2/10/2020
As the death toll from the novel coronavirus outbreak soared to over 900 people worldwide, the Chinese ambassador to the US has cautioned against fueling panic and spreading dangerous rumors about the virus’ unknown origins.
Chinese ambassador to U.S. dismisses coronavirus theories as “absolutely crazy”
2/10/2020
xenophobia? How many times do you think this interview was rehearsed for Western media. Hahah
Coronavirus death toll tops 900 as China’s envoy to US dismisses ‘absolutely crazy’ bioweapon rumors
As the death toll from the novel coronavirus outbreak soared to over 900 people worldwide, the Chinese ambassador to the US has cautioned against fueling panic and spreading dangerous rumors about the virus’ unknown origins.
With China’s Hubei Province, the epicenter of the lethal viral outbreak, reporting 91 deaths and some 2,618 additional cases of infection throughout Sunday – the global toll now stands at over 40,000 cases with at least 904 fatalities.
Asked about the situation and speculation surrounding the 2019-nCoV origins and spread earlier in the day, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai told CBS it would be “absolutely crazy” to believe unsubstantiated rumors online while the entire global scientific community that is working day and night on the issue has yet to come a conclusion.
For one thing, this will create panic. Another thing that it will fend up racial discrimination, xenophobia, all these things, that will really harm our joint efforts to combat the virus.
Chinese scientists say pangolins might be missing link in coronavirus transmission
Until thorough research is conducted, there are and always will be “all kinds of speculation and rumors” about the virus potentially being a lab-created bioweapon, the diplomat noted.
There are people who are saying that these viruses are coming from… some military lab, not of China, maybe in the United States… How can we believe all these crazy things?
The outbreak is believed to have originated in a market in Wuhan, China, which sold wild animals. According to a UK medical journal, the Lancet, the disease is very similar to two coronaviruses found in bats.
Meanwhile, recent Chinese research pointed the finger at pangolins as a potential source. Researchers tested samples from more than 1,000 wild animals and found that the genetic code of coronavirus strain samples taken from pangolins was 99 percent identical to samples taken from infected humans.
However, most studies on the virus that was first discovered last December so far have been far from conclusive, as they are yet to be scrutinized and peer-reviewed in any meaningful way.
One such recent pre-print study was widely misinterpreted and fueled rumors that the virus might have been genetically engineered to put pieces of HIV in it. The authors have rushed to withdraw their research, saying it was never their intention to “feed into the conspiracy theories and no such claims are made here.”
The strict isolation and quarantine measures in China and border screenings elsewhere have been “very effective,” China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, told the BBC on Sunday. He emphasized that with proper precautions and response efforts this new “enemy of mankind” is “controllable, preventable, and curable,” even though he admitted it was “very difficult to predict” when the outbreak might reach its peak.
‘Puzzling’ virus of UNKNOWN origin with genes scientists can’t identify discovered in Brazil
Scientists in Brazil have discovered a virus which appears to be almost entirely new, consisting of unrecognizable genes that have been, until now, undocumented.
The Yaravirus (Yaravirus brasiliensis), named after a water deity in Brazilian mythology and folklore, was discovered in Lake Pampulha in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.
Сhina unveils mobile app that DETECTS coronavirus close contact
In recent years, virologists and other researchers have discovered a variety of new viruses which challenge traditional thinking, including so-called “giant viruses” (named for their large protein shells, not their deadliness to humans).
These giant viruses possess a far more complex genome than scientists could have predicted, based on humanity’s knowledge of normal viruses, and are capable of repairing and replicating their own DNA.
“Contrary to what is observed in other isolated viruses of amoeba, Yaravirus is not represented by a large/giant particle and a complex genome, but at the same time carries an important number of previously undescribed genes,” the authors write, adding that it may be the first in “a new lineage of amoebal virus with a puzzling origin and phylogeny.”
In fact, 90 percent of the genes in the Yaravirus have never been described before in public scientific databases and literature.
Rather worryingly, the researchers conclude that the amount of unknown proteins within the Yaravirus throws open the door to a whole other world of as-yet-undiscovered viruses we know little to nothing about.
The Chinese villages attempting to self quarantine
2/10/2020
This looks like something straight out of a apocalypse movie.
