TIMES, TIME, AND HALF A TIME. A HISTORY OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM.

Comments on a cultural reality between past and future.

This blog describes Metatime in the Posthuman experience, drawn from Sir Isaac Newton's secret work on the future end of times, a tract in which he described Histories of Things to Come. His hidden papers on the occult were auctioned to two private buyers in 1936 at Sotheby's, but were not available for public research until the 1990s.



Saturday, February 1, 2020

Coronavirus: The Bird Flu, HIV, Nanotech, and 5G Connections


Image Source: Twitter.

Most of the latest reports on the coronavirus deal with the genome researchsymptoms, spread, and recovery and death rates of the virus. A scary, non-peer-reviewed article (here), based on clinical data coming out of China, places the Ro at 4.08!

There is a growing emotional toll in the quarantined zones. Some complaints by Chinese locals are reaching social media, as with this man, who leaked footage from Wuhan hospitals and was arrested - or this woman, who lost one or more family members. The translation and commentary on her video are here. Popular dissatisfaction with the Chinese Communist Party is brewing, even as the Wuhan coronavirus hospitals are nearing completion.

Unconfirmed: Wuhan Hubei China Coronavirus Latest | What's Going On? | Video Footage Dump/Archive Part 5 武汉冠状病毒 (1 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube. More leaked videos here and here.

Translation: "RFA said (in a translated tweet): '[Latest Situation of Wuhan Fifth Hospital] Some Wuhan citizens entered Wuhan Fifth Hospital on February 1st and found many patients who died of pneumonia. The corpses were packed directly to the crematorium. Paramedics are busy rescuing the dying patient.'"










Bird Flu in Hunan Province

At the same time, in Hunan province, south of Wuhan's Hubei province, there has been an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu; over 17,000 chickens were slaughtered at one farm to stop the spread of the virus.


Bat Flu: HIV and Henipah (Hendra-Nipah) Virus Connections


An Indian team has linked this version of the bat-sourced and snake-sourced coronavirus to HIV; the non-peer-reviewed paper is here. The results have not yet been reproduced elsewhere. Researchers have generally focused on bats in this field because they can carry several deadly viruses without dying: Ebola, SARS, Nipah, and the coronavirus.

Incidentally, there is a small Nipah virus outbreak in India and Bangladesh now, due to local consumption of raw fruit juices contaminated with infected bat urine.

Other quarters have linked this novel coronavirus to SARS and Ebola. This may explain why HIV and Ebola therapies are being used on infected patients who have the coronavirus. A failed Ebola drug (Remdesivir) may be implemented to treat the coronavirus.

The Henipah virus was shipped with Ebola from the Canadian Winnipeg National Microbiology Laboratory to Beijing on 31 March 2019. Protocols were ignored (CBC later claimed protocols were followed) in the virus transfer and promoted an RCMP investigation. Note that the Chinese researcher, Xiangguo Qiu, at the centre of this controversy was dismissed in Winnipeg, but not charged. She helped develop ZMapp, the Ebola vaccine.

This rumour arises amid crackdowns on social media "misinformation." On 27 January 2020, the CBC published a weird story denying any wrong-doing on the part of this scientist, despite an earlier article stating she was under investigation. The CBC's larger concern seems to be that the Winnipeg story will lead to public distrust of authority and Sinophobic racism. They interviewed Fuyuki Kurasawa, director of the Global Digital Citizenship Lab at York University:
"The broader damage is that there grows a mistrust toward both government authorities, public health officials, the media, authoritative sources of media, and there there becomes a social media environment where speculation, rumour and conspiracy theories take over and wash out the factual information that is being promoted online."
This hand-wringing over misinformation and racism on social media simply muddies the waters. It pushes authoritative discourse management and identity politics without really getting to the bottom of what happened last year between the Winnipeg lab and Chinese labs.

Nor does the MSM crackdown on the alt-media rule out a bioengineered virus, which passed through the wet market of Wuhan, but did not originate there. There is something very strange going on and it is obvious that the public are not being told the whole truth.

