Current Wuhan Situation

https://twitter.com/heylauragao/status/1241620966762938370

by sturza • 6 years ago

154 102 6 years ago

nashashmi• 6 years ago

Taxis are repurposed for hospital visits! How dangerous for taxi drivers.

ipsum2• 6 years ago

From what I've seen, taxi drivers have put up barriers between them and their passengers. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXJHp_zmgTE

Not sure how they disinfect the taxi afterwards though. Anyone more knowledgable on this?

Leary2• 6 years ago

Alcohol/disinfectant in a spray bottle. Spray it everywhere inside.

dchyrdvh• 6 years ago

A/C knows no barriers.

dang3• 6 years ago

Url changed from https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1241620966762938370.html, which points to this.

Shoop• 6 years ago

What’s the ruling on using threadreaderapp? Would a good submission post the original twitter source and link threadreaderapp in a comment?

dang3• 6 years ago

"Ruling" is too strong a word but that's probably the best way. HN's guidelines call for original sources: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

If there were a community consensus that threadreaderapp.com links are better than the equivalent twitter.com links, we could maybe override that, but there's no such consensus.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

yumraj• 6 years ago

Doesn't this put into question the whole premise that China had defeated the Covid-19 and things are beginning to come to normal?

The lockdown is in effect and the moment it's taken down, we'll see a second wave. No?

lihaciudaniel• 6 years ago

You are right, but we did had a chance to contain it [1] but according to them

[1] flattenthecurve.com

kelp• 6 years ago

Total not an expert in this area or really qualified to comment. But I think if they can get the known case load low enough, and continue aggressive testing and contact tracing, they may be able to lift the lockdown. Then aggressively isolate anyone who's come into contact with a known case.

If that doesn't work, restart the lockdown.

The big risk my be re-importing it back from other parts of the world who've been much less successful at containing this.

ENGNR• 6 years ago

Yes

But... hospital and testing capabilities are building day by day, the quarantine is buying time

It comes back, but the second time around we can isolate the right people due to ubiquitous testing, have more hospital beds and more knowledge on how to treat the sick, and are that much closer to a vaccine

pengaru• 6 years ago

At least China now knows they have brakes that work.

Leary2• 6 years ago

China's relaxed posture is stricter than America's quarantines in NYC, Washington, and California.

glofish• 6 years ago

The lockdown is in effect and the moment it's taken down, we'll see a second wave. No?

Who knows, I think they have no idea and are just keeping things as they are to avoid having Wuhan in the news. Would make awful press to admit to any new cases in Wuhan.

Are other major metropolises locked down similarly? Beijing, Shanghai?

In general, is it credible that China has had no new cases other than those so called "imported from outside"? Sounds like propaganda to me.

DarthGhandi• 6 years ago

Are other major metropolises locked down similarly? Beijing, Shanghai?

Kuala Lumpur has all unessential services and schools closed. Supermarkets are open.

People aren't allowed outside apart from going to work or the shops. Police are enforcing this and they've brought in the Army to help stop people spending time in parks.

johnchristopher• 6 years ago

Even so, three days without casualties doesn't seem enough to me for any country to declare they are out of the woods.

harmmonica2• 6 years ago

Think it's worth reading this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22593771) from a few days ago and in particular watching the whole Nanjing video. If it is accurate (or was accurate (because from other commenters the restrictions are loosening daily)), you can really get a sense of how extraordinary the Chinese efforts to combat this have been.

Nanjing is a city of 8M people so roughly the size of Wuhan. I came away from it thinking that the numbers coming out of China could very well be credible given how strict movement/social distancing/etc is/has been. Of course that is not Wuhan, which is why the stricter lockdown still going on in Wuhan would seem to make sense (but I can't vouch for the authenticity of any of this).

vanniv• 6 years ago

This is the thing that is so crazy about the economic suicide and authoritarian lockdowns we are all doing.

Evidence from China and Italy is that they don't actually work. It's been three months, and China still can't let people leave their front door or the virus will return full force, with no expectations that another month or even another year of lockdown will help.

In Italy, with two weeks of lockdown, the exponential growth of new infections hasn't even slowed. Now they are predicting that "just three more weeks" and the exponential growth might start to slightly decline.

Wealth and freedom are declining around the world, but it doesn't even slow the virus' spread.

