Day 39: COVID-19 Outside of China

 

Fifty-eight countries are now reporting COVID-19 cases. First cases reported in the following countries (with source of infection): Belarus (Iran); Lithuania (Italy); Nigeria (Italy); Mexico (Italy); New Zealand (Iran); Azerbaijan (Iran?). Latest news from Worldometer.com:

February 28 (GMT):

Europe | Middle East | Africa | North America | Oceania | Asia

EUROPE
  • Italy to release its daily coronavirus report in a press briefing at 17:00 GMT [source]
  • 1 new death of a British man who was on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. [source]
  • 2 new cases in Romania: both had recently traveled to Italy. [source]
  • 11 new cases in Germany [source]
  • 1 new case in the Netherlands “has no link to the first patient.” The patient is in home quarantine in the town of Diemen, 6 kilometres southeast of Amsterdam’s city centre. [source] [source]
  • 3 new cases in the UK, including:
    1st in Wales: a person who had traveled to Italy. [source]
    – 2 in England: “the virus was passed on in Iran and the patients have been transferred to specialist NHS infection centres at the Royal Free Hospital.” in London [source]
  • 7 new cases in Switzerland. [source]
    currently there is “no case where one would have lost the chain of infection in Switzerland“.
    – events with more than 1,000 people are now banned
    in response to the coronavirus threat. “The ban comes into force with immediate effect and is valid until March 15 at least.” The Geneva Motor Show (scheduled to start on March 5) is going to be cancelled or postponed. [source]
  • 8 new cases in Spain. Total cases include: [source]
    5 cases in Madrid
    8 in the Valencia area
    6 in Andalusia
    6 in the Canary Islands
    3 in Catalonia
    2 in Castilla y León
    1 in Aragon
    1 in Balearic Islands
    Today’s new cases include: (first in Aragon): a 27-year-old woman in Zaragoza who had recentlytraveled to Milan, Italy. [source]
  • 1 new case in France (first in Nice): a woman returning from Milan, Italy. [source]
  • 1 new case in Greece: a Greek woman aged 36, who had recently traveled to one of the virus-stricken regions in Italy and developed mild symptoms after her return.
  • 2 new cases in Croatia (Zagreb and Rijeka): contacts of the first and third cases in Croatia. The first case got infected after being in Milan, Italy for a match, the second is his brother, and the third is a person in Rijeka who works in Italy.
  • 2 new cases in France, in the village of La Balme-de-Sillingy, in Haute-Savoie: they are relatives of the first contaminated in the town: a man who had returned from a trip to Italy and whose wife, friend, and friend’s wife then contracted the virus. The infected friends had then participated to a 120-guest gathering on Feb. 15. “It is quite possible that there are many more cases in our town,” said the mayor, who admits “being worried“. [source]
  • 1st case in Belarus: a citizens of Iran, who arrived on a flight from Baku on Feb. 22. Given the deteriorating epidemic in South Korea, Iran and Italy, the Ministry of Health had disposed since Feb. 20 that people from these countries be tested upon arrival. [source]
  • 1st case in Lithuania: a 39-year-old woman who came to Kaunas after visiting Verona, Italy. [source]

[ Feb. 28 News ↑ ]

MIDDLE EAST
  • 143 new cases and 8 deaths in Iran
    – Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican, Hadi Khosroshahi, has died of coronavirus: he was 80 years-old and had a pre exisiting condition.
  • 2 hotels in Abu Dhabi have been put in an effective lockdown by authorities after two Italians in the country for the UAE Tour cycling race tested positive for the coronavirus. [source]
  • 3 new cases in Bahrain [source]
  • 1 new case in Israel: contact of the first confirmed case (a person returning from Italy). First transmission within Israel. [source]

[ Feb. 28 News ↑ ]

AFRICA
  • 1st case in Nigeria: an Italian citizen who works in Nigeria and returned from Milan, Italy to Lagos, Nigeria on Feb. 25. [source] [source]

[ Feb. 28 News ↑ ]