Unconfirmed: Wuhan Coronavirus Pneumonia - Chaos at a hospital in Wuhan (1 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

If the virus is a bioweapon, medical staff and researchers must be informed. If it is a bioweapon and they are not informed, then we can only conclude that the deaths which ensue are deliberately caused.

Only one conspiracy theory site I have seen connects the coronavirus to the Nipah virus. The same site stated that the Chinese Hongmen (洪門), also known as the 'Heaven and Earth' secret society, have vowed to hunt down and kill any engineers of the coronavirus, if it was indeed engineered. You can see videos depicting the Hongmen, here, and immediately below.

Chinese Secret Society [Heaven and Earth Society] | Real Stories | THE SHIFT (21 March 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

Espionage and Nanotech

What is less discussed, or outright denied, is the potential of bio-espionage. Buzzfeed is one of the American online outlets currently condemning Zero Hedge for doxxing of one of the scientists at the Wuhan lab over this possibility. The Guardian also absolutely denied that the virus is a bioweapon, based on a Washington Post survey of "expert" opinions.


Nevertheless, bioweapons and bio-espionage do exist and it is fair to ask if they are a factor in this epidemic. It is easy to deny the possibility based on lack of evidence. Obviously, intelligence agencies operate secretly by definition. They are not going to provide evidence to the press and public.

In 2017, CNN reported that a bioweapons danger came from China's ally, North Korea. In response, the Trump administration formulated a National Biodefense Strategy in 2018, to be administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services. You can read the 2018 strategy statement, here.

Press Briefing with Members of the President's Coronavirus Task Force (31 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

The coronavirus epidemic unfolds against a backdrop of Chinese spies running amok globally. Harvard Professor Charles Lieber was just arrested in relation to his activities in Wuhan (and will be freed on USD $1 million bail). The Chinese paid Lieber USD $50,000 per month plus USD $1.5 million to set up a lab in Wuhan. Lieber is also an expert on nanotechnology.

The Lieber arrest prompted the social media conspiracist Joseph P. Farrell to ask grimly if there was a connection between nanotech development and bioweapons.

Even China's Thousand Talents Plan, which funds and recruits foreign scientists, does not prove that the coronavirus has anything to do with bioweapons or bio-espionage. Neither does a recent arrest over attempted Chinese smuggling of biological materials at Boston University. However, the links below confirm a general situation in which many individuals, countries and corporations are fending off, or falling under the sway of, Chinese intelligence.


5G, Drones, Surveillance


Drones are flying over Chinese communities, checking that people are wearing their masks. There is an online rumour that 5G was rolled out in Wuhan first as a test city, and that 5G causes virus-like symptoms and depresses immune systems. The MSM have denied this possibility as misinformation.

Venture Beat and RCR Wireless News were much more optimistic, claiming that 5G-powered gear lets doctors remotely diagnose the virus. In fact, the coronavirus epidemic is a terrific opportunity to test 5G capabilities in the implementation of remote medical treatment:
"Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, 5G’s potential for remote medical services was largely theoretical, as carriers and practitioners spoke of the future prospect of performing remote surgeries or offering diagnoses to patients in far-flung areas. The use of 5G communications to enhance practitioner safety in circumstances such as this, where a virus’ transmission characteristics and other vectors remain unclear, is fairly new but represents a highly practical test of the high-bandwidth wireless technology.

China’s adoption of 5G has outpaced many other countries thanks to a combination of government subsidies and top-down coordination, as well as significant availability of locally produced 5G networking hardware. While domestic companies such as ZTE and Huawei have been restricted or prevented from supplying 5G gear in some countries — a ban that nearly led to ZTE’s collapse in 2018 — their hardware has since enabled Chinese carriers to launch 5G services in somewhere between 30 and 50 cities — no easy feat given the country’s size and population. The country expects to have 5G in every prefecture-level city by the end of this year."
In other words, this disaster is aiding the rapid entrenchment of the new 5G networks, while the notion that that 5G entrenchment might exacerbate health problems associated with the disaster is dismissed as highly speculative.


See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.


Thursday, January 30, 2020

Genocide in a Jar: Playing God with the Coronavirus


Image Source: Kickstarter.

