Covid-19 in China

[Randy W]

When the quarantine was lifted in Hubei, people were told they could leave the province, but Jiangxi didn't want them yet -

A female passenger scolds airport staff after a dispute about her being in quarantine, and more trending videos from China this week.

For more on Chinese society: http://sc.mp/chinasociety

https://www.facebook.com/355665009819/posts/1074246862950895

Click above link to see video

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

[Greg.D.]

Thanks for the National Review article. Head spinning. Both labs in Wuhan were up to their eyeballs in coronaviruses. And the few accounts we have so far say the seafood market had neither bats nor pangolins.

Don’t know what it would take to ever get full and forthright disclosure from people in charge in Wuhan. Something about pigs flying first.

[amberjack1234]

I think I said something similar earlier. You are spot on.

[Randy W]

Someone who had to race to beat the ban on foreigners . . .

they still had to face a 14 day quarantine, which is just NOW over with.

https://www.facebook.com/1582608362/posts/10219702304019766/

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

[Randy W]

An article from China Law Blog about what many foreigners in China are facing. I didn't see any of this, even at the hospital, but I haven't been able to get out since before the outbreak started.

 

This is not surprising, given that everyone was alerted via Weixin that,

 

The risk of overseas importation increases, there are cases of circulation and asymptomatic infection in the territory

 

 

To most Chinese, this would arouse suspicion of ANY foreigner.

 

Foreigners in China in the Time of Coronavirus: “See the Whole as Well as the Parts”

By Fred Rocafort on April 5, 2020

One of the most unfortunate twists in the ongoing COVID-19 emergency is the racism and xenophobia it has unleashed across the world. To be sure, much of this has been directed at Chinese and Asians generally. See our plea to stop this here: Do Not Blame Chinese People for the Coronavirus. No Exceptions

According to a Guardian article, foreigners

have been turned away from restaurants, shops, gyms and hotels, subjected to further screening, yelled at by locals and avoided in public spaces.

***

Experiences range from socially awkward to xenophobic. An American walking with a group of foreigners in a park in Beijing saw a woman grab her child and run the other way. Others have described being called “foreign trash”. A recent online article, under an image of ship stacked with refuse being pushed away from China’s coast, was headlined: “Beware of a second outbreak started by foreign garbage.”

 

 

[Greg.D.]

Every Flight of mine into China was filled by at least 95% Chinese people. Why would they think that “imported cases” should be anything other than Chinese people?

[Martin B]

Every Flight of mine into China was filled by at least 95% Chinese people. Why would they think that “imported cases” should be anything other than Chinese people?

 

I think there was a statistic recently published that 90% of the "imported" in China were due to Chinese nationals returning from abroad. This is why the Chinese government basically axed nearly all international routes - to prevent nationals from flocking back.

 

I'm shocked actually shocked that it's 90% - I would've expected something closer to 99.9% . Your experience matches mine - most of the flights we've taken were almost entirely Chinese people before the outbreak - how many foreigners could have possibly been flying to China in February and March?

 

Just another easy opportunity for the government to incite hatred against foreigners and deflect blame.

[Allon]

The National Review article and the YouTube story are interesting but contain a lot of stretching words. What is missing is information from several articles that point to multiple cases of COVID-19 virus antibodies in people living around the caves in question as far back as 2005. That could have made them asymptomatic carriers or even worse, the real first COVID-19 victims. Is there a log of their activity from 2005 to late 2019?

Just because someone says bats or pangolins were not sold in the now famous market doesn't make it so. China is lovely for such juicy gossip.

But no doubt the laboratory was not located properly for what they did. And throwing around bat piss and blood....another lovely story made up by a grad student somewhere in a dorm.

What happened to researchers who worked the lab reminds me of the hysteria behind the death of certain Democratic principals in the Clinton campaigns, certainly published in the likes of the National Review. (William Buckley is laughing in his grave,)

And from a YouTube investigator no less. How credible....

I am waiting for more factual evidence even though I am sure the Chinese government is involved somewhere in the black keys.

[Randy W]

 

Someone who had to race to beat the ban on foreigners . . .

they still had to face a 14 day quarantine, which is just NOW over with.

https://www.facebook.com/1582608362/posts/10219702304019766/

https://www.facebook.com/1582608362/posts/10219702304019766/

 

 

 

 

I'm hearing that some foreigners are having trouble finding accommodations now that they've been released from quarantine - many hotels just won't take foreigners.

[Greg.D.]

The National Review article and the YouTube story are interesting but contain a lot of stretching words. What is missing is information from several articles that point to multiple cases of COVID-19 virus antibodies in people living around the caves in question as far back as 2005. That could have made them asymptomatic carriers or even worse, the real first COVID-19 victims. Is there a log of their activity from 2005 to late 2019?

Just because someone says bats or pangolins were not sold in the now famous market doesn't make it so. China is lovely for such juicy gossip.

But no doubt the laboratory was not located properly for what they did. And throwing around bat piss and blood....another lovely story made up by a grad student somewhere in a dorm.

