• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

The next Pandemic?

Planigale

Philosopher
Planigale
Joined
Jul 6, 2013
Messages
8,160
Location
49 North
Just something to keep an eye on!

UNDIAGNOSED PNEUMONIA - CHINA: (BEIJING, LIAONING) CHILDREN, REPORTED EPIDEMIC, REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
*******************************************************************************************************
A ProMED-mail post
http://www.promedmail.org
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
http://www.isid.org

Date: Tue 21 Nov 2023 17:37 CST
Source: FTV News [in Chinese, machine trans., abridged, edited]
https://www.ftvnews.com.tw/news/detail/2023B21I19M1


With the outbreak of pneumonia in China, children's hospitals in Beijing, Liaoning and other places were overwhelmed with sick children, and schools and classes were on the verge of suspension. Parents questioned whether the authorities were covering up the epidemic.

In the early morning, Beijing Children's Hospital was still overcrowded with parents and children whose children had pneumonia and came to seek treatment. Mr. [W], a Beijing citizen: "Many, many are hospitalized. They don't cough and have no symptoms. They just have a high temperature (fever) and many develop pulmonary nodules."

The situation in Liaoning Province is also serious. The lobby of Dalian Children's Hospital is full of sick children receiving intravenous drips. There are also queues of patients at the traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and the central hospitals. A staff member of Dalian Central Hospital said: "Patients have to wait in line for 2 hours, and we are all in the emergency department and there are no general outpatient clinics."

Some school classes have even been canceled completely. Not only are all students sick, but teachers are also infected with pneumonia. ...

Mr. [W], a Beijing citizen: "Now you are not allowed to report to school. If you have any symptoms such as fever, cold, cough and then you are hospitalized, you can ask for leave..."

Since China stopped adhering to the "zero" policy at the beginning of the year [2023], epidemics such as influenza, mycoplasma, and bronchopneumonia have broken out from time to time. ...

--
Communicated by:
ProMED Rapporteur Dan Silver

[This report suggests a widespread outbreak of an undiagnosed respiratory illness in several areas in China as Beijing and Liaoning are almost 800 km apart. It is not at all clear when this outbreak started as it would be unusual for so many children to be affected so quickly. The report does not say that any adults were affected suggesting some exposure at the schools. ProMED awaits more definitive information about the etiology and scope of this concerning illness in China.

It is too early to project whether this could be another pandemic but as a wise influenza virologist once said to me "The pandemic clock is ticking, we just do not know what time it is."

ProMED thanks Dan Silver for the post. - Mod. LL
Click to expand...
https://promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=8713261
 
Science Money woes and a staff strike threaten dispatches valued by researchers and public health experts.

The first news about the COVID-19 pandemic came not from a government or a scientific publication, but in an email from a disease-alert system called ProMED. This fateful missive in December 2019 about a few cases of a mysterious pneumonia in Wuhan, China, is just one example of how physicians and public health experts around the world have used the 30-year-old, free service to share real-time information about local disease outbreaks with tens of thousands of subscribers.

But ProMED is now on life support. Much of its work came to a screeching halt yesterday when 21 of its 38 paid editors and moderators went on strike. They issued a letter suggesting the service find a new home because of a lack of attention and support from ProMED’s parent organization and sponsor, the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID). Three more have since signed on. Weeks earlier, the society acknowledged that ProMED faced a financial crisis and had begun to take actions it hoped would keep the service alive, such as making its 20,000 subscribers pay to access its emails or website.