NORTH AMERICA
  • 1st case in Mexico (Mexico City): a man who had recently travelled to Northern Italy [source]
  • 1 new case in Canada (Quebec): a woman who had returned to Montreal from a trip to Iran on a flight from Doha, Qatar. She went to a clinic on Feb. 24, with minor symptoms. She did not take public transit to get to the clinic, and she hadn’t gone back to work since returning from Iran, so she has “limited contact” with people in the community. [source] [source]

[ Feb. 28 News ↑ ]

OCEANIA
  • 1st case in New Zealand:
    • A person, in their 60s, who had recently travelled to Iran
    • They arrived in NZ on Feb. 26 via Emirates flight EK450 from Iran, via Bali, and travelled home in a private car
    • The person’s family, who were wearing medical masks, went to Auckland City Hospital where the person was admitted. The person is now a stable condition
    • First two tests, taken from a throat sample, were negative . The symptoms of a lung infection were present though so a third test was done, coming back positive
    • New Zealanders who have returned from Iran in the last 14 days asked to self isolateand register with Healthline.
  • 1 new case in Australia from the Diamond Princess cuise ship.

[ Feb. 28 News ↑ ]

ASIA
  • 1st case in Azerbaijan
  • 571 new cases in South Korea. [source] [source]
  • 12 new cases and 1 death in Japan.
    – Hokkaido declares state of emergency and urges people to stay at home
    Tokyo Disney Resort and Universal Studios Japan being closed for at least 2 weeks
  • 1 new death on teh Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan: a Japanese woman in her 70s. [source]
  • 2 new cases in Taiwan.
  • 1 new case in Thailand.
  • 327 new cases and 44 new deaths (of which 318 cases and 41 deaths in Hubei) occurred in China on Feb. 27, as reported by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China. [source]
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  1. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I’ve been trying to understand for the last month the theory behind quarantining cities or towns or regions, which is what China has been doing.

    Comparing the impact of COVID-19 versus the flu, the new corona virus is not as bad. Every specialist in infectious diseases I’ve heard speak or read about it has seemed somewhat gobsmacked over the fear of the corona virus because the United States is seeing one of the worst flu seasons it has had in a long time. The doctors halt every conversation with reporters with “Could we first talk about the flu?” :-)

    For communicable dangerous diseases, Massachusetts has always taken the quarantine-individuals approach. In other words, we have protocols in place to quarantine individuals who are symptomatic. This approach makes perfect sense to me given my understanding of how “herd immunity” works. A light exposure to a new virus stimulates the immune system to recognize it and learn how to defend against it. In lieu of manufactured vaccines–a slow and expensive process in terms of developing, testing, manufacturing, and distributing–it seems to me that it would be better for sick people to have more, not less, contact with other people not yet sick.

    That said, that did not seem to happen with the flu in 1918 or with small pox in Boston in the 1770s or with the myriad bacteria and viruses that scientists say killed the Native American population during their first years of exposure to the Europeans. (The small pox blanket theory of genocide has been debunked. What happened to the Native American population was not an intentional act of the colonialists. It was a result of the tragic way communicable diseases work.) My point is that history seems to argue in favor of quarantining entire cities.

    I just can’t figure out whether quarantining people is a good idea or not. It seems that it would make things worse, especially when we finally release people who have been super exposed to the disease because they were quarantined (the Diamond Princess story). On the other hand, I know of times in history when it took so long for the human immune system to get to work that millions of people died.

    Why are so many countries rushing to quarantine measures for this particular bug? What are they trying to accomplish? Are they wrong to do this and actually making this epidemic worse?

    [continued in comment 15]

    The best source on the small pox story is Greg Cochran’s “The 10,000 Year Explosion.”

    https://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accelerated/dp/0465020429/

    The short version is that North America was isolated from “Old World” diseases for 10,000 years.

    • #31
  2. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston has issued changes to the Mass for the time being. Holding of hands during the Lord’s prayer will be optional. Only the bread, and not the wine, will be consecrated. 

    I’m not sure how threatening the virus really is because there are incentives for misinformation, before any of us weigh that information. But the way I justified caution to an associate was to point out that mortality rates are relative to infection rates. If many more people are infected by this virus than by normal flu because the coronavirus is asymptomatic while contagious, then even just 2% out of a much larger infected population equates to more deaths than if it reached only as widely as the flu. 

