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Thread: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Wuhan Pneumonia

  1. #46
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    The impact

    The Coronavirus Outbreak Could Derail Xi Jinping’s Dreams of a Chinese Century


    President Xi Jinping said on Feb. 5 that China is “confident and capable” of handling the coronavirus Paolo Tre—A3/CONTRASTO/Redux

    BY CHARLIE CAMPBELL
    6:18 AM EST
    It took eight hours for a doctor to see Wu Chen’s mother after she arrived at the hospital. Eight days later, she was dead.

    The doctor was “99% sure” she had contracted the mysterious pneumonia-like illness sweeping China’s central city of Wuhan, Wu says, but he didn’t have the testing kit to prove it. And despite the 64-year-old’s fever and perilously low oxygen levels, there was no bed for her. Wu tried two more hospitals over the next week, but all were overrun. By Jan. 25, her mother was slumped on the tile floor of an emergency room, gasping for air, drifting in and out of consciousness. “We didn’t want to see my mom die on the floor, so we took her home,” says Wu, 30. “She passed the next day.”


    Illustration by Edel Rodriguez for TIME

    Because she did not want a spell in jail for dissent to compound her grief, Wu asked TIME to refer to her by a pseudonym–a reasonable request and one that carries with it a measure of what each virus death means to the People’s Republic of China. The novel coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV threatens more than the 24,000 people known to be infected as of Feb. 4 or the 492 it has killed. It also looms over the national rejuvenation project of President Xi Jinping and the rigid, top-down rule being tested by all that the disease brings with it, including distrust in a population the government pledged to keep safe. Since China belatedly acknowledged the severity of the outbreak, every organ of the Chinese state has been harnessed to enforce an unprecedented quarantine on 50 million people across 15 cities. China’s government has unleashed a 1 billion yuan ($142 million) war chest to fight the outbreak amid a frenzy of construction work that, among other feats, erected a 1,000-bed hospital in just 10 days. That there was no cot for Wu’s mother may be understandable, given the time it took to comprehend the disease and how quickly it spread. But what to make of a government that cannot abide the grief of a daughter who took her ailing mother home rather than see her die on a hospital floor?

    Transparency is essential to public health. But in China, doctors who reported the reality of the outbreak have been arrested for “spreading rumors.” Officials were pictured pocketing supplies meant for frontline medical staff, who were reduced to cutting up office supplies for makeshift surgical masks. Meanwhile, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has already started leveraging the crisis for propaganda by lionizing cadres leading containment efforts. “No crisis is too deadly that they can’t take a time-out to promote the party through manipulation of it,” says Scott W. Harold, an East Asia expert at the U.S. policy think tank Rand Corp.

    In the fall of 2017, Xi took the podium at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to claim that China’s version of one-party autocracy offered an option for “countries that want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.” Western democracy was messy and flawed, the argument went. In the years since that speech, China’s hubris has grown, nurtured by the tumultuous U.S. presidency of Donald Trump and the disintegration of the multilateral world order. But the coronavirus crisis threatens to rattle China’s authoritarian apparatus. “A major test of China’s system and capacity for governance” senior party chiefs called it on Feb. 3.

    The 2019-nCoV outbreak is infecting some 2,000 people daily in China and has spread to at least 25 countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a “global health emergency.” And the fear is not limited to health. Global commerce now hinges on China’s $14.55 trillion economy, which in turn is governed by an opaque, authoritarian regime tightly coalesced around one man. Xi, burnished by a resurgent cult of personality, has amassed more power than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. He has leveraged Beijing’s economic clout to forward ambitions at home and abroad but also has struggled as no previous leader. “Since Xi came to power, problem after problem have occurred on his watch that he seems unable to effectively manage,” says Jude Blanchette, a China analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. These include popular unrest in semiautonomous Hong Kong, a disruptive trade war with the U.S. and now an unfolding health crisis.
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  2. #47
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    Continued from previous post


    An empty highway in Wuhan, the city of 11 million where the outbreak began in a market, on Feb. 3 Getty Images

    For decades, the sales pitch for China’s single-party rule was the superior performance of its political system when faced with both short-term crises and long-term challenges. It built thousands of miles of high-speed rail and helped drag hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. By 2022, McKinsey predicts 550 million Chinese will be able to call themselves middle class–about 1.5 times the current U.S. population. Still, that benevolent narrative has deteriorated under Xi. Now the coronavirus threatens to undermine further his mission to have China stake out the next century as America did the last.

    In 2019, China overtook Soviet Russia as history’s most enduring communist state. The seven-decade longevity of the CCP can be attributed in no small part to abandoning great chunks of Marxist-Leninism; instead of centralized planning and top-down targets, China embraced markets and devolved considerable power to its regions and cities. Local party bosses were encouraged to make bold decisions to boost the local economy, like setting up heavily subsidized means of production.

    As a result, China boomed but also became a network of little fiefdoms and power centers, where local bosses vied for influence and corruption flourished. Xi came into power in 2012 convinced rampant graft posed an existential threat to the party. To him, only an ideological renaissance coupled with an anticorruption crusade could save China from going the way of the Soviet Union.

    A bland apparatchik by reputation, Xi climbed the career ladder as a provincial bureaucrat, eventually emerging as a compromise candidate for the post of China’s top leader. His lack of a power base led party elders to believe he would remain malleable and easy to control. Global leaders hoped he might push through long-awaited economic and social reforms.

    They were wrong. Soon after taking power, Xi announced his “China Dream” of a grand national rejuvenation, later speaking about returning China to “center stage of the world.” Far from embracing Western-style market reforms, Xi calcified state control over the economy and stocked its bureaucracy with flunkies and yes-men. Today party zealotry permeates all of Chinese society. The head of China’s national Film Bureau has ordered movies “must have a clear ideological bottom line and cannot challenge the political system.” China’s journalists have been instructed to follow “Marxist news values.” Artists can only produce works that “serve the people and socialism.” One advertisement for sperm donors required applicants ages 20 to 45 with “excellent ideological qualities” who “love the fatherland,” and are “loyal” to the party’s “mission.” Mao may have had his Little Red Book, but Xi has a personalized app distributed to all 90 million CCP members, with a directory of his speeches and quizzes on his life and political thought.


    Evacuees from Wuhan, mostly German nationals, leave Frankfurt’s main airport on Feb. 1 Thomas Lohnes—AFP/Getty Images

    His mission is to forge a singular Chinese identity that restores the nation’s ethnic Han majority to a golden age, on the basis of fealty to his party. “Xi Jinping is fundamentally a Han chauvinist with a ‘historic mission’ to make China, Han China, great again,” says Professor Steve Tsang, director of SOAS China Institute at the University of London.

