International COVID-19 Megathread

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https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1222293526232412160

Time to panic?

I don't understand why the WHO didn't declare this a global emergency a week ago unless it was political to not piss off the Chinese. This thing is global at this point at least in terms of cases if not deaths (for those I think it's just too early, there's a case in France that's reported to be intensive care). For global the case of the 4 Germans that got infected by their co-worker from Wuhan is just damning, not in the sense of people should've known but it demonstrates they aren't going to be able to put a lid on this. The quarantines were too late to work. 3 out of the 206 people the Japanese extracted of their nationals they confirmed had coronavirus, and 2 were showing no symptoms.

Here in the U.S. we got a Super Bowl this weekend. It's going to involve a lot of transnational travel from people all over the country. I'm sure one person there conversing with everyone else has had close contact with a person from Wuhan: it's a small very interconnected world nowadays.

Putting aside the virus aspects, the trailing economic (mostly bad) and climate (good, due to part of the world transportation system getting shut down for a period of time) effects of this crisis will make interesting case studies.

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The case in Chicago passed on coronavirus to the spouse. So first case here of a person that had not been to China.

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WHO declares global emergency. Probably like a week too f***ing late, but that is always the UN's MO.

The Chinese must've silently vetoed it a week ago by how the WHO Director-General phrased the statement:

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, announced the decision after a meeting of its Emergency Committee, an independent panel of experts, amid mounting evidence of the virus spreading to some 18 countries.

Tedros told a news conference in Geneva that recent weeks have witnessed an unprecedented outbreak which has been met by an unprecedented response.

"Let me be clear, this declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China," he said.

"Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems," he added.

Why would declaring this a global emergency be a vote of no confidence in China?

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Why would declaring this a global emergency be a vote of no confidence in China?

Because declaring it a global emergency means that China cannot contain it within their own borders. Which means their government is incapable, etc etc

Don't really view it that way. First, it was shown a week ago it wasn't contained inside their borders. Second, the fact a new virus no one has seen before has spread rapidly is hardly the fault of the government (trading in wild animals at a market which created this is something else entirely).

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You kind of cut your post off there mid-thought.

Everyone is focusing on China vs. the Rest of the World. Let's look at Hubei Province vs. the Rest of China. The death rate compared to number of cases reported is significantly worse in Hubei than it is Rest of China. It makes me wonder if this has some kind of intensity factor, because taking a simplistic face value look at the numbers, "Rest of China" with more than half the cases should have all things being equal 150 to 200 deaths.

Hubei Province - 11177 cases, 350 deaths
Rest of China - 6028 cases, 11 deaths
Rest of World - 181 cases, 1 death

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Passing on from another message board. I've advised him to contact the New Zealand Embassy (he appears to be a Kiwi) and if he wants to get out he better do it soon considering all the countries shuttering flights to and from China.

Today is the first day I've sort of panicked and realised I might need to leave China very soon. Possibly this week or next. It's getting real hairy over here real fast. I've sat quarantined in my apartment in Beijing for four days since getting back from the CNY break slowly losing my mind. I've been living in denial but today was the day I cracked a bit and realised I'm not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. No one knows what the  is going on really which is the scary thing, but I'm looking around with my own eyes and it doesn't look good. I saw a guy being carried out to an ambulance by paramedics in full protective gear across the road from where I live this evening. The armchair experts on here trying to convince people its no worse than the regular flu genuinely crack me up.

The censorship is also going through the roof, even for China. I'm kind of worried to discuss it objectively over Wechat in group chats, stories of people going missing, a lot of messages getting conspicuously deleted, Western media stories of the outbreak are now completely banned on Wechat.

The other thing is the social unrest/economic side of things. The flu is worrying, but the social unrest that might be brewing is even more frightening. No one is working. I think after tomorrow, unless you have the capacity to work from home, to the best of my knowledge you're not getting paid. All the shops are shut except for the supermarkets basically and sh**t is flying off the shelves. Economic consumption must have slid to a crawl because there's nothing to buy. Anyone who's spent any real time in China knows the whole place is a house of cards but it's ok because the music keeps on playing and house prices go up and the Gucci bags keep on rolling. There isn't unrest yet but if this carried on for a few more weeks which it could well do, I could see there starting to be some real problems over here in a society with few if any safety valves when things go wrong.