Meanwhile, places like Korea have no trouble stopping the virus without the authoritarianism.

And yet, all people here call for is ever-more economic destruction, and ever more authoritarian controls, all to no detectable effect. Except, of course, the end of our free and prosperous societies.

natmaka4• 6 years ago

I'm French and live in Shanghai since 201708.

There was no lockdown.

Everyone wears a mask in public places, this is mandatory. Before entering many/most buildings (private or public) your body temperature is measured. In most private compounds non-resident people cannot enter without a solid reason. Schools are closed. A gym I know was closed for weeks and restarted at the beginning of March in restricted mode (no group class, simultaneous private courses are under quota, masks are mandatory at all times...), and restrictions are progressively lifted (reduced group classes will soon restart...).

Reedx• 6 years ago

Dr. Fauci is saying it's likely to have flu-like seasonality. Though it's not known for sure yet.

And current expert consensus is in line with that, putting the odds at 73% for a 2nd wave in the fall:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-expe...

asveikau2• 6 years ago

I thought there were cases in the southern hemisphere where it's currently summer.

loeg• 6 years ago

The significance of China flattening the curve was never that Covid was defeated. This thing will have a much longer impact than that. It was that their health infrastructure could keep up with ICU demand, i.e., they have a death rate trending towards 0.5-1% instead of 4-6%.

Until there is a vaccine or the entire remaining population develops some immunity, the disease is still around and lockdown will have to be lifted gradually to keep the number of new cases low enough that the cases that need intense care can get it.

op03• 6 years ago

So far South Korea and Japan aren't showing any second wave and they have probably more travel/biz links with Wuhan than anyone else...so fingers crossed. Keep an eye on them.

dredmorbius3• 6 years ago

Slight upticks in China ex-Hubei and SG cases in the past week.

Japan still has a growth rate that's doubling roughly monthly. Better, and a much flattened curve, but still concerning.

harmmonica2• 6 years ago

It has been, I think, 5 days since the last case in Wuhan (guess there's a debate about a case that may have occurred yesterday/today, but jury's out on that one based on media reports).

That said, if the 5 days is true, then you wouldn't expect them to remove the lockdown until they know they've starved the virus for the incubation period (I think it's generally accepted that 14 days is the number, but that there are potentially longer outliers). By that logic, you wouldn't expect them to lift the lockdown materially for another 9 days and even then you would expect them to only gradually lift restrictions while they ensure no new cases emerge.

I'm sure there are media outlets saying China has "defeated" the virus, but from what I've read they've contained it, kept new infections to a minimum (attributing all at this point to imported cases) and are still on varying degrees of lockdown. And this is hardly reputable, but I follow people on Instagram who are in Shanghai and folks there still talk as if things are far from normal... There are still restrictions on what you can do, where you can go.

Jaxkr2• 6 years ago

They stopped testing. There are no new cases because they stopped testing.

fg6hr4• 6 years ago

Why would a lockdown help? The virus will live in some animals and humans and once the lockdown is over, the spread will resume.

eric_b4• 6 years ago

Let me make sure I have my timeline right.

For years experts have warned that another SARS-like virus is going to come out of China, due to their animal husbandry practices and culture of eating certain animals.

Then this disease appears, and China initially tries to suppress news of it. They deny it's an issue. Wasting valuable time and allowing it spread unchecked to the rest of the world.

Then, about three months ago they lock down Wuhan to contain it (an area with millions of people I think?) This means, based on this Twitter thread, that residents can't even walk outside. So, like being incarcerated?

And, people's wages are getting paid still, but as loans they'll owe when this is all over. So, like debt?

What boggles my mind is all the positive news coverage of this. Why are people fawning over this?

dboreham2• 6 years ago

They locked down end of January.

drivers99• 6 years ago

The news I’ve seen has been calling it “draconian.”

e.g.

“China has used draconian measures to contain the spread of the virus, including locking down Hubei province and more recently stepping up measures to screen and quarantine overseas arrivals.” Reuters (NYTimes?) https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/21/world/asia/21reut...

dredmorbius3• 6 years ago

China, as with other countries, hss made errors and seen successes in addressing COVID-19. Systemic strengths and weaknesses have been exposed. A reasonable commentary expresses both sides.

Truth is nonideological.

