nCov - Formosahut forum

A very cool map of the nCoV virus. I don't know how accurate it is:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd4029942346...

10 cities now on unprecedented lockdown. 100 million people on lockdown? It must be approaching that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/23/coronavirus-panic-spreads-in-china-with-t...

10 cities now on unprecedented lockdown.

Shows how brittle we really are. You wouldn't have to be Nostradamus to know that at some stage a virus is liable to take out 20% of the world's population - hopefully it's not this one.

The scale of the lockdowns does indicate an elevated degree of concern

According to China's health commission minister:

“The transmissibility shows signs of increasing and the ‘walking source of infection’ [where patients have few signs of disease] has made it difficult to control and prevent the disease,” said Ma Xiaowei.

“For this new coronavirus we have not identified the source of the infection and we are not clear about the risk of its mutation and how it spreads. Since this is a new coronavirus there might be some changes in the coming days and weeks, and the danger it poses to people of different ages is also changing.”

Sounds a bit alarming.

Death toll now at 80 - has almost doubled every day over the last few days

Chinese health officials have confirmed human to human transmission

Currently estimated to have a 3% fatality rate but this is thought to be an over-estimation due to under-reporting of infections (flu, which kills 400 000 per year, has a 1% fatality rate)

Unclear how easily it is spread - but swelling numbers suggest it's spreading fast

China is giving it's 'people control' systems a good work out with 33 mil under lock down

This is an interesting virus because although the fatality rate is low relative to SARS and MERS, it is contagious while the carrier is asymptomatic, something that SARS and MERS were not, so it appears that it will spread like wildfire once it takes hold in an area.

And this means that although the fatality rate is lower, the actual fatalities may be much higher because more people may end up catching it.

I also wonder if a virus is more likely to mutate if more people have it. A lot is made of the possibility of viruses to mutate and take off. I remember that was a fear with SARS. But is that really a common thing? If it were, one would think we'd have much more of a problem with viruses than we do.

Yes that mutation point is interesting - as far as i recall SARS just stayed SARS the whole way through. I assume nCov is itself a mutation of an existing virus but don't know if it's likely to mutate again - and whether that mutation would make it worse

As for the acceleration rate, the death toll is roughly doubling every day - it's now up to 104. SARS killed 774 so its on track to eclipse that in three days if it keeps going at this rate

There are some interesting posts on this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/nCoV/

That would suck if you were on the flight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=Nspvsw7Mr3Y&feature=emb_logo

From: https://www.dailybulletin.com/2020/01/28/flight-from-epicenter-of-coronavirus-outbreak-...

The passengers were to be quarantined at ONT in “a highly secure, contained facility isolated from other passengers and staff,” an earlier airport statement read. Ontario airport officials said the Wuhan passengers would remain there “for however long is necessary,” but that would be up to the CDC, the California Office of Emergency Services and the San Bernardino County Department of Health.

And this is the fear -- forced quarantine in a place other than one's home, even when you're feeling fine. Note that you'd be quarantined with some people who are likely sick, so by being quarantined, you're more likely to get sick, on top of it just, well, sucking in general.

Death toll is up to 170. The good news is that it hasn't kept multiplying exponentially, but none-the-less, still climbing at an alarming rate - about 30-40 a day.

The reddit posts are interesting. One graph has it outstripping SARS over a 45-day time-frame, while the video report (gutsy effort by the reporter if he really is in China) is informative and alarming. It also casts doubt on the figures being released - basically it's a question of 'Do you believe the CCP is telling us the whole truth?'

And this is the fear -- forced quarantine in a place other than one's home, even when you're feeling fine. Note that you'd be quarantined with some people who are likely sick, so by being quarantined, you're more likely to get sick, on top of it just, well, sucking in general.

Sounds like a holiday from hell. Another case has just emerged with 6000 people locked-down on a cruise ship off Italy.

Interesting podcast: https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/jan/30/the-race-to-contain-coronavirus-podcast

Deaths now at 259 - that's quite a jump from 170 the previous day - almost 90 - which is by far the biggest one day increase.

The caveat as always is: 'How much can you trust the figures being released by the CCP?'

This is worrying me as i have a friend coming to visit from Taiwan soon.

"The Trump administration has declared a public health emergency over the coronavirus outbreak and announced it will temporarily bar entry to the US for people traveling from China unless they are Americans or immediately related to US citizens."

Since America (and Australia) officially adheres to the 'one-China' policy then i assume the ban applies to Taiwan citizens as well. If Australia follows suit then i worry my friend won't be allowed in.

Apart from my own situation, it must cause a massive economic disruption if all travel between China and the rest of the world ends up being closed down. Using SARS as a guide - it lasted for about 6 months. I'd hate to be a tourist business relying on Chinese customers

At this point, I'm wondering if the whole world isn't massively overreacting. First of all, it appears that there may be many, many more cases than reported simply because a lot of people have mild symptoms or even no symptoms. If that's the case, this may end up being no more deadly than the common flu. And if that's true, then clearly we're overreacting.

On the other hand, we don't fully understand the virus, so I can see the need for caution. But if we find in a couple months from now that the fatality rate is indeed quite low, then I have to wonder what all the fuss is about.

Now, there's another possibility and that is that governments are taking so much precaution because there is evidence that this could be far more serious a virus than what we're being told, though I sort of doubt that's the case. Still, it's clear that it's highly contagious, and the low mortality rate makes it even more contagious and assures it's relative longevity compared to SARS and MERS, both of which tended to kill a high enough percentage of their hosts to help in their downfall. nCoV may just turn out to be one tough, persistent bugger. And, with more carriers, I assume there's a greater likelihood that it could mutate.

