The Corona PANICdemic - Wuhan WORS
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn by Charlie Liu, ExpatGuides is a co-publisher.
Image: typical random microscope picture used to freak people out in western media
Synopsis: A sane mind trying to offer some facts and context about the Wuhan Originated Respiratory Syndrome. A stark contrast to all of the doom mongers and drama queens who are currently turning a relatively minor problem into something, much worse - fear and panic.
Summary (at the bottom of this article)
Know the facts - understand what WORS is and that even if it it's two times worse than SARS or MERS, it's not worth everyone panicking about.
Put it in context with flu. Flu is something most westerners see as trivial. But flu killed 100 times more people in the USA in 2018, a country with about a third of the population of China, than SARS killed in 2003. Yes that is correct - 100 times more people died of flu in the USA in 2018.
Understand and appreciate that China, for all it's strength and glory, still has a massive percentage of superstitious, traditional, health obsessed people who instinctively overreact to anything health or illness related.
Stop sharing misinformation and adding to the panic and the hysteria.
International governments should stop all this evacuation nonsense. I've never seen any government evacuate anyone over a cold or a flu and in fact, have left their citizens in war zones. Press statements about evacuating people over colds and flu is ridiculous and counter constructive.
Welcome to China during the 2020 Spring Festival. Normally a happy time where people go back to their hometowns and villages to spend time with their family and childhood friends. In most cases this would be the only holiday or break from working for an entire year. It usually also the only time that some people see their families for the entire year. Children are often raised by grandparents in hometowns, while parents are away for 50 weeks a year, working in factories or offices in the major cities.
It's sad that this annual time of happiness has actually become a period of panic and fear. This (as expected) has been whipped up into a frenzy of near madness by unprofessional journalism and the sharing of such nonsense on social media and instant messaging.
There's no page views or clicks when the media start sharing pictures of happiness - fear, panic and hysteria get page views.
Thousands of panic messages being shared, which get passed on and shared again and again. Every share takes little more context away from the original point creating messages that within minutes of being shared, become messages of Armageddon and the end of the world. Ironically, the two words used most in "informed discussions" about this new virus, "viral" and "evolving" are given no place around the messages themselves, which are undoubtedly causing more problems than the original virus.
Time for someone to start sharing some facts and some context.
WORS - The Name
I've taken the liberty to follow convention in naming this new virus. SARS stood for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (the last big much ado about very little that we had in China back in 2003). MERS stood for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. So I'm following the convention of including the location and calling this one WORS. Wuhan Originating Respiratory Syndrome.
This is a deliberate decision by me because WORS (as all my South African friends will know) is the general world in Afrikaans for "sausage". My American and Italian friends would probably use the word baloney to talk about sausage, and that's exactly what all this drama and panic is right now - BALONEY.
WORS - What is it?
As I'm sure most of you should have picked up by now, it's being triggered by a coronavirus. The CDC in the USA have decided to name it, 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The name alone sounds quite intimidating but it's essentially one of a group of viri that infect mammals with cold symptoms or stomach upset.
They were first studied in the 1960's when two Human Corona Viri were identified as the cause of the symptoms of patients with "the common cold". These viri infected the nasal cavities of the patients, causing runny noses and sneezing. These two viri were given the names Human coronavirus 229E and Human coronavirus OC43.
Are you with me so far? These are viri that CAUSE THE COMMON COLD. I'm going to repeat that so it sinks in - corona viri are the causes of THE COMMON COLD.
Again, to frame a context here. Some corona viri will cause breathing difficulties and intestinal problems. You might get a dose of diarrhea.
SYNDROME - not a disease
Lets help you all understand the difference between the two.
SARS, MERS and WORS (as I'm naming it today) is a syndrome and not a virus or a disease. You can't catch SARS. You can't catch MERS and you won't be able to catch WORS. It's something that develops over time.
• Syndrome is a set of symptoms occurring altogether, but the disease is an abnormality in normal functioning of the body.
• Syndrome does not have a specified cause, but a disease does.
• A Syndrome may indicate a disease or even a combination of diseases.
