General / Off-Topic Some numbers and a shortage

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Yesterday I learned that the 1918 Spanish flu that killed 100 million people, started in China !

Interesting Spanish flu fact, its name varies by nation as everyone blamed it on another country. The western powers of the time all called it Spanish flu because they were annoyed at Spain for remaining neutral and as a neutral country they didn't have heavy press censorship so they talked about it first.

The Spanish called it French flu as it was spread by soldiers returning from the front.
 
Personally, I don't believe them when they say they are communists...

Even the CPC doesn't claim to have achieved communism, only that they are committed to it (which is doubtful). Officially, the CPC claims China is still in the preliminary stage of socialism, which is how they justify the current status quo of state capitalism and a 'socialist market economy'.

Unofficial numbers 500.000 infected, 20.000 dead, virus has mutated and can go dormant but still infect people.

don’t know if true, but sounds plausible.

From the beginning a big problem with COVID-19 has that it's often contagious well before there are any symptoms and that it's often asymptomatic. So, measures that focus only on the obviously ill are full of holes.

Anyway, half a million infections is probably a low-ball figure at this point and most people should anticipate being exposed to some strain of it sooner or later. No way of knowing if it will turn into a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic, but it's not well contained, and isn't likely to become so...doesn't make most people sick enough.
 
Well, they promised a vaccine by the end of April (approximately).
If I'm not sick or dead by that time, I'm definitely getting one. Seems like a worthwhile investment.
 
Well, they promised a vaccine by the end of April (approximately).

Start of clinical trials is one thing. April means initial results in August, with normal people being maybe being able to get them in time for next winter, if everything goes smoothly.

April trials is already extremely fast and anyone claiming they'll have a mass produced COVID-19 vaccine on the market in less than 9-12 months is probably running a pump and dump.
 
Start of clinical trials is one thing. April means initial results in August, with normal people being maybe being able to get them in time for next winter, if everything goes smoothly.

April trials is already extremely fast and anyone claiming they'll have a mass produced COVID-19 vaccine on the market in less than 9-12 months is probably running a pump and dump.
Hmm. I must have misread something. I was under impression that they are in the trials and are giving 3 months ETA to public.
Oh well. We'll have to make our own antibodies, then.
 
China today claim to have a possible vaccine that sounds pretty smart. It's basically yeast modified with the spike protein from the SARS-cov-19. Normally we would need to run it through tests lasting ~18 months, but the scientist who developed the vaccine says he has already tried it, with no side effects. He might sometime in the future though. That's the risk of not testing it. However, if the virus continues spreading like now, which is highly likely, we might end up in a situation where we skip the tests. We are not there yet, but outside China things are developing rapidly at the moment.

 
Yeah....no. I'll take my chances with the virus before I tank up on a quicky vaccine that's produced and (not) tested in a world record rush.

I agree with Morbad that we may as well just prepare for the inevitable; at some point we are likely to all be exposed to the virus in one strain or the other. At this point I'm still more concerned with the Government response to an outbreak cluster than the virus itself and strongly advise my friends and family to have more than two weeks of basic supplies and foodstuffs in their homes. Setting aside the lying of the Chinese (and lets face it, in Communist China lying is a feature), the statistics show that the actual effects of the sickness are less of a problem than the common flu and nobody cordons off whole multi-million population cities with armed soldiers because of it.
 
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