    And he’s willing to go to extreme lengths to do it. In China’s restive Xinjiang province, a systematic campaign of forced internment has transformed the area into a dusty expanse spotted with camps where more than 1 million Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are held extrajudicially, according to the U.N. What began as a campaign to battle radical Islam in the region has mutated into an enormous project of ideological re-education. On the routes where Silk Road caravans once traveled, a sophisticated surveillance apparatus shrouds the wider populace in an AI-powered panopticon, where every action is watched, recorded and judged by algorithm.

    Those who fall foul of it are sent to learn the error of their ways. Nurlan Kokeubai, 56, never found out the charges against him. But from August 2017 to April 2018, he was detained in a re-education camp close to the city of Ili, in Xinjiang province. For four hours each morning, Kokeubai says he and his fellow inmates were forced to watch videos of Xi carousing with dignitaries and overseeing military exercises. They were also ordered to memorize Xi’s eponymous “political thought” and documents from the 19th CCP Conference, where Xi removed presidential term limits to enable himself to rule for life. Those that resisted were beaten with sticks or strapped to a metal chair for interrogation. “They weren’t testing our knowledge or loyalty,” Kokeubai told TIME in Almaty, Kazakhstan, to which he has since fled. “They were just filling us with this propaganda.”

    President Trump has kept mum on the Xinjiang camps as he negotiated a provisional agreement in the trade war. But when the coronavirus broke, his Administration did not hold back. “I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a TV interview on Jan. 30. “The fact is, it does give business yet another thing to consider … I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”

    Forty years after Beijing and Washington normalized relations, the two are diverging rapidly. Under Trump, the U.S. has been disentangling its firms and, yes, supply chains from China’s through taxes, tariffs and punitive investment curbs. Western investors are also cowed by ideological hurdles and looking elsewhere, given China’s market is now sophisticated, saturated and tricky to exploit. Washington has banned Huawei, the world’s biggest telecoms equipment manufacturer, from its key infrastructure and urged allies to do the same. In U.S. universities, Chinese researchers have been purged as academia, wary of espionage, lurches into Sinophobic McCarthyism. The patient optimism that colored the George W. Bush and Obama administrations has largely evaporated.
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    Continued from previous post


    Travelers in the arrivals halls at New York City-area airports in early February Thomas Prior for TIME

    But it’s a mistake to ignore Xi’s own agency in this process. “[Last year] was a landmark in the structural shift of how the United States views its relationship with China,” says Tsang. “But the decoupling wasn’t started by Donald Trump. It was originally prepared by Xi Jinping himself.” Every one of Xi’s signature economic policies has sought to reduce China’s reliance on the U.S. and grow its own empire. His $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative builds connectivity across Eurasia and Africa. The “Made in China 2025” campaign aims to propel China to the forefront of strategic industries currently dominated by Silicon Valley, such as semiconductors, aerospace, AI and robotics. The Chinese government has even ordered all state departments to remove foreign-made computer equipment within three years.

    Xi does not stand alone, though he is surrounded by clients rather than friends. China is now more closely aligned with Russia than at any period since Mao and Nikita Khrushchev fell out in 1956. The Belt and Road Initiative is drawing nations across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East into Beijing’s orbit (and often into its debt). The U.S. may have asked 61 countries to shun Huawei, but only three–Japan, Australia, New Zealand–have acquiesced. The next decade won’t be defined by an iron curtain but two blocs vying for influence within every nation that isn’t firmly in the liberal democratic or autocratic camp. And, for one side, the coronavirus is being sized up as an opportunity. Asked whether import levies on China should be dialed down given the crisis, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro demurred. “Let’s remember why the tariffs are in place,” he said.

    Confronting an outbreak requires more than just an ability to throw up hospitals in a few days; it necessitates trust. And from the beginning, China’s public response to the virus has raised questions. Even multinational institutions like WHO are feeling this as the coronavirus worsens. The organization was unable to rule on the severity of 2019-nCoV following its first meeting on Jan. 22, apparently because of resistance from Beijing. (WHO referred to “divergent views.”) Notably, despite WHO’s insisting that travel bans to China would not be necessary, a dozen nations introduced stringent restrictions, including the U.S., Australia and North Korea. If you believe China’s official figures, 2019-nCoV has a fatality rate of just 2%–about the same as regular influenza and a far cry from the 50% of Ebola or the 10% of SARS. Why then, observers might well ask, has China placed entire cities in lockdown, quarantined tens of millions and mobilized troops?

    Here is the downside of Xi’s system of top-down control; nobody acted until they got word from the top, and then everyone wildly overreacted in order to satisfy the leader. This was evident in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, where the outbreak began, and the official response lurched from cover-up to overreaction only after Xi addressed the crisis. “The full CCP apparatus didn’t kick into gear to address the coronavirus until Xi had weighed in on the matter,” says Blanchette. Notably, the President himself has kept a low profile since the outbreak began and was not seen in public for eight days after the Lunar New Year.


    A medical worker disinfects a hotel converted into a quarantine zone in Wuhan, on Feb. 3 AFP/GETTY IMAGES

    Now, throughout China, fear is mixing with inchoate rage. In Hubei province, people from Wuhan are ostracized. But in other provinces, people from anywhere in Hubei are shunned. Videos circulating on social media show vigilantes tooling up to protect their villages. In one video, a man in a dark jacket and wide-brimmed hat guards a bridge with a pistol. In another, a man in an orange puffer jacket sits on a table at the entrance to his village, brandishing an enormous sword. All have signs nearby with a common theme: outsiders cannot pass.

    Even in Beijing, apartment building guards are checking the IDs of everyone who enters and banning those from Hubei–rent-paying tenants included. Videos emerge of Hubei residents scuffling with gas station staff who refuse them service. Sometimes mass brawls erupt when a Hubei resident tries to force himself past an improvised roadblock. “Don’t blame us for being rude if you are from Wuhan and you don’t self-quarantine,” wrote one poster on China’s Twitter-like microblog Weibo. “You should just shoot them because they are killing us!” wrote another.

    The ideological revival behind Xi’s “China Dream” may have rendered the political system more decisive but also more prone to error. Under Mao, local officials were also hesitant to act until they had clear signals from the top. Rather than assess issues through a purely governance lens, China’s bureaucracy is forced to balance both technocratic and political concerns. Meanwhile nativist vigilantism spreads almost as fast as the virus.

