Sneeze

It's kind of a contradiction to be observing the beginnings of a pandemic in the middle of a long, hot summer. When I started having cold symptoms (again) two days ago it was also a contradiction. In went the thermometer and out popped another normal 36 degree temperature. It was the same when I came back from China. Cold symptoms, mild concern and normal 36 degree temperatures. To most people in my circle it wouldn't be a contradiction for me to be the one with coronavirus, yet even that didn't happen. Sneeze.

Back on Saturday I mentioned the growing worry that it wasn't China that would be the risk to New Zealand. And how things change in 6 days: South Korea went from 200-odd cases to 2000 cases. The world outside of China went from 11 deaths to 67 deaths. Back merely 6 days ago Italy wasn't even listed among the top affected countries with a few traceable infections. Now it's 653 infections and 17 deaths put it at number 3 outside of China. And just 8 days ago, Iran burst onto the scene with a leftfield "two cases/two fatalities" report. Now Iran's death count are second to Hubei's, if listed alike. Italy's and Iran's numbers are wonky though: The fatalities are far above what they should be for the number of cases found. There are only a couple of possibilities:

- The strain of the virus is more lethal there. (Unlikely)

- They are not reporting all cases. (I'm guessing not.)

- The virus is more pervasive than their testing is showing. (Very likely)

Iran's now 27 deaths from 260 cases, for example, presuming an initially unburdened medical system and a similar mortality rate must have at least 1000 extra cases that are undiagnosed, and potentially on the loose. This pervasiveness has led to the astonishing news that the health minister (and the Vice President of the Womens and Family Affairs), officials who you wouldn't expect as first victims of an outbreak, are now famously ill and quarantined. New Zealand may have its first case now courtesy of a traveller who has been through Iran. And you can feel for Iran, it's been sanctioned heavily (and I would say unjustly) so may lack the resources to handle the outbreak. Without external support it may go the way of Hubei. Yesterday the president of Iran has said they are not quarantining cities yet. It worries me that they haven't learned China's lesson.

Italy's 17 deaths already from 653 cases also appears off, especially this early in the piece. For comparison, Henan province has 20 deaths but that has been on the back of 1272 cases and time for the critical cases to slowly but surely be tallied in the deaths column, or into the recovery column. In China, though the case numbers skyrocketed in the initial days it took a long time for those provinces to have reported deaths. (Again, I'm guessing that the reports of deaths are accurate - I have no reason to doubt them outside of Hubei.) 

67 deaths in the world outside of China. Perhaps another count to be aware of. In China outside of Hubei, which had direct impacts from Hubei travellers before the sealing of cities, which has 1.2 billion vulnerable people, have suffered 109 deaths. Yesterday there were 44 deaths in China due to the disease, with 3 outside Hubei. Between noon yesterday and 6pm tonight the rest of the world racked up 14.

Sneeze.

The burden of freedom

In a fatigued blink of an eye, three days of work nicely announced my resumption of normal, unquarantined life. It contained logistics of moving campus, a case of student-on-student sexual harassment, de-escalating a feud over inaccurate book-keeping, gaining approval for a new programme and also lots of hugs to welcome us back, usually accompanied by my fake coughing. It's good to be back. Back into hyperdrive.

The world churned just as quickly when this happened, but the preoccupation with the million and one interruptions meant that it seemed like the world was again rather simple.

The Covid-19 outbreak in China is now in clear decline with cases dropping. Time is still doing its grim stocktake as the bad cases in each province turn into fatalities, but the majority are recovering. Hubei is still racking up 100 deaths or more a day but with cases falling, this will inevitably fall. And for our business's sake we hope that the travel ban for Chinese to New Zealand will be lifted this week. I would if I were in charge. In perspective of a country of 1.4 billion people, the risk of sick tourists is low and majority of the population are from provinces without any recent cases. Hubei still deserves to be a customs pariah for some time yet though.

