Covid-19 in China

[Randy W]

Received just today

 

 

Guangxi Epidemic Prevention Command shall, in accordance with the law, crack down on illegal and illegal acts such as illegal entry and organization of illegal immigration across the border, and encourage the masses to actively report illegal immigration, and give cash rewards if the clues are verified to be true.

 

[Allon]

That sounds familiar for some reason......

[Randy W]

That sounds familiar for some reason......

 

 

An ongoing warning about foreigners . . .

 

not in the least bit tempered by the events concerning Africans in Guangzhou.

[eseum]

Wasn't sure whether to post this here or in the U.S. section on the virus. This on "The Hill" this morning: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/492848-china-hawks-flex-muscle-amid-fallout

China hawks flex muscle amid coronavirus fallout

The fallout from the coronavirus is shaking up the U.S.-China relationship on Capitol Hill, as a group of hawkish lawmakers fiercely criticize Beijing’s response to the disease.

Republicans are pushing for their colleagues and the Trump administration to take a more aggressive stance toward Beijing, which they say downplayed the virus’s danger.

China’s government has become a target for criticism for Republicans, along with the World Health Organization (WHO). President Trump on Tuesday said he would halt funding to that organization.

I'm not sure that is necessary for the U.S. to punish China for their not revealing more about the virus at its earliest stages. Some (okay, most) of what they are suggesting should be done to punish China doesn't seem to be very well thought out. Senator Graham suggesting the suspension of debt payments seems to be the most asinine.

[Cale1953]

 

That sounds familiar for some reason......

 

 

An ongoing warning about foreigners . . .

 

not in the least bit tempered by the events concerning Africans in Guangzhou.

 

I've read several stories about what precipitated this, but even if all the circumstances are true, it doesn't justify what went on. I think Beijing is embarrased about it but to tell the local authorities to knock it off, would admit to the presence of racism in Chinese society and would result in a loss of face.

 

Apparently there were local groups that organized to help some of the Africans in Guangzhou, it would be good to know more about that

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

Trump discussed Wuhan virology lab connection to Covid-19 with Xi

• Trump said the US was ‘doing a thorough investigation’ on the matter and declined to divulge details of his conversation with Xi
• Comments follow Washington Post report that US science diplomats raised alarm about Wuhan lab in 2018

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he discussed an alleged connection between a virology lab in Wuhan and the coronavirus outbreak that led to the Covid-19 pandemic with China’s President Xi Jinping during a phone call.

 

Responding to a question in a White House coronavirus press briefing about “lax safety protocols that had been reported to the State Department from the [uS] embassy in Beijing”, Trump said that he did not want to discuss what he talked to Xi about regarding the laboratory.

 

“I will tell you more and more we’re hearing the story, and we’ll see. When you say multiple sources, now there’s a case where we can use the word sources, but we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened,” Trump added.

 

. . .

 

According to a Washington Post report on Tuesday, US officials who had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sent diplomatic cables in January 2018 back to Washington warning about safety and management weaknesses at the lab, and also that the facility’s work on bat coronaviruses created a pandemic risk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Randy W]

Yeah! From China Pictorial on Facebook

Quote

China on Monday refuted the U.S. accusation that the Chinese province of Guangdong has taken discriminatory practices toward Africans in the process of epidemic prevention and control.

"During our fight against coronavirus, the Chinese government has been attaching great importance to the lives and health of foreign nationals in China. All foreigners are treated equally, and we reject differential treatment," said Spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

https://www.facebook.com/553929144732479/posts/2702178589907513

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Wuhan's estimates revised upwards. From the Shanghaiist

Wuhan raises coronavirus death toll by 50% in interest of “transparency and accuracy”

• The new total of 3,869 dead still falls far, far short of some estimates

 

Quote

It offered four reasons to explain the discrepancies in the data:

 

1. Some patients died at home without being treated by hospitals that were overwhelmed and over-capacity.
2. Because the hospitals were overwhelmed, some belated and erroneous reporting slipped through.
3. Some private hospitals, makeshift hospitals, and other medical institutions were not linked up to the health ministry’s epidemic information network and failed to report their data in time.
4. The information of some deceased patients was incomplete and there were mistakes in the reporting.

The revision comes as increased questions have been raised over the validity of China’s coronavirus numbers as other countries have reported far more cases and deaths than the home of the virus’s original epicenter.

 

. . .

 

The revised Wuhan numbers are still not in the same neighborhood as estimates made by some critics who have concluded that the virus infected hundreds of thousands of people in Wuhan while killing tens of thousands.

 

These estimates are based on reports from a mortuary in Wuhan where 5,000 urns were delivered in just two days and residents waited in line for hours to retrieve the remains of their loved ones.

 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

from the Shanghaiist

 

 

China is having to cancel clinical trials because it’s running out of coronavirus patients

 

"No one expected that China would control the epidemic so quickly," explained China's top respiratory expert, Zhong Nanshan.

[amberjack1234]

I am having trouble believing that especially since I just read that 1,500 new patients have popped up in about 3 different cities. Maybe it is true. I hope so that would give us more encouragement. But I kinda believe the CCP is reporting that to try and embarrass the US. Just my two cents worth and the wife too. She told her parents that are drinking their kool-aid that as long as you see Xi and all the government officials wearing a mask they should too. Kinda makes sence don't you think.

[Randy W]

I am having trouble believing that especially since I just read that 1,500 new patients have popped up in about 3 different cities. Maybe it is true. I hope so that would give us more encouragement. But I kinda believe the CCP is reporting that to try and embarrass the US. Just my two cents worth and the wife too. She told her parents that are drinking their kool-aid that as long as you see Xi and all the government officials wearing a mask they should too. Kinda makes sence don't you think.

