Some awkard stuff... by the EU commission
Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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Some awkard stuff... by the EU commission
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
The Spanish Health Ministry on Friday tweeted that the flawed coronavirus test kits were not purchased directly from China, but through a national supplier. The Chinese embassy in Spain has made a clarification that the company that provided the test kits to Spain has not yet obtained the official license in China to sell its products.
Gotta love that stupid title. Better yet, gotta love how they don't mention those are not government supplied kits but third party kits till the very end. Better yet, it seems as if no one in the comment section actually read it beyond the title. And now I'm angry and just woke up.
Further to my previous post,
But given the current Covid-19 situation around the world, the only country with meaningful spare capacity to respond to the US request is China.
I know it was poorly written, I realize it now. Tried to cram too much information in and didn’t organize it well. I know it is not possible to know without proper investigation (I did open with that caveat). This is more of a logic exercise.
Main question: is it possible for the virus to have established an unknown reservoir, where it did not spread widely because the country/area simply did not have the proper conditions to spread the way it’s happened in China or happening in EU/US (i.e. lacking public transport)?
All that information I had provided was to try to show 3 points.
1. It is clear at this point that the spread in China outside of Wuhan was quite limited.
2. Restrictions on travel from China had a very limited and temporary effect. In Asia, there are/were less restrictions, but control has been maintained so far.
3. Although highly contagious, it is still not something easily caught.
This last point was probably the most poorly conveyed. I will provide one example below.
One French NBA player, Rudy Gobert, was infected. Subsequently his teammate Donovan Mitchell also got infected. However, there were no other cases connected to him (other teams played in the 2 weeks before his test and team staff were tested and cleared) and the suspected vector of infection was friends from Europe visiting him. If he only infected one teammate in this kind of setting, it suggests that a lot of exposure seems to be required.
Additional Questions:
Were early cases that failed to establish an outbreak indicative of an alternative reservoir?
This thought is along the lines of "it was just good fortune that initial infections fizzled out, but since carriers are still being produced, it was eventually able to take hold"
From point 2, does the timing of the current outbreaks suggest that East Asia might not be virus source?
It doesn't have to be Iran. I only suggested (anywhere in) Middle East based on previous MERS and it is geographically in the middle between East Asia and Europe.
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Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Right Here is the article
BEIJING (AFP): As the coronavirus pandemic that originated in a central Chinese city has gone global, thousands of factories in China have nimbly turned to a new and very profitable market -- face masks for export.
At the height of China's outbreak in early February, Guan Xunze's company created a new mask factory in just eleven days.
The factory, with five production lines in northeastern China, made the much-needed N95 face masks which were in huge demand as infection numbers surged.
As cases in the country have dwindled, the 34-year-old -- who was previously in pharmaceuticals -- is now profiting from new markets and exporting masks to Italy, where the death toll has overtaken that of China.
In the first two months of the year, a staggering 8,950 new manufacturers started producing masks in China, according to business data platform Tianyancha -- racing to fill the huge gap in demand.
But after the virus epicentre of Hubei province was placed on lockdown and the initial frenzy began to die down in China, virus outbreaks emerged in new hotspots elsewhere in the world.
Globally more than 400,000 have been infected with the deadly coronavirus, and demand for protective equipment is still soaring as nations across the globe battle the outbreak.
"A mask machine is a real cash printer," said Shi Xinghui, sales manager of an N95 mask machine company in Dongguan city, southeastern Guangdong province. "The profit of a mask now is at least several cents compared to less than one in the past.
"Printing 60,000 or 70,000 masks a day is equivalent to printing money."
Qi Guangtu has put more than 50 million yuan (US$7 million) into his factory producing mask-making machines in the southern industrial hub of Dongguan.
It has been in 24-hour continuous production since Jan 25 -- two days after the dramatic lockdown of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged.
"Cost recovery is certainly not a problem," he said, adding that 70 sets of equipment have been sold for more than 500,000 yuan ($71,000) each.
The heir to the throne, the prime minister, and now the health secretary in UK also tested positive for coronavirus. The silver lining is that no sane government will consider herd immunity approach any more, thus saving many lives.
Leading by example.