And should they be smart enough to lift the ban on non-Hubei Chinese, they should slap a temporary travel ban on South Korea and Japan where the virus is now loose and, worse, the authorities do not know how some of the cases caught the virus. There would have been some anomalous cases in China, presumably, but majority could be traced back to Wuhan, Hubei or another infected person. Both Japan and Korea are the only countries with more than 100 known, reported cases. Singapore has the fourth most cases and anecdotally, people don't seem to be taking the same degree of precautions, even though it is probably also got some local spreading. (There was the amazing story of the British businessman who caught coronavirus at a conference in Singapore, flew to France for a holiday and infected a bunch of British in the chateau, accounting for a large number of the French cases.) There is also the odd case of Iran, where 18 cases have been reported including 4 fatalities, the country with the most fatalities outside of China.

This could be alarming. The chance to decimate the virus's presence in the human species might have gone and we might just have gained a new thing to catch and watch out for. There is the argument of diminishing potency for lethal viruses. Viruses that are too lethal or too quick to be noticed tend to kill the host or incapacitate them too quickly to spread to too many people. The strains that spread fast but more mildly have the advantage in getting out to the world and may be far less likely to kill lots of people. (Thank you, Hubei, and sorry as you may have borne the brunt for the benefit of others.) Or not. Generally speaking I think it'd be good to do some shopping for potential similar restrictions to what happened in China just in case. Freshen up the good ol' civil defence supplies, with Vitamin C.

New Zealand has been hugely lucky not to have any cases at all. If there should be a case, it'd be imperative to be able to track where those people have gone and me and put them self-isolation and observation. I hope our country has learned the Chinese lesson.

The blessings of isolation

It's now day twelve of this intermission in my life. It's all gone rather quickly but with a bit of a flow: I wake up about 6:30am and do some of my hip mobility and strengthening exercises, make myself a Chinese tea or coffee, attend to some personal e-mailing or reading, before announcing my arrival in "the office" at about 7:20.

I've very rarely had to work from home previously as my main daily work. I've only ever brought work home on evenings, weekends or holidays. It took some adjustment to organise myself but as time has gone on I would say my productivity level is higher than in the office. In the morning, I mainly work on my reports and projects because that is the time of least work related distractions. Work gets me to 11:45am when the first non-work distractions and tasks arise. 

11:45am is when the Hubei numbers are duly announced. Hubei is usually one of the first and it's the main attraction. Since the new confirmation standard, numbers are a lot higher. For the last few days it's been Hubei 130-odd fatalities, vs. 5-10 fatalities elsewhere in China and the world. It's been noticeable that, if the numbers are correct and not prone to the same sort of reevaluation as in Hubei, the situation outside of Hubei is stabilising with some provinces occasionally reporting "no new cases". Guangdong is not close to that but the rises are smaller. And the above is what happens when 11:45am arrives. My mind dives into a lot of reading and checking of articles. Lunch follows. I'll do the dishes. We go out for a driving lesson.

By the time 2pm arrives I'm back into work, usually doing none of the projects. It's the flow of the day that means this period even at a distance I'm peppered with fielding requests, calls and confirmations. 5:30pm rolls around and dinner and a walk is had. By 7:30pm I'm usually back at work trying to get a few formulas on spreadsheet to work more obediently before we watch something on Netflix.

It's turned out to be a packed life. My reading has dwindled down to the point that I have to do it on the weekend. In fact, I've resorted to doing my projects on weekend days to ensure I have no disruptions from colleagues, even as remote as I am!

If there were some other distinctions from my previous commuting life, it'd be that in this phase I've done more on WeChat to practice my Cantonese, watched broadcast TV news and tried to read the New Zealand Herald. (I got myself a five week trial!). It's impossible to read the Herald, to be honest. There's too much in it, especially when I'm hooked into so many other media sources. But I've done the crosswords relentlessly!

As for those grim numbers. Wuhan has recorded 1233 deaths, China's national toll just rolled over the year of the Great Fire of London. They've got people back to work now but delaying schools going back to March. For most of China going back to work makes sense. At my brother-in-law's factory they give out face masks. Interesting my sister-in-law, a civil servant, had to go back earlier and doesn't get any on account of them not wanting to sacrifice masks that could be sent to those who need them. Qingyuan fortunately hasn't had any further cases so we can breath easier.

