Wuhan Coronavirus: Megathread - Got too big

[wtfNeedSignUp]

If I remember correctly the whole Chinese medicine has the idea that rarer = better, just to fuck with species under risk of extinction.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

The next riders of the apocalypse are War and Death.

We already had War, but it was a short ride.

 

[ulsterscotsman]

The next riders of the apocalypse are War and Death.

Oooh yeah Civil War come on baby!

 

[Ahriman]

A bit more on the bird flu.

Reuters on Twitter

“China has another health scare to contend with, an outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu at a farm in the southern province of Hunan https://t.co/c5wWMXnU9u https://t.co/L1zpPsg9Ll”

twitter.com

China facing global isolation as virus toll rises

China faced mounting isolation in the face of increasing international travel curbs and flight suspensions on Saturday, as the death toll from a spreading coronavirus outbreak rose to 259.

www.reuters.com

 

[JosephStalin]

You know if the EU delivers this shit it's going into the pockets of president Xi's and select party member's pockets, right?

I have zero faith in the chink government to do anything even resembling the right thing.

Yup, will go to hospitals that treat the CCP and PLA elite.

 

[Niggaplease]

Eh that's debatable. Somewhat off topic but...

Hong Kong, Tibet, Manchuria: probably pretty nice places, along the lines of Singapore, Bhutan/Nepal, and Korea respectively.

Uighuristan: a central Asian Sunni clone.

Canton: lol fuck no, imagine Vietnam but more dysfunctional.

Han China: maybe, but I doubt it - probably about on Iran's level. They suffer from the societal illness common to ex-imperial capital provinces, where after a while only the backstabby types succeed.

I don't trust a country that historically had brutal ways of torture and centuries of inhumanity. Say what you will about it woke folks but your literally defending a country that threw concubines into tombs because they hadn't produced kids. Or had concubines commit suicide after an emporers death by force. Or threw children and women into a river to drown to appease some god for a greater part of 5000 years.

 

[mr.moon1488]

A bit more on the bird flu.

Reuters on Twitter

“China has another health scare to contend with, an outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu at a farm in the southern province of Hunan https://t.co/c5wWMXnU9u https://t.co/L1zpPsg9Ll”

twitter.com

China facing global isolation as virus toll rises

China faced mounting isolation in the face of increasing international travel curbs and flight suspensions on Saturday, as the death toll from a spreading coronavirus outbreak rose to 259.

www.reuters.com

View attachment 1125840

These niggers really need to rethink their food situation...

 

[Sm0kINHaZefEEliNBlaZEd]

They've got form.

Battle of Suiyang in 757 A.D. The general encouraged the cannibalisation of civilians. Lots and lots of civilians (see image):

 

[Absolutego]

China had and still somehow could have the potential to be a top notch first world country. Makes you think how backwards communism is.

At this point they're not so much practicing communism as they're just another dynasty with updated lingo and a non-divinely ordained reason for the Emperor and his inner circle of Mandarins to run the country as they see fit.
Although I can understand your mistake, communism as practiced doesn't have a ton of differences from a typical autocracy.

 

[thx1138]

China had and still somehow could have the potential to be a top notch first world country. Makes you think how backwards communism is.

"Oh yeah well you have to pay five dollars for amoxycillin and thirty bucks just to see a physician but in China you can just go to the hospital and wait a few hours and bam you're all set, checkmate trumptard." - probably all of Reddit.

 

[TooStupidTooCare]

Right so that is Disease now possibly famine. What's next on the biblical list of plagues?

Let’s see, Pestilence then famine so War should be next.

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

Op-Ed in the LA Times in how we shouldn't quarantine anybody, just tell everybody to wash their hands and for those who deem themselves sick to stay home.