As much as China squandered weeks, possibly months of advanced warning, we've seen precisely that script repeated around the world, across a wide range of cultures, governmental systems, economic systems, and ideologies.

With a few notable exceptions: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan RoC, and South Korea most notably.

This epidemic is unprecedented since WWII, and everyone is making up their response (including numerous ineffective ones) as it develops. Most often there are no good options, only least bad ones.

jariel• 6 years ago

Nobody but the Chinese were throwing their justice system at people for merely indicating there might be a problem. That's very different than incompetence.

thankswell• 6 years ago

Even all you claimed stand, China stop its whole country in Jan and achieved 0 domestic new case in 2 months. This is already the biggest positive news.

Speaking of that:

- Hongkong and Palau has much worse eating wild animal habit than Wuhan.

- Hundreds of Wuhan gov officials got punished due to inefficient response, more investigation is still continuing.

- First case reported at end of Dec, China CDC shared out coronavirus gen sequence in Jan, Wuhan locked down in Jan, but the most of the world simply did nothing in the upcoming 3 months and keep spreading unchecked globally even today.

- "Incarcerated" or die, you make the choice.

- Loan payments are postponed as well.

eric_b4• 6 years ago

The estimated IFR for this coronavirus is ~.05 to 0.1%. Even if it turns out to be something extreme, like 0.5%, it's not a big deal for the vast, vast majority of the population. But lockdowns and economic catastrophe are. They are a big deal for everyone. In this case the needs of the many are being overridden by the needs of the few.

If the shutdowns/lockdowns go for more than 4 weeks, I think we'd have been better off just letting the disease run wild. More people will die from the economic issues at that point. Might be too late already.

hker• 6 years ago

- Hongkong and Palau has much worse eating wild animal habit than Wuhan.

Curious how you get this impression, do you have specific examples in mind? For example, bats, wolves and civet cats are consumed in Wuhan, which is not the case in Hong Kong.

- Hundreds of Wuhan gov officials got punished due to inefficient response, more investigation is still continuing.

On the flip side, I wonder how the cases for the eight whistleblowers reprimanded by local authorities, including Li Wenliang, are being investigated. More importantly, the real question is: does it actually solve the problem? Replacing officials (especially the local ones) is easy, solving the root cause (lack of accountability) is hard.

Kaze4044• 6 years ago

It's awful, but I feel it's not fair to single out China for this. I don't see the rest of the world doing much better of a job, especially in Brazil where Bolsonaro is still going on television to downplay the situation and actively making it harder for state governors to do the right thing (make people stay the fuck home, if you pardon my French).

eric_b4• 6 years ago

It is absolutely fair to single them out. This would not be happening if not for circumstances specific to their culture and industry. They had warning 20 years ago with SARS1, and they did nothing to prevent this, even though the solutions would basically be "don't store live animals next to each other in wet markets". Now we all pay the price.

Our world would be better with more accountability. And in this case there is one specific party who fucked up worse than all the rest, particularly given their 20 year notice.

amylene• 6 years ago

Because there is value in making good decisions after a series of bad ones. Wuhan has stopped more infections, which is to be applauded.

Moving forward, we can criticize the reasons in the post mortem. However, if we are looking to find the truth, we cannot start with blame. We all know how blame causes people to cover their ass and inhibits learning.

hcknwscommenter• 6 years ago

Perfectly put. Thank you.

dirtyid2• 6 years ago

Strip away media narrative on both sides, an impartial timeline would be:

Wuhan medical community recognized a new pneumonia of unclear cause in late December during winter and the height of influenza season. The novel Corona Virus was identified, WHO was notified, the genome was sequenced. This took roughly 1 week. Then it took 3 more weeks of "stability management" before central government quarantined WuHan and essentially shutdown the entire country right before the most important holiday of the year and the largest annual human migration.

4 weeks for identification to evaluation to 3 months of aggressive techno-authoritarian quarantine, and assuming 2nd wave and import cases can be managed until the vaccine - China just demonstrated the first civilization model in human history to be able to suppress a virus of this magnitude in large countries. Other countries are only recently adopting the war analogy, China executed it on a dime. How they'll fair in rebooting society is unknown.

