In Regard To The Coronavirus, How Unsafe Is Airplane Travel? Will Governments Level With Us?

I'm a fairly intrepid international traveller and I've never thought twice about pandemics when making my travel plans. Until this morning. This morning is when I called my friend Helen, who was putting out summer vacation together in the Dordogne region of France. First off, how cool does this look?





But I told Helen to hold up on reserving the house Sarlat we were planning on. I just got this awful feeling that this coronavirus is way more serious than the public is lead to believe and that by summer, air travel is going to be... well too risky, even just to Europe.

Today the Washington Post reported that both the number of infected people and the number of people dying keeps growing, primarily in Wuhan in central China.

● The global death toll from the novel coronavirus reached more than 810 on Sunday, surpassing the 774 fatalities attributed to the outbreak of the SARS coronavirus in 2002 and 2003. Among the dead was the first American, a 60-year-old woman who died Thursday in Wuhan.
● Although Wuhan and Hubei province remain ravaged by the disease, Chinese officials say the number of new cases outside Hubei is declining, in a reflection of strict quarantine measures taking effect nationwide.
● A World Health Organization-led international team is planning to leave for China on Monday or Tuesday to conduct an investigation of the coronavirus.
● Chinese authorities have labeled masks a “strategic resource,” and experts call for most protective masks to be reserved for medical workers amid global shortages.
● Hong Kong expanded its quarantine orders to more than 160 people who arrived from the Chinese mainland. People who violate the quarantine face up to six months in jail.

As far as I can tell, infected people in China are being put into what amounts to storage facilities. Oh-- and the Chinese government aren't being very forthcoming about the disease. We don't really know much about anything and I don't trust any of the information China is releasing. The Post reported that "Even as infections overwhelm the afflicted province, the rest of China may be seeing the effects of strict quarantine measures, Chinese health officials said Sunday. In all parts of China excluding Hubei, the daily number of new infections dropped from nearly 900 on Feb. 3 to 509 on Saturday, the officials said." Is it true? I wouldn't count on it.

An international team of experts led by WHO will depart for China on Monday or Tuesday to investigate the outbreak, said the director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Medical experts say available data show the disease-- officially named “novel coronavirus pneumonia,” or NCP, by Chinese health officials on Saturday-- is much more contagious than SARS, but the probability of death for those infected is much lower.

Around the world, cases continue to tick up. The number of confirmed infections rose on Sunday to 70 onboard the cruise liner Diamond Princess, which has been anchored and quarantined off the coast of Japan. Only the sick are able to disembark.

One of the evacuees was Rebecca Frasure, her husband Kent Frasure, 42, told The Post by phone on Sunday from the quarantined ship in Yokohama. The couple from Forest Grove, Ore., had traveled to Disneyland in Hong Kong, Vietnam and other destinations before Japanese medical staff boarded the ship with thermometers. Rebecca Frasure, 35, tested positive for the virus on Thursday, her husband said, and was taken by ambulance to a hospital north of Tokyo.

“She is doing pretty good, no fever or cough,” he said, although symptoms can take as many as 14 days after exposure to appear. Frasure said his wife is being evaluated in a stripped-down contagious disease ward with just a bed, TV and calendar on the wall. Doctors step through a sealed antechamber to see her.

It is an alien experience for her, said Frasure, a technician at Intel. She does not speak Japanese and the physicians use electronic devices to translate confusing medical jargon. But Rebecca, who works for a health-care company, has WiFi and keeps in contact with him and family on FaceTime, he said.

The quarantine on the ship, meanwhile, has become claustrophobic. Frasure had a fever earlier, so he has been restricted to his suite. His Nintendo Switch and reporters calling him for comment help pass the time, he said. The ship captain periodically issues updates over a loudspeaker, but media reports often clue in the passengers before then.

“Usually we know what’s happening before it’s announced,” he said.

Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, urged calm as the city-state reported a spike in the number of cases to a total of 40 and raised its alert level. New cases were also reported in Germany and South Korea.

In Hong Kong, where grocery stores have been emptied as worried residents stock up on supplies, the number of cases rose by three to a total of 29 on Sunday. The city’s health authorities said tests for all 3,600 crew and passengers quarantined for the past four days on a cruise ship, the World Dream, came back negative and everyone aboard was released Sunday afternoon.

China faces a crucial test beginning Monday as laborers from across the country trickle back to work in major cities that have been effectively emptied and shut down since the Lunar New Year in late January.

Officials, concerned about another spike in infections, have tried to delay the return to work. Shanghai is asking companies to dissuade nonlocal employees from returning for several more weeks. In Shenzhen, the iPhone assembler Foxconn has told employees that work is suspended until further notice. Officials in cities ranging from Xian in the north to Tianjin on the east coast have warned travelers from other parts of China that they would be immediately quarantined upon their return.

