I cannot believe the Chinese numbers (3k dead, etc) can be trusted at all. They could be 10x bigger and nobody outside would have the slightest idea. Look how Italy and Spain went straight past that number. It makes no sense. If you do a total lockdown you still have about 3 weeks of it propagating in the population so you cannot escape some big numbers, in a large population.
They’re exporting protective equipment. I don’t think they would be doing that if they had an uncontrolled outbreak to hide. I think they just became very serious at some point and contained it. Remember door welding videos?
I wouldn’t put anything past the party to protect its image and shield the people from the truth.
The track record of shutting down information getting out and going after those who say something is quite well documented, and probably only scratches the surface.
If they’ve got no new cases, why did they re-open cinemas, then suddenly shut them all back down with no reason given?
There are reported cases of people selling biological test animals supposed to be put down into markets to be eaten.
It’s a real shame we don’t have transparency so could really have understood what was going on. China knew early on about the person to person transfer and it being transmitted before people showed signs of infection yet allowed people to move around subject to their thermometer checks.
This video is a worthwhile watch. in 2016/17 apparently China had 56/41 deaths from flu. Something smells fishy
They’re exporting protective equipment. I don’t think they would be doing that if they had an uncontrolled outbreak to hide. I think they just became very serious at some point and contained it. Remember door welding videos?
Sure; I am not doubting that they have it contained now.
I just don’t think they contained it at 3k.
Well, they may have contained at at 3k in hospitals and another 30k (or 300k?) in locked apartment blocks.
I say this because even if a country goes into a blind panic and locks everybody down, with the army ordered to shoot everybody they see going out, they will still get a few weeks’ worth of exponentially rising deaths. 3k doesn’t make any sense then.
But maybe they really did it. I guess we will know later this year, because the place leaks fairly well.
China has fantastic production capability, for low tech stuff like PPE. It’s like nothing on earth. There are huge areas full of high rise buildings and on every floor is a dozen companies making some stuff. They can’t speak English so on floor 100 will be a firm with a load of Chinese who can speak (some) English and who sell their services to floors 1-99 (that’s partly a joke 
).
in 2016/17 apparently China had 56/41 deaths from flu
A typo above maybe, but the UK gets up to 10k in a year from flu (hard numbers are hard to find due to different classification methods).
Peter wrote:
A typo above maybe
This is supposedly from the data from the Chinese National Health Centre. The 2016 / 17 figures are repeated in the following article
Peter wrote:
Probably foreign travel will not come back anytime soon.
That has been my evaluation since the beginning.
There are countries who do well enough now, they’d be stupid to let people from countries who have not got it under control in. In fact I hope they are not that stupid, as it would be suicidal. International travel, maybe 2021 or 22 in Europe, 23-25 maybe slowly elsewhere IF there is no further outbreak or if the virus does not mutate.
Ted wrote:
Totalitarian measures will fail IMHO.
If they do, be prepared to loose a pretty large fraction of your population.
Peter wrote:
Pilots in the US will come out a lot better than Europeans.
There is no impact on pilots in the US other than this. which is prefaced by this FAA statement “The FAA’s primary concern is that federally obligated airports remain safe and open to the traveling public and aircraft“
My paraphrasing is that FAA’s main interest is in keeping airports open for all users, but that FAA has no objection to local municipalities temporarily restricting some operations if it is strictly in accordance with temporary local law. The only example I’ve heard of this is in restricted fuel sales at some airports more than a full days flying from my base. I imagine that may be an indirect and legally less risky way for local airport management to discriminate against some users, or it may just reflect delayed fuel deliveries.
I haven’t yet canceled reservations to Corsica and Italy (by road) in mid-late June as it appears to me based on current predictions that normalcy may be returning by then, just. We’ll see.
Silvaire wrote:
I haven’t yet canceled reservations to Corsica and Italy (by road) in mid-late June as it appears to me based on current predictions that normalcy may be returning by then
I will give that 1% chance The problem is not that you cannot do it. The problem is quarantine, at least 2 weeks when crossing any border. 2-3 weeks locked inside some random place does not sound like a nice holiday. The same will happen when you get back again.
We’ll see
Andermatt or Tiefencastel is typically on the list, not this time.
Peter wrote:
I cannot believe the Chinese numbers (3k dead, etc) can be trusted at all
This is a common point of view in the research community in France, which I am hearing in documentaries. Actually the doubt came when they confronted what Chinese doctors says about various data about contagiousness of covid and what was seen in France, and these numbers were never confirmed. In that sense, 3k dead is very probably underrated, as well as 80k infected people. What can be trusted is the discipline of chinese people and that fact that China has a lot of power in terms of material. It is not very surprising as China is used to control information for political purpose, especially that iun this case, they let the virus expand although there were many signs which they have not taken into account until they couldn’t hide it.
During today’s press conference it was announced the “R” (Re as they call it, different from R0) is now 0.7 for Norway (with some uncertainty, 0.4 to 1.0 I think it was). 3 1/2 weeks ago the Re was 2.4. The main message from the health minister was “we are in control of the situation”. It is definitely possible to fight this bugger
