@Right_in_Virginia if you don't mind, I'm going to fold this into the other ongoing "ugly snake, bat, virus" thread.

Neal Boortz@Talkmaster

I have this uneasy feeling that China is hiding the actual number of fatalities from their coronovirus. Also ... can we eliminate the possibility that this was a virus-weapon test gone bad?
7:31 AM · Jan 25, 2020·Twitter

Exponential coronavirus

By Ronald R. Cherry, MD, January 26, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/exponential_coronavirus.html

Similar to SARS, the current Chinese Coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, is transmitted from person to person by close personal contact, and also believed to be readily transmitted by respiratory droplets and aerosols produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The CDC informs us that the Chinese epidemic “reportedly had some link to a large seafood and animal market, suggesting animal-to-person spread,” but some believe 2019-nCoV might be a Chinese bioweapon which leaked out of their Wuhan BSL-4 microbiology research laboratory.

2019-nCOV virus (photo courtesy of European Commission)

Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China's biowarfare program

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times, Sunday, January 26, 2020

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-link-china-biowarfare-program-possible/

The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, said an Israeli biological warfare analyst.

Radio Free Asia last week rebroadcast a Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory, known the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.

Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program.

“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” Mr. Shoham told The Washington Times.

Work on biological weapons is conducted as part of dual civilian-military research and is “definitely covert,” he said in an email.

Mr. Shoham holds a doctorate in medical microbiology. From 1970 to 1991, he was a senior analyst with Israeli military intelligence for biological and chemical warfare in the Middle East and worldwide. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel.

China has denied having any offensive biological weapons, but a State Department report last year revealed suspicions of covert biological warfare work.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not return an email seeking comment.

Chinese authorities said they do not know the origin of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 80 and infected thousands.

Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-controlled media that initial signs indicated the virus originated from wild animals sold at a seafood market in Wuhan.

One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that false rumors circulating on the Chinese internet claim the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons. That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter any charges that the new coronavirus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories.


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World Map tracking spread that is autoupdated:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Recent thread:


The following thread regards how we should be planning for the possibility that nCoV cannot be contained. #2019nCoV (1/x)

Containment of nCoV is, and should be, the highest priority in China. This requires gov, health care/PH system & the public to work together to ID those w/ sx, get them tested rapidly, get them isolated (home or hospital), provide good med care while keeping HCWs protected. (2/x)

The global community should be doing all it can to be helping China w/ the terrible set of challenges it is facing in its effort to contain nCoV. It is not only the right thing to do for China, but it is critical in trying to help prevent global spread. (3/x)

We don’t know what overall CFR will be w/ nCoV-that requires more data, time. SARS-like illness has been seen in some, but we don’t know what % of nCoV pts will get severe disease. We all hope it'll be far less than SARS, but we don’t know enough to predict %. (4/x)

We also don’t have enough data on H2H transmission yet to make confident predictions about how it will spread. We don’t know enough about extent of asymptomatic cases, asymptomatic spread, proportion of spread happening in health care facilities vs community. (5/x)

But given uncertainties + very high stakes, part of global & national planning efforts should now be aimed at possibility that nCoV containment could fail. (6/x)

Others have raised this possibility too, including @neil_ferguson at Imperial who has said in last 24 hrs that containment of nCoV might not succeed. (7/x)

Global and national leaders should be looking ahead to what must be done to prepare for the possibility nCoV can’t be contained, even as we continue to work as hard as possible to contain it in China and beyond. (8/x)

The work to prepare for the possibility of failed containment could be called something like: Plan for Global Mobilization to Respond to a nCoV Pandemic. There are a series of highest priorities that should be at the top of that Plan, including: (9/x)

Crash vaccine development. Top of list because would so dramatically change response and outcomes. @NIAID & @CEPI working on vaccines, as are others. All pharma+biotech companies that could have a vaccine or therapy candidate of relevance should be enlisted in the effort. (10/x)