A Freudian Slip

After a harrowing week of reports about an emerging pandemic, culminating with the WHO declaring a global public health emergency, it is time to be honest. The Chinese government-supported news outlet, CGTN, reported on 28 January 2020 that an Australian lab became the "first lab outside China to create - to recreate - the virus."

That statement could be read different ways. One way of reading it is that the news anchor is referring to Chinese researchers creating the virus ahead of the Australians and the Chinese were copying its appearance in the wild. Another way of reading it is that the virus was synthesized in China in the first place.

Pandemics, Evolution, and Playing God

Spanish Flu: a warning from history (30 November 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

It used to be that pandemics were about natural evolution, of humans and other species. We see this in history. The bubonic plague, smallpox, the 1918 flu epidemic were evolutionary disease events. They arose from natural conditions and the afflicted masses perceived the scourge in terms of divine, not political, will.

In today's secular age, politics replaces God, and science has been bent to serve the aims of politics. Pandemics can be less about nature, science and medicine - and more about politics. What you see in the current media struggle to control the coronavirus narrative is a debate on whether or not this epidemic is actually a political event and whose politics will be served by it.

In this sense, it is wrong to assume that anti-scientific sentiment hails solely from ignorant, God-fearing quarters. The criticism of science bent to serve political agendas is less a criticism of scientific ideas and methods than it is an attack on certain political agendas.

For example, anti-vaxxers are portrayed in the mainstream as anti-rationalist morons and religious lunatics. A deeper probe into the anti-vax sub-culture reveals people who may accept the basic medical concept of vaccination, or who at least understand it, but who remain suspicious of the political or ideological aims of vaccinators.

Scoff if you will, but these paranoids do live in a post-Holocaust world and they seem to have understood that point better than most. They know that a genocidal political culture can potentially arise in any state. No matter how uninformed they otherwise are, they are not wrong. When they lean toward personal fascism, these types may deny the history of the Holocaust. However, as I have explained in another post, it is on the ironic basis of the Holocaust and subsequent modern genocides that even neo-Nazi Holocaust-deniers know that a state can turn on its citizens and engineer a genocide.

When we discuss these inflammatory questions, the true debate gets lost behind the immediate outrage, the issue of the day. The true debate now is whether the nation state can and should evolve into a global state and to what degree, and whether either of these geopolitical entities - national or global - is ever mobilized to be systematically harmful toward its citizens. Behind this concern, we know that a core ideology drives every state architecture, and that set of goals may differ from the state's overt civic values and politics. Again, in a post-Holocaust environment, it is fair to ask if a state entity, no matter what virtues it claims to uphold, is actually driven by a malevolent core ideology.

Beyond these worries are the roles played by science and technology. These latter fields make certain actions available to state and political agents, where before those options did not exist.

The Georgia Guidestones express a real agenda of mass depopluation, supported by the guidestones' makers, who are unknown. Image Source: pinterest.

Discussion about the coronavirus is entering a difficult phase because it reflects all these issues: national jurisdictions and international communities; core Realpolitik ideologies versus overtly expressed political ideals; science and technology pressed into the service of a core Realpolitik ideology as well as overt politics.

The atmosphere of debate on these issues must not be one simply of top-down narrative authority by mainstream officials, experts and journalists. In the Information Age, they cannot simply insist they are right because they are authoritative. They have to prove that they are telling the truth.

At the heart of the matter is the question of whether this virus arose naturally or whether it is a weaponized, synthesized Frankenvirus, as reported by the Washington Times on 26 January 2020. If it is the latter, then how it was approved and released must be revealed. People everywhere would be absolutely right to demand immediate investigation of the current international and national political orders which permitted such an outcome: no one, anywhere, should be able to develop a 'genocide in a jar.'

If that possibility exists in this case, it is up to the media to thoroughly investigate every possible bit of evidence in that regard. If the bioweapons story is not true, then it has to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not true. It should not be simply, sloppily and reflexively denied by the MSM, 'because we said so' in order to maintain social order.

Again, there are justifiable reasons for worrying about bioweapons now. In the past, there were examples of diseases being weaponized and used against targeted populations, as with smallpox blankets being given to indigenous peoples in colonial America and Canada.

