re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

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The key is we don't know the fate of those cases that are being turned away or never making it into the hospital. It's possible the number of deaths is ten times or more what is official. You would expect there to be more news from individual families if that was occurring - but we also don't know how effective the government is at shutting down that kind of info instantly. At this point it could only be flu level bad or something ten times worse than the flu. Until somebody in a civilized nation gets a couple weeks of dealing with this where there is information freedom or we have better data on the inside, its all speculation.

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The most promising number, IMO, is the fact that 98% of confirmed cases are in mainland China. Wuhan is obviously a massive city with plenty of international travel. If China was intentionally lying about serious infections (if there were really 90k people infected and seeking medical help as that whistleblower claimed), you'd think there would be substantially more cases internationally.

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This is China. Not everyone has access to healthcare or has the means to go to the doctor or even knows where one is. The assumption that only the worst off people go to the doctor in China is a pretty bad argument. People still starve to death regularly and die of dysentery.

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China is of two worlds and of significance is which hukou registry archtype do you fall under.

Pretty much everyone in Wuhan will be listed as non-agricultural and do have access to a lot of the system benefits that Westerners take for granted.

Individuals with an agricultural residency status that travel to the city in search for paid labor probably won’t.

So the assumption breaks down on the regional perspective and down the stretch but we can definitely make assumptions we otherwise couldn’t due to Patient Zero of this outbreak in this urban environment

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The mayor of Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of China’s viral outbreak, said rules imposed by Beijing limited what he could disclose about the threat posed by the pathogen, suggesting the central government was partially responsible for a lack of transparency that has marred the response to the fast-expanding health crisis.”

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He’s dead

Its final here. Time for Zombie Killing Machete.

For what it's worth, I dropped the last 11 days of confirmed cases into an exponential regression calculator. It's by no means perfect, but it spits out y = 32.8932e^(.4109x), where y is the number of confirmed cases and x is the day (January 16th was 1 and January 27th will be 12). The average error was ~9% and the maximum error was ~20%. Anyway, it would suggest the confirmed global cases will rise to 4,555 +/- 900 by today.

Countries evacuating nationals from China virus areas

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** France expects to repatriate up to a few hundred of its 800 citizens living in the Wuhan area. Evacuees will have to spend 14 days in quarantine to avoid spreading the virus in France.

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** Japan is expected to arrange charter flights as early as Tuesday for any of its citizens who wish to return from Wuhan, two sources familiar with the matter said. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said about 430 Japanese nationals have been confirmed to be in Hubei province.

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** Spain’s government is working with China and the European Union to repatriate Spanish nationals from the Wuhan area, Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said.

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** The U.S. State Department said it will evacuate personnel from its Wuhan consulate to the United States and will offer a limited number of seats to private U.S. citizens on a flight. Some private citizens will be able to board the “single flight” leaving Wuhan on Jan. 28 bound for San Francisco, it said.

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HONKUS

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** Britain is talking to international partners to find solutions to help British and other foreign nationals leave Wuhan, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

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** Russia has been in talks with China about evacuating its nationals from Wuhan and Hubei province, Russia’s embassy in China said.

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** The Dutch government is assessing ways to evacuate 20 Dutch citizens from Wuhan, press agency ANP reported.

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** Authorities in Myanmar said they had canceled a planned evacuation of 60 students from Mandalay who were studying in Wuhan. Kyaw Yin Myint, a spokesman for the Mandalay municipal government, told Reuters that a “final decision” had been made to send them back after 14 days, once the virus’ incubation period had passed.

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Reuters

The international concern and caution signals to me, that those governments know a real shite storm is brewing in china and / or the full story is known behind the scenes and it's as suspected significantly worse than beijing says it is.

Lightning strikes and bathtub slips aren't contagious last I checked... God help us all if they are.

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Countries evacuating nationals from China virus areas

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Seeing Honkus' example in real time, honestly was surprised at what sounded to me like a poor level of effort/care from the US State Department. Honkus had to reach out to a message board to get help and the coordination was outsourced to what sounded like a foreign country (based on his posts).

Every other country in those press clippings makes it sound like they are bringing back everyone who wants to come back. The US summary makes it sound like they might be leaving some US citizens in the lurch.

I would just assume once our State Department got involved that they would help put into a logistics plan on how to get to the airport - that is half of the battle.

Anyways fingers crossed and prayers lifted that Honkus and his family makes it there safely.