    And, of course, the threat extends beyond mortality. Several conventions have lost participants already due to caution, for example. Business could be strongly affected. 

    • #32
  3. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Rodin:

    “have heard the claim that this virus was engineered, but I have also heard claims to the contrary. @unsk, is there a reference that you could share? Thanks.”

    Latest study I have found but there have been several others.

    From Scientists Discover HIV-Like “Mutation” Which Makes Coronavirus Extremely Infectious”

    “While mainstream scientists continue to perform mental gymnastics to insist that the new coronavirus wasn’t man-made, new research from scientists in China and Europe reveal that the disease happens to have an ‘HIV-like mutation’ which allows it to bind with human cells up to 1,000 times stronger than the Sars virus, according to SCMP.”

    “Recall that at the end of January, a team of Indian scientists wrote in a now-retracted, scandalous paper claiming that the coronavirus may have been genetically engineered to incorporate parts of the HIV genome, writing “This uncanny similarity of novel inserts in the 2019- nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature,” meaning – it was unlikely to have occurred naturally.

    Fast forward to new research by a team from Nankai University, which writes that COV-19 has an ‘HIV-like mutation’ that  allows it to quickly enter the human body by binding with a receptor called ACE2 on a cell membrane.”

    Other highly contagious viruses, including HIV and Ebola, target an enzyme called furin, which works as a protein activator in the human body. Many proteins are inactive or dormant when they are produced and have to be “cut” at specific points to activate their various functions.

    When looking at the genome sequence of the new coronavirus, Professor Ruan Jishou and his team at Nankai University in Tianjin found a section of mutated genes that did not exist in Sars, but were similar to those found in HIV and Ebola. –SCMP

    “This finding suggests that 2019-nCoV [the new coronavirus] may be significantly different from the Sars coronavirus in the infection pathway,” reads the paper published this month on Chinaxiv.org – a platform used by the Chinese Academy of Sciences which releases research papers prior to peer-review.

    This virus may use the packing mechanisms of other viruses such as HIV,” they added.

    For those confused, what the latest scientific paper claims is that whereas the Coronavirus may indeed contain a specific HIV-like feature that makes it extremely infectious, that was the result of a rather bizarre “mutation.” However, since the scientists did not make the scandalous claim that Chinese scientists had created an airborne version of HIV, but instead blamed a mutation, they will likely not be forced to retract it, even if it the odds of such a “random” mutation taking place naturally are extremely small.”

    Continued on next post

     

    • #33
  4. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    continued from last post.

    “According to the new study, the ‘mutation’ can generate a structure known as a cleavage site in the new coronavirus’ spike protein, SCMP reports. “Compared to the Sars’ way of entry, this binding method is “100 to 1,000 times” as efficient, according to the study.

    The virus uses the outreaching spike protein to hook on to the host cell, but normally this protein is inactive. The cleavage site structure’s job is to cheat the human furin protein, so it will cut and activate the spike protein and cause a “direct fusion” of the viral and cellular membranes. –SCMP

    (a recent paper published by Dr. Zhou Peng of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, meanwhile, is “Immunogenicity of the spike glycoprotein  of Bat SARS-like coronavirus.“)”

    According to the report, a follow-up study from a Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhn confirmed Nankai University’s findings.

    The mutation could not be found in Sars, Mers or Bat-CoVRaTG13, a bat coronavirus that was considered the original source of the new coronavirus with 96 per cent similarity in genes, it said.

    This could be “the reason why SARS-CoV-2 is more infectious than other coronaviruses”, Li wrote in a paper released on Chinarxiv on Sunday.

    Meanwhile, a study by French scientist Etienne Decroly at Aix-Marseille University, which was published in the scientific journal Antiviral Research on February 10, also found a “furin-like cleavage site” that is absent in similar coronaviruses.