In my on-line job, I work with a lot of teachers in China and the rest of East Asia, and many of them are locked out of school or left the country for CNY and can't get back in. Schools in Vietnam are now closing also. So it's causing a lot of disruption already for me and the company I work for.

Here is some info:

"Seasonal flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year, according to ... U.S. Centers for Disease Control"

"So far this flu season, about 0.05% of people who caught the flu have died from the virus in the U.S., according to CDC data

nCov death toll up to 563, which is more than SARS killed in China.

Deaths have "risen by 73 in the previous 24 hours – the third record daily rise in a row – with 70 of the deaths recorded in Hubei province, the centre of the outbreak.

28,018 confirmed cases throughout the country – a rise of 3,694 and the biggest 24-hour rise – as well as 24,702 suspected cases"

Throughout the outbreak, the death rate for 2019-nCoV has been about 2%.

Each infected person has been spreading the virus to an average of 2.2 people.

The CDC estimates that, on average, about 8% of the U.S. population gets sick with the flu each season.

in 2009 the swine flu pandemic, is estimated to have killed between 151,000 and 575,000 people worldwide, according to the CDC".

[image]

This is somewhat disturbing: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3870468

Bloody hell! That's Brave New World and then some

It's odd because given the data you previously posted, this virus is relatively tame, so why the big deal. Why all the extreme measures?

Spoke to my sister - she's a scientist - it's not her speciality but she'd just attended a briefing from experts. They said 'next week will tell the story'. She seemed to think the main thing was that it's a new virus so it has shock-value that goes 'viral'. There's an interesting metaphor between the two. She seemed to think that eventually it will just fall back into the pack of flu viruses that already exist.

I liked the comment from a Chinese netizen:

"Yeah all those rooms are prefab jail cells and nobody is asking why China has thousands of prefab jail cells ready to go at all times, which isn’t creepy at all and is very normal to have."

That's what I think is going to happen. It's just going to slowly move off the front page and top story category. That's what happened with H1N1 and MERS. I think MERS is still around, isn't it? Not sure.

I also heard on an interview yesterday that the next two weeks will determine a lot, so we'll see what happens. I think people are going to just tire of this as an issue once they realize it just doesn't kill that many people.

Yeah, that quote is great. Portable, pre-fab jails. What a concept.

Yep, MERS is still around and it has a fatality rate of a whopping 35% - https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coron...

And yet we hear nothing about it. It's fatality rate is so high that it inhibits its spread, unlike 2019-nCoV, which has a very low fatality rate so spreads well.

But this nCoV is a pussy compared to MERS or SARS, a whimp, a teeny bopper, a wannabe big player. And yet, there's still a chance that it could be really nasty. I'm guessing the actual fatality rate is about the same as the flu, maybe slightly higher. But if it's, say, 3 times that of the flu, or nearing 1%, then it's bad news.

In other words, the super bug, the virus that is going to kill tens of millions, is going to have a low fatality rate relative to MERS and SARS. No doubt virologists have figured this all out. There must be a 'golden' rate for a novel virus to be really devastating -- low enough to maintain hosts, but high enough to do the damage. What is that number? 2%? 5%? It's surely not 30%.

Regarding the rate of nCoV, we just don't know because the data coming out of China is not reliable. They're not reporting all the cases because most people aren't going to hospital. So the question is, how many cases are there, really, and how many people have died from this thing, really. I'm guessing the rate is flu-like.

nCov has "infected more than 40,000 people and killed at least 908. The country reported 97 fatalities on Sunday, its largest death toll in a single day since the outbreak was detected in December."

If this week was going to 'tell the story' then the story is not looking good...

I received this from the AIT in Taiwan:

On February 7, the Taiwan Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) sent out an alert containing a map (http://bit.ly/2SpSxeT) of the locations in Taipei City, New Taipei City and Keelung City visited by passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship on which cases of the novel coronavirus have since been confirmed. The CECC advises those who visited the same locations on the map on Friday, January 31 from 6 AM to 5:30 PM to monitor their health for fever and respiratory symptoms until February 14.

For more information on the novel coronavirus in Taiwan, please visit the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control website at www.cdc.gov.tw/En

On February 7, the Taiwan Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) sent out an alert containing a map (http://bit.ly/2SpSxeT) of the locations in Taipei City, New Taipei City and Keelung City visited by passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship on which cases of the novel coronavirus have since been confirmed. The CECC advises those who visited the same locations on the map on Friday, January 31 from 6 AM to 5:30 PM to monitor their health for fever and respiratory symptoms until February 14.

That's interesting - quite a lot of places! You'd think there would have been some transmission there.

Regarding the mutation thing:

Could the virus mutate?
Tests so far suggest that the coronavirus is relatively stable but as it is passed from human to human the virus will become more adapted as a human disease. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though. “In Darwinian terms, the virus wants to survive,” said Smith. “And to do that it’s generally not a sensible idea for a virus to kill people. The most successful viruses infect a lot of people and cause relatively little pathology.”

It’s worth noting that coronaviruses do not undergo the same type of genome shuffling that leads to the constantly shifting variety of flu strains in circulation. It is this genetic drift that means new flu vaccines have to be created each year and that means getting the flu once does not mean you’ll be immune next time it comes around. The coronavirus is not expected to mutate this rapidly and so once a vaccine is here, it should continue to work far into the future.

