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ANY FEVER TO DECLARE? Temperature check for arrivals at BIA for possible corona infection

The bubble burst on the Great Chinese Dream in this new dawned Chinese zodiacal Year of the Rat when a snake or bat borne virus showed its deadly presence amongst humans and revealed the truism of how the best laid plans of rats and men can be swiftly disposed by gods and fate.

The microbe with the spiky head, spawned of an innocuous though ingenious mother that gave the world the common cold for which no cure has still been found, mutated beyond the sniffles to bring the emerging super-power China down to her knees, the nifty spring in her confident step nipped in her ambitious stride.

Escaped from its natural lair of the crawling and the winged that hitherto had played host to it, the coronavirus graduated to the human domain due to the long cultivated, weird eating habits of the Chinese, to whom all creatures great and small, whether walking, slithering, swimming or flying, were fair game to be eaten alive as an appetizing bite on the side, dipped in sweet soy.

It was a matter of time for the coronavirus to take a great leap into the future; and when the time bomb exploded, to habituate freely in the human realm and stalk, with the shadow of fear and death, every human who crossed its path.  Without a mask, as the experts constantly warned the world in the initial stages of the invasion.

But would a mask around one’s nose and lips serve as an iron clad armour of protection? The sort of metal gear brave knights of yore used to dress in when they embarked on their crusades to prevent spear or lance piercing their skin? Or the kind of chastity belts they locked their ladies in, lest they suffer a fate far worse than death in their absence?

Apparently not. It is now advised, that the first frights of shock and panic have given way to a more collected and sober response. The fear of the unknown, the dread of knowing for certain that one hasn’t the foggiest of how best to respond to it, not merely to save lives but to contain the contagion’s spread, can cause the onset of shivers on the strongest sinews.

But now, with scientists familiarising themselves with the flamboyant lifestyle of the feared foe and beginning to gauge its bizarre behavioral patterns and to map its genetic code, a standard guide when to use the face masks has been issued.

Basically, it is as follows: should  you wear a mask?

•  YES. If you have respiratory symptoms, cough or difficulty breathing.
•  YES. If you are providing care to individuals with respiratory symptoms.
•  YES. If you are a health worker and attending to individuals with respiratory problems.
•  NO. It is not needed for the general public who do not have respiratory problems to wear face masks.
•  AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, make sure you wash your hands thoroughly each time you return home and, if on the move, to use a hand sanitizer, each time you touch some object which is likely to have been touched by other hands.

So that’s it then. A mask, said to be not that effective since the miniscule virus can creep through its openings – unless it’s an airtight and virus tight N95 respirator used by medical staff – and hand sanitizing spray is the gamut of the protection presently available to guard oneself against the marauding microbe on the war path.

Here’s a brief take on what the coronavirus, now clinically named 2019-nCoV, is all about.

•  So what is the coronavirus? It’s a family of viruses that can cause the mild cold all the way up to SARS or MERS. These viruses look like a tennis ball with all these spikes sticking out of it and depending on the type of spike it allows that virus to attach to certain laces. So some viruses have the spike that attaches to your nose. You just get a common cold. But the SARS virus and this new virus have the spikes that allow them to attach to the cells in your lung.
•  And when it latches there it puts in information to make photocopies of itself. So it uses our equipment to make more viruses. Just like all viruses, it needs a target. It has to get into your lungs and it has to get their by your help. Therefore, it needs us to move it there. Don’t hang around sneezy people because you’re going to breathe it in and don’t touch your face because that’s how the virus is going to get in.
•  The masks are helpful but not necessary because they are leaky. The one that are commonly bought have pockets so therefore the virus can get in. What the masks really do is that they stop us from touching our face. The true mask is the N95 worn by the medical staff.
•  So in the beginning the coronavirus will cause flu like symptoms so people will get a stuffy nose. As soon as that virus starts manufacturing in your lung cells, producing all these copies of the virus, all of a sudden now you’ve killed the lung cells. So now you can’t exchange oxygen. The early symptoms shown are shortness of breath and that’s why they end up in hospital.
•  How is it treated? So currently, we don’t have a direct treatment for the coronavirus. We don’t have a medication that can kill it off.  So then it’s really just supportive. If a patient can’t breathe, we give them oxygen to help them breathe. When they can’t drink we give them fluids to support them. Their kidneys begin to shut down and so we help. This is a new virus that we’ve never seen before. The answer is to develop antibodies. These are things that can grab on to the spikes on the virus and it will get rid of the virus for you.