    Chinese scientists speculate that drugs targeting the fuirn enzyme could potentially hinder the virus’ replication inside the human body. Drugs up for consideration include “a series of HIV-1 therapeutic drugs such as Indinavir, Tenofovir Alafenamide, Tenofovir Disoproxil and Dolutegravir and hepatitis C therapeutic drugs including Boceprevir and Telaprevir,” according to Li’s study.

    The conclusion is in line with several reports from doctors who self-administered HIV drugs after testing positive for coronavirus, however there have been no clinical tests to confirm the theory.

    All perfectly “natural.”

    Rodin- No one now wants to say specifically that this virus is the work  of Bio-Weapons Lab  because if they do their study will be censored as was the first Indian Study that noted the HIV insertions, and btw several of the studies are coming straight out of China so they can’t say such a thing if they value their life.   That said they hint and just dance around the subject by saying  their findings of the “furin-like cleavage site” is just a ‘rather bizarre mutation” and a highly improbable one in nature. 

    All that said, whether one wants to discuss the issue of whether there is some link to the Bio Weapons Lab, which may be besides the point now,  the fact of the new study is that COVID-19 is between 100 to 1000 times more infectious than SARS.

    • #34
  5. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Rodin: ““I, too, have seen reports of “re-infections” as well as concerns about a cytokine storm in a recovered person re-infected. I think it is important to confirm the details of these stories.”

    From “Coronavirus Reappearing Weeks Late in Discharged Patients” at Zerohedge:

    “An alarming number of coronavirus patients in China and around the world are testing positive after ‘recovering’ and being discharged from the hospital – with the disease reappearing weeks later in some cases, according to Reuters.”

    “On Wednesday, Japan’s Osaka prefectural government revealed that a female tour-bus guide had tested positive for coronavirus for a second time – which comes on the heels of Chinese reports that discharged patients throughout the country were testing positive after their release from the hospital.

    “That said, China’s National Health Commission said on Friday that reinfected patients were not transmitting the disease to others. The two running theories is that COVID-19 is “biphasic” and lies dormant before reappearing, or that patients are not building sufficient antibodies to fight a new infection.”

    “Experts say there are several ways discharged patients could fall ill with the virus again. Convalescing patients might not build up enough antibodies to develop immunity to SARS-CoV-2, and are being infected again. The virus also could be “biphasic”, meaning it lies dormant before creating new symptoms.

    But some of the first cases of “reinfection” in China have been attributed to testing discrepancies.

    On Feb. 21, a discharged patient in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu was readmitted 10 days after being discharged when a follow-up test came back positive. –Reuters”

    “Deputy director of the infectious diseases center at the West China Hospital, Lei Xuezhong, told People’s Daily that hospitals had been using nose and throat samples to test patients, while new tests were finding the virus in the lower respiratory tract.

    A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association which analyzed four infected medical personnel treated in Wuhan found that it was likely that some recovered patients would remain carriers even after meeting discharge criteria.”

    “In China, for instance, patients must test negative, show no symptoms and have no abnormalities on X-rays before they are discharged.”

    Allen Cheng, professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at Monash University in Melbourne, said it wasn’t clear whether the patients were re-infected or had remained “persistently positive” after their symptoms disappeared. But he said the details of the Japan case suggested the patient had been reinfected.

    Song Tie, vice director of the local disease control center in southern China’s Guangdong province, told a media briefing on Wednesday that as many as 14% of discharged patients in the province have tested positive again and had returned to hospitals for observation.

    He said one good sign is that none of those patients appear to have infected anyone else.”

     

    • #35
  6. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

     Troubling News: from Daisy Luther via the Organic Prepper and Zero Hedge in the post “Here Why I don’t Really Trustee Official CoronaVirus Numbers”

    A lot of folks have distrusted the numbers coming out of China since the very beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. That uneasy feeling was justified when it was discovered that many patients weren’t being counted because they were never tested.  Once an alternative testing method was temporarily approved, the number of infected people skyrocketed. This was only temporary though because Chinese officials reverted quickly to their previous method of only relying on the nucleic acid test, which is infamous for false negatives.”

    Hardly anyone is actually being tested in the United States.

