China Quarantines Millions After Thousands Exposed To Mutating Virus That Has Killed Many

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Jackie Salo - New York Post




Chinese officials on Sunday revealed that patients infected with the coronavirus can spread the deadly illness before experiencing any symptoms — prompting fears about how to contain the disease.

China’s National Health Commissioner Ma Xiaowei said the flu-like virus is infectious during its incubation period of one to 14 days.

He cautioned that authorities’ knowledge of the new virus was limited and they are unclear on the risks posed by any possible mutations of the virus.

Dr. William Schaffner, a longtime adviser to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the new development “means the infection is much more contagious than we originally thought,” CNN reported.

Schaffner warned that current preventative methods won’t be enough to battle the growing epidemic since it’s difficult to track down the contacts that a patient had before they even began experiencing symptoms.

“Assuming that Ma is correct, we’re going to have to re-evaluate our strategy, that’s for sure,” Schaffner said.

Meanwhile, China said it has banned wildlife animal trade until the “epidemic situation is lifted nationwide.”

The mystery virus is believed to have originated from wild animals at markets in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

There have been 56 deaths and more than 2,000 cases diagnosed in the country, including a 9-month-old baby in Beijing, CNN reported.

[DemonGeminiX]

So everybody that is currently known to be infected could have infected everybody they've come into contact with before they started showing symptoms, and everybody those people come into contact with could be infected, and everybody...

This is gonna get worse.

[DemonGeminiX]

What's the over/under on the Chinese creating this intentionally?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

What's the over/under on the Chinese creating this intentionally?

Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China's biowarfare program
By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times




The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, said an Israeli biological warfare analyst.

Radio Free Asia last week rebroadcast a Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory, known the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 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 biological warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-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.

Work on biological weapons is conducted as part of dual civilian-military research and is “definitely covert,” he said in an email.

Mr. Shoham holds a doctorate in medical microbiology. From 1970 to 1991, he was a senior analyst with Israeli military intelligence for biological and chemical warfare in the Middle East and worldwide. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel.

China has denied having any offensive biological weapons, but a State Department report last year revealed suspicions of covert biological warfare work.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not return an email seeking comment.

Chinese authorities said they do not know the origin of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 80 and infected thousands.

Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-controlled media that initial signs indicated the virus originated from wild animals sold at a seafood market in Wuhan.

One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that false rumors circulating on the Chinese internet claim the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons. That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter any charges that the new coronavirus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories.

The World Health Organization is calling the microbe novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. At a meeting Thursday in Geneva, the organization stopped short of declaring a public health emergency of international concern.

China has deployed military forces to Wuhan to halt all travel out of the city of 11 million people in an effort to contain the outbreak of the virus, which causes pneumonialike symptoms.

The Wuhan institute has studied coronaviruses including the strain that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis and dengue. Researchers at the institute also have studied the germ that causes anthrax, a biological agent once developed in Russia.

“Coronaviruses [particularly SARS] have been studied in the institute and are probably held therein,” Mr. Shoham said. “SARS is included within the Chinese BW program, at large, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.”

It is not known whether the institute’s coronaviruses are specifically included in China’s biological weapons program but it is possible, he said.

Asked whether the new coronavirus may have leaked, Mr. Shoham said: “In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident.”

After researchers sequence the genome of the new coronavirus, they might be able to determine or suggest its origin or source.

Biological weapons convention

Mr. Shoham, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the virology institute is the only declared site in China known as P4 for pathogen level 4. That status indicates the institute uses the strictest safety standards to prevent the spread of the most dangerous and exotic microbes being studied.

The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent to China samples of what he described as some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus.

In a July article in the journal Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, Mr. Shoham said the Wuhan institute was one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of biological weapons development.

He said the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute was engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses.

The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said.

In 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention, which China joined in 1985.

The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products is a civilian facility but is linked to the Chinese defense establishment. Mr. Shoham said it is thought to be involved in the Chinese Biological Weapons Convention program. China’s vaccine against SARS is probably produced there.

“This means the SARS virus is held and propagated there, but it is not a new coronavirus unless the wild type has been modified, which is not known and cannot be speculated at the moment,” he said.

The annual State Department report on arms treaty compliance stated last year that China engaged in activities that could support biological warfare.

“Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC,” said the report, adding that the United States suspects China failed to eliminate its biological warfare program as required by the treaty.

“The United States has compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions’ toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat,” the report said.

The biosafety lab is about 20 miles from the Hunan Seafood Market, which reports from China say may have been the origin point of the virus.

Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebright told London’s Daily Mail that “at this point there’s no reason to harbor suspicions” that the lab may be linked to the virus outbreak.

[DemonGeminiX]

1 point for me.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Didn't realize that the story was truncated...rest of the story added above.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Yaron Steinbuch and Tamar Lapin - New York Post




Nearly half the population of the Chinese city at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak left town before it was put on lockdown, officials have revealed.

Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, said on Sunday that some 5 million people left the city during the Lunar New Year travel rush, raising new fears of a global pandemic.