In a sign that governments are still seeking to prolong closures, state media reported Sunday that the populous Hebei province surrounding Beijing would join a number of other major jurisdictions keeping schools closed until March 1 at the earliest.

At the heart of the epidemic in Wuhan, the situation remains dire.

Officials are rushing to transfer patients into three quarantine facilities with 4,000 beds to alleviate a severe shortage of space inside the city’s overwhelmed hospitals. Hotels and university dorms are being requisitioned and converted into spaces for “centralized quarantine” for patients showing symptoms.

Leishenshan, a second makeshift hospital with 1,600 beds, began accepting patients with severe symptoms beginning Saturday night, state media reported.

Wuhan officials had initially asked all but the most ill patients to stay home in recent weeks due to a shortage of hospital beds, but on Saturday Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, the leader of a central government response group, ordered local officials to “take in everyone that should be taken in” to newly established facilities to quarantine confirmed cases.

But risks remain inside medical facilities. Doctors from Wuhan’s Zhongnan Hospital reported that 41 percent of coronavirus patients at their hospital became infected while inside the hospital by other patients and medical staff. The doctors announced their findings in a paper published by the Journal of the American Medical Association on Friday.

At another hospital, the Wuhan Mental and Health Center, 50 patients and 30 medical staff were infected due to a lack of caution and protective gear, a doctor, Zhao Ping, told China Newsweek magazine.

Hubei deputy governor Cao Guangjing said Saturday that hospitals in the province had only 80 percent of the masks they required.

Two prominent incidents have become symbols for China’s tight grip on information and simmering tensions among its citizens unhappy with Beijing’s response to the virus.

Chen Qiushi, an attorney and citizen journalist, slipped into the Wuhan hot zone on Jan. 24 to interview citizens about the outbreak, The Post reported, garnering worldwide attention for the city of 11 million where little, if any, information has slipped through government censors.

Chen’s family and friends said this weekend he was forcibly detained in an undisclosed location.

Details of his disappearance emerged days after Li Wenliang, the “whistleblower doctor” considered the first to sound the alarm about the disease, died after contracting the virus in Wuhan.

Millions of Chinese tried to surge past censors by amplifying the social media hashtag #WeWantFreedomOfSpeech, and photos of him flooded the Internet as a digital rallying cry.

One month after patients began flooding into area hospitals, many increasingly sick and desperate households say they still cannot secure care and fear time is running out.

Li Lina, a resident in the Hanyang district, beat a gong and shrieked from her high-rise balcony this weekend to beg for help for her and her stricken mother holed up at home. A neighbor filmed her cries and uploaded it to the Internet, where it went viral.

Reached by telephone on Sunday, Li explained that her mother’s condition was steadily worsening but she has not been able to secure a hospital bed since Jan. 29, because city regulations allow only confirmed coronavirus patients to get spots.

Li was finally able to administer a nucleic acid test on Friday; the result returned positive for coronavirus but ambiguous. Doctors gave her mother a second exam and Li is waiting for the result to arrive Tuesday.

“I don’t even know if she’ll hold out that long,” Li said as she tended to her mother, who is too feeble to speak and communicates by ringing a bell. “I feel helpless. I can’t watch my mother die.”

A friend of mine who lives in Hong Kong told me that the city is better equipped than most places, because of previous hibernations in response to SARS and bird flu potential pandemics, to react by being careful without panicking. BUT the government has virtually no credibility. The consequence of that is the city's medics are on strike demanding a total shutdown of the Chinese border.

There were 7,000 medics on strike last week

Vive La France! Nov. 13, 2015

UPDATE: What Is That?

A lot of people have asked me where I found the graphic posted above and who did it. I found it online, on Twitter, I think and I had no idea who had done it when I posted it right after the terrorist attacks in Paris. Think Progress had the whole story a few days later.

It looks like something he made in a rush. Like something he scribbled on a cocktail napkin. Something he could have drawn in four strokes. Circle, upside-down V, cross. Black ink on a white background. The image-- the marriage of the peace sign and the Eiffel tower-- is the product of French graphic designer Jean Jullien. He posted his work, titled “Peace for Paris,” on Twitter and Instagram near midnight on November 13, just hours after the massive terrorist attacks on six separate locations in the city left hundreds wounded and over 120 dead.

Jullien created the image only a minute after learning about the attacks. “It was done on my lap, on a very loose sketchbook, with a brush and ink,” he told Wired. He didn’t think it out beforehand or go to the page with a plan. “It was more an instinctive, human reaction than an illustrator’s reaction.”

