COVID-19 Coronavirus UPDATES, BANS, CLOSURES, ADVISORY, etc.

[Wheels]

I bet in 3 weeks, we wont even be talking about it anymore.

Marius,

The medical community is saying we are 12-18 months out from a vaccine. This is the earliest if we go through normal human testing. Perhaps this can be sped up, but there could also be significant risks in going straight from animals to humans without real studies. Once we get the vaccine it will be many more months before we get 6 billion + people vaccinated.

Will people really fly around the world until they are vaccinated. Will governments even allow it.

Other than stopping flights from China, America had done a poor job of responding to the pandemic until this week. Now we are probably 6-8 weeks out from stopping the spread and starting to see reductions in growth at best. Europe has responded poorly and will probably have significant problems throughout this year. South Asia is a big question mark. Things will probably not be pretty over there. If the virus gets established in South America and Africa it will be really tough. Hopefully summer in the northern hemisphere will slow the spread of the virus. If it does, look for it to pick back up in the fall/winter of 2020/2021. Hopefully by spring there is a vaccine, then hopefully it will be part of the annual flu shots starting in fall 2021.

Travel, tourism, airlines, cruise lines, restaurants, hotels, entertainment industries have significant problems. Their best hope is a financially strong government that is willing to bail them out.

No disrespect intended but plan for much more than three weeks.

 

[TokkieM]

Highly intelligent reply PHASA, they may be using Who statistics, but not they are hell bent on not following their advice.

 

[spike.t]

I honestly do.

So airlines are grounding hundreds of planes and cutting staff...countries are closing their borders totally to outsiders.... International flights are being cut in countries... everything from countries to areas of countries to cities are in lockdown.... And numbers infected are increasing rapidly.... And this will all be gone in three e weeks....... Err....Don't think so...

 

[KMG Hunting Safaris]

So airlines are grounding hundreds of planes and cutting staff...countries are closing their borders totally to outsiders.... International flights are being cut in countries... everything from countries to areas of countries to cities are in lockdown.... And numbers infected are increasing rapidly.... And this will all be gone in three e weeks....... Err....Don't think so...

Mike, I said, we wont even be discussing it anymore. Did not say the world will be cured.
I read today the China is already showing containment.

 

[Standard Velocity]

The media can't let it go because it's the only diversion from the DemonRats pathetic candidates. The problem is that it happened too soon and any reasonable person would see that the government response was optimal given the pre-existing policies and known information regarding the disease. There only hope is that the virus is not temperature sensitive and can continue to be active through the Summer. Then the Communists can blame the current administration, which they'll do anyway, but there would be more idiots to support them.

Didn’t the current administration 86 Tom Bossert and fail to replace Timothy Ziemer leaving the arm of the National Security Counsil responsible for pandemics and biological attacks kind of... flaccid?

Is it really reasonable to believe there is a liberal conspiracy to win an election by letting thousands (millions?) of people die? Maybe I’m naive.

I find it difficult to be blindly loyal to any elected official. I’ve never voted for a single candidate that truly represented me and my views. I have voted for the least worst candidate, the candidate I would come to regret, the candidate who turned coat and once a candidate I quite liked.

 

[Uncle Sauce]

Thought this was interesting:

 

[Wheels]

I honestly do.

With a 99% survival rate for people under 70, with no previous conditions, I'll take those odds.
Can you imagine if we reported on every single flu infection?
We need to get back to some common sense.

Marius,

Of the people I know posting here, you are probably in as good of shape as anyone, you are also still young. You are probably in the 99 percentile of AH posters to survive anything. You should probably travel all over the world this year while rates are cheap.

Look at your average customer. How many of them are 50+. How many of them have health issues. Especially issues they may not have told you about. Look at hunting from their perspective.

You also have to consider your clients family. Do your clients want to potentially bring the virus back to spouses, parents, grandparents, etc that have health problems or are older. ie: I am supposed to be in Mozambique in a little over a month. My in-laws live close and my wife is the primary caregiver. If I can carry the virus for over 30 days and be asymptomatic for much of that, and still contagious, is it worth the trip to possibly give my wife and/or them the virus. I haven't made a decision yet, and feel the decision will probably be made for me before time to leave.