Blessed Isolation - this blogcast extra

I thought I would add to my previous post with a quick update after the media collectively failed with fact checking, with news items such as Coronavirus deaths hit highest daily toll when it almost certainly didn't. Below are the two counts of cases in China 12 hours apart on my phone, the first at 7:37am this morning and the second at 7:51pm this evening. The red numbers shows the number of confirmed cases, the yellow are the suspected cases, the black is the fatalities and the green are the recoveries. The news people can read numbers and they have indeed risen dramatically in the reported total number of reported cases and deaths. But in this case, it's probably not the case that the cases dramatically shot up at all. 

When I received the Hubei numbers, there was a lengthy preamble before the numbers, which is different to all the other reports through the Chinese media. Even though I'm fluent enough with my reading, I'm also quite impatient so to see this textual obstruction annoyed me so I flicked down and the numbers seemed from another planet, enough to send me back to the preamble.

Hubei has changed its way of counting cases. It has been shown that the antigen test they use for the virus is unreliable and having both it and the CT scan as the necessary two-step confirmation has been flawed. So they have brought in a clinical approach focussing on symptoms and thus they reclassified a whole bunch of people, and is it turns out, a whole bunch of deaths. To be honest, I'd believe that there is probably a lot of death accounting yet to go in Hubei. Allow me to be crude: I presume they're not bringing corpses from the countryside and putting them through a CT scanner. The initial torrent of fatalities were probably incinerated in fear and due to a lack of space before there was a credible way to test. A clinical determination might have back counted the likely cases. 

So don't be alarmed. The TVNZ news was funny in that it both claimed yesterday to be a deadly day, yet also recognised that they had changed the way they were counting them. I haven't heard of other provinces re-evaluating their cases, but if others follow suit there might be another bump up in numbers, without it corresponding to a worsening of the situation. 

The funny thing is that there will be items about how officials may be messing with the numbers. They may be fake, but if you're going to take the numbers seriously, it's important to know what they mean.

Under the official news radar, there is still a lot of disturbing news and videos out there. I'll try and cover it in my next blog.

Blessed Isolation, the Revenge

It might have been a rumour, but the outbreak of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak (SARS) in 2003 badly affected that the soft drink brand, Sars, and the flavour associated with it. Sars was available in NZ, I recall, but only because I had tried it during my time in Taiwan. A disgusting soft drink, I also recall. It was called Sars because it was short for Sarsaparilla, an ingredient in it. And now we have Corona... Will be funny if that brand takes a hit in the coming period and they make a PR-name change.

Names often get twisted up in bad incidents. I remember one of my favourite bands, Massive Attack, changed its name to Massive during the Iraq war. Apparently, there were a few who prior to 2013 made the decision to name their businesses, groups and babies, the beautiful name of Isis, an Egyptian goddess.

The place-name Wuhan might be etched in people's memories for quite some time. It is hard to remember particular places that have their names indelibly stenched by a disease. Pre-Corona, Wuhan for me was a possible location for Chinese study. In China, besides Beijing, it was one of the earliest to really build up a name and infrastructure as a place for foreigners to go and learn Chinese. Deep in China's interior, it also got mildly tainted in my mind by the usual stories that come from the slightly more backward parts of the world. To the ear it even sounds backward: Woo-HAN. The Chinese characters for it are also interesting: Military Han (as in Han Chinese, the ethnicity of the majority). I visited Wuhan for the first time in 2013-2014 to see it with my own eyes. It was a city renovating itself like many Chinese cities. There was massive construction projects digging up pavements, streets and whatever. I believe they were putting in a subway. Though there were the mandatory ancient sites (it was a major holiday so they were wall-to-wall people) and natural sites (East Lake), it didn't really endear itself to me.

But like a lot of the places I've been to, with later reading it has come alive. I read the things that every Chinese person knows and would feel when they hear the name Wuhan. Its name is actually a portmanteau of two different names: WUchang and HANkou. These were actually two separate cities before they amalgamated into one megacity. Anyone with a rudimentary idea of Chinese history knows Wuchang, its the place where a critical uprising happened in 1911 that led to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. I remember reading Hankou in many stories and was always confused why I couldn't find it on a map. It is surprising how late you learn these things.

