Comments

Episode-2588- The Expert Council Show for 1-24-20 — 10 Comments

  1. I’m more concerned about the coronavirus than you are, but not enough to cancel our travel back to Mongolia next week. I’m honestly more worried about the negative effects on local economies, supply lines, and emergency services in the region. In Ulaanbaatar apparently they’ve announced the closing of all schools (much to my son’s delight) until March 2nd. There’s apparently been a lot of talk about closing the border with China, but I think that’s mostly talk. That won’t happen unless things go REALLY sideways in China (too dependent on trade).

    I wish we weren’t flying through Beijing, but we’ll be sticking to the International Terminal,  and bringing all our own food. I’m a little more worried on what kind of reception we’ll get coming into Mongolia from China. I’m expecting the full works… temperature scans, lots of questioning, maybe even examination of travelers. Anyway, if things are really unusual or crazy on our trip I’ll pass it along.

  2. I’m a bit more concerned about the Coronavirus, too. Not sure where you were getting the figures for the rate of infection, the official WHO estimate as of 1/23 for R0 is 1.4-2.5, with higher being worse. By comparison garden variety flu is about 1.28, and 1918 Spanish flu was 1.80. This bug looks to be more contagious than the flu, not less.

    • That is for people they expect were exposed vs. people in the area where it is present. ie we know Joe was in a room with Tom who is currently on a respirator. That is exposed.

      I got the rate by the total number of people infected in Wuhan vs. the total population. ie how likely are you to have this thing if you were living in Wuhan.

  3. Yeah its never good to panic about these things but also concerned about 2019-nCoV too. They didn’t try and build a 1000 bed hospital in 5 days during the SARS outbreak or quarantine 56 million+ people. China, as authoritarian as they are,  has already lost in containing this virus. Problem with 2019-nCoV is that infected people are symptom free for 5+ days while contagious. So those fever scanners at the airports can only do so much. This virus can travel 5 feet airborne and is enveloped to live outside of a host for 5 days so avoiding close contact in closed buildings and washing hands is best of course. This is what is making it very hard to contain.  Looks like regular adults have a pretty low risk, I just worry about the kiddos and my folks. Hopefully is will mutate to burn out like SARS did and have a relatively uneventful wiki page in history.

    • “They didn’t try and build a 1000 bed hospital in 5 days during the SARS outbreak ”

      Actually they are tying to do it in 6 days, pride thing to break the old world record of 7 days, which they did DURING THE SARs breakout.

      From this article

      “He points out that the hospital in Beijing in 2003 was built in seven days so the construction team is probably attempting to beat that record. Just like the hospital in Beijing, the Wuhan centre will be made out of prefabricated buildings.”

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51245156

  4. After listening to “Wish Them Well” I can understand some of why the drum part may have been so difficult, but I’m not a drummer.

    If you listen to older Rush, say Cygnus X-1 on Hemispheres, the drumming there was (and had to be) spot on. Rush used so many complicated and mixed time signature in their music back then. I went to two Rush concerts, one in 1980 and another in 1982, and at both concerts at some point in a song the band members were off the beat, and Geddy Lee had to actually start keeping time with his hands to get them back on.

    I also remember how all the drummers I knew in high school would listen to Rush albums over and over to learn those drum riffs. LOL

  5. Oops! Cygnus X-1 was on A farewell to Kings.

    Cygnus X-1 Book 2 was on Hemispheres…

    It’s ben a few decades… LOL

  6. My favorite backpacking snack is take a small tortilla and cover with peanut butter drizzle honey over the peanut butter, roll bunches of them and stuff zip-lock bags full of them. Carbs, energy and protein! They are a little sticky but when you are hungry they hit the spot. I would think they would last a long term hike if they stay sealed.

  7. My Asia travel update:

    United airlines was (uncharacteristically) helpful in rerouting our Mongolia flight from a transfer in Beijing to a transfer in Seoul.

    Just about everyone in Incheon airport was wearing masks. Seeing travelers wearing masks in Asia is not unusual, but is very pronounced now (outside the airport too). They had us walk through temperature scanners (expected), though they did separate us into a different line from the inbound passengers from Thailand and seemed to be giving them more attention. Entering Korea customs for us was routine, though I did see one lady ahead of us with a China passport who was politely pulled aside (for additional screening I presume).

    Overall, seems to be very heightened awareness of coronavirus here but life is still going on. Will add more once we get into Ulaanbaatar and get settled. Very glad we didn’t have to go through Beijing… yeah there’s the obvious reason, but also I just don’t want us being on a list of `recently been in China` people. At this stage, I think that association is more likely to directly give us headaches than the virus…