This is not the flu. The flu doesn't put 15% of it's victims in the hospital. It doesn't require ventilators for 5-8% of them. If this virus spikes in any area, the health care system will be overwhelmed and the mortality rate will spike much higher than 1%.

 

[Standard Velocity]

I honestly do.

With a 99% survival rate for people under 70, with no previous conditions, I'll take those odds.
Can you imagine if we reported on every single flu infection?
We need to get back to some common sense.

With literally billions of flu cases worth of data we expect less than 0.1% mortality rate.

Originally the rate for Covid-19 was said to be 3-4%. I entered the numbers from the WHO website yesterday and it was 1.5-2%. The more cases reported the more data and the more it will normalize.

Just a 1% rate of mortality is exponentially greater than that of the flu.

 

[spoonieduck]

Although I believe this disease will be self-limiting, I'm shocked to see some people trying to comfort themselves with the 'information' that such-and-such African nation has reported only one case. If you don't look you won't find and I suspect that few sub-Saharan countries ate 'looking' hard. How could they? In many of these countries public health infrastructure and testing are almost non-existent.. We have at least two epidemiologic experiments in progress. The U.S., for example, represents a maximum effort to slow the advance of the virus. Extremely impoverished countries will be obliged to try the second approach which is to say, almost nothing--the infection will do what infectious diseases do, and infect more and more people until it hits some kind of biological wall.

Should the ultimate numbers of infected people be a certain number in, let's say, Burundi, and should the ultimate percentage of infected Americans be about the same, then we'll be able to say that we've wasted a great mountain of gold for very little. If the U.S. shows a much lower percentage of infected individuals, the expenditure MAY be justified. Maybe.

But right now, we just don't know. We don't know where that biological brick wall is. Will it be very low, such as early South Korean data suggests [1-2% of population will eventually get infected,] or will it be very high at 40-50%? No data I know of suggests this high number, at least not yet. The mortality rate seems to hover around one percent OF THOSE PEOPLE INFECTED, and, those that die, are heavily weighted against those over 75 with other very serious diseases like cancer, emphysema,, cirrhosis of the liver etc. Clearly, no matter your age and pre-existing conditions, you can't die of covid 19 if you don't catch it.

As I presently put it together, the disease, itself, shouldn't devastate whole populations--not even close--but health agencies throughout the world are behaving as if it just might. Why? What do they know that I don't know?

 

[EricB]

The smartest thing to do right now is hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

 

[Ray B]

The primary question will be answered by the virus when Winter ends in one week, then 13 weeks of Spring and if Greta and the Bozos are correct the Earth will warm and we'll have Summer. We will then learn if the virus is susceptible to heat. If it is, it will die off and the "flu season" will end. the test kits would be widely available and the positives should reduce to near 0. the virus may go into a dormant stage for the Summer & Autumn, then return for Winter. With all the emphasis it is possible that there would be a treatment available at that time. Additionally, the governments would be forewarned and have plans in effect in the case of a resurgence. So while the peak is still ahead and 3 weeks is overly optimistic, it is possible that in 3 months it will be a memory. ALL of this depends on the virus' answer to the temperatures of Summer.

 

[Hogpatrol]

The primary question will be answered by the virus when Winter ends in one week, then 13 weeks of Spring and if Greta and the Bozos are correct the Earth will warm and we'll have Summer. We will then learn if the virus is susceptible to heat. If it is, it will die off and the "flu season" will end. the test kits would be widely available and the positives should reduce to near 0. the virus may go into a dormant stage for the Summer & Autumn, then return for Winter. With all the emphasis it is possible that there would be a treatment available at that time. Additionally, the governments would be forewarned and have plans in effect in the case of a resurgence. So while the peak is still ahead and 3 weeks is overly optimistic, it is possible that in 3 months it will be a memory. ALL of this depends on the virus' answer to the temperatures of Summer.