    “First of all, very few tests have actually been performed in the United States. As of Feb. 26, 2020, the CDC reported that only 466 tests had been performed in the US and the criteria for being tested is so narrow as to render the statistics useless.”

    z”Here’s the narrow criteria to get tested. Basically, if you haven’t been to an affected country or been exposed to someone from an affected country, you’re unlikely to be tested.

    And it gets even worse.

    The first batch of tests sent out to health departments around the country was faulty.

    …expanded testing has been delayed because of an unspecified problem with one of the compounds used in the CDC test. About half of state labs got inconclusive results when using the compound, so the CDC said it would make a new version and redistribute it. (source)

    So 466 people have been tested with potentially flawed tests. Countless people have been untested simply because they haven’t traveled to certain countries or knowingly been in contact with someone who has traveled to certain countries.”

    “In comparison, New York Magazine reports that more than 7,100 coronavirus tests have been conducted in the UK, South Korea has tested more than 30,000 people in “drive-thru” testing facilities, and the province of Ontario, Canada has tested 629 people. All of these places have far lower populations than the United States but they’ve tested a lot more people.”

    “What about all those people being “monitored?”

    “You’ve probably seen that thousands of people across the country are being “monitored” by health departments.”

    “So monitoring is mainly self-instituted and no testing is being done.”

    “To be absolutely clear, those being “monitored” are basically staying home for a couple of weeks then going on their merry way, with no testing involved. And considering there have been instances of asymptomatic people spreading the virus, this is hardly comforting.”

    “And now Vice President Pence has issued a gag order.”

    “If the obfuscation above isn’t bad enough, now all statements from health officials must be cleared by Vice President Mike Pence, the unofficial Covid19 Czar, before they can be made public.”

    Pence’s behavior has all the ingredients of a full blown PR disaster for Trump.

    • #36
  7. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I guess my understanding is completely wrong. I was under the impression that the childhood vaccines that last a lifetime were protective in that they essentially taught the immune system what the foreign viral invader looked like. I thought the vaccines introduced a trace amount of the virus as a teaching device, essentially. I thought we were mimicking what happens naturally in the case of some diseases such as measles in that once a person contracted the disease as a child, he or she probably wouldn’t get it again. It was not really the vaccine that did the work. It was our own immune system. 

    This has been a very interesting discussion. Clearly my understanding of the workings of the immune system is wrong. So perhaps everyone here is right and the countrywide quarantines have been a good thing.  

    • #37
  8. Quietpi Member
    Quietpi
    @Quietpi

    MarciN (View Comment):

    DonG (skeptic) (View Comment):
    Herd immunity works by having a good portion of population immune such that active infections can’t propagate. There is no such thing as “light exposure” with a viral infection.

    But isn’t there? Isn’t that the theory behind the way antibiotics and immunizations work? A person defends himself or herself against the pathogen by having a slight exposure that wakes up the immune system or teaches it for future exposures. The slight exposure shortens the time it takes for the immune system to react and kill the pathogen.

    @marcin, you can think of your immune system as a vast filing cabinet.  Every time your body encounters a pathogen, your immune system takes a picture of it, then runs to its filing cabinet.  If it doesn’t find an exact match, it selects the closest thing to it (as, it turns out, they did in Israel) and starts building the necessary antibody from there.  Then that newly – invented antibody goes to work on the new vector.

    This filing cabinet is an amazing thing.  It’s the system that your body uses to defeat thousands of vectors every day.  So the function of inoculations is to give your body a chance to analyze this new critter, and put it into the filing cabinet.  Because the viruses are dead, or nearly so, they have little or no effect on the body.  At the same time, your filing cabinet keeps these files for a long time in some cases.  That’s why the herd immunity for swine flu developed through immunizations for the outbreak – how many years ago? – was sufficient to prevent its proliferation a few years ago.

    So there’s a lesson here.  Get your flu shot.  E-v-e-r-y year.  It may not hit the virus that shows up that year, but it does serve to replenish and refresh that filing cabinet.

