Covid-19 pandemic

[Furtho]

Looking at the responses to the pandemic of the football leagues in China, South Korea and Japan, the Chinese Super League announced at the end of last month that it was postponing indefinitely the start of the 2020 season, which had previously been scheduled for last Saturday, 22nd Feb. The K-League issued a similar statement yesterday ahead of the start of their new season, which was supposed to have taken place this coming weekend.

The J-League yesterday said all its games up to Sunday 15th March are now postponed, but it did play in full its opening round of matches this past weekend. Unilaterally, Vissel Kobe asked supporters attending their home game with Yokohama FC not to sing, chant or wave flags in order to help contain the spread of coronavirus. Fans were asked to wear masks, wash their hands on entering Vissel's stadium and cover their mouths and noses when coughing or sneezing. Anyone with a cold or flu-like symptoms was asked to stay away from the match.

It's understood Kobe's approach was influenced by their midweek ACL tie in South Korea, where hosts Suwon Bluewings only allowed fans to go into the stadium if they wore masks, submitted a medical questionnaire and had their temperatures taken.

[Balderdasha]

Greece joins the ranks of the infected.

[ursus arctos]

Another death in France, which has reported two fatalities, but only four confirmed cases

Italy now reporting 12 deaths and 374 cases

[Balderdasha]

By my calculations, today is the first day that more new cases have been reported outside China (442 so far) than inside China (415).

[Bruno]

Reports that the Boston Red Sox are quarantining players.

[ad hoc]

Have to say that .1% chance that I personally would die if I were over 80 still seems pretty high, but this graphic does say a fair amount about the virus which is not really part of the global freak out

[Benjm]

Various bands, including Pixies and New Order, have cancelled or indefinitely postponed forthcoming concert dates in Japan. The potential knock-on effect upon scheduling of having to enter quarantine is cited as well as the risk of infection itself. Would the shows have been affected by restrictions on public gatherings anyway, even if they had gone?

[ursus arctos]

That's pretty much guaranteed to be a feature of any public response to an outbreak of infectious disease

Recall Trump's absolute freak out at the repatriation of a handful US medical workers who had contracted Ebola

[Gangster Octopus]

Some rugger won't happen.

[Wouter D]

I understand. We are scheduled to go to Japan at the beginning of April.

I have a similar situation. Mine is very much a first-world problem. It's still a problem though.

From March 27, we're going on the second half of our honeymoon: a four-week trip through Japan. Everything was planned and booked long before this virus came along. We're flying from Amsterdam to Tokyo Narita, via Hong Kong, with Cathay Pacific. Now, I am not worried at all that the virus will in reality come anywhere near us. I am worried, however, that some government somewhere decides to take some annoyingly drastic measure. KLM already decided not to fly to mainland China anymore; will the Dutch government forbid anyone from flying to China, and will that include Hong Kong soon? Will the Japanese decide to bar flights arriving from anywhere in China and/or Hong Kong? The most likely answer to any of these questions is no. But the probability that any of them turns into a yes (though small) isn't exactly zero either, especially if the situation deteriorates. Since we booked a ton of trains and hotels in Japan already, the involved sunk costs are such that the odds make it favorable to look into booking a second set of flights, from Amsterdam to Tokyo directly.

So how much will that cost? There's an amount of money involved in booking new flights, but some of the money invested in the old flights can be recouped. The latter will be subject to a cancellation fee. What is the cancellation fee? Fucked if I know. Cathay Pacific booked us in flight class S from Amsterdam to Tokyo, and flight class N from Tokyo to Amsterdam. Travel conditions are appended to my ticket, but by way of 'service' those are machine translated into Dutch. Machine translation is shitty. I have no idea what this blathering means exactly, and would have really rather received this information in English. If I translate it back, I get something like: "Conditions for restitution: allowed with restrictions. Supplement for reissuing ticket between: EUR 250.00/250.00. Maximum reissuing supplement for full ticket: 250.00 EUR." But this is under the header "AMS to NRT". There is another set of these under the header "NRT to AMS".