My sister would argue with Prof Smith about the 'virus wanting to survive' (as she does with me). According to her it doesn't want to do anything - it just randomly mutates and one/some of those mutations mean that it is better suited to survive. Not sure i agree - it boils down to a question of science V philosophy.

Death toll increased by 242 yesterday - by far the biggest one day jump.

There was some optimism over the previous few days that it might be starting to taper off but that seems misplaced.

The thing that surprises me is that the share market keeps shrugging it off. How does China being shut down not have a major impact on the global economy?

I was struck by how China's announcement that cases were leveling off coincided with the day many people went back to work. Perhaps they fudged the data to inject optimism into the society and markets?

Regarding the markets, there's absolutely a correction coming, if not an outright crash. This period reminds me a lot of that just before the dotcom crash of 2000.

A potential gaping hole in the world's containment measures is that countries like Indonesia are reporting 'no cases'. Either there really are no cases (perhaps due to the tropical climate) or they're going unreported.

I was struck by how China's announcement that cases were leveling off coincided with the day many people went back to work. Perhaps they fudged the data to inject optimism into the society and markets?

Regarding the markets, there's absolutely a correction coming, if not an outright crash. This period reminds me a lot of that just before the dotcom crash of 2000.

Imagine the hit that airlines and any tourist related businesses are taking - there must be some knock-on effect from that.

Interestingly the Chinese market fell 8% in a day in the beginning - then 'a rumour' emerged that a Chinese scientist had found a vaccine and it all rebounded. Considering it would take at least a year to get a vaccine up and running even if one was found then that sounded like market manipulation - similar to what you mention above.

A couple troubling stories came out in the last 24 hours or so.

First, this from Taiwan News: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3876197.
Exclusive: Chinese doctors say Wuhan coronavirus reinfection even deadlier
Instead of creating immunity the virus can reportedly reinfect an individual and hasten fatal heart attack

And there's this from that story:
"The source also said the virus has “outsmarted all of us,” as it can hide symptoms for up to 24 days. This assertion has been made independently elsewhere, with Chinese pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan (鍾南山) saying the average incubation period is three days, but it can take as little as one day and up to 24 days to develop symptoms."

But probably more troubling for us here in Japan is this story, which I'm surprised hasn't gotten wider coverage: https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/02/14/governor-japanese-visitor-recently-hawaii-conf...
Couple diagnosed with coronavirus after returning to Japan from Hawaii vacation

This couple had never been to China and had not been in contact with a known sufferer of the virus, at least that's what I glean from the article. Assuming the contracted the virus before getting on the plane to Hawaii, or on the plane, that means the virus is circulating among the general population in Japan.

If you combine the new information of these stories, a 24-day incubation period and the fact that the virus is now in the general population outside China, the implication is that we're about to see an alarming increase in cases both in Japan and around the world.

EDIT: Confirmed - http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13130630. There are people getting it all over Japan, including Hokkaido, which is very remote, and Okinawa, so basically from one end of the country to the other.

Also see http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13132892.

That's interesting. Guess it's up and running in Japan.

Since one of the cases mentioned caught it in Hawaii then that suggests it's there as well. It was probably always going to be like putting the genie back in the bottle no matter how many drastic measures were brought in to contain it. With a potential 24-day incubation period it would seem to be even more of a losing battle.

The cruise ship is also disturbing - when they quarantine these places it's almost like a certain number of people are condemned to catching it 'to protect the greater good'. Over 218 confirmed cases now on the Diamond Princess.

"It has also emerged more than 500 cases have been confirmed in prisons across China... Of those, 230 were in Wuhan’s women’s prison."

The Diamond Princess suggests that the 'lock-down' method is maybe not the way to go - seems like nearly everyone ends up getting it to some extent. Maybe that's the way it will play out worldwide eventually anyway but dispersal to medical facilities might be better - which is the solution they've belatedly gone for

So i'm afraid it's not gonna go well in a literal 'lock-down' situation like a prison.

This situation with the Diamond Princess has been a comedy (tradegy that is) of errors. Of course, hindsight is always 20-20, but this has been a disaster. They kept people on board, essentially making sure the virus spread to hundreds of people.

Then, when the outcry got to be too much, they just let everybody off, basically dispersing all that pent up virus around one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. People got off the boat and went straight on to public transportation and disappeared into the sea of Tokyo.

We know that people can be contagious before symptoms appear, and we know that the swab diagnosis produces false negatives. There's a near certainty that more than just a few contagious people were sent on their merry way.

And these contagious people were made contagious by being kept on the boat! It's just bizarre.

My big sociological question is, at what point are we as a global community going to decide to just say fuck it, it's no big deal, and carry on. I mean, at some point, a bigger threat will emerge, be that the entire west coast of the US being on fire or an approaching asteroid, and we'll realize that this virus, with it's likely less than 1% fatality rate, is just not that big of a deal.

At some point, the economic and social costs are going to outweigh the health risks. What is that point? That's the question that intrigues me.

This is the type of story that makes me think we're seeing the tip of the iceberg with this virus http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13156296 (emphasis added):

------

CHIBA--A teacher in her 60s at a junior high school here was found to be infected with the new coronavirus, prompting authorities to cancel classes for two days following the three-day holiday weekend that ends Feb. 24.

The Chiba prefectural and municipal governments jointly made the announcement on Feb. 22.

The teacher visited a medical institution on Feb. 12 after feeling nauseous and she was diagnosed with a cold.