    Some questions–whether the virus becomes a pandemic (or reaches epidemic levels on two continents), how many people it infects and how many lives it takes–remain shrouded in uncertainty. But the crisis has already demonstrated that the centralization of political power under Xi has made Chinese society brittle. The question now is what it will endure before it begins to crack.

    Wu’s mother was cremated the evening she died. A battered container truck arrived at 9 p.m. and packed her body in with countless others. Instead of 2019-nCoV, her death certificate simply reads “viral pneumonia.” Wu signed a permission slip for the cremation but was told her mother’s ashes won’t be released until the crisis has abated. “They say that there are more than 300 dead now,” says Wu, “but I think there are many more.” Distrust, it turns out, is infectious too.

    –With reporting by AMY GUNIA/ HONG KONG

    This appears in the February 17, 2020 issue of TIME.
    I've been posting every weekday on this thread because coronavirus is the top of many of my newsfeeds given that I monitor news from China assiduosly. There are several threads here that I feed about the rise of China, ie. Chollywood rising, Chinese Theme Parks, Made in China etc. The advancement of China as the world's second most influential nation has a direct relationship on Chinese martial arts. Our magazine, which supports this forum here through the promotion of our sponsor MartialArtSmart, are under the Tiger Claw umbrella. Tiger Claw is one of the largest wholesale distributors of martial arts gear for all styles in the nation. So much of inventory, whether for Chinese, Japanese or Korean styles, is made in China. Now China shuts down during Chinese New Year for about two weeks. Tiger Claw, which also supplies some of MartialArtSmart, knows this and orders in advance in anticipation of the holiday break because the factories shut down and everyone goes back to their hometown. This year, with coronavirus, the break has been extended and travel has been restricted, so we don't know exactly when our factories will start production again. I imagine most of the martial arts supply companies are looking at the same situation because we know all the manufacturers (there really aren't that many) so we know that most of the competition uses PRC factories too. Depending how this plays out, there may be delays in the supply chain soon, and what with the rising prices we experienced with the trade war already having some impact on driving up prices, this makes it hard on the small school owners, the grassroots of the martial community. Coronavirus is a worldwide problem, but we - the martial community - are on the front lines economically. The U.S. has been divisive when it comes to China, and while some of that is warrented in areas like copyright infringement (and many others) the martial arts world is a global community and we have to stand united if we are to preserve our treasured legacy.
    Gene Ching
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  4. #49
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    Making things worse, the reporting is so sideways.

    Wuhan hospital announces death of whistleblower doctor after confusion in state media
    By Yong Xiong, Hande Atay Alam and Nectar Gan, CNN
    Updated 4:21 PM ET, Thu February 6, 2020


    An undated photograph shows Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang on oxygen support in hospital after contracting the coronavirus.

    This story has been updated to reflect the latest statement from Wuhan Central Hospital, after confusion in state media reports.

    Beijing (CNN)Li Wenliang, the Chinese whistleblower doctor who warned the public of a potential "SARS-like" disease in December 2019, has died, according to Wuhan Central Hospital. The confirmation follows a series of conflicting statements about his condition from the hospital and Chinese state media outlets.
    Li died of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan in the early hours of Friday morning (local time).
    "Our hospital's ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected with coronavirus during his work in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic," the latest hospital statement read.
    "He died at 2:58 am on Feb 7 after attempts to resuscitate were unsuccessful."
    Earlier on Thursday night, several state media outlets had reported Li's death, following which Chinese social media erupted in profound grief and anger.
    Hours of confusion followed, with Wuhan Central Hospital releasing a statement saying Li was still alive and in critical condition, adding that they were "making attempts to resuscitate him."
    State media subsequently deleted their previous tweets.
    The hospital later confirmed his death.

    Wuhan's whistleblower

    Li had raised the alarm about the virus that ultimately took his life.
    In December, he posted in his medical school alumni group on the Chinese messaging app WeChat that seven patients from a local seafood market had been diagnosed with a SARS-like illness and were quarantined in his hospital in Wuhan.
    Soon after he posted the message, Li was accused of rumor-mongering by the Wuhan police.
    He was one of several medics targeted by police for trying to blow the whistle on the deadly virus in the early weeks of the outbreak, which has sickened more than 28,000 people and killed more than 560. He later contracted the virus himself.
    Li was hospitalized on January 12 and tested positive for the coronavirus on February 1.

    Confusion over his condition

    The Global Times announced Li had died in a tweet at around 10:40 p.m. local time Thursday, linking to a report that cited friends and doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital.
    It deleted the post several hours later. Other Chinese media outlets also deleted their reports of his death, without explanation. The World Health Organization released a message of condolence following the initial reports that Li was dead but later updated their statement to say they did not have any information about the doctor's status.
    Wuhan Central Hospital issued a new statement confirming his death later that day.
    The death toll and number of people infected by the Wuhan coronavirus continues to grow, with no signs of slowing despite severe quarantine and population control methods put in place in central China.
    The number of confirmed cases globally stood at 28,275 as of Thursday, with more than 28,000 of those in China. The number of cases in China grew by 3,694, or 15%, on the previous day. There have been 565 deaths so far, all but two of which were in China, with one in the Philippines and one in Hong Kong.

    CNN's Amy Woodyatt contributed to this story.
    I saw news of his death earlier and thought about posting it here but there's just so much news and I already post enough here.
    Gene Ching
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  5. #50
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    Global supply chains affect us all

    The Market’s Reaction to Coronavirus Is ‘Ludicrous,’ Economist Says. Here’s Why.
    By Reshma Kapadia
    Feb. 7, 2020 8:15 am ET


    China's struggle to contain the deadly coronavirus is deepening concerns about the impact on the world's number-two economy. (Photo by GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images

    The world’s second largest economy has ground to a virtual halt as coronavirus cases continue to rise. Still, stock markets don’t seem too bothered.

    That complacency may be misplaced, especially as the virus hits when both the Chinese and global economies were already fragile, Stephen Roach, former chief economist and chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, says.

    The base case for most investors is that China will see a V-shaped recovery if the deadly virus, which has sickened more than 28,000 people globally, shows some indications of containment in the next two weeks. Most analysts and money managers are using the SARS outbreak in 2003 as a template, fueling expectations of a snapback recovery after a painful first quarter.

    Barron’s talked with Roach, who is now a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, about how the situation is meaningfully different, why the virus could push the global economy to the brink of recession, and why the market reaction is “ludicrous.”