The flu-like illness has so far killed 81 people and infected more than 2,800.

The exodus from the city of 11 million took place during the 24 days between Dec. 30, when the first reports of infection emerged, and Thursday, when the city was effectively quarantined, Zhou said.

The travelers took off for Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and Japan, as well as other parts of China, the South China Morning Post reported.

Seventeen cities in China, encompassing more than 50 million people, have now been locked down as the virus has continued to spread.

Anger mounted on social media over officials’ response, with some accusing the government of withholding information in the early days of the outbreak.

Zhou admitted on state TV on Monday that the city’s handling of the crisis was “not good enough” and offered to resign.

But he also said his hands had been tied by rules requiring Beijing’s approval before releasing sensitive information about infectious diseases.

Meanwhile Monday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the virus originated at the Huanan Seafood Wholesales Market in Wuhan.

The now-shuttered market sold live animals including wolf pups, foxes, rats and peacocks.

“Thirty-one of the 33 positive samples were collected from the western zone of the market, where booths of wildlife trading concentrated,” the Chinese CDC said, according to China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency.

“The result suggests that the novel coronavirus outbreak is highly relevant to the trading of wild animals.”

Chinese authorities temporarily barred the trading of wild animals on Sunday.

On Monday, Mongolia closed its border with China, and Malaysia announced it would bar entry to visitors from Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the largest city.

President Trump also offered US help to control the growing crisis.

“We are in very close communication with China concerning the virus. Very few cases reported in USA, but strongly on watch. We have offered China and President Xi any help that is necessary,” Trump tweeted. “Our experts are extraordinary!”

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Ryan Saavedra - The Daily Wire




New reports from the Chinese government indicate that the number of people who have been infected by the coronavirus jumped from 2,700 yesterday to over 4,500 today as the number of people who have died from the outbreak is now well over 100.

“China on Tuesday reported 25 more deaths from a new viral disease, raising the total to at least 106, as the U.S. government prepared to fly Americans out of the city at the center of the outbreak,” The Associated Press reported. “There were 1,771 new cases confirmed on Monday, raising the national total to 4,515, according to the National Health Commission. It said 976 were in serious condition.”

The Washington Post reported that “a scientific assessment of the spread of the disease, assuming an optimistic 90 percent quarantine, still predicted more than 59,000 infections and 1,500 deaths — twice the toll of the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that the rapid spread of the virus led China’s communist government to expanding its quarantine to an “unprecedented scope affecting 56 million people.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) raised its travel warning to China to its highest-level, strongly encouraging Americans to not travel to the communist nation.

“CDC recommends that travelers avoid all nonessential travel to China,” The CDC said in a statement. “In response to an outbreak of respiratory illness, Chinese officials have closed transport within and out of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, including buses, subways, trains, and the international airport. Additional restrictions and cancellations of events may occur. There is limited access to adequate medical care in affected areas.”

The Daily Wire reported yesterday that Ma Xiaowei, director of China’s National Health Commission, indicated that those who are infected with the virus but who are not yet showing symptoms may still be able to infect other people, making containment significantly harder.

“The epidemic is now entering a more serious and complex period,” Ma said on Sunday. “It looks like it will continue for some time, and the number of cases may increase.”

The Daily Wire reported on Saturday that Eric Toner, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Business Insider that he was not surprised by the rapid spread of the virus, and that he thinks millions of people could die from the virus based on a scientific model he created just a few months ago.

“Toner’s simulation of a hypothetical deadly coronavirus pandemic suggested that after six months, nearly every country in the world would have cases of the virus,” Business Insider reported. “Within 18 months, 65 million people could die.”

China is in the process of building a massive nearly 270,000 square foot hospital to respond to the crisis that it expects to be completed in the next few days.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told BBC: “China has a record of getting things done fast even for monumental projects like this. This authoritarian country relies on this top down mobilization approach. They can overcome bureaucratic nature and financial constraints and are able to mobilize all of the resources. The engineering work is what China is good at. They have records of building skyscrapers at speed. This is very hard for westerners to imagine. It can be done.”

[RBP]

How do you build a 270,000 sq ft hospital in a few days?

[Muddy]

This is North Koreas "Christmas Gift" Rocket man spoke about.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

How do you build a 270,000 sq ft hospital in a few days?

Slave labor and substandard materials

[lost in melb.]

Tents?

[RBP]

Tents?

Maybe just a little nervous.

[fricnjay]

Anybody else think that the communist Chinese government might have did this on purpose to control over population?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Madeline Farber | Fox News


Top U.S. health officials this week provided further details on the nation's "coordinated public health response" to China-linked coronavirus that's killed more than 100 people and sickened thousands of others worldwide.

During a Tuesday news conference which included U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease (NCIRD) Director Nancy Messonnier, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, officials said the outbreak is a "potentially very serious public health threat" in the United States, but that the current risk remains low.

Azar said the Chinese have refused continued offers from the U.S. to send CDC officials to the country to help with outbreak responses.