The American handling of its citizens aboard the Diamond Princess was peculiar at best. At least American citizens were given the chance to say “No” which is more than what can be said for the Chinese even in their own homes in China.
Speaking of medical ethics, and etiquettes, why were 3600 passengers forced to incubate pathogens in a docked cruise ship? There’s more than enough history on buses and floating buses to suggest that disease spreads rampantly in those environments. In this case the suspected disease for the ship quarantine is the highly infectious COVID-19.
Is this just one more example of governments acting for themselves and not for their constituents? In any case, we all must deal with the outcomes.
Analysis by Micheal John
“Patients should have the right to choose self-quarantine, in other words, stay home and drink broth and have bed rest,” adduces Sara Qin, a Wuhan nurse who uses an anglicized first name since she first went to university in England. Her section in a Hubei hospital has been commended for producing good patient outcomes with consistency. “Good care, works,” she says.
She has a point.
There is not yet an approved medication for this or any virus like COVID-19.
Photo Credit: Xinhua. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
The picture and its story. Somebody worked hard to create this makeshift “hospital” in Wuhan, China. Their hearts were in the right place and the many kind touches suggest there is a lot of love in that city, but not for the Chinese government, for each other. Nurses in the city say the same things.
COVID-19 spreads like a virus. It is a virus and its first goal is to multiply and evolve for survival. It wants to make millions of copies of itself and seeks a host within which to do that. That’s why many approaches to confining patients are contraindicated.
COVID-19 is a highly contagious bundle of DNA in a container that continuously searches for hosts. For COVID-19 quarantine, this close quarter situation is contraindicated. One person can infect all.
This image above shows the converted cultural building in Wuhan China turned into a makeshift hospital for COVID-19 suspected cases. The spread of illness aboard the Diamond Princess is an illustration of what can happen.
“This forced mass confinement concept as an approach to controlling COVID-19 spread has flaws. Many of the worst cases have the same morbid outcome regardless of being outpatient or alternatively in large wards amidst swarms of suspected cases they then infect,” says Wuhan nurse. “Home quarantine may work better. It is now being tried but with welding torches sealing doors. That is not indicated either. Ill patients stay in bed of their own volition.”
Nurse Qin would be the voice of experience in such instances. She has watched what happens from the front lines, seeing the spread of illness among persons in close quarters. Her story of what she has seen in Wuhan from ‘behind the blue doors’ is one worth hearing. Another time.
Creation of The Luxury Incubator was an epic bad call.
American Diamond Princess cruise liner travellers were urged to leave their ship by their government and come back to America. It is shocking that not every passenger followed that advice, but that is their right and it is good that they had the opportunity to make their own decisions about their own fate. Certainly their decision brings no change to anyone else’s outcome, only their own. Xi Jinping should pay heed to this concept before he gets it (figuratively) shoved down his throat by 1.4 billion Chinese who now are realizing the collosal risk of top-down autocratic communist governments in disaster recovery mode. It’s not “great” as WHO has suggested, perhaps out of courtesy. It’s the same approach that has been used on the Uighurs.
328 Americans left the ship and 44 stayed aboard the floating incubator.
COVID-19-Infected passengers were to be unwelcome on the trip, the passengers were all told.
The whole lot were locked up in buses for hours without even a toilet. Some say it lasted ten hours. This defies the Wuhan learning experience and the Diamond Princess “incubation experience”.
The Americans from aboard the cruise liner were herded into old cargo-variant Boeing 747s and flown to California and Texas for quarantine living that may not be as enjoyable as their cruise ship experience. Since then they have virtually vanished from the face of the Earth, say their families.
Fourteen were allegedly tested positive for the COVID-19 virus but were packed into the aircraft regardless, once again mixing infected patients with the population in a confined space. It’s a head scratcher. The trip was cold and the flights were uncomfortable in the makeshift seats added at the last minute to the over flogged 747 cargo holds. Hopefully the virus was subdued also by the discomforts of a cold 7-thousand foot cabin pressure altitude.
File Photo Credit; Kalitta Air. Not the actual aircraft but a similar plane of the same cargo carrier. It was a rainy night when the floating incubator escapees left Japan. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
Return home of the Zombies? This could be a Quentin Tarantino flick. Americans are shipped like potentially infected cattle back to the United States from the Diamond Princess COVID-19 incubator. They are now locked up in quarantine centers on US military bases in Texas and in California after two weeks locked up on the cruise liner.
What will happen to the remaining passengers aboard ship is yet unknown but there is talk of other countries following the American example, hopefully treating the passengers and patients in a much better manner.
Why did it take so long? Is this another case of governments acting for themselves and not their constituents? That blight seems more infectious than COVID-19.