Wuhan is located in Hubei province. Chinese provincial names might sound rather confusing but they're pretty straight forward. Hu means lake. Bei means north. Hubei is north of some of the famous lakes (including Dongting Hu). Hunan is to the south of Hubei, and literally means "Lakes-South". Of course when they come together, they have completely different flavours. When you say Hunan, anyone who has spent time in China immediately has a humid, spicy taste arise in their mouths and knows the aroma of stinky tofu isn't far away. Such is the nature of language that the whole is always greater than the sum of a word's etymological parts. Day 9 of quarantine.

Virus news? In terms of spread, the virus is now on a downward slope. New cases numbered just 2000 yesterday, which though still a ridiculous number, is half the ridiculous numbers of 10 days previous. But with the good news comes the grim accounting. The virus is cashing in its chips, the last two days with the largest number of deaths with 100 or more in both of the last two days. Wuhan by itself now totals more than the worldwide deaths for SARS. Yesterday, however, had fewer deaths than the previous day so perhaps that has peaked, too. Hubei officials reported that there are now no people waiting for testing or care. If true, that would mean the death rate will plummet. Hubei has hoovered up a lot of the country's medical resources - the gamble I mentioned previously. If they can process things and bring it down to a manageable number, essentially the war against the virus is won with a heck of a lot of battles remaining.

With the tide of the war turning, there is more knowledge about it. It is widely reported that 14 days is not long enough to cover the whole range of possible incubation periods, that people are falling ill and able to spread it up to 24 days after infection. I hope this doesn't affect my quarantine... Also a treatment has been developed, although with the economics of this virus it doesn't "work" in my head. It's a disease that spreads widely, quickly and only really fatal in a small number of cases if there is appropriate care. It'd be just a bad flu. They did a human trial but since there are so many people recovering from it without this drug, it must be stretching it to say that the drug was responsible. But I haven't studied the reports closely.

The one other shadow for me personally is that there have been another two cases in our hometown. It had been stuck at a total of 10 for many days, with 5 recovered cases. These new two might be "imported" cases, that is, people from Guangzhou or Shenzhen. Or it could be cases who developed symptoms later than others. There is no reporting on them like there was earlier.

Commentary on the two pictures: In the last three days, the Hubei deaths (1068) is almost 300 higher, of the 1117 deaths in China. Guangdong, the second on the list, still has just 1 death and cases have only grown to 1219 (from 1131). The total cases has gone from 37294 to 44766, a rise of about 7000 (20%). Although there are a lot of places that there have been little or no fatalities despite high case count, some provinces outside of Hubei have had a disproportionate number: Henan, Heilongjiang, Anhui all break this trend with 8, 8 and 4 respectively; but in the context of this outbreak, they are not scarily high. Cases outside China, with the exception of the Diamond Princess, seem to be sporadic. Since it is unlikely this disease will be exterminated completely regardless what measures are done, it might be something that is latently there and may just be another disease to add to the pantheon. Once the borders are opened again, carriers may bring it to the rest of the world.

The Return of Blessed Isolation

Isolation doesn't happen in isolation. The world changes around it and isolation changes within. The last few days have been more distracting than usual. I barely touched my novels, which is completely out of habit for the previous two months. In fact, for someone in isolation I've felt rather sick and listless. Sick - but don't get any ideas! I've got a well-established cold that regardless of the rest I'm getting doesn't seem to be shaken in any way. And I have what used to be the regular bane of my existence, and I hope this doesn't give "too much information": an ulcer on my tongue. The latter in particular is a problem because it's on the tip and if I want to avoid aggravating it, I can't speak properly. The cold symptoms are mocking me at this rather globally stressful point in time: There's a deadly epidemic the disease of which I'm literally quarantined for, and you give me a cold?? (I must mention that coronavirus and cold symptoms are quite different - I have no cough, no fever, no headache, no vomiting, just a head full of gunk.)