She continued to teach, but was hospitalized on Feb. 19 after her condition worsened. She tested positive for the coronavirus on Feb. 21.

The Chiba municipal board of education decided to close the school as a precaution. The school will be disinfected. The health of all 580 or so students as well as all teachers at Chiba municipal schools will also be monitored for symptoms such as fevers.

The woman lived in western Chiba Prefecture and commuted by train to the school in Chiba city. She began wearing a face mask during the commute from Feb. 13. It remains unclear how she became infected since she had not been overseas in the two weeks before showing symptoms and no confirmation has been made of the woman coming in close contact with anyone with pneumonia.

Authorities in the main northernmost main island of Hokkaido said meantime that eight new cases of coronavirus had been confirmed. The eight, three males and five females, range in age between 10 and 90. They are all Japanese.

The latest announcement doubled the number of coronavirus cases in Hokkaido to 16. Local authorities are still trying to determine how they were infected because they reside in various parts of the island.[/color]

This situation with the Diamond Princess has been a comedy (tradegy that is) of errors.

Haha - I thought the Japanese were meant to be an organized bunch - but what you described sounds very 'luan-chi-ba-zao'. Also since read that at least one person who was released having tested negative has since tested positive - which is what you predicted.

At some point, the economic and social costs are going to outweigh the health risks. What is that point? That's the question that intrigues me.

The economic/social threshold is an interesting one. Hard to see how a global economy can soldier on when large sectors of it are increasingly going into shut-down. My guess is if it doesn't tail off with the coming of spring then we'll start hearing a new narrative about 'living with the virus'.

Not sure if i'm more concerned about the virus or the population control measures taken to contain it and the hysteria that will create. Seems like it could well be coming to a living space near you so what are we in for exactly in terms of being quarantined? Even in Australia people are fighting in supermarkets over toilet paper coz they think they might get locked down - feels like a sudden leap forward into a bad sci-fi movie that i don't want to be in

This sort of nonsense coming out of the US is what concerns me. I wonder when enough US voters will realize how bad the US health care system really is -- enough to affect change that is:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-nursinghome/seattle-area-nurs...

That's awful. You'd feel like a sitting duck if you were an old person stuck in a nursing home there.

Interesting how Taiwan managed to contain it so well. I guess they're already geared up for wearing masks coz of the pollution so maybe that helped.

Some funny things here - sports games are going ahead but fans aren't allowed to attend. In cricket, a non-contact sport, they've banned the traditional handshake between players on opposing teams. But how's that work for football, which is a full-contact sport?

Interestingly, there's no definitive answer as to how the virus originated. The general scientific consensus is that it 'probably' came from bats - there's a 96% similarity with a known virus extracted from a bat in China in 2015. But it's still a different strain. A minority of other scientists, including one from Taiwan, have speculated that it may have escaped from one of two research labs in Wuhan which were known to be studying cornona virus. One of those labs is 250 metres from the Wuhan Seafood Market. The unusual 4-protein structure led them to believe it was more likely man-made than a natural mutation. These scientists have been ridiculed as conspiracy theorists, which, given we don't know the actual answer, seems a bit silly.

Yes, it's ok to speculate that it probably came from bats - that a bat might have passed it to a pangolin - which might have been sold at the market.

Also seems plausible to speculate that the virus was being studied at a nearby university where due to a lapse in security it escaped. Not sure why other scientists are howling this down without definitive proof.

Whatever the reason is, i'd really love to know for sure. For a start, surely the bat-pangolin theory would be pretty easy to verify. Wouldn't you just interrogate the first reported cases, ask them 'Did you eat or handle bat or pangolin?'
Wouldn't you have seized any wildlife at the market and tested it?

Alternatively, wouldn't you release information on whatever version of corona virus it was that was being studied in Wuhan?

For me this is the frustrating thing. We've had this simple event that has decimated the world economy and caused a massive intrusion of government into our lives but we don't have a clear answer as to why it happened. Without that, we don't have any sense of security that it won't happen again.

If it really was bats, fine, let's get the definitive evidence. How hard can it be? If it was another reason, human error, deliberate, or whatever, then let's find that out for sure.

This is the problem with it occurring in China - we will likely never know for sure. Meanwhile, like it or not, without a full investigation and explanation, conspiracy theories are going to go into supersonic overdrive. That, at least, is a scientific certainty.

Excellent points. The theory that this virus escaped from a nearby lab seems entirely plausible to me and I'm not sure why it's being so easily discounted when, as you point out, the source of the virus has yet to be found. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/02/23/2003731479

The only comments I've seen on this are something along the lines of, "This virus is clearly from an animal source." OK, but that doesn't mean it didn't escape from a lab. So until we determine where it did come from, doesn't it make scientific sense to not exclude any possibilities?

And why isn't the world more concerned with where this came from? Shouldn't we be? If a nuclear bomb exploded in Manhattan, I suspect the first order of business would be to determine where it came from. This virus is probably going to do at least as much damage, and yet that question is not being addressed in the media.

In addition to the link in the earlier post, there's this, which is an old story by today's standards.
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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked...

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At an emergency meeting in Beijing held last Friday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke about the need to contain the coronavirus and set up a system to prevent similar epidemics in the future.

A national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place “to protect the people’s health,” Xi said, because lab safety is a “national security” issue.

What Xi didn’t say is that the coronavirus that has sickened more than 76,000 and claimed more than 2,200 lives escaped from one of the country’s bioresearch labs. But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive entitled “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.”