I was in Laos with old mates from uni over the break. Basically a two week long bender and didn't check my phone or read the news the whole time I was away. I had been loosely following the Wuhan thing for a bit but it didn't seem like that big a deal until a couple of weeks ago, then just seemed to blow up over CNY. Ran in to a couple of other expats in Vang Vieng who also lived in Beijing on CNY night and they told me they weren't going back to Beijing and staying put/going home. I wasn't really sober enough to comprehend the seriousness of the situation and sort of went in to denial and just ignored the whole thing until I got back to China. One of my mates who I was traveling with is a doctor and tried to explain that going back was pretty stupid under the circumstances but naturally I knew better.

I was still in denial really up until today that it's a serious situation and I probably shouldn't be here any longer. I live in Sanlitun which is like the main entertainment/nightlife area of Beijing. Went for a walkabout on both Friday and Saturday evenings and it was completely dead but at the same time it felt surreal and didn't really all sink in until today.

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Countries that have banned travel from China:



Almost all EU/Schengen Countries have suspended the Issuance of Visas to Chinese nationals. Visas already granted remain valid. France seems to continue to Issue Visas. The German Minister for Health Jens Spahn has called for a more broad travel ban. The Chinese Government condemns the travel restrictions. It says its screening measures on departure are adequate. Europe now has 26 confirmed cases, 12 of them in Germany. The latter all but two connected to the aforementioned Webasto case. The other two are German evacuees from Wuhan who were flown out and quarantined three days ago.

Also some pretty ugly xenophobic sentiments seem have spread in Europe and elsewhere, some of which I experienced myself. Misinformation Online, especially that notorious video of the Chinese woman eating bat soup (which was actually from Palau three years ago) seems to have become an ample excuse to slag off Chinese and Asian people and their cultures as disgusting, backward and this as some sort of deserved ("devine") punishment. Pretty sad to see even (quite respectable) newspapers swoop this low.

 
"Yellow Alert"                                 Source: Der Spiegel

Particularly charming and very effective..

https://twitter.com/OnkelNasch/status/1222756056633368577?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7C...

Why is the German newspaper headline in English?

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https://mobile.twitter.com/IsChinar

A Twitter feed with some videos and black humor.

Some of the social aspects of this going on: this could seriously bring down Xi.

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If you want to throw fire on the official numbers not being real.

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871594

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As many experts question the veracity of China's statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures.

On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), Tencent, on its webpage titled "Epidemic Situation Tracker", showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.

The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.

Moments later, Tencent updated the numbers to reflect the government's "official" numbers that day. Netizens noticed that Tencent has on at least three occasions posted extremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approved statistics.

Screenshots at the link. Best in mind that was for four days ago.

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I see no way the Olympics are getting held. A "senior Japanese government official" was anonymously sourced by the London Times saying they don't think it's being held, they're just putting on a good face and acting like it will move forward so that the IOC will be compelled to give them 2032. All parties then came out and predictably said they will take place as scheduled. They've all said it's this year or bust, so if it's bust that's the first Olympiad canceled since the 1940 and 1944 ones. All Olympic athletes globally would become the sad sports tale we've been told time and again about the Team USA athletes that didn't go to Moscow in 1980.

If that's the case of no 2020 Games and Tokyo gets 2032 as a make good, I think the IOC are going to really rue doing a double handout of 2024 and 2028 at the same time, because they're not going to have an open Games to have bidding on for another 15 years.

If we do go to the point of the Games will be held, there's going to be no fans and you're just going to be shuttling athletes in and out, so what? That's a drastic investment loss for the Japanese government, although at least they're a rich country and can afford it. Can you imagine if this was Rio or Athens? Also, if the games are held somehow, no way we're having a 100% participation rate, have to imagine a bunch of countries won't send athletes.

