Li Wenliang, the Chinese Doctor Who Tried To Warn Others About Coronavirus, Dies (bbc.com) 111
A Chinese doctor hailed as a hero for trying to warn others about coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak has died from the virus, Chinese state media say. From a report, shared by long-time reader schwit1: Dr Li Wenliang, thought to be 34, tried to send a message to fellow medics about the outbreak at the end of December. Three days later police paid him a visit and told him to stop. He returned to work and caught the virus from a patient. He had been in hospital for at least three weeks. He posted his story from his hospital bed last month on social media site Weibo. "Hello everyone, this is Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital," the post begins. It was a stunning insight into the botched response by local authorities in Wuhan in the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak. Dr Li was working at the centre of the outbreak in December when he noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like Sars - the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003. The cases were thought to come from the Huanan Seafood market in Wuhan and the patients were in quarantine in his hospital.
Just like the flu (Score:1)
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Death rate for coronaviris is about 2.1%.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
You are correct for the flu. So while not near as widespread, coronavirus is considerably more fatal if one gets it.
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But the big question is how many have recovered. Last stat I saw which was back when there were about 190 deaths was around 110 full recoveries.
Will feel a lot more comfortable when the numbers are reversed
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Death rate for coronaviris is about 2.1%.
What's the death rate for Chinese citizens, deep in mainland China, publicly calling out the corruption of the Communist Party and their endangerment of the public?
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Death rate for coronaviris is about 2.1%.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
You are correct for the flu. So while not near as widespread, coronavirus is considerably more fatal if one gets it.
I had a feeling a /s sarcasm tag was needed at the end of my comment. It was meant for those believing this coronavirus isn't anything to be more worried about than a typical flu.
Being an early witness to Communist corruption (Score:2)
Nothing to see here. I'm sure he was just unlucky, like the 0.1% of the people that die from a typical flu.
Surely being an early witness to Communist corruption and the endangerment of the Chinese public, and publicly calling out the Communist Party, had nothing to do with his demise. Its just a coincidence.
Shouldn't be a problem (Score:5, Funny)
If he's the Chinese Doctor Who, can't he just regenerate?
Hey if you're going to post stuff to a site that is "News For Nerds", you'd best be prepared for nerdy cringe-takes of the worst order!
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If he's the Chinese Doctor Who, can't he just regenerate?
Hey if you're going to post stuff to a site that is "News For Nerds", you'd best be prepared for nerdy cringe-takes of the worst order!
In China, Timelords reincarnate.
<ducks>
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He did regenerate, but he no longer has an ID that matches his face and was immediatelly taken into custody.
Doctor Who? Doctor Hu. [Re:Shouldn't be a problem] (Score:2)
If he's the Chinese Doctor Who, can't he just regenerate?
Burt he's not Doctor Hu, he's Doctor Li.
Doctor Hu is a different doctor [sixthtone.com]
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If he's the Chinese Doctor Who, can't he just regenerate?
Hey if you're going to post stuff to a site that is "News For Nerds", you'd best be prepared for nerdy cringe-takes of the worst order!
Have you noticed the humor quotient of Slashdot has done a real crash and burn lately? I thought that was hilarious.
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Because tech nerds are sensitive now.
Perhaps the new ones. Us Boomers are pretty unfazed and undamaged by such things.
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Troll or no, I parsed the headline as Doctor Who [wikipedia.org] as well. Maybe the editors can... Oh who am I kidding, maybe whoever submitted the article could have stressed that it should have been "Doctor w ho".
News for nerds indeed, I had to read the headline several times to parse it out correctly.
His organs will live on ... (Score:2)
If he's the Chinese Doctor Who, can't he just regenerate?
Well he will, sort of, his organs will live on in party officials and wealthy westerners, just like the organs of other political criminals.
why not design and make your own vaccine? (Score:3)
It's just pepties that can be synthesized for pennies each. And it's not that hard if you know science -- eventually it may even be automated for everyone. I mean there's lots of people designing their own vaccines nowadays, for example:
https://github.com/feraliscatu... [github.com]
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Re: why not design and make your own vaccine? (Score:2)
How can it be used to do something nefarious?
It's nefarious by default. You're Hitler. (Score:2)
Vaccines defend the SPECIES from a disease by creating a herd immunity. Not an individual.
Designing a vaccine for an individual human AT BEST will create a genetically-similar resilient population around the said individual, who will remain carrier "plague rats", murdering people they encounter by the mere fact of existing.