 

 

The masks, business closures, and social distancing are still required - the return to normalcy is proceeding VERY cautiously. The supposed "second wave" IS apparently only in a small # of cities, supposedly due to people coming from other countries. But, as I've posted, they ARE still broadcasting warnings about foreigners.

 

Winston weighs in, but ONLY about the African situation. His buddy gets a bouquet of flowers, and some fruit (and released early) as compensation for having been forcibly quarantined because of his South African passport.

 

[Cale1953]

So TV announcers have face masks when on air talking to the camera and hotel staff have full biohazard suits.

 

The whole thing just gets weirder and weirder.

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

Warnings from inside over China’s Wolf Warrior coronavirus diplomacy

• Chinese observers and former envoys caution against Beijing’s attempts define international opinion in the face of a global health crisis
• Be aware of criticism in usually friendly countries as they question China’s position, observers say

 

The warnings come after pushback in the region and beyond to China’s diplomatic posturing in the midst of a devastating global health crisis, especially its “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, an assertive approach named after a popular nationalistic film.

 

Beijing should scale back its combative efforts to change the narrative over the coronavirus pandemic and rein in rising nationalist sentiment because the attempts have backfired and hurt its international reputation, Chinese diplomats and foreign policy experts have said.

 

. . .

 

Under President Xi Jinping’s call for “a fighting spirit”, China’s diplomats have become increasingly assertive on the world stage, with Beijing repeatedly resorting to nationalism in recent years over the trade war, mass protests in Hong Kong and the fate of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

But experts have warned that stoking nationalist sentiment, especially when combined with disaster opportunism, is a double-edged sword that could easily backfire and make it more difficult for sensible and rational decisions.

. . .

“But we cannot allow the relatively good relations with those countries to be affected simply because of those critical views. They are the real foundation of China’s diplomacy,” he said.

 

 

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

Coronavirus’s ability to mutate ‘has been vastly underestimated’

The most aggressive strains of Sars-CoV-2 could generate 270 times as much viral load as the least potent type.

Professor Li Lanjuan and her colleagues from Zhejiang University found within a small pool of patients many mutations not previously reported. These mutations included changes so rare that scientists had never considered they might occur.

 

They also confirmed for the first time with laboratory evidence that certain mutations could create strains deadlier than others.

 

“Sars-CoV-2 has acquired mutations capable of substantially changing its pathogenicity,” Li and her collaborators wrote in a non-peer reviewed paper released on preprint service medRxiv.org on Sunday.

 

Li took an unusual approach to investigate the virus mutation. She analysed the viral strains isolated from 11 randomly chosen Covid-19 patients from Hangzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and then tested how efficiently they could infect and kill cells.

 

. . .

 

The deadliest mutations in the Zhejiang patients had also been found in most patients across Europe, while the milder strains were the predominant varieties found in parts of the United States, such as Washington state, according to their paper.

 

A separate study had found that New York strains had been imported from Europe. The death rate in New York was similar to that in many European countries, if not worse.

 

. . .

 

Li took an unusual approach to investigate the virus mutation. She analysed the viral strains isolated from 11 randomly chosen Covid-19 patients from Hangzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and then tested how efficiently they could infect and kill cells.

 

. . .

 

The researchers also found three consecutive changes – known as tri-nucleotide mutations – in a 60-year-old patient, which was a rare event. Usually the genes mutated at one site at a time. This patient spent more than 50 days in hospital, much longer than other Covid-19 patients, and even his faeces were infectious with living viral strains.

 

“Our understanding of the virus remains quite shallow,” Zhang said. Questions such as where the virus came from, why it could kill some healthy young people while generating no detectable symptoms in many others still left scientists scratching their heads.

 

[Randy W]

from the NY Times - how to choose where to sit (once you've figured out where the asymptomatic COVID-19 patient is)

How Coronavirus Infected Some, but Not All, in a Restaurant
A limited study by Chinese researchers suggests the role played by air currents in spreading the illness in enclosed spaces.



A diagram of the arrangement of a restaurant’s tables and air conditioning airflow at site of an outbreak of coronavirus in Guangzhou, China. Red circles indicate the seating of future case-patients; the yellow-filled red circle indicates the index case, or first-documented, patient.Credit...Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

On Jan. 24, a family went to lunch at the restaurant in Guangzhou, a sprawling metropolis in southern China located 80 miles from Hong Kong.

An air-conditioning unit next to Family C blew air in the southward direction across all three tables; some of the air likely bounced off the wall, back in the direction of Family C.

Because the coronavirus had not yet spread widely beyond Wuhan, public health officials were able to trace the recent contacts of Families B and C and determine that the restaurant was the only likely place where they would have crossed paths with the virus.


. . .


The family had left Wuhan, 520 miles to the north and the hot spot of the initial coronavirus outbreak, one day before Chinese officials imposed a lockdown on the city and the surrounding province of Hubei to slow the spread of the disease.Chinese researchers described the incident in a paper that is to be published in the July issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The field study has limitations. The researchers, for example, did not perform experiments to simulate the airborne transmission.

. . . all of the people who became sick at the restaurant in China were either at the same table as the infected person or at one of two neighboring tables. The fact that people farther away remained healthy is a hopeful hint that the coronavirus is primarily transmitted through larger respiratory droplets, which fall out of the air more quickly than smaller droplets known as aerosols, which can float for hours.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Randy W (see edit history)