Was there missteps? Yes. Could they have done better? Not by much IMO. Every misstep with Chinese characteristics is being repeated just as worst in other countries with their cultural characteristics. The overall response as been not as agile (if there a response at all), despite having ample notice and more information.

The retrospect of this global health crisis is going to be interesting, China and a handful of islands managed to successful crush the curve, complacent developed countries may or may not successful spread the curve, and all the developing countries get rapid herd immunity because like the Spanish flu, they have no other choice. 1.4 billion people without herd immunity among a globalized world with immunity is going to be a conundrum though.

tluyben2• 6 years ago

Herd community for covid19 is speculation right? There is no proof that that will happen is there? It is a (dangerous) gamble at this point as I understand it.

YZF• 6 years ago

Lots of people left Wuhan before the lockdown though. Also lots of people still travelled for the Chinese New Year internally. January 10th is the beginning of travel season, Wuhan was locked down on the 23rd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932...

emmelaich4• 6 years ago

new pneumonia of unclear cause in late December

The earliest known case was 1 Dec.

There were suspected cases going back at least as mid-November.

gandutraveler• 6 years ago

A pure theory but how likely is it that Chinese govt knew that travelers would spread covid-19 but allowed it knowingly anyways.

nojvek2• 6 years ago

US had a 2 month warning. Our president and CDC kept downplaying it like it was nothing. Trump was saving face for a long time trying to not harm the stock market while blatantly lying to us.

How is this any different from what China did?

At-least China has gotten things under control, the west is on fire. Italy is being decimated and being overwhelmed.

troughway• 6 years ago

Here is a video that better describes the situation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be

unclesaamm• 6 years ago

In response to people who are saying, "it's just because Chinese people eat weird food that the virus started in Wuhan," here's a much more thoughtful article about how the shape of the global markets contributed to the shape of this pandemic:

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/chinese-viru...

fg6hr4• 6 years ago

Didn't the virus start from the Wuhan virus lab?

overeater• 6 years ago

ColanR• 6 years ago

There's a decent amount of evidence to suggest it did, and China has already shown themselves unreliable (putting it mildly) regarding information about the virus. I don't think you have a leg to stand on if you propose to speak with such certainty.

fg6hr4• 6 years ago

"China’s only Level 4 microbiology lab that is equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology." In fact, when all this started, China was quite open about the lab story. Only when the containment failed, CCP decided to erase the lab story from the news.

tonypace• 6 years ago

No, probably not.

There is evidence that there virus was not engineered. The spike protein is completely novel and existing techniques for finding bonding proteins do not see this virus as a good binding candidate.

It is conceivable that the lab was studying bat coronavirus and accidentally released it, but Occam's razor suggests that the market where most early patients contacted the virus, similar to the market where SARS evolved, is the actual source.

8862• 6 years ago

Stop spreading the conspiracy theories, please.

(Even those that say it started from the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick...)

There is absolutely no evidence showing the virus started from a lab, regardless of Chinese or American.

gruez2• 6 years ago

the govt mandated employers must still pay salaries while [the workers are] in quarantine. As a reaction, some employers are requiring workers to make up this pay once they come back... effectively a loan.

So how are the workers going to pay it back? I presume it's going to be a pay cut for the next n months until it's all made up for. While that's better than not getting paid at all, the unexpected pay cut might be problematic for households that live paycheck to paycheck (not sure how prevalent that is in china), and for the consumer economy. Also, are what happens if the employee simply quits? Are those debts legal debts?

seanmcdirmid• 6 years ago

For employees on the edge making 5-10 RMB/hour, that will be a huge burden for them. In China you need a signed/stamped release from your previous employer before you can take a new job, so they could just hold that back if there are any debts to make up.

raywu• 6 years ago

If you're interested in seeing the organized grocery run by neighborhood in Wuhan, this video interview[1] did an excellent job capturing the gist.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU2ut5Ark3Q

gdubs• 6 years ago

“For context, most people live in "neighborhoods" comprised of several high rise apartments in a compact area w/ a shared green space (see pic).”

Off-topic I know, but this is a pretty good description of the Sim City “donut” shape that was essential to building a megalopolis and winning the game. You built residential units around a park center, and with the right conditions that developed into white high-rises like those in her linked picture.

natmaka4• 6 years ago

https://solutions.synearth.net/a-community-dwelling-machine/

Current Wuhan Situation

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