I studied biochemistry at Cornell. A famous dude there named Ephram Racker said “Dont resort to extraordinary explanations for ordinary events”.

 

The simplest and far and away most likely explanation is that one of the two research centers in Wuhan had an escape, a breakdown of their safety protocols. The transport via non-existent bats or the more ludicrous jump from a bat to a second host to human (each, but especially the second, being a rare event) is not impossible but highly unlikely ..... why go there? The first SARS was from an escape from a virology center in Beijing and in 2019 there are two - not one - bat coronavirus research centers in Wuhan where SARS-2 breaks out.

 

Antibodies to Covid-19 in Yunnan people who live near the bat caves? Not surprising. I looked for, but couldn’t find, a reference I read that said for now we have to consider the human antibodies to be cross-reactive among various, highly related strains of the covid virus.

 

Anyway, nothing changes whether it is a completely natural phenomenon or a lab accident that has caused this.

[Allon]

Greg, not to disagree but hope to add, because I always respect your opinion...and certainly your education.

 

I studied logic with the number 6 rated (they did that in those days) Aristotelian logician in the world but that did not stop me from being pre-med microbio. But I dropped that when I came back from SEA and went back to my passion for "thoughty thoughts." I had already practiced enough having seen more than some doctors see in their lifetime. (I was told that by a surgeon.)

 

I saw news articles that clearly showed dead bats at that market. Now that may have been made up or (lol) doctored but there are a lot of "If my grandmother had wheels she would be a wagon" in that article.

 

The great American pragmatist and philosopher Charles Peirce said in a piece about Belief and Doubt:

 

A belief is that upon which you are willing to act when the occasion presents itself.

 

I believe there were bats at that market and believe antibodies for COVID-19 don't just magically appear in nearby villagers long before the outbreak in Wuhan, and the antibodies were found by the early research teams themselves. I posted earlier about the activities of those teams.

 

With all the "might haves" and "may`s" in that article in National Review, I am at the doubt stage, although we might have Colonel Mustard as a suspect. The manner in which the Chinese were handling the bats in those films I saw is proof alone of a breach of protocol. No gloves and none of the handlers looked like white coated professors to me.

 

I do agree in substance with your last sentence. It's tragic but we will never find the truth behind this story.

[Randy W]

Wuhan lockdown ended - Apr 8.

 

from the NY Times

 

China Ends Wuhan Coronavirus Lockdown, but Normal Life is a Distant Dream

 

• In the city where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported, the reopening of outbound travel won’t end hard times, wariness or confinement.

 

A park along the Yangtze River in Wuhan, China, on Monday.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock

 

China on Wednesday ended its lockdown of Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus first emerged and a potent symbol in a pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of people, shaken the global economy and thrown daily life into upheaval across the planet.

But the city that has reopened after more than 10 weeks is a profoundly damaged one, a place whose recovery will be watched worldwide for lessons on how populations move past pain and calamity of such staggering magnitude.

In Wuhan, sickness and death have touched hundreds of thousands of lives, imprinting them with trauma that could linger for decades. Businesses, even those that have reopened, face a wrenching road ahead, with sluggishness likely to persist. Neighborhood authorities continue to regulate people’s comings and goings, with no return to normalcy in sight.

 

 

 

[Randy W]

People leaving Wuhan

 

 

 

Xinhua covers the Grand Re-opening

 

[Randy W]

With hope we move on! from Xinhua - New China TV

 

 

[Randy W]

Not much new here, except for a few little tidbits about the Wuhan labs

 

from Al Jazeera

​

Coronavirus origin: Few leads, many theories in hunt for source

 

• Coronavirus most likely to have jumped to humans from intermediary host, but some say lab accident cannot be ruled out.

The practice of collecting viruses from bats first burst into public view in the early weeks of the outbreak when Shi Zhengli, a noted scientist with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, refuted a swirl of online accusations both at home and abroad that the coronavirus may have leaked from her institute, where a lab certified as BSL-4, the highest level for handling dangerous pathogens, opened three years ago.

. . .

So, over the past 10 years, Shi and other Wuhan virologists have made numerous expeditions to collect viruses from different bat species, building up Asia's largest virus bank, according to the institute's newsletter.

Poon said once the genome of the coronavirus was sequenced in early January, Shi was able to confirm its likely source as a bat by retrieving a bat virus sample from her store that was 96 percent similar.

Shi did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for an interview, but told Scientific America that the coronavirus did not match "any of those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves".

In mid-February, scientists from two of China's most prestigious polytechnics, including one in Wuhan, circulated a pre-print paper, one that has not undergone peer review, detailing accidents involving bats at the lab of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). After being attacked and urinated on by the bats, a researcher quarantined himself for 14 days.

The BSL-4 lab was not the only laboratory in the city of 11 million people that was collecting bat viruses.

The wild animals that were believed to be on sale illegally at the seafood market - which the scientists see as specimens - were destroyed after it was shut down in early January soon after the first known cluster of cases emerged there. The whole area has been disinfected and scrubbed.