Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

OppositeDay

Senior Member
Registered Member
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.
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Can anyone clarify how medical products regluations work in the EU? The test kits in question weren't approved by NMPA (Chinese equivalent of FDA), so they cannot be used in China, but apparently it's legal to sell them in Europe merely because it has a CE mark. I'm sure Europe must have a regulatory body for medical products that go beyond CE marking?
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
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China offers anti-virus assistance to 89 countries

BEIJING, March 26 -- China has provided assistance to 89 countries and four international organizations to fight against the novel coronavirus, the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) said Thursday.

A new round of aid implementation programs is currently being prepared, Deng Boqing, deputy head of the CIDCA, said at a press conference held in Beijing.

"China's anti-virus external assistance is the most intensive and wide-ranging emergency humanitarian operation since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949," Deng said.

Chinese medical workers and supplies have been sent to 28 Asian countries, 16 European countries, 26 African countries, nine countries in the Americas and 10 countries in the South Pacific, he noted.

On the premise of fully ensuring domestic epidemic control, China has properly formulated its aid plan and offered assistance to other countries within its capability, Deng said.

Noting China is facing rising risks of imported cases of the novel coronavirus disease, Deng said China's assistance to other countries is conducive to the global fight against the virus and will consolidate its hard-won achievements in containing the spread.
 

Anlsvrthng

Captain
Registered Member
Well, the economy in the Soviets already collapsed even before the disintegration. In fact, the economic downfall was one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Soviets. The only difference was that the world finally saw what's happened behind the iron curtain. The current world economy is a very different story.
: D

No clue about how the things worked then, and afterwards I presume.

Nothing destroyed the machines, even the workers, but the connection of them damaged , and everything that happened afterwards was a bigger crisis than anything happened before 90s.

Saying that the CCCP was in crisis before 90s is like compare the coronavirus with the flu : D And the flu was all the problem of the eastern block, insignificant compared to the decades afterwards. And all that happened was similar to the things that the covid19 doing now.

It is easy to make new machines, and fit them into the existing businesses, but it is extremely hard to remake /create new business processes ,value stream,connections and get experienced people from nothing.


See Germany after the second world war, they recovered extremely fast from a pile of debris , other hand the Indians has lot more human than the Germans possessed ever, but no similar level of living like in Germany.


Whats happens now is the supply chains , connection between the countries tearing apart , best part of it is irreversible.

From now on the companies has to be prepared to be cut off from the foreign operations in the event of a SARS or swine flue for months or years.
The bar to stop the whole word (human) transportation will be set very low, and it will be stopped in every second year.
The airplane tickets will be priced like that, way higher than the current average cost, to cover the risk . This will cut back dramatically the airplane production . It will reshape lot of things, without considering other changes.




And this will be only small potion of the changes that will came.


No one can put Humpty Dumpty together again.
 

vesicles

Colonel
: D

No clue about how the things worked then, and afterwards I presume.

Nothing destroyed the machines, even the workers, but the connection of them damaged , and everything that happened afterwards was a bigger crisis than anything happened before 90s.

Saying that the CCCP was in crisis before 90s is like compare the coronavirus with the flu : D And the flu was all the problem of the eastern block, insignificant compared to the decades afterwards. And all that happened was similar to the things that the covid19 doing now.

It is easy to make new machines, and fit them into the existing businesses, but it is extremely hard to remake /create new business processes ,value stream,connections and get experienced people from nothing.


See Germany after the second world war, they recovered extremely fast from a pile of debris , other hand the Indians has lot more human than the Germans possessed ever, but no similar level of living like in Germany.


Whats happens now is the supply chains , connection between the countries tearing apart , best part of it is irreversible.

From now on the companies has to be prepared to be cut off from the foreign operations in the event of a SARS or swine flue for months or years.
The bar to stop the whole word (human) transportation will be set very low, and it will be stopped in every second year.
The airplane tickets will be priced like that, way higher than the current average cost, to cover the risk . This will cut back dramatically the airplane production . It will reshape lot of things, without considering other changes.




And this will be only small potion of the changes that will came.


No one can put Humpty Dumpty together again.

You do realize that the socialist system has been the number one killer of economies? That’s why China had to go through the painful economic reform that shattered all the social safety nets of all Chinese. The single most important goal of China’s economic reforms since the 1990’s has been to eliminate the old Soviet-style socialist system. No matter how many machines you have and how many skilled workers you have, the old system crushed their motivation and the planned economy messed up all the natural patterns of economics. And that’s been the main reason for the collapse of the Soviets.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Iceland: half of the infected show no symptoms


Coronavirus Cases Without Symptoms Spur Call for Wider Tests

By Jason Gale

Iceland, which says it’s tested a
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of inhabitants than any other country, found that about half those who tested positive have no symptoms of Covid-19, Thorolfur Gudnason, the nation’s chief epidemiologist, told
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. As many as a third of the people who test positive show delayed symptoms or none at all, the
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reported Sunday, citing classified data from the Chinese government.

