12 ms·

Coronavirus: Five Brits in French ski chalet catch virus

139 points by kgwgk 7y ago

speedgoose 7y ago
For the record, the name of the place "Contamines-Montjoie" can mean "Contaminated-JoyMountain" in French.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  Yet another example or reality being stranger than fiction.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Contamines comes, in that case, from Contamina which comes from Condominium (roughly co-administered property). But "Contaminated" sounds soooo much cooler right now, doesn't it?
ryanobjc 7y ago
This seems to suggest, in addition to another case, that nCOV is in the wild in Singapore?
- Nursie 7y ago
  Certainly looks like it, two brits, each of whom attended business meetings there, are now confirmed. I am worrying as I returned to the UK from Singapore a week ago and now have cold-like symptoms. No coughing, no raised temperature, lungs OK so far... but it's a worry. (--edit-- actually it looks like one Brit, I had thought the new cases were related to a separate traveller, but it looks like it was the same guy)
  - praveenster 7y ago
    I would go to the doctors office and get myself checked, if I were in your situation. Let’s hope and pray that you test negative and if not you can take immediate action.
    - jtaft 7y ago
      Call ahead before you go to a doctor’s office or emergency room. Tell them about your recent travel and your symptoms. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html
      - yongjik 7y ago
        Seconded. This is very important - if you just walk into a hospital and later it turns out you had the virus, now they have to close the hospital and quarantine hundreds of patients who are already sick (and hence in higher risk).
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      Yes, you do need to call ahead and let them know that you visited areas where nCoV-2019 might be endemic. This lets them prepare wrt. any issues, and you're more likely to get tested quickly. Which is very important because getting results takes a lot of time and those are needed to decide on the best treatment.
    - speedgoose 7y ago
      I don't know for your country but in France we are asked to call and to not go to the doctor or the hospital. One doctor got contaminated by a patient.
  - dave7 7y ago
    Please, self-isolate and call 111 for advice. Chances are you're fine and will be tested clear, but in the case you are not it would be a disaster to not receive proper treatments / come in to contact with loved ones / come in to contact with the general public.
    - Nursie 7y ago
      It's way too late for that, I've been on crowded commuter trains and the London underground earlier this week. I only started feeling under the weather in the last day or so, long after I'd been exposed to a lot of people. I've mostly stayed in the house since then. Which is another reason I think this is just something else that's going around at the moment, that I've picked up since I'm back (I was also only in Singapore for around 12 hours, and didn't encounter many people other than at the airport, though was there for a day or so a week before that). I'll call 111 and see what they say.
      - hef19898 7y ago
        Let's keep fingers crossed, then!
      - Retric 7y ago
        People are vastly less contagious in the early stages of an infection. I would seriously call a doctor as the odds are it’s something else, but if it’s not other people’s lives are at risk from inaction.
        Nursie 7y ago
        I've talked to the UK health services, based on my symptoms they aren't worried. What they're looking for is mostly respiratory distress, which I don't have. I just feel the usual common-cold variety of lousy...
        Retric 7y ago
        Sounds like great news, even if your still sick. I hope you’re feeling better soon.
  - ValentineC 7y ago
    > (--edit-- actually it looks like one Brit, I had thought the new cases were related to a separate traveller, but it looks like it was the same guy) Yes, he was believed to have attended an international business meeting by Servomex: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7977725/Britains-coronavirus-victim-caught-deadly-virus-five-star-hotel-Singapore.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7977725/Britains-...
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  It certainly is if you read the news reports. Latest new case there is not known to have been in contact with any known contaminated person, which is bad news.
Cantbekhan 7y ago
So, today we're learning about 5 infections from a man coming from Singapore (not China) staying there in Contamines-Montjoie from 01/27 to 01/28. So we're now learning about infections from almost 2 weeks ago, almost a week before the last major airlines stopped their regular flight to/from China. And flights from/to Singapore are still going to this day. Makes you wonder how many people slipped through since then ... (sorry for my broken non native English)
- cs702 7y ago
  Personally, I'm assuming this new virus has already gone global, with the scale of the outbreak in most major metropolitan areas a few weeks behind Wuhan. For practical purposes, I'm already lumping this new virus in my mind with the "seasonal flu," variants of which travel around the globe every year, requiring annual shots. It seems that most people who get infected have only mild symptoms. Consider: Many major cities in China already have infected populations in the hundreds or thousands, and growing: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... -- these are official, confirmed figures. See also https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930260-9 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820... for maximum-likelihood estimates of the size of the outbreak as of month-end.
  - Cantbekhan 7y ago
    Personally I'm not afraid of the sanitary aspect of this virus. I don't think the mortality is extremely alarming per se. What I'm afraid of is the emotional population reaction and the practical impact on daily services fueled by FUD and sensationalist media coverage. Schools closing unnecessarily forcing many working people to stay home to babysit their kids. Teachers/Drivers/Cashiers going on strike to avoid risks while there is a now globally confirmed shortage of face masks (which might or might not be very useful anyway but it will keep people working if they feel it helps). It's virtually impossible to find a useless face mask where I am in the EU (at a normal non 10x inflated price from opportunistic vendors) and even less possible to find a useful one (N95/FFP2/FFP3 rating). Interesting times for sure.
DayDollar 7y ago