Multiple vaccine efforts should be pursued in parallel. Money should not be rate-limiting. Timelines should be shortened in whatever ways possible that doesn’t get in the way of a final safe, effective product. Rapid clinical trials prepared. (11/x)

Global plan for mass manufacturing of vaccine when it is created. This should be planned for multiple places in the world concomitantly. Cannot have a successful vaccine come out of only one place and remain only in that country. It will need to be broadly distributed.(12/x)

Plan for WHO global stockpile w/ global allocation plan. Once vaccine developed, WHO will need to allocate vaccine quickly to countries around world. WHO can work w/ UN system to help distribute, but will also need partnerships w/ global logistics companies to succeed. (13/x)

Urgent serology development programs. Need this to help determine severity of nCoV. If many have been exposed and are immune, but never had disease, this suggests asymptomatic spread and that disease will be mild in many. We need serology testing. (14/x)

Massive expansion of diagnostics development capacity in China and around world. We need diagnostics to isolate and triage and care for people, and if containment fails will need very high numbers of reliable diagnostic tests around the world in the months ahead. (13/x)

Rapid clinical trials for antivirals. There isn't much evidence current antivirals will be useful, but there should be in vitro studies, clinical trials to study all reasonable candidates. Other med interventions that have sound theoretical basis should be studied quickly. (16/x)

Major expansion of personal protective equipment for health care workers. We have seen in SARS that much of the spread of disease is through hospitals. We will need to make sure health care workers have needed equipment to protect themselves. (17/x)

Hospital infection control plans. Beyond protecting health care workers, hospitals will need administrative plans, equipment, engineering controls where relevant, to care for higher number of patients at same time they are working to prevent resp spread of disease. (18/x)

Government plans to provide transparent, full, rapid communication. People need to trust that governments giving them the full story so that they will agree to get tested, isolated and treated. (19x)

Good accurate info needs to flood out the bad, the harmful rumors, the conspiracy info. Govs may need to partner w traditional and social media to get factual info out to people. (20/x)

Plans to keep travel&trade moving in the world, even if we do have disease spread around the world. nCoV airport screening efforts make sense now as a way of early ID of pts. But if containment fails and disease is widespread in world in time ahead, new plans are needed. (21/x)

If nCoV spreads widely in the world, it will be in strong interest of all countries, to keep trade going despite the pandemic– global economy is highly interdependent. Govs would need to work w/ orgs like WTO and travel industry orgs like IATA to keep goods, people moving.(22/x)

Certainly there are other key elements of such a Global Plan, and additional recommendations welcome here. (23/X)

Overall in this Planning effort, countries will need to take some actions on their own. Others will require international coop. e.g. many countries don't have capacity to develop, make vaccines, Dxs, masks, et al so will need to work w/ countries that do. (24/x)

Other elements of this Plan will require close cooperation between countries, global business and international orgs. Organization of the elements of this Global Planning effort will be hard and consuming. (25/x)

It is important to move ahead on planning for the possible failure of nCoV containment in event we need it. In truth, we should have already done a lot of this planning work in advance of nCoV, but we haven’t. So it should be done now. (25/x)

If nCoV is contained – as we all hope it can be, we should see work on this Plan as an insurance policy that was only partially needed now, but will help us be prepared for what comes next. But if nCoV containment fails, we will need all of this Plan to deal with it. (26/x)


Better format at: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221434570714669056.html

Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally

By Jon CohenJan. 26, 2020 , 11:25 PM

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally

As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.

The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The earliest case became ill on 1 December and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases,” they state. Their data also show that in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace either. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link,” says Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Georgetown

Earlier reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization said the first patient had onset of symptoms on 8 December—and those reports simply said “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January.

Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan and perhaps elsewhere before the cluster of cases from the city’s now infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace,” Lucey asserts.


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Quote: EdJames wrote in post #61

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Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China's biowarfare program

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times, Sunday, January 26, 2020

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-link-china-biowarfare-program-possible/

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