Is this the big one lads? What started as a few cases in Hunan in late December has now spread to several major Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai, Bangkok, Seoul, Toyko, Brisbane and now Washington state crossing the Pacific. After lying for a few weeks the Chinese government have now admitted it is transmitted person to person and have now sealed off Wuhan.
Chinese New Year should be cancelled as a precaution and travel restrictions put in place before it’s too late. The SARS outbreak in 2003 killed 800 people. The Wuhan virus is a cousin of SARS, a zoonotic that can be transmitted from animals to humans.
According to some of the Chinese nationals I work with, this is far worse than we’re being led to believe. They’re scared shitless to go home.
Though that could be because they’re scared of ending upon a cell somewhere.
The scary thing in the short term is Chinese New year, millions of people flying within China and abroad to celebrate. I think I read there’s 3 flights a day from Heathrow to Wuhan alone. The important thing with these kinds of outbreaks is to control their spread early.
It isn’t, the MERs virus started in the Middle East, transmitted from camels. I think it has more to do with the culture and hygiene of handling / slaughtering animals.
The chinese have said its treatable and controllable. A lady on the radio from the Irish Virus Control centre (I made up that name) said there’s no reason to think it’s going to spread to Europe, which I thought was an odd statement.
People were so scared of getting swine flu that the flu vaccine uptake went way up and flu deaths dropped significantly far outweighing the deaths from swine flu