---
Op-Ed: International overreaction to the coronavirus is more dangerous than the virus itself

By KATHERINE A. MASON
JAN. 31, 2020

11:16 AM
In April 2003, I was evacuated from my post teaching English in Guangzhou, China, at the height of the SARS epidemic. I was 23. While transiting in Chicago on my way home to Philadelphia, I called my parents. That’s when they informed me that they were not coming to pick me up. Convinced that I was going to be Patient Zero for an American outbreak of SARS, they told me to take a cab to my sister’s apartment, where they intended to lock me up for 10 days with only a bag of groceries and a DVD player to keep me company.
I had no symptoms of SARS and had not been in contact with any SARS patients. According to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, that meant that I was not a risk. Deciding that my parents were overreacting, I went to the worst possible place to travel to when you might have a deadly disease: Manhattan.
I did not have SARS and did not seed a new plague in Manhattan. But the message that SARS was a cause for panic was received — not just by me, but eventually by my Chinese friends as well.
Fueled by press criticism and considerable pressure from the global health community to prove that it was doing something, the Chinese government jumped into gear. It did what it does best: exercise its authoritarian power in the most dramatic, highly visible way possible. Cheered on by the international community, it took disease control measures including many things that would not and could not happen anywhere else: sealing off entire hospitals, schools and apartment buildings full of people; rapidly building SARS facilities, including an entire SARS hospital in one week; and setting up neighborhood watch systems to root out potential carriers of the disease.

Quarantined in their university dorm rooms, my friends back in Guangzhou were so frightened that they said that they finally understood how Americans felt after 9/11. The World Health Organization praised China’s actions and credited them with the success of the global SARS containment effort.
As I learned over the next several years while traveling back and forth to China to study the aftereffects of SARS, the message that the Chinese received from that outbreak was that draconian actions in the name of infectious disease control are necessary, desirable and should overtake any other public health concerns.
China’s No. 1 public health goal became to never again be the source of a global epidemic like SARS. In the years following SARS, China spent vast amounts of money to overhaul its public health infrastructure, expand its infectious disease departments and develop sophisticated surveillance and containment systems. It eliminated most of the live-animal markets and restaurants that gave cities like Guangzhou much of their character. It set up strict screening and quarantine protocols at hospitals and ports of entry.
Seventeen years later, the disease-control apparatus has cranked into high gear with the coronavirus outbreak, quarantining tens of millions of China’s own citizens, shutting down entire metropolises in the process. And once again the international community is fueling panic and overreaction.


The U.S. has raised the threat level for travel to China to the same as for Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. Russia is closing down swaths of its 2,600-mile border with China. And the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has declared the outbreak a global health emergency and praised China for taking measures that would not be acceptable or even legal in a large number of the WHO’s member countries.
But what the WHO is cheering is both ineffective and dangerous. The virus has already spread. Barricading Wuhan, a city larger than New York City, and efforts to ban travel to and from a country with one-fifth of the world’s population or shut down trade routes are very unlikely to prevent further spread of the virus.
The coronavirus is scaring people because it is new and much is not known about it. But what we can tell so far is that this is no Ebola. Most people who contract it recover just fine. The fatality rate appears to be considerably lower than SARS and is probably much lower than it appears right now, since so many cases are very likely going unreported and mild versions of the disease are probably not being counted at all. Most fatalities are among the elderly and those with preexisting conditions.
The situation in Wuhan, where the vast majority of cases are, is being made far worse by the panic and extreme measures being taken. Panicked and trapped citizens are rushing to the hospital at the first sign of a sniffle. Hospitals are overwhelmed with thousands of people who probably do not have the virus — but are far more likely to contract it after waiting for hours in crowded waiting rooms with people who do.
Meanwhile, those with other diseases and urgent health needs are not able to get timely care as huge amounts of resources are redirected toward fighting the virus. How many people might be dying from heart attacks in China because hospitals are paying attention to nothing but the coronavirus?
What is needed now is calm — both in China and throughout the global community. Citizens of all countries should stay home if they are ill and should wash their hands often in any case. Scientists should do their jobs in tracking and studying this new disease, without inciting public panic. In the meantime, broad quarantines of the general population (beyond those who are sick) should be lifted. This is not the end of the world. Treating the coronavirus outbreak as if it were will do a lot more harm than good.
Katherine A. Mason is an assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University and author of “Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health After an Epidemic.”

 

[eternal dog mongler]

They're not superior and haven't shed their brutal ways since their feudal period.
Human life has been cheap for all that time and still is.

And also animal life!

This whole thing has been endemic to Asia for a long time. People can call me racist all they want but they don't respect life in general. Let's leave our female infants to die of exposure! 5,000 years of great China history!

