Please check the GoKunming articles for the latest information
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New Coronavirus
4. For those who workout at teh gym, Kunming's Hercules fitness center chain will resume on the 27th.
@vetimo: "1. People are now not required to put on masks in open, outdoor spaces."
Were they ever?
I'm sure nearly everyone did and will keep doing it, but at least GoKunming's official articles only mentioned this requirement for public and non-public transport vehicles and related venues - no word about it being required in open outdoor spaces.
China's National Health Commission (NHC) has unique ways of tallying confirmed cases that are different from world standards:
"Since February, the Covid-19 prevention and control policies issued by the NHC have stipulated that asymptomatic infected individuals are not considered “confirmed cases” and that their numbers should not be released.
However, given numerous studies suggesting that this group is infectious, the NHC has required that, once detected, they be subject to a 14-day quarantine and lab testing, recategorizing them as “confirmed” cases only in the event they develop symptoms.
Caixin previously obtained data that showed Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province had 480 “confirmed cases” on Feb. 25, but had also discovered 104 asymptomatic infected individuals that it left off the public tally.
A March 6 preprint – a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed – by Chinese and American researchers suggested that asymptomatic cases and those with mild symptoms could account for at least 59% of Covid-19 infections, potentially undetected and fueling its spread."
This may be a big deal given one third of confirmed cases may be silent carriers, where "people who are infected by the new coronavirus but show delayed or no symptoms... according to classified Chinese government data seen by the South China Morning Post:"
...may have been silent carriers... now not infectious. Making a totally different take on the numbers.
The counting of asymptomatic cases and how it fits in the total tally is explained here:
covid-19.chinadaily.com.cn/[...]
Turns out that if they are found they still will be placed in quarantine.
lemon, madly in love with state media Chinadaily news aren't you? The tricky part is that by the end of February, "43,000 people in China had tested positive for COVID-19 without immediate symptoms" according to above SCMP article. Three studies below show why rounding up asymptomatic carriers for quarantine may be challenging as lockdowns are being lifted:
1. This study details the "case of an infected individual who never developed symptoms but shed a similar amount of virus to those who did."
www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2001737
2. This study suggests "there were 37,400 people with the virus in Wuhan who authorities did not know about, and who had mild or no symptoms but could still be contagious."
doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.03.20030593
3. This study "showed people had high levels of the virus in throat swabs early in their illness, when their symptoms were mild, meaning the disease could easily be spread through coughs or sneezes."
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v1
Source: World Economic Forum
www.weforum.org/[...]
Well Bojo I am just passing on information. By referring to state media I know how to judge this information namely that it is the government’s version of the truth.
Asymptomatic Covid-19 infected persons are only found because they are tested to start with. This testing was done because they were in close contact with a person who was tested because they showed symptoms. The trigger for the test and their discovery is thus related to somebody with symptoms.
The near zero discovery of home grown positive cases at this moment shows that asymptomatic cases don’t spread the disease in significant numbers. And are therefore luckily insignificant in the whole picture.
I quote from one of your linked to articles: “A new study suggests there were 37,400 people with the virus in Wuhan who authorities did not know about, and who had mild or no symptoms but could still be contagious.”
Note the words “COULD still be”. Well with Wuhan now already for days being new cases free this indicates that they are not.
Now that more tests are available I think it is a good thing that people coming into the country are tested (And spend time in preventive quarantine).
At this moment there are only two countries that managed to flat-line the curve, China because of rigorous measures and South Korea because of large scale testing. This large scale testing discovers asymptomatic cases as well but again apparently they have a near zero RO number. Still the positive tests of asymptomatic cases are useful because it improves (self) isolation of these cases which they might have more lax with if they were tested negative.
Personally I think test positive cases should be included in the total positive case number.
What do you people think, or have read about, natural resistance that might be developed among populations for this virus?
Specifically I'm thinking that in certain (mainly western) countries the policies seem to reflect assumptation that that it's here to stay, and their main goal is to slow the infection rate within their borders so that their healthcare system can answer to the demand of serious cases.
Unlike countries like China where the healthcare system was probably never going to be up to the task, and therefore completely stopping the spread was considered a necessity.
Given this difference between countries, will some populations in general have better natural resistance in coming years, while in other countries more people will suffer also in future seasons unless prevented with vaccinations among general population.
Janjal the answer on your question is not easy because one has to understand the underplaying reasoning of various governments. In general China thinks it still can manage society while in most western countries they have realised that they cannot and therefore concluded that they have to accept that Covid-19 is here to stay. There are countless examples of the failure of social distancing that failed in the western world while in China it largely did work. China as well had a track record of, at the end, stamping out SARS, and the lessons learned from that were put in to practise now. Few other countries took serious lessons from that.
Different to European counties, China had as well the spare capacity to draw from a fast country to deal with what in the end was basically a regional problem.
There are three ways to overcome Covid-19 : Number 1, and the best, is a working vaccine. Two and three are an effective medical cure and heard immunity. China believes that by applying effective control measures it will buy enough time to develop a vaccine. Given the emergency they don’t have any problem with fast tracking vaccine development. In western countries this is more problematic because of medical standards and ethics.
Trump thinks a miracle cure is possible and puts all his hopes on new and old medicines. In Europe this is considered wishful thinking.
Given the timeframe for these different scenarios some European countries realised that they didn’t have any other option then to go for heard immunity. Not because it is the best but because it is the only realistic option. One has to realise that these countries have very open societies and in practise open borders.
In my work, already a long time ago, I learned that with epidemics it is not the disease that is the problem but the collapse of the health system and the possibility of total panic. The disease is a given fact and you deal with it. Panic and collapse are much harder to deal with (and have grave consequences for the powers that be).
The main thing during an epidemic event is to flatten the curve till a level that the healthcare system and other parts of society can deal with. In China they managed to do this and South Korea is nearly there. Taking half and insufficient measures let to the situation we have now in most of the western world. I know of only one western country that had the guts to take the right measure in time and that is New Zealand (But they had plenty of time to see other countries fail.).
At the end it will be heard immunity that is created by a fast group of recovered patients and by those vaccinated that will get this disease at manageable levels like for instance the flu.
Manageable levels, by the way is what society thinks it is. Every year there are 1.5 million people dying of tuberculoses and “we” think that’s acceptable. For tuberculoses, which has been around since humans started to walk on two legs, never a vaccine was found and medical cures turn out to be only limited in their effectiveness.