This is how come China's Coronavirus statistics are highly inaccurate (BBC) :

[Ghost Dog]

... Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, my uncle has already passed away, my father is critically ill and my mum and aunt have started showing some symptoms. The CT scans shows their lungs are infected. My brother is coughing too, and has some breathing difficulties.

My dad has a high fever. His temperature was 39.3C (102F) yesterday and he's constantly coughing and having breathing difficulties. We got him an oxygen machine at home and he relies on that machine twenty-four seven. He's taking both Chinese and Western medicines at the moment. There's no hospital for him to go to because his case hasn't been confirmed due to the lack of testing kits.

My mum and aunt walk to the hospital every day in the hope of getting a bed for my dad despite their own health situation. But no hospital will take them...

... If we follow the government's guidelines, the only place we can go now is to those quarantine points. But if we went, what happened to my uncle would then happen to dad.

So we'd rather die at home...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51379088

[Recursion]

1. Wuhan started with 44,000 hospital beds and has built 10,000 more

That is jaw-dropping

[spinbaby]

17. There are photos on Twitter

I treat anything on Twitter with skepticism, but there are photos of what are supposed to be hospital facilities that are just rows of beds in a big open area with no medical equipment in sight.

[still_one]

2. Right now China is trying to get the Gilliad drug for Ebola which has shown

effectiveness against this virus, though the results are mostly anecdotal

[Recursion]

3. That's weird. This isn't a hemorrhagic is it?

But then biomed is always weird

[still_one]

4. .............

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-05/china-is-trying-to-patent-gilead-s-experimental-coronavirus-drug

[ancianita]

7. Gilead is an evil bio-med company here that delays antiviral distributions, high prices for Hep-C

Last edited Wed Feb 5, 2020, 08:41 AM - Edit history (1)

pills ($1,000 in the US, $4.29 in India) for an 84-dose cost to cure it.

Most of Gilead's wealth sits outside the US through the the Irish tax arrangement.

Gilead will withhold patented antiviral drugs to China until both think they've got an equitable "deal."

The slowness of treatment is solely due to the "deal" process.

These for-profit pharmaceuticals, subsidized by Western governments' tax monies, are structured business evil. To live is to pay anything to sign a pact with the health devil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilead_Sciences#Acquisition_history

Congress can't seem to make them come to heel, because they've already let the subsidy out, based on promises, but without further pricing conditions.

[LisaM]

5. I work in trademarks and this is a big deal.

This is on the heels of a Chinese holiday, and statutory deadlines have already been extended. Our Chinese counsel are not answering emails, so I assume there is a further extension of deadlines (which of course are insignificant in the scheme of things). Just from what I can glean, things are bad and now we are getting signals from other colleagues in Asia that things are bad.

[Ghost Dog]

6. Reuters is reporting the same:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-health-deaths/data-suggests-virus-infections-under-reported-exaggerating-fatality-rate-idUKKBN1ZZ1CJ

But spin is being applied by suggesting that since not all cases of infection are being counted, the death rate must be lower, as a percentage, than it appears. However, there are clearly many deaths from this virus of people who were never tested and so are not being counted in the Coronavirus statistics.

Meanwhile, both confirmed cases and confirmed deaths due to the virus continue in China to rise exponentially:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[James48]

9. Nature? Or not.

One thing that is certain is that the growth rate of this one means they are losing track Of the number of cases. Extrapolation of growth shows a million people will die from this in the next three weeks.

Let us hope science and medicine can work to slow this one down.

[Blues Heron]

10. If they're symptomatic don't go walking around!

jeez, stay home, self-quarantine.

[Ghost Dog]

11. There's a UK report of a potential fast-track vaccine:

Professor Robin Shattock, head of mucosal infection and immunity at Imperial College London, said he is now at the stage to start testing the vaccine on animals as early as next week with human studies in the summer if enough funding is secured...

But:

... It will be too late for this current outbreak but it will be crucial if there is another one...

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-significant-breakthrough-in-race-for-vaccine-made-by-uk-scientists-11926469

Maybe China can do this more rapidly.

