As of yesterday, no one flying in from the new COVID-19 hotspots of South Korea and Italy are even being so much as questioned about their travel upon their return. Two US college students returning from Italy because of the cancellation of the program in Italy by their college due to COVID-19 reported this to the media.
Of course, this would be using a half-assed method anyway to stop something that's already here. As an example, there are 390,000 Chinese college students in the US and the CDC announced
weeks ago that up to that point, 30,000 US citizens had returned to the US from China.
The barn door has long been open and the horses have already left the barn or, in this case, entered the barn.
A nearly useless filter method:
FEBRUARY 27, 2020
Korean Air says it will not allow passengers with fever to fly to U.S.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...engers-with-fever-to-fly-to-u-s-idUSKCN20M070
SEOUL (Reuters) - Korean Air Lines Co Ltd (003490.KS) said on Friday it plans to check temperatures of passengers traveling to the United States before boarding and would not allow anyone with a temperature higher than 37.5 Celsius to fly.
A Korean Air flight attendant who worked on flights between Seoul and Los Angeles subsequently tested positive for the coronavirus, South Korea’s disease control agency and sources said on Thursday.
The country’s top airline said in a statement that it also plans to expand these procedures to other routes.
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The other day I saw some bragging being done about the John Hopkins Global Health Security Index #1 rating for the US, a study which I'd already downloaded and looked at a week before.
I had heard an epidemic expert who was involved in the MERS, SARS, and Ebola outbreaks say that Singapore had by far the best system for epidemic detection and containment in the world due to their SARS experience and if they couldn't succeed in stopping an outbreak, no country could.
So, I took a look at the JH report and saw that the US was rated 1/195 [best of 195 countries evaluated] while Singapore was rated 59/195.
Of course, the JH report didn't consider the US's near total dependence on China for PPE (we have 30 million masks in reserve, need another 270 million ASAP according to a recent fedgov announcement, and previous studies have shown we might need billions in an outbreak) and essential drugs OR the lack of test kits which other countries seem to have no problem making and using in huge quantities [is it US regulatory BS that prevents us from making and using THEIR kits?].
Next week the word is that 10,000+ test kits will finally be available here and that's when we actually start to get an idea of how many people in the US are actually COVID-19 infected with that number getting more accurate as the kits filter out and the flu surveillance system adapts.
The third "unknown source" case has been found in Oregon even with the ridiculously low amount of testing being done. He or she works in an elementary school.
Fortunately, kids don't die from this bug, but they can serve as vectors.
Good news: it has been found that lung CT scans are even more accurate and MUCH faster for COVID-19 detection than the test kits due to the unique presentation of the affects on the lungs.
Update just heard: the problem with the CDC/FDA approved test kit was that they were trying to make it a multi-flu detection kit and once they removed that feature, it worked reliably enough for COVID-19. Trying to save money by making the kit a generic one for flu type detection?
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Coronavirus (COVID-19): Underappreciated unknowns & inexplicable failures
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/blog...erappreciated-unknowns--inexplicable-failures
Faulty test kits:
The Chinese test kits have an estimated 50% false-negative rate, that is, when testing an infected person, 50% of the time, the test will say he isn't infected. In an experiment on a person known to be infected, only one of the four tests administered return a positive result. You might think that the CDC would take note. Apparently not. The first set of kits distributed to the states and counties had to be recalled because of a manufacturing defect (ineffective chemical reagent). Was this a mistake in testing or QA (quality assurance)? The replacement kit has a lesser defect: The last of the three tests is reportedly beyond the skill set of most to the people intended to administer it. Not a big problem, yet: There is such a limited supply of the kits that few actually have them.
The Chinese finally admitted to themselves that the persistent shortage and unreliability of their test kits called for alternative diagnosis measures. In the reporting of the testing delay of the Solano County case and the CDC's continuing problems with its testing kits, it was reported that the CDC had started developing its own alternative methods. Way to not learn from others' mistakes!
In my previous coronavirus blog, I enumerated similar shortcomings by the CDC to Ebola reaching the US, despite many, many months to prepare.
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Unfortunately, since China apparently buried the outbreak allowing it to spread massively,
I think there is absolutely no way this will not become a common, seasonal flu just like H1N1 did. See my H1N1 post below. That's not a good thing for a flu that may be 23 times as deadly as the common influenzas. That and the probably higher transmission rate is why this is being treated the way it is by China and any other affected country.
Study of 72,000 COVID-19 patients finds 2.3% death rate
24 Feb 2020
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-per...y-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate
Researchers from China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention today describe the clinical findings on more than 72,000 COVID-19 cases reported in mainland China, which reveal a case-fatality rate (CFR) of 2.3% and suggest most cases are mild, but the disease hits the elderly the hardest.
The study, published in JAMA, is the largest patient-based study on the novel coronavirus, which was first connected to seafood market in Wuhan, China, in December, and has since traversed the globe.
Another just released study gives a 1.4% death rate which would be 14 times as deadly as the common influenzas.