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Guess What Just Went Viral in China?
Xi didn’t actually admit that the coronavirus now devastating large swathes of China had escaped from one of the country’s bioresearch labs. But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is exactly what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive entitled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.”
It’s probably nothing.
Published in Science & Technology
Wuhan didn’t infect itself.
See what I did there ?
Gateway Pundit has an article that the lab workers from a government lab perhaps were selling lab animals in an exotic meat market in Wuhan
And Tom Cotton is a conspiracy theorist!
A Manhattan Project? Isn’t this what got us into this mess in the first place?
https://vimeo.com/147695523
Norm, Thanks for your post.
Things are starting to go really wrong.
A partial summary of Corona Virus headlines from Zerohedge:
• Italy announces 79 cases, declares a “national emergency”; Northern Italy put on Lockdown.
• Japan cases triple in a week to 121.
• South Korean cases surge 8 fold in four days to 433; country report third death.
• San Diego reports 200 under “medical observation”.
• Iran reports 10 new cases; deaths climb to 6.
• Young woman infects five relatives without ever showing symptoms.
• Researchers find that 61.5% of Corona Virus Patients with severe Pnuemonia Won’t Survive.
• In the US, the CDC has warned that only three states, California, Nevada and Illinois, have the testing capacity needed to confront a coronavirus outbreak.
• Most patients in a South Korean Psychiatric ward infected with Coronavirus
• Chinese CoronaVirus Patient Reinfected 10days after Leaving Hospital ( recovered)
• Chinese find virus in urine
I think it is time to get serious about this Corona Virus.
To my mind, there are three areas of potential society killing problems:
• 80% of Pharmaceutical Drugs are manufactured in China;
Approximately 760 million people in China are on some sort of government regulated lock down or quarantine; expecting China to produce anything close to the drugs needed byAmerica is a total delusion- it not going to happen in the immediate future when we may need it the most or maybe never. In Pandemics like this one looming, more people die often from the lack of medical supplies or workers than from the Pandemic itself. That is what we are facing.
• The CoronaVirus lockdown in China has paralyzed the Chinese economy; which it could do to us:
a. Critical supply chains products and materials from China will not be coming anytime soon, so many of our manufacturing production lines will freeze up and many workers will be let go.
b. Our Big Banks let hundreds of billions to the Chinese; those loans are now thoroughly at risk with the Big Banks facing huge losses.
c. Industries dealing with vacations, travel , hospitality or any where large amount of people gather like sporting events are going to be severely affected.
• If we do not respond quickly, there will be a panic like has already occurred in parts of South Korea and Italy, not to mention China.
This pandemic has reached the proportions of a National Emergency. It is not a question of whether there will be severe problems with Pharmaceutical Drug availability, or that the economy will be hit hard; It is a question of bad will it get. We will manage it or will it take down the economy to a non-functioning state?
A big factor is whether there will panic. A panic similar to what is happening in China could shutdown the economy almost completely and the effects will be devastating. Two thirds of American families live paycheck to paycheck. A panic will cause many millions to lose their jobs and to be unable to sustain themselves.
continued on the next post.
And I thought the movie was going to be about Margaret Sanger.
She’s a piker.
I think he’s probably nuts despite the Huffington Post article.
My inner skeptic just won’t shut up. If Chinese labs weren’t working on coronavirus before, they will be now. That being the case, they had better have their containment protocols nailed down tight.
I’ve been saying this for weeks now.
This is the tip of the iceberg.
I do not trust any official numbers from China on anything. In this case, because their economy is so fragile, they have all the more reason to try to cover it up.
Editors: Please Main Feed this post, if only for the brilliance of Comment #1 by Kevin Schulte.
I am a Tokyo denizen (off-and-on since 1988, with current stint since Spring 2016) — strongest thanks to “Norm” for the heads-up about and link to the NY Post article.
Even absent this article, I’m exiting Japan this coming Wednesday (26 February) IY”H (God willing), and heading to the US (I originally hail from the Boston area).
Living and commuting conditions here (in Tokyo in particular) are simply too dense; it doesn’t help matters that the long-term resident population of mainland China nationals has ballooned over the past decade; the Japanese government does not have its act together on this specific challenge — and is still evidently more concerned about the viability of the 2020 Tokyo Olympiad rather than the viability of the citizenry; the Japanese hospital system has already been overburdened for years now without adding the threat of pandemic to the mix; and the CCP/PLA thugocracy is exactly as Senator Cotton characterizes it.
