A view from within Wuhan seems desperate.. sources that Coal Speaker have talked to from inside tell of empty streets.. People fearfully staying in their homes and staying away from people.. There is a massive construction project underway to build a hospital from the ground up in just days–enough for 1,000 patients.
Most New Year celebrations in China have been called off—that is remarkable given the importance and planning that goes into the yearly spectacles..
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, after holding a special government meeting on the Lunar New Year public holiday…
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WHAT IS IT?
A coronavirus is a family of viruses which include the common cold. This new rapidly spreading virus has never been seen before, so it’s been called 2019-nCov, for “novel coronavirus”. New viruses can become common in humans after jumping across the species barrier from animals. There are rumors that this one did, somehow from snake to human.
Chinese authorities have stated that they suspect a seafood market that “conducted illegal transactions of wild animals” was the source of the outbreak.
There is no vaccine at this time.. Symptoms start with a fever, followed by a dry cough and then, after a week or so, shortness of breath with some patients needing hospital treatment.
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THE LOCK DOWN
You can’t get in.. you can’t get out.
Chinese officials have virtually locked down tens of millions of people in the hopes of saving the world from a rapidly spreading virus..
China’s most important celebration has been all but cancelled for at least 56 million people as authorities expanded travel bans across central Hubei province to try and contain the spread of the virus
In Wuhan, the epicentre of the emergency, 450 military medics were deployed to help treat patients in Hubei’s capital city, where a seafood and live animal market has been identified as the centre of the outbreak.
On Saturday, when they should have been celebrating the New Year, people waiting at one hospital in the city were angry and frustrated.
“It takes at least five hours to see a doctor,” one woman, who didn’t want to be named, told AFP.
One man in his 30s said some people had to queue for two days. Many people had brought their own chairs for the wait.
Chinese State-run China Global Television Network reported on Saturday that a doctor who had been treating patients in Wuhan, 62-year-old Liang Wudong, had died from the virus.
Starbucks said it was closing all its Hubei outlets for the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, following a similar move by McDonald’s in five Hubei cities…
Public gatherings and public events have been completely banned in certain provinces in China just in time for the lunar new year..
There are reports that the government is doing its best to destroy roads and paths in order to stop villagers from traveling out of hard hit areas..
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THE WORLD BRACES
Vietnam, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong all now have confirmed cases — alongside the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
France yesterday confirmed three cases and Australia one – with all patients returning from Wuhan. So far, 14 people in the UK have been tested for coronavirus, with five given the all-clear and nine still awaiting results. Britain is on the brink of an epidemic according to experts..
Professor Neil Ferguson, an expert at Imperial College London, said the new strain is currently “as deadly as the Spanish flu epidemic”.
That flu killed 50 million people worldwide in 1918 through 1920.
Believe it or not, our understanding of the spread of respiratory infections on aircraft is very limited. Key questions include how often transmission can occur by contaminated surfaces, large droplet spread, and airborne spread of small-particle aerosols, as well as the risk for specific organisms. The scientific uncertainty limits the ability to design preventive measures.
During the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS outbreak, investigations were conducted among passengers who traveled on 40 flights with patients on board who had symptomatic SARS. Transmission is thought to have occurred on board 5 of 40 flights. On 4 flights, a small number of suspected infections occurred among persons seated within a few rows of the index patient, consistent with spread by large droplets. However, on 1 flight from Hong Kong to Beijing, 22 of 120 passengers and crew were thought to have become infected, which suggests airborne spread over a considerable distance.
Many commercial aircraft use vertical airflow and high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters that should limit exposure to small airborne particles. However, there are no regulations requiring HEPA filters or for testing the function of filters.
It is obvious that we need additional careful epidemiological investigations to understand the frequency and relative importance of different modes of transmission on board aircraft for specific pathogens.
I guess now there is more of a concern about getting a disease onboard a plane than it is worrying about a crash.
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How did it start?
From what is known, the claim is ‘wet markets.’ This is what NPR reports,
At such markets, outdoor stalls are squeezed together to form narrow lanes, where locals and visitors shop for cuts of meat and ripe produce. A stall selling hundreds of caged chickens may abut a butcher counter, where uncooked meat is chopped as nearby dogs watch hungrily. Vendors hock skinned hares, while seafood stalls display glistening fish and shrimp.
Wet markets put people and live and dead animals — dogs, chickens, pigs, snakes, civets, and more — in constant close contact. That makes it easy for a virus to jump from animal to human.
On Wednesday, authorities in Wuhan, China — where the current outbreak started — banned the trade of live animals at wet markets. The specific market where the outbreak is believed to have begun, the Huanan Seafood Market, was shuttered on January 1. The coronavirus that emerged there has so far killed 26 people and infected more than 900.
“Poorly regulated, live animal markets mixed with illegal wildlife trade offer a unique opportunity for viruses to spillover from wildlife hosts into the human population,” the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement.
A day ago reports surfaced that snakes could have been the origin animal..
Some other people have some more nefarious theories of how the virus began..
Bill Gertz landed this story in the Washington TIMES and eyebrows have been unfurled… Gertz writes, in part,
The deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert.
Radio Free Asia this week rebroadcast a local Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory known the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Radio Free Asia reported.
The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.
Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese bio warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert biological weapons program.
“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” Mr. Shoham told The Washington Times.
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…AND IF YOU THINK THAT IS BAD!
The global health threat, being what it is, seems bleak. Biblical!?
Wait til you get a load of this..
This is from Africa..
The AP reports, dateline January 24, 2020:
KATITIKA, Kenya (AP) — The hum of millions of locusts on the move is broken by the screams of farmers and the clanging of pots and pans. But their noise-making does little to stop the voracious insects from feasting on their crops in this rural community.
The worst outbreak of desert locusts in Kenya in 70 years has seen hundreds of millions of the bugs swarm into the East African nation from Somalia and Ethiopia. Those two countries have not had an infestation like this in a quarter-century, destroying farmland and threatening an already vulnerable region with devastating hunger.
“Even cows are wondering what is happening,” said Ndunda Makanga, who spent hours Friday trying to chase the locusts from his farm. “Corn, sorghum, cowpeas, they have eaten everything.”
When rains arrive in March and bring new vegetation across much of the region, the numbers of the fast-breeding locusts could grow 500 times before drier weather in June curbs their spread, the United Nations says.
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