BREAKING: CHINA TO QUARANTINE CITY OF SHENZHEN IN GUANGDONG PROVINCE, CAUSING “MAD RUSH” TO HONG KONG
Infected citizens now fleeing to other nations
FEBRUARY 7, 2020
This is a breaking news update from Natural News, translated from the Chinese language Liberty Times Net website, which has produced some of the best reporting on the coronavirus pandemic outbreak.
According to the report, the communist Chinese government has just announced the imminent quarantine of the city of Shenzhen in the Guangdong Province, causing a “mad rush” of Chinese citizens fleeing to Hong Kong to try to escape the quarantines before the international community blocks all flights from Hong Kong. This effort will, of course, only serve to accelerate the spread of the virus internationally.
There are roughly 25 million people in the greater Shenzhen municipal area, so this is a significant increase in the number of Chinese citizens who will soon be living under military-enforced quarantine. (Currently over 50 million, soon to be at least 75 million and growing…)
Here’s the translated text that explains this. Just remember, automated machine translations from Chinese to English are very difficult, so the English appears quite broken:
Shenzhen News Network reported that the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government said on the 7th, all communities will be 100% closed management, if there are confirmed cases of residential “hard isolation” for 14 days, and organize “regulatory service team” to do key ethnic groups tracking, where there is a history of close contact with the case 100% of the implementation of centralized isolation, households also want to take temperature and other measures.
According to Hong Kong’s “Position News” reported that Shenzhen city from the 8th began to seal the city after the announcement of the news, 7 days from the emergence of a large number of people want to pour into Hong Kong, from the scene film can be seen at 10:28 p.m., shenzhen port before the appearance of long lines of taxis, are to load the people of Shenzhen into Hong Kong, long car long about 1 km.
The same story also reports that the hard quarantine of Shenzhen begins on Feb. 8th (tomorrow), which is why people are panic fleeing today, while they can still get out: (another important reminder to always have a bugout bag)
Comprehensive Chinese media reports, the Shenzhen Municipal Government announced that from February 8 on the city’s people’s vehicles fully implement control, in the “vehicle epidemic control checkpoint” vehicle control, and foreign vehicles to sacrifice “advance declaration measures”, the first time the public driving through the “vehicle epidemic prevention checkpoint”, must be at least 1 day in advance of the Internet registration declaration, approval before passing.
https://www.brighteon.com/440295cb-ff15-4c57-a9dd-8b207652113a
THE WUHAN QUARANTINE HAS BEEN BREACHED… “HONG KONG IS FINISHED”
Shenzhen, in Southern China, is very close to Hong Kong. This explains why Shenzhen residents are fleeing to Hong Kong, no doubt bringing more infections with them. Many residents will attempt to take flights out of Hong Kong in order to escape the draconian quarantine, which means of course that some of these people will be inadvertently spreading the coronavirus pandemic to yet more countries, including the United States, which still accepts flights from Hong Kong and China.
According to the Liberty Times Net story, observers in Taiwan are now saying, “Hong Kong is finished” and are demanding that flights from Hong Kong be cut off in order to protect Taiwan and other Asian countries from the exploding pandemic. Some of the quotes in the story include, “”The people of Hong Kong are dead, Taiwan will soon be cut off…” and “next week becomes the crazy influx of Hong Kong people into Taiwan.”
We pray for the people of Hong Kong in this desperate time. They are good people, and they don’t deserve this madness from communist China.
CHINA’S QUARANTINE EFFORTS NOW ACCELERATING THE SPREAD OF THE PANDEMIC
It brings up an important point in all this. As China is chasing the outbreak with ever-expanding quarantines, the citizens who live in those areas are attempting to flee before the quarantine, causing a mass exodus of infected individuals who would have otherwise probably just stayed home if not for the draconian quarantine measures enacted by the Chinese government. In effect, the quarantines are accelerating the spread of the virus to other countries due to this “fleeing” effect.
Much of this likely stems from the fact that China is now running door-to-door roundups of citizens, medically kidnapping them and throwing them into “quarantine prison camps” with bars on the windows of each room. Nobody wants to end up a prisoner in one of these “death hospitals.”
The coronavirus pandemic is currently spreading at the rate of roughly a 20% increase per day, achieving sustained, exponential growth that has spread to three cruise ships, dozens of countries and an ever-expanding list of mainland Chinese cities.