A worldwide shutdown of airports for two weeks is out of the question, why exactly? This is a honest question.. Its obviously one of the most potent travel vectors of the virus. When the plague struck, harbours where closed, and gates where manned on both sides. It seems quite logical, to enforce quarantine this way.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  Actions speak louder than words. It's like playing Russian roulette with thousands to millions of lives in the name of what's in your name: filthy lucre. If it gets much worse, there's a real risk it might not be stoppable and then this phony-omniscience "risk management"/emergency triage will have failed to contain it. I don't think it will be anywhere nearly as bad as 1968, but that's a relative benchmark and would be an equivocation if used to defer action.
- eropple 7y ago
  Because that would be an eye-poppingly ridiculous response? Seriously, this breathless "plague!" nonsense absolutely must stop and its purveyors should feel bad for doing so. Bubonic plague has an untreated mortality rate of fifty percent! This, on the other hand, is a nontrivial though increasingly global outbreak of a disease that is unlikely to seriously harm healthy people--CFR rate of mortality seems to be about three percent--and is predominantly a threat to the very young and the elderly. If this sounds familiar that should be because it maps rather closely to the flu. There are 650,000 deaths per year from the flu--who's suggesting closing the airports over such a Threat To Humanity? Turn the news off. If you have a brain predisposed to low-information panic it is bad for you.
  - duxup 7y ago
    "that is unlikely to seriously harm healthy people and is predominantly a threat to the very young and the elderly" I feel like we've seen at best mixed information about that. I'm not sure that is the case.
    - eropple 7y ago
hedora 7y ago
In case there was any doubt, the numbers coming from China are being faked. Infections and deaths are quadratic with an R^2 value of 0.9995: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22275092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22275092
- jobigoud 7y ago
  I've read this several times. Could someone shed some light on this? Are the reported numbers impossible because they are too close to the curve? Or because the numbers should follow another curve? Could there be a hidden mechanism in the speed at which the virus is tested for that could explain the quadratic?
  - wolco 7y ago
    Of course. If you say: - The only cases that we will confirm have a positive trst Then if you only test 3000 today and 4000 tomorrow that would define the curve not the real spread.
  - hedora 7y ago
    The fit is too good, and it has predicted subsequent stats with implausible accuracy so far.
  - mtreis86 7y ago
    Something like a hospital opening, and suddenly having a pile of patients to test, should result in a small spike in that graph. A quarantine being enacted in a city should cause a change in angle of the curve.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      The list of spikes is available, e.g. from Tencent News: https://xw.qq.com/act/qgfeiyan https://xw.qq.com/act/qgfeiyan Most recent update right now: 上海新增5例新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎确诊病例 Shanghai adds 5 confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus infection 2020年2月8日0—12时，上海市排除新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎疑似病例11例；新增治愈出院11例；新增确诊病例5例，其中2例为外地来沪人员，3例为本市常住人口。 On 2020-02-08 from 0 to 12, Shanghai handled 11 suspected cases of pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus infection, added 11 cases released from hospital after treatment, added 5 confirmed cases, 2 of which are not originally from Shanghai and 3 are residents. 截至2月8日12时，上海市已累计排除疑似病例877例，发现确诊病例286例。 Until 02-08 at 12 o'clock, Shanghai has already handled a total of 877 suspected cases and discovered 286 confirmed cases. 健康上海12320 Healthy Shanghai 12320 Lots of small spikes can still add up to a smooth curve overall.
themgt 7y ago
I started following this outbreak about two weeks ago, when confirmed number of cases was still below 300 and 17 people had died. The confirmed cases were almost wholly contained in China, primarily just Wuhan province. At the time there was a lot of debate about the seriousness of the virus and the risk of a pandemic, and I was mostly sitting on the fence, looking back to SARS/Ebola and figuring a quarantine might be able to burn it out. Today confirmed cases stand at 34,964, with 725 dead, and the virus spread to nearly 30 countries. I'd highly recommend this interview from a couple days ago with Neil Ferguson, director of the Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics at Imperial College London's School of Public Health[1] Some highlights I'll quote, based on his team's modeling of the true situation vs. the necessarily incomplete confirmed cases: - China: estimated 10% of total cases detected - International: estimated 25% of total cases detected - estimated 50,000 new infections per day in China - Doubling every 5 days - Onset to death can take up to 20 days (in fact I think we've seen deaths up to 30 days post-infection now) The NYT today[2] also quotes leading experts that this virus is almost certain to become a pandemic, and no one can with certainty predict the consequences. All of which is just to say, I think it's time to stop the hot takes about how unseriously you're taking the situation. There seems to now be unanimity among global experts, who are taking it very very seriously indeed. The actions of widespread border closures, travel and economic shutdowns and China forcefully quarantining 500 million citizens also ought to suggest that governments are treating this far differently than the flu or in fact any sort of viral outbreak in perhaps modern history. [1] https://youtu.be/ALQTdCYGISw https://youtu.be/ALQTdCYGISw [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/health/coronavirus-pandemic-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/health/coronavirus-pandem...
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Yes it's indeed interesting (and reassuring) how the situation has evolved even after starting with the usual fog management policy.
  - kgwgk 7y ago
    What is that you find reassuring? This is from the WHO director’s speech on February 4: “Second, we reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions inconsistent with the International Health Regulations. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit. So far, 22 countries have reported such restrictions to WHO. Where such measures have been implemented, we urge that they are short in duration, proportionate to the public health risks, and are reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1ZX1H3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1...

