Epidemics: Bird Flu, TB, AIDs, Superbugs, Ebola, etc

[Crafty_Dog]

Tick and Mosquito Infections Spreading Rapidly, C.D.C. Finds
Image
More Americans are living in wooded suburbs near deer, which carry the ticks that spread Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, babesiosis, rabbit fever and Powassan virus.CreditScott Camazine/Science Source

By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
May 1, 2018

The number of people who get diseases transmitted by mosquito, tick and flea bites has more than tripled in the United States in recent years, federal health officials reported on Tuesday. Since 2004, at least nine such diseases have been newly discovered or introduced into the United States.

Warmer weather is an important cause of the surge in cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the lead author of a study in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

But the author, Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, the agency’s director of vector-borne diseases, repeatedly declined to connect the increase to the politically fraught issue of climate change, and the report does not mention either climate change or global warming.

Many other factors are at work, he emphasized, while noting that “the numbers on some of these diseases have gone to astronomical levels.”


C.D.C. officials called for more support for state and local health departments. Local agencies “are our first line of defense,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C.’s new director. “We must enhance our investment in their ability to fight these diseases.”

Although state and local health departments get brief infusions of cash during scares like the 2016 Zika epidemic, they are chronically underfunded. A recent survey of mosquito control agencies found that 84 percent needed help with basics like surveillance and pesticide-resistance testing, Dr. Petersen said.

While the C.D.C. did not suggest that Americans drop plans for playing outdoors or lying in hammocks this summer, Dr. Redfield emphasized that everyone — especially children — needed to protect themselves against tick and mosquito bites.

Between 2004 and 2016, about 643,000 cases of 16 insect-borne illnesses were reported to the C.D.C. — 27,000 a year in 2004, rising to 96,000 by 2016. (The year 2004 was chosen as a baseline because the agency began requiring more detailed reporting then.)

The real case numbers were undoubtedly far larger, Dr. Petersen said. For example, the C.D.C. estimates that about 300,000 Americans get Lyme disease each year, but only about 35,000 diagnoses are reported.

The study did not delve into the reasons for the increase, but Dr. Petersen said it was probably caused by many factors, including two related to weather: Ticks thriving in regions previously too cold for them, and hot spells triggering outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases.

Other factors, he said, include expanded human travel, suburban reforestation and a dearth of new vaccines to stop outbreaks.

In an interview, Dr. Petersen said he was “not under any pressure to say anything or not say anything” about climate change and that he had not been asked to keep mentions of it out of the study.

More jet travel from the tropics means that previously obscure viruses like dengue and Zika are moving long distances rapidly in human blood. (By contrast, malaria and yellow fever are thought to have reached the Americas on slave ships three centuries ago.)

A good example, Dr. Petersen said, was chikungunya, which causes joint pain so severe that it is called “bending-up disease.”

In late 2013, a Southeast Asian strain arrived on the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Maarten, its first appearance in this hemisphere. Within one year, local transmission had occurred everywhere in the Americas except Canada, Chile, Peru and Bolivia.

Tickborne diseases, the report found, are rising steadily in the Northeast, the Upper Midwest and California. Ticks spread Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, rabbit fever, Powassan virus and other ills, some of them only recently discovered.


Ticks need deer or rodents as their main blood hosts, and those have increased as forests in suburbs have gotten thicker, deer hunting has waned, and rodent predators like foxes have disappeared.

(A century ago, the Northeast had fewer trees than it now does; forests made a comeback as farming shifted west and firewood for heating was replaced by coal, oil and gas.)

Most disease outbreaks related to mosquitoes since 2004 have been in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. But West Nile virus, which arrived in 1999, now appears unpredictably across the country; Dallas, for example, saw a big outbreak in 2012.

For most of these diseases, there are no vaccines and no treatment, so the only way to stop outbreaks is through mosquito control, which is expensive and rarely stops outbreaks. Miami, for instance, was the only city in the Western Hemisphere to halt a Zika outbreak with pesticides.

The only flea-borne disease in the report is plague, the bacterium responsible for the medieval Black Death. It remains rare but persistent: Between two and 17 cases were reported from 2004 to 2016, mostly in the Southwest. The infection can be cured with antibiotics.

Dr. Nicholas Watts, a global health specialist at University College London and co-author of a major 2017 report on climate change and health, said warmer weather is spreading disease in many wealthy countries, not just the United States.

In Britain, he said, tick diseases are expanding as summers lengthen, and malaria is becoming more common in the northern reaches of Australia.

But Paul Reiter, a medical entomologist at the Pasteur Institute, has argued that some environmentalists exaggerate the disease threats posed by climate change.

The 2003-2014 period fell during what he described as “a pause” in global warming, although the notion of a long trend having pauses is disputed.

Also, disease-transmission dynamics are complicated, and driven by more than temperature. For example, transmission of West Nile virus requires that certain birds be present, too.

In the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, St. Louis encephalitis, a related virus, surged, “and it looked like climate issues were involved,” Dr. Reiter said. But the surge turned out to depend more on varying hot-cold and wet-dry spells and the interplay of two different mosquito species. St. Louis encephalitis virtually disappeared, weather notwithstanding.

“It’s a complicated, multidimensional system,” he said.

A. Marm Kilpatrick, a disease ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said many factors beside hot weather were at work, including “a hump-shaped relationship between temperature and transmission potential.”

Warm weather helps mosquitoes and ticks breed and transmit disease faster, he explained. But after a certain point, the hotter and drier it gets, the more quickly the pests die. So disease transmission to humans peaks somewhere between mildly warm and hellishly hot weather.

Experts also pointed out that the increase in reports of spreading disease may have resulted partially from more testing.

Lyme disease made family doctors begin to suspect tick bites in patients with fevers and to blood more often. Laboratories began looking for different pathogens, especially in patients who did not have Lyme. That led to the discovery of previously unknown diseases.

[ccp]

We are getting reports of flu in Texas and Florida so far

So all *patriots* and families may want to get their flu shots now,

I will not post this on Huff[com]post.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2019/05/14/chickenpox-virus-asylum-seekers-central-america-waiting-enter-u-s-varicella-mexico-mexicali/1180527001/?fbclid=IwAR0Xe4vFuX1r5M5bpKa_ebjwkvRyfRczhgI7fm0rUP1Ht6mXT4Hy4l7VvSU

[Crafty_Dog]

Questions of Risk Follow the Spread of a New Virus out of China
8 MINS READ
Jan 23, 2020 | 00:41 GMT
Authorities in Wuhan, China, check the temperature of a passenger at a wharf on the Yangtze River on Jan. 22, 2020.
Security officials check the temperature of passengers at a wharf on the Yangtze River in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 22, 2020. The spread of an emerging coronavirus that has led to 17 deaths so far has prompted emergency health measures across China.

(Getty Images)

HIGHLIGHTS

Compared with the outbreak of SARS in 2003, greater transparency on the part of the Chinese central government about the spread of a new coronavirus that recently surfaced in Wuhan has facilitated earlier responses and greater public awareness.

In the short term, the disease — and the emergency measures introduced in response — will lead to significant logistical disruptions and reduced travel in and out of Hubei province, which will have secondary impacts on China’s manufacturing and export economy.

Moving forward, information transparency, emergency responses at both the national and subnational levels and international coordination will be critical to the management of this emerging virus.

Over the past three days, the reported spread of a deadly strain of coronavirus first detected in Wuhan, China, both within and beyond Chinese borders has raised concerns of a wider outbreak that would increase the risks of significant economic and social impacts in China and the wider world. The coronavirus, which is the same type of virus that led to a disruptive global outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002 and 2003, was first reported in Wuhan in November. Notably, however, compared with the apparent cover-up and scarcity of information released by Chinese officials during the first three months of the SARS outbreak, which first arose in Guangdong province, greater transparency about the current viral outbreak on the part of local and national officials has mobilized an earlier official response and raised public awareness, which could mitigate the extent of its spread.


Still, the exact source of the coronavirus at the heart of the current outbreak and its mutation methods remain unknown. And combined with the up to 14-day asymptomatic period at the early stages of infection and incubation, it's possible that the full extent of the outbreak within China has been underestimated and underreported. At a time of traditionally heavy travel associated with the Chinese New Year season, the disease could well inflict broader impacts on global travel and tourism. It will also test Chinese pandemic management strategies at both the national and subnational levels before the virus can be effectively contained.

The Big Picture

The quick spread of a deadly coronavirus apparently originating in the central Chinese city of Wuhan into other parts of the world has resurfaced memories of the detrimental effects caused by an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) 17 years ago.


At present, 543 confirmed cases of infection have been reported, covering almost all Chinese provinces, including major municipalities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and at least seven other countries, including the United States, Thailand and Japan. Of those confirmed cases, 80 percent have been centered in Hubei province, as well as all 17 of the reported deaths associated with the virus. Among those infected, the vast majority reported living in or traveling to Hubei's provincial capital, Wuhan, with an origination point believed to be a local seafood market.

But the virus has increasingly shown signs of human-to-human transmission. In at least one case, a single patient was found to have infected 14 health care workers. This raises the strong possibility that the new virus strain could easily spread among humans, differentiating it from the coronavirus behind the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), a type of bird flu first reported in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, which has a limited ability to spread through human contact. If the ease of human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus strain is confirmed, it would make tracking, monitoring and effective containment substantially more difficult. This is especially true given Wuhan's status as a national transportation (rail and waterway) crossroads. The city also hosts the largest university cluster in Asia.

The Potential Effects

At this point, the new virus appears to be less deadly and less contagious than the one behind SARS. The death rate for the Wuhan virus appears to be at 3 to 4 percent of infections, versus 9 percent for SARS, and 35 percent for MERS. For comparison, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 6,600 people have died from the flu during the 2019-20 influenza season, with another 120,000 hospitalizations linked to this season's prevalent influenza strain. Still, much remains unknown about the emerging disease. For instance, the exact source of infection and primary means of transmission, factors that are critical in forecasting the disease's progression and associated socio-economic impacts, have yet to be determined. Likewise, the exact medical measures and antiviral drugs that can be used to control the disease in its early phase have yet to be determined. For perspective, it took about 270 days for the SARS outbreak to be controlled in 2003. But in the short term, a somewhat wider spread of the new virus appears unavoidable before it can be contained.

Given the speed of the spread and apparent relatively high death rate associated with the current outbreak, transparency will be critically important for effective disease management.

Critically, the lengthy incubation period for the new virus, considerably longer than MERS or SARS, means it takes much longer for those infected to show symptoms, thus making early detection and preparation difficult.
Considering the crush of domestic and international travel within and outside China during the Lunar New Year, the two-week incubation period and inconspicuous nature of those infected but not yet showing symptoms can result in significant underreporting or underestimation of the real scale of the virus. This would also delay the necessary response and protective measures that could have been used to prevent a further spread. (This factor can also skew fatality rates, especially if less severe cases are flying under the radar.) What's more, the spread of the disease is highest when symptoms aren't obvious — if that's when the virus is transmitted, as occurred during the SARS outbreak — and when no proper preventive measures are adopted.

A Question of Transparency

Given the speed of the spread and apparent relatively high death rate associated with the current outbreak, transparency will be critically important for effective disease management, including emergency response, mitigation and public awareness. For these reasons, the new disease has resurfaced questions about the credibility of Chinese authorities. During its early stages in 2003, ignorance, deliberate cover-ups and late responses contributed to the unrestrained spread of SARS and brought Beijing to the brink of political crisis. Compared with the four months of delayed reporting and passive responses to SARS, transparency and responsiveness during the current outbreak have increased.

It took 30 days for authorities to report the first case of coronavirus-related pneumonia to the World Health Organization, and about two weeks longer for direct central government intervention — a critical factor in curbing the tendency of local authorities to downplay bad news. Shortly thereafter, a nationwide emergency response, as well as related prevention and control methods, were put into place. Nonetheless, domestic public and international skepticism over a possible cover-up of the current outbreak remains strong. Suspicions were elevated by the fact that several cases of the disease were reported overseas, including in Thailand and Japan, before authorities acknowledged any other cases in China outside of Hubei province. If the transparency issue is not properly managed, the government's credibility could again come under question, possibly resulting in a wider social backlash.
 
Given that much about the virus remains unknown, the eventual socio-economic and international impacts of the current outbreak by the time it runs its course will be difficult to determine. To put it into perspective, the SARS epidemic in 2003 resulted in more than $40 billion in productivity losses, and the Ebola outbreak in 2014-2016 had an approximate impact of $53 billion. At the least, the current outbreak — and the responses to manage it — can be expected to affect China's logistics and travel sectors and reduce consumption. These effects will come on top of the inevitable disruptions posed by the Lunar New Year that annually weigh on the domestic economy.

What to Expect Next

Questions of Chinese response capacity: On Jan. 22, Wuhan authorities halted all road, waterway and expressway transit in and out of the city and suspended outbound travel by rail and air. This order followed on the heels of an official emergency quarantine by China's health authority affecting hospitals nationwide. In major cities, people have adopted preventive measures such as wearing protective masks. But given local capacity limitations and the limits of available resources, high-level national coordination or even tougher measures, such as employing security forces, may need to be introduced. Hubei province plans to seek national assistance to procure needed supplies, such as protective medical equipment.
 
Business disruptions: Hubei has the seventh-largest gross domestic product among China's provinces, totaling $541 billion in 2017, and a population of 59 million. Wuhan, meanwhile, is a major Chinese transportation hub as well as a center of scientific research, automobile manufacturing and heavy industry. The emergency measures will significantly disrupt traffic and input goods that rely on road, rail and maritime shipment through Hubei. Those disruptions, in turn, could have secondary effects on major ports — especially Shanghai, which is down the Yangtze River from Wuhan. But as with SARS, the business impact will likely be felt across the country, if not around the world, if the emergency measures remain in place for a considerable period, especially in an age of integrated national connectivity. Elsewhere, the international spread of the disease threatens to disrupt the movement of people and goods as East Asia enters the Lunar New Year holiday season.

International response: The new virus will test pandemic management systems in China and internationally. The CDC has introduced screening and quarantine measures at major U.S. airports that host flights from Wuhan. Countries that have reported cases of the coronavirus, such as South Korea, will be particularly mindful of the risks of human-to-human transmission, given the steep economic impacts of the 2015 MERS outbreak. A massive uptick in the flow of Chinese tourists throughout the Asia-Pacific region will inspire caution in Japan, Southeast Asia and even North Korea as well, although the ability of those countries to screen and manage cases vary widely. Additionally, the World Health Organization will decide on Jan. 23 if it will declare this a global emergency and what that means for funding and world attention.

[DougMacG]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Quarantine a city the size of Wuhan?   How?

[Crafty_Dog]

January 24, 2020   Open as PDF



    Chinese New Year 2020: The Year of the Coronavirus
By: Phillip Orchard

Grappling with internal political pressures, a slowing economy, an open rebellion in Hong Kong and an unresolved trade war with the U.S., Chinese leaders may have already been in a less-than-celebratory mood heading into this year’s Lunar New Year festivities, which begin Jan. 25. The last thing the government needed was an outbreak of infectious disease, particularly when hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel throughout the country and beyond. Not only is that exactly what happened, but the disease – a new type of coronavirus – is unknown to science.

The severity of the virus (known as nCoV or the Wuhan Virus) is uncertain, nor is it clear if it will mutate and spread. The World Health Organization has yet to label it a global health emergency. But it’s certainly not yet contained. As of Thursday, there were more than 653 confirmed cases across seven countries, including the United States, and 18 people had died. And despite repeated assurances that it had matters under control, the government on Wednesday began locking down Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, where the outbreak started, and three nearby cities. Doctors in Wuhan are reportedly expecting the number of infections to exceed 6,000, and local authorities are planning to build a special hospital in just six days to handle the epidemic.

There’s reason to believe the disease isn’t nearly as big a threat to public health as the one posed by the SARS outbreak in 2003, which killed nearly 800 people. Inevitably, though, the biggest political and economic effects of pandemics come from public panic and panicked government responses, not the disease itself. And given Beijing’s checkered track record for managing these sorts of emergencies over the past two decades, the Communist Party of China’s very legitimacy might just prove to be on the line.

How Bad Is It?

Coronaviruses come in a variety of strains. Some, such as the one that’s one of the many causes of the common cold, are relatively harmless. Others, such as those responsible for SARS and MERS, are potentially lethal. The dangerous coronaviruses seem to be linked to animals. SARS may have originated in bats and then spread to humans via civets, which are eaten as a delicacy in China. MERS also came from bats but spread to humans via camels, once again, perhaps through consumption of raw camel milk or meat. It is therefore reasonable to suspect that the new coronavirus is linked to animals that are eaten. Indeed, the reason China is always likely to be ground zero for the next influenza pandemic is that millions of people regularly come into contact with livestock. As Smithsonian Magazine wrote, “Many Chinese people, even city dwellers, insist that freshly slaughtered poultry is tastier and more healthful than refrigerated or frozen meat.”

Whatever the source, it’s now been confirmed to be capable of being transmitted from one human to another. Even so, the new coronavirus will have a limited direct impact on public health. SARS appeared in 2002, spread quickly around the globe in 2003, infected 8,096 people and killed 774. Then, with the exception of a handful of cases, it mostly disappeared. MERS has infected 2,442 people and killed 842. It still lingers throughout much of the world, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula. And though the reported case-fatality rates for both seem high – 9.6 percent for SARS and 34.5 percent for MERS – bear in mind that many mild cases probably went unreported. The real case-fatality rate is likely lower.
 
(click to enlarge)

The damage inflicted directly by the disease is therefore highly unlikely to have much long-term impact. But, particularly in China, the potential economic and political implications can’t be dismissed.

Economic Impact

The problem with new outbreaks is that the public and public officials alike can’t exactly wait until all the facts become clear before taking preventative measures. And it doesn’t take much for fear of the unknown to grind public transportation systems to a halt, empty out shopping centers, movie theaters and restaurants, and, most important, persuade revelers to just stay put this year during the Lunar New Year rather than join the hundreds of millions of people who take part in the world’s largest annual human migration.

The costs add up quickly. The SARS outbreak in 2003, for example, dented Chinese gross domestic product by as much as $30 billion, reducing annual growth by between 1-2 percent. Globally, the bill for the pandemic ran up to as much as $100 billion.

Not all economic activity will be lost for good. Short-term hits to the sorts of sectors most exposed to the epidemic – mostly ones tied to consumer spending – often lead to supercharged recoveries. Chinese growth drivers where short-term disruption would have longer-lasting effects, such as manufacturing exports, industrial production and investment, stayed mostly intact in 2003. Indeed, while Chinese GDP growth dropped from 11.1 percent in the first quarter of 2003 to 9.1 percent in the second, it bounced all the way back to 11.6 percent a year later.

Still, even if nCoV proves more manageable than SARS, there are reasons to think the impact this year will be worse. For one, the SARS epidemic occurred on the heels of the dot com crash, when consumer spending across the region was already somewhat suppressed. (Incidentally, the resulting reduction of international travel may have helped contain the spread of the virus.) For another, locking down an urban area as large as Wuhan – a city at the center of one of China’s most important internal shipping routes along the Yangtze – will be immensely disruptive.
 
(click to enlarge)

Moreover, a substantial portion of the lost holiday spending will never be recovered. This is a problem for Asia Pacific nations that, unlike in 2003, are now highly dependent on Chinese tourists. All told, Chinese people took an estimated 130 million more trips abroad in 2018 compared to 2003, and before the outbreak, the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute predicted that more than 7 million Chinese people would head overseas during the Lunar New Year this year. In Thailand, which has already reported four cases of nCoV, foreign tourism accounts for as much as a fifth of economic growth. Around 57 percent of visitors to Thailand last year were Chinese, including more than 2 million in January and February alone. Japan, which hosts the 2020 Summer Olympics, is estimating an economic loss of nearly $25 billion if the virus spreads as widely as SARS.

The biggest difference for China this time around is that the economy can’t as easily shrug off a major shock. In the early 2000s, annual GDP growth was still climbing well above 10 percent. Today, with a long structural slowdown well underway, Beijing is running up staggering debts just to keep growth from swan-diving below 6 percent. Add to this an unresolved trade war with its largest export customer – along with its scramble to implement critical but growth-sapping measures to stave off a financial meltdown before the next global slowdown strikes – and the epidemic starts to look like the sort of thing that could derail Beijing’s best-laid plans for avoiding an economic reckoning.

Political Impact

The outbreak will also complicate a broader, existential challenge weighing on the CPC: preserving its very legitimacy with the public. Delivering steady gains in prosperity is, of course, at the center of this challenge. But breakneck economic growth has become impossible to sustain – and was never going to be sufficient, anyway. The wealthier a country becomes, the more its citizenry demands quality of life that can’t be sourced solely from rising GDP, things like clean air and water, medical services, social safety nets and responsive, corruption-free governance. This is why President Xi Jinping has encouraged the party to shift its focus to “high-quality growth,” and it’s why he’s put environmental and emergency management initiatives at the center of his sweeping reform agenda. No amount of propaganda or censorship can convince his people that a smog-choked sky is actually blue or make devastation from an earthquake disappear.

The 2003 SARS outbreak laid bare the political risks of mismanaging a public health emergency. The government came under withering public criticism for covering up the scale of the epidemic (inadvertently worsening panic), impeding the World Health Organization’s investigation, and moving slowly to contain the outbreak. Bungled government responses to a number of other crises, such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, a high-speed rail accident in 2011, and a string of scandals involving tainted milk, tainted vaccines and fiery industrial accidents likewise prompted fierce public outcry. Beijing received higher marks in subsequent health scares, particularly the H171 bird flu outbreak in 2013. And this time around, initially at least, it received international praise for its improved transparency and swiftness in moving to contain the virus. Chinese authorities had isolated and published the nCoV genome by the second week in January, allowing foreign governments to develop critical testing procedures for the virus. Xi addressed the emergency personally last week, ordering “all-out prevention and control efforts.” China’s top political body responsible for law and order said officials who withheld information would be “nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity.”

But facts on the ground are once again giving the public reason to doubt its government’s candor and capability. Authorities have been claiming for more than a month that the virus is “preventable and controllable.” Now, they’re taking extreme measures like locking down the Wuhan metro area, home to some 19 million people, and making belated mea culpas. The government has also struggled to abandon its practice of reflexively cracking down on independent sources of information, despite commands to do so from on high. This has led to contradictory messaging and suppressed information that might have helped contain the virus. Chinese censors initially ordered local media outlets to stick to reprinting official reports, according to the Financial Times, effectively silencing independent reporting. And in early January, eight people were reportedly detained for posting information about the outbreak on social media. As also happened in the SARS outbreak, moreover, the government’s rigidly enforced top-down decision-making structure has once again worsened matters by incentivizing, for example, hospitals to under-report cases and local authorities to go forward with high-profile public gatherings deemed politically important.

For all the criticism they are receiving, authorities in Beijing are trying to address a problem that would bedevil any government. China is very large and very dense. As happened with SARS, panic would almost certainly do more damage than the disease itself. And Beijing may reasonably conclude that resorting to drastic measures may truly be in the public interest, even if they’re at odds with public sentiment. Perhaps more than any government, Beijing has given itself the power to surveil its citizenry, to shut down cities, to silence unfounded rumors on social media – all without permission. Such powers certainly could come in handy in this sort of crisis.

But by hoarding authority – by insisting on the right to micromanage the country – the CPC has raised the bar for what the public expects in response when the country is under attack, whether from foreign powers, economic forces or viral mutations. This is a problem when tight centralization has also, paradoxically, created a rigid top-down institutional culture that’s ill-suited to respond nimbly to public demand. When faced with a crisis, the machinery of the state is programmed to default to the tools it knows best. Censorship, disinformation and problem-solving by brute force are hardwired into the Chinese system, often making it at once flat-footed and prone to overcorrection. Yet, the more pressure intensifies, the more Beijing is doubling down on this model. And the stakes riding on its bet are getting higher.   

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-authorities-shut-down-schools-tourist-sites-as-viral-pneumonia-spreads-to-nearly-all-parts-of-china_3214253.html?utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=364c1bd566-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_23_09_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-364c1bd566-239065853

[Crafty_Dog]

Third post

Xi’s Disease Spreading: After this hits the global streets—and it has already—efforts at containment are something akin to containing a global wildfire.

Political and other dimensions are mind-boggling and beyond reach. Epidemiologists and other experts constantly talk about the cruciality of early detection and jumping right on it RIGHT NOW, but if this turns out to be very serious, right now was already yesterday, and listening to the experts we all have to focus on slowing spread by wearing masks and so forth.

There always are cultural aspects, too, such as the habit of mainlander Chinese sneezing everywhere with no attempt cover their faces. They will sneeze in elevators— yes, they do— restaurants, airplanes, more. They ain’t Japanese who will self-quarantine.

To be clear, I am not talking about “Chinese” (difficult to define), but some cultures in Mainland China. Many in Taiwan or Hong Kong and other places are super-civilized, but many of the mainlanders are like something from another time and planet.

The Thai and China governments jointly published a book years ago showing traveling mainlanders how to behave civilized, such as not spitting on restaurant floors, or defecating in department store changing rooms. This drives Thais crazy. Not to mention everyone else.

This is the sort of barbarian invaders that Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, and the rest of us who see, are very concerned about.

They will not hesitate even as known-virus carriers to sneeze on airplanes without covering their faces. Why would they cover their face and soil their hand or whatever when they can just let it fly? They do this constantly.

The virus is doing what viruses do. It bought tickets and flew to Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, USA, more.

Wait ‘till it hits the great incubators of India and Africa. Hopefully it is not that serious but hope is not a plan, or a vaccine.

[Crafty_Dog]

Wuhan crisis not in check. The novel coronavirus is continuing to spread, and China is moving into full crisis mode. At least 869 people have been infected in China, and at least 26 people have died. There was also a fifth confirmed case in Thailand and a second confirmed case in the United States. A number of epidemiology models are now predicting that there will eventually be several thousand infections. In response, at least 10 Chinese cities – with a combined population of more than 40 million – have effectively been placed in quarantine. Beijing has also ordered travel agencies to suspend sales of domestic and international tours. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an alliance of public and private medical entities, announced a multinational effort to develop a vaccine for the new virus, but it won’t be ready for months, if ever. (There is still no MERS vaccine.) As we’ve noted, the biggest and longest-lasting impacts will come from the reaction to the virus, not the virus itself.

[Crafty_Dog]

fourth post

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/24/coronavirus-fears-rise-chinese-cover-up-40-million-lockdown/

[G M]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLp8CHeKQkI

He knows what he is talking about.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/the-latest-pandemic-threat/#slide-1

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-wuhan-has-two-laboratories-linked-chines/

https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-%20chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-%20dangerous-pathogens-1.21487


But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says.

[G M]

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[G M]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Quarantine a city the size of Wuhan?   How?

The ugly truth is you can't really.

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan20/questions-coronavirus1-20.html

[G M]

https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/01/is-market-grossly-underestimating.html

[G M]

https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-outbreak-mongolia-closes-china-border

[Crafty_Dog]

   
    Daily Memo: China's Coronavirus Strategy, the UK's Huawei Policy
By: GPF Staff
Xi responds to the coronavirus. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday charged Premier Li Keqiang with the job of heading government efforts to deal with the coronavirus, after infections doubled over the span of just 24 hours. During a visit to Wuhan, Li pledged greater government support and resources for treating the sick and containing the virus's spread. Criticism over how the Chinese government has responded to the health crisis has been circulating on social media. There are also reports of vigilante groups blocking transit and regulating foot traffic to protect their communities. Yesterday, the city's mayor once again offered to resign, taking part of the blame for the local government’s response but also making the case that China’s sclerotic top-down decision-making structure impeded the Wuhan government’s response. Xi needs someone in the government to assume responsibility over the virus, thereby distancing himself from any cries of government mismanagement. Li has often been tasked with being the public face of the government’s response to crises, in part because he’s considered an effective administrator with a relatively positive reputation among foreign governments (a useful trait at a time when doubt over Beijing’s transparency is growing). But it’s also because he doesn’t hail from Xi’s political network and has been given relatively minimal power by Xi over routine matters, making him an ideal fall guy if the crisis response falls short. The move also shows that Xi appreciates the need to prevent the disease from destabilizing the country and impinging on his hold on power.

[G M]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7938887/Thailand-admits-unable-stop-spread-Chinas-deadly-coronavirus.html

This is looking very, very bad.

[Crafty_Dog]

 

The New Coronavirus Could Leave Global Tourism and Trade Ailing

Countries around the world are facing major fallout from the new coronavirus. Cases of the virus originating in Wuhan have cropped up worldwide, forcing governments to roll out measures to screen travelers or even restrict arrivals in hopes of preventing outbreaks in their own countries. As of Jan. 29, 16 countries besides China have reported cases of the virus. Nearly all of the affected patients contracted the virus in China, but cases of human-to-human transmission have occurred several times outside of China. And while many countries are equipped to prevent the spread of an outbreak on their soil, the complex nature of disease control means that each new case presents risks of an outbreak outside China.

The Big Picture
________________________________________
The new coronavirus has yet to prove particularly deadly, but authorities in China have so far failed to halt its spread — both within the country and abroad. And the longer the outbreak continues, the longer the disruption to international trade and tourism will be.
________________________________________
The Geopolitics of Disease

The effects, of course, are not just limited to public health. Inside China, the virus has already caused massive disruption by dampening consumption during Lunar New Year celebrations — the busiest shopping time in the country — and forcing lockdowns of key supply chain nodes. Moreover, any dip in Chinese economic growth and outbound tourism will have ripple effects in countries that rely on trade with China. The existing global economic slowdown prior to the outbreak has already done a number on the likes of export-oriented economies worldwide, but the possibility of a drop in Chinese tourist numbers or a blow to Chinese economic growth could sap tourist revenue around the world, particularly in East and Southeast Asia.
The next phase of the outbreak will be critical to determining the success of interventions to stop the spread of the virus and limit its impacts outside China. But even in an optimistic scenario, the effects of the virus will last for weeks, raising the possibility of sustained, monthslong disruptions to growth in countries linked to the Chinese economy.

Here is how the new coronavirus could impact economies around the world.

South Korea and Japan

Although well-equipped to screen for and stem the spread of the virus, South Korea and Japan will experience some economic difficulties due to declines in tourism, as well as disruptions to Chinese imports and supply chains. South Korea, however, will be more vulnerable than Japan because its economy has already suffered amid the preexisting global trade slowdown.
Already, the outbreak in China has disrupted the flow of travelers, as Beijing has banned Chinese tourists from conducting overseas group tours, which account for 44 percent of the country's outbound tourism. A sustained outbreak could further stanch flows of Chinese travelers to South Korea and Japan, while the spread of the virus inside either country would naturally have a chilling effect on tourism overall.
 
South Korea and Japan boast widely diversified economies, yet a drop in tourism revenues from China (or overall) would deal both a blow in certain areas. In 2019, 7.4 million Chinese tourists visited Japan, while a further 5.5 million went to South Korea. In Japan as a whole, Chinese tourists accounted for 30.3 percent of the total, spending $16.2 billion in 2019, or 37 percent of what all tourists to the country spent combined. Japan's Nomura Research Institute estimates that a dropoff on par with the 2002-2003 outbreak of severe acquired respiratory syndrome (SARS) could cost the country's economy $7.1 billion. What's more, Chinese tourism growth in 2019 was key in helping rural, tourism-dependent and economically smaller Japanese areas offset a South Korean boycott stemming from Seoul and Tokyo's trade standoff.

South Korea's tourism sector, too, has enjoyed a greater influx of Chinese tourists, who contributed 34 percent of the total in
2019 and who accounted for a substantial portion of the estimated $21.6 billion in 2019 total tourism receipts — revenue that is doubly important for an export-reliant South Korean economy flagging in the face of global trade headwinds. As it is, Seoul knows all too well what a drop in Chinese tourist arrivals can mean for the economy: In 2017-2018, Beijing banned Chinese citizens from traveling to South Korea on group tours in retaliation for Seoul's deployment of a U.S. missile-defense system, costing Seoul around $6.82 billion in revenue. Beyond Chinese tourists, South Korea is particularly worried about the risk of the new coronavirus spreading inside the country given its experience with Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2015. That outbreak in South Korea scared away tourists, ultimately costing the country's economy $3.6 billion in losses, or 0.2 percent of gross domestic product.

Any drawdowns in tourism revenue would come at a particularly fraught time for South Korea's economy, which is reeling due to drops in worldwide demand and trade tensions with Japan. (Over 44 percent of South Korea's GDP comes from exports as compared to just 18.5 percent for Japan.) More troubling for Seoul, however, is that South Korean exporters are vulnerable to the economic ripples of an extended outbreak in China. Already, South Korean markets have taken a hit on fears that the new coronavirus could dampen Chinese consumption and roil supply chains. China accounts for nearly 24 percent of South Korea's total trade, including 36 percent of electronics exports, 28 percent of machinery exports and over half of organic chemical exports. A virus-related Chinese slowdown would especially hit South Korean chipmakers and display manufacturers hooked into Chinese production chains, as well as South Korean retailers that sell to the Chinese market. With South Korea's economy already suffering in a tough global environment, that would be particularly troubling.

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is equally vulnerable to the health and economic effect of the virus given the large numbers of Chinese tourists who visit the region, as well as the area's deep links to the Chinese economy. The uneven levels of health care, monitoring and screening capacity among these countries make the situation even riskier. Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam have all confirmed cases of new coronavirus, and while Myanmar and Laos have yet to report cases, their high Chinese tourism flows — and porous, poorly controlled borders with China — put them at risk of undetected infections.
 
In the region, Thailand stands to fare the worst. Over 21 percent of Thailand's GDP comes from tourism and related spending, while its cities are also key destinations for Chinese travelers. As of Jan. 28, Thailand had 14 reported cases of the virus — the highest number outside China. Furthermore, fear of the virus could deter vital tourism from all countries to Thailand. Most immediately, however, the country could suffer from a long-lasting drop in Chinese arrivals, who accounted for 10.5 million arrivals in 2019 and $17 billion in spending. According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand's estimates, the virus could lead to a drop of 2 million Chinese tourists in 2020 — a big blow that comes on top of the problems stemming from a strengthening baht, competition with Vietnam for tourists and a series of high-profile ferry accidents that discouraged Chinese visitors. The outbreak further jeopardizes this revenue stream at a worrying time for Bangkok, which is trying to prop up growth amid political fragility, weak global demand for its electronics and automotive sector, as well as dampened domestic consumption.
Vietnam, too, relies on China for a substantial number of tourists — one-third of its total. Its economy, however, is not overdependent on tourism, as it has been a key beneficiary of manufacturers fleeing China due to the U.S.-China trade war. But as with most Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam's deep reliance on Chinese supply chains puts it at risk of economic fallout if a sustained outbreak saps China's economic growth.

Africa and the Middle East

While Africa is far from the Chinese center of the outbreak, the increased flow of Chinese nationals to the continent in recent years puts it at risk. Any disruptions in African economies, however, would stem less from a sharp dropoff in Chinese arrivals or a slowdown in the Chinese economy than outbreaks in the countries themselves, particularly as many nations lack decent health care infrastructure or robust screening procedures. On Jan. 28, Ethiopia reported that it had quarantined four students who recently returned from Wuhan exhibiting symptoms of the virus. Ethiopia is comparatively well-positioned to control any outbreak, but others with significant links to China are not. The virus, for instance, could spread much more quickly in a country like Zimbabwe, which is currently facing a severe economic and food crisis. At the same time, many of Africa's major cities, especially Addis Ababa, Cairo, Johannesburg and Casablanca, are all destinations for Chinese travelers, students and businesspeople.

If China's domestic response nips the virus in the bud, the number of cases could peak in the coming weeks, resulting in a relaxing of restrictions within the next two months.

Europe and the Americas

In the Americas, Canada and the United States are the only countries that have reported cases to date, and both are well-equipped to monitor and deal with the threat. Fewer Chinese travelers visit Latin America, which is also at lower risk because many flights from China to the region first go through the United States or Canada, which could prevent the onward travel of anyone suffering from the virus. During the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, for instance, the virus spread at a significantly lower rate in Latin America than elsewhere: Brazil and Colombia each registered just one confirmed case, in contrast to 250 in Canada and 75 in the United States. (The latter, meanwhile, was the only country in the Americas to confirm an outbreak of MERS.) Disruptions to China's economy, however, would still have knock-on effects for Latin American countries, which conducted $307.4 billion in bilateral trade with China in 2019. A long-lasting outbreak would jeopardize agricultural and natural resource exports, especially Chile, which sends over half of its vital copper exports to China, and Brazil, which relies on agricultural exports to China.

Elsewhere in Asia

China's numerous land borders in Northeast and Central Asia also put other countries at risk of the virus, leading Mongolia and Kazakhstan to implement severe restrictions on movement from China. However, most countries have to balance the need to protect their populations against the economic and political ramifications of severing links with China. Particularly worried is North Korea, which has banned Chinese tourist arrivals and set up quarantine zone at its borders. While North Korea's tight, authoritarian system appeared to help it weather both the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak and the 2015 MERS outbreak, the new coronavirus presents the country with more of a dilemma, as Chinese tourists (350,000 visited last year alone) have become a critical source of revenue for the country's economy as it struggles under the weight of sanctions. Another source of danger for Pyongyang are the estimated 50,000 North Korean workers in China. The laborers were supposed to return to North Korea by late last month in accordance with U.N. sanctions, but many reportedly did not due to the haphazard implementation of the measures. Since then, however, some may have returned home before Pyongyang implemented quarantine measures, particularly in the run-up to the Lunar New Year.

The Upshot

China's coronavirus outbreak is a fluid, rapidly evolving situation. What happens now is highly uncertain — and even more so for countries that are trying to contain the spread of the virus within their own borders. If China's domestic response nips the virus in the bud, the number of cases could peak in the coming weeks, resulting in a relaxing of restrictions within the next two months. But if the measures prove ineffective and the virus spreads further — or becomes more fatal — the long period of incubation and contagiousness could mean cases continue to crop up internationally for some time to come. In such a scenario, authorities in China and farther afield won't be lifting restrictions anytime soon, which would herald a difficult year ahead for the global tourism industry.

[G M]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-underreporting-true-scale-of-deadly-viral-outbreak-expert-says_3218207.html

Shocking!

[G M]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=597&v=w0cy_4FmvJY&feature=emb_logo

Plan accordingly.

[G M]

Coronavirus infections predicted to grow exponentially; first death outside China; outbreak becomes political
Major airlines stop flying to China as coronavirus spreads
The United States has issued a “Level 4” travel advisory for China, its highest level of caution, over the rapidly spreading outbreak. (The Washington Post)
By
Anna Fifield and
Alex Horton
The Philippines and New Zealand have joined the list of countries that have sharply restricted entry to people traveling from or through China, as the number of cases confirmed outside the mainland continues to grow. Meanwhile, inside China, the number of reported cases has grown rapidly, and scientists predict that exponentially more have been infected. Here is what we know:

● There are nearly 14,500 confirmed cases of coronavirus in China, including 10 on the self-governing island of Taiwan, with more than 300 dead. A new study says that as many as 75,815 people in Wuhan may have been infected.

● The World Health Organization has reported roughly 130 confirmed cases of the virus in more than 20 countries outside China and Taiwan. The Philippines reported the first death attributable to the virus outside China. New cases have been confirmed in South Korea and India.

AD
● Doctors say the virus can be spread by fecal matter, as well as droplets from the mouth and nose.

● Chinese financial regulators have prepared a $173 billion support package for when markets reopen Monday.

● Are you in isolation or quarantine because of the coronavirus? We want to hear your story.

First person-to-person case reported in the U.S. | Mapping the spread

BEIJING — The Philippines has blocked entry to travelers from China, including from Hong Kong and Macao, after a man from Wuhan died in Manila of the coronavirus, the first person outside China to succumb to the pneumonia-like respiratory illness.

With the coronavirus continuing to spread beyond China’s borders, more countries are moving to close their doors to foreign nationals who have visited there. New Zealand, Iraq and Indonesia joined the Philippines on Sunday in imposing new restrictions on people coming from or through China.

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The virus has been detected in small numbers in some 20 other countries — from the United States and France to Thailand and Australia — while the number of infections in China has surged to nearly 14,500, according to the latest National Health Commission figures.

The number of deaths has risen to 304, although anecdotal reports suggest the true number could be much higher.

A 44-year-old Wuhan man died in a Manila hospital Sunday, after arriving, via Hong Kong, on Jan. 21. He was admitted to a hospital with pneumonia four days later and his 38-year-old companion remains hospitalized, but there was no evidence of local transmission, the country’s Department of Health said.

Early missteps and state secrecy in China probably allowed the coronavirus to spread farther and faster

Even before the man’s death, President Rodrigo Duterte had decided to expand the Philippines’ travel restrictions from those traveling from Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, to the rest of mainland China, as well as its special administrative regions, Macao and Hong Kong.

Members of the People’s Liberation Army arrive Sunday in Wuhan with medical staff members and supplies to fight the coronavirus outbreak. (China Daily/Reuters)
Members of the People’s Liberation Army arrive Sunday in Wuhan with medical staff members and supplies to fight the coronavirus outbreak. (China Daily/Reuters)
“I wish to emphasize that we are not singling out Chinese nationals,” Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go, a close aide to Duterte, said in an interview with DZBB radio station on Sunday, after meeting with the president on Saturday night. “It covers all travelers from China to the Philippines regardless of nationality.”

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New Zealand’s government announced that starting Monday, it would deny entry to foreign travelers arriving from China and order returning New Zealanders to isolate themselves for 14 days.

Indonesia said it would immediately bar visitors who have been in China for 14 days, the maximum incubation period, from entering or transiting. Iraq’s Interior Ministry said it would ban all foreign nationals coming from China.

These three countries have not reported a case of coronavirus on their shores.

They, however, join countries including the United States, Australia and Singapore in imposing travel restrictions on visitors from China. Japan and South Korea have imposed looser rules on people from the Hubei province, although the subtropical South Korean island of Jeju, where 98 percent of foreign tourists are Chinese, said Sunday that it would rescind visa-free entry for them.

AD
South Korea on Sunday reported three more cases of infection, taking the total to 15, while India confirmed its second case. The United States now has eight infections.

But even as countries around the world impose restrictions on travel from China, the Foreign Ministry’s combative spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, has sought to frame the coronavirus outbreak as part of a bigger, existential battle between the United States and China.

After U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the coronavirus could “help” to bring jobs to the United States as companies moved operations away from China, Hua said these “unfriendly U.S. comments” were “certainly not a gesture of goodwill.”

A worker disinfects an area in Jincheon, South Korea, on Sunday. (Yonhap/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
A worker disinfects an area in Jincheon, South Korea, on Sunday. (Yonhap/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
“Many countries have offered China support in various means,” she said. “In sharp contrast, certain U.S. officials’ words and actions are neither factual nor appropriate.”

AD
Over the weekend, she singled out the United States for going against the World Health Organization’s advice that travel limitations were not necessary, even though a raft of other countries have also imposed restrictions.

A “certain country has turned a blind eye to WHO recommendations and imposed sweeping travel restrictions against China,” Hua tweeted Saturday. “This kind of overreaction could only make things even worse. It’s not the right way to deal with the pandemic.”

Reality check: The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now

China is still struggling to contain the spread of the virus, which began in December in a market in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan, where exotic animals including bats, civets and snakes were sold for consumption. Bats and the catlike civets have been linked to previous mutations in viruses that have jumped from animals to humans, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which began in southern China in 2002.

AD
With authorities slow to recognize this latest outbreak as a new virus and even slower to warn people of it, the number of infections has continued to rise rapidly, passing the total infected by SARS.

The number of confirmed cases rose by almost 2,000 between Saturday and Sunday, despite stringent restrictions placed on movement of some 50 million people from Hubei province.

The People’s Liberation Army sent 1,400 medical staff members from the armed forces to Wuhan on Sunday to treat patients at the new 1,000-bed Huoshenshan Hospital, which was built in just 10 days and is due to start operation on Monday.

“This is the latest development in the Chinese people’s critical battle against the novel coronavirus outbreak,” the official Xinhua News Agency said in an article that presented leader President Xi Jinping as “commanding this fight” against the coronavirus outbreak.

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In trying to contain the outbreak, Hubei officials continue to speak in terms of an epic battle against what Xi has called a “devil” virus.

“Cadres at all levels should truly show a wartime spirit,” the Hubei state newspaper exhorted Sunday after a meeting at the provincial pneumonia prevention headquarters.

A leukemia patient waits for permission to cross a checkpoint in Jiujiang, China, on Saturday. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
A leukemia patient waits for permission to cross a checkpoint in Jiujiang, China, on Saturday. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
Scientists around the world have raced to consolidate and share what they’ve learned since the outbreak.

Virologists at Italy’s National Institute for Infectious Diseases announced on Sunday they isolated the virus for research, uploading its partial sequence in the GenBank database — a first in Europe. “In the next few days the whole virus will be made available to the international scientific community,” said Salvatore Curiale, a spokesperson for the institute. “This is a fundamental step for perfecting diagnosis [and] developing treatments and a vaccine.”

AD
China’s stock markets will reopen Monday after the Lunar New Year holiday, the first trading day since the extent of the outbreak became clear.

Anticipating a sharp sell-off, China’s central bank and other financial regulators said Sunday that they had prepared an emergency package totaling an astronomical $173 billion to support companies and markets during the coronavirus crisis.

This news came as a new study by University of Hong Kong scientists, published in the Lancet, said the outbreak could be even worse than it appears and could get dramatically worse over the next week or two.

They found that as many as 75,815 people in Wuhan had been infected with the coronavirus by Jan. 25, based on an assumption that each infected person could have passed the virus to 2.68 others. It also said the epidemic was doubling every 6.4 days.

If the virus was spreading at a similar level around the country, “we inferred that epidemics are already growing exponentially in multiple major cities of China with a lag time behind the Wuhan outbreak of about 1-2 weeks,” the scientists wrote.

In coronavirus outbreak, China’s leaders scramble to avert a Chernobyl moment

Medical advice over the past two weeks has emphasized the need to wear masks to stop transmission through respiratory droplets from the mouth and nose. But Chinese authorities are now saying that the virus can be passed from fecal matter.

Researchers from the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University and the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported this weekend that there had been fecal-oral transmission. It warned medical workers to “protect themselves against vomit and feces of patients.”

In Shenzhen, on China’s southern border with Hong Kong, scientists at the Third People’s Hospital said the stool samples of infected people had tested positive for the virus, further suggesting that it could be transmitted through feces in addition to through respiratory droplets.

Health officials urged good personal hygiene, and especially washing hands well and often.

“When mildly ill patients are isolated in their homes, they and their family members should pay special attention to hygiene, and they should avoid sharing bathrooms with family members as much as possible,” officials said, according to the China News Network.

Hubei Vice Gov. Xiao Juhua acknowledged in a news conference Sunday the province’s medical resources were relatively week amid the “severe and complicated” outbreak, Reuters reported, though officials described optimism that test kits for the virus have improved in speed and accuracy.

People in Hong Kong protest on Sunday government plans to convert a heritage site into a quarantine camp. (Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images)
People in Hong Kong protest on Sunday government plans to convert a heritage site into a quarantine camp. (Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images)
As the virus continues to spread and new cases continue to emerge, anger is mounting about the lack of access to protective equipment, especially the face masks that authorities are urging to be worn in public places.

With stores and online shopping sites sold out of masks, many cities across the country have launched an online booking system or lottery system for masks.

In Guangzhou in the south, each person can reserve up to five masks a day, although those in the Zhejiang province’s Shaoxing are allowed only one. In the southeastern seaboard city of Xiamen, authorities have launched a lottery system for residents.

Masks and other basic protective equipment like goggles and gloves are in such short supply that Hubei hospitals have been openly appealing for donations on social media.

U.S. seeks to send expert team to China to combat coronavirus outbreak; Xi defends response

There is growing criticism about the shortage of masks and particularly about the distribution of the masks after a video emerged of a man taking a box of masks apparently donated to the Red Cross Society in Wuhan. Rumors spread that the man was diverting the masks for local leaders, rather than for their intended recipients, prompting state news outlets to claim that he was simply delivering them to their rightful place.

A list of the materials donated to the Red Cross Society branch in Hubei showed that 36,000 masks had been given to two private hospitals in Wuhan, while the public Wuhan Union Hospital, whose doctors have been working at the front line in fighting the coronavirus, had only received 3,000.

One Wuhan doctor said that his hospital had not received a single mask from the Red Cross, one of the few officially recognized organizations permitted to handle civic donations.

In a post on social media, since deleted by censors, the doctor said his hospital had only 300 N95 masks left, barely enough for a day. “Fortunately we got a batch of donations from America, 500 U.S. FDA standard N95 masks. It made us so happy because we could last one more day!”

One netizen even called the Wuhan Charity Federation and other such groups “pixiu,” a mythical winged animal that eats but never defecates, accusing them of receiving more than $80 million in donations but spending none of that amount on the public. That post has also been deleted by China’s zealous Internet police, which tries to swiftly stamp out any criticism of the ruling Communist Party.

In apparent recognition of this growing discontent, Premier Li Keqiang, who is leading the party’s efforts to prevent and control the coronavirus outbreak, went to the national hub for medical supplies in Beijing over the weekend.

Kimchi, cow poop and other spurious coronavirus remedies

Li “called for all-out efforts to ensure the provision of key medical supplies and create necessary conditions to win the battle against the outbreak,” the Foreign Ministry said Sunday in a statement about his visit. He also urged “further refinement” of the ways equipment was allocated, noting that “the priority is to meet the needs of medical workers selflessly saving lives on the front lines.”

Echoing the military language of the state media, Li said medical supply manufacturers were “like military contractors producing for the ‘arsenal’ in this battle against the epidemic.”

Liu Yang in Beijing contributed to this report.

[Crafty_Dog]

 


February 4, 2020   View On Website
Open as PDF



    The Geopolitics of the Novel Coronavirus
By: George Friedman

Geopolitics is a fairly slow-moving process that unfolds in predictable ways. This is usually the case. There are then moments when a wild card enters the system from the outside, unpredictable yet significant. At the moment, we can’t tell if the new coronavirus is such an event. We don’t know exactly how it is transmitted, how lethal it is, whether it causes long-term illness and so on. We know it has broken out in a Chinese city, Wuhan; that the Chinese government regards it as serious enough to impose significant controls on movement in and out of Wuhan; and that a small number of cases in China, relative to the population, and a smaller number of cases outside of China have been reported. For this we depend on media reports, since our own knowledge of viral medicine is limited.

Geopolitically, communicable disease ranges from the common cold to the Black Death. The former is ever-present but of little consequence; the latter massively disrupted European society and, in some cases, shifted the regional balance of power. There is a trigger point between these two diseases where the political system erects disruptions in everyday life and commerce designed to limit the effect of the disease. To some extent these actions are effective, and to some extent they can be sufficiently disruptive to cause economic problems. We are at the moment teetering between these points, with the consequence of the disease and the consequence of protecting against the disease uncertain.

The major threat would appear to be travelers carrying the virus. The United States has banned travel to the U.S. for foreigners who have traveled to infected regions, while U.S. citizens may return but are quarantined for two weeks. Major U.S. airlines are starting the process of suspending all flights to and from China, but Chinese airlines and U.S. cargo carriers are still flying to the U.S. Other countries like Russia have also imposed travel bans. The U.S. government has imposed very limited barriers, through which the disease is likely to pass. Most important, maritime shipments to and from China have not been significantly disrupted. This is vital, because if they were to be suspended, the situation would transform from a problem to a crisis.

China is dependent on exports to maintain its economy. About 20 percent of its gross domestic product derives from exports, and its single largest customer is the United States, despite the trade dispute. Assume for the moment that the new coronavirus were closer to the bubonic plague than the common cold, or assume that the panic that arises from the fear of the unknown compelled the governments of multiple advanced countries to place China under quarantine. It is an unlikely but far from impossible outcome.

The Chinese government has been under intense pressure in three ways. First, the crackdown on Xinjiang province generated a massive negative response from Europe and the United States. Alongside that, the United States imposed significant tariffs on China. The contraction in exports hit a financial system that the Beijing government was already struggling to stabilize. This led to fear among Chinese authorities of unrest over economic and financial issues. The result was increasing security, from recognition technology to intrusion into the internet and periodic arrests of those considered dissidents. Economic insecurity led to increased security. This in turn led to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong riots were triggered by a bill that authorized China to extradite Hong Kong residents. This was a desire Beijing did not have before. But as the situation intensified, the desire to assure stability in Hong Kong increased. With the bill, some in Hong Kong recognized that extradition could be carried out for things legal in Hong Kong and could lead to extreme sentences. It represented an existential threat to many in Hong Kong, and the results were transmitted around the world.

A chief responsibility of the Chinese president is to manage relations with its most important customer, the United States. China has deflected American demands to open its markets and not manipulate its currency since the George W. Bush administration. It was expected that President Xi Jinping could continue this process. He failed to manage U.S. President Donald Trump, and the result was that an exporting nation faced a challenge from a consuming nation. To put it more simply, there is a rule in business that you should never have a fight with your best customer. Xi violated this rule by winding up in a tariff fight with the United States.

There is no evidence – but then, there wouldn’t be – of a fight in the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party over Xi’s stewardship. The Central Committee is packed with Xi supporters, of course, but a situation like what has developed must cause concern and generate ambitions. The idea that the Central Committee was content with the financial situation, trade war, Hong Kong and Xinjiang is to me the least likely situation.

Now, to the coronavirus. Assume that the fears that are being expressed do not turn out to be exaggerated. Assume that in response to this, massive trade restrictions and embargoes were imposed on China and that freighters were not permitted to dock in Long Beach or Rotterdam, nor would they be permitted in Shanghai. With the Russians already screening China’s northern border, China would be isolated.

China is a nation whose core dynamic is based on international trade. Under pressure from the United States, a dangerous virus would inevitably cripple that trade at best. At this point, the Chinese government, like any government, would be blamed for what went wrong, and it would be blamed for mismanaging the virus and failing to understand the economic consequences. From here you can play out the game.

The reason for this exercise is to point out that the coronavirus is neither a geopolitical nor a political event. Diseases emerge with some frequency. But given the Chinese dynamic and China's current condition, the virus could readily evolve into a geopolitical and political event, in which tension within China might explode, with the coronavirus the last straw and China’s international position transformed.

To emphasize, I have no idea what “2019-nCoV” is or what it will do, but judging from what is being said about it and the level of anxiety, I will assume for the sake of argument that it is more dangerous than not. Then, given the evolution of the past year or two, and given the fear that always follows new, deadly diseases, we could see a fundamental transformation of the international system.

Not all events are geopolitical. They do not arise out of relations between nations. But events that are unconnected to geopolitics can connect themselves to the system and disrupt it. This is meant as an exercise in geopolitical theory. It is not insignificant in the case of China, which has had a difficult period and doesn’t need to be quarantined by the world.   

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/385612.php

I am going with a yes.

[Crafty_Dog]

Beijing's coronavirus mismanagement. We noted Thursday that a 34-year-old doctor in Wuhan who had been detained in early January for sounding the alarm about the appearance of a mysterious new coronavirus, Dr. Li Wenliang, had become one of the 638 people who have succumbed to the disease – and that it was exactly the sort of development that Beijing feared could crystallize rising public anger at the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic. Sure enough, news of the death of the doctor sparked a torrent of outrage on Chinese social media platforms like Weibo and WeChat. Posts praising whistleblowers and calling for free speech received millions of views over the course of a couple hours before censors caught up. Making matters worse for itself, the government also appeared to spike several stories in state media announcing the death after they had already been published and gone viral on social media, effectively pouring gas on what was already a bonfire of public anger over the heavy hand of censorship.

China’s much-feared anti-graft agency, the CCDI, announced it would launch a probe into the death of the doctor, and a prominent official or two may have to take the fall, raising the risk of a destabilizing power struggle in Beijing. One other takeaway from the incident: State media and the government's censorship apparatus are enormously powerful tools for shaping public opinion, but Beijing’s control over information is hardly airtight, particularly in a crisis, when it has the potential to do more harm than good to the party’s legitimacy.

[G M]

The PTB in Beijing are already blaming city level officials for everything.

Beijing's coronavirus mismanagement. We noted Thursday that a 34-year-old doctor in Wuhan who had been detained in early January for sounding the alarm about the appearance of a mysterious new coronavirus, Dr. Li Wenliang, had become one of the 638 people who have succumbed to the disease – and that it was exactly the sort of development that Beijing feared could crystallize rising public anger at the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic. Sure enough, news of the death of the doctor sparked a torrent of outrage on Chinese social media platforms like Weibo and WeChat. Posts praising whistleblowers and calling for free speech received millions of views over the course of a couple hours before censors caught up. Making matters worse for itself, the government also appeared to spike several stories in state media announcing the death after they had already been published and gone viral on social media, effectively pouring gas on what was already a bonfire of public anger over the heavy hand of censorship.

China’s much-feared anti-graft agency, the CCDI, announced it would launch a probe into the death of the doctor, and a prominent official or two may have to take the fall, raising the risk of a destabilizing power struggle in Beijing. One other takeaway from the incident: State media and the government's censorship apparatus are enormously powerful tools for shaping public opinion, but Beijing’s control over information is hardly airtight, particularly in a crisis, when it has the potential to do more harm than good to the party’s legitimacy.

[G M]

https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-pandemic-isnt-ending-its-just.html

[ccp]

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/02/07/report-china-crematorium-funeral-homes-burning-coronavirus-patients/

China likely is putting the whole world at risk by covering up the true scope of the outbreak

Who can believe anything the Chicoms say ?

There should be world outrage

[DougMacG]

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/02/07/report-china-crematorium-funeral-homes-burning-coronavirus-patients/

China likely is putting the whole world at risk by covering up the true scope of the outbreak

Who can believe anything the Chicoms say ?

There should be world outrage

China's Ambassador to the US came on Face the Nation yesterday, to reassure us of ... something.  Should be a friendly forum for him.  He said the million plus Muslims being held in concentration camps in China "are happy".  And liberals here aren't outraged?!

No, we can't believe anything they say.

Two weeks ago it was 1000 infected.  Now it is 40,000.  Neither number is accurate.  How do we do the math or know the danger level?

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/02/how-china-working-quarantine-truth-about-coronavirus/162985/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl

[G M]

https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/02/coronavirus-spiraling-economic-impact.html

[G M]

https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/02/coronavirus-spiraling-economic-impact.html

https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/02/chaos-brings-opportunityand-chaos.html

[G M]

https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/02/corona-virus-analysis-by-historian/

[G M]

https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/02/corona-virus-analysis-by-historian/

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/t0212-cdc-telebriefing-transcript.html

[G M]

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/02/13/us-military-prepping-for-coronavirus-pandemic/

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-vows-put-end-lab-leakage-pathogenic-samples

And promises to never do it again!

[G M]

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/reports-china-has-monopoly-on-medical-supplies-and-drugs/

We do.

[Crafty_Dog]

This episode is strongly recommended by Michael Yon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34108122

[Crafty_Dog]

 


February 17, 2020   View On Website
Open as PDF



    How Dangerous Is the Wuhan Coronavirus?
By: Ryan Bridges

The political and economic effects of the new coronavirus – both in China and across the globe – hinge overwhelmingly on just how successful efforts to stop its spread are likely to be. Forecasting these, therefore, requires us to take a closer look at the mechanics of both contagion and containment.

When determining how dangerous an infectious disease can be, microbiologists and epidemiologists need to know two numbers: R0 (called R-naught) and the case-fatality rate (which is actually a ratio, not a rate). The former estimates how infectious the disease is, while the latter provides an insight on its virulence.

R0 is an attempt to calculate how many people will catch a disease from an infected person. An R0 of 2, for instance, means that an infected person will spread the disease to two other people. But this is not an easy number to calculate. A paper published in the scientific journal PLOS One describes two methods for finding R0. One involves hunting down every contact of several infected people to determine how many get sick and averaging the results; the second involves calculating an estimate by plugging cumulative data into equations that serve as infectious disease models.

But, as an article in The Atlantic explains, R0 is even trickier than that. It can change depending on external circumstances. A public health campaign or an effective quarantine could lower R0, while the virus’ spreading to a region with poor health care could increase R0. Perhaps the most salient point is that an R0 greater than 1 suggests that the infection will spread, while an R0 less than 1 suggests it will fizzle out.

As its name implies, the case-fatality rate estimates the percentage of deaths that occur among infected people. The Wuhan coronavirus has an estimated case-fatality rate of about 2 percent, meaning that there are two fatalities for every 100 cases of the disease. Science News reports that “the [World Health Organization] says less than 2 percent of patients who have fallen ill with 2019-nCoV have died, most often from multi-organ failure in older people and those with underlying health conditions.”

But just like R0, this number can be tricky to calculate and interpret. First, the true number of cases is hard to know for sure, since people who contract a mild version of the disease don’t go to the hospital, don’t get tested, and don’t become tallied in the official statistics. Second, the case-fatality rate will vary inversely with the quality of a health care system. Wuhan was so overwhelmed by the coronavirus that hospitals were turning away patients. It is quite likely that some people who died could have been saved had they received treatment. Combined, these facts would suggest that the case-fatality rate for the Wuhan coronavirus is lower than 2 percent, especially if an infected person is treated in an advanced nation with a good health care system. Indeed, an article in Reuters concluded that infections have been underreported. As of publication, data from Johns Hopkins show that of the more than 1,000 deaths, only two have occurred outside mainland China (in the Philippines and Hong Kong).

Despite the difficulty in calculating R0 and the case-fatality rate, these numbers are worth estimating because they help place a new disease in the context of what is known about other diseases. The R0 of measles could be as high as 18, while the case-fatality rate of seasonal influenza is approximately 0.1 percent. Thus, preliminary numbers suggest the Wuhan coronavirus is less infectious than measles but deadlier than seasonal flu. But, because of the sheer number of cases of seasonal flu (which number in the millions), the global death toll from influenza is far greater, estimated to be approximately 300,000 to 500,000 deaths annually.

Containing the Coronavirus

The global economy surely will take a substantial hit from the coronavirus. This will be the result of China’s massive, citywide quarantines, a decrease in industrial output, and travel restrictions and supply chain disruptions. Many such efforts to contain the coronavirus are disproportionate to the threat.

China’s massive quarantines will probably work to an extent – after all, preventing people from traveling within and between
cities will help curb transmission of the virus – but this measure cannot be implemented in free societies. In non-authoritarian countries, only individuals can be quarantined, and this has been adequate to prevent the spread of disease. (When Ebola came to the United States, it didn’t spread far thanks to effective treatment and isolation procedures.) Citywide quarantines also aren’t necessary because the best way for uninfected people to remain that way is to wash their hands frequently and to avoid touching their face while in public. It’s difficult to say whether wearing a mask accomplishes anything. On the one hand, masks catch respiratory droplets, which is why sick people and those with whom they are in close contact absolutely should wear them. On the other hand, viruses are so tiny, they can pass right through masks. To the extent that a mask prevents a person from touching his or her face, then a mask may provide some protection. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend that healthy people wear a mask in public.

While coronaviruses can spread via frequently touched fomites (objects, such as doorknobs, that can transmit an infection indirectly to another person), it is not known how long they can survive outside the body on surfaces. While some scientists believe that coronaviruses can last only a few hours, a newly published literature review in the Journal of Hospital Infection concludes that they “can persist on inanimate surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for up to 9 days, but can be efficiently inactivated by surface disinfection procedures… within 1 minute.” Because exports from China take 30 to 40 days to arrive in the United States (if shipped via ocean freight), there is virtually no chance that exported products could infect Americans – unless the export is an infected human, animal or animal product.

When Overreactions Are Rational

The most serious threat to the global economy is not from the virus itself but from overreaction. Chinese manufacturing plants sit idle due to sick or quarantined workers. Travel into and out of China has been reduced. These overreactions are understandable, however, because scientists and public health officials have expressed a lot of uncertainty about the virus. When faced with uncertainty – particularly when that uncertainty potentially involves death – people (especially politicians) behave cautiously. (From the American perspective, restricting travel to China has the side benefit of squeezing that nation’s economy even further.)

The general public hates uncertainty. But scientists live in a world of probability and are very comfortable dealing with uncertainty. This is also why scientists rarely use words like "never" and "always." (We know better from experience. At one time, we thought all swans were white, until we went to Australia and found black swans.) This difference between the public and scientific community on the relationship to risk creates a communication gap that further feeds the uncertainty.

Ultimately, the future of the Wuhan coronavirus is not knowable. Like the other major coronavirus epidemics that preceded it, the Wuhan virus is thought to have jumped from animals to humans. SARS terrified the world, but then quickly vanished. MERS, on the other hand, is now endemic, meaning there are a few cases that occur all the time. The Wuhan virus could follow either path or some other path entirely.

Just like an economic recession, an infectious disease outbreak provokes strong psychological responses. Life will return to normal when enough people believe that it’s okay to return to normal.   

[G M]

This episode is strongly recommended by Michael Yon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34108122

Worth the time to listen to.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34159825

[G M]

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/china-deploys-40-incinerators-wuhan-21529067

Hopefully, their definition of medical waste doesn't include the possibly infected or political dissidents.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-suspends-inspection-in-china-warns-of-medical-supply-shortages_3243943.html

https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijing-decides-to-expel-three-wall-street-journal-reporters-over-coronavirus-coverage_3243321.html?utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=b7a0b55522-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_19_10_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-b7a0b55522-239065853

[G M]

https://wilderwealthywise.com/corona-virus-with-a-slice-of-recession/

[G M]

https://gizmodo.com/things-are-not-looking-good-for-stopping-the-coronaviru-1841835193

[G M]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/

[G M]

https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/02/what-next.html

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2020
What Next?


















If you missed it, read yesterday's post of CDC warnings.

If there are mass quarantines in effect at some point, you're going to need some things.
Some of them you know, and some of them you probably haven't made provision for.

1) Water
One gal/person/day, minimum.
If you're planning on city water continuing to flow, well...best of luck there.
Hope ain't a plan.
Three days without water, and your kidneys will begin to shut down.

2) Food
Figure out a menu for a month. Focus on variety, and calories, ideally of easy-to-prepare food.
Now get to where you have six to twelve months' worth on hand.
If you're planning on the .Gov handing out MREs, well...best of luck there.
Hope ain't a plan.

3) Rx and OTC meds.
Your pharmacy probably won't be open, and you may need to care for yourself and/or family members.
For any conditions you already have, and possibly also Kung Flu.

4) Lights and Heat/AC
If water stops, what makes you think power, gas, etc. will still continue?

5) Banking and cash reserves
Your landlord or bank is still going to expect you to make rent/mortgage payments.
Ditto for property taxes. Trash or utility bills. Any other regular payments.
Whether banks are still operational is an open question. Options, and a cash reserve float, would be prudent. Doubly so if this becomes you not going to work for an extended period, non-voluntarily.

6) Your home version of 9-1-1.
Protection from stupid people, because you've got something they didn't plan to have.
I don't care if, for you, that's a big dog, a baseball bat, a loaded .45, or prayer beads.
People are stupid now, pre-panic.
Think hurricane, that lasts months, here.
Imagine your stupidest near-neighbor, two months into being hungry every day.

Hopefully, nothing gets this bad, or lasts for very long.
But it might. And stay-at-home quarantines are what CDC is talking about when they talk about "community mitigation measures" and "tele-schooling, and tele-working".
And yet again, hope ain't a plan.

Notice I said nothing about isolation gear.
That's because
a) you won't have enough, ever
b) playing outside in a pandemic is about as bright as playing on the highway
c) the results are likely to be rather similar
Stay inside means stay inside.
Going out and about is simply rolling the dice with catching something you didn't have, until you got stupid.
Don't do that.

Someone really smart would start doing an inventory, and see where they're short, then start backfilling those holes in their abilities. That way you're the solution, and not part of the problem, if/when this becomes a thing.

And if it never does, nothing on this list goes bad overnight, and solves 99% of your problems in every other disaster/problem you're likely to face.

It's also too late to shop when they announce things are shutting down now, like they will, with barricades and check points already up.

So decide whether you'd rather be a month early, or five minutes too late.
You only get one chance to make that choice, and it's now.