Generic Virus Thread

[AJ]

45 minutes ago, Rodders said:

RIP @Demitri_C

Scaremonger.

[HanoiVillan]

40 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

This. I noticed on FB this morning "50 amazing things about China that don't seem real - but are!" It leads off with "eating dogs that have been tortured to death", and goes on with loads of supersititions/yukky food preferences/authoritarian state stuff, calculated to trigger westerners' predjudice and selfrighteousness. No coincidence. 

Also note:

Chinese in UK report 'shocking' levels of racism after coronavirus outbreak

'“We’ll be in trouble if these guys sneeze on us,” Jason Ngan overheard as he and his brother got into a lift in Manchester’s Piccadilly station. Born and bred in Manchester, home to more than 7,000 Chinese people, the legal adviser said the level of anti-Asian racism the coronavirus had unearthed was “shocking”.

[...]

 

In Sheffield, a postgraduate student was reportedly verbally and physically harassed in the street for wearing a face mask, while in Leicestershire two students – mistakenly thought to be Chinese – were pelted with eggs on the street in Market Harborough. The Manchester Chinese Centre has received scores of complaints of racist incidents targeting children in schools across the region.

North Yorkshire police confirmed they had received two reports of verbal abuse where individuals of an “Asian appearance” had comments about coronavirus shouted at them in York, and there was a further incident where staff at an Asian tea house had been verbally abused.

 

Last week the University of York, home to around 2,000 Chinese students, issued a statement calling for respect and tolerance after xenophobic and racist comments were published on the anonymous confessions page Yorfess.

The site was shut down, but the student newspaper York Vision reported that comments ranged from stating that the risk of the virus spreading was minimal because Asian students were “cliquey and unwilling to integrate”, to one user not wanting to share cutlery with their international housemates.

[...]

The abuse is not confined to big cities. Waiting for a train in Edale, Derbyshire, Alice, a charity worker, overheard a woman saying she didn’t want a group who appeared to be east Asian to get on the train. She said the woman’s friend must have tried to reason with her because she then said: “I’m looking out for myself!”'

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/09/chinese-in-uk-report-shocking-levels-of-racism-after-coronavirus-outbreak

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, AJ said:

If people are vigilant with their influenza vaccinations, that could also help

Don't see how. The jab is tailored to one particular strain of flu. Would have no effect on coronavirus. 

[AJ]

10 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Don't see how. The jab is tailored to one particular strain of flu. Would have no effect on coronavirus. 

You are right, it wont have an effect on the coronavirus, as it isn't influenza. The media however love the annual doomsday bug story, as it causes worry, and gets them lots of clicks.

However, the influenza vaccination isn't just based on one particular strain, but the most common ones at the time. Since it is a constantly adapting virus, the vaccine has to be constructed annually, hence why it is only good for a year.

Edited February 10, 2020 by AJ

[hippo]

1 minute ago, AJ said:

You are right, it wont have an effect on the coronavirus, as it isn't influenza.

However, the influenza vaccination isn't just based on one particular strain, but the most common ones at the time. Since it is a constantly adapting virus, the vaccine has to be constructed annually, hence why it is only good for a year.

The flu vaccination helps reduce the number of people of sneezing - so could slow the infection rate if that is how coronavirus is spread. 

[sne]

Edit: Threads merged, delete.

Edited February 10, 2020 by sne

[AJ]

1 minute ago, hippo said:

The flu vaccination helps reduce the number of people of sneezing - so could slow the infection rate if that is how coronavirus is spread. 

What a virus needs to incubate within a host is heat and moisture. As @mjmooney pointed out, the influenza vaccine wont necessarily have much of an impact on Coronavirus, as it is based on influenza strains. If you have had a flu vac, you can still catch a common cold.

[tonyh29]

59 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

This. I noticed on FB this morning "50 amazing things about China that don't seem real - but are!" It leads off with "eating dogs that have been tortured to death", and goes on with loads of supersititions/yukky food preferences/authoritarian state stuff, calculated to trigger westerners' predjudice and selfrighteousness. No coincidence. 

on my last visit there i posted a few interesting food pics  ,  live scorpions on a stick for example

some of the FB comments were about how barbaric they are , i don't think there is any argument there tbh .. a few comments were borderline xenophobic but then again when i went to Iran all i got on Facebook was dozens of " Are you joining the Taliban " comments so there is a lot of ignorance ,predjudice  about as well.

Always a tough one for me , I love animals  ..but i also love eating animals and usually how my pork knuckle went from happy pig rolling around in mud to my supermarket  is not something I give much thought to  , but in China if a market stall has a large fish on sale and someone only wants half , they basically chop it down the middle whilst it's still alive and put the other half back on the stall , you can see the live half still moving , its mouth opening and closing ... the Chinese are tuned out to it , life is cheap out there , animal live even cheaper 

back onto the virus  , my mate is out in HK working and his hotel has been closed ... he went over to Macau for a few days , messaged me just now to say all the casinos are closed  .. that must be costing hundreds of millions  , so I'd put it more in the deadly category  as far as China is concerned ....  far as I'm concerned , well I'm not , I'm so low risk there is more chance of me scoring the winning goal at Wembley next month than dying of this virus

[Stevo985]

20 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

on my last visit there i posted a few interesting food pics  ,  live scorpions on a stick for example

some of the FB comments were about how barbaric they are , i don't think there is any argument there tbh .. a few comments were borderline xenophobic but then again when i went to Iran all i got on Facebook was dozens of " Are you joining the Taliban " comments so there is a lot of ignorance ,predjudice  about as well.