    Barron’s: You were in China when SARS hit. What’s different this time around?

    Stephen Roach: The markets have looked at SARS, which was a one quarter shot and then a strong V-shaped recovery. But keep in mind the economy was growing at 10% to 11%, so it was much easier to pull off. Today, the economy is much weaker. Pre-virus it had slowed to 6%. The downside is considerably further in the current environment.

    What impact will this have on the global economy?

    The IMF estimated global economic growth at 2.9%. That’s only 0.4% above the threshold we would associate with a global downturn. We were weak going into this shock and it is going to take us right to the threshold where we technically may be operating at a global recession pace in the first half. Policy makers have no ammo to address cyclical downward pressures, if in fact the coronavirus pushes us through that threshold.

    Markets don’t seem to have gotten the message. The S&P 500 is up 3.6% so far this year and returned to near highs.

    This is a market where if you declared it was World War III, they would rally on reconstruction. It’s pretty ludicrous the optimism that is built in.

    But what about the stimulus measures China has unveiled?

    Right now, the economy is at a full stop. When you are doing quarantines and restrictions on intercity travel and closing plants and even talking about delaying the all-important meetings of the National People’s Congress in early March, what is monetary stimulus going to do to counteract that? Probably nothing. It puts a floor on market turbulence. But it does virtually nothing to arrest the downside of a major public health crisis and near catastrophic reduction in Chinese economic. It’s not like the growth rate is slowing from 6% to 5.5%. Nothing is going on. We have never seen a deceleration from an already weak 6% rate.

    So how do you see this playing out?

    I’m hopeful they will solve the public health issue. I think possibly it will take longer [than expected] but the economic machine is going to take considerably longer to restart than the virus containment trajectories. Growth will be amazingly weak in the first quarter, spill over into the second quarter—though not as weak. We can hope that it gets a SARS-like rebound but there will be a two-quarter shortfall.

    What does that mean for corporate earnings?

    Companies’ supply chains are clogged. We have this idea supply chains are perfectly malleable and can resource from one to another. That’s ludicrous. These are long tail events that will take months to resolve. If you can look to some sort of containment on the health side, the companies will have better second-halves.

    What will be the lasting consumer and behavioral impact of the virus?

    China is leading the world in terms of e-commerce. Its share of retail sales is more than double the U.S. and growing rapidly. That trend will remain strong and get more reinforced. [The virus] will have lasting impact on individual confidence in the government’s ability to manage the public health system. They have started from ground zero. They focused on getting as large a portion of population enrolled in public health but lagged in benefits paid out and quality of public health care.

    What happens to the rest of Asia?

    When China sneezes, to say the rest of the region catches a cold is an understatement. No one is spared from China-related disruption, either on the production or demand side. And then you add in travel.

    The virus makes it that much harder for China to meet its phase one trade commitments. China cut tariffs on the U.S. in half. Was that a goodwill gesture?

    They would never have made them [the commitments] anyway. The tariff cut was a goodwill gesture but also long overdue. In phase one, the U.S. cut in half tariffs it had put in place in September so this was a response to that. There is a clause in phase one that says in the event of a natural disaster, there is a loophole.

    Thanks, Stephen.

    Write to Reshma Kapadia at reshma.kapadia@barrons.com
    This is what I was ranting about above, only on a much larger scale.
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  6. #51
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    Any Asians here experience this yet?

    The coronavirus exposes the history of racism and “cleanliness”
    While the epidemic may be new, xenophobia has been intertwined with public health discourse for a very long time.
    By Nylah Burton Feb 7, 2020, 7:40am EST


    A man riding the subway in Brooklyn, New York, wears a medical face mask on February 2, 2020. Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

    The coronavirus outbreak has created global anxiety since the first cases were reported in Wuhan, China, late last year. So far, over 30,000 illnesses and 635 deaths have been reported in mainland China, with cases in the double digits found throughout Asia, parts of Europe, Australia, and beyond; in the US, 12 people have been found to have the pneumonia-like virus. In response, Chinese cities have been quarantined, borders have been sealed, and travel has been banned. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the coronavirus an international public health emergency.

    While panic about a sudden, deadly virus is to be expected, some fears — especially in North America and the West — have been based on something other than health. The panic has exposed a deep-seated xenophobia, and with it, a symptom of its own has surfaced: hostility toward East Asian people.

    Washington Post reporter John Pomfret writes, “At a middle school a few blocks from my house, a rumor circulated among the children that all Asian kids have the coronavirus and should be quarantined.” People in Los Angeles and Toronto have also experienced instances of xenophobic harassment, from racist comments made by TSA agents to verbal street harassment. In the UK, Chinese restaurants say they are struggling for business because of widespread misconceptions about the “cleanliness” of their food. Meanwhile, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has touted the crisis in China as an opportunity to increase jobs in America.

    While some efforts to contain the virus seem fairly practical — like the suspension of flights to mainland China — others seem to be unfairly targeting Asian people. Australia is quarantining people who’ve recently been to China’s Hubei province, many of whom are of Asian descent, on an offshore island.

    Adding to the panic are conspiracy theories. Under the pseudonym Tyler Durden, the founder of a right-wing financial blog called ZeroHedge posted an article, “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?” sharing the name and personal information of a Chinese doctor and researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, accusing him of collaborating with the Chinese government to develop engineered bioweapons.

    The severity of this wave of xenophobia has even been minimized by respected educational institutions. In a now-deleted Instagram post, University of California Berkeley Health Services tried to comfort students and faculty who might be “experiencing” xenophobic thoughts and reactions, by saying bigotry and bias are “normal” and “common” during the coronavirus outbreak.

    Adrienne Shih

    @adrienneshih
    Confused and honestly very angry about this Instagram post from an official @UCBerkeley Instagram account.

    When is xenophobia ever a “normal reaction”?


    3,333
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    The fact that some believe racist stereotyping is “normal” shows that the coronavirus isn’t creating xenophobia out of nowhere. It is uncovering what has long been baked into Western culture.

    “Misinformation, coupled with the fear that it provokes, can bring existing xenophobia to light,” said Edith Bracho-Sanchez, assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who has worked on health issues involving international borders. “As human beings, we are afraid of the things we don’t know, but our response should be to educate ourselves, not to further spread and give oxygen to fears and misunderstandings.”
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  7. #52
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    Continued from previous post

    Xenophobia and the racist stereotypes of “dirtiness”

    News of the coronavirus is amplifying a specific form of bigotry, called sinophobia — hostility against China, its people, people of Chinese descent, or Chinese culture. In America, this can even be found in our policy. For example, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned the immigration of Chinese laborers to the US for 10 years. The purpose of the act was to “placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white ‘racial purity.’” President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been restricting immigration for Chinese students and scholars since 2018.

