The Coronavirus Today

Some humor (source)

Still a lot of news coming out about the virus. First of all, it appears to have spread to every continent now other than Antarctica. Futurism reported on Jan. 27 that "REPORTS OF CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK HIT EVERY INHABITED CONTINENT," stating:

      On Saturday, officials in Australia confirmed the continent’s first case of 2019-nCoV, the pneumonia-like virus that emerged from Wuhan, China last month.

      By Monday, Australia had confirmed five cases, according to The Straits Times. That means the viral pandemic has now definitively spread to yet another continent, the latest after making its way to the U.S. and France last week. And more could soon be confirmed: There are suspected but yet-unconfirmed coronavirus cases in both Brazil, The Epoch Times reports, and the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, according to BBC News — meaning it would have spread to every inhabited continent.

It continues to spread, with recent reports of a confirmed case in Finland and four in the United Arab Emirates. Also, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea have quarantined six patients presenting with symptoms. According to the latter article, "World Health Organization chiefs today said they are 'concerned' about any cases in Africa because the continent does not 'have the capacity' to handle the virus." And turning to Japan, we read:

      The government confirmed three more cases in Japan of the new coronavirus on Tuesday, including a tour bus driver who has never been to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak of the deadly virus began in a seafood and poultry market.

     The bus driver in his 60s became the first Japanese to be infected with the virus in Japan, the health ministry said. He drove two groups of Chinese tourists from Wuhan earlier this month.

     The findings bring the total number of confirmed infections in Japan to seven.

Meanwhile, to the north of us, "more than 1,000 people on three flights from China walked into Canada without medical screening." This too may soon end, however, as "major airlines pull plug on services to Hong Kong and mainland as US considers stopping all flights" according to the South China Morning Post. British Airways is stopping all direct flights from Shanghai or Beijing to London.

      As for those being evacuated from Wuhan to the United States, they have been rerouted to a California military base: March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County. The Daily Mail reports: "Officials in hazmat suits meet evacuation flight after it arrives at California air base from coronavirus epicenter Wuhan as all 201 passengers prepare for final health screenings and 72-hour quarantine." Interestingly, a photograph from the latter article shows the cockpit windows, and the pilots of the aircraft are also in hazmat suits.

      It also appears that we are still not being told the truth about the virus. Last night a friend sent me a link to a news release from WHO on the subject of "WHO, China leaders discuss next steps in battle against coronavirus outbreak." Most of the document is about China agreeing to share data and biological material with international experts and being more transparent. But buried in the statement was this little gem: "The source of the outbreak and the extent to which it has spread in China are not yet known." And yet official after official and news story after news story has been telling us it came from an open-air butchers market. Something not right here.

     One thing we do know is that Wuhan officials delayed reacting to the virus, meaning that millions of people had already left Wuhan before any travel restrictions were put into place. According to the Daily Mail, "China launches search for tens of thousands of passengers who shared public transport with coronavirus sufferers as footage emerges of one of the buses they're hunting." The article reports:

       The Chinese authorities have launched an urgent search for tens of thousands of passengers who shared public transport with citizens who were later found to carry coronavirus. 

      Officials in various cities are now trying to hunt down people who travelled on at least 20 trains, eight flights and one bus to find out if they have been struck down with the deadly disease.

It continues:

      The new coronavirus ravaging Asia is far more contagious than previously thought and someone who is infected can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze. 

      Chinese officials revealed on Sunday that the disease can spread between humans even before the symptoms begin to show.  

      One 57-year-old male passenger in Jilin city - 2,252 kilometres (1,399 miles) from the epicentre Wuhan - was found to be sickened after his train stopped in the coronavirus-stricken city 'for just a few minutes', the Jilin Health Commission said on Monday.

 And Sky News reports that Thailand, with 14 confirmed cases, and a top foreign holiday destination for tourists from Wuhan, admits (via its Health Minister) that it cannot contain the epidemic. Again, one of the issues raised is that the virus is contagious during the incubation period before symptoms begin to present.

