@Prapancha
Good advice on cleaning smart phones after being out. My wife told me to do that one day, but between her mispronunciation and my damaged hearing I though she said "clean your bum" rather than "clean your phone".
All things plastic can hold on to the virus longer than metal which we already knew about.
Interesting article with references to Yunnan and Kunming.
Why force herbs down students' throats?
Who should be taking medicines? Those who are unwell, of course. However, in Lincang city, in Southwest China's Yunnan province, some schools made it mandatory for students to take a specific herb as a precaution against contracting the novel coronavirus.
Although there is no medical evidence to support the claim, reports say the students are required to buy the prescribed herb at local medicine shops and upload the prescription and bills to be able to attend classes in the new semester. Some kindergartens have even required parents to submit photographs of their kids taking the drug every day.
On Monday, the municipal education and sports bureau in Lincang apologized on its official website, saying the drug was merely a suggestion that some schools and junior officials decided to enforce. Now that has been clarified, there are some lessons to be learned.
When it comes to medicines and health, caution is advisable. The herb, namely "big pot herb", is popular but has not passed any national test. If a kid falls ill after taking the herb, local officials can be held responsible.
Although it is not clear if the herb they consumed was the same as the one being mandated in Lincang now, over 200 students and two teachers fell ill in June 2005 after a primary school in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, made them take the herb. One student even died.
However, this is no reason to denounce traditional Chinese medicine.
Although the big pot herb is a traditional drug, anyone who prescribes them must rely on patients' requirements. Those forcing students to take the herb are definitely not giving it a good name.
The power some officials and agencies wield, refusing students entry into schools for not consuming the herb, needs to be regulated because it is always ordinary people who end up paying a price.
www.chinadaily.com.cn/[...]
WHO Director-General announced yesterday,
"Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected."
Flu is typically set at 0.1%. So 3.4% is around 34 times deadlier than your average seasonal flu.
Please continue to protect yourself and your loved ones with vigilance as China returns to work while the world now tries to contain this virus.
To put that number into perspective, in the case of Covid-19, these are reported documented cases whereas the statistics for the flu is based on mathematical modeling. My personal hunch is that the actual numbers of infected are vastly greater than those reported given the fact that only those whom are very sick or dead are tested for the virus.
As Covid-19 becomes seasonal, as it is expected to be, a more accurate model can formulated to better determine the seriousness of the disease.
***Topic tidied up***
Trumpster wrote, "My personal hunch is that the actual numbers of infected are vastly greater than those reported given the fact that only those whom are very sick or dead are tested for the virus."
There may be a flip side to that coin. You should privately research on the prevalence, or lack thereof, of death certification (official reporting) in rural China. The number you find may be shocking.
I guess all 小区(residential complexes) are doing this. They are issuing a card that allows you to enter/exit your complex. It's called 剧名出入证. This will be a requirement for now. They have one for renters (ours is green) and one for owners (orange). Perhaps this is leading to them getting rid of the QR scanning requirements in the complexes.
When we came back to Kunming, we were given one such temp card, and were told to fetch the real card 14 days later.
But for time being (after the first entry anyway), we have not needed to read QR codes nor present the temp card.
Or even use our keycards to open the gates ourselves - but that may be because we usually come carrying more stuff than we would normally, so they're just being helpful.
In any case, if the point of reading the QR codes is to track who may be infected, I'd say it is safe to assume that if you live in residential complex where infection has occurred, you are to be assumed potentially infected just by having your address there, even if you were not registered going in/out in the system - since for many reasons such coming and going is not bulletproof to track.
Of course, as I had just written the above posts, our neighbourhood was informed that starting tomorrow the 5th the cards will be required.