Adding to that sobering thought, the World Health Organisation stepped in this week to declare war not on the invasive virus for the deaths it had so far caused but on the havoc it had so far spread in the countries in which it had gained entry as a stowaway on a human vessel to sojourn.

The Geneva-based UN organisation said it was working around the clock with internet and social media giants to combat widespread misinformation surrounding the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of the dangers posed by “the spread of rumours and misinformation” as China saw a surge in deaths and infections from the highly contagious virus.

“We have worked with Google to make sure people searching for information about coronavirus see WHO information at the top of their search results,” Tedros said in opening remarks to the UN health agency’s Executive Board meeting in Geneva. “Social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Tencent and Tiktok have also taken steps to limit the spread of misinformation,” he said.

His comments were interrupted by a fit of coughing, but the WHO chief assured the assembly that there was no need to worry: “It is not corona.”

He spoke as the death toll in China surged above 360, surpassing the number of fatalities in the country from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2002-03.

The WHO war was on a new sort of epidemic, not hitherto unknown, but for which no legally, morally, politically acceptable cure had still been discovered. The only effective albeit extreme remedy known was to shoot the harbinger of bad news on sight and the havoc and the panic and the media induced mass fear will vanish without trace and all will be quiet on every front.

True, the virus will be infecting more and more people and more and more people will still be dying of it, but it will be happening in controlled, sterile areas and the grave risk of the news escaping to the broad acres of the land to alarm and strike the fear of God in men will be less and thus so will the damage be than had the virus made a dash to the open urban zones.

From their plush Geneva officers, the world’s top paid bureaucrats could only think of placing a damper on the smoke that were coming out from the birthplace of the coronavirus, Wuhan and lowering the red flag on the clear and present danger the world was presently witnessing.

While scientists were busy in their labs working against the clock to find an antidote, the WHO executives had even coined a word for it: Infodemic. An over-abundance of information.

WHO executives warned last Sunday that the coronavirus outbreak “has been accompanied by a massive ‘infodemic’,” which it defined as “an over-abundance of information — some accurate and some not — that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” The agency said it had risk communication and social media teams “working 24 hours a day to identify the most prevalent rumours that can potentially harm the public’s health, such as false prevention measures and cures”.

Only last week the WHO declared the crisis a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Now they were trying to downplay it, perhaps to please China, a powerful member of the United Nations with a seat on the Security Council plus a right of veto.

WHO chief Tedros underscored on Monday that the rare declaration was not taken due to lack of confidence in China’s handling of the situation.  It was “taken primarily because of the signs of human-to-human transmission outside China, and our concern of what might happen if the virus were to spread in a country with a weaker health system,” he said.

Taking the Beijing line, WHO was now advising countries not to panic — even if their people were — and not to take “measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”. This comes at a time when a wide range of countries are advising against travel to China and even closing their borders to people travelling from the country.

Not that one expects this world health body to be a modern day doomsday prophet and daily neigh ‘the end is nigh, the end is nigh’. What is expected of this world health guardian is to strike the proper balance, urging people not to panic whilst keeping them on tip toe, alert to the danger posed. Not to publish the daily Corona Good News Gazette

For does anyone really know what goes on behind the bamboo curtain?

After the deadly coronavirus had shown its nightmarish presence in the capital city of Hubei province, Wuhan, in late December and early January its spread was slow though steady, maintaining always a 2 percent fatality rate. By January 23, its official toll was 1,237 infected, 41 dead. By January 29, thousands more had been infected and 130 people were dead.

The Chinese government thought it serious enough just two weeks ago to order a lockdown of Wuhan, a city with a population of 11 million – that’s half the population of Lanka. After China’s bitter experience with the SARS, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome which infected 8,100 people, killing a worldwide total of 774 and in mainland China 349 people, China appeared determined not to let history repeat itself and pulled all the stops to ensure the virus would be trapped within Wuhan and did not escape the circle of containment.

Chinese President Xi Jinping himself on January 28 described the coronavirus as a ‘devil’ and said he will not rest till he flays the devil. The virus is a devil and we cannot let the devil hide, the Chinese state television quoted President Xi Jinping as saying.

More than 56 million people were subject to travel curbs in the Hubei province, public transport was halted in 18 cities, train stations were shut, events were cancelled and theatres, libraries and karaoke bars were closed. The virus had condemned the entire Hubei population to house arrest.