Anyway. Back to the pandemic. Things are still bad. Another city (Wenzhou) appears to be in lock down. Chongqing also appears to be in the stages of locking down. The latter is a megacity, not belonging to any province and reports it's numbers with other provinces just like Beijing and Shanghai. If if were counted as a province, it's is the province that has the ninth most cases. But just two deaths. Wenzhou is a significant city but no officially reported deaths either. If the lock downs manage to get number of cases to fall, the turning point is due.

In fact the last two days have had a noticeable turn in the number of new cases, which might mean the "extraordinary methods" used might finally be curbing the spread. Meanwhile the death number charges on. The number went from 637 to 814 in the two days between blogs. It's putting up about 90 people a day and that number is increasing as either cause of death, a difficult issue, is established; and also the critical cases run their courses.

On 31 January, I went into prophesy mode and said in an e-mail: "Hubei's numbers are horrific and will account for over 90% of what will be a big number of cases and probably 98% of deaths. Their numbers alone are the biggest problem - the province alone will have more deaths than SARS did worldwide by the time we leave."  Well, yesterday, three days after our original return date, it did come to pass. Hubei cruised past it. And although there are more provinces with fatalities than two days ago - Henan for example went from 3 to 6 in that period - 122 were in Hubei. 

It feels like at least the momentary trend is towards control, of waiting for cases to run their courses, of posting of literature about the new drug that could be the savior, and of pointing to the US flu numbers and wondering why they haven't locked down any cities or states to save the people from the scourge of the flu season. Fingers crossed this is the flavour of the week. 

Blessed Isolation, the Revenge (i.e. pt 2)

Today was my first day working from home under quarantine. It is quite a feeling to be removed, but completely healthy. I remember last year with the flu, or the year before that post-surgery, trying to contribute to solving some work problems remotely, tiring and lying on the couch, feeling like I've done my bit. Now I feel that eight hours of independent work is a very long time. Fortunately we have a few apps now to facilitate good communication and collaboration.

Two days after my last blog and two days after the Wuhan 14 day period quarantine period, which is now going to be extended, it's a fine day to see how the Chinese official numbers have moved. Firstly, the deaths have risen by over 50% to 637 and the total cases have more than doubled, from 13522 to 31211. In other words, there are plenty of people getting sick from other people despite the self-quarantined and forcibly quarantined nature of people's lives in China.

The growth number is still Hubei province and, in particular, Wuhan. Of the 637 deaths, 478 have come from that one city, which also accounts for a third of the Chinese cases. Hubei as a province accounts for 618, accounting alone for two-thirds of Chinese cases. It fits into the theory that it's the overwhelming number of sick people that causes this disease to be deadly.

Meanwhile, Guangdong broke a thousand cases and to celebrate had its first fatality in Zhaoqing. Zhaoqing is a city close to my heart - I've been there twice, the second city I visited in Mainland China and I even took my sister there when she visited. It's a small city with a famous set of pillar-like limestone peaks in a lake called the Seven Star Crags. A friend of mine who I have had an enduring friendship with lives there and said there was a story behind the death: A friend of his who lived in Wuhan came to visit him in Zhaoqing where they sang Cantonese opera together. He fell ill and went to the hospital where they wrote off his sickness as a cold without testing him for coronavirus. He went home, became gravely sick and by the time he returned to the hospital, it was already too late.

The whole world has stopped moving in China. People who were to go back to work on 10 February will be told to stay home longer. Schools are being delayed even later. The Guangzhou Metro and buses require people to wear medical masks or else they'll be fined and ejected. But with masks in short supply, it means some people have no way but to stay home and ask for someone to buy them some. Wuhan, as you can imagine, is a deathly quiet city.

But every disaster movie needs a hero. His name was Li Wenliang and was the whistleblower who first broke ranks to share his fears, that other people posted and reposted, until everyone knew something big was going down in Wuhan. The local authorities did what authoritarian cultures do and interrogated him and arrested those who "spread rumours". He was forced to sign a letter of admonition in order to move on from it and go back to work. His work, of course, was now a publicly known endeavour to save people from the increasingly prevalent disease, and he was infected, along with many of his colleagues. He died in the early hours of this morning. Sometimes, and especially in Chinese movies, the hero has to die.