139 points by kgwgk 7y ago

speedgoose 7y ago

For the record, the name of the place "Contamines-Montjoie" can mean "Contaminated-JoyMountain" in French.

m4rtink 7y ago
Yet another example or reality being stranger than fiction.
hef19898 7y ago
Contamines comes, in that case, from Contamina which comes from Condominium (roughly co-administered property). But "Contaminated" sounds soooo much cooler right now, doesn't it?

ryanobjc 7y ago

This seems to suggest, in addition to another case, that nCOV is in the wild in Singapore?

Nursie 7y ago
Certainly looks like it, two brits, each of whom attended business meetings there, are now confirmed. I am worrying as I returned to the UK from Singapore a week ago and now have cold-like symptoms. No coughing, no raised temperature, lungs OK so far... but it's a worry. (--edit-- actually it looks like one Brit, I had thought the new cases were related to a separate traveller, but it looks like it was the same guy)
- praveenster 7y ago
  I would go to the doctors office and get myself checked, if I were in your situation. Let’s hope and pray that you test negative and if not you can take immediate action.
  - jtaft 7y ago
    Call ahead before you go to a doctor’s office or emergency room. Tell them about your recent travel and your symptoms. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html
    - yongjik 7y ago
      Seconded. This is very important - if you just walk into a hospital and later it turns out you had the virus, now they have to close the hospital and quarantine hundreds of patients who are already sick (and hence in higher risk).
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Yes, you do need to call ahead and let them know that you visited areas where nCoV-2019 might be endemic. This lets them prepare wrt. any issues, and you're more likely to get tested quickly. Which is very important because getting results takes a lot of time and those are needed to decide on the best treatment.
  - speedgoose 7y ago
    I don't know for your country but in France we are asked to call and to not go to the doctor or the hospital. One doctor got contaminated by a patient.
- dave7 7y ago
  Please, self-isolate and call 111 for advice. Chances are you're fine and will be tested clear, but in the case you are not it would be a disaster to not receive proper treatments / come in to contact with loved ones / come in to contact with the general public.
  - Nursie 7y ago
    It's way too late for that, I've been on crowded commuter trains and the London underground earlier this week. I only started feeling under the weather in the last day or so, long after I'd been exposed to a lot of people. I've mostly stayed in the house since then. Which is another reason I think this is just something else that's going around at the moment, that I've picked up since I'm back (I was also only in Singapore for around 12 hours, and didn't encounter many people other than at the airport, though was there for a day or so a week before that). I'll call 111 and see what they say.
    - hef19898 7y ago
      Let's keep fingers crossed, then!
    - Retric 7y ago
      People are vastly less contagious in the early stages of an infection. I would seriously call a doctor as the odds are it’s something else, but if it’s not other people’s lives are at risk from inaction.
      - Nursie 7y ago
        I've talked to the UK health services, based on my symptoms they aren't worried. What they're looking for is mostly respiratory distress, which I don't have. I just feel the usual common-cold variety of lousy...
        Retric 7y ago
        Sounds like great news, even if your still sick. I hope you’re feeling better soon.
- ValentineC 7y ago
  > (--edit-- actually it looks like one Brit, I had thought the new cases were related to a separate traveller, but it looks like it was the same guy) Yes, he was believed to have attended an international business meeting by Servomex: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7977725/Britains-coronavirus-victim-caught-deadly-virus-five-star-hotel-Singapore.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7977725/Britains-...
mytailorisrich 7y ago
It certainly is if you read the news reports. Latest new case there is not known to have been in contact with any known contaminated person, which is bad news.