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Things have the potential to get very ugly on the Vaccine front soon, I fear. There is a lot of anger in Europe at Pfizer and AstraZeneca, as both companies have now said that they are not going to be able to deliver as many doses to the EU as originally agreed. So far so bad, but what riling distrust particularly, is the fact that AstraZeneca at least is both refusing to give a proper reason (only blaming vague "problems in the European supply chain") and only cutting commitments to the EU - other Countries, in particular the UK, are not affected for some reason. Making things worse is simmering anger/distrust over Brexit. The EU will now introduce a advance registration requirement for all exports to third countries, and some member states, such as the German Health Minister and many in the EU parliament are for calling for restricting or banning the exports of Vaccines entirely.

Clearly it is unacceptable for AstraZeneca to not keep it's commitments to the EU but to other countries without a proper reason, and if they cannot, they should be held legally accountable considering how much the EU invested in them for research and production capacity. But doing things like this is extremely irresponsible in my view. Mixing politics and vaccines is never a good idea, but especially not like this. If Europe would block the export of Biontech/Pfizer from it's European plants, other Countries would (such as the UK with AstraZeneca) respond entirely tit-for-tat, and crucial supply chains for the Vaccine distribution everywhere would be disrupted. It is a lose-lose for everyone. And it's feels like a cheap attempt to distract for the failures of the Government in the Vaccine rollout in many European countries, especially in Germany.

This is what I read at another message board as far as EU and AstraZeneca from the Twitter of a journalist named Robert Peston who the poster said has worked for the BBC, the Independent, the Times, the Financial Times, and has a political show on ITV.

https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1354019140084916225

Robert Peston
@Peston

The important difference between AstraZeneca's relationship with the UK and with the EU, and the reason it has fallen behind schedule on 50m vaccine doses promised to the EU, is that the UK agreed the deal with AZ a full three months before the EU did - which gave...

AZ an extra three months to sort out manufacturing and supply problems relating to the UK contract (there were plenty of problems). Here is the important timeline. In May AZ reached agreement with Oxford and the UK government to make and supply the vaccine. In fact Oxford...

had already started work on the supply chain. The following month AZ reached a preliminary agreement with Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy, a group known as the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance, based on the agreement with the UK. The announcement was 13 June. BUT the EU...

insisted that the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance could not formalise the deal. The European Commission insisted it should take over the contract negotiations on behalf of the whole EU. So were another two months of talks and the contract was not signed till the end of August...

What is frustrating for AZ is that the extra talks with the European Commission led to no material changes to the contract, but wasted time on making arrangements to make the vaccine with partner sites. The yield at these partner sites has been lower than expected. The problem...

is in the course of being sorted. AZ say it is working 24/7 to make up the time and deliver the quantities the EU wanted. It says its contract with the EU - as with the UK - was always on a "best effort" basis, because it was starting from scratch to deliver unprecedented...

amounts for no profit. AZ is not blaming the EU. But it does not understand why it is being painted as the "bad guy" given that if the deal had happened in June, when Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy wanted it done, most of these supply issues would already...

have been sorted. A pro-EU source at the company says "I understand Brexit better now".

PS According to AZ, the EU claim that it pays less to AZ per dose, and that is why AZ "works harder for the UK than for the EU", is "completely incorrect". It charges the same price to all buyers, wherever they are in the world, subject to small adjustments due to local costs

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If Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands all were ready, but certain other countries were obstructing, I'm really wondering why there isn't more finger-pointing going on in the EU. Or maybe I know, because then people might ask if the expansion went too far and certain countries should never have been let in. The EU per se is a good thing, but this is really very bad optics. Maybe we need a new core EU. Or we accept that not everything needs to be done via the official EU channels and that we can do things with Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and everyone who wants to join on that particular thing. And if Mr X from country Y doesn't want the vaccine, then good luck.

"Wasted time on making arrangements at partner sites" sounds like governments wanting the vaccine made at extra sites inside their borders. Should be easy to figure out who by looking at where the AstraZeneca vaccine is being manufactured.

The one place I can readily find having issues manufacturing the vaccine are a Novasep plant in Belgium who are less than half their expected production. AstraZeneca announced this 4 days ago.

From the Guardian in the past hour. EU lawsuit threat:

The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has urged pharmaceutical companies to honour their commitments to supply coronavirus vaccines, citing the massive public investment in research and development.

“Europe invested billions to help develop the world’s first Covid-19 vaccines, to create a truly global common good,” she said at a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum. “And now, the companies must deliver. They must honour their obligations.”