The initial attempt to quarantine the Wuhan region in order to stop the coronavirus has clearly failed. Yet the WHO, the CDC and the totally discredited mainstream media are still lying to the public, falsely claiming this outbreak is “under control” and “poses no risk to America.” Those claims are malicious, dangerous lies that even the CDC’s own scientists are contradicting in their public statements.
In addition, multiple health experts are now on the record confirming this pandemic has broken containment and will spread globally.
Any media source saying this is “no big deal” is actually trying to make the pandemic worse by keeping people uninformed and unprepared.
https://www.brighteon.com/0208e343-0c03-45b7-a4fe-eb84836571a3
Coronavirus infections TRIPLE on cruise liner quarantined in Japan with thousands of passengers stuck in ‘floating prison’
Dozens of additional passengers aboard a cruise liner in Japan have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of infections on the ship to 61 as 3,700 people remain trapped on the quarantined vessel.
Stuck at the port of Yokohama since earlier this week, the ship’s 3,700 passengers and crew face weeks of quarantine as medical workers test for signs of the deadly contagion. The ship is now like a “floating prison,” one passenger said on social media, where haunting images have emerged showing its abandoned halls, once bustling with activity.
Of the thousands of passengers on board, 273 have shown symptoms of illness, such as cough and fever, or came in contact with those who have. All of those passengers have now been tested, Japan’s Health Ministry said, noting the 41 new patients will be transferred to medical facilities in Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Shizuoka prefectures, as well as Kanagawa.
It remains unclear whether additional cases could arise on the ship, as the novel coronavirus has been found to spread person-to-person, even among those not yet showing symptoms, with a long incubation period. Some passengers already expressed fear that they could eventually end up stuck on the vessel for much longer than 14 days if new infections occur.
With the number of infections on the ship tripling on Thursday as health screenings continue, Japan now counts at least 86 cases of the lethal coronavirus nationwide, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December. The illness has since spread to 25 other countries, infecting over 30,000 and claiming 635 lives in total, most of them in China.
Coronavirus kills 69 more people in China’s Hubei as total cases soar beyond 31,000
Not a great look: Failed Iowa caucus app is deeply linked to self-declared winner Buttigieg… and Hillary Clinton
By Danielle Ryan
An app supposedly meant to ensure quick reporting of the Iowa caucus results was developed by a firm deeply tied to the Democratic establishment and went kaputt at the crucial moment. What are the chances?
It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but Americans can be excused for their distrust of the system after what happened in 2016 – and the facts that have been dug up on the group behind the failed Iowa app won’t do much to quell their suspicions.
The firm in question, rather ironically, is called Shadow Inc. — and, according to Federal Election Commission filings, it was paid thousands of dollars by Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for “software rights and subscriptions” in July 2019.
Fast-forward to February 2020, and the app has failed to deliver any reliable results in Iowa, Buttigieg has prematurely declared himself the winner — and #MayorCheat is trending on Twitter.
Adding to the suspicions surrounding the Iowa debacle is the fact that the company’s CEO, CTO and COO, among others, all previously worked for Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign, according to their LinkedIn profiles. For supporters of Sanders, convinced the DNC is attempting to rig the primary process against him for a second time, the conspiracy theory writes itself.
Shadow Inc was launched in 2019 by ACRONYM, a digital non-profit founded by one Tara McGowan, who happens to be a huge fan of Buttigieg, tweeting her excitement over his candidacy back in January 2019.
Despite declaring that it“launched” Shadow last year, ACRONYM has suddenly tried to distance itself from the company in the midst of the Iowa debacle. Yet, only a couple of weeks before the caucus disaster, McGowan herself was tweeting proudly about what ACRONYM was “building” together with Shadow. McGowan, by the way, is married to a top Buttigieg advisor.
Raising even more questions, there are rumors that Clinton’s former 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, was indirectly involved with the Shadow app. While Mook himself says he doesn’t “know anything” about it and there is no indication that he was involved in its actual development, investigative journalist Lee Fang tweeted that it was Mook’s security company, Defending Digital Democracy, which “vetted” the Iowa caucus app for “integrity.” The New York Times also reported that Mook’s company was involved in testing the app.
It’s not like Sanders supporters haven’t been burned by this sort of thing before. It is now widely accepted that the DNC was secretly working to thwart Sanders’ campaign in 2016, in an effort to ensure establishment favorite Hillary Clinton would face off against Trump. It is perfectly plausible to assume the party apparatus might try to do the same again in 2020, albeit with different tactics.
