it is.

OssanAmerica

*“All this blaming becomes rather mute”*

As much as the instigators of the Yokohama quarantine fiasco would prefer hard questions not be asked and people stay mute, we’ve got a voluminous record of events in Wuhan months earlier, cautioning against repeating the same mistakes. Courtesy of their Chinese colleagues, doctors and medical professionals around the world have been kept fully apprised of the dangers of asymptomatic viral spreading and test imprecision long before Diamond Princess was a blip on Chairman Abe’s radar screen. The sensible option experts in the field were arguing at the time would have been to allow all the foreigners to fly home immediately to their country of origin and let those countries worry about quarantine instead of attempting to out Wuhan Wuhan and try to fashion the world’s largest floating petri dish.

Japantoday should be more professional in their coverage and put a link from the CDC, with credible information

@Do the hustle

Anyone can say "what should have been done" with 20/20 hindsight. Especially without knowing the limitations in handling a scenario that has never been done anywhere on such a scale. In retrospect we now know that the ship, crew, medical staff were all ill prepared to effect a quarantine on a level that could have separated those who were infected at the time with those who were not. But as I have stated, now knowing that those who test negative now can test positive later, and those who are asymptomatic can infect others, all this blaming becomes rather mute. A pefect textbook quarantine onboard may have been effected and we would still have people testing positive. In Japan, South Korea, Italy, Iran , this is now a community transmitted virus. Getting hung up on the Diamond Princess is like getting hung up on the Chinese tourists during the Lunar New Years. It's history.

OssanAmerica - Also needs to be understood that letting them all off would have risked infecting the population ashore

That is not necessarily so. They should have been split into different quarantine facilities. I am aware the logistics of quarantining 3,700 people are difficult, but no more difficult than treating the 20% of people who ended up with the the virus. If they had split the tourists into groups by nationality or susceptibility (young, old, etc) they would have had a much better chance of containing the virus.

Sad. It seems to be more viralent amongst the elderly. The man that died was in his 70s with health issues. Look after your elderly family members.

Hiding the infected numbers was more important then solving the problem or helping the people. ... and still is today.

cracaphatToday  01:30 pm JST

Needs to be an acknowledgement that forcing people to stay on the ship was a death trap in of itself.

Also needs to be understood that letting them all off would have risked infecting the population ashore.That's how quarantines work, the goal is to isolate the contageous group from the larger population.

All this is water under the bridge because we now know that a person could test negative but test positive later. And that infected persons can infect others at least 2 days before they themselves show any symptoms, and COVID19 is spreading at a community level.

cracaphatToday 04:45 pm JST

It has been:

I meant by the decision makers involved in that decision to keep them onboard.

I think we'll be waiting a very long time for that.

Japan is undoubtedly fudging the stats about the prevalence of the deadly coronavirus, a denial incentivised by its desperate need to hold on to the Olympics. If ever there was a remit for the WHO to send an investigative team here to verify Japan’s claim that there are less than 300 domestic cases, this is it. Japan, for its part, should welcome the opportunity to have independent verification.

This tragedy very well would have been prevented without the incompetency of certain bureaucrats.

nandakandamanda - This Australian tested negative, apparently, on 20th February when coming off the ship

Which means, their testing methods are inadequate. He could have only contracted the virus from the incubator ship.

This Australian tested negative, apparently, on 20th February when coming off the ship.

cracaphat Today 01:30 pm JST

Needs to be an acknowledgement that forcing people to stay on the ship was a death trap in of itself.

It has been:

The ship-side outbreak was a foreseeable man-made disaster.

Masahiro Kami, head of Japan’s Medical Governance Research Institute, in an interview with the weekly magazine Bunshun, called the spread of the virus on board “a completely man-made disaster.” 

Kami said in a case like this, “getting the crew and passengers off the ship is the consensus of the world. Once infection spreads inside the ship, even if you get those who manifest symptoms off the ship, there will be others aboard the ship still incubating the virus, and it will continue to spread.” He noted that in Italy and Hong Kong, ships with possibly infected passengers dealt with that problem, at least, swiftly and effectively.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/japans-coronavirus-cruise-ship-debacle-shows-epidemic-can-be-a-gift-for-would-be-dictators?ref=author

Sadly, a British man died last Friday on the ship, the “completely man-made disaster.”

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-28/coronavirus-wales-england-uk-rises-italy-iran/

Very sad; original root cause below

https://nypost.com/2020/02/29/china-officials-knew-of-coronavirus-in-december-ordered-cover-up-report-says/