I guess I'm supposed to pay a fee of 250 euros, although it's unclear to me why this is formulated as costs for "reissuing" the ticket. But more importantly: what is the scope of those 250 euros? Is this per person? Per leg? Per flight? It really rather matters whether I'm paying this one, two, four, or eight times. The Cathay Pacific website has no helpful information on this.

I really ought to be glad that this is the level of problem I'm dealing with: it's not so simple to make a problem even more first-world than this. I'm still annoyed, though.

[Patrick Thistle]

Read a tweet yesterday that said 20% of infected people are hospitalised and have been stabilised in hospital. If we had 77,000 people infected in the UK and 20% of them had to be hospitalised then the NHS would collapse.

[Balderdasha]

Pakistan and North Macedonia join the club no-one wants to be in.

[Balderdasha]

And Georgia. It's now reached 46 countries / territories.

[Balderdasha]

Countries / sources with the most new cases today.

China: 415
South Korea: 284
Italy: 60
Iran: 44
Kuwait: 15
Diamond Princess: 14 (this is slightly confusing as I thought most people had left / been evacuated now. Possibly people who were tested before they left? Or staff who are still on board?)
Japan: 11

[steviecowden]

That was the original hypothesis, but multiple investigations have come up empty to date.

The real fear is that there may be multiple sources.

given that venice has just had carnival that is more than likely given the mobs of people that would have been there
guess where I was supposed to be flying on Friday for a weekend away.ill be giving it a miss,i think

[steviecowden]

And it's fuckin unseasonably cold in Ireland and Britain. Yay.

maybe not such a bad thing-if people come down with common or garden colds or flu they'll hopefully self isolate rather than head into work anyway which will hopefully then reduce the number of folks being exposed to this bad boy

[Jobi1]

Travel disruption for me too – me and him are finally going on our 'proper' honeymoon next week. Original schedule was to fly to Seoul for a few days' sightseeing before heading down to the Philippines to laze around for 10 days. Thankfully, KLM have allowed us to change our flights to cut out Korea and go straight to the Philippines, and have waived their usual changing fee to do so, just charging us the difference in ticket price, which wasn't too bad. Luckily, the hotels we had booked in Seoul had free cancellation, so we haven't lost out there. Not ideal to be having to shell out a bit more than we had planned to, but certainly could have been a lot worse. Just hoping things don't escalate in the Philippines now while we're there.

[Guy Profumo]

So bloke has coughing fit at Canary Wharf and collapses.


IT'S CORONOVIRUS!!!


SHUT THE STATION

EVACUATE!!!!


FFS people, get a FUCKING GRIP

[Guy Profumo]

Countries / sources with the most new cases today.

China: 415
South Korea: 284
Italy: 60
Iran: 44
Kuwait: 15
Diamond Princess: 14 (this is slightly confusing as I thought most people had left / been evacuated now. Possibly people who were tested before they left? Or staff who are still on board?)
Japan: 11

Do we know the no. of cases of "normal" seasonal 'flu?

And if we don't, why not?

And if we do, why aren't these figures being published?

[ursus arctos]

174,307 in the US as of the last report.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

Knock yourself out

[Balderdasha]

We know a bit about it in the UK.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/u...s-2019-to-2020

Less elsewhere. It's a very different kettle of fish though.

1) seasonal flu is already endemic, so no-one is bothering with contact tracing or quarantine for that
2) vaccines exist so a large part of the focus is on encouraging greater uptake of the vaccine
3) the death rate is far lower (roughly 0.1% compared to an estimate of 1-2% for Covid-19)
4) the serious and critical rates are also far lower. I'm not sure what it is for seasonal flu, but it's potentially as high as 20% for Covid-19

[Balderdasha]

New cases in Norway and Romania.

[Balderdasha]

I make that seven more countries that it's spread to in the last 24 hours, mostly via Italy.

[ursus arctos]

A resident of Solano County, California is the US' first confirmed case of Covid-19 not to have spent any time abroad nor had first hand contact with anyone who has.

[Nefertiti2]

Solano County is the home of Travis Air Base...

https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1232847764134014978?s=20