However, as far as I know, there were no historical examples of bio-engineered diseases. Before certain scientific and technological advances, we could not have made a 'genocide in a jar'. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention reveals that we now have that capacity and it is not a comforting thought. Pretending that this reality does not exist and that a state or similar powerful entity cannot act along these lines is dishonest and dangerous.

Whether they are right or not, there are good reasons why people believe the Washington Times story that this epidemic is not a natural evolutionary event, but rather that this is a Frankenvirus, which can lie dormant in the body for days, and which seems to combine elements of coronaviruses, SARS and Ebola. And lo and behold, two months ago - as the pro-conspiracy site Zero Hedge found - that was precisely the focus of research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Postdoc job ad (18 November 2019). Image Source: Zero Hedge. Click to enlarge.

Dr. Joseph Farrell, an Oxford-educated conspiracist and author, discusses the above job ad. NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE NEFARIUM JAN 30 2019 (30 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

This public suspicion has not been helped by the MSM suddenly moving in lockstep as of 28 January 2020 to control the narrative merely on the basis of their official media authority. As the MSM outlets work together to discredit the social media rumour that this virus is a bioweapon, they reinforce the public belief that there is a conspiracy afoot.

If we lived in a normal world, the MSM would ask whether bio-espionage and viral labs (especially the 50 odd level 4 labs around the world) are properly regulated and discover whether they are violating the Biological Weapons Convention. They would not quote 'experts' who say that they are confident that the Wuhan lab is following rules, merely because they 'think so.' They would ask why the FBI has arrested and charged a prominent Harvard scientist for lying about kickbacks he received to work and recruit scholars for the Wuhan lab. The same story was reinterpreted elsewhere as: Chinese Biowarfare Agents At Harvard University Caught Smuggling Viruses. You can read the affidavit here.

In a normal world, the MSM would ask why the policies for regulating risky virus experiments, in which scientists tweak viruses to make them more dangerous, were suddenly under review in the United States as of 24 January 2020.

In a normal world, the MSM would investigate the internal policies of big corporations when they hold pandemic gameplays a few months before an actual pandemic breaks out.

If we lived in a normal world, the MSM would not admonishing the justifiably riled public for daring to think for itself when a dangerous epidemic has arisen under sketchy, unclear circumstances. An MSM with backbone and real standards would look again China's competitive scientific community. It is well known that this community has by-passed, bent or broken normal humane research rules in order to gain a global competitive edge for its country.

It is no secret that China has more relaxed rules and the Chinese are engaging in Franken-research. There is an atmosphere that anything can be done with new scientific and technological capabilities. For the morally-challenged scientist with tone-deaf human intuition, working in China is an opportunity to play God.

In 2018, Foreign Policy shrugged its shoulders and stated: "China will always be bad at bioethics." Oh! That's all right then. The NYT confirmed that China is a hotbed of scandalous biomedical experiments. There was the full body transplant, with a head transferred to a new body! There are crazy cloning projects, including cloned primates. Last year, the Chinese created human-monkey hybrids.

In 2018-2019, the whole scientific community criticized China's anti-HIV genetically-altered CRISPR babies, which "seriously violated" regulations. The Chinese government has been fined for unauthorized collection of human DNA.

When four lone bioethics experts appealed to the journal Nature in 2019 to press the Chinese government for more oversight of risky bio-experiments, hundreds of Chinese researchers protested. After this demand for a "reboot" of biomedical regulations, the Chinese government did establish a national medial ethics committee to review "high risk biomedical technologies" in May of 2019. But all indications are that it was business as usual and everyone just pressed ahead. This "rogue science" is not a China-only problem, as western researchers are cross-pollinating with Asian researchers and western scientists are taking advantage of China's lax biomedical regulations and covert funding. This is an established fact, according to stories emerging from Canada and America.

In this context, it is not unreasonable to imagine that the embarrassing potential truth of a Chinese bioweapon, a 'genocide in a jar,' has been developed and unleashed. While research is often shared between labs, the burden of proof that there has been no wrongdoing in research at the Wuhan lab, no associated international interests, and no bio-espionage lies with the Chinese government, any involved researchers, and with the WHO and the MSM. The burden of proof does not lie with the beleaguered global public who have to start stockpiling masks, food, water, goggles, and gloves because of this possible outrage.