    But xenophobia has been intertwined with public health discourse for a very long time, against many different groups, Merlin Chowkwanyun, historian and assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told Vox. “Historically, in both popular and scientific discourse, contagious disease has often been linked, in a blanket way, to population groups thought to be ‘outsiders,’” he said.

    Associations between germs and immigrants, for example, was a critical part of the early 20th-century xenophobia that led to immigration restriction in New York City in the 1920s, Chowkwanyun said. “City authorities justified racial segregation by drawing supposed links between germs and Mexican, Chinese, and African American people.” He points out that similar narratives were portrayed against Haitian immigrants in the early days of the HIV epidemic in America, as they were the only group singled out as “high risk” because of their nationality.

    While othering often centers the white experience as “superior” and “pure,” fears of “dirtiness” also extend to conflicts outside of Western colonization. In the Dominican Republic, where there is a long and incredibly bloody history of hatred toward Haitians, Bracho-Sanchez says that “many spent more energy asking that Haitians be banned and borders be closed than they spent ensuring their vaccines were up to date” when there was a diphtheria outbreak from 2014-2017.

    We see that dynamic here in the US, with the difference in how people react to the coronavirus compared to how they react to the flu. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the US alone the flu has had a devastating impact — leading to at least 19 million illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations, and 10,000 deaths this season. Cases of measles are also being reported more and more. But there seems to be greater urgency and panic to buy masks and emergency supplies to avoid the coronavirus than there is with getting a flu shot.

    In trying to explain part of this dynamic, Chowkwanyun says, “In general, when there is a zeitgeist of racial backlash and xenophobia, it drips down into medical discourse. Given the tensions between the [US] and China now, it’s not surprising to see that happening with coronavirus.”

    Refocusing attention on the victims of the virus

    There’s also the question of whether focusing solely on the many bigoted Western reactions to the coronavirus is misguided. Mark, an Asian American writer and photographer born in the Philippines to a mother whose parents immigrated there from China, has been concerned about the level of attention given to Western racists. “At a time when thousands of Asian lives and livelihoods across the region are threatened by Chinese institutional failures, it’s racist to try to make it about what white people are doing in Western countries,” Mark, who asked to be identified by his first name, said.

    Racism is taking place not only in the West and between non-White countries, he said, but within China itself. “People from Wuhan and its environs have been ostracized throughout the rest of China, let alone the region,” he said.

    Bracho-Sanchez says that although the painful experiences many Asian Americans and Asian immigrants have faced must be discussed and confronted, when we do so at the expense of reporting on the crisis that’s happening on the ground we “run the risk of losing perspective on who the real victims [of the coronavirus] are.”

    To help address xenophobia and direct people toward ways to help those directly impacted, Bracho-Sanchez says the media should “stick to the facts and try to include context when able.” Instead of creating more panic and chaos, people must begin supporting those directly impacted and those most at risk. “People in countries without the infrastructure to contain this virus and to give the sick adequate and timely medical care are truly the ones who should be most concerned,” she said. “And like with any viral infection, those with pre-existing medical conditions, the very young, and [those who contracted it] early are most likely to suffer complications.”

    In Wuhan and other places in China, the situation is dire. As Chinese authorities scramble to build new hospitals, the lack of available beds means many people with the coronavirus are being denied treatment at hospitals. In an interview Tuesday with state broadcaster China Central Television, Jiang Rongmeng, a member of the Chinese National Health Commission’s team studying the virus, said that “the medical resources in Wuhan, especially the ICU team, are not enough to deal with this severe treatment.”

    One thing that people can do to help is donate to organizations on the ground that are providing shelter, masks, and medical supplies. They can also appeal to their governments to provide the $675 million in support that the WHO is asking for “in support of nations with weak health care systems.” And when bystanders see xenophobic incidents occurring around them, Bracho-Sanchez says, they should “share their knowledge” to confront the rising spread of misinformation and bigotry.
    As I mentioned above:
    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    I had a racist slur hurled at me by some drunk dude last weekend. That hasn't happened to me in years.
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  8. #53
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    I'm really trying to limit my coronavirus posts...but there are so many

    The US coronavirus travel ban could backfire. Here's how
    By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
    Updated 7:37 AM ET, Fri February 7, 2020

    (CNN)Experts say travel restrictions the Trump administration put in place to stop the novel coronavirus from spreading could have unintended consequences that undermine that effort.
    It's been days since the US restrictions went into effect, blocking foreign nationals who've visited China in the past two weeks from coming to the US.
    Details about the US travel ban's impact are still emerging. But some are already urging the US to reconsider.
    "All of the evidence we have indicates that travel restrictions and quarantines directed at individual countries are unlikely to keep the virus out of our borders," Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week. "These measures may exacerbate the epidemic's social and economic tolls. And can make us less safe."
    The director-general of the World Health Organization also weighed in this week, calling on countries not to impose travel restrictions.


    Passengers board buses after arriving January 29 on an airplane carrying U.S. citizens being evacuated from Wuhan, China, at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif. Under new restrictions, US citizens returning to the United States who have been in China's Hubei province in the two weeks before their return will be subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine.

    US officials have defended the government's response, saying they're taking important steps to prepare for the virus and slow its spread -- and that the timing of their efforts is key.
    "Hopefully, because of improved global capacity and surveillance and lab capacity, it was caught early, before it spread around the world, and we had this window of time in which they could intervene to slow it down," said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
    But several experts who spoke with CNN say there are a number of ways travel bans can backfire when authorities are trying to stop an outbreak. Here's a look at some of them:

    Individuals may be more likely to lie

    Scientists are still studying how the new coronavirus is transmitted. According to the CDC, it mainly spreads from person to person "via respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes," like the flu.
    With this virus, like others that have come before it, one key tool investigators have as they try to treat it and stop it from spreading is the information individuals share about their symptoms and behavior. And a travel ban can get in the way of that, public health experts say.
    "On a personal level, it discourages people from coming forward, from being transparent. You're more likely to have people try and go about travel in less direct ways, which would then totally negate the purpose of that," says Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist in Arizona and global health security researcher at George Mason University. "You're forcing people into situations that could more actively promote disease transmission."


    A man wears a protective mask and goggles as he lines up to check in to a flight at Beijing Capital Airport on January 30.

