Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) outbreak discussion

Will the "Corona Virus" turn into a worldwide epidemic or fizzle out?

  • Yes

    Votes: 37 49.3%

  • No

    Votes: 9 12.0%

  • Bigger than SARS, but not worldwide epidemic (Black Death/bubonic plague)

    Votes: 25 33.3%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 4 5.3%
  • Total voters
    75
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The virus came to the New York area mainly from Europe, not Asia, genetic analysis shows, arriving weeks before the first confirmed case.

Coronavirus in New York came mainly from Europe, studies show.
New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that it was brought to the region mainly by travelers from Europe, not Asia.

“The majority is clearly European,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study awaiting peer review.

A separate team at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine came to strikingly similar conclusions, despite studying a different group of cases. Both teams analyzed genomes from coronaviruses taken
from New Yorkers starting in mid-March.

The research revealed a previously hidden spread of the virus that might have been detected if aggressive testing programs had been put in place. On Jan. 31, President Trump barred foreign nationals from entering the country if they had been in China — the site of the virus’s first known outbreak — during the previous two weeks.


Viruses invade a cell and take over its molecular machinery, causing it to make new viruses. An international guild of viral historians ferrets out the history of outbreaks by poring over clues embedded in the genetic material of viruses taken from thousands of patients.

In January, a team of Chinese and Australian researchers published the first genome of the new virus. Since then, researchers around the world have sequenced over 3,000 more. Some are genetically identical to each other, while others carry distinctive mutations.
 
YAHOO at last medical supplies, oh thank you China.:D

https://au.news.yahoo.com/wuhan-pla...ney-after-coronavirus-lockdown-030130311.html
From the article:
In a near-deserted Sydney airport, a flight from China’s coronavirus epicentre touched down on Australian soil for the first time in more than two months.
Being sent to Australia from Wuhan was 90 tonnes of much-needed medical supplies, the Department of Home Affairs has confirmed.

The freight was made up of protective masks, gowns and ventilators.


A spokesperson for the embassy said sections of the media were "keen to defame the local Chinese companies" at the same time as Australian businesses are importing protective equipment from China.

"The Aussie media are misleading the public, maliciously characterised the Chinese companies' purchasing, a purely humiliation move, as 'scandal'," the embassy said in a statement on Monday.

"Then how do they characterise the Aussie companies' procurement in China? Another scandal?

Well DUH, it might be because we can't make any of the gear, that the Chinese companies bought here and sent to China.
What a dumb ar$e thing for an embassy official to say, China wont do themselves any favours, taking that stance IMO.
 
As I have posted previously, China shipped 50 tons of Vitamin C to Wuhan not long after the virus escaped.

Story at-a-glance
  • Vitamins C and D are finally being adopted in the conventional treatment of novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. This fortunate turn of events is likely to save thousands of lives, while keeping health care costs down
  • Seriously ill coronavirus patients in New York state’s largest hospital system receive 1,500 milligrams of intravenous vitamin C three to four times a day, in conjunction with other conventional treatments
  • Vitamin C at extremely high doses acts as an antiviral drug, actually killing viruses

    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/...d=20200407Z2&et_cid=DM501437&et_rid=845504949

 
Came across an outstanding story which examines the explosive way the corona virus was spread in a range of social gatherings. The gatherings ranged from funerals, to beach parties, prayer meetings to Mardi Gras.
A great explainer and gets across how quickly this virus can spread in a group of people.

The cluster effect: how social gatherings were rocket fuel for coronavirus

Screenshot_2020-04-09 https interactive guim co uk.png


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...l-gatherings-were-rocket-fuel-for-coronavirus
 
bellenuit said:
Coronavirus: Leaked intelligence report shows US was warned about COVID-19 in November

https://www.news.com.au/world/coron...r/news-story/f46254a64f98f393d9935585611fa77b
Click to expand...

Excellent summary of the repeated warnings about the inevitability of another pandemic and the need to invest modest amounts to to prevent and deal with it.
Also highlights the fact that US intelligence realised Wuhan was dealing with a disastrous epidemic in November 2019. They reported and updated the US government repeatedly on this situation through December and January.

In fact they were advising the Trump administration for at least 6 weeks before WHO was making universal reports on the dangers posed by this epidemic

Join the dots on why the US was totally unprepared for the eventual fallout.:rolleyes:
 
basilio said:
Excellent summary of the repeated warnings about the inevitability of another pandemic and the need to invest modest amounts to to prevent and deal with it.
Also highlights the fact that US intelligence realised Wuhan was dealing with a disastrous epidemic in November 2019. They reported and updated the US government repeatedly on this situation through December and January.

In fact they were advising the Trump administration for at least 6 weeks before WHO was making universal reports on the dangers posed by this epidemic

Join the dots on why the US was totally unprepared for the eventual fallout.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I don't find these reports credible.
It is highly improbable that US intelligence would apparently find something with cataclysmic potential in November and not be able to determine by December that there was a SARS-like virus causing pneumonia by late December given there were tweets from Wuhan doctors about it, and contact tracing occurring that led to Wuhan's wet markets being closed down on January 1.
The issue of Trump's ignorance is an entirely different matter.
 
Article is a little dated with respect to the numbers now but worth a read.

SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data
Highlights
•
Comparison of incidence and mortality rates of four common coronaviruses circulating in France with those of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries.

•
As of 2 March 2020, 90 307 patients had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, with 3086 deaths (mortality rate 3.4%).

•
As of 2 March 2020, among OECD countries, 7476 patients had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, with 96 deaths (mortality rate 1.3%)

•
As of 2 March 2020, in France, 191 people had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, with three deaths (mortality rate 1.6%).

•
In OECD countries. the mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2 (1.3%) is not significantly different from that for common coronaviruses identified in public hospitals of Marseille, France (0.8%; P=0.11).

•
The problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing.
Click to expand...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300972
 
Yes, well that's been proven wrong.
The Spanish, Italians, French English and Americans knew about the v it is in January but the political believed this stuff about it being not much worse than the flu.

They should haveunderstood the fear present in China. No country's population is going to accept a 2% death rate., or a 17% death rate for 70 and 80 year olds.

You saw it most obvios in the USA, the change in direction was stark. A lot more, ten fold at least, deaths to come.
 
rederob said:
If it was true, where is the evidence?
Looks like a media beat up doing the rounds.
Click to expand...

As in what ? The direct copies of the reports made by the intelligence officers? I think whoever has back-grounded this information is already facing potential treason charges.

Certainly the Pentagon has denied any such reports exists. That will make things even more interesting if somehow copies do surface.

This story is not suggesting there was a single analyst or only one report which could have got lost. There are multiple briefings and papers circulating.

Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.

The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.

"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House. Wednesday night, the Pentagon issued a statement denying the "product/assessment" existed.

MORE: CDC director downplays coronavirus models, says death toll will be 'much lower' than projected
From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."

The NCMI report was made available widely to people authorized to access intelligence community alerts. Following the report’s release, other intelligence community bulletins began circulating through confidential channels across the government around Thanksgiving, the sources said. Those analyses said China’s leadership knew the epidemic was out of control even as it kept such crucial information from foreign governments and public health agencies.

"It would be a significant alarm that would have been set off by this," former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Mick Mulroy, now an ABC News contributor, said of the NCMI report. "And it would have been something that would be followed up by literally every intelligence-collection agency."

Mulroy, who previously served as a senior official at the CIA, said NCMI does serious work that senior government leaders do not ignore.

"Medical intelligence takes into account all source information -- imagery intelligence, human intelligence, signals intelligence," Mulroy said. "Then there’s analysis by people who know those specific areas. So for something like this to have come out, it has been reviewed by experts in the field. They’re taking together what those pieces of information mean and then looking at the potential for an international health crisis."

MORE: Trump abruptly removes inspector general named to oversee $2T in stimulus spending
NCMI is a component of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Together, the agencies’ core responsibilities are to ensure U.S. military forces have the information they need to carry out their missions -- both offensively and defensively. It is a critical priority for the Pentagon to keep American service members healthy on deployments.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/int...isis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273

 
basilio said:
As in what ? The direct copies of the reports made by the intelligence officers? I think whoever has back-grounded this information is already facing potential treason charges.

Certainly the Pentagon has denied any such reports exists. That will make things even more interesting if somehow copies do surface.

This story is not suggesting there was a single analyst or only one report which could have got lost. There are multiple briefings and papers circulating.

Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.

The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.

"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House. Wednesday night, the Pentagon issued a statement denying the "product/assessment" existed.

MORE: CDC director downplays coronavirus models, says death toll will be 'much lower' than projected
From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."

The NCMI report was made available widely to people authorized to access intelligence community alerts. Following the report’s release, other intelligence community bulletins began circulating through confidential channels across the government around Thanksgiving, the sources said. Those analyses said China’s leadership knew the epidemic was out of control even as it kept such crucial information from foreign governments and public health agencies.

"It would be a significant alarm that would have been set off by this," former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Mick Mulroy, now an ABC News contributor, said of the NCMI report. "And it would have been something that would be followed up by literally every intelligence-collection agency."

Mulroy, who previously served as a senior official at the CIA, said NCMI does serious work that senior government leaders do not ignore.

"Medical intelligence takes into account all source information -- imagery intelligence, human intelligence, signals intelligence," Mulroy said. "Then there’s analysis by people who know those specific areas. So for something like this to have come out, it has been reviewed by experts in the field. They’re taking together what those pieces of information mean and then looking at the potential for an international health crisis."

MORE: Trump abruptly removes inspector general named to oversee $2T in stimulus spending
NCMI is a component of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Together, the agencies’ core responsibilities are to ensure U.S. military forces have the information they need to carry out their missions -- both offensively and defensively. It is a critical priority for the Pentagon to keep American service members healthy on deployments.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/int...isis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273
Click to expand...
Bas, I have read numerous articles on this theme and there is absolutely nothing credible in any of them.
Detailed medical reports of Wuhan's first coronavirus patients have been made available to international teams for study, and from memory the first admission was 1 December 2019. It would make no sense to hide records from them unless this has been a weird and senseless Chinese conspiracy, and I doubt they are that stupid.
Had the virus been known of earlier (such as in November) it is unlikely hundreds of medical staff would have caught the virus 2 months later, and less likely that doctors would have died from it. Surely they would have known!
 
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I worry a little about how well we are doing wrt the numbers, particularly here in the West. It is said that most of our Covid-19 numbers are from Overseas travellers and in particular cruise ships. It is good that we have these under some sort of control. What is a nagging concern, are those few that are locally transmitted. These might be the few hidden seeds that could easily ignite a flood of new hosts. I hope the 'distancing' and 'stay at home' rigour holds out in the near term. and I thank all who are doing the right thing, particularly the young, whom this does not affect so tragically. The quicker we get on top of this the quicker we can ALL get out and return to normal.
 
Singapore is an interesting one. On top of it until they weren't.

For weeks, Singapore managed to keep its numbers low and trackable, with only small, easily contained clusters, without any real restrictions to daily life......

The system worked until mid-March..... That's when, as the gravity of the situation became clear around the world, countries started urging their citizens to get home. Thousands returned to Singapore from countries which had not been as proactive - among them more than 500 people who unwittingly brought the virus back with them.

www.bbc.com/news-asia-52232147
Prof Teo says what has happened in the dorms "is an indication of what will happen in some other countries, particularly the lower middle income, less well-resourced countries"."All you have to do is look at many countries in South Asia, South East Asia, parts of Africa - there are many communities where the living conditions are very similar to dorms." He says the need now is for all governments to look at their countries with "a frank and transparent lens" in terms of what they can do to "minimise the risk of an uncontrollable outbreak where people are living very closely packed together".
Click to expand...
 
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