Talk:Coronavirus

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Chinese experts who reported to the WHO claim the illness is spreading so fast that not enough technicians are trained or facilities exist to test for the disease. Further, only the most sick who report to emergency rooms are tested and treated first. Because of the incubation period, people without symptoms have to wait in ER waiting rooms. Healthy people showing up for testing then may become infected.

Because of the seriousness of this issue, I suggest avoiding (1) inserting panic type wording in the article, and (2) avoiding conspiratorial langauge of its origins (although it may in fact be a bio-weapon). Experts suggested (a) it has the potential of becoming a global epidemic, requiring (b) "draconian" restrictions on population movements. Educating readers on basic facts is crucial at this point; discussion on a "travel ban" will fall into place by its own in coming weeks and months without pushing a political agenda. Those who have opposed "travel bans" in the recent past will be left to hang out to dry without our help.

For now, lets concentrate on what the holy "scientists" and "experts" are saying. If it continues doubling every 6 days without public health intervention, my estimate is 7 million infections in 3-4 months. This is potentially as big a life changing event as 9/11 was, RobSDe Plorabus Unum 03:21, 27 January 2020 (EST)

With a fatality rate of 3-5% of 7 million infections, that would 225,000 to 380,000 deaths in four or five months. The Guardian reports today there may already be 100,000 infections rather than the 3000 reported. We are on the verge of a real panic here unless we get a handle on facts quickly. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 15:34, 27 January 2020 (EST)
Looks like these projections were not far off. [1] RobSLive Free or Die 00:04, 8 June 2020 (EDT)

'Unclean' animals

Firstly, this is extremely problematic, to focus on the Biblical notion of 'unclean' as it ignores Acts 10.

Secondly, dooes the writer of this article advocate *not*, for example, eating pigs and shellfish?

In all honesty guy, does anyone in their right mind want to sit at a table and eat a bowl of soup with a dead bat in it?[2]

User: Conervative's response

Prophet Moses.jpg

East Asian atheists have live cats and exotic animals in cages in their food markets, which medical authorities believe likely caused the Wuhan coronavirus[3]. Modern, medical authorities in China are now using the Mosaic principle of quarantine to help contain the epidemic.[4] See: The Bible and health

If the Chinese, atheist leaders instituted better quality control in terms of a food delivery system instead of having a barbaric and cruel cat slaughtering industry, perhaps this epidemic may have never happened. See: Cat slaughtering practices in China and Dietary practices of atheists

China, which has the largest atheist population in the world, is now paying a tribute to Moses by having the largest quarantine in human history! See: China and atheism Conservative (talk) 12:22, 27 January 2020 (EST)

It may be a bio-weapon from Canada. It's too early to make any definitive conclusions on its origins. Because of the real imminent danger, the focus right now should be on informing the public on wcahat it is and preventative measures. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 15:23, 27 January 2020 (EST)
That camels are mentioned in the opening sentence of the article is.....a little odd. Some scientists have speculated that the disease jumped from a wild animal at a wet market, but that's about as specific as the published sources are willing to get. PeterKa (talk) 21:53, 30 January 2020 (EST)

Questionable Facts

This article needs work. Most of the assertions are made without the required references. Many are of dubious value. For instance, the claim, “There is no known treatment…” is false. The CDC lists treatments for the coronavirus. [5] The death claim, and the math associated with the claim, appear to be without merit. During the SARS-CoV outbreak in China, 2002, the death rate was 9.6% from 8098 probable cases. [6] --JLind (talk) 20:17, 28 January 2020 (EST)

Please, go ahead and expand. For unsourced claims add[Citation Needed] or your references. Thanks. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 01:23, 29 January 2020 (EST)
The halls of the hospitals across China are crammed with coronavirus patients. And that's true not just in the cities that make the news, but in hundreds of other places as well. It was the same in 2003 with SARS. Eight thousand cases? That number has no relationship to reality. If the real infection rate is vastly higher than reported, that would suggest that the real death rate is lower than reported. PeterKa (talk) 22:14, 30 January 2020 (EST)
There will be 1000 dead by Sunday, 10,000 in two weeks, and one million in three weeks, according to the chart here. [7] This is "science"'s best estimates for a "novel virus" that nobody knows anything about. Of course, "science" right now is watching how fast people are dropping dead, as that is the only "research" they can do. Then, believe it or not, we have CNN, NYT, and WaPo to inform us of "facts" coming from the unquestionably reliable Communist government of China. Meanwhile, Medicare For All advocates lead Democrat polls, while the Chinese single payer system doesn't have trained technicians to test for the unknown virus, let alone enough masks or disposable hazmat uniforms for first respondents.
But don't panic, yet; impeaching Trump is still our first priority. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 23:08, 30 January 2020 (EST)
Coronavirus may ultimately prove to be the CCP's "Chernobyl". RobSDe Plorabus Unum 00:23, 31 January 2020 (EST)