Some scientists see the potential loss of ProMED, whose dispatches have slowed to a trickle, as a blow to researchers and health workers in developing countries who rely on its announcements. “The fiber of ProMED has always been open source and it serves a very broad international community,” says Harvard University epidemiologist John Brownstein. “It provides a real global public health service.”
Click to expand...
more

:boggled: https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity...ing-world-to-disease-outbreaks-is-in-trouble/
 
Last edited:
Following a request for data and discussions with Chinese health officials on November 23, the WHO said the increase in outpatient consultations and hospital admissions of children in China is linked to increased circulation of pneumonia caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae—commonly known as "walking pneumonia"—since May and a more recent uptick in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, and influenza. That conclusion was based on data from enhanced surveillance systems for respiratory illnesses implemented in China in mid-October.
(...)
"This is not an indication of a novel pathogen," Van Kerkhove said. "This is expected. This is what most countries dealt with a year or two ago."
Pneumonia outbreak in Chinese kids linked to known pathogens (University of Minnesota, Nov 27, 2023)
Click to expand...


In Denmark, we call Mycoplasma pneumoniae 'cold pneumonia'.
 
And we have it, too! We've already had it for a loooong time, and I seriously doubt that it came from China:
Denmark's Statens Serum Institute (SSI) today said Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections have reached the epidemic level, with an increase that began in the summer but has risen significantly over the past 5 weeks, according to a statement translated and posted by Avian Flu Diary, an infectious disease news blog.

Last week, the Netherlands reported a striking rise in pneumonia in children and young people since August, according to a government surveillance report flagged by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.

The notices of rising pneumonia activity in some European countries come against the backdrop of reports of overwhelmed pediatric hospitals and clinics in China due to a mix of respiratory viruses, including Mycoplasma pneumonia, commonly known as "walking pneumonia." The surge in respiratory infections in China raised fears that a novel pathogen was behind the rise.
Denmark reports Mycoplasma pneumonia epidemic (University of Minnesota, Nov 29, 2023)
Click to expand...


Phew! Now we can all relax! It's nothing new. We already have an actual epidemic of it, but it only became news when China got it.
 
Well that's assuming China is telling the truth, and it's not something else. Let me remind you that after initial cooperation they stopped reporting on Covid completely.
 
Well, WHO's Van Kerkhove is convinced that it's Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and it affects mainly children, which is consistent with Mycoplasma pneumoniae, but feel free to turn it into a conspiracy theory.
 
It's not uncommon for reports out of ProMed to sound alarming at first. It happens all the time as email reports come in. Within a few days or a week or 2 the situation is cleared up. Every reported outbreak is not something China hushes up and the outbreaks are rarely anything like COVID 19.

Reports coming from India suffer from the same early warning—turn out to be nothing beyond a small geographic area. The exception is the monitoring of avian influenza. That's always worth concern.


See #2 mod comment:
[It's worth pointing out that the wording used for the current China alert "undiagnosed pneumonia" along with the also commonly used "undiagnosed respiratory illness" are standard ProMED wording for respiratory diseases presenting with unconfirmed etiologies at time of publication. As ProMED is by design an early warning surveillance system, many of our posts are made before preliminary and/or definitive diagnostic results are available, with those results then provided in follow-up posts. Early warnings allow for appropriate prevention measures to be implemented while test results are still pending, and/or to mobilize testing resources, PPE, etc. needed to positively identify the cause(s). Any implication that using a similar title to our original COVID-19 post somehow created fear among healthcare professionals ignores the very purpose of early warning systems where most events by their very nature will be unconfirmed when the first report is made. To further illustrate this point, we also posted "Undiagnosed respiratory illness - China: (Hong Kong), USA (MI) RFI 20230506.8709890" and "Undiagnosed respiratory illness - Chile: (RM) RFI 20230301.8708657" earlier this year, but neither generated the same level of interest. - Mod.JH]
Click to expand...
 
dann said:
Well, WHO's Van Kerkhove is convinced that it's Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and it affects mainly children, which is consistent with Mycoplasma pneumoniae, but feel free to turn it into a conspiracy theory.
Click to expand...
The report is that it is a variety of known pathogens and the result of lifting COVID precautions. The same has occurred in other countries.