 

[thx1138]

Let's say this shit gets actually oh-my-God levels of apocalyptically biblical, and China loses say 30-50 million to this plague (it'll burn itself out first, but bear with me). That's a drop in the bucket, the country has a population of what, one point seven billion now? That's like four people dropping dead in the mid-sized town of around 30k I live in. The generation that replaces them will be squalling in their bassinets before the last body gets shoved into the mass grave.

 

[ConfederateIrishman]

Op-Ed in the LA Times in how we shouldn't quarantine anybody, just tell everybody to wash their hands and for those who deem themselves sick to stay home.

---
Op-Ed: International overreaction to the coronavirus is more dangerous than the virus itself

By KATHERINE A. MASON
JAN. 31, 2020

11:16 AM
In April 2003, I was evacuated from my post teaching English in Guangzhou, China, at the height of the SARS epidemic. I was 23. While transiting in Chicago on my way home to Philadelphia, I called my parents. That’s when they informed me that they were not coming to pick me up. Convinced that I was going to be Patient Zero for an American outbreak of SARS, they told me to take a cab to my sister’s apartment, where they intended to lock me up for 10 days with only a bag of groceries and a DVD player to keep me company.
I had no symptoms of SARS and had not been in contact with any SARS patients. According to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, that meant that I was not a risk. Deciding that my parents were overreacting, I went to the worst possible place to travel to when you might have a deadly disease: Manhattan.
I did not have SARS and did not seed a new plague in Manhattan. But the message that SARS was a cause for panic was received — not just by me, but eventually by my Chinese friends as well.
Fueled by press criticism and considerable pressure from the global health community to prove that it was doing something, the Chinese government jumped into gear. It did what it does best: exercise its authoritarian power in the most dramatic, highly visible way possible. Cheered on by the international community, it took disease control measures including many things that would not and could not happen anywhere else: sealing off entire hospitals, schools and apartment buildings full of people; rapidly building SARS facilities, including an entire SARS hospital in one week; and setting up neighborhood watch systems to root out potential carriers of the disease.

Quarantined in their university dorm rooms, my friends back in Guangzhou were so frightened that they said that they finally understood how Americans felt after 9/11. The World Health Organization praised China’s actions and credited them with the success of the global SARS containment effort.
As I learned over the next several years while traveling back and forth to China to study the aftereffects of SARS, the message that the Chinese received from that outbreak was that draconian actions in the name of infectious disease control are necessary, desirable and should overtake any other public health concerns.
China’s No. 1 public health goal became to never again be the source of a global epidemic like SARS. In the years following SARS, China spent vast amounts of money to overhaul its public health infrastructure, expand its infectious disease departments and develop sophisticated surveillance and containment systems. It eliminated most of the live-animal markets and restaurants that gave cities like Guangzhou much of their character. It set up strict screening and quarantine protocols at hospitals and ports of entry.
Seventeen years later, the disease-control apparatus has cranked into high gear with the coronavirus outbreak, quarantining tens of millions of China’s own citizens, shutting down entire metropolises in the process. And once again the international community is fueling panic and overreaction.


The U.S. has raised the threat level for travel to China to the same as for Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. Russia is closing down swaths of its 2,600-mile border with China. And the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has declared the outbreak a global health emergency and praised China for taking measures that would not be acceptable or even legal in a large number of the WHO’s member countries.
But what the WHO is cheering is both ineffective and dangerous. The virus has already spread. Barricading Wuhan, a city larger than New York City, and efforts to ban travel to and from a country with one-fifth of the world’s population or shut down trade routes are very unlikely to prevent further spread of the virus.
The coronavirus is scaring people because it is new and much is not known about it. But what we can tell so far is that this is no Ebola. Most people who contract it recover just fine. The fatality rate appears to be considerably lower than SARS and is probably much lower than it appears right now, since so many cases are very likely going unreported and mild versions of the disease are probably not being counted at all. Most fatalities are among the elderly and those with preexisting conditions.
The situation in Wuhan, where the vast majority of cases are, is being made far worse by the panic and extreme measures being taken. Panicked and trapped citizens are rushing to the hospital at the first sign of a sniffle. Hospitals are overwhelmed with thousands of people who probably do not have the virus — but are far more likely to contract it after waiting for hours in crowded waiting rooms with people who do.
Meanwhile, those with other diseases and urgent health needs are not able to get timely care as huge amounts of resources are redirected toward fighting the virus. How many people might be dying from heart attacks in China because hospitals are paying attention to nothing but the coronavirus?
What is needed now is calm — both in China and throughout the global community. Citizens of all countries should stay home if they are ill and should wash their hands often in any case. Scientists should do their jobs in tracking and studying this new disease, without inciting public panic. In the meantime, broad quarantines of the general population (beyond those who are sick) should be lifted. This is not the end of the world. Treating the coronavirus outbreak as if it were will do a lot more harm than good.
Katherine A. Mason is an assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University and author of “Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health After an Epidemic.”

