China Visit - who’s betting?

[Cruiser Elite]

Following on from ‘Would You Visit China’ thread/poll and considering that my China visit Feb 16 to 25 had to be cancelled - my next visit to China is booked for Mar 18 to 27 - where are the punters out there in AFF land? What are my chances sufficient normality will have returned to permit this trip to go ahead?

Note: Poll Closes 08:00 Wed Mar 04, 2020

 

[equus]

So the poll closed over 3 weeks ago?

Time travel like that is probably the only way to get an informed opinion.

 

[Cruiser Elite]

So the poll closed over 3 weeks ago?

Oops - alcohol

 

[daft009]

My head says "book OT", my heart says "pack your bags"

 

[I love to travel]

Only a mug would try and predict today. Will let you know 3 March.

 

[PineappleSkip]

The Asian action has moved on to Korea and Japan. World Bank back from China, and they say the virus there peaked/plateaued 4-2 weeks ago and has been declining since. My bet is China will be looking a lot better than Europe or Middle East in 3 weeks time.

An inlaw just back from Shanghai enjoying 2 weeks self quarantine on NSW South Coast. He is positively gloating about it.

cheers skip

 

[serfty]

You need another option - Book Olive Tree as a farewell dinner, come back and have 2 weeks holiday ...

 

[ja1]

The Asian action has moved on to Korea and Japan. World Bank back from China, and they say the virus there peaked/plateaued 4-2 weeks ago and has been declining since. My bet is China will be looking a lot better than Europe or Middle East in 3 weeks time.

An inlaw just back from Shanghai enjoying 2 weeks self quarantine on NSW South Coast. He is positively gloating about it.

cheers skip

At this point I'd like to bring physics into it.

Acceleration, velocity and deceleration are different things.

Are things in China getting progressively worse (accelerating) or just getting worse (velocity) or getting better (deceleration).

My interpretation is things are getting worse based on two things: More people continue to be infected and more people continue to die. This is not unexpected but doesn't mean because we expect it that we think things are getting better.

I can't forsee in the immediate future (3 months) how things are going to get better.

When there is a vaccine I can definitely see how things get better as you then have a 'positive pressure' acting against infections which at the moment are only being managed by either containment or treatment.

Would I travel ? Being aware of the risks I absolutely don't have a problem personally if there was a good enough deal available..

 

[Cruiser Elite]

.
Would I travel ? Being aware of the risks I absolutely don't have a problem personally if there was a good enough deal available..

Unfortunately price of travel to China at moment would be the least of your concerns - even if flts and accom were free you would still be screwed by insurmountable probs

 

[burmans]

My interpretation is things are getting worse based on two things: More people continue to be infected and more people continue to die. This is not unexpected but doesn't mean because we expect it that we think things are getting better.

What are you interpreting that on, the WHO stats fairly clearly indicate that infection rates in China continue to drop and are a fraction of what they were 3-4 weeks ago. That's deceleration to me.

Experience

experience.arcgis.com

 

[cove]

I suspect the under counting in China could be 10 million.

 

[Forg]

What, someone is suggesting that the Chinese government could be making false claims, about how magically well they have managed things, for political & financial reasons? Incredible! Ridiculous!!

 

[ja1]

What are you interpreting that on, the WHO stats fairly clearly indicate that infection rates in China continue to drop and are a fraction of what they were 3-4 weeks ago. That's deceleration to me.

Experience

experience.arcgis.com

The rate of infection is dropping but the coughulative number of people who are infected isn't as is the total number of people infected at the moment? and clearly the coughulative total of people who have died isn't going to reduce either.

i.e are you saying (and I'm picking round numbers here) that if China had 20,000 cases in Week X, in Week Y they are saying they have 10,000 cases (so in effect, 10K people are 'cured/not sick anymore') and no new people have been infected ? I don't think that's what is happening.

Week 1 they had 10K
Week 2 they had 11K (+1K)
Week 3 they had 13K (+2K)
Week 4 they had 20K (+7K)

was the original trend.

My reading was that the rate of infection is dropping but not the actual number of cases.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing at all and it clearly helps a lot - but it isn't to the point where the problem is going away any time soon (but clearly if infection rates are dropping, it is going to go away at some point).

Of course the other factor is that you do have to believe the data coming out of China. The same people who provided data at the start that said there was no COVID19 issue at all and anyone who said otherwise was making things up and asking for trouble.

I would like to think I have a healthy degree of scepticism on their numbers as there's little you can do to prove them either way (and before you ask, no, not a criticism of the WHO, simply noting they have to get their data from the Chinese government.. there are no independent health numbers)

 

[amaroo]

Go for it.

 

[SydneySwan]

I suspect the under counting in China could be 10 million.

Rubbish - 9 million tops.

 

[tgh]

All this prognostication reminds me of the iceberg analogy.. It's not what you can see that sinks the ship

 

[ja1]

All this prognostication reminds me of the iceberg analogy.. It's not what you can see that sinks the ship

It's the submarine hiding under the iceberg ?

 

[PineappleSkip]

Are things in China getting progressively worse (accelerating) or just getting worse (velocity) or getting better (deceleration).

My interpretation is things are getting worse based on two things: More people continue to be infected and more people continue to die. This is not unexpected but doesn't mean because we expect it that we think things are getting better.

The empirical data, which is available everywhere, suggests the opposite is occurring in China. New case reports in China have been steadily declining for a long time. The WHO mission to China report concluded that the virus peaked there between 23 and 27 January, and has been declining since.

You need to factor lag into it as well. The WHO report charts on page 7 show clearly the lag from symptom onset to confirmed case reporti. There is also a lengthy lag in people dying, so a death rate peaks later than the peak of symptom onset.

I can't forsee in the immediate future (3 months) how things are going to get better.

Neither do I, but that is because things have moved on (to say the least!) the spread is now global. There are about 22,000 active cases (neither recovered nor deceased) in China and about 19,000 elsewhere. There are now more cases reported in the Schengen Zone than in South Korea. For every new case reported in China on 4 March there were more than 20 new cases elsewhere. Most new cases have been from local transmission outside of China, and in travellers from Iran or Italy, and now people are turning up all over, who got the virus all over.

I may well get worse again in China because there is the issue there of people coming in who are infected, in the same way this is an issue everywhere.

cheers skip

 

[juddles]

On the one hand: It is not known if cases/infection are "dropping" in China. It may be completely true that the number of new cases detected has dropped, but in my unskilled analysis, the stats on China do not make sense unless one of two things have occurred - (1) that the government there decided that after being forced to admit the outbreak, they are now absolutely bull-sh_tting now that other countries have managed to steal the limelight, or (2) they have simply stopped testing. Hence no new cases. In this whole episode all we ever hear about are positive cases or deaths - but the far more enlightening stat would be positives as against whole numbers actually tested....

On the other hand, live dangerously! Enjoy! Or not really live dangerously, as for most under 60 or so this is not a killer disease. get the virus and move on....

But a trip to China at the end of March?? Australia is still (just) behind the bubble bursting here, so even by late March the real effect for most (disrupted travel, quarantine, cancelled flights, etc) will still be in full swing.

 

[Cruiser Elite]

Good news - F WL for my return 217 SIN-MEL Mar 26 just cleared - the pieces are starting to fall into place