And in locked down Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, travel out on a barge on the great Yangtze River was barred. The residents were urged to stay put at home to prevent the virus gaining rapid mobility. And anyway, with all avenues of travel sealed, and with many shops and entertainment places shut down to prevent the infection from spreading, there was nowhere to go but grin and bear the ordeal and pray to their household gods that an infected neighbor wouldn’t drop in for a cup of tea and chat.

But still, with all these precautions taken, with all the modes of transport closed, with the military patrolling streets and guarding the frontiers, the once wily snake or bat borne virus now present in infected human cough, spittle or sneeze slyly escaped through the well placed dragnet.

Soon, it was reported, it was striking terror in all the regions of China. It had laid siege on all of China. Furthermore it had voyaged to more than 15 countries, Sri Lanka included, and is fast becoming a serial killer, if not a mass murderer the world will not find easy to forget.

Meanwhile, it is reported that the Chinese doctor who tried to raise the alarm about coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan has died after contracting the disease. Early reports of the death of Li Wenliang were retracted, only for the doctor to succumb later in the day.

Last morning  the coronavirus death toll in mainland China had risen to 636, with 31,161 people reported infected and on death row unless the body’s own defences grants a reprieve. Mysteriously the death rate holds on to an uncanny 2 percent. Though this is greeted as a spot of good news, it will cease to be if the number of those infected rise to millions in a land with a population of over a billion.

Two percent dead out of ten million infected will cease to be of any comfort when the actual number killed by the virus is shown to be 400,000.

Clearly the Corona cannot be wished away at the behest of those who suddenly call for calm. It seems as if it will be here to stay for some time at least.  Already some experts of a different school of thought have warned, as the BBC announced on Friday, that Africa and South Asia will be vulnerable to the coronavirus attack since the health systems have to be strong to withstand the onslaught.

Thus this is no time to lower the guard but to raise it and follow the scouts’ motto  as advised: Be Prepared.

Sri Lankan Girl, what a great way to fly

Angels of mercy take wing to bring back 21 Lankans at risk from the China virus WELCOME ABOARD PARADISE: Behind the protective suits same warm Sri Lankan service with a smile A host of angels  were aboard UL Flight 1423 engaged in a Mission of Mercy to bring back 31 Lankan students trapped in the besieged city of Wuhan, facing the ever present danger of contracting the coronavirus now running amok in mainland China. The SriLankan crew were not mercenaries who had volunteered to risk their lives to fly into infection ridden Wuhan and return with their precious human cargo aboard. The mercy mission landed safely at Mattala Airport shortly after dawn following its extremely long turnaround flight from Colombo to Wuhan and back. The students who were relieved to be back on home ground were handed over to the care of health authorities and other relevant institutions, But bringing them home safely was not enough to the crew of volunteers.  The extra  money they received for volunteering for the flight was returned by the captain on behalf of his flying crew of men and women. Chief Pilot Chaminda De Zoysa has written to Captain Ranatunga stating that the entire crew who operated the Wuhan flight have collectively decided to respectfully decline the flight allowances paid for the said duty period. “Please be kind enough to facilitate the airline to utilise those monies toward procuring masks and gloves for the use of ground staff at Bandaranaike International Airport, Colombo or for a worthy cause,” he said. Well done. Thanks for the humanitarian gesture to save Lankan lives. By flying beyond the radar of duty this crew of 16 showed that behind the full body protection gear they wore that there was not only a smile of welcome but a heart every ready to reach out to those in distress. And, instead of stashing away their extra allowance in some Panama off shore account in the spouse’s name, thanks again, for ploughing the proceeds back to the cash hit company to enable its director’s purchase badly needed face masks and gloves for its ground staff’s protection against the coronavirus.

Hollywood legend dies at 103

KIRK DOUGLAS: With son Michal and daughter in law Catherine Zeta Jones He fought ‘Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, rose against authority  and valiantly fought as Spartacus, survived the Gunfight at OK Corral and lived to tell the tale and, outliving the heroes and the villains of his time,  died peacefully at home at the age of a staggering 103. It was a Hollywood career that spanned seventy years, he was an actor, producer, director, philanthropist and writer who became an international star playing the leading role in the film Champion in 1949. Scores of other hits followed, notable among them were Spartacus, Gunfight at Ok Corral and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. He was the only son of poor immigrant parents. He had six sisters. Out of his three sons, one followed in his footsteps and achieved stardom in his own right. He is Michal Douglas who is married to film star Catherine Zeta Jones. He was a stout 103 when he breathed his last this Friday.