• Two or more different diseases may cause the same syndrome.
• Treating a syndrome is symptomatic but treating a disease allows treating the underlying cause because it is known.
Why does it matter if it's a syndrome and not a disease? Simply because understanding that the people that have apparently died as a result of WORS - have actually died of a combination of things and almost certainly had underlying health issues that were contributing factors.
There's no doubt that WORS will affect the old, weak or sick people very seriously and might lead to death. But fit and healthy people have very little to worry about and will probably have the same symptoms as a common cold, and recover just as easily.
The Context
At the time or writing this there are just over 2000 confirmed cases and about 60 or 70 deaths. In a country of 1.3 billion, I'm actually wondering why this is Global News. I'm wondering why absolutely every single English language news site I have checked, have WORS as their leading story and at least 5 stories in their top 10.
A typical winter in the UK will take out more people than WORS has. MUCH more.
Check this link out for yourself. The 2018 to 2019 winter in the UK killed 23'000 people. CHECK HERE(https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths). See for yourself. Apparently that's something of an achievement and the lowest since the 2013 to 2014 winter.
SARS at it's peak (which WORS might be similar statistically speaking) during November 2002 through July 2003, a total of 8,098 people worldwide became sick with severe acute respiratory syndrome that was accompanied by either pneumonia or respiratory distress syndrome (probable cases), according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Of these, 774 died. By late July 2003, no new cases were being reported, and WHO declared the global outbreak to be over. Don't take my word for it - CHECK HERE(https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/faq.html) and read it from the CDC.
Shall we break down the maths on this one? Over a billion people in China in 2002 to 2003 where SARS was considered to be serious. 774 died globally.
The UK has about 60 million people. About 1/16th of the population of China. But it lost 30 times more people - to winter. 30 times more people died in the UK in the winter of 2018 to 2019 because they didn't have enough heating.
The Real Problem
Right now the real problem right here in China isn't WORS. It isn't some thing called NCOV blah blah blah. It's the sharing of fear and panic without any context, that has whipped up a largely uneducated and paranoid nation into some fear of this being the end of the world as we know it.
Western media across the world are all over this "news" about the Wuhan plague which has created the viewpoint now that "if the western news are covering it, it must be serious".
Aside from it being obviously irresponsible journalism, this viewpoint that "it must be serious" is being fueled by equally irresponsible foreigners in China, who are jumping on the attention seeking and dramatic bandwagon.
While it's accepted that a lot of the foreigners are making light of the situation with jokes and memes, there are literally tens of thousands of foreigners sharing pretty much anything that they can get their hands on with absolutely no regard for their Chinese national social media and instant messaging, taking everything literally.
Education in China
In the 10 years between 2008 and 2018, there were just over 70 million graduates in China, that graduated from a University. You can CHECK HERE(https://www.statista.com/statistics/227272/number-of-university-graduates-in-china/) and check it for yourself.
That's a massive number. But compared to the overall population (which for this example, we'll use the number of 1.3 billion) it's still only 5.38%. Factor in that the culture in China is built on principles of accepting your seniors (the oldest people in your family) "know best" and their beliefs on most things are a mixture of superstition, tradition, ancestral worship and herbalism (traditional Chinese medicine).
Even with a good university education, and I see this around me everyday in my work place, sharing office space with other university graduates. Warm water will apparently cure most problems, certain foods have to be avoided at certain times of the month, and even the mildest sniffle means it's time to either bring out the concoction of herbs to make a tea with, or get to the hospital and get an urgent IV drip of medicine.
People will pay huge sums of money to procure various animal parts to eat to cure pretty much anything from erectile dysfunction to cancer. Westerners are quick enough to laugh at this as total nonsense - but when that is considered in context, you can start to understand why some new mystery virus with a complicated name, that hit the western press, must be serious.
Foreigners in China - do the right thing
I call out to all foreigners in China (as I'm sure that no foreign journalists in other countries are ever going to take being mature and responsible over column inches, clicks and views) to start contributing positively, or contribute nothing at all.