There has been a kind of mass public fury after his death, directed at the government and those people in power. In China there is a certain power of the people when everyone borrows strength from the outrage of others to publicly state their disgust and criticise the failings of the system that has failed them. It's not unlike a social media riot. On WeChat, Li Wenliang's death was the dominant theme of the day: in memory, in sympathy and worship of him, but mostly anger at his death. There were articles about him being a hero. And others reflectively saying that it is a shame that such a simple thing as telling the truth of a life-threatening disease could be a heroic act.

In the village where just five days ago I lived, they are now "sealed". It's a loose seal: no cars allowed, and no-one who doesn't live in the village can pass in and out, but the locals can. When my wife's brother-in-law drops something off, my parents-in-law have to walk about 10 minutes to the side of the highway to pick it up. It's happening to a lot of the villages - it happened last week in the town where our Aussie friend was doing the same CNY visit to the wife's hometown as I was. We also got a subtle sign of stress when we were asked how much masks cost in New Zealand. If they're asking for masks here, they are obviously very short of them, or very far-sighted.

Blessed isolation, part 1

We pulled our luggage from the car and decided who would take what up to the apartment. She brought up the groceries first and then I followed a moment later wheeling the large suitcases. To greet us were our downstairs neighbours on the balcony of their place, father and son. They're familiar in the neighbourly way. The father and I know each other to the point of names and his son always says hi to us, usually while playing frontyard cricket with the lawn at the front of the complex.

"Been travelling?" the father asks.

"Yes," I say but drawing a metre further past him.

"Where to?" he asks, which I can't help but wince in response to.

"China," I say. 

He smiles without any recoil: "So you'll be having a 14 day holiday then." I nod and he says: "If there's anything you need help with, let me know." It was nice to know that the first real "stranger" experience to this recent China traveller wasn't of shrieking dread, but actual friendly support. I thanked him and headed up to what will be our almost 24/7 bunker for the next 14 days.

Shrieking dread though is something the media likes. My Australian friend, who after quite the ordeal is boarding a plane today to leave Guangdong, struggled to get access to the Australian newspapers and I let him know about the New Zealand Herald, which isn't blocked in China. 

"It's such a breath of fresh air," he said. "None of the sensationalism that the Aussie papers have." I'm not sure if the Australian dailies are ridiculous or he just read the NZ Herald on a good day, but the coverage has been shrieking and inflammatory in the Herald. And boy does it serve its purpose. 

Step 1: Report the issue with not-so-subtle editorialising, which will certainly inflame and hypersensitise, perhaps by emphasising the extreme. 

Step 2: Wait for the statistically likely response of the ill-informed who read the previous reporting to do something ridiculous to further report on. 

Such is the case with coronavirus, which even in our liberal populace triggered racists responses. 

Is coronavirus something to fear? China's reported numbers are hard to be certain of but they were shamed by SARS outbreak where they clearly weren't open and honest, and praised for their reaction to avian flu a few years back. and I still believe the numbers to an extent are accurate. The picture on the left is one I saw circulating on WeChat after the international community suddenly started shutting off borders to Chinese travellers. It's not accurate - H1N1 did not have a 17.4% fatality rate. (They've mixed a hypothetical death count with the actual reported number of cases. That puts it on par with the Spanish Flu. It's more likely to be 3-4%) It's hard to fact-check in China but excluding the nationalist chip on the shoulder, it has to be said no modern effort to control an outbreak matches this. 

The media in China is controlled so you will never have news that panics unless you the government wants you to panic. The best way to know is by reading the response, and also knowing that even the aspiring omniscient, omnipotent state does not know everything and cannot do everything. 

Fact: Wuhan and several other cities are still "sealed". Something that is a massive undertaking.

Fact: The country's holidays have been extended by weeks damaging production and consumption. Fact: The whole tourism industry was shut down during its most lucrative time. 