Good for the northern hemisphere but what about the southern? It's going to be interesting.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Not sure but I think Ghana shut down today.

 

[Brent in Az]

If heat kills it, then that is one positive thing of living here in the Arizona desert.

 

[WebleyGreene455]

If heat kills it, then that is one positive thing of living here in the Arizona desert.

I've read that high humidity also has an effect on the ability of cold and flu viruses to infect people. That plus heat are in abundance here in GA, or will be before too long.

But I'm not counting on either to make this virus go away.

 

[LivingTheDream]

The issue I have is that there is a lot of "experts" saying "will infect" or "would be" or "could". I feel at this current time to say millions will die in the US, even millions will be infected, is not supported with any data.

Based on US numbers, we have seen 55 deaths so far (I know it will go up) but that is about the same as the first warm weekend in Chicago. We have around 2500 known cases, there are a lot of steps being taken to minimize large gatherings. We will see an increase over the next week due to better testing and more cases being correctly diagnosed but to get to millions of infected is a stretch, millions of deaths would require more almost 20% of the population to be infected....I just dont see it happening.

If we look at China (I know they are not the most honest with data) but they only have had 81,000 cases and 3,200 deaths. They are much more populated, have a larger population and were at the epicenter/start of it all before we knew it could be contagious for 5 days before even showing symptoms. This should be the worse case example, however for whatever reason "experts" are predicting way worse for the US and Europe. I keep hearing the hospitals will be overloaded and there will be no beds, however I had not seen any data that supports this, I also havent seen any that says we will be fine and I also havent seen any plan for what we will do once we hit critical mass.

As someone told me yesterday, I have a false sense of reality based upon my use of data. I dont feel the current level of fear or panic is warranted, I will also say I dont think it matches reality, for example refinances are up 79%, would someone worried about dying or large hospital bills be getting 30 year mortgage? Be safe, be vigilant, be prepared, but also dont live in fear.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Namibia

"Tiri Masawi
Namibia has become the latest African country to record cases of corona virus (Covid-19), the government confirmed on Saturday.
Namibian Minister of Health and Social Services, Dr Kalumbi Shangala, confirmed that two tourists, a couple from Spain who arrived in the country, tested positive for the virus.
"They were attended to by a private doctor who sent samples to South Africa for testing and the tests came out positive," Shangala said.
They are now being monitored under the World Health Organisation guidelines.
Shangala said the Namibian Government and partners are doing all that is necessary to deal with the situation and avoid further spread of the virus in the country."

https://southerntimesafrica.com/site/news/namibia-confirms-two-covid-19-cases

 

[BRICKBURN]

NAMIBIA
I am trying to find further confirmation of this FLIGHT BAN

WINDHOEK — Namibia is the latest in a growing list of sub-Saharan African countries to report their first cases of coronavirus.

A couple from Spain who arrived in the Southern African country on Wednesday both tested positive and have been quarantined, Health Minister Kalumbi Shangula said on Saturday.

Namibia, Kingdom of eSwatini, Ethiopia and Rwanda have all reported their first coronavirus cases over the last 48 hours amid mounting fears the pandemic could overwhelm the world’s poorest continent.

Namibian president Hage Geingob told a press conference on Saturday that the government would implement several measures to try and contain the outbreak, including banning all mass gatherings for 30 days and clamping down on travel to three countries.

“The Namibian government is suspending inbound and outbound travel to and from Qatar, Ethiopia and Germany with immediate effect for a period of 30 days,” Geingob said.

Independence Celebrations scheduled for March 21 have been canceled, he added, though a swearing-in ceremony for his second and final term will go ahead.

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/health-pmn/namibia-reports-first-two-cases-of-coronavirus-imposes-travel-ban?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

 

[Brent in Az]

I've read that high humidity also has an effect on the ability of cold and flu viruses to infect people. That plus heat are in abundance here in GA, or will be before too long.

But I'm not counting on either to make this virus go away.

No shortage of humidity in the summer in the south. Humidity kills me.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Namibia News Release.