Starting off with one side of their family, unless mom and dad were brother and sister.
Congratulations, you're Hitler.
That's the SECOND BEST CASE scenario.
In a much more likely outcome, a
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Those scenarios are statistically ridiculous and false choices general anti-vaxxers come up with.
Your scenario 1: Many individuals are naturally partially immune to many viruses and can be carriers already.
Your scenario 2. If the vaccine is ineffective the individual would have suffered no loss unless they thought they were immune and did things to deliberately increase their risk of infection.
Your "statistical error" scenario 3: The disease mutation is more likely in unprimed individuals. The vaccine pepti
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Although it is believed personalized peptide vaccines should be safer when produced correctly than traditional vaccines, independently synthesizing and using your own vaccine can be deadly or worse if you make a mistake. This design is intended for experienced companies, scientists, or organizations to implement with adequate resources and testing facilities.
Well, that's a little more of an extreme disclaimer than your typical MIT License. sheesh!!!
Or did he? (Score:1)
Coronavirus: Chinese media confusion over doctor's death [bbc.com]
Hey it's no big deal (Score:2)
He must have died from something else, slashdot has repeatedly reminded me that only old and otherwise sick die of this and that it is no big deal.
msmash is most likely a right wing racist who hates China. Shame on you!
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Yeah it's no big deal. Doctors die all the time from the flu big whoop. China always locks down it's population as a containment measure.
Just trust China they have the smartest government money can buy
Not dead (Score:4, Informative)
Dr. Wenliang is apparently not dead.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
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The way I read it, he did actually die but the government officials are trying to cover it up.
Right, he died, but he was on life support, so they added another machine that should keep him warm for as long as they want.
Except it appears that other officials also intervened, and are reporting that he did die. Time will tell if they keep him hooked up to the machine, or not.
Well then (Score:1)
Looks like my original comment was spot-on... :-)
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Well I WAS happy he was alive Mr Frumpypants, which I'm still not ruling out.
Especially with some anon probably-Chinese AC claiming he is dead.
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Dr. Wenliang is apparently not dead. https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
The article linked now indicates he is dead.
He is dead. Government tried to cover it up (Score:5, Interesting)
Ophthalmologist?? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Ophthalmologist?? (Score:5, Informative)
A Ophthalmologist is an MD. And you are questioning how an MD has the ability to make a SARS-like diagnosis? Because he's an MD.
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I know I've always pictured Chinese people as having eyes.
He's alive (Score:2)
Try to keep up /.
He's alive but in critical condition.
Re:He's alive (Score:4, Informative)
He actually died at 9:30 PM local time, but the Chinese government ordered that the corpse be put on a ventilation and heart pump machine and then declare he's in "critical condition".
But his soul has already left the building.
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But his soul has already left the building.
Citizen, 25 social credit points have been subtracted for spreading cultist propaganda.
Or maybe not. (Score:2)
State media is apparently walking back the story of his death, published in a local party paper.
Really, you can't be sure of any recent news coming out of China. Either story could be true at this point.
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The assassin must have been scheduled at the same time as the news story, but died of coronavirus before he got there.
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Ha! Or chickened out.
Why do you want this guy killed again? He let people know just how *incredibly contagious* the virus he's in the hospital with is?
So a few weeks from now (Score:3, Interesting)
When "Doctor Li Wenliang" holds a press conference to announce that he's recovered and that the Chinese government response was timely and effective, we shouldn't take notice that he doesn't look like any of the old photos of himself.
Thanks, Li! (Score:2)
R.I.P. (Score:2)
China will keep repeating inhumane disasters (Score:1)
These virus outbreaks, especially disasters to the world from China will keep repeating itself; as long the Chinese Communist Party is still there to censor news, accuse, arrest, torture political dissident & whistle blowers with this evil regime continues.
But we were told (Score:2)
1 flu over the cuckoos nest (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, this *doesn't* look suspicious. Not at al (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be suspicious if died from anything other than the coronavirus and the only suspicious aspect about it is that he's so young. The Chinese authorities are just being their usual idiotic selves and trying to clamp down on anyone or anything that might be disharmonious. Maybe they'll start to realize the errors in doing this now that they've had to expend considerable resources dealing with a problem that possibly could have been contained much sooner if they didn't have their heads up their assess. Of course if humanity were capable of that it'd be the most suspicious thing I could ever hope to see.
