
China building 1k-bed hospital over the weekend to treat coronavirus - tosh
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-hospital-idUSKBN1ZN07U
======
BiasRegularizer
I was born and raised in Wuhan. My father and a few friends are still in
Wuhan, one of the friend is a nurse. Here's what they told me:

* The hospitals in Wuhan are at absolute maximum capacity. they are lumping any fever cases (e.g. flu) patients with potential coronavirus patients in the same room.

* People with mild symptoms are sent home due to capacity, they are instructed to be quarantined at home unless symptoms get worse

* Despite reports, surgical masks are completely sold out in China, my dad is asking me to send him 3M (the brand) masks from abroad.

* Even hospitals are low on surgical masks for staff. Each nurse is given one or two masks per day, but per regulation, they needed to replace the mask every 3 hours.

* A wider scale locked down went in to effect in Wuhan this morning, forbidding anybody from entering or leaving on any roads, rail, water or flight.

* Domestic news are filled with non-sense, top 3 news today are praising Xi's CNY speech, which has exactly zero word mentioning the pandemic or Wuhan.

[Edit] One more thing,

* This coronavirus is potentially deadlier than SARS. Most of the 25 deaths are from the original 47 cases that was reported a few weeks ago.

~~~
jialutu
If you are interested, there is a crowdfund in the UK trying to raise money to
provide surgical masks to doctor and nurses in Wuhan. Here is the link:
[https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/standbywuhan](https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/standbywuhan)

~~~
lykr0n
No. That's the government's job. China is not some impoverished country.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> China is not some impoverished country.

That's not obvious. Here are some countries with higher estimated GDP per
capita than China:

Mexico (roughly equal)

Malaysia (10% more)

Romania (24% more)

Uruguay (69% more)

~~~
lykr0n
The per capita is low in China, but that doesn't make the different layers of
government unable to provide stuff like that.

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torgian
Too bad they’re not doing more in other cities.

My wife ( mainland Chinese ) said the hospital in Chongqing told here there
were 24 confirmed cases there. She’s sick now and possibly has the Wuhan virus
( though her chest scans are clear ).

Unfortunately the doctors are overworked right now due to the holidays and she
can’t see anyone for the next couple days. Hopefully she doesn’t have the
virus, but she’s taking precautions.

I think the virus is spreading more than the news is letting on.

~~~
Markoff
it's also less deadly than the attention it gets, so while there are for sure
much more infected than the confirmed cases the mortality rate is also pretty
low affecting only old people and people with weak immunity, so no point to
panic about it

~~~
asdff
Seriously. Typically 60-80k people die of the flu every year in the U.S.
alone. 40 deaths in the largest country by population in the world is noise.

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socceroos
Setting aside quality assurance and risk assessment/mitigation, I'm seriously
impressed with the speed in which they construct complex infrastructure.

The are some good reasons we don't quite go at this pace, but there are lots
of good lessons about expediency to be gleaned as well.

~~~
yorwba
This is exactly the opposite of complex infrastructure. They're reducing a
hospital down to the essentials: beds under a roof. If it weren't winter, they
could've gotten away with just using tents, too.

~~~
koheripbal
I'm still not convinced they aren't just building a simple morgue... or
perhaps even just a large covered grave.

...all we see so far is a TON of excavators digging a hole.

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jxramos
coronavirus, where does this stack in the legacy of nasty viruses that come
out every few years? I can remember several off hand making the news, maybe
I'm lumping some mistakenly. Anyone know a place where a timeline and scale of
each pandemic (is that what they're known as?) can be found?

    
    
        * swine flu
        * SARS
        * bird flu
        * H1N1

~~~
nayuki
Adding one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome)

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panic
Did Reuters do any of its own investigation here, or is this story just
republished from Chinese state media?

~~~
SteveSmith16384
It says "Writing by Ben Blanchard" at the bottom. No idea who they are though.

~~~
fma
The author added a few misc. info but the article is more of a report on a
report...many of the sentences were like

"Building machinery, including 35 diggers and 10 bulldozers, arrived at the
site on Thursday night, with the aim to get the new facility ready by Monday,
the paper added."