I'd conclude that all of these self-damaging decisions were made by the Chinese authorities with the best understanding of the outbreak, whether it is the same as what they're projecting to the public. They put a huge resource into halting the cultural imperatives to gather during Chinese New Year and sent crucial staff and teams from all over China into Hubei province, gambling it wouldn't break out there. The kind of actions they have taken imply it is pretty bad. These are actions that panic, too. I surmise they're doing things openly because they want the populace to take it seriously.

But even trusting the figures for all provinces and foreign countries, except for Hubei province, shows that it isn't necessarily much worse than a seasonal flu - many provinces have had large numbers who have recovered, most provinces are yet to have a fatality. The picture on the left shows the province names, the confirmed cases, the recovered cases and the fatalities in the 10 most affected provinces. (Hubei at the top, then Zhejiang, followed by Guangdong, Henan and Hunan.)

I do have a hypothesis that rationalises both the extreme actions taken to contain it with the low fatalities as of now in other provinces against the large number in Hubei. I would guess that this virus does transmit easily and causes death, not from its extreme symptoms per se, but from the lack of medical care and sustaining medical supplies, as well as the inevitable deaths of weak and vulnerable. I would guess that this wasn't well contained early and that caused a huge wave of infected people. A large proportion required hospitalisation and almost all would survive with adequate supplies and professionals. China is a massive country with an organised health system but there is a point where medical resources cannot match the spike of cases this particular virus caused. I saw pictures of queues and crowds outside hospitals in Wuhan, sent via social media, but never seen in the mainstream media. Anecdotally people were queuing for the test and then were waiting for the confirmation of coronavirus before isolating and treating just so they could make sure that they were treating the right people. But with a lack of testing equipment during a down time in production and also a lengthening turn around time for results, most people in Wuhan who get the virus cannot get care. If the number above is accurate over 13,000 people in Hubei province should be in a quarantined room with special supplies. 

But there is a huge and fast moving social media environment. Pictures always get out. I would presume the videos of body bags and stories of people dropping dead in Hubei are real. I would say that the number there is underreported just because confirming is a process that requires the person to be there to be tested. 

Initially all the cases in other provinces was among the five million people who left Wuhan before the city was sealed who went to all cities and countries some carrying the virus. Its now 14 days since Wuhan went into quarantine, which means of those five million, those who caught it must have all been symptomatic and have hopefully got the care they need in the less burdened hospitals outside of Hubei. Therefore, tomorrow's number of new cases for provinces outside of Hubei will almost all be those infected outside of Hubei itself despite the shutting down of the country. In a way, the numbers tomorrow are the most interesting of all. If the majority of the cases are nipped in the bud, while there are adequate hospital quarantined beds, there is a good chance this is the end of the outbreak. If the number keeps rising especially in certain cities, there could be further sealed cities.

So is coronavirus to be feared? If it there weren't the huge efforts being undertaken, I would guess that it would cause a similar systems failure in other cities and provinces. If I were apocalyptic, either Guangzhou, Wenzhou or Shenzhen could be overcome if there gets to a point. It's only during my peaceful contemplation from my place in the protection of my own home that I now think it's more dangerous than I thought it was while in China. 

New Zealand's response at the border (as reported: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12305734) was my experience of it too. I was underwhelmed and I'm not sure if it's putting to much trust in human trust and diligence, as New Zealand systems often do. China's ports are fitted out for pandemics. The airports have better temperature measurement technology than hospitals (when we went to the doctor in our last trip, we still needed to do the "thermometer-under-the-armpit for 10 minutes" trick). I have no idea what the outlay is for Auckland Airport to do that but I would say that a country should have something similar and have the resources to staff it. We live in a country where people generally do the right thing without direction and generally follow the advice (except for the idiots who go to the beach to check for tsunamis). 

After a restless day of travel and jet lag, my cold has been reactivated. My temperature taken: 36.2 degrees. I hope with a bit more rest I can actually feel like I'm not sick during this quarantine. My company has allowed me to work from home, which means I won't have trouble getting through the period but I've given myself sick leave to get to next week. This post is called part 1. There might not be a part 2. I'm kind of hoping that there isn't.