Near death... (Score:5, Informative)
Newer reports correct the older report to say he is "critically ill" and "near death", not that he died.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/06/asia/li-wenliang-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-dies-intl/index.html
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Looks like he got suicided a bit out of order.
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Kind of like that guy Epstein, who didn't kill himself.
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Looks like he got suicided a bit out of order.
Hey, China's still working on Epsteining people.
Re: Near death... (Score:2)
Turns out heâ(TM)s only mostly dead, i.e. slightly alive
Re: Near death... (Score:3)
The hospital is now confirming his death
Unfortunately, he did die ... (Score:3)
As reported by the Associated Press [www.cbc.ca], he did die. The CNN article is updated, saying it was confusion in state media.
Too bad. He is a whistle blower and a hero.
I vaguely recall that a doctor in Saudi Arabia also published stuff on MERS, only to be ordered to stop talking about it.
dead or alive (Score:2)
So, a real life Schrodinger's subject. Doctor Li (not a Ho) is in one state or the other, and possibilities are endless.. except the nation-state he's recently run afoul of, and currently living in, is China.
If all outcomes were equally likely, why does Vegas have coronavirus death at -500?
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But with that much polonium in his system, it is only a matter of time.
Re:Yeah, this *doesn't* look suspicious. Not at al (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, this *doesn't* look suspicious. Not at al (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Yeah, this *doesn't* look suspicious. Not at al (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on how the immune system reacts to it or fails to, and it being a "novel" virus probably doesn't help either. Don't forget that even various flus have had striking differences in their mortality rates - the 1918 flu had a mortality rate ~10% and tended to kill both the very weak and the strong. The weak died by the usual failures of the body when assaulted by flu, but the strong died because their immune system flipped out hard and literally drowned their lungs in fluid by over-response.
Re:Yeah, this *doesn't* look suspicious. Not at al (Score:5, Informative)
There's a lot of uncertainty about the exact mortality rate. On one hand, it's undercounted by the people who have gotten sick and will ultimately die, but haven't yet. On the other hand, it's overcounted by the fact that minor cases (which appear to be common) may go entirely undiagnosed. The latter is usually considered to be a bigger factor than the former, but 2% is a good enough estimate for now.
New infections that jump to humans are often more dangerous than ones that have been in humans for a while because they've not evolved to let their new hosts survive and spread the disease to others. As far as a new human disease is concerned, 2% is actually quite tame. 80% of the deaths have been people over 60 and 75% have had preexisting conditions, so it's basically functioning like a bad flu (but nothing like Spanish Flu, which humans basically inadvertently bred to be virulent).
BTW, if anyone wants to track how the disease is spreading, I use the following code:
province="hubei"; wget -q -O - https://bnonews.com/index.php/... [bnonews.com] https://bnonews.com/index.php/... [bnonews.com] | html2text | grep -iE "${province}|February|January"
Substitute various provinces.
And so on. The thing it really drives home is how much - at present at least - this isn't a global problem, or even a China problem, but specifically a Hubei problem. It seems to be well contained, with no real growth, outside of Hubei, and the number of incidents is way lower - despite some of the other provinces being much more populous (Hubei is the 9th most populous province). Hubei, until recently, didn't seem very well contained, although it might be topping out there. We need a lot more days in a row to tell for sure.
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In case anyone wants to try different provinces above, the top provinces in terms of the number of infections is:
Hubei (e.g. Wuhan), Guangdong, Zhejiang, Henan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Chongqing, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan, Beijing, Shanghai
2% Tame? (Score:1)
Normal flu has a mortality rate less than 0.1%. The coronavirus seems to be much more infectious than flu so a greater proportion of the population will have it, and it seems to be killing otherwise healthy people like this 34 year old doctor.
Tame is not the word I'd use.
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"Much more infectious"? R0 is pretty similar to a normal flu. The "bad flu" reflects that the mortality rate is higher than a typical influenza strain (but nothing like really bad flu pandemics like the Spanish Flu pandemic). "Quite tame" is in regard to most diseases that have newly jumped to humans, such as SARS and MERS ("As far as a new human disease is concerned") - mortality rates of those two being 12% an 35%, respectively. 2% is very low for a disease that's newly jumped to humans.