I sincerely don’t want to leave Japan, but as it is I’ve already been in job-search mode since the start of the New Year 2020, and for better or for worse I don’t have a spouse nor dependents with me here in Japan — I’m unencumbered in my decision-making and mobility; indeed, being without at least a significant other here strikes me as paradoxically a health hazard, inasmuch as I could risk falling ill with enough rapidity and severity that I might be unable to reach emergency medical assistance (my fluent Japanese notwithstanding) — I once fainted and fell to the floor here in my apartment several months ago due to dehydration (fortunately not hitting anything during my collapse), and when I came to realized with alarm that no one would ever have been the wiser.
So, for once, that silly and much-abused formulation — “out of an abundance of caution” — holds true, both as prescriptive guidance and also as a description of my motivation.
Australia has a big Chinese tourism business…I was surprised at how many I saw when I visited family there. Canary alert.
New Zealand, too. I’ve seen both.
The craziest part of that story was this:
Editors: Please don’t.
Intelligent response, thx.
#15 Mark Camp
Pray tell what motivates your countermanding note to the Editors?
Biosafety (keeping bad bugs away from workers) is only one part of the picture. You also have biosecurity (keeping the bugs secure from bad people) and biosurety (only hiring trustworthy workers for your lab). I would not be surprised if this turns out to be a failure on the part of the laboratory. China’s safety standards are well behind ours.
I’d imagine it’s like comparing a US BWR or PWR with a Soviet RBMK. Both made at the same time, but the US one is orders of magnitude safer. I would not lose any sleep if they were working with COVID-19 at our facility. The people there are really, really good at this, and take pride in safety – a legacy from the founder. It’s one of those things where you don’t cut corners.
Nothing is coming out in the world of biosecurity, though.
I hope it is not a containment failure, as I do not want to deal with the massive blowback and people calling for BSL-3 labs to be shut down.
Again folks.
If you or a loved one have a medication you depend on try to get a 90 day supply of it on hand.
I had come across this information on Twitter last week. Didn’t know whether to believe it.
This may be China’s Chernobyl. And it went a long way toward taking down the Soviet Union.
As if the reactor techs had been selling the graphite on the side to make pencils….
I really, really, really hope that he is.
Danny,
I agree with @Percival’s Comment #9, and don’t think that this conspiracy theory shows Ricochet to the public from the most flattering angle.
The virus has spread to multiple countries. I’m no epidemiologist, but it seems easy enough to extrapolate infection and mortality rates backward from second-wave nations to China. We don’t need their official numbers. Just assume that a totalitarian regime is willing to let more people die, so round up from external rates.
Wuhan has a bio weapons lab on its boarder. Given the third world nature of China and its inhabitants The likelihood of the virus originating from that lab is not conspiratorial in nature.
Where is the line between speculation and conspiracy theory? And who gets to draw it?
If this pandemic turns out to be one tenth as severe as is speculated, Ricochet’s angle, flattering or otherwise, will be the least of your worries. Johns Hopkins Univ. is a useful source of up-to-date information. Ignore the data from China, learn how to interpret a logarithmic graph, keep your fingers crossed. Oh, and follow Kozak’s advice, above.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t automatically believe that this is anything more than a memo for labs to be more professional. There are a lot of people (in addition to the New York Times and the Washington Post) that are capable of purveying “facts” that might not measure up. These people think that the Chinese government is despicable. These people are absolutely right about that.
I’m not calling anyone out on being a conspiracy theorist. I just haven’t seen anything yet that moves the needle.
Here’s my test for wacky conspiracy theories:
Is this consistent with known behavior and the available evidence? How many people would have to be involved?
For example, it would be utterly insane to imagine the Israelis deliberately attacking a US ship in 1967 – the idea does not make sense, and the fact that the USS Liberty remained afloat showed a haphazard attack. Similarly, claiming the US government bombed the WTC towers would involve a vast conspiracy larger than the entire US military.
The idea of China having a breach in containment is not implausible. Poor containment has caused accidents in the past, especially near biological warfare labs. The idea of China having low biosafety standards and low biosecurity standards is unfortunately plausible – they certainly have horrendous chemical pollution and worker safety standards. I doubt anyone would find the idea of China covering up a release implausible. Aside from a handful of people in the lab itself, the rest of those who might actually know are part of highly controlled party structure.
Memo to file:
The Russian Revolution started out as just a conspiracy theory.
And I thought the logic of the OP was bad…:-)