     News from inside China is harder to come by, but it appears that the Chinese are building a second coronavirus hospital in Wuhan. "Japanese citizens evacuated from Wuhan have described the fear and confusion in the Chinese city with shops running out of food and everyone wearing masks to protect themselves from the deadly coronavirus." The Daily Mail also reports that "Coronavirus infected are trying to spread the disease by deliberately SPITTING at health care workers in Wuhan, claims South African teacher trapped in the city." And Chinese peasant villages continue to take matters into their own hands to keep out "the Golden Horde" of people fleeing Wuhan: "Chinese villagers dig up roads and arm themselves with spears to prevent Wuhan residents from escaping into their communities." And, speaking of the fear of infection from their co-nationalists, I also came across an article reporting on an incident from yesterday in which:

      A group of air passengers from Shanghai have refused to board the same plane with tourists from Wuhan after allegedly noticing them secretly taking anti-fever medicine in the airport, according to reports.   

      The drama reportedly took place yesterday in Japan as the two rivalling groups were ready to go home from Chubu Centrair International Airport near the city of Nagoya. 

      It is said the protesting Shanghai travellers, around 70 of them, demanded the airline bar 16 Wuhan residents, fearing that they might spread the coronavirus to the others. The stand-off led to a five-hour delay to the two-hour flight. 

      The Epoch Times has also reported on the infection rate of the virus. From that article:

      “I would say there is a very high pandemic risk,” said Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, citing conclusions in the Chinese CDC report.

      He said the risk was exacerbated as a result of asymptomatic patients spreading the virus unknowingly.

      China’s health minister, Ma Xiaowei, told reporters on Jan. 26 that the coronavirus, unlike SARS, is infectious during its incubation period, which can last up to 14 days—meaning it can be transmitted even when the infected person exhibits no symptoms.

     A Jan. 24 study in The Lancet identified a coronavirus patient, aged 10, who didn’t exhibit any symptoms prior to a medical inspection. Two other patients in the same study didn’t have signs of fever.

     Such findings have raised fears that current screening measures, which check body temperature, are not effective in detecting the disease.

      Recently, two patients from Wuhan passed screening checks in France and didn’t show signs of infection until one and five days later, respectively.

      Feigl-Ding said this trait of the coronavirus “makes containment much more difficult” than in the case of SARS, which was not infectious during incubation.

      He also suggested that a lot of the official figures on the infections and deaths are based on data that is not up-to-date, due to there likely being an administrative “backlog.”

      Between Jan. 25 and 26, the reported number of patients jumped by 50 percent, from around 2,000 to roughly 3,000. There have been a number of occasions where the deaths were not reported until at least a day later, making it difficult for those on the outside to gauge the true situation, he said.

 Read the whole thing.

     Anonymous Conservative linked to some Twitter comments by Dr. Feigl-Ding which are somewhat more ominous. Referring to research on the genome of the virus, Dr. Feigl-Ding notes that the virus has not been determined to come from bats:

      “A BLAST  search of 2019-nCoV middle fragment revealed no considerable similarity with any of the previously characterized corona viruses (figure 2)” —> it’s a sequence entirely new to any known #coronavirus. What does this mean? We don’t know yet.

      “Notably,  the  new  coronavirus  provides  a  new  lineage  for  almost  half  of  its  genome,  with  no  close  genetic  relationships  to  other  viruses  within  the  subgenus  of  sarbecovirus.” —> basically it’s saying it’s completely brand new to #coronavirus subgenus.

      Very strange: So what is in this new mystery middle segment that has no #coronavirus history? The study authors continue: “This genomic part comprises also half of the spike region encoding a multifunctional protein responsible also  for virus entry into host cells[30,31]”.🤔

 * * *

      BOTTOMLINE: 1) Seafood market not the source. 2) This RNA #coronavirus mutates really fast. 3) 🧬 has unusual middle segment never seen before in any coronavirus. 4) Not from recent mixing. 5) That mystery middle segment encodes protein responsible for entry into host cells.

He ends by stating that he is not saying that the virus was bioengineered, but that we need to study it further to reach a conclusion.