I’d say mucus
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Coughing droplets count as saliva.
https://www.lung.ca/lung-health/prevent-lung-disease/germ-control/cover-your-coughs
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I found this in this article on Vox
“While South Korea has run more than 35,000 coronavirus tests, the United States has tested only 426 people, not including people who returned on evacuation flights,” the Washington Post reported earlier in the week. As of Friday, only 445 people have been tested for Covid-19 in the US.
If you read the entire article maybe you can understand the reason for this delay. However, only US and South Korea tests are mentioned. Italian data reported by me (18.500 tests) comes directly from the head of Civil Protection and is reported on a daily basis together with the number of infected people and deaths.
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Another source of 5 days ago reports:
Number of tests and positivity rate for Covid-19 as of Feb. 26
- UK: 7,132 concluded tests, of which 13 positive (0.2% positivity rate)
- Italy: 9,462 tests, of which 470 positive, awaiting results: unknown (at least 5.0% positivity rate)
- France: 762 tests, of which 17 positive, 179 awaiting results (at least 2.2% positivity rate)
- Austria: 321 tests, of which 2 positive , awaiting results: unknown (at least 0.6% positivity rate)
- South Korea: 66,652 tests with 1766 positives 25,568 awaiting results (4.3% positivity rate)
- United States: 445 concluded tests, of which 14 positive (3.1% positivity rate)
I would expect that in coming days, reliable tests will be developed in advanced countries, distributed also to countries without a self-production capacity, and broadly used to monitor better the diffusion.
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This is unlikely considering that North America and most European countries are unable to generate enough point-of-care testing kits for their own citizens. Coupling this with previously faulty kits pushed out from the USA, and blanket statements from the White House about “it will sort itself out” (Canada has hardly said anything at all about it), leads me to believe that neither the NA or EU can to step up and ship PoC test kits to the entire world within a reasonable time-frame.
I know Japan and South Korea are focusing internally, and someone else (hopefully @ayaros) can comment on Italy’s PoC test kit situation to give us an idea of how other countries may act.
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If I remember well, Italy has 7 laboratory which are able to make this test (I don’t know if they produce covi-19 tests themselves). I don’t think a single country will never have the capacity to produce such a kits for all the rest of the world. The point is that seems some country (including China, S.Korea, and Italy) are trying to develop cheap and easy to use covid-19 tests first of all for their internal use. In case such goal should be achieved (it seems not impossible), only international organizations like IMF or The World Bank can fund a massive production distributed in several regional production centers.
If you are asking why they should spend such money (that are coming essentially from the same richest countries), my answer is that it depend a lot from the negative side effect on the global economy. It may be worth it.
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Do you think it might be “too late” so to speak? Assuming it takes about 18 months for R&D, production and distribution, and we don’t see a second wave from China being reinfected by an inside/outside mutation.
Not to say that the impact will be devastating if it’s “too late”, but to me it doesn’t seem like it would be worth it after it hits pandemic level and everyone in the world is expected to be in a community with positive covid-19 infections.
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I think that 18 months can be realistic for the vaccine. For a cheaper test I understood some weeks (maybe I’m wrong or maybe among the huge amount of information often without fundament someone peddled an hope for a fact) .
You are right about mutations. Someone recently told: it is not a matter of “if” but “when”. Epidemics affected Earth in all the ages. It is only a question of time to find a pathogen so malicious that we cannot beat it in short time.
“With the coming spring and the sun - some expert says - the virus should stop infecting people.”
I think that if in a world’s hemisphere is summer, in the other is winter. Moreover the virus doesn’t disappear: it will pop-up again next autumn and the probability of mutation will increase if in the meantime we don’t find a vaccine.
It’s a complex matter. I think that globalization means globalization. Even for epidemics and for the effort that should be spent fighting against them.
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Yeah, I know that technically it is.
But if you say to me (as you did) “It only spreads from wet saliva” it seems to imply kissing etc (*).
The word “only” somehow makes it seem as if it is hard to spread (like only by kissing) as opposed to spreads like wild (coughing, sneezing, even maybe breathing?)
*: for example, glandular fever is described as “The virus is spread through saliva and infection occurs through contact.” This is what I think of when you say “only spread by wet saliva”. Could just be my ignorance I guess, or could be a connodatation of that word. In any case, I think the diminutive “only” is not warranted for something as contagious as this appears to be.
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Saliva to me also means shared glasses or utensils, in addition to kissing and coughing.
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My local area (meaning the entire capital area of my country with about 1/5 of total inhabitants) has now 5 confirmed cases and over 130 people have ordered to stay quarantined after being exposed to one of the cases. Those numbers were 0’s just few days ago.