Noooo not my hecking ricebois

 

[Ahriman]

These niggers really need to rethink their food situation...

Get a load of this:

Bat spit coffee is a hit with Madagascar consumers

In the rich volcanic soils of central Madagascar’s Itasy province grows a rare and fragrant coffee coveted by bats and humans alike. The twist: humans want it even more after the bats have nibbled on it.

www.reuters.com

Time to give China a run for their money, I guess...

 

[Judge Holden]

Let's say this shit gets actually oh-my-God levels of apocalyptically biblical, and China loses say 30-50 million to this plague (it'll burn itself out first, but bear with me). That's a drop in the bucket, the country has a population of what, one point seven billion now? That's like four people dropping dead in the mid-sized town of around 30k I live in. The generation that replaces them will be squalling in their bassinets before the last body gets shoved into the mass grave.

One word nigga

Logistics

Losing that many people, handling so many cases of sickness, having the entire population in a state of absolute unproductive panic, roads and infrastructure gummed up to apocalyptic levels, and every other imaginable step on the logistical chain fucked up indefinitely may well sent china's ever more uncertain economy into a full on nosedive, and when that happens and these already scared and angry people start going hungry then shit is likely to escalate to a far more severe level, and when it escalates that infrastructure and transportation system will again start to break down, and a country of a billion people will start running out of shit they need to live from food to medicine to fuel.

Sure none of this is certain or even likely, but even losing a relatively "small" number like this can utterly doom a nation solely because of how the citizenry and government react to it due to how much it disrupts the interconnected threads of modern life

 

[LetThemEatCake]

I don't trust a country that historically had brutal ways of torture and centuries of inhumanity. Say what you will about it woke folks but your literally defending a country that threw concubines into tombs because they hadn't produced kids. Or had concubines commit suicide after an emporers death by force. Or threw children and women into a river to drown to appease some god for a greater part of 5000 years.

Yeah, being a concubine was a risky fucking business. Your boss died, you got buried alive with him in his tomb. All thousand of you sealed in together to die alongside the guy's furniture. Then we have the old 'lotus feet', breaking middle/upper class women's foot bones and folding them back into flesh triangles and hoping they didn't get gangrene before they healed into tiny, disabling stumps. Fucking madness. That's the one thing Mao did I could admire - stopping that torturous practice.

Tibet is all quaint and shit and had a very old feudal culture before it was overrun by Han Chinese in the 50s and buttfucked to near-cultural death and everyone remembers the proud and noble Tibetan monk who self-immolated to protest it and everyone knows the cute modern and well-spoken Dalai Lama with all his collective wisdom and fun sense of humour as a spirtual and civilized kind of guy. But Tibetan culture pre-Chinese invasion was horribly brutal and fucked up in its own way too. Various Buddhist sects annihilated each other over the centuries. Monks in those monasteries high up were basically allowed to do whatever they fucking pleased to the dirt poor peasantry and what they wanted to do was apparently rape little boys and girls, enslave the peasantry and torture people from time to time. That whole area of the world has always been brutal and fucked-up.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

I'm sorry in advance for the stale ass meme but:
God: so how many plagues will suffice?
China: Y E S
I swear someone should give Moses a call see if he got a hand in this one.

There's currently a locust plague heading towards Egypt.

God is mad and He's not taking prisoners this time.

 

[simulated goat]

s

Right so that is Disease now possibly famine. What's next on the biblical list of plagues?

The locusts are busy right now, but maybe the rains of frogs aren't booked up yet.