“The construction of this project is to solve the shortage of existing medical
resources,” the report said.

“It created a miracle in the history of medical science,” the paper added.

------
hkai
Fantastic propaganda piece. Well, it's more of a camp made it prefabricated
pieces, but yeah, let's repeat Beijing's propaganda.

------
peterkelly
Can you imagine something like this happening in America?

~~~
FatalLogic
>Can you imagine something like this happening in America?

A new, dangerous respiratory virus mutating in the overcrowded and unhygienic
environment of a poorly-managed city market, and then spreading almost
unchecked for six weeks, amidst continual denials of its serious nature?

No, probably not.

~~~
hatenberg
No probably not... crammed homeless in city parks giving each other Hep, city
streets disinfected from feces, leprosy being endemic in parts of the homeless
population. People unable to afford life-saving medication or unable to take
time off work due to lack of medical leave, choosing to carry their viruses to
work. People also never eat Armadillo meet and come down with the plague.
Large parts of the population distrusting science and government and rejecting
vital vaccination to keep diseases from spreading.

Such things would never happen in any kind of first world country. let's focus
on exotic animal markets in China to make us all feel superior

~~~
_iyig
While the plight of the homeless in the U.S. is great discussion fodder, I
don't see what relevance it has to meat market hygiene in China, or the
state's role in publishing accurate public health information.

~~~
hatenberg
Yes, thank god we have no head of state questioning vaccines and no federal
agencies dismantling health related regulations. thank god

No, health epidemics could never thrive in our amazing country because we have
safe meat markets

~~~
gamblor956
You're right, they couldn't, because the US has much stricter safety
regulations to prevent stuff like this from happening.

Unlike China, the West tries to learn from its mistakes. It's why we have so
much bureaucracy. The cost of red tape seems excessive until shit like this
happens in the places that don't have red tape.

~~~
hatenberg
Wow. Really. Only we are able to learn from mistakes and we have so much
bureaucracy.

We do so much learning, its Yuuge I tell you. No other country learns so
great. And our bureaucracy, everyone is jealous of it, it is so highly, so
much red tape. Nobody has that much red tape.

[https://qz.com/1790253/the-usda-is-recalling-more-unsafe-
mea...](https://qz.com/1790253/the-usda-is-recalling-more-unsafe-meat-now-
than-in-2013/)

Lol

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kkwak
They are using pre-fab (not sure if this article mentioned that). Makes things
so much easier where buildings can be built in factories with similar
standards. Lots of new builds nowadays have so many little issues due to bad
quality control.

~~~
jansan
Even with prefab components this is an amazing achievement. I suspect that
here in Germany we would still be waiting for the hospital to treat the
Marburg virus patients to be completed.

~~~
rntksi
I read about the airport debacle in Germany, were you perhaps referring to
that?

~~~
ifthenelseend
The Brandenburg Airport in Berlin is already took 15 years instead of 5 and it
is still not ready...

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butler14
Two weeks ago it wasn't human transmissible

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duxup
I think the more accurate phrase was that it wasn't human transmissible .. as
far as anyone knew / there wasn't evidence to show it was.

I think with any new virus or etc folks focus on what they know at that time
... and effectively waiting for testing / what they observe to enhance their
understanding.

~~~
koheripbal
No. It was shown that human to human transmission happened in December.

The issue is that the Chinese gov't threatened prison to anyone who reported
it.

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momentmaker
Sounds more and more like Raccoon City...

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ifthenelseend
In Germany it will take 15 years to build a hospital. True bureaucratic hell
on planet.

~~~
neuronic
In Germany people have rights and that complicates things, yes.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
People's rights are not what's stopping BER from being finished. People's
rights aren't what set the Elbphilharmonie so far behind schedule and over
budget.

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dgyreghyt
This kind of thing is basically impossible in the West now.

There would be one rabbit family on the site, which would trigger endless
environmental protest and lawsuits to protect their right of living there and
against disruptions of their habitat.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _endless environmental protest and lawsuits_

States and the federal government have emergency powers for crises. This is
how _e.g._ FEMA is able to rapidly erect shelters in disaster areas without
needing to care about zoning rules.