From what i’ve read, those 130 or so ppl is just the tip of the iceberg of what they think might have been exposed, but they are within “high-level of exposure to someone who had symptoms”
I do believe that its already stared spreading here, and it will soon be out of control. I am not afraid for my own sake - since i’m still young healthy guy - i’m sure i won’t die even if i catch it. But i am afraid for parents and other people of their age, cause i know it can very well be lethal for them.
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I do believe that its already stared spreading here, and it will soon be out of control. I am not afraid for my own sake - since i’m still young healthy guy - i’m sure i won’t die even if i catch it. But i am afraid for parents and other people of their age, cause i know it can very well be lethal for them.
I am in the exact same situation, but even if I am not afraid personally, I find it hard to accept that I might contract a virus that could potentially harm someone else. The days-long incubation period of the virus means that a person could interact with carriers of the virus that look perfectly healthy and then become a carrier as well, also looking perfectly healthy and thus unknowingly spreading the virus.
What is extra annoying and adds to the turmoil is that the symptoms, in my best of knowledge, appear to laymen like me similar to the common flu or just having a cold, which means two things :
A) that everyone that gets even the usual kinds of winter illnesses could cause a panic to the people around them.
B) There will be a lot of people that will shrug it off and say “it is just a cold” / “it is just a normal flu” because they trust their constitution or they just want to avoid the drama and the testing and traveling in order to find a hospital that can test them for the virus. And who can blame them? The nearest hospital for my area is 150km away through a very dangerous road during the winter, so it is not a trip one would embark on lightly.
So, the possibility that the virus will not make an appearance in my little town is very small and all I can hope for is for my relatives’ immune systems to hit the lucky jackpot and cope with it.
Stay safe everyone!
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Speaking from Hong Kong, i can say we are in panic.
We know how things are done in China. When it decides to lock up a whole city of up to 10 mil persons, you know thing is BAD.
We know when China said there is X people infected, there is more like X hundred that is infected.
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I’d really like to know if what you experience/see is any different from what we westerners see on the news.
I see a lot of stuff on liveleak and whatnot, but I have no way of knowing if it’s actually representative or just cherry-picked or what.
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I haven’t read it all, but there is some misinformation.
Please educate yourselves. Do NOT panic, but research, and take care.
• Incubation time is up to TWO WEEKS
This is a HUGE difference to influenza, and it means that people who show no symptoms are a potential source of infection for MUCH LONGER because nobody knows they’re contagious.
(Source: https://www.infektionsschutz.de/coronavirus-sars-cov-2.html – German govt. site)
• The virus can stay contagious on surfaces for up to NINE DAYS
… depending on temperature and humidity (it seems to prefer cool and moist).
(Source: https://www.uni-greifswald.de/universitaet/information/aktuelles/detail/n/wie-lang-coronaviren-auf-flaechen-ueberleben-und-wie-man-sie-inaktiviert-60251/ – German university site)
Personal story
I live in Lower Saxony (IIRC 3 cases meanwhile in this state, up from one yesterday), Germany.
I’m in the risk group (age 62, COPD, emphysema, and as consequence, asthma).
For today, a Go player meetup was scheduled at my place for the afternoon and evening, the three expected guests are aged 25–40, they live active lives, have families, and meet more people than I do.
Now, just yesterday I spoke to a friend of mine, an M.D. who knows about my health condition, and as we chatted about life, “what’s happening?”, I mentioned that I was looking forward to todays Go games.
He then strongly suggested that I cancel the meeting … and I remembered also how my doctor had said that I better not go to birthday parties and large group events … and then I decided, albeit sadly, to cancel the Real Life Go meetup for now.
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ok, to be fair, its all rumours, or hearsay in internet chat groups, as there is no way i could go to china and prove anything, here is just a few that i randomly recalled reading
- some folks calculated thru sulphur dioxide (or whatever), which is a by product of burning corpses, that death toll in Wuhan is about 200/day.
- some also observed that the crematorium, which there is around 8 in Wuhan, operating 24/7 and each corpse takes about 1.5 hr to fully burn, also come to similar conclusion that around 200 is dead / day
- armed police / paramedic is patrolling the city, not allowing people to walk the street. (this has video evidence)
- hard cash is being transported to the city. for those who don’t understand, china is heavy on electronic payment, and people carry very little cash. the move to transport cash to the city is interpreted as a sign that the government is about to cut internet, prevent any more news to get out.
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I’d think the reason for this is that people who life in home quarantine must get their food delivered, and using plastic money is difficult in this case.
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glad to know sulphur dioxide is not true, bu still, its broadly believed that they are operating 24/7 and still couldn’t handle the number of corpses.
the point is, we Chinese knows the CCP. When they say there is nothing, there is something, and when they say there is something, then it’s huge. when they admit it’s huge, then all hell broke loose.
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I just game to this thread to ask “why are we more worried about this than flu” and lo you had just answered it.
It’s interesting that the WHO site says that you don’t have to worry about parcels from China, which would appear to be untrue if contagion remains on surfaces for days…
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