The image went viral. Jullien’s original tweet has been retweeted almost 60,000 times; his original Instagram has over 163,000 likes. Earlier today, he posted another image on Instagram thanking his followers “for your messages of support for Paris… I just want to say that I did it in the most spontaneous and sincere way, as a heartfelt reaction to what was happening. It’s a drawing for Paris, for all the victims and their families.” He emphasized that he does not seek any “benefit” from it. “It’s a sign for everybody to share and show their support and solidarity.” (Jullien did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment as of publication.)

The concept seems so simple — the Eiffel tower’s structure so obviously aligned with the innards of the peace sign-- it’s almost amazing that no one has ever thought of it before. The Eiffel tower is a spry 126 years old, and the peace sign has been bopping around the public consciousness since Easter of 1958. Gerald Holtom designed the symbol for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War to plaster on placards for a march from London to Aldermaston, site of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Holtom later described the image as being reflective of his inner state, which was one of “an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it. It was ridiculous at first and such a puny thing.”

So why did Jullien’s image catch on? What makes something so simple so special?

An effective symbol is “something that usually connects to someone’s preexisting knowledge about something,” said John Caserta, head of the graphic design department at the Rhode Island School of Design. “So to combine the Eiffel tower and the peace symbol, it’s a two-for-one.” An image like this “is like a phrase, or a simple piece of text, a title, a catchphrase. It’s a visual version of that. It’s something that is already connecting or resonating with people, so it works immediately. It doesn’t ask them to work very hard.”

“In this context, any messages of peace are especially moving, because they exist in a landscape of so much violence, xenophobic noise,” said Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics. Jullien’s drawing is “so eloquently simple, it also conveys a sense of timelessness and strength,” said McCloud. “You see something like that and it has the ring of truth about it. It feels like something that won’t blow away in the wind. It doesn’t feel ephemeral.”

The fact that it is so obviously drawn by hand adds to its emotional punch, said McCloud, especially considering how it stands out against the usual photoshopped offerings on Instagram. “I think that sometimes, that slightly sloppy, rapidly drawn quality… can strengthen the symbol, because the abstract nature of the symbol shines through despite that imperfect rendering. I think that can often be a lot more persuasive than something done in, say, Adobe Illustrator. This was made by the hand of a human being, you know?”

“That it’s made by hand makes sense, because it’s a tragedy that’s on a very human scale,” said Caserta. “It’s not childlike at all, but I think whenever you have something handmade, there is something kind of naive and pure and simple, and it brings your guard down a bit and makes you realize some of the basics. Peace is one of those. Without it, we don’t have much.”

“It doesn’t feel mass produced,” McCloud said. “But it feels like it’s for the masses, nevertheless.”

Caserta agreed. “Just looking a it, it feels immediate, and when something happens of this sort, it makes sense that it wouldn’t be highly polished or corporate. That it is someone there responding right away.”

Ahhh ... La Gloire De Mayotte Fabuleux-- Know Anyone Who's Ever Been To The French Département Of Mayotte?

A friend of mine just got back from Mayotte. He was only at Dzaoudzi Airport, across the channel from Mamoudzou, his plane having stopped briefly on a trip between Moroni on Grande Comore and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania (a stopover itself on the way to half a dozen other places on an inconvenient and circuitous route to Florida). And there is no convenient way to get to Mayotte from America, take my word for it. But people do go there. It's a couple of islands in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique. There are no hotel chains... always a very good indication that you might be onto someplace worth going to visit. Mayotte is part of a larger small chain of Islands, the Comoros, but Mayotte's 50,000 people voted to stick with France when the rest of the islands formed an independent country in 1974. There was another referendum in 2009-- since the population had grown to nearly 200,000-- and 95.2% of the voters decided they'd rather be part of France than part of the Union of Comoros. 97% of the people there are Muslims. Before being taken over by France in 1841, Mayotte had been conquered by Madagascar and a succession of Afro-Arab sultanates.

The Comoros, which has been chaotic and politically unstable, claims sovereignty over Mayotte and the UN has tended to agree. In 2011 France vetoed a Security Council resolution giving Mayotte back to the Comoros. It's now France's 101st département. That's an unheralded victory over Sharia Law, which is being eased out in favor of the French civil code. (Someone needs to tell American Islamaphobe Bryan Fischer.)

French is the official language of course, but more people speak Shimaore, Shindzwani, Kibushi and Shingazidja than French, at least as a primary language. On the other hand, the currency is the Euro and Americans don't need visas to go there. The tourist attraction is unspoiled nature and unspoiled beaches. Tourists go for the snorkeling, scuba diving, whale watching and sailing. It's always hot and tropical but the best time to go is between June and October when is relatively cooler and free of the cyclones that plague the islands during the rainy season (November to May).

Mayotte... that's all there is