Taiwan's health ministry on Thursday urged the elderly, very young and those with poor immunity to avoid travel to China due to the recent increase in respiratory illnesses there, a move some experts said was ineffective to manage public health risks.
    • Chainweasel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      1 year ago

      Considering this is almost the exact same time of year that Covid-19 was first being whispered amongst news sites, I can see why.

      And the first cases didn’t appear in the US until late January, so it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. If it’s something new we haven’t seen before and not just another round of covid we’ll know in the next month or so

  • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    I wonder if there was a legit possibility of another corona type thing if Chinese authorities would be more forthright and transparent about the situation than with corona.

    Corona made me super worried that they’d try to sweep another epidemic under the rug until it was too late

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      We have had surprisingly few mass infectious diseases despite the massive increase in world population. Its really surprising COVID took so long to happen and that it was relatively mild.

      COVID like infection will happen again, we won’t be prepared again and the lockdown/mask compliance will be even weaker. We are really screwed.

      • Cinner@lemmy.worldBEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        If you’re in the position to take time off of work OR can work from home, then it’s imperative that you work to buy a little here and there for an (ideally at least) ~1 month stock of non-perishable food, water (or sanitation kits if you don’t have the space for that much bottled water) and whatever you need day-to-day if you need meds to survive etc, as well as some supplements like vitamin D as you won’t be going outside, NAC which has been shown to help with respiratory conditions, antibiotics (can be purchased online without rx, but have a print out of what works for what… they’re not a 1 size fits all, and don’t use them unless you’re absolutely sure you need to)… a stock of N95 respirators (and battery shaver with battery backup, masks need to fit to work) in case you need to go out…

        COVID gave forward-thinkers and planners a good idea of what could happen and what’s required if, say, there was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease from Plum Island which is ALL being dismantled and moved to a new facility in Kansas this year, or a new bubonic plague outbreak happens as is expected…

        With the Earth warming (which sometimes means colder winters, but not usually), viruses and bacteria are able to breed faster. It also means animals are migrating to new places, and looking for new food sources potentially closer to humans and other like-animals. With the population of humans on Earth increasing so quickly (we were JUST being amazed at the 7 billion mark being hit, and now it’s at 8 billion… exponential growth) that means humans in closer proximity to one another which means faster rates of spread.

        I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a multiviral pandemic in the next decade.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    TAIPEI/SHANGHAI, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Taiwan’s health ministry on Thursday urged the elderly, very young and those with poor immunity to avoid travel to China due to the recent increase in respiratory illnesses there, a move some experts said was ineffective to manage public health risks.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) last week requested China provide detailed information on the spike, which a WHO official said was not as high as before the COVID-19 pandemic and that no unusual or novel pathogens had been detected.

    Shu-Ti Chiou, an epidemiologist at the Health & Sustainable Development Foundation in Taipei, said the advisory would lead the public to mistakenly believe they would not contract respiratory illnesses as long as they did not go to China.

    Rajib Dasgupta, an epidemiologist and professor of community health at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, also said “travel restrictions for respiratory infections are not an effective measure for interrupting transmission”.

    Some public health researchers said the travel advisory was reasonable, saying Taiwan was also likely to experience a surge in respiratory illnesses in winter and following the lifting of pandemic restrictions.

    China’s Taiwan affairs office and authorities in Hong Kong and Macau did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The original article contains 370 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 45%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!