    Also keep in mind that all those symptoms we experience when we get sick aren’t caused by the vectors themselves (usually).  Rather, they’re your body’s response, part of its battle against the bad stuff.  When a killed (or close to it) virus doesn’t proceed to invade the body, your immune system has time to construct the appropriate antibody, and destroy the virus.  So your body quickly figures out that there really isn’t a need for the elevated temperature, extra mucus, etc. and your seeming symptoms disappear quickly – if they develop at all.  In other words, you might feel a little sick, but you actually aren’t.  Not that knowing that helps much.

    • #38
  9. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Unsk (View Comment):

    “Comparing the impact of COVID-19 versus the flu, the new corona virus is not as bad. Every specialist in infectious diseases I’ve heard speak or read about it has seemed somewhat gobsmacked over the fear of the corona virus because the United States is seeing one of the worst flu seasons it has had in a long time.”

    OMG!

    Marci who are these nutcases you have heard speak?

    I have to clear this up. I did not explain what he said properly. I was talking about the infectious disease specialist who works for Cape Cod Hospital and with our county health department. What he said was, essentially, that the COVID-19 was at this moment somewhat remote from our health issues on Cape Cod (he’s still trying to get people to get their vaccines), that we were in midst of a very severe flu season and that issue should be our first concern at this moment (on Wednesday this past week). :-) He certainly did not minimize the threat COVID-19 posed. :-) 

    Sorry to have worded that poorly. 

    • #39
  10. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Unsk (View Comment):

    From “Why is the FDA stalling on more CoronaVirus testing” at the American Conservative:

    “The Association of Public Health Laboratories has asked the agency for permission to develop tests for the virus, but their pleas have been met with persistent foot-dragging. The FDA’s frustrating risk aversion is nothing new, and things will not change absent a wholesale reevaluation of the agency’s mission. The country cannot wait for bureaucrats’ delay tactics.

    The saga began on February 4, when the FDA announced that it had granted “emergency use authorization” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to test for coronavirus detection at qualified laboratories across the country. There have been a number of kinks in CDC testing, and currently, only a handful of states are even qualified to use it—California, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, and Tennessee. So while the CDC has been busy working out problems with the diagnostics, private labs are champing at the bit to develop their own tests. It’s up to the FDA to grant those labs the permission to make their own rival tests, yet there’s little indication that the agency intends to do that anytime soon.

    By most accounts, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) track-record in approving new products and testing procedures isn’t very good. The cost of bringing a new medication to market is now more than $2 billion and patients have to wait more than a decade to see life-saving drugs become available. Even if the FDA does finally get around to approving coronavirus testing, drug development to defeat the disease will prove prohibitively pricey thanks to agency regulations. “

    Time for Trump to assert those emergency powers he has been talking about and to tell the FDA to butt out- there are literally killing people with this nonsense.

    It is also long past time for the FDA to be thoroughly reformed along with those traitorous knuckleheads in Congress that protect them.

    why is the FDA stalling? lol

    this is who they are, this is what they do

    drug stall cowboys

     

    • #40
  11. Quietpi Member
    Quietpi
    @Quietpi

    Unsk (View Comment):

    “And now Vice President Pence has issued a gag order.”

    “If the obfuscation above isn’t bad enough, now all statements from health officials must be cleared by Vice President Mike Pence, the unofficial Covid19 Czar, before they can be made public.”

    Pence’s behavior has all the ingredients of a full blown PR disaster for Trump.

    There are problems with nearly every assertion you’ve made, but I don’t have time to deconstruct all of them.  But this last is a serious stretch, and whomever has made this charge has no idea how to manage an incident, big or small.  This is how an effective leader minimizes rumors and false or misleading reports.  This is why an incident of any size has previously – trained Public Information Officers.  It does not mean they’re gagging people.  Rumors produce panic.  Conflicting reports, often from people who only have knowledge of a small slice of the incident, cause distrust of the public, and contribute to panic.  

    I was on a major incident a few decades ago, when a reporter heard a rumor, and without checking ( which would have been easy), he broadcast this bit of misinformation far and wide.  It was picked up by the mainstream media, which made things even worse.  As a result, two people acted upon it, and were killed.  