Lessons aboard The Diamond Princess cruise ship docked at Daikoku Pier in the Japanese port of Yokohama, suggest that collecting people in confined areas like any of the mass quarantine wards of the new and makeshift hospitals in Wuhan City, has revealed a recipe for disaster. It’s not a novel approach. Ordinarily with a more benign infection it would work. But this virus rampages. A change in approach is needed. It’s not a case of a foul, it’s a matter of learning. The spread of the illness aboard the ship despite massive efforts by the crews was like a wildfire and it continues. We must all learn from this in order to survive the COVID-19 and all its coronavirus cousins in the future, none the least of which is Ebola, a horrific pathogenic menace to human existence.
It is now believed in a part of the scientific community that a prophylaxis pharmacological approach to suppressing the presence of the HIV in the blood of infected patients may be applied with good outcomes to even the worst cases of the COVID-19 pathogen. In fact it has been tried and the lopinavir-ritonavir combination may suppress the novel coronavirus to levels the patient themselves can then fight.
Some experimentation with encouraging outcomes has been conducted in three cities of China, at least, and also nearby at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Myongji Hospital, Hanyang University College of Medicine, Goyang, South Korea.
This is in the realm of scientific experimentation and readers should consult their nation’s drug administration for what is approved in their regions. Consult your own physician or medical care provider about your own case.
A recent conversation with other experimenters on the weekend brought up the question of using lopinavir/ritonavir in combination with lamivudine/zidovudine in an antiretroviral (ART) approach to the COVID-19. This might be making some assumptions of things unknown about the COVID-19 but in the context of known pathogens, whatever saves lives in desperate situations could lead to a treatment plan for every case. No clear thought should be discouraged. This disease is causing some very nasty deaths of pneumonia asphyxiation or coronary complications. It must be defeated.
This gets beyond the scope of our readership, but it should be said that some of the best and the brightest scientists in the world who have worked hard to save patients are bringing what they have learned from HIV/AIDS to this COVID-19 endeavour and for many reasons, it looks promising.
One of the paradoxical parts of this viral attack to the lungs is that the human body can overreact and flood bronchial tubes with debris and cause a further deterioration in health. The symptom of breathing difficulty has thus far been the indicator of imminent morbidity in COVID-19 patients, say doctors and nurses.
That is why an antiretroviral approach where the virus is radically suppressed, can reduce overreaction and allow the patient’s system to better analyze the attacker and rid the body of the few remaining hiding virus cells.
It goes something like that. In reality the two combattants, the pathogens and the human immune system are evolving and adjusting to each other and some expectations will be met but the rest is unknown how the COVID-19 will evolve and how the human body will deal with it. From this knowledge will come a vaccine, hopefully.
Secondary transmissions have indeed occurred and the speed of transmission has been accelerating to a point that some fear a massive spread.
“Be prepared,” says Dr. Tedros, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Another case for using prophylaxis medications to suppress the COVID-19 is that this virus eats holes in lung tissue. This can yield very bad outcomes for patients. Some learning was available from SARS to suggest this outcome must be avoided by early suppression of the virus before it has infected the lower respiratory system. Candidates for trials may initially be patients who have a history of pulmonary events. But there are numerous contradictions to the theory that the COVID-19 only exploits underlying chronic conditions.
There is something else about this virus that has been missed but may be under study now.
A word on Statistics
FPM.news and its partners have someone working 24/7 tracking the disease. They are occasionally quoted incorrectly. The distinction is the number of cases historically versus the number of cases currently active. Of even the worst cases, a high percentage recover with very good outcomes. The cases that are tracked are the worst. There are hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million cases of minor or asymptomatic infections that have no outcome at all. The patient recovers after infecting one, two or three others, maybe. A percentage that is unknown, a small percentage become seriously ill. Those that present at hospitals are counted. Those of the very low percentile that are morbid cases that stay home, are later presented at morgues. That’s how it is going, say FPMAG and partner investigators tracking the COVID-19. That also explains the unhappy anecdotal stories that come from non-medical ‘citizen reporters’ (a generous term for wackiness) about busier than usual mortuaries.
Every number has a face. Photo Credit: Melissa Hemingway / FPM.news
The following sources are available to readers. FPM.news and The Nurses Without Borders make direct contact and interview colleagues and sources close to the information around the world to track events and statistics.
- The People’s Republic of China
- Canadian Department of Health
- US Centers for Disease Control
- Hong Kong Global Tracking (PDF)
- Philippines Dept. of Health
- Govt. of Ireland
- Australia DoH
- Ministry of Health, Singapore
- Province of Ontario, Canada CoronaVirus Info
- WHO
- Government of New Zealand