“I think at this point, containment is already a lost cause,” one expert said.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

Amid furious efforts to stem the tide of the expanding coronavirus outbreak, health officials are soberly preparing for the growing risk of a worldwide pandemic. That calculus reflects the continued spike in cases in Wuhan, China, the epidemic’s epicenter, as well as heightened fears that sustained person-to-person transmission could take off on other continents, including North America.

Increasingly, some experts said, the question was a simple one: How ugly will this get?

“I think at this point, containment is already a lost cause,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm’s comments echoed grim realism from health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a call with reporters early this week.

Although the disease’s severity appears to be lower than once feared, Osterholm said the 2019 novel coronavirus’s transmission patterns so far are reminiscent of influenza. “To the extent that we have to deal with this, if this in fact is being transmitted like influenza, then there really isn’t much chance to contain it,” he said. “We can surely minimize transmission in health care facilities and some public spaces. But beyond that, this virus is going to kind of do what it damn pleases.”

Several other experts, while offering somewhat more optimistic outlooks, agreed that the world was entering a critical phase that will determine—over the next few weeks —whether the epidemic that has spread from China to at least two dozen other countries goes nuclear.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” said Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto General Hospital and the University of Toronto. “It’s hard to know if the massive, massive efforts taken by the Chinese government will be sufficient to curtail this or if we have to be prepared for more widespread transmission worldwide.”

Among its efforts, China has quarantined roughly 45 million people in Wuhan and surrounding cities in Hubei province. Although travel bans and quarantines have had limited success in containing previous outbreaks and pose difficult questions about human rights and supply chains, Bogoch said, the unprecedented scale of the response by China makes any past comparisons difficult. “Within the same hour, I’ll think, ‘Maybe this can be contained,’” Bogoch said. “And then three minutes later, I’ll read some other data and think, ‘You know what? This is going to be a pandemic.’”

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York, said preparations for a worst-case scenario, including training health care workers, outfitting them with personal protective equipment, and ensuring ample testing supplies, may help avert the very worst. “I think if anything, it will improve what the worst-case scenario might look like since I think this means that our public health apparatus will be mobilizing as if there are already many patients instead of few,” she said.

By the end of Tuesday, the U.S. had confirmed 11 cases, though no deaths. Worldwide the toll had risen to more than 24,000 cases, about 99 percent of them—and all but one of the (at least) 492 deaths—in China.

While there was room for optimism, Rasmussen noted, recent U.S. cuts to biopreparedness and pandemic preparations clearly haven’t helped. She also questioned the effectiveness of involuntary quarantines and travel bans, arguing that they can erode economies, public trust, and the flow of information. “A virus doesn’t discriminate based on national origin,” she said. “It doesn’t care what passport you are carrying.”

One key variable driving the epidemic’s potential severity is whether epidemiologists see ongoing, sustained transmission of the virus to people with no travel history to China or clear connections to others who have been there. So far, most of the human-to-human spread beyond China has been limited to close contacts of infected patients, which some researchers have pointed to as a hopeful sign.

“If this remains limited in nature, the epidemic can be contained,” said Jason Kindrachuk, an expert on emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, in an email to The Daily Beast. “If we start seeing sustained human-to-human transmission outside of China, there will likely be some pretty quick revisiting of current screening procedures,” he added.

Given his work throughout Africa, Kindrachuk said he will be closely watching for confirmed cases on the continent as well as other low and middle-income regions around the world. “The limitations on health care infrastructure in many of these regions could be problematic for containment if the virus is able to gain a foothold and sustained H2H [human-to-human transmission] occurs,” he said.

The World Health Organization cited that danger as part of its rationale for declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern last week. If the disease accelerates, the capacity of multiple countries could be sorely tested, Bogoch said. “It’s like catching fly balls in the outfield,” he said. “When there’s one or two or three or four, you can run around and catch them.” But if countries become inundated with more cases at a faster pace, “it might be challenging to keep up and one or two might hit the ground.”

Tempering reports that the outbreak may be considerably larger than initially thought, emerging data also suggest that it may be less deadly than other recent outbreaks. A Feb. 3 report from the South China Morning Post, for example, suggested that the more than 5,000 reported cases in Wuhan by that point were “just the tip of the iceberg” due to a shortage of testing kits in the outbreak’s epicenter (several modeling studies have likewise pointed to much higher numbers). The report, however, also suggests that the true proportion of fatal cases—officially hovering around 3 percent for the city and surrounding Hubei province—might be significantly lower since milder cases would be more likely to go undiagnosed.

“Many of the sicker people are going to be seeking medical care and being diagnosed because they’re hospitalized,” Bogoch said. “And we’re going to be over-selecting for the sicker individuals who are going to have a higher fatality rate.”

Elsewhere in China, where hospitals haven’t been as overwhelmed, the proportion of fatal cases is roughly 0.2 percent, while the proportion elsewhere around the world is about 0.5 percent. Those numbers could quickly change, of course, and more accurate case fatality rate estimates may not be known for months. But epidemiologists and virologists were in large agreement that the virus appeared to be considerably less lethal than either SARS or MERS, at least so far.

The good news, Bogoch said, also carries a downside: “The negative side of it is, OK, if it causes less severe illness, there may be a large cohort of people that aren’t sick enough to seek medical care,” he said. “They may be contributing to further transmission in the community, and it’s just going to continue to spread and spread beyond China.”

Bogoch downplayed fears of transmission from truly asymptomatic patients, noting that many likely have had mild symptoms that didn’t require medical care. German officials, in fact, moved to correct a recent study suggesting that an asymptomatic Chinese woman passed the virus to four others in Germany; a follow-up confirmed that she did have symptoms after all.

Even so, Osterholm said the dynamic transmission of the coronavirus within China suggests that the same thing could readily happen elsewhere. “Viruses don’t change their skin when they cross a political border, so why do we think what’s happening there would be different if it went elsewhere in the world?” he asked.

If so, the impact could be severe. “In this case, we have a combination here where it appears to be much more infectious than what we’ve seen with SARS or MERS,” Osterholm said. “So even though the disease severity seems to be less, potentially substantially less, than SARS or MERS, the overall impact may be as great if not greater.”

Researchers believe the new coronavirus spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes and releases tiny droplets, similar to how seasonal cold and flu viruses proliferate. Since both cold and flu viruses in temperate regions seem to spread more readily in drier air, some scenarios have envisioned a similar future of fewer 2019 novel coronavirus infections over the summer and a seasonal resurgence over the winter.

Roughly 0.1 percent of people who become infected with seasonal flu in the U.S. every year die from it, with the risk skewed toward older and much younger people. Even if only 1-2 percent of coronavirus patients die, Osterholm said, “that is 10 to 20 times higher than we see with seasonal flu. That’s still a very important number.”

If containment efforts fail, Dr. Bogoch said, “We’re going to see a lot of people with upper and lower respiratory tract infections throughout the world, unfortunately.”

Public health preparations throughout the world, he said, may ultimately help determine where most cases land on the spectrum between mild symptoms and a “death sentence.”

The post What the Worst Case of a Coronavirus Pandemic Might Look Like first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Weekly Update

Greetings from Tyler,

This has been a week that history will remember, for several reasons.  A plague of large locusts is consuming the nations of North East Africa.  But that’s not the big story.  The incurable and deadly coronavirus has escaped Wuhan, China and is threatening to become a worldwide pandemic.  Doctors and nurses who recognized the danger of the sickness early, from the standpoint of its lethal nature and the ease with which it is transmitted, were arrested by Chinese authorities for “spreading rumors.”  The doctor credited with getting out an early warning is dead.

A number of cities in China are said to be ghost towns, with every one ordered not to leave home.  You hope they have plenty of food at home and hope no delicacies came from the Wuhan market.  Every report we see has hospital staff in hazmat suits.  Then we hear that the people caring for the sick are also sick unto death.   The things they sell for food at the market in Wuhan, China make us ill at the very thought.  Not only do they sell coyote and fox pups, but bats!  There it is, and since the coronavirus is thought to be an animal virus that has mutated to become a human contagion, bat soup may well be the culprit.

We don’t know if we’re getting the whole story, because the communist Chinese dictatorship appears to be covering up the magnitude of the problem.  Maybe it wouldn’t have gotten to this stage in the first place if they’d dealt with it honestly.  It doesn’t make any sense to report the numbers of sick or dead, because those numbers rely on Chinese reports.  And “truth” is not in their vocabulary.

So, there’s a plague of locusts consuming everything in East Africa’s fertile region.  There’s a pestilence that may well result in the deaths of millions.  It sounds like the end-time plagues may have started, but that’s not the big news either.

This week was the time that the President’s opponents, including nearly the entirety of the media, fervently hoped that he would be convicted in the Senate and removed from office.  The bug-eyed buffoon prosecuting the “case” did his utmost to shame at least a handful in the opposing party to break with the President and vote to remove him.  “You know you can’t trust him!” bug-eyes said over and over again with great emotion, pleading with the Senators to get Trump out of office before he uses foreign interference to win another election later this year.

They weren’t just impeaching him for what he’d allegedly said on the phone call, or what he “intended” to be understood from the conversation, he was being impeached for what he might do because “You know you can’t trust him!”

If it were any ordinary legal or criminal case, it would have been dismissed for lack of evidence before ever seeing a courtroom.  But as we were reminded every day, this wasn’t any ordinary case, it was a political action.  Therefore, normal rules of evidence didn’t apply.  If they had, countless hours of opinions, understandings and suppositions and hearsay from the secure basement of Congress could never have been admitted into the record.  But it gave a boatload of ammo to the political assassins in the media.  Everyone who thought the President had used foreign aid to coerce the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into “his political opponent” was a brave hero.  Vindman, Sondland, Ambassador Yavonovich, Misko, (Ciaramella, whose name must never be spoken), all employees of the Trump administration were all upstanding public servants for their willingness to risk their employment to oppose the President, even though they served “at his pleasure,” as the Constitution puts it.

Knowing the parties involved, as we do, it’s difficult to imagine Trump thinking he’d need such an advantage in order to deal with the awkward, gaff-laden former Vice President.  But that’s what the media demanded we believe.  Apparently the only thing necessary to avoid scrutiny (at least in the eyes of mainstream news) is to run for high office.  Some of us (including yours truly) are wondering if that’s not the main reason former V. P. Biden decided to throw his hat into the ring in the first place.

After three years of raising the expectations of those who hate our president to a fever pitch, only to see him acquitted of all the wrongdoing they’ve alleged, it is hilarious watching them pretend to be excited about other would-be contenders in the next election.  They’re promoting debates as if they were world-champion prizefights.  Their promos feature percussive explosions as they zoom one oversized face after another into your living room.  Bernie, Booti-whatever, Warren, Biden, in quick succession.  You know this is going to be exciting!  Pretty funny, after seeing these network buffoons having their hindquarters handed to them in real-time after they’d invested three and a half years in an all-out rush to get rid of Trump.  You’d think they could at least come up with a half-hearted apology, but no.

We knew it before, but the last three and a half years have removed any lingering doubt.  Our mainstream media is not trying to inform the public, but rather manipulate what we “know” and believe.  Can you even imagine what it would be like if not for alternative sources like it was in the good ole days?  Even though the public relied on only a handful of newsmen to present us what was important, at least there was some responsibility on their part to leave their personal opinions aside.  That is obviously no longer the case.

Thank goodness for alternative sources.  Thank God for President Trump, and this period of relief from oppressive government agencies.  The mainstream information outlets cannot be trusted, except to manipulate and deceive.  They’re mostly concerned about their contrived grievances, global warming and “gay” rights. The good news is that we’ve seen all the way through them, and will find out what we need to know in spite of them.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update from Mark Armstrong – 7 February 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday outlined a global plan for fighting influenza and trying to prevent or slow any worldwide outbreak of the viral disease, warning that the danger of a pandemic was “ever-present.”

“The question is not if we will have another pandemic, but when,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement on the WHO website. “We must be vigilant and prepared —  the cost of a major influenza outbreak will far outweigh the price of prevention.”

Among other things, Dr. Tedros warned of the risk that a new influenza virus could transmit from animals to humans to trigger such a pandemic.

“With the partnerships and country-specific work we have been doing over the years, the world is better prepared than ever before for the next big outbreak, but we are still not prepared enough,” he said. “This strategy aims to get us to that point.”

Read more: Do I have the flu or the common cold?

The WHO said there were an estimated 1 billion cases of flu each year, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths.

Strengthening national capacities

The United Nations agency recommends annual vaccinations to combat the disease, particularly for people working in health care and high-risk groups such as the old, the very young and those suffering from underlying illnesses.

The plan aims to build stronger national capacities to fight the disease, calling on countries to each have a special influenza program. It also wants to develop better tools for preventing, detecting, controlling and treating the disease and make these tools accessible for all countries. The anti-flu measures include vaccines and antiviral drugs.

Read more: WHO publishes list of 12 pathogens that pose greatest risk to human health

The world’s last flu pandemic was in 2009 and 2010 and was caused by the H1N1 virus. At least one in five people across the world is thought to have been infected, with a mortality rate of around 0.02 percent, amounting to 18,500 deaths in 214 countries.​​​​​​​

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/next-flu-pandemic-a-matter-of-when-not-if-says-who/a-47853367

The post Next flu pandemic ‘a matter of when, not if,’ says WHO first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.