For the bioweapons theory to be disproven, we would have to have access to WHO, CDC, Chinese, Canadian and American scientific records, along with worldwide intelligence archives, which will not be happening any time soon. Given that problem, the notion that the MSM have the right to simply deny uncomfortable stories and rumours because it is for our own good is as condescending and authoritarian as it is morally questionable in a time of crisis. The public are not the problem here, and they never were. The problem lies with those who see themselves as above and beyond the public, who think they can play God.

資源緊缺,疫情緊急 | 陳秋實大年初六中午焦慮總結報導(“公民記者陳秋實武漢疫區採訪實錄”系列10) [Shortage of resources, emergency outbreak | Summary report of Chen Qiushi ’s anxiety at noon on the sixth day of the new year] (29 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube. The same video with English subtitles is here.

Debated Virus Origins from Bioweapons Lab

Harvard virologist “speculates” Wuhan Virus came from lab #Coronavirus (29 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
Censorship

Virus Information and Discussions



Police Barricade Family In Apartment That Visited Wuhan "The sign says something like 'This is a returnee family from Wuhan, not approach!'" (28 January 2020) Video Source: Live Leak.

Extreme Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation

  • Biorxiv: non-peer-reviewed preliminary study, with a tiny infected group of eight people, of which one was an Asian male. Results on this limited paper gave rise to unsupported, completely unproven conspiracy theories that this virus is bio-engineered to attack Asian males and to leave those of European descent unharmed: "we analyzed the ACE2 RNA expression profile in the normal human lungs. The result indicates that the ACE2 virus receptor expression is concentrated in a small population of type II alveolar cells (AT2). Surprisingly, we found that this population of ACE2-expressing AT2 also highly expressed many other genes that positively regulating viral reproduction and transmission. A comparison between eight individual samples demonstrated that the Asian male one has an extremely large number of ACE2-expressing cells in the lung." Ethnic bioweapons are a known potential international issue, but are not discussed in a public square already obsessed with identity politics. The possible existence of ethnic bioweapons confirms a vast gulf between the way the world actually operates and the way we are told (and like to think) it operates.
  • Project Zyphr and US Genocide super-rumours, mainly driven by anti-Zionism
  • Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism feature in unfounded fears that the coronavirus was not only lab-engineered, but somehow released from the Wuhan facility by Israeli agents
  • Supposed CIA whistleblower: "This is not a coronavirus. It is the Nipah virus. Caused by fruit bats. There are cycles of much more virulent strains of the Nipah virus. The WHO (with whom I do research) knew about this in August of 2018. It is zoonotic."

Vaccine Development

Economic Impacts

Prep Links

See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.


Coronavirus Air Travel Perils: Toronto


Coronavirus New footage (29 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube. The publisher of the video stated: "This [Air Canada] plane just landed in Canada Toronto seven passengers have corona virus symptoms and fever plane is in quarantine no one is allowed off footage from a friend in China"

Amid news stories of international flights canceled in and out of China, here is an indication as to why. This is rumoured smartphone footage from an Air Canada flight earlier tonight (29 January 2020), which landed in Toronto from China. Several passengers have coronavirus symptoms and someone is on a gurney. No one is allowed off the plane. None of this is confirmed yet by the MSM, the airline, or the Canadian government.

Addendum (31 January 2020): Some commenters suggest this flight dated from 22 January 2020. No information about this footage is confirmed.


See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.


Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Coronavirus Conversations


About the reddit post (25 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

A 14-year-old student in Macau, China has begun posting videos about her daily life during the lunar New Year's holiday and she remains at home due to the coronavirus store and business closures. The new vlogger announced her channel on Reddit: "I just wanted to make this video to show that I'm not fake." Oh, the irony, when today the WHO and major news outlets announced a desire to stifle social media conversations and to eradicate all sources of coronavirus disinformation, except of course, themselves.