From the above link:
Later on Thursday [23 Nov 2023], the WHO said in a statement that China has not detected any "unusual or novel pathogens," and that the increase in respiratory illnesses spreading in the north of the country was due to "multiple known pathogens." Since October 2023, northern China has reported an "increase in influenza-like illness" compared to the same period over the past 3 years, the WHO said. "Some of these increases are earlier in the season than historically experienced, but not unexpected given the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, as similarly experienced in other countries," the statement said.
Click to expand...
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
It's not uncommon for reports out of ProMed to sound alarming at first. It happens all the time as email reports come in. Within a few days or a week or 2 the situation is cleared up. Every reported outbreak is not something China hushes up and the outbreaks are rarely anything like COVID 19.
Click to expand...

Good points. Thanks.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Yeah, WHO was never tiptoeing around China's statements before, so I guess you're right. As always ! :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

You are conflating a common occurrence seen in ProMed alerts that come from multiple countries with the WHO reaction that happened after the COVID pandemic was clearly established as more than a common report.

China only clammed up after things got out of hand which was a month after the pandemic started. I've been reading ProMed email reports including alerts for more than 30 years. The WHO hasn't been tiptoeing around initial reports out of China in all that time. I don't recall what the WHO did when SARS initially began but there was no initial coverup.

China cooperated overall but there was regional denial by local officials. In Beijing for example the local mayor denied there were any cases but local health care providers blew the whistle on the reports. The federal government wasn't happy about the mayor's attempt to cover things up. It appeared that China was moving forward.

With COVID it was one very big step back. But there were multiple factors the biggest of which were new leadership and attacks by Trump. That's getting off-topic and we don't need to discuss it here except to say you are basing an awful lot on one event (IOW the equivalent of an anecdote).
 
One event ? Look at official China Covid numbers, and tell me with straight face they are surely saying the truth this time. It's systematic cover up.
 
I don't think anyone can say with certainty that "they are surely saying the truth this time" but we are also smack in the middle of cold and flu season so it would be completely normal to see a rise in respiratory illness at this time of year.

In addition, this is the first year (since 2019) that China's zero-Covid policy hasn't been in effect at the beginning of cold and flu season (It was ended in January of this year) so it could be that the population has less natural immunity that it would in a typical year to whatever bugs are going around.
 
Dr.Sid said:
One event ? Look at official China Covid numbers, and tell me with straight face they are surely saying the truth this time. It's systematic cover up.
Click to expand...

What Puppycow said.

Plus I'm looking at a much bigger picture and doing so with more than 30 years of experience reading ProMed alerts and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks.

There is a team of staff members in the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID). On top of that there is an extensive network of people who send in email alerts from all over the world.

https://promedmail.org/team/
The Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID) and is staffed by a multidisciplinary global team of ISID Staff and over 50 subject matter experts reporting from 34 countries on a variety of topic specialties including human, animal and plant health.
Click to expand...
 
Dr.Sid said:
One event ? Look at official China Covid numbers, and tell me with straight face they are surely saying the truth this time. It's systematic cover up.
Click to expand...


So you stick with the conspiracy theory without any hard facts to back it up?! Brilliant!
 
No, I'm just saying whatever China says is irrelevant. Or even worse .. if they say something, the opposite is more likely.
I agree it's probably nothing. But still .. flu and other respiratory viruses epidemics were common everywhere. But not pneumonia. Why the difference ?
 
Dr.Sid said:
No, I'm just saying whatever China says is irrelevant. Or even worse .. if they say something, the opposite is more likely.
I agree it's probably nothing. But still .. flu and other respiratory viruses epidemics were common everywhere. But not pneumonia. Why the difference ?
Click to expand...
bold is mine

Where do you get that bolded part from? Pneumonia is common with flu, RSV etc.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Just never heard it mentioned anywhere.
Click to expand...


Like I said in post 4:
dann said:
And we have it, too! We've already had it for a loooong time, and I seriously doubt that it came from China:

Phew! Now we can all relax! It's nothing new. We already have an actual epidemic of it, but it only became news when China got it.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom