China lock city down - plague outbteak

[badcompany]

http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-officials-seal-off-plague-city-puzzling-us-080446975.html

Quite disturbing ! Even experts baffled at the strict measures.

 

[Strife212]

World War Z started like this.

 

[Sliver]

And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

 

[d_brennen]

A country as large and as populated as China, with such a disparity between well off and peasants with access to healthcare, a city lockdown of 30,000 people probably isn't all that OTT

 

[badcompany]

A country as large and as populated as China, with such a disparity between well off and peasants with access to healthcare, a city lockdown of 30,000 people probably isn't all that OTT

In your opinion, US experts have different opinion.

 

[Xordium]

Ok checking into this a significant number (151) are in quarantine and the city is in quarantine all down to 1 death. Seems a bit of an overreaction maybe there is something here we don't know.

 

[Mynight]

I imagine the us don't have slums quite as bad as China's.

Seems a bit overkill but wasn't it the same plague that wiped out considerable parts of London?

 

[badcompany]

I imagine the us don't have slums quite as bad as China's.

Seems a bit overkill but wasn't it the same plague that wiped out considerable parts of London?

Try around 60% of the european population.

 

[Mynight]

Try around 60% of the european population.

So in which case I think the us are being pretty thick about it. If its that dangerous.

 

[Xordium]

You are aware that medicine has changed somewhat in the past 400 years and what may have been significantly dangerous then may not be so now?!?

 

[MichaelAwkward]

You are aware that medicine has changed somewhat in the past 400 years and what may have been significantly dangerous then may not be so now?!?

This is media fearmongering.

This.

You get outbreaks of plague every few months all over the world. It was never fully eradicated.

 

[arknor]

I imagine the us don't have slums quite as bad as China's.

Seems a bit overkill but wasn't it the same plague that wiped out considerable parts of London?

or the same plague that killed only 60 people in Madagascar a few years ago that was a perfect match for the plague that hit London.

no doubt dailymail will blow it all out of proportion soon
"is this the plague that will destroy the world?"
etc

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Which it actually mentions in the article.

They may as well have posted this story as, "Thing happened again, some people in a different country have a view."

e: in response to post #11

 

[Mynight]

You are aware that medicine has changed somewhat in the past 400 years and what may have been significantly dangerous then may not be so now?!?

This is media fearmongering.

Indeed but still a ~15% mortality rate with treatment in sufficient time (24 hours after first symptoms). 50% mortality without treatment.

It's the pneumonic version that's up at 99% lethality and 50% with treatment. Even with today's medicine.

Rereading the article suggests it was only bubonic and not a huge issue with it being transferred.

Does china have free health care?

I completely agree its fear mongering.

 

[Xordium]

It also appears the media can't tell the difference between bubonic and pneumonic plague they seem to use the interchangeably. The must love this stuff with ebola floating around too.

 

[arknor]

This is a good read if people really give a crap about the black death
http://www.history.com/news/medieval-black-death-was-airborne-scientists-say

Currently, the plague still infects several thousand people every year around the world, though most patients recover if treated early enough with antibiotics. When they compared the strain of plague preserved in this medieval DNA with the strain that recently killed some 60 people in Madagascar, however, they found something surprising. The medieval strain was no stronger than the recent one; in fact, their genetic codes matched almost exactly.

Scientists at Public Health England in Porton Down, argue that for the Black Death to have spread so quickly and killed so many victims with such devastating speed, it would have to have been airborne. Therefore, rather than bubonic plague, which is transmitted to humans through bites from infected rat fleas, they concluded that this must have been a pneumatic plague that made its way into the lungs of the infected and spread through coughs and sneezes.

That theory at the end is apparently backed up by the lack of rat bones that have been found as well according to some documentary I watched a few weeks ago

 

[Slade2]

There are actually only 2 known infectious disesases that have been eradicated, the two being Smallpox (both variants) and rinderpest.

 

[arknor]

There are actually only 2 known infectious disesases that have been eradicated, the two being Smallpox (both variants) and rinderpest.

I bet they both still live on in lab samples and likely far worse

oh there's a conspiracy theory about small pox

At that time (1960s) , testing for the (smallpox) virus became more sophisticated. You no longer were suffering necessarily from smallpox. They would test it and find that it had different DNA. You’d have monkeypox or camelpox or some other form of pox. But it was still called variola, which is smallpox. And that’s what monkeypox in Africa is called. Clinically, the disease is exactly the same as smallpox. It has the same progression. It looks exactly the same. If you put a smallpox victim next to a monkeypox victim, you will not be able to tell the difference. As a matter of fact, with this outbreak of monkey pox in Africa–I think there have been over 500 cases in a very short time”.–Meryl Dorley

 

[Windle]

Zombies. 100% zombies.

 

[James J]

Very easy to treat though using two extremely common antibiotics that cost pennies. Due to that, plague isn't an issue any more, regardless of the headline. It makes sense to quarantine 30000 people as you could quite easily treat all of them prophylactic for a fraction of the cost and inconvenience of the infection spreading to a major city.