Read on:Agricultural commodities may enjoy a post-coronavirus boost

Also:Venice, Italy, cancels its famed pre-Lenten Carnival events in hopes of stemming coronavirus outbreak

Read that again. It sure sounds as if China is conceding there may be a problem keeping dangerous pathogens in test tubes, doesn’t it? And just how many “microbiology labs” are there in China that handle “advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus”?

It turns out that in all of China there is only one. And this one is located in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which, of course, is the epicenter of the epidemic.

That’s right. China’s only Level 4 microbiology lab equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

What’s more, the People’s Liberation Army’s top expert in biological warfare, Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, was dispatched to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak.

According to the PLA Daily, Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003, as well as Ebola and anthrax. This would not be her first trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology either, since it is one of only two bioweapons research labs in all of China.

This suggests to me the novel coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, may have escaped from that very lab, and that Chen’s job is to try and put the genie back in the bottle.

Add to this China’s history of similar incidents. Even the deadly SARS virus has escaped — twice — from the Beijing lab where it was being used in experiments. Both were quickly contained, but neither would have happened at all if proper safety precautions had been taken.

And then there is this little-known fact: Some Chinese researchers are believed to sell laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.

You heard me right.

Instead of properly disposing of infected animals by cremation, as the law requires, they sell them on the side to make a little extra cash. Or, in some cases, a lot of extra cash. One Beijing researcher, now in jail, made the equivalent of a million dollars selling monkeys and rats on the live animal market, whence they likely wound up in someone’s stomach.

Also fueling suspicions about SARS-CoV-2’s origins is the series of excuses offered by the Chinese authorities as people began to be sickened and die.

They first blamed a seafood market not far from the Institute of Virology, even though the first documented cases of COVID-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2) involved people who had never set foot there. Then they pointed to snakes, bats and even a scaly anteater called a pangolin as the source of the virus.

I don’t buy any of this. Snakes don’t carry coronaviruses, and bats aren’t sold at a seafood market. Neither are pangolins, for that matter, an endangered species valued for its scales as much as for meat.

The evidence, to me, points to SARS-CoV-2 research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The virus may have been carried out of the lab by an infected worker or crossed over into humans who unknowingly consumed a lab animal. Whatever the vector, Beijing authorities are now clearly scrambling to correct serious problems with the way their labs handle deadly pathogens.

China may have unleashed a plague on its own people. It’s too early to say how many in China and other countries will ultimately die, but the human cost will be high.

But not to worry. Xi has assured us that he is controlling biosecurity risks “to protect the people’s health.” PLA bioweapons experts are in charge.

I doubt the Chinese people will find that very reassuring. Neither should we.

"Shi Zheng-li — a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years—walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-fro...

Supposedly the lab then checked all their samples but didn't find an exact match - but i don't think that rules them out. For a start my understanding is that the closest match of 97% was with a coronavirus that Shi identified from a Yunan bat in 2015. Is it not plausible that the virus escaped sometime after that, lived in the community undetected, mutated, then exploded into what we've got today?

Below is another story confirming the previous report you posted where the SARS virus escaped a lab in Beijing - twice.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-beijing-lab-twice-50137

This is interesting. Germany, which has gone all out on testing, has a mortality rate of 0.3%. Previously it's been reported that 1% was the mortality rate but it was thought that that was an overestimation due to not everyone who catches it being tested.

Imagine how many times we'd have to shut down the world and crash the economy if we did it for everything that has a 0.3% mortality rate. Alcohol would be gone - deep fried food - cars - climate change - pollution - regular flus ...

I still struggle to understand why the world has got a raging boner for corona virus while many more serious problems are ignored

I still struggle to understand why the world has got a raging boner for corona virus while many more serious problems are ignored

I think there are two things going on. Assuming Germany is treating those with the virus earlier than other countries that don't test as much, it could mean that early intervention brings down the mortality rate. Without that health intervention, the rate might have been higher.

I think the panic is based on the assumption that if this virus were not to be slowed down, it would completely overwhelm health care systems leading to a much higher mortality rate because people who do get it bad couldn't get health care. Couple that with the fact that the majority of the people in the world will get this eventually, and you can imagine a gruesome scene. At least that's the narrative I've been hearing. And yet, you're right, so many more people will die in the next 3 months from completely preventable causes and nothing's being done about that.

I think I may have had it already in mid February. At the time, it was just hitting Hokkaido, and I didn't even consider that the chest cold I had, which included shortness of breath, dry cough, low fever, etc., would have been corona, but it very well may have been.

I've been wondering when the economic pain is going to overtake the fear of the virus. Hunger will drive people out of their homes eventually.

I've been watching the news after a few days of not watching it, and I must say things seem to have been blown out of perspective. I listen to BBC Newshour pretty much daily, but that's audio, obviously, so I don't get the full visual impact of what's going on.

A couple times a week I watch Reuters News https://www.reuters.com/video. Today they had a story about a funeral person getting suited up like he was dealing with someone who died of ebola. We're all going to be exposed to this sooner or later, so I don't quite understand the full on hysteria.

The thing about viruses is that if they are really super deadly, they don't last because they tend to kill off their hosts. This is not horribly deadly, it's just very, very contagious because nobody has immunity and because it has lots and lots of hosts because it's not deadly but highly contagious.