The utter contempt for Sanders among the establishment ranks of the DNC should not be underestimated. Despite the fact that Sanders ultimately supported Clinton in 2016, Clinton herself initially refused to say she would back Sanders if he became the party’s nominee in 2020 — and declared that “nobody likes” the Democratic socialist, who consistently ranks as the most popular politician in the country, but whose socialist-style politics are anathema to corporate centrists.
The Iowa drama is reminiscent of the controversy surrounding the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC in 2016. The determination that Moscow hacked the organization to harm Clinton’s campaign was made almost instantly by Crowdstrike, a private Democratic party contractor with links to an arms manufacturer-funded think tank. You couldn’t even make it up.
For progressive Democrats expecting a Sanders win in Iowa (that prediction based on recent polls in which he enjoyed significant leads), this all looks like blatant, bare-faced corruption. Or, as journalist Kyle Kulinski put it: “This is either record breaking incompetence or it’s an attempt to game the results. Those are the only two options.”
As of the time of writing, it has been 14 hours since the Iowa polls closed, there are still no official results available and Shadow Inc has assured everyone that it sincerely regrets the delay. While Buttigieg has declared victory based on limited data covering only his own campaign, Sanders’ camp has released data covering all candidates, indicating that he won the night.
With such a mess made of the Iowa caucus, and suspicions swirling about Shadow’s mysterious app, whether Sanders won or he didn’t, the DNC has once again ignited a rage in his supporters that it may come to regret.
Progressive Democrats were expecting yesterday’s caucus to potentially get messy, but “Shady app crashes and Pete Buttigieg declares victory before the result” probably wasn’t on anyone’s Iowa bingo card.
Chinese coronavirus quarantine now just 100 miles from Shanghai, 4 more cities with 21mn people added
Chinese authorities have extended the country’s internal quarantine to include four additional cities comprising roughly 21 million people in a bid to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Travel restrictions have been placed on residents in Taizhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou; allowing only one person per household to leave every two days to go and pick up supplies. In addition, residents in Taizhou must present ID every time they leave their homes.
City authorities also have placed rent controls on landlords, expressly forbidding them from renting their properties to people from “severely affected areas such as Hubei,” if they have traveled home in the past few months.
The city of Hangzhou, just 110 miles (177km) from major population center and business hub Shanghai, which boasts over 24 million people, already has 200 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The wearing of face masks in public is mandatory and temperature checks are commonplace for those who venture outside.
Similar measures were announced on Sunday for the city of Wenzhou, which severely restricted movement for its nine million residents in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus.
In China alone, at least 427 deaths and over 20,000 cases of coronavirus infection have been confirmed. The majority of the deaths have been concentrated in Wuhan in Hubei Province, where the outbreak began in December 2019. The city has been on lockdown for almost two weeks.
China’s leadership acknowledged “shortcomings and difficulties exposed in the response to the epidemic” in a statement on Monday.
“It is necessary to strengthen market supervision, resolutely ban and severely crack down on illegal wildlife markets and trade,” the Politburo Standing Committee said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
H5N8: Saudi Arabia reports outbreak of HIGHLY pathogenic bird flu virus
An outbreak of a particularly contagious bird flu virus has been reported in Saudi Arabia, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) warns, as the world struggles to contain the spread of a deadly China coronavirus.
The outbreak took place in the central Sudair region, located some 150 kilometers north of the nation’s capital of Riyadh. The disease already killed more than 22,000 birds, the OIE said, citing the Saudi Agriculture Ministry. More than 385,000 birds were also slaughtered out of precaution. This is the first such outbreak since July 2018.
The H5N8 strain of the bird flu, which was detected in Saudi Arabia, was previously considered not particularly contagious for humans. Yet, it has been recently declared to have become increasingly more pathogenic.
Earlier on Tuesday, a similar alarming report about a bird flu outbreak came from Vietnam, where another highly pathogenic virus strain — H5N6 — led to the deaths of 2,200 birds in a village in the country’s north.
On February 1, China, which has already been gripped with a novel coronavirus originated from the city of Wuhan, reported that an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus was detected in its central Hunan province.
While it hasn’t occupied the news spotlight lately, H5N1 is said to be an even deadlier virus to those who contract it. Nearly 60 percent of H5N1 patients die after contracting the sickness, compared to two percent of Wuhan coronavirus (2019 nCoV) patients thus far.
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