Cantbekhan 7y ago

So, today we're learning about 5 infections from a man coming from Singapore (not China) staying there in Contamines-Montjoie from 01/27 to 01/28. So we're now learning about infections from almost 2 weeks ago, almost a week before the last major airlines stopped their regular flight to/from China. And flights from/to Singapore are still going to this day. Makes you wonder how many people slipped through since then ... (sorry for my broken non native English)

cs702 7y ago
Personally, I'm assuming this new virus has already gone global, with the scale of the outbreak in most major metropolitan areas a few weeks behind Wuhan. For practical purposes, I'm already lumping this new virus in my mind with the "seasonal flu," variants of which travel around the globe every year, requiring annual shots. It seems that most people who get infected have only mild symptoms. Consider: Many major cities in China already have infected populations in the hundreds or thousands, and growing: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... -- these are official, confirmed figures. See also https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930260-9 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820... for maximum-likelihood estimates of the size of the outbreak as of month-end.
- Cantbekhan 7y ago
  Personally I'm not afraid of the sanitary aspect of this virus. I don't think the mortality is extremely alarming per se. What I'm afraid of is the emotional population reaction and the practical impact on daily services fueled by FUD and sensationalist media coverage. Schools closing unnecessarily forcing many working people to stay home to babysit their kids. Teachers/Drivers/Cashiers going on strike to avoid risks while there is a now globally confirmed shortage of face masks (which might or might not be very useful anyway but it will keep people working if they feel it helps). It's virtually impossible to find a useless face mask where I am in the EU (at a normal non 10x inflated price from opportunistic vendors) and even less possible to find a useful one (N95/FFP2/FFP3 rating). Interesting times for sure.

DayDollar 7y ago

A worldwide shutdown of airports for two weeks is out of the question, why exactly? This is a honest question.. Its obviously one of the most potent travel vectors of the virus. When the plague struck, harbours where closed, and gates where manned on both sides. It seems quite logical, to enforce quarantine this way.

anonsivalley652 7y ago
Actions speak louder than words. It's like playing Russian roulette with thousands to millions of lives in the name of what's in your name: filthy lucre. If it gets much worse, there's a real risk it might not be stoppable and then this phony-omniscience "risk management"/emergency triage will have failed to contain it. I don't think it will be anywhere nearly as bad as 1968, but that's a relative benchmark and would be an equivocation if used to defer action.
eropple 7y ago
Because that would be an eye-poppingly ridiculous response? Seriously, this breathless "plague!" nonsense absolutely must stop and its purveyors should feel bad for doing so. Bubonic plague has an untreated mortality rate of fifty percent! This, on the other hand, is a nontrivial though increasingly global outbreak of a disease that is unlikely to seriously harm healthy people--CFR rate of mortality seems to be about three percent--and is predominantly a threat to the very young and the elderly. If this sounds familiar that should be because it maps rather closely to the flu. There are 650,000 deaths per year from the flu--who's suggesting closing the airports over such a Threat To Humanity? Turn the news off. If you have a brain predisposed to low-information panic it is bad for you.
- duxup 7y ago
  "that is unlikely to seriously harm healthy people and is predominantly a threat to the very young and the elderly" I feel like we've seen at best mixed information about that. I'm not sure that is the case.
  - eropple 7y ago