You can see the human benefit of international social media discussion here. The girl states that Chinese people who eat exotic animals like pangolins do so because it is illegal and expensive. She states that in China, wildlife consumption is a statement of personal influence and wealth. As for the atmosphere in her city, "You can actually feel the fear. ... People are really panicking. ... At least in Macau we are still pretty safe." They store food, water, and masks and stay inside their apartments and houses. She holds live Q and A chats and she and her young social media counterparts compare notes from around the world to try to understand the epidemic. She thinks that the new Chinese generation will be better than her predecessors.

She has heard a lot of conspiracy theories from the Internet, including the rumour that the virus did not come from a wildlife market but was engineered in a Wuhan bioweapons lab. "I hope that's not true, because if that is true, I don't know what to do." She's not alone in that regard.

Why chinese people like to eat wild animals (27 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.


See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.


Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Coronavirus Censorship and A Group Hug


A call for a Hong Kong strike to support Hong Kong's medical staff on 29 January 2020 suspiciously features the creepy left eye symbolism highlighted in Internet Illuminati conspiracy theories. The girl's placard loosely translated: All (Hong Kong) people strike, Medical Staff don't need going at the front! (won't be sacrifice[d]) Image Source: Twitter.

A (dis)information crackdown has started by (dis)information authorities regarding the Wuhan virus. The Chinese government has begun silencing unauthorized reporting and has demanded that a Danish newspaper refrain from virus satire. Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are removing social media and alt-media reports on the epidemic, on the grounds that everything discussed by unauthorized outlets is a conspiracy theory, disinformation, or racism. Western MSM outlets confirm that the virus started in bats and snakes, but condemn online (racist) criticism of the Chinese eating bat soup and running filthy wildlife wet markets. Youtubers were unimpressed at this feeble attempt at their moral re-education by inserting identity politics into this obvious, ongoing disaster:
"But fkn bats are the one animal that humans shouldn't be eating LOL"
Another:
"the virus came from bat but not this bat soup. so what bat did it came from bat stew,roast bat,fried bat.curry bat,barbecue bat .lol"
Another:
"Best thing would be to fill China in with concrete. It may seem excessive but it's better than having to fill the rest of the world in with concrete"
Another:
"ONLY TRUST THE TELEVISION. CONSUME."
And another:
"Here we go with the racism and hatred BS. That’s right, only believe what the media tells you. Do you actually trust the Chinese government is being truthful? There is a very plausible likelihood that there are quite a lot more infected than being reported. Instead of putting proper safety measures in place, like shutting down the goddamn borders, we are worrying about not hurting anyone’s feelings online? That’s a good indicator that this is probably a lot worse than we are being led to believe"

It is happening, youtube deleted one of the latest videos about the coronavirus from r/nCoV

Social media censorship was implemented amid reports that Facebook employees have been told to refrain from travel to China, which confirms the seriousness of the epidemic. Apple expects the epidemic to disrupt its iPhone supply, meaning the crisis is real. Medical updates reveal a terrifying situation; but they also show that the full range of information is unavailable for a comprehensive understanding of what is unfolding.

Dr Gabriel Leung Dean of Medicine dire projection (27 Janaury 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

It is hard to tell what is real in the first videos of the virus's spread and what is not. Regardless, the earlier leaked local footage of bodies in Wuhan's streets and hospitals has now disappeared, or is disappearing, off the Internet. The China Media Project reports that the Chinese government has been censoring and steering the narrative all along: local Wuhan reporters who tried to track down information in December and earlier this month were intimidated, stone-walled, and beaten up:
"while carrying on an investigation of Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market, where the outbreak originated, Xiao Hui (萧辉), a reporter for Caixin Media, was surrounded and beaten by four security guards. Caixin journalist Wang Heyan (王和岩), one of the finest investigative reporters working in China today, contacted several doctors in Wuhan in order to verify infections among medical staff, but was not allowed to meet with her sources. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has issued an order saying that: '[Medical personnel must not, under any condition, accept media interviews, and must not leak information about the outbreak to the outside. Noone can accept interviews, even if journalists promise anonymity and agree to protect their sources.]'"
These embarrassments have been replaced with a government-sanctioned group hug video with Wuhan's citizens calling to each other from their tower blocks, complete with a soppy piano soundtrack. A Vietnamese social media video popped up yesterday on Youtube, which peddles a positive message about clean, orderly, calm - and deserted - Wuhan streets. Reddit is suddenly full of Redditors who want to debunk coronavirus conspiracy theories.

