Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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A World Health Organization official said Monday that she suspected human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus “right from the start,” beginning on Dec. 31, 2019.



But WHO officials echoed Chinese authorities and denied any suggestion of human-to-human transmission for weeks after Dec. 31. Chinese doctors, meanwhile, were reported to have known for weeks prior that the virus could be transmitted between humans.

“Right from the start, from the first notification we received on the 31st of December, given that this was a cluster of pneumonia — I’m a MERS specialist, so my background is in coronaviruses and influenza — so immediately thought, given that this is a respiratory pathogen, that of course there may be human-to-human transmission,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said in a press briefing Monday.

Despite Van Kerkhove’s apparent suspicions, the WHO repeated Chinese authorities’ downplaying the possibility that the virus could spread between people.

The WHO repeatedly stated in early and mid-January that Wuhan healthcare workers weren’t becoming infected with coronavirus — a key indicator of human-to-human transmission.

Yet Wuhan doctor Lu Xiaohong told China Youth Daily that by Christmas she had already heard of doctors becoming infected with the virus. The Wall Street Journal similarly reported that Chinese doctors were aware of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 since late December, though Chinese authorities censored those who spoke out.

Additionally, a study by The Lancet found that by Jan. 2, only 27 of 41 laboratory-confirmed coronavirus patients had connections to the Huanan seafood market thought to have been the source of the outbreak.

But a Jan. 12 WHO press release said: “Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.”

“At this stage, there is no infection among healthcare workers, and no clear evidence of human to human transmission,” it continued.

That press release came one day after, Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor who authorities punished for warning the public about the virus, came down with the virus.

“To date, there has been no suggestion of human to human transmission of this new coronavirus,” the WHO said in a Jan. 13 press release. “There have been no infections reported among health care workers, which can be an early indicator of person to person spread.”

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,” the WHO tweeted Jan. 14.

“To date, China has not reported any cases of infection among healthcare workers or contacts of the cases. Based on the available information there is no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission,” read a WHO press release that same day.

Also on Jan. 14, Van Kerkhove acknowledged that “it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families,” but added: “it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission.”

By the time the WHO acknowledged evidence of human-to-human transmission, which they did on Jan. 22, the U.S. had already detected its first coronavirus case.

Source: WHO Official Says She Suspected Human-To-Human COVID-19 Transmission ‘Right From The Start’ — But The WHO Echoed Misleading Chinese Claims To The Contrary For Weeks

These are the dramatic results of prolonged quarantine.

^ O/T: I really like the stool under the counter and the big green dresser, good taste in furniture.

My daughter found some paracord and sent us 10 feet of it. It is called 1/16" elastic stretch bungee shock cord. It is a good substitute for 1/4" braided elastic use in the construction of cloth face masks. So yesterday my wife fabricated 40 mask and delivered them this morning to donate to hospitals/nursing homes.

A Chinese laboratory at the center of new theories about how the coronavirus pandemic started was the subject of multiple urgent warnings inside the U.S. State Department two years ago, according to a new report.

U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.



Those cables have renewed speculation inside the U.S. government about whether Wuhan-based labs were the source of the novel coronavirus, although no firm connection has been established. The theory, however, has gained traction in recent days.

The United Kingdom has said that the idea that the virus, which has turned into a full-blown global pandemic, was leaked from a Wuhan lab is "no longer being discounted."

A member of the U.K. government's emergency committee of senior officials claimed Sunday: "There is a credible alternative view (to the zoonotic theory) based on the nature of the virus. Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is a laboratory in Wuhan."

Foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang said in a recent opinion piece on Fox News that "many Chinese believe the virus either was deliberately released or accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a P4-level bio-safety facility."

He added: "This lab, known for studying coronaviruses, is not far from the market that had been initially identified as the source of the outbreak."

In a series of diplomatic cables labeled "Sensitive But Unclassified," U.S. Embassy officials warned that the lab had massive management weaknesses, posed severe health risks and warned Washington to get involved.

The first cable, which was obtained by the Post, also sent red flags about the lab's work on bat coronaviruses and more specifically how their potential human transmission represented the risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

"During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory," the Jan.19, 2018 cable, written by two officials from the embassy's environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists, said.

The cable argued that the United States should give Chinese researchers at the Wuhan lab more support because its research on bat coronaviruses was important and dangerous. The lab had already been receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

The cable also called attention to Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who in November 2017 published a paper that showed the horseshoe bats collected from a case in Yunnan province were most likely from the same bat population that had been behind the first SARS coronavirus in 2003.

The cable states that "the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention."

Source: State Department leaked cables renew theories on origin of coronavirus

Jack Keane, a retired four-star Army general, said on Tuesday that China “had their hands all over the spread” of the new coronavirus.

He also pointed out that China was “very deceptive about the actual spread of the epidemic.”

“They actually punished people,” Keane said. “They put it in writing that it wasn't human-to-human transmission. This is all going on in December and January."

"By the end of December we know they had 105 cases and 15 deaths and as late as mid-January the World Health Organization, after the director had gone to China, reported out that there were no human-to-human transmissions coming out of China,” Keane continued.

“Then on the 23 of January President Xi shuts down ground traffic and air traffic coming out of Hubei province, and Wuhan city is in that province, but guess what? He does not shut down international flights so hundreds of thousands of Chinese were still on the move,” Keane continued, explaining his reasoning for thinking that China “had their hands all over the spread" of COVID-19.

Source: Gen. Jack Keane: China 'had their hands all over the spread' of coronavirus

So if this coronavirus was so dangerous that China shut down all ground and air traffic coming out of Hubei to the rest of China, why did it not shut down International flights. Was this done on purpose to infect the entire world?

Senator Cotton has been saying it was a lab escape.I was really hoping he was wrong.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nation ... ology/amp/

That government is messed up. Im so glad Im not in the military I would lose faith in humanity for REAL not just as a statement...