hedora 7y ago

In case there was any doubt, the numbers coming from China are being faked. Infections and deaths are quadratic with an R^2 value of 0.9995: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22275092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22275092

jobigoud 7y ago
I've read this several times. Could someone shed some light on this? Are the reported numbers impossible because they are too close to the curve? Or because the numbers should follow another curve? Could there be a hidden mechanism in the speed at which the virus is tested for that could explain the quadratic?
- wolco 7y ago
  Of course. If you say: - The only cases that we will confirm have a positive trst Then if you only test 3000 today and 4000 tomorrow that would define the curve not the real spread.
- hedora 7y ago
  The fit is too good, and it has predicted subsequent stats with implausible accuracy so far.
- mtreis86 7y ago
  Something like a hospital opening, and suddenly having a pile of patients to test, should result in a small spike in that graph. A quarantine being enacted in a city should cause a change in angle of the curve.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    The list of spikes is available, e.g. from Tencent News: https://xw.qq.com/act/qgfeiyan https://xw.qq.com/act/qgfeiyan Most recent update right now: 上海新增5例新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎确诊病例 Shanghai adds 5 confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus infection 2020年2月8日0—12时，上海市排除新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎疑似病例11例；新增治愈出院11例；新增确诊病例5例，其中2例为外地来沪人员，3例为本市常住人口。 On 2020-02-08 from 0 to 12, Shanghai handled 11 suspected cases of pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus infection, added 11 cases released from hospital after treatment, added 5 confirmed cases, 2 of which are not originally from Shanghai and 3 are residents. 截至2月8日12时，上海市已累计排除疑似病例877例，发现确诊病例286例。 Until 02-08 at 12 o'clock, Shanghai has already handled a total of 877 suspected cases and discovered 286 confirmed cases. 健康上海12320 Healthy Shanghai 12320 Lots of small spikes can still add up to a smooth curve overall.

themgt 7y ago

I started following this outbreak about two weeks ago, when confirmed number of cases was still below 300 and 17 people had died. The confirmed cases were almost wholly contained in China, primarily just Wuhan province. At the time there was a lot of debate about the seriousness of the virus and the risk of a pandemic, and I was mostly sitting on the fence, looking back to SARS/Ebola and figuring a quarantine might be able to burn it out. Today confirmed cases stand at 34,964, with 725 dead, and the virus spread to nearly 30 countries. I'd highly recommend this interview from a couple days ago with Neil Ferguson, director of the Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics at Imperial College London's School of Public Health[1] Some highlights I'll quote, based on his team's modeling of the true situation vs. the necessarily incomplete confirmed cases: - China: estimated 10% of total cases detected - International: estimated 25% of total cases detected - estimated 50,000 new infections per day in China - Doubling every 5 days - Onset to death can take up to 20 days (in fact I think we've seen deaths up to 30 days post-infection now) The NYT today[2] also quotes leading experts that this virus is almost certain to become a pandemic, and no one can with certainty predict the consequences. All of which is just to say, I think it's time to stop the hot takes about how unseriously you're taking the situation. There seems to now be unanimity among global experts, who are taking it very very seriously indeed. The actions of widespread border closures, travel and economic shutdowns and China forcefully quarantining 500 million citizens also ought to suggest that governments are treating this far differently than the flu or in fact any sort of viral outbreak in perhaps modern history. [1] https://youtu.be/ALQTdCYGISw https://youtu.be/ALQTdCYGISw [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/health/coronavirus-pandemic-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/health/coronavirus-pandem...

agumonkey 7y ago
Yes it's indeed interesting (and reassuring) how the situation has evolved even after starting with the usual fog management policy.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  What is that you find reassuring? This is from the WHO director’s speech on February 4: “Second, we reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions inconsistent with the International Health Regulations. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit. So far, 22 countries have reported such restrictions to WHO. Where such measures have been implemented, we urge that they are short in duration, proportionate to the public health risks, and are reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1ZX1H3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1...