EU member states could take AstraZeneca to court for breach of supply contracts if it did not honour its schedule, Latvian foreign affairs minister Edgars Rinkevics said. “The possibility should be evaluated, and it should be coordinated among the EU countries.”

The EC will finalise a proposal by the end of the week to require pharmaceutical firms to register their vaccine exports from the EU, and says it has no plans to impose an export ban.

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If Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands all were ready, but certain other countries were obstructing, I'm really wondering why there isn't more finger-pointing going on in the EU. Or maybe I know, because then people might ask if the expansion went too far and certain countries should never have been let in. The EU per se is a good thing, but this is really very bad optics. Maybe we need a new core EU. Or we accept that not everything needs to be done via the official EU channels and that we can do things with Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and everyone who wants to join on that particular thing. And if Mr X from country Y doesn't want the vaccine, then good luck.

"Wasted time on making arrangements at partner sites" sounds like governments wanting the vaccine made at extra sites inside their borders. Should be easy to figure out who by looking at where the AstraZeneca vaccine is being manufactured.

The one place I can readily find having issues manufacturing the vaccine are a Novasep plant in Belgium who are less than half their expected production. AstraZeneca announced this 4 days ago.

That's not how it sounds to me at all. To me it sounds like: "If it wasn't for the meddling by the EU commission (and maybe meddling by some individual states) we would have known how much to produce earlier and hence we could have made arrangements with partner sites earlier." No direct connection between meddling and partner sites.

If they were meddling just to meddle, that's worse because it shows it was just a power play. At least if you were meddling to spread out the manufacturing to more sites, there's a local jobs argument.

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So who takes the fall here in the Commission? This isn't really a scandal, it's more a governmental failure making bad decisions in an existential crisis, a Neville Chamberlain moment.

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Of all the places in the world I expected to go ultra-nationalist in this Covid debacle, the European Union would've been pretty far down my list. They published their AstraZeneca contract and Reynders is now talking about a vaccine war with the UK.

(Side comment: how is a guy that previously demonstrated he was incapable of making a functioning government in Belgium promoted to EU Justice Commissioner? If you can't get Flemings and Walloons to work together, how can you get 27 countries to work together?)

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Here's politico.eu's take late Thursday night.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-brandishes-export-ban-to-claim-dibs-on-vaccine-astrazeneca-pfizer/?force_isolation=true

They start with "it's not Europe 1st, but the Commission made clear Thursday they won't stand for EU 2nd"

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Tony Connelly of RTE:

-first said that Taioseach Michael Martin had not been consulted about the move from the Commission prior

-just came out saying:

"Senior figure says a resolution to the Article 16 row is "in sight" and could before the end of the evening.

Second source says Commission is working on a solution and Article 16 is "unlikely to be triggered".

Safe to say, IMHO, that the Commission made a mistake here and know it."

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Darren McCaffrey of euronews.com in the last hour:

AND with that, the official regulation text has been taken offline
Are we about to see a major EU u-turn on this?
Talks within the Commission ongoing
Has the damage been done?

He had a funny earlier tweet:

EU decision to invoke Article 16, clearly without prior notice has managed to unite the British and Irish governments, Labour, the DUP and SDLP in disagreement with the move...
When did that last happen?
later Tweet: We can now add Sinn Fein to that list

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Great article from Tony Connelly of RTE on what the hell happened with the EU and Ireland last week.

https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2021/0202/1194551-article-16-vaccines-brexit/?force_isolation=true

The Article 16 clause was added last minute. No one knows who added it or who told them to do it. It was likely not Dombrovskis' fault. All the commissioners were given 30 minutes to read and approve. The Irish government did not find out until the press started calling them about it.

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Is it premature to consider this the 'silver bullet' that will finally bring the COVID pandemic in the developing world under control at last?

https://twitter.com/alfonslopeztena/status/1482318783687581701

A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.

The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been developing vaccine prototypes for Sars and Mers since 2011, which they reconstructed to create the new Covid vaccine, dubbed Corbevax, or “the world’s Covid-19 vaccine”.

Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it, allowing anyone with the capacity to reproduce it.

Also would require an FDA approval.