[Ghost Dog]

12. More harrowing descriptions from Wuhan:

Li Lun is desperate. On Tuesday her husband was confirmed to have the Wuhan coronavirus, after weeks of suffering with a fever. They have not been able to get him admitted to a hospital or find space for him to quarantine himself.

The family of six – Li, 39, her husband, her in-laws and the couple’s two children, both disabled – live in close quarters in a three-bedroom apartment in Wuhan. They sent the children to an aunt on Monday. Li and her mother-in law have developed symptoms and both have confirmed lung infections, which some doctors say should be reason enough to be quarantined...

They have had no instructions from Wuhan’s centre for disease control, nor from the neighbourhood committee, which is in charge of communicating with health authorities and hospitals to arrange for treatment and follow-ups. Li posted on the microblog Weibo pleading for help, one of hundreds of posts in the last few days. “I’m afraid I will collapse. I have called almost every number, everywhere,” Li said. “Wherever we go, no one cares about us.”...

... Residents in Wuhan, already distrustful of authorities who waited weeks before sounding the alarm about the virus, have grown only angrier. “Locking down so many people without yet having the doctors and facilities in place means people are stuck there and getting sicker and sicker,” said Vivienne Shue, a professor of contemporary China studies at the University of Oxford. “That’s going to feel like being condemned to death.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/05/voices-of-coronavirus-patients-wherever-we-go-no-one-cares

[eilen]

13. I was talking to one of the ID docs I work with

and he said it isn't just the Corona virus causing problems but also an outbreak of a variant of the Avian flu-- H1N5 (to my recollection) is happening in China simultaneously.. He said no one is reporting on it on the news. So that can be a complicating factor in treatment and/or determining death rates from one or the other. I'm sure they run out of test kits for both and the labs are overrun.

[Ghost Dog]

14. Yes. H1N5 found a few days ago in birds in Hunan province,

next door to Wuhan's Hubei province.

... The possibility of transmission of avian influenza between humans is low, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Most human H1N5 infections appear after prolonged and close contact with infected birds.

However, avian influenza has a mortality rate in excess of 50%, far above severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), also known as atypical pneumonia, and which has a mortality rate of 10%, or the new coronavirus, which has a 2% rate, so far...

https://www.time24.news/b/2020/02/china-reports-outbreak-of-bird-flu-near-the-epicenter-of-the-new-coronavirus.html

So events fast get out of hand...

[Ghost Dog]

15. 'Hidden' coronavirus cases could thwart containment efforts, experts warn (Guardian)

Global health experts have warned that “hidden” infections make containment of the coronavirus unlikely and raised fears that the rapidly rising caseload of 25,000 people could be the “tip of the iceberg”.

“Hidden” cases – where people with mild symptoms do not seek medical help and so remain untested and unrecorded – combined with the highly contagious nature of the disease mean there could be “vastly more cases” than previously thought, according to Tom Frieden, a former director at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

... “It’s a fog of war reality, which is what makes me suspect that what are seeing is the tip of the iceberg.”

Frieden added that while such confusion is common in every outbreak, what marks this one as different is the very large number of cases and how contagious the virus appears to be, although he added that the relative death rate was likely to diminish as more mild cases were identified...

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/06/hidden-coronavirus-cases-could-thwart-containment-efforts-experts-warn

I think we know from this DU thread that it is not only mild cases that are flying under the radar.

[Ghost Dog]

16. Li Wenliang, 34 year-old whistleblowing doctor, died, after finally testing positive.

... Li himself was infected when he operated on a patient with glaucoma, who he did not know was carrying the virus. On 10 January he started to feel sick, and his symptoms worsened over the rest of the month.

Hospitalised with fever and breathing problems, as he fought the illness, he also decided to fight the government, going public with details of how he had been silenced in the name of stability...

... His parents have also been reported as having contracted the virus. The health status of his wife and children is not clear.

After several negative tests, on 30 January he was finally confirmed as one of thousands of coronavirus patients, he said on a social media post, along with an emoji of a dog with its eyes rolled back and tongue hanging out, the BBC reported. “Today nucleic acid testing came back with a positive result, the dust has settled. Finally diagnosed.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/li-wenliang-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-profile

So only after three weeks of sickness, and several negative tests, and having infected his family, did he finally test positive ony to die shortly afterwards.

This is bad.