Every foreigner in China, on a work permit should have a university education (I believe that is law to legally apply for a work permit for China). Ergo, you MUST have enough education to have an understanding of simple science (to understand what a corona virus is) and simple maths (so you can frame a context around this with simple statistics).
In the same way, as mature adults, we all accept that it's morally wrong to bully the youngest child in the class, or the smallest child, or the child that might not be as smart as the others, we need to apply this same moral view to an entire society, culture and country. That's essentially what you are all doing.
Sharing your posts with scare headlines such as "BAT AIDS" and "Wuhan Plague", while probably intended as a bit of fun, is actually making the problem worse for everyone.
How about sharing something with some CONTEXT and maybe even some facts? How about highlighting that SARS, while considered "serious" - was responsible for less than 1% of the amount of people that died in the USA in the 2018 season - OF FLU. Yes. 80'000 people died in the USA from flu in 2018.
See for yourself.
CHECK HERE(https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/26/health/flu-deaths-2017--2018-cdc-bn/index.html).
Flora - the WORS Meme Queen
Probably THE single biggest problem we have right now is actually "Flora". A person of unknown gender, claiming to be an American, who has made so much drama about all of this that she/he/it is now the subject of hundreds of memes.
Flora, also known as Winnie, using the WeChat user ID of synonymousbotch, spent hours on Thursday 23rd January 2020, starting around lunchtime, having what looked like a total emotional breakdown in the Americans in Wuhan group.
After hours of scare mongering and conspiracy theories being thrown mostly towards the Chinese government and how they were (in her apparently expert opinion) covering everything up, she/he/it dropped in some things such as this:
Unfortunately, the Flora memes are being taken very literally as a warning to all Chinese locals that this really is a serious problem.
I understand and appreciate that it's a western thing to mock and laugh at these Flora types. However, having seen many of these Flora memes being shared in many Chinese groups as "warnings" with bad interpretation of the English words, It would be more useful if everyone just stopped.
Thankfully, the attention of Flora and the focus of her rage on Twitter seems to be mostly aimed at the US Government right now.
International Evacuations Hype
Most of us would have seen the announcements that the US, the UK and at the time of writing this, Russia, plan to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan. SO lets take a look at this in a little more detail. Lets see some good examples of the US evacuating it's people.
There's a nice article here where Americans were left stranded in Yemen, in the middle of a full scale war.
Read the Yemen article yourself if you CHECK HERE(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/01/american-civilians-yemen-left-behind).
Also interesting to read that during that genuine disaster, Russia was not only evacuating people before the US, but also taking anyone of any nationality to safety.
You can check that article yourself also if you CHECK HERE(https://www.rt.com/news/248961-russia-navy-ship-yemen-evacuation/).
The US also has it's own government website, check it out yourself if you CHECK HERE(https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/emergencies/what-state-dept-can-cant-do-crisis.html) but here are some of the highlights.
So it leaves me (and the other logical people in the world) to wonder why the US had little or no interest to evacuate it's citizens from a full-blown war in Yemen. But it's banging drums about evacuating people over a cold and flu from China. Even more interesting when you then factor in that the US had 80'000 deaths from flu in 2018.
Summary
Know the facts - understand what WORS is and that even if it it's two times worse than SARS or MERS, it's not worth everyone panicking about.
Put it in context with flu. Flu is something most westerners see as trivial. But flu killed 100 times more people in the USA in 2018, a country with about a third of the population of China, than SARS killed in 2003. Yes that is correct - 100 times more people died of flu in the USA in 2018.
Understand and appreciate that China, for all it's strength and glory, still has a massive percentage of superstitious, traditional, health obsessed people who instinctively overreact to anything health or illness related.
Stop sharing misinformation and adding to the panic and the hysteria.
International governments should stop all this evacuation nonsense. I've never seen any government evacuate anyone over a cold or a flu and in fact, have left their citizens in war zones. Press statements about evacuating people over colds and flu is ridiculous and counter constructive.
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/corona-panicdemic-wuhan-wors-charlie-%25E5%25A9%25B5%25E5%25A9%25B5-liu-%25E5%2588%2598-?from=timeline&isappinstalled=0
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