    Governments might also hold back on the truth

    The same can be said for how governments could respond once they see travel bans in place, says Dr. Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.
    "A lot of this is dependent on voluntary reporting," Omer says.
    And governments might be hesitant to share information about novel coronavirus cases in their countries if they feel they'll be punished for doing so.
    "If you're the prime minister of a small- to medium-sized economy, there would be a disincentive for you," Omer says. "It becomes a disincentive for international solidarity and collaboration."

    There can be major economic consequences

    One reason countries may be wary of sharing information: the economic consequences of a travel ban can be devastating.
    "It has massive economic implications," Popescu says.
    Eric Carter, an associate professor of geography and global health at Macalaster College who studies the politics of public health, points to what happened in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak as an example.
    "First of all, it made it harder to some degree for health personnel to get into the country, to actually do the work they needed to do," he says. "Also, it just so severely damaged the economies of those western African countries that were affected by Ebola, because they were cut off from the rest of the world. Other countries weren't even buying what they produced. That ended up having really dramatic effects."
    The latest US restrictions could stop hundreds of thousands of people from visiting the United States each month and "come with huge economic and societal impacts," says Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
    "The way it's written, it seems like it's going to be impossible for Chinese nationals to be granted visas," she told CNN. "This is a massive flow that this ban is restricting with very little evidence that it's actually going to benefit the United States."


    Security personnel check the temperature of passengers arriving at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport on February 4.

    'Fear and stigma' can result

    World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned this week that travel bans might do more harm than good.
    "Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit," he said Tuesday in Geneva. "Where such measures have been implemented, we urge that they are short in duration, proportionate to the public health risks, and are reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves."
    Carter told CNN the past provides plenty of examples of travel restrictions stigmatizing countries and ethnicities. The response to the novel coronavirus, including recent travel restrictions, has happened more quickly than in past epidemics -- and from a public health standpoint, that could be a good thing, he says. But he notes there are also other questions to consider.
    "Historically a lot of these border security measures have used public health as a pretext for discrimination. It's very easy to see how a public health rationale would be used to limit immigration for whatever reason," he says. "And I'm not saying that that's actually occurring, but it well could in this particular political climate, not just in the US, but internationally."
    CNN's Holly Yan and Nada Bashir contributed to this report.
    "Fear and stigma' has already resulted.

    I remember when travelling during SARS. There were these janky temperature reading devices at some airports. They had this outline of the human body and looked more like a life-size Operation! game than a functioning scientific instrument. You had to stand in front of them before boarding, however when I left, the one at my gate wasn't on. Maybe it didn't work. It was more like a token device to assuage fears. Not much you can do for stigma though.
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  9. #54
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    First it was bats. Now pangolins?

    WORLD NEWS FEBRUARY 7, 2020 / 12:45 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
    Scientists question work suggesting pangolin coronavirus link
    Kate Kelland, Tom Daly
    3 MIN READ

    LONDON/BEIJING (Reuters) - Independent scientists questioned research on Friday that suggested that the outbreak of coronavirus disease spreading from China might have passed from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins.


    FILE PHOTO: A man holds a pangolin at a wild animal rescue center in Cuc Phuong, outside Hanoi, Vietnam September 12, 2016. REUTERS/Kham
    South China Agricultural University, which said it had led the research, said on its website that the “discovery will be of great significance for the prevention and control of the origin (of the new virus)”.

    China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus strain separated from pangolins in the study was 99% identical to that from infected people. It said the research had found pangolins - the world’s only scaly mammals - to be “the most likely intermediate host.”

    But James Wood, head of the veterinary medicine department at Britain’s University of Cambridge, said the research was far from robust.

    “The evidence for the potential involvement of pangolins in the outbreak has not been published, other than by a university press release. This is not scientific evidence,” he said.

    “Simply reporting detection of viral RNA with sequence similarity of more than 99% is not sufficient. Could these results have been caused by contamination from a highly infected environment?”

    Pangolins are one of Asia’s most trafficked mammals, despite laws banning the trade, because their meat is considered a delicacy in countries such as China and their scales are used in traditional medicine.

    The outbreak of disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has killed 636 people in mainland China, is believed to have started in a market in the city of Wuhan that also sold live wild animals.

    Virus experts think it may have originated in bats and then passed to humans, possibly via another species.

    Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at Britain’s University of Nottingham, said that while the South China Agricultural University research was an interesting development, it was still unclear “whether or not the endangered pangolin really is the reservoir”.

    “We would need to see all of the genetic data to get a feel for how related the human and pangolin viruses are, and also gain an understanding of how prevalent this virus is in pangolins and whether or not these were being sold in the Wuhan wet markets,” he said.

    Dirk Pfeiffer, a professor of veterinary medicine at Hong Kong’s City University, also said the research was a long way from establishing a link between pangolins and the new coronavirus outbreak in humans.

    “You can only draw more definitive conclusions if you compare prevalence (of the coronavirus) between different species based on representative samples, which these almost certainly are not,” he said.

    Additional reporting by Dominique Patton in Beijing. Editing by John Stonestreet, Peter Graff and Giles Elgood
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  10. #55
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    TCM medical staff practice Ba Duan Jin to prevent respiratory diseases during coronav


    TCM medical staff practice Ba Duan Jin to prevent respiratory diseases during coronavirus outbreak

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  11. #56
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    Coronavirus be ****ed

    As I mentioned on the Birds of Prey thread this morning, the female-strong trend in films is flopping so far. Mulan is the next up to bat (not a Harley Quinn pun, but it should be). I've got my fingers crossed for this one more than all of the others.

    FEBRUARY 7, 2020 8:52AM PT
    Disney Remains Committed to ‘Mulan’ Global Release, Even if China Film Biz Stays Closed
    By PATRICK FRATER
    Asia Bureau Chief


    CREDIT: NULL

    The final trailer for Disney’s Mulan was one of the highlights of the weekend’s Superbowl LIV. It was fast-moving, spectacular and seemingly well-received by fans on social media. It was also a reaffirmation of the studio’s commitment to releasing the family blockbuster in late March.

    The film faces an unexpected headwind in one of its key markets: China. There, a dangerous virus outbreak has closed cinemas since the end of January and stirred up a storm of problems across the length of the entire film industry, from local production, through exhibition, to Hollywood distribution.

    It would be disappointing for Disney if China cannot be part of the film’s synchronized global launch. But the studio faces an unenviable choice – leave the China release to a later date, or delay the entire global campaign until a time when the Wuhan coronavirus has died down. Not only is it currently unclear when that might be, but the film’s marketing and promotional campaign would also have to be restarted.