Wuhan residents chant "Jiayou" for city to persist in face of adversity (27 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

There are signs that the virus stirred up a great deal of unrest in already unsettled Hong Kong, mainland China, and on Chinese social media. A video purportedly from today (27 January 2020) of open, violent popular revolt in Fujian, which I embedded in this post, actually disappeared off the Internet while I was still writing the post.

Social media censorship suppresses information like the above image, suggesting the coronavirus was engineered in Wuhan, announced in a report from 5 April 2018. Is this real? Image Source: Reddit.

The censorship and corresponding attempts to keep the Chinese and global public artificially calm may indicate that the virus has not been contained and is out of control. The Chinese government has not revealed (or does not know) true numbers. You can read an account of their desperate attempt to understand and control the virus from 8 December 2019 to 11 January 2020, here. Fox News reported that the Chinese government spurned help offered by the US CDC to contain the virus on 6 January 2020. The Chinese may have been unbelievably sloppy in their handling of deadly diseases; a 6 August 2019 report states that they shipped a live Ebola sample from Winnipeg, Canada to Wuhan, China on a commercial airline flight on 31 March 2019! Perhaps this is why the MSM are walking back their wet market story with virtue signalling. It came from bats, but not bat soup. Again, the evidence of the virus's point of origin seems to return to the Wuhan bioweapons lab.

The Huanan seafood market in Wuhan has been widely considered the source of the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. But the virus may have infected people elsewhere first. REUTERS from r/nCoV

Further evidence that this is a serious epidemic: there are images of medical staff on Reddit and Twitter sleeping with their protective gear on. Combined with censorship in east and west, the picture is very worrying.


Effect on Chinese doctors wearing masks, gloves and goggles for extended periods. from r/Coronavirus

Funny how Reddit mods keep flagging these reports as fake or unverified. Socalist Media Publishers getting the tax benefits of a platform along with the curation power of a publisher. from r/Coronavirus

Various quarantine zone barricades and guards in Wuhan China and surrounding areas. from r/Coronavirus

New video of villages shutting themselves off from r/Coronavirus

China demands apology from Jutland Post for satire drawing from r/Coronavirus

Uber driver in Beijing from r/Coronavirus

China coronavirus goes viral: What's true and what's fake? | DW News (28 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.


See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.


Monday, January 27, 2020

Coronavirus Roundup: The Struggle to Control the Narrative Begins


Image Source: rfi.

Here is the coronavirus roundup for today, mainly from medical sources and reports on evacuations. It is very difficult to pinpoint exact information, and so conclusions and discussions - whether formal and informed or not - vary wildly. There are indications that the Chinese government has not fully disclosed the extent of the outbreak; or perhaps they do not know. People on Chinese social media criticize the government, while the government strives to control the narrative. Meanwhile, the usual suspects are at work in western countries, and are using this issue as an excuse to crack down further on the alt-media and social media and to eradicate any rogue narratives.