Yes it's a tricky one for the authorities. Most of the politicians here are running around like chickens with their heads cut off - maniacally introducing new measures without knowing how those measures are going to be implemented or what the downstream consequences will be. By the same token i wouldn't want to be the one in charge.

I guess it all boils down to whether containment actually works. If it doesn't - and seems likely it won't coz there are many countries that just aren't able to manage it - then you've got the same number of deaths in the end plus the world economy has been driven off the edge of a cliff with all the fallout from that.

If you institute a focus on protecting the vulnerable and the rest of us take our chances and carry on then you get the same death toll but without the economic disaster of millions out of work.

There are currently 13 dead in Australia.

Meanwhile, China looks poised to emerge strongly. It's stopped the Hong Kong protest in its tracks, knocked the US of its perch, and super-sized/normalised their surveillance network. I'm suspicious of whether they've really contained it there - or just decided on option (b) from above and are not reporting new cases

Interesting to see what businesses are doing well out the virus. The media is having the wettest of their wettest wet dreams come true in terms of selling copy - then there's home delivery services - i bet Netflix is going great guns - others will emerge ...

Meanwhile, China looks poised to emerge strongly. It's stopped the Hong Kong protest in its tracks, knocked the US of its perch, and super-sized/normalised their surveillance network.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I work with people all over the world, every continent save Antarctica, and I have yet to know anybody who has the virus. It strikes me that perhaps we're being played to some extent. Something is up. It doesn't make sense to shut the world down for a virus that has such a low mortality rate.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I work with people all over the world, every continent save Antarctica, and I have yet to know anybody who has the virus. It strikes me that perhaps we're being played to some extent. Something is up. It doesn't make sense to shut the world down for a virus that has such a low mortality rate.

Mind you, nearly 1000 deaths in Italy in the last day - so i don't know what's going on there. And Spain. Is it the treatment? A different strain?

WHO is starting to look a bit dodgy in all this as well. Refuse to allow Taiwan to join due to China pressure and have echoed pretty much everything China has said about the virus since it first appeared.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/03/28/2003733517

Some more suss WHO squirming in relation to Taiwan. When asked a question the assistant director general Dr Bruce Aylward pretends not to hear - so she asks again - then he hangs up. She calls back - he ducks the question again - refers to Taiwan as China then cuts the interview short.

This guy is a doctor. It's why i don't automatically trust something just coz a doctor or scientist says it.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1243865641448169474

Yeah I saw this. Any respect I had for WHO has gone right out the window. Unbelievable. So politics and power is more important to him than 20+ million lives.

It looks like the WHO got the message, but their response is absolute bullshit, a lot of words and no meaning.

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/29-03-2020-information-sharing-on-covid-19

Yes it gets sticky quickly when you take a non-truth as a premise. At least his bungling interview went viral so you can't say he isn't entering into the spirit o things!

Will be interesting to track Sweden's plight. They're not doing the lockdown - instead employing "a strategy of mitigation: allow the virus to spread slowly without overwhelming the health system, and without recourse to draconian restrictions."

"Data updated daily by the federal health department shows that 11.3% of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Australia are among people aged 25 to 29, followed by 9.5% in those aged 60 to 65 – the cruise ship cohort – and 9.3% in those aged 20 to 25.

People aged 80 and older account for just 2.7% of the confirmed cases of Covid-19 but 47% of the deaths."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/31/coronavirus-live-news-usa-confirmed-...

You hear a lot of people going on about "the science" but as this article points out:

"The world is not divided between “the science”’ and other mortals. Scientists are like the rest of us. They form assumptions and grasp at evidence to validate them. They are optimists or pessimists, by nature risk-taking or cautious. My wife and I share inputs, hear the same news and read the same papers. But I am an optimist and she is a pessimist. I think we could have stuck to the Swedish model. I think the crisis will be over in three weeks. She believes it will last months. It is not much comfort that we both have scientists on our side."

Frightening video of next-world-now surveillance station for checking body temperature

https://twitter.com/i/status/1245967610765873154

The Brave New World has arrived. Or is it 1984. I can never remember which.

Well, so much for the 'it only gets old folks' theory. We'll lump that with the 'it will die when the heat comes' theory.

We're now entering the territory of what the fallout from closing down the world really looks like. I don't know if this was properly weighed up but there is no mystery to it's inevitable eventuation. Behind the words 'economic collapse' there are people who have lost their jobs and don't have enough money to put food on the table. Those people are desperate and hungry. Ask any tinpot despot they'll tell you things go bad when people don't have enough to eat.

https://youtu.be/NsNWbfatRwg

There are no easy answers so it's a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. If one of those is a police state, economic ruin and violent unrest then you've got to seriously look at the other one.

Meanwhile, when the fuck is the cause of this going to be investigated? Never? In all the media hysteria i've read there's been nothing about demanding an answer to why this has happened and how to stop it happening again. Some vague scientific papers saying it probably came from bats. Some rumours (denied) that it leaked from a lab. That's it. How about definitive answers. This is not theoretical astro-physics we're talking about. The answer is right there in Wuhan waiting for the first thorough investigation to discover it.

Wow. Well that's disturbing, but I guess it is to be expected.

One thing that strikes me about this is how it is affecting literally everybody on the planet in one form or another. And people all over the world are having similar experiences such as being cut off from loved ones, which is very common. The level of emotional stress is also building worldwide.

Climate change will affect everyone as well, but it won't look the same for everyone to the extent that this does, and so people, and the media, won't connect the dots. With this, we have a name and we see people dying and going broke and being stuck on cruise ships and in foreign countries all over the world, but with climate change, people may not associate that typhoon in Japan with the wildfires in California.