Always a tough one for me , I love animals  ..but i also love eating animals and usually how my pork knuckle went from happy pig rolling around in mud to my supermarket  is not something I give much thought to  , but in China if a market stall has a large fish on sale and someone only wants half , they basically chop it down the middle whilst it's still alive and put the other half back on the stall , you can see the live half still moving , its mouth opening and closing ... the Chinese are tuned out to it , life is cheap out there , animal live even cheaper 

back onto the virus  , my mate is out in HK working and his hotel has been closed ... he went over to Macau for a few days , messaged me just now to say all the casinos are closed  .. that must be costing hundreds of millions  , so I'd put it more in the deadly category  as far as China is concerned ....  far as I'm concerned , well I'm not , I'm so low risk there is more chance of me scoring the winning goal at Wembley next month than dying of this virus

I think it's hypocritical for people to turn their nose up at the Chinese eating bats or scorpions or whatever. It's still an animal. What makes it more or less barbaric than eating a cow or a sheep?

The hygiene of the food or how it's kept/prepared etc may be another (legitimate) issue.

 

 

(oh and if you eat animals you don't love them, but that's for a different thread  )

Edited February 10, 2020 by Stevo985

[tonyh29]

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

What makes it more or less barbaric than eating a cow or a sheep?

Ermintrude and Dolly go to animal heaven with a quick bolt to the back of the neck , rather than being paraded in a market stall for a slow death with a spike up their bottom

[LakotaDakota]

Not really sure how she managed it by my wife spoke to our friend who has been iving in Hainan & said she managed to get back to the UK over the weekend. No off to quarantine for a couple of weeks, She just went home. Needless to say she won't be invited round for tea for a few weeks...

[hippo]

Could this be the end of 'Corona' ?

Remember in the mid eighties there was a slimming supplement called 'AIDS' ? 

[HanoiVillan]

4 minutes ago, LakotaDakota said:

Not really sure how she managed it by my wife spoke to our friend who has been iving in Hainan & said she managed to get back to the UK over the weekend. No off to quarantine for a couple of weeks, She just went home. Needless to say she won't be invited round for tea for a few weeks...

Who, your wife? 

[villakram]

Heard an interesting discussion this morn flagging the danger in neighboring population dense countries like Laos/Cambodia. Health experts now saying that this has advanced in excess of SARS.

Factories in China turning back on this morn, will be interesting to see how this goes or if new outbreaks force things to regress again.

[Stevo985]

31 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Ermintrude and Dolly go to animal heaven with a quick bolt to the back of the neck , rather than being paraded in a market stall for a slow death with a spike up their bottom

If only  

[sne]

If this got into places like Bangladesh, Pakistan and India it would be disastrous as I imagine they don't have anywhere near the same ability to "control" people like China has.

Thankfully the geography helps here with the Himalayas and what not.

[HanoiVillan]

28 minutes ago, villakram said:

Heard an interesting discussion this morn flagging the danger in neighboring population dense countries like Laos/Cambodia. Health experts now saying that this has advanced in excess of SARS.

Factories in China turning back on this morn, will be interesting to see how this goes or if new outbreaks force things to regress again.

Slightly confused here? Vietnam has a high population density (roughly similar to the UK) but Cambodia is no more densely populated than average, and Laos has very low population density. 

[KentVillan]

3 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

I think it's hypocritical for people to turn their nose up at the Chinese eating bats or scorpions or whatever. It's still an animal. What makes it more or less barbaric than eating a cow or a sheep?

The hygiene of the food or how it's kept/prepared etc may be another (legitimate) issue.

I don't think it's that one is considered more ethically barbaric, just that boiling a whole bat in a soup is pretty **** repulsive... something Baldrick would do in Blackadder Goes Forth. Those cute little eyes staring up at you from that furry little ratty head marinated in its own blood.

Here's a recipe for Fruit Bat Soup anyway: https://travelfoodatlas.com/fruit-bat-soup-palau

Quote

Ingredients

• 1 Large fruit bat
• 2 Medium donni sali (hot peppers)
• 1 Chopped white onion
• 5 tbsp Light soy sauce
• 2 tsp Lemon juice
• 1 pinch Salt
• 2 cans Coconut milk unsweetened

 

[villakram]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Slightly confused here? Vietnam has a high population density (roughly similar to the UK) but Cambodia is no more densely populated than average, and Laos has very low population density. 

I think they were factoring in GDP related anti-pandemic capabilities, but ya I'd imagine all of SE Asia must be quasi-terrified right now.

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, villakram said:

I think they were factoring in GDP related anti-pandemic capabilities, but ya I'd imagine all of SE Asia must be quasi-terrified right now.

Yes, that's fair. Hospitals in Vietnam are largely terrible, and they're probably worse in Laos and Cambodia (fortunately I never needed to find out).