It is not pred
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Much of the confusion about it is the mix of scientific talk and casual talk. Coronavirus is a different class of virus. It isn't genetically influenza, but causes sickness t
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I'm so confused about this virus. It is described as "mind respiratory infection", yet the mortality rate is over 10x greater than the flu. Is this entirely due to it being so... novel? Does it greatly vary in how it affects people? A doctor of all people, in their 30s, dying from "a mild respiratory infection" sounds like it's not that mild. That or conspiracy theory.
You're confused, yes.
First of all, lets talk about influenza. Most people who get the influenza virus do not get the Flu. The flu is a disease, by which I mean, a pattern of related symptoms. Most people who are infected with the flu virus have either no symptoms, or they have the disease (the pattern of symptoms) called the Common Cold. The reason you might think the flu is less deadly is because you, or the media sources you consume, might have falsely conflated the influenza infection rate with flu. Flu
Re: Yeah, this *doesn't* look suspicious. Not at a (Score:2)
We must be living in a simulated world and someone is playing 'Plague inc.'
You always start in China and mutate pneumonia, along with coughing and sneezing, which increases infection rate in cold countries. The idea is to spread it to Russia and from there to Scandinavia. Cause the only way to infect Greenland is ships from Sweden....
You are welcome.
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I agree, since it wasn't obvious that it was a new variant, his being infected is not that atypical.
Let's toast him when the vaccine comes out, and hope China finally shuts down their "wet meat" markets permanently.
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hope China finally shuts down their "wet meat" markets permanently.
That isn't necessary. They just need to ban the food trade in exotic animals.
This outbreak wasn't caused by chickens or fish.
The most likely origin was bats.
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Maybe they'll start to realize the errors in doing this now that they've had to expend considerable resources dealing with a problem that possibly could have been contained much sooner if they didn't have their heads up their assess.
That's a flat nope [nih.gov]
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Do you Trust Their Numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tencent briefly lists 154,023 infections and 24,589 deaths from Wuhan coronavirus [taiwannews.com.tw]
Re:Do you Trust Their Numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)
China's lying, for sure, but there's no way the numbers are that high.
We know they can't even test that many people.
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Who says they are even trying?
China wouldn't bethe first Communist government to cover up a disaster of monumental proportions [wikipedia.org]
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As of 2/5/2020 the World Health Organization says 24554 confirmed cases and 492 deaths.
https://www.who.int/docs/defau... [who.int]
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All of the crematoriums of the entire Wuhan province are operating 24x7 since January 28th burning bodies.
If Only 400 had died, this wouldn't be the case. The 25,000 dead number is probably spot on.
Re:Do you Trust Their Numbers? (Score:5, Informative)
All of the crematoriums of the entire Wuhan province are operating 24x7 since January 28th burning bodies.
Wuhan is not a province.
Hubei province has a population of 60 million people, and thousands of people routinely die there every day. Cremation is nearly universal in China, so there are plenty of crematorium ovens available.
Stop repeating rumors as if they are facts.
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Wuhan is not a province.
Right, right, and Megalopolis is not a State, and yet it is a sort of province.
And Miami State isn't a real place, but Miami's State is. And yet, neither is ambiguous.
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Some of it can be explained in that they are cremating everyone who dies, not just confirmed cases. People dying to other causes such as heart attacks could also have been exposed, so it's a precaution.
Still, I assume the Chinese government is trying to avoid a panic. Given the scenes of crowding hospitals, the number of dead is probably in the low thousands.
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China's lying, for sure, but there's no way the numbers are that high.
We know they can't even test that many people.
The South Koreans who were evacuated, they were screened by the Chinese before boarding the plane and passed the screening, but the Koreans, who deal closely with the Chinese all the time, re-screened everybody during the flight and lots of them were presenting symptoms. They had prepared for this, and used the upper deck for quarantine.
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It may be that in both sets of numbers, the "cured" is just an invented number. What does that mean? Does it mean "recovered?" Or something else?
Also, read the story. It is probably bullshit propaganda, but the story isn't consistent with your criticisms. The story is, these numbers keep reappearing, and then being replaced by "official" numbers. And when they reappear, above the graphic it also lists the "yesterday" numbers which follow a reasonable growth rate.
It is clearly not just a mistaken graphic, it
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After being "visited" by the local police to stop talking about it, he mysteriously contracts the virus and then "dies"?
Yeah, nothing fishy about this.
China is fighting the virus better than anyone else could, you insensitive clod! Great leader has made it illegal to mention coronavirus, and the problem has disappeared completely.