Coronavirus Testing

This virus shows what can happen when humans treat animals so badly. If the majority of the human race is wiped out by a pandemic, it is what we all deserve and I, personally, will not be sad at our demise.

H and I watched yet another news report about the Wuhan corona virus. We feel that the response in China is both commendable and unprecedented. We also wonder if there's more they aren't saying, which is worrisome at best.

The response needs to be coordinated on a global scale. I say this because while China cordons off entire cities and builds hospitals in record time, we have other places that are not taking this seriously. Without travel restrictions or effective screenings how will they possibly prevent or contain outbreaks on their own turf?

While the Chinese exercise their due diligence and the rest of us pray on pins and needles, sick people from these countries will travel undetected and continue to spread he disease everywhere they go.

Last Saturday morning I was browsing the meat aisle in Tesco and having decided to give up on Burns night because I couldn't get hold of a gluten free haggis, I wandered over to the duck section thinking, Chinese New Year innit!

As I toyed with the choice of leg or breast I heard some Chinese voices behind me. We are used to students based in Cambridge visiting our local supermarkets so I didn't think anything of it until I turned around.

The aisle was empty other than four Chinese students....and me.

Yes, they are still arriving in Australia from China, 43 flights today, passengers disembarking just handed a leaflet.

Australia has a huge number of tourists (about 1.4 million) from China each year although there will not be any arriving at the moment. However, there are already more suspected cases of the virus in Australia.
It is extremely worrying.

Glad DD has given up the job which required 4 buying trips to Hong Kong and China per year!

Might lay off the takeaways myself

People can be tested for symptoms but the question is whether the disease can be spread by someone who is asymptomatic and does not develop the disease themselves, ie carriers

To get back to the present day, Dr Hilary said this morning that the fatality rate for coronavirus amongst in the over 60s is 50% which is very high. Better go and get my finances in order.

Apologies, I must have missed that post. My point is that potential hysteria can be avoided by an understanding of unavoidable fact, in this case, sometimes s—t happens and we can’t do anything about it.
I too learnt a version at school, but that was nearly 50 years ago. One tangible benefit of the Information Age is the pooling of knowledge, now offering a truer version of history.

I suppose many of us remember what we learnt at school, perhaps we haven't really updated our knowledge.
We were taught that the Black Death originated in the Far East, swept across that part of the world and arrived in Europe on 12 ships which arrived in Messina, the plague carried by black rats aboard the ships. It decimated nearly all of the known world.
One war lord (can't remember his name) threw bodies into a city he was trying to capture, thereby infecting the residents.

Wet markets are important sources of affordable food for growing urban populations. They are embedded in cultures economies throughout Asia. Making wet markets safer while over time shifting consumer preferences to better sources provides a sensible alternative to an outright ban. Following the 2003 SARS outbreak, Hong Kong took a series of measures to strengthen regulation of wet markets and their animal supply chains
This is an extract from my post of yesterday, I think about 8ish which says pretty much that.
Worth reading ExperiencedNotOld .

How many posters have bothered to look up the history of previous pandemics? Curiously, most have originated in the east. The Black Death (1347) which killed 20% of the known world population, was thought to have reached Europe via the Silk Road trade route. And so on. Plague, call it what you will, is an occasional hazard over which we have little control. Life is unpredictable and sometimes uncontrollable, something we conveniently forget in modern times.

I was referring to the way some commenters were trying to make out the Chinese were less than civilized in relation to their eating habits. Less civilized = eating weird food = to blame.
That is only your interpretation though.

If a certain animal carries a virus/disease then eating that animal would increase the chances of the virus passing through the food chain.

No-one has used the term less civilised.

I was referring to the way some commenters were trying to make out the Chinese were less than civilized in relation to their eating habits. Less civilized = eating weird food = to blame.

I am reluctant to start quoting others because it just turns into a sh*t show. Same old culprits though.

othering In this case it would not seem to be an appropriate term as we have been told exactly where the virus originated.

No Callistemon, 'othering' is a part of post colonial studies, something I studied at university many moons ago.

Most people on here are being rational. BUT there are a few making comments that are borderline offensive.

While there are cultural differences in what we and they eat, most of it is perfectly edible, if you were so inclined.

Yes, TerriBull, I take your point about starvation during the Great Leap Forward.

....and while other countries are shipping their expats out, The British government says it will do all can to help our expatriots get out, but sending planes to ship them out like other countrieshave is clearly not something HM government will do!! It suppose they are worried about cost. How about about taking about 0.000001 percent of the recently announced extra cost of HS2 and using that to get them home.

I would do anything I could to get back to the uk callistemon, if I were in a country where the virus is running rife. Good old nhs, warmth and comfort and dedicated treatment. I read that there are quite a few ex-pats out there

documentated documented

"Othering" is such a generalisation. The fact that the Chinese will eat "almost anything" a well documentated fact is highly understandable. In the not too distant past, something in the region of 45 million Chinese died of starvation under one of the harshest communist regimes known to man, I imagine that could well explain the fact that what some Chinese are still prepared to eat is possibly a hangover from those desperate times. The masses living under communist dictatorships usually end up half starved and methods of survival would be the same anywhere, wherever such an ideaolgy becomes a reality.

I don't think that will happen craftyone as more cities are going into to lockdown.
I doubt they would get better care here - we are not able to put up a new 1,000 bed hospital and staff it in the UK in 10 days!

No-one here is othering because the fact is that this particular virus originated in China.

Is that a new buzzword?

I don't believe that for a minute - scaremongering and alarmist.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

But no-one on here is 'othering' and no one has suggested such things that those things counld not happen here because we are civilised.

In fact everyone on this thread to date is only too aware how international every new illness is and we could have this disease here - if we do not already have it and also worry that draconian though such measures are, the Chinese approach in quarantening whole cities and provinces will hopefully be effective, but is something our government would be too scared to do.