Initial medical studies - based on very limited, preliminary information - are not encouraging and are also conflicting. A commenter from Reddit wrote today:
"The Lancet study of the first 41 patients paints a shocking picture: They were all 'stable' for 10.5 days on average before suddenly needing to go on respirators and 6 of them dying even more days after that."
Links:
  • Map; another map; numbers tracking
  • Chinese government press conference (28 January 2020)
  • Assessment in Viruses (2020, 12, 135, doi:10.3390/v12020135) published 24 January 2020: Makes no mention of the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, despite acknowledging that some infected people had no contact with the seafood market
  • CBC (27 January 2020): Online claims that Chinese scientists stole coronavirus from Winnipeg lab have 'no factual basis': A CBC News report was distorted to create conspiracy theory circulating online
  • Business Insider (27 January 2020): A new report indicates that the deadly Chinese coronavirus may not actually have originated at a wet market in Wuhan
  • CCN (27 January 2020): Scientists Pinpoint 2 Causes Behind China’s Deadly Coronavirus – They’re Both Shocking: two possible causes are consumption of bats and snakes; or a release from the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory
  • Washington Times (27 January 2020): China silent amid growing doubts over coronavirus origins
  • WHO statement (23 January 2020); WHO assessment (26 January 2020); WHO statement (27 January 2020)
  • US CDC coronavirus main page; summary page
  • Public Health Agency of Canada coronavirus main page; press meeting 27 January 2020
  • Taiwan Daily (25 January 2020; hat tip: Natural News) reports on a Lancet study (The Lancet (24 January 2020): A familial cluster of pneumonia associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus indicating person-to-person transmission: a study of a family cluster; DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30154-9), published by Hong Kong and Chinese researchers, based on a tiny family sample of 5: 15% mortality rate from this virus (!); it features person-to-person transmission; transmission possible by asymptomatic infected individuals: 83% (!) of those exposed are infected; 3-6 day incubation period; another article states that those who are infected and survive suffer permanent heart injury
  • The Lancet (24 January 2020): Emerging understandings of 2019-nCoV; DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30186-0
  • The Lancet (24 January 2020): A novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern; DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30185-9
  • The Lancet (24 January 2020): Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China; DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30183-5
  • The Lancet (24 January 2020): Data sharing and outbreaks: best practice exemplified; DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30184-7
  • Nature warned in 2017 (Nature 542, 399–400 (23 February 2017) doi:10.1038/nature.2017.21487) that a bioweapon could escape from the BSL-4 lab facility in Wuhan
  • Science (24 January 2020): Policy for reviewing risky virus experiments under reconsideration
  • Natural News (26 January 2020): Speculation that the seafood market origin of the coronavirus is a cover story
  • Bloomberg (26 January 2020): China Names HIV Drugs in Treatment Plan for New Virus
  • NYT (26 January 2020): France to Repatriate Citizens From Wuhan as Virus Spreads
  • ABC News (27 January 2020): US to evacuate consulate staff from Wuhan to San Francisco amid coronavirus outbreak
  • The Guardian (27 January 2020): Britons in Wuhan decry ‘pathetic’ UK government coronavirus advice; see also: The Independent
  • National Post (27 January 2020): First Canadian coronavirus case officially confirmed, second is presumptive, 19 people under investigation
  • Reports on evacuations of: New Zealanders in Wuhan; AustraliansGermans; Indians; Italians; Japanese; Dutch nationals; Russians; South Koreans; almost 5,000 students from 12 African countries (students who leave now may lose their degrees)
  • The Star (27 January 2020): Canada is exploring whether to evacuate citizens from coronavirus quarantine in China
  • American Action Forum (24 January 2020): The Economics of Pandemics
  • FluTrackers.com: Pandemic Discussion Forum; topics include: Operating a Small Business in a Disaster; Ethical Considerations in a Pandemic; Economics in a Pandemic

New paper wrt transmission (not peer reviewed; BioRxiv- Posted January 26, 2020) from r/China_Flu

Disparity between China cases and International Cases from r/China_Flu

Resources to stay up to date on the 2019-nCoV outbreak from r/China_Flu

Early estimation of epidemiological parameters and epidemic predictions | R0 of 3.8, and 94.9% of cases are unidentified, travel restrictions in Wuhan likely ineffective | 24JAN20 from r/nCoV

Wife of Canada's first coronavirus patient tests positive, 19 under investigation from r/nCoV

nCoV vaccine prognosis | 27JAN20 from r/nCoV

Russian scientists in Novosibirsk's VECTOR developing two novel coronavirus vaccines from r/China_Flu

A glimmer in the distance. Monday morning 9 AM EST | (27JAN20) from r/nCoV

Chart 1: Case/Deaths by country | Chart 2: Cases by Country| Updated: 26JAN20@UTD11:15 from r/nCoV

WHO advice on home care for mild cases from r/nCoV

Asymptomatic man infects 14 medics with coronavirus. They are calling him "超级传播者" (Super-spreader), he took more than 15 days to start feeling symptoms, even though he was able to infect the doctors and nurses. from r/nCoV


Villagers close roads and guard with knives and spears in rural areas. Desperate measures in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. (Source and gallery in comments) from r/nCoV








See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.