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reservior dogs

Junior Member
Registered Member
You do realize that the socialist system has been the number one killer of economies? That’s why China had to go through the painful economic reform that shattered all the social safety nets of all Chinese. The single most important goal of China’s economic reforms since the 1990’s has been to eliminate the old Soviet-style socialist system. No matter how many machines you have and how many skilled workers you have, the old system crushed their motivation and the planned economy messed up all the natural patterns of economics. And that’s been the main reason for the collapse of the Soviets.
I agree that socialism kills the economy. However, after this, we won't just snap the finger and get back to normal. The impact could be felt for years to come. Many businesses will go under. Many of the retail giants such as Macy's, may have to further retrench or go bankrupt. Banks will be stressed as delinquency rate go up. Getting all this sorted out will take time.

The U.S. is a resilient country and will get back on our feet after a couple of years, but I am not sure how the Europeans will fare. There does not seem to be much cohesion in the EU. During this crisis, it is every country for itself. The weaker ones like Spain and Italy may never be the same after.
 

Brumby

Major
The USA will as early as end of today surpass 100,000 of confirmed Covid-19 cases. How did the US ended up with such a mess and in such a short time? I am sure many articles will be written on how the Public Health system adequately or inadequately stepped up to the crisis. What is clear to me is that the "system" dropped the ball by failure to ramp up on the availability of testing kits and wasted probably two weeks of crucial mobilization window.

We know that extensive testing is vitally important in identifying carriers within the population so as to quickly isolate them from the rest of the population. This was clearly the case with the South Korean experience and its success in containing the spread. A write up on the story can be found here.
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In contrast, the US was very slow in this effort compared to a number of countries. The following chart highlights the lack of effort during the comparable time period in terms of testing per 100,000 popultion.

1585356694318.png

The good news is that in recent days the testing regime has significantly scaled up and the main reason why the number of confirmed cases have also increased significantly.

1585356887833.png

Put in perspective, the scale of US testing as early as a week ago was way behind when bench-marked against some other countries.

1585357058054.png

There is a write up explaining why the US was so slow in ramping up testing
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Unfortunately, the genie is now out of the bottle and will require a lot more effort to address the crisis. New York is now the epicenter for the US just as Wuhan was to China. It is the place to watch to understand how well or badly the US "system' is coping with the crisis. New York currently is averaging 30 % positive results which suggest that the scale of testing is still insufficient in identifying the cases that need to be isolated to prevent community infection. In contrast, South Korea's testing regime resulted in a 3 % strike rate which means the scope of testing was more extensive.

1585357529266.png


Covid-19 is now present in almost every country and is a world wide problem no matter where you live. We can all play a part by observing and practicing social distancing because one less infection means one less strain on the health system. The following is a study on the effectiveness of social distancing only if each of us play a part in the effort.

1585358169175.png

Stay safe.
 

supercat

Major
Can anyone clarify how medical products regluations work in the EU? The test kits in question weren't approved by NMPA (Chinese equivalent of FDA), so they cannot be used in China, but apparently it's legal to sell them in Europe merely because it has a CE mark. I'm sure Europe must have a regulatory body for medical products that go beyond CE marking?

I think those tests kits are used for rapid antigen test (RAT) for screening. They are supposed to give you a result in 15 minutes. Current generation of RAT for the novel coronavirus is not very sensitive regardless who manufactures them. Also, the manufacture only used some small samples to verify the sensitivity of their test. I suspect the Chinese company ran into the same problem.

Regarding the tests Coris BioConcept ran to determine the sensitivity, Faix said that the two studies cited by the manufacturer were small ones.

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Currently, at least 11 Chinese companies have met European CE marking requirements and 64 Chinese manufactures are exporting test kits to Europe. It's quite possible that there are bad apples among them, especially those that have not been approved by the Chinese regulators.

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BTW, Test kits from BGI have received both Europe and FDA approval.

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Situation in the U.S. on Mar. 27 at 8:00 pm EDT (data for Mar. 27 are preliminary and subject to change):

1585357755974.jpeg

1585357881952.jpeg

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On Mar. 27, excluding Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, there are 54 new cases, all imported, in China. There are 3 deaths nationwide, all in Hubei province. There is no new confirmed or suspected cases in Hubei (table 2). There are a total of 649 imported cases.

Table 1:
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Table 2:
1585358215134.jpeg

Table 3:
1585358229804.jpeg

Chart:
1585358250305.jpeg

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