You would think that such a common experience of suffering might bring the world closer, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

One thing that strikes me about this is how it is affecting literally everybody on the planet in one form or another. And people all over the world are having similar experiences.

Yes that sticks out for me too - it's worldwide saturation of the same event at the same time with similar consequences playing out in everyone's lives.

Also good point about how climate change - actually far more serious i would have thought - cannot generate the same sort of concerted effort. Imagine if all the effort and money that goes into the virus went into urgently combatting climate change...

I'm afraid though climate change might get a back seat in terms of funding initiatives for quite a while.

Here's an interesting article that explores this as a bio-weapon accidentally released: https://freepress.org/article/francis-boyle-talks-about-likelihood-covid-19-virus-biowe...

The anthrax event of which the other speaks is indeed factual, and the anthrax used did indeed come from the US military. That was established pretty quickly. Funny how quickly we forget about these things!

It's too bad there are no citations with this article.

More on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DAI3c9wE0Q&t=196s

Very interesting. By far the most important question in this catastrophe is: How did this happen? We need to know this coz we don't want it to happen again in a few years time.

Right at the beginning there was a report in the Taipei Times referencing French and Taiwanese researchers who concluded that the virus was 'probably' man-made and 'probably' came from the Wuhan institute.

To me that seems a highly plausible explanation. The you tube video posted presents further evidence that manipulation of existing viruses is going on quite a lot - especially at the Wuhan institute. From there there are two possibilities: 1. It accidentally escaped the lab 2. It accidentally on purpose escaped the lab

Another curious point is that 3/4 of all cases in Chinawere from Wuhan. At first I thought China was fudging the figures but now I tend to think that they did contain it by rolling out a 'ready-to-go' people-control regime that seems a bit too well-prepared to be true - unless you knew something in advance.

Finally, i'm getting more and more suspicious about WHO and China's relationship. Tedros, the Secretary General, is from Ethiopia where he used to be a government minister - Foreign Affairs minister in fact, which, considering Ethiopia is known as the 'Little China' of Africa, means he was basically Minister for China. Since the outbreak, Tedros, in lockstep with China, has made one disastrous call after another. What's going on there?
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/487851-china-and-the-whos-chief-hold-them-bot...

The WHO has lost all credibility with me. It is clearly not a WORLD health organization if it does not include a country of, what, going on 30 million? It is a POLITICAL health organization. You make good points regarding Tedros's background, affiliations, and loyalties. Combine that with the fact that we really can't trust any data coming out of China, and we have to recognize that we're really in the dark here regarding the origin of all this, and we probably always will be.

You are right regarding China's preparedness. Those prefab hospitals were ready to go. Why would they have a prefab hospital, not a field hospital, just sitting around?

You're right - there is a lot of stuff that just doesn't add up - and surprisingly little interest in uncovering the truth - whatever it might be.

Here's what we know:

1. Bats weren't sold at the seafood market
2. The kind of bat that carries corona virus doesn't live in Wuhan
3. The first known cases hadn't visited the market anyhow

(So all those scientific papers about how the virus 'probably' came from bats via pangolin via the seafood market are based on a false premise. However pointing this out seems to invoke an hysterical response amongst some scientists and journalist who label alternative analysis or even simple questions as 'conspiracy theories'.)

4. The only known bat viruses in Wuhan were held at two research institutes
5. Biosecurity at these facilities was lax. A report in the Washington Post says: "Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats."

At this point it's time to get out Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation by far is that the virus came from one of the Wuhan labs. Doesn't mean it's a fact - but it's way more likely than the seafood market premise that has absorbed so much attention and research dollars.

Unfortunately some scientists are locked into a mindset of getting grants to continue their line of research whether or not that research is of any value. In this respect they are more like lawyers representing their client whether the client is guilty or not. That's kinda understandable but it's not useful in terms of finding out exactly how this happened - and stopping it from happening again.

Just in the last few days, the main stream media has been reporting the possibility that this was engineered:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/covid-19-origin-lab-general-mark-milley

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley:
“There’s a lot of rumour and speculation in a wide variety of media, blog sites, etc,” Milley told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday. “It should be no surprise to you that we’ve taken a keen interest in that, and we’ve had a lot of intelligence look at that. And I would just say at this point, it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural. But we don’t know for certain.”

This is interesting: https://ponderwall.com/index.php/2020/04/18/lab-grown-coronavirus/

This is interesting: https://ponderwall.com/index.php/2020/04/18/lab-grown-coronavirus/

Interesting indeed! Also reinforces the point that there's no such thing as 'the science' on this matter. Just to identify the link, a Nobel prize winner in physiology or medicine for his work on HIV, Prof Luc Montagnier, has claimed that the virus was partially grown in a lab and the RNA contains small sequences from HIV.

He speculates that it may have been an attempt to develop an AIDS vaccine.

He also claims similar findings from other researchers have been suppressed.

I'm getting annoyed with papers like the Guardian - their obsession with Trump is colouring all their reporting. Instead of just trying to uncover the truth they seem to take reactive positions to whatever he says. (a) That's just getting sucked into his universe (b) it's bad journalism (c) if it turns out they're wrong they've handed him victory on a platter which he'll use, with great effect, to dismiss all criticisms.

The natural V lab origin debate is a good example. Not only has the Guardian championed the natural origin model but they label alternative lines of enquiry as conspiracy theories - why? Because they think it's part of the war against Trump. That's stupid and dangerous.