    That would be an unwelcome additional expense on top of what may well be the most costly non-franchise movie of all time: “Mulan” has a production budget of $200 million.

    A significant portion of that may have been spent giving “Mulan” the best shot at working in China, the world’s second largest theatrical market with a box office last year exceeding $9 billion.

    Based on a well-known Chinese legend about a female warrior from the fourth century AD, the film-makers went back to the original source material, the folksong “Ballad of Mulan,” for inspiration for both the screenplay and the film’s design.

    The title role went to Crystal Liu, a young but already celebrated singer-actress, better known in China as Liu Yifei. Other lead roles go to mainland Chinese superstars Gong Li and Jet Li, and the popular Hong Kong-based Donnie Yen.

    But while “Mulan” is a story that’s culturally specific to China, it’s a movie that Disney sees as appealing to markets all around the world. Presented largely in English, and directed by New Zealander Niki Caro, the film plays up the contemporary concept of a female hero, as well as trading in adventure, spectacle and martial arts action.

    Significantly, “Mulan” was not made as an official U.S.-China co-production. While a co-production might have offered the studio a greater share of the China box office revenue, the complications of working in China can outweigh the benefits. Among those is the requirement that an overseas release cannot precede the Chinese release.

    As such, “Mulan” will suffer the slight disadvantage of being treated as an import into China, but Disney will enjoy the flexibility of setting its own release dates around the planet – from March 25 in Finland and France, and March 27 in North America.

    Disney’s China reps had anticipated “Mulan” obtaining a slot that would have allowed a day-and-date or near simultaneous outing, concurrent with its Asian and North American sorties. But the firm had not yet received an authorized release date by the time China ground to a virus-induced halt.

    If Disney is ultimately unable to include China as part of the film’s global release pattern, there is a danger that online pirated versions of “Mulan” may leak into the country. (The studio has not altered its release plans in Asia-Pacific, where there will be Chinese-language versions of the film.) Piracy could shrink or compromise the box office success of the film’s eventual China release, though the Chinese government which maintains ultimate control over the Internet in China, has the ability to stamp out much of it.

    But, important as “Mulan” is for the studio, Disney has greater headaches in China brought on by the virus outbreak. On a conference call this week, Disney chairman Bob Iger warned that the group would lose out on $175 million of operating income if the Shanghai and Hong Kong Disneyland theme parks remain closed for two months.
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  12. #57
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    I hope this is over by April...

    May is our Tiger Claw Elite Championships and prior to this viral outbreak, we had an opportunity to bring 5 major grandmasters to the U.S., each for the first time for our event. Hopefully that will still be an option, assuming this has subsided significantly. More immediately however is the impact to our Tiger Claw suppliers.

    FEBRUARY 10, 2020 / 5:44 PM / UPDATED 22 MINUTES AGO
    Expert sees coronavirus over by April in China, WHO still alarmed
    David Kirton, Stephanie Nebehay
    5 MIN READ

    GUANGZHOU, China/GENEVA (Reuters) - The coronavirus outbreak in China may be over by April, its senior medical adviser said on Tuesday, but deaths passed 1,000 and the World Health Organization feared a “very grave” global threat.

    As the epidemic squeezed the world’s second-biggest economy, Chinese firms struggled to get back to work after the extended Lunar New Year holiday, hundreds of them saying they would need loans running into billions of dollars to stay afloat.

    Company layoffs were beginning despite assurances by President Xi Jinping that widespread sackings would be avoided, as supply chains for global firms from car manufacturers to smartphone makers ruptured.

    China’s foremost medical adviser on the outbreak, Zhong Nanshan, told Reuters numbers of new cases were falling in parts and forecast the epidemic would peak this month.

    “I hope this outbreak or this event may be over in something like April,” added Zhong, 83, an epidemiologist who won fame for his role in combating an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday 1,017 people had died in China where there were 42,708 cases.

    Only 319 cases have been confirmed in 24 other countries and territories outside mainland China, with two deaths: one in Hong Kong and the other in the Philippines.

    World stocks, which had seen rounds of selloffs due to the coronarivus’ impact on China’s economy and ripple effects round the world, kept rising towards record highs on Zhong’s comments.

    WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was less sanguine, however, appealing for the sharing of virus samples and speeding up of research into drugs and vaccines.

    “With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world,” he told researchers in Geneva.


    A worker is seen inside a convenience store following an outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, Hubei province, China February 11, 2020. REUTERS/Stringer

    For graphic comparing new coronavirus to SARS and MERS, click: tmsnrt.rs/2GK6YVK

    For more Reuters graphics on the new coronavirus, click: tmsnrt.rs/2GVwIyw

    SACKINGS START
    With travel curbs, lockdowns and production suspensions all affecting China’s economy, many were trying to calculate and predict the probable impact.

    JPMorgan analysts downgraded forecasts for Chinese growth this quarter, saying the outbreak had “completely changed the dynamics” of its economy.

    Investment bank Nomura’s analysts said the virus seemed to have had “a devastating impact” on China’s economy in January and February and markets “appear to be significantly underestimating the extent of disruption”.

    Norway’s biggest independent energy consultancy Rystad Energy predicted the outbreak will cut growth in global oil demand by a quarter this year. However, two European Union officials said the impact on the bloc from damage to China’s economy would only be “marginal”.

    Inside China, more than 300 companies are seeking bank loans totalling 57.4 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) to help cope with the disruption, banking sources said.

    Prospective borrowers include food delivery giant Meituan Dianping (3690.HK), smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp (1810.HK) and ride-hailing provider Didi Chuxing Technology Co.

    Chinese firm Xinchao Media said on Monday it had laid off 500 people, or just over a tenth of its workforce, and restaurant chain Xibei said it was worried about how to pay its roughly 20,000 workers.

    Authorities said they would roll out measures to stabilise jobs, in addition to previously announced cuts to interest rates and fiscal stimulus designed to minimise any downturn.

    Hubei, where the flu-like virus emerged from a wildlife market in the provincial capital of Wuhan in December, remains in virtual lockdown, its train stations and airports shut and roads blocked.

    Nevertheless, its health authority reported 2,097 new cases and 103 new deaths on Feb. 10.

    With public anger rising, Hubei’s government dismissed the provincial health commission’s Communist Party boss Zhang Jin and director Liu Yingzi, state media said.

    The virus has caused chaos around Asia and beyond, with many flights suspended and entry restrictions imposed.

