02-10-2020, 01:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-10-2020, 01:18 AM by Warren Dew.)
(02-09-2020, 05:41 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: The number of reported cases in China seems to have leveled off at the
high 3,000s per day, at least for the time being. If they have
leveled off, then it's because of extreme draconian measures taken by
the Chinese -- with millions of people effectively under house arrest
-- measures that would not be tolerable in any other country.
Possibly. There are a couple other possibilities. Maybe no more than 3000 people a day can be tested, or maybe no more than 3000 people can be admitted for treatment and they limit testing to limit admissions. Or maybe all 5000000 in Wuhan have already gotten it and most of them didn't have sufficiently severe symptoms even to justify testing. If the incidence is really leveling off, we should see the death rate level off within a week or so.
Quote:The draconian measures that China is taking have done the rest of the
world a favor. Not only have those measures slowed the spread of the
disease within China, but also they've slowed the transmission of the
disease outside of China, and that has bought the rest of the world
some time, time to figure out how to mitigate the spread once it
starts.
... provided we can make greater strides in epidemiology and disease control over the next few weeks than we have in the past century.
I suppose we could ramp up production of the test kits and face masks. Other than that, the best we can probably do is to tell people to stay home from school or work if they have cold or flu symptoms - which would probably be a good policy even without the Wuhan coronavirus.