Maybe this is hyperbole from the Guardian but this article suggests 250 million people face starvation due to the coronavirus. It's not made explicit in the story but i assume that's due to the containment strategy not the actual virus. How is that not a bigger story? If it's true, then the lockdown to prevent the virus will prove many times more deadly than the actual virus. Doesn't that deserve more discussion? Or doesn't it matter if the deaths are mainly in third world countries?

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/21/coronavirus-pandemic-will-ca...

They do spell it out:

Money alone will not be enough, he added. It is difficult for relief workers to get through lockdowns around the world and set up air bridges when transport is paralysed. “We need money and access – not one or the other, both.”

Also crucial is ensuring that supply chains stay open in the face of lockdowns and the difficulty of getting workers into the fields to tend crops if they are sick or unable to travel easily. “If the supply chain breaks down, people can’t get food – and if they can’t get food for long enough, they will die,” said Beasley.

I don't understand it either.

Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell: “Lockdowns, closing of border … Nothing has a historical scientific basis, in my view. We have looked at a number of EU countries to see whether they published any analysis of the effects of these measures before they started, and we saw almost none.”

That statement is revealing. How can there be no analysis done on the likely repercussions of a strategy that is going to have massive repercussions?

No doubt later we will hear, "Oh, we didn't know! We just tried to do our best in difficult circumstances." Which will be kinda true, except the reason nobody knew is because no one wanted to know.

Another point i'm curious about but which never gets a media mention - how much of what we're seeing in terms of the reaction was a rehearsed drill? I'm guessing a lot. Presumably there was contingency planning by governments in the case of an outbreak - then we got one - so - all systems GO!!!

That leads to the question of whether the reaction was a way to give these contingency plans a work out as much as it was a measured, proportionate response.

Not sure how this fits in. It's a striking coincidence at least:

"The Obama administration also set up an initiative called PREDICT, a $200 million pandemic early-warning program that supported staff in 60 overseas laboratories, including in Wuhan, China. It was launched in 2009 after the 2005 H5N1 outbreak sparked global fears of an epidemic. But the Los Angeles Times reported that the Trump administration abandoned the effort two months before the new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan."

Probably just a coincidence but two months after American scientist(s) withdraw from the Wuhan Institute we have the virus...

This is how you have an outbreak Aussie style. Having gotten the virus under control - almost to the point of eradication - it has flared up again in the southern state of Victoria. It's now running out of control again.

The reason: security guards assigned to the quarantine hotels for returned travelers couldn't resist bonking some of the infected patients. From there it's spread back into the community.

[image]

Ha! Classic! And their response is to replace the young and horny, presumably mostly male, guards with equally young and horny, presumably mostly female, flight attendants. Assuming that most everybody involved is heterosexual, this use of female 'attendants' will simply lead to more bonking!

You've got a way to go to catch up to the US though. Americans are unmatched when it comes to nurturing and taking pride in our dysfunctional society.

The Union is saying it's all because they didn't have enough training - but how much training do you need to know: 'Don't fuck the client'

Would like to see the training video for that.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan, former researcher and whistle-blower from University of Hong Kong:

"I work[ed] in the WHO reference lab which is the top coronavirus lab in the world, in the University of Hong Kong. And the thing is I get deeply into such investigation in secret from the early beginning of this outbreak. I had my intelligence because I also get my own unit network in China, involved [in] the hospital ... also I work with the top corona[virus] virologist in the world," she said.

"So, together with my experience, I can tell you, this is created in the lab ... and also, it is spread to the world to make such damage."

It will take more than just her word to prove it, but she has reportedly said "more evidence will be released."

It was on Fox News, an interview with Tucker Carlson, though if it's a broadcast quote from the guest, it doesn't matter who they said it to. It's not inconceivable that she approached all the networks but none of them would have a bar of her. If evidence implicating a lab accident was to somehow come out before the election - that would be game over for Biden.

This is a key part of the problem. People hate Trump so much it's clouded their thinking. If you are always reacting to someone else then you end up barracking (Aussie speak: to cheer blindly - from soldiers - barracks - passionate about their footy) for counter-positions rather than paying attention to what's true. Are otherwise intelligent people pseudo-barracking for China in this?
I love my football team - in my mind it's an incontrovertible fact that the umpires are fucking cheats and the opposition's so called 'super-stars' are over-paid up-themselves dickheads.
But the truth is: we're sitting 17th on the ladder of 18 teams.
Sport is great for that - it's an outlet for irrational emotion that we all need as humans. But in terms of thinking about the world and taking a position - in a pivotal moment of human existence - just stick to the truth. Forget about reacting to what anyone else is saying.

This is fascinating. I have a feeling that at some point the world will know without question if this was indeed created in a lab. I just can't imagine that it's that easy to fake nature perfectly, at least not yet. If we were that good at it, medicine would be far more advanced than it is. So there must be some signatures if it is indeed manipulated virus, some slight footprints.

So there must be some signatures if it is indeed manipulated virus, some slight footprints.

Apparently there is. In August 2020, a collective of scientists on ResearchGate questioned the natural evolution theory, saying "Although based on phylogenetic analysis SARS-CoV-2 seems to be related to BatCoVs RaTG13 or RmYN02 ...(t)he host tropism pattern has major discrepancies compared to other CoVs, raising questions concerning the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. "

These guys don't have the mass-media mega-phone that our Proximal Origins guys had but it's a growing tide.

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