    The Diamond Princess cruise ship with 3,700 passengers and crew remained quarantined in Japan’s port of Yokohama, with the number of confirmed cases from the Carnival Corp-owned (CCL.N) vessel at 135.

    Thailand said it had barred passengers from getting off another Carnival Corp ship, Holland America Line’s MS Westerdam, even though no confirmed infections have been found on board.

    “Now we are back in limbo,” passenger Stephen Hansen told Reuters by email.

    Reporting by David Kirton in Guangzhou; Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Huizhong Wu, Shivani Singh, Gabriel Crossley, Min Zhang, Liangping Gao, Lusha Zhang in Beijing; Yilei Sun, David Stanway in Shanghai; Tom Westbrook in Singapore.; Writing by Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Andrew Cawthorne
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  13. #58
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    From Yuan's gram.

    yuanherong1229




    yuanherong1229
    171 cases of new pneumonia were cured and 15238 suspected cases were found. The healers are all treated through traditional Chinese medicine and other symptomatic treatment. We will try our best to do a good job in prevention and treatment💪
    1w
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  14. #59
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    spare the children

    The coronavirus appears to be sparing one group of people: Kids
    PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 11 2020 2:59 PM EST UPDATED TUE, FEB 11 2020 3:56 PM EST
    Berkeley Lovelace Jr.
    @BERKELEYJR

    KEY POINTS
    The new coronavirus, named COVID-19, has sickened more than 43,100 people worldwide, but very few children appear to be among the confirmed cases.
    About 80% of people who died from the virus in China were over the age of 60, and 75% had pre-existing conditions, according to a recent report from China’s National Health Commission.
    A small study published Jan. 30 in the medical journal The Lancet found the average age of patients was roughly 55 years old.


    Bangladeshi students wear masks for protection against Coronavirus on January 29, 2020.
    Mehedi Hasan | NurPhoto | Getty Images

    The new coronavirus that has already killed more people than the 2003 SARS epidemic appears to be sparing one population group: kids.

    Of the more than 43,100 people it’s infected since Dec. 31, World Health Organization officials say the majority are over 40 years old and it’s hitting those with underlying health conditions and the elderly particularly hard.

    “Increasing age increases the risk for death,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said Thursday at a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. “It appears even over 80 is the highest risk factor.”

    Fortunately for many worried parents, there appear to be few confirmed cases of the virus among children so far. Officials caution that the virus is so new, there is still a lot that they don’t know about it and the data they are seeing today will likely look different a month from now.

    About 80% of people who died from the virus in China were over the age of 60, and 75% had pre-existing conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, according to a recent report from China’s National Health Commission. A small study published Jan 30 in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that the average age of coronavirus patients was roughly 55 years old. The study looked at 99 patients at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, China, from Jan. 1 to Jan. 20.

    Last week, Singapore confirmed a case in a 6-month-old baby whose parents were also both infected, and an infant in China was born Feb. 2 with the virus. The baby’s mother also tested positive. But infections in children appear to rare for now, according to a Feb. 5 study in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association.

    Symptoms can include a sore throat, runny nose, fever or pneumonia and can progress to multi-organ failure or even death in some cases, world health officials say.



    Some infectious disease specialists and scientists say older adults may be more vulnerable to the virus, which has been named COVID-19, due to their weaker immune systems.

    With age, immune systems weaken, leaving the elderly at an especially higher risk of developing serious complications from a respiratory illness, public health officials say.

    “It’s usually the very old, sometimes the very young and certainly people with other medical conditions who typically have more severe manifestations,” said Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the University of Toronto.

    The apparent lack of children among confirmed coronavirus cases could also be because they are getting infected but developing more mild symptoms and aren’t being reported to local authorities, according to Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. World health officials say they are working to improve surveillance of the disease and expect more mild cases to be reported. It could be a while before we have a clear picture on cases, Lipsitch said.

    “The data is coming out in so many places and so many forms,” he said in a recent interview.

    The differences in symptoms among different age groups are seen in other respiratory illnesses as well. The seasonal flu, which infects millions in the U.S. each year, can usually be more severe in adults than children.

    Thousands of children are hospitalized each year from the flu, but death is rare, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, between 50% and 70% of flu-related hospitalizations in the U.S. occur in people 65 years and older, and between 70% and 85% of deaths occur in the same age group, the CDC says.



    The lack of confirmed cases in children was also seen in another coronavirus. During the 2003 outbreak of SARS, which sickened 8,098 people and killed about 800 over nine months, the vast majority of cases infected older adults, according to WHO data. The case-fatality ratio for people age 24 or younger was less than 1%, according to WHO.

    Even if children are only developing mild symptoms, Lipsitch said scientists still need to know whether they can still infect others at high rates. “This is a key uncertainty that needs to be resolved,” he said.

    When asked whether mild cases are transmitting the virus, Kerkhove of WHO said Thursday that more studies need to be conducted.

    “We need to look at mild individuals all the way to severe individuals,” Kerkhove said. “That systematic data collection and that sampling of mild cases, as well as severe cases, is something that is really urgently required for us to get a clear handle on this.”

    Read CNBC’s live updates to see the latest news on the COVID-19 outbreak.

    Correction: Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove is head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit. An earlier version misspelled her name.
    Adding 'COVID-19' to the title of this thread
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  15. #60
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    To call it a turning point now is presumptious


    Wuhan coronavirus update: 1,114 deaths, 44,747 infections and 16,067 suspected cases

    Has the outbreak reached a turning point?
    by Alex Linder February 12, 2020 in News



    With the release of official statistics from Wednesday, the question now on everyone’s mind is, has the Wuhan coronavirus finally peaked?

    For the second straight day, the number of new reported cases has declined — now all the way down to 2,039 new confirmed cases over the past 24 hours, the lowest figure since January 30.

    Meanwhile, the total number of suspected cases has dropped precipitously. Down from 21,675 on Tuesday to 16,067 on Wednesday.

    Here’s a look at the number of new confirmed cases (red) and suspected cases (purple) reported each day in China:



    While these figures would seem to hint towards a trend, the virus’s death toll has not yet slowed down.

    97 new deaths were reported over the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths attributed to the virus up to 1,114.

    In brighter news, the number of those who have recovered from the virus and been discharged from the hospital is also at a record high with 822 people being cured over the past 24 hours, bringing that total tally up to 4,820.
    I'm hearing so many projections from random people every day now about what might happen next. Maybe they should write their own articles, but most of them are just repeating headlines they misread.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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