    • #41
  12. DonG (skeptic) Coolidge
    DonG (skeptic)
    @DonG

    Unsk (View Comment):
    Rodin- No one now wants to say specifically that this virus is the work of Bio-Weapons Lab

    I am not buying the weapon lab idea.  A respiratory virus is a horrible choice for a weapon.  It spreads slowly and cannot be controlled.  No military value.  Nope.    

    • #42
  13. David Carroll Thatcher
    David Carroll
    @DavidCarroll

    DonG (skeptic) (View Comment):

    Unsk (View Comment):
    Rodin- No one now wants to say specifically that this virus is the work of Bio-Weapons Lab

    I am not buying the weapon lab idea. A respiratory virus is a horrible choice for a weapon. It spreads slowly and cannot be controlled. No military value. Nope.

    My mind is still open to the manufactured virus possibility.  I agree that this COVID-19 would be a poor choice as a final product.  However, that still leaves open the possibility that it was an experiment that went wrong and leaked out of the lab.  That is, it is an unintended result of bio-chemical weapon research.  Not an opinion, just a possibility.

     

    • #43
  14. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Quietpi (View Comment):
    Because the viruses are dead, or nearly so, they have little or no effect on the body.

    How can one tell if a virus is dead? Its only activity is invasion of cells, right? So a “dead” virus is one that looks exactly the same but remains still? A virus is never dormant before returning to activity?

    • #44
  15. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    DonG (skeptic) (View Comment):
    A respiratory virus is a horrible choice for a weapon. It spreads slowly and cannot be controlled. No military value. Nope.

    You are 100 % wrong.  Respiratory spread is the ideal method of spread for a bioweapon.  It’s the fastest method of spread and most difficult to stop.

    • #45
  16. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):
    The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston has issued changes to the Mass for the time being. Holding of hands during the Lord’s prayer will be optional. Only the bread, and not the wine, will be consecrated.

    I got word last night of the same policy change for the Archdiocese of Atlanta.  (As regards consecration of the wine.  Holding of hands during the Lord’s Prayer is a local convention–never part of the GIRM–and actually discouraged for clergy.)

    • #46
  17. The Other Diane Coolidge
    The Other Diane
    @TheOtherDiane

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):
    The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston has issued changes to the Mass for the time being. Holding of hands during the Lord’s prayer will be optional. Only the bread, and not the wine, will be consecrated.

    I got word last night of the same policy change for the Archdiocese of Atlanta. (As regards consecration of the wine. Holding of hands during the Lord’s Prayer is a local convention–never part of the GIRM–and actually discouraged for clergy.)

    I’m really surprised that they waited so long.  The Diocese of Venice (in Florida) announced a policy of no holding hands during the Lord’s Prayer, no shaking hands with other Mass-goers and no wine distribution to the congregation about 3 weeks ago, and also asked anyone who was sick not to attend Mass.  I’ve had a lingering cough after a cold so haven’t been back to church yet but I read the church bulletins online.

     

    • #47
  18. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    I am not buying the weapon lab idea. A respiratory virus is a horrible choice for a weapon. It spreads slowly and cannot be controlled. No military value. Nope.

    I am not necessarily suggesting that China released this COVID-19 as a bio-weapon. What is very likely though is that they were playing around with the CoronaVirus and other known pathogens like HIV in the Wuhan BioWeapons lab and some of the consequences of those experiments leaked out to the general public in some way possibly through lab animals sold on the black market of which they is quite a bit of.  The Scientist who publicly bragged of his work that involved researching  the CoronaVirus with other immune diseases  appeared to be quite proud of his work, but we will likely never know the whole truth. But the point is that this disease may as a  result 0f experiments be weaponized in ways that make it much more communicable and much more deadly than other similar diseases.  The studies show it to be 100 to a thousand times more communicable that SARS. That is a huge problem and we need to deal with it immediately. No more screwing around.

    • #48
  19. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    “There are problems with nearly every assertion you’ve made, but I don’t have time to deconstruct all of them. But this last is a serious stretch, and whomever has made this charge has no idea how to manage an incident, big or small. This is how an effective leader minimizes rumors and false or misleading reports. This is why an incident of any size has previously – trained Public Information Officers. It does not mean they’re gagging people. Rumors produce panic. Conflicting reports, often from people who only have knowledge of a small slice of the incident, cause distrust of the public, and contribute to panic.”

    Here’s the problem Quietpi; our government has already made a monumental screw up in the testing. That is an undeniable fact.  People are being infected very quickly now because our government, likely due to our good friends at the FDA inhibiting the flow of test kits,  have restricted testing to a small fraction of the people that need to be tested and as a consequence we really have no idea of how many people are really infected particularly with a disease which like this CoronaVirus which can also be asymptomatic. People like the President, because this lack of testing has not uncovered a very sizable pool of infected, have been told that the situation is under control and has spoken as if it is, but the situation is far from under control. That is a huge problem  because when the massive extent of the problem is really  known by the people, which may be very shortly,  and the disease is undeniably spreading like wildfire credibility in our government’s ability to respond to  the Pandemic  and the credibility of the President, not to mention his political support will be shot all to hell. Pence’s behavior despite all  your excuses and rationalizations smacks of a cover up and that is the worst thing he could have done.  You want to talk of panic. When the trust in our government to handle the Pandemic is shot and it appears to be trying to cover up it’s humongous mistakes, no matter who is really to blame within the government, the panic is going to be enormous and uncontrollable.  In a situation like that the economy will start to shut down and we will have an unbelievable problem.

    Furthermore, please explain to us  how South Korea with a population one sixth of our’s  has tested over 30,000 people for the Coronavirus and we have only tested a little over six hundred. We desperately need to ramp up our testing immediately. Our government’s response has been a disgrace. You won’t be able to imagine the problems we will face unless we get this situation under control right away.

    • #49
  20. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    Unsk (View Comment):

    I am not buying the weapon lab idea. A respiratory virus is a horrible choice for a weapon. It spreads slowly and cannot be controlled. No military value. Nope.

    I am not necessarily suggesting that China released this COVID-19 as a bio-weapon. What is very likely though is that they were playing around with the CoronaVirus and other known pathogens like HIV in the Wuhan BioWeapons lab and some of the consequences of those experiments leaked out to the general public in some way possibly through lab animals sold on the black market of which they is quite a bit of. The Scientist who publicly bragged of his work that involved researching the CoronaVirus with other immune diseases appeared to be quite proud of his work, but we will likely never know the whole truth. But the point is that this disease may as a result 0f experiments be weaponized in ways that make it much more communicable and much more deadly than other similar diseases. The studies show it to be 100 to a thousand times more communicable that SARS. That is a huge problem and we need to deal with it immediately. No more screwing around.

    This is the sort of question that Senator Tom Cotton has been asking: Was China working on the virus at the Wuhan lab? If so, what kind of analysis and manipulations were they doing? China would have been nuts to do this intentionally, but there are a number of factors that make Sen. Cotton’s questions relevant. And the more we know the better we are able to deal with it. 

    • #50
  21. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Rodin: Was China working on the virus at the Wuhan lab?

    There was a scientist working at the Wuhan Bio-Weapons Lab  who,  in an advertisement for lab assistants , boasted of his experiments  with the Bat Corona Virus and Immunology. 

    • #51
  22. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    The chemist at Harvard who was arrested recently has ties to Wuhan. 

    he was arrested then one week later this virus comes out. 

    coincidence?

     

     

    • #52
  23. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    The chemist at Harvard who was arrested recently has ties to Wuhan.

    he was arrested then one week later this virus comes out.

    coincidence?

     

     

    Correlation is not causation.

    • #53
  24. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Rodin (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    The chemist at Harvard who was arrested recently has ties to Wuhan.

    he was arrested then one week later this virus comes out.

    coincidence?

     

     

    Correlation is not causation.

     

    i think the timing is very strange

     

    • #54
  25. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Rodin (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    The chemist at Harvard who was arrested recently has ties to Wuhan.

    he was arrested then one week later this virus comes out.

    coincidence?

     

     

    Correlation is not causation.

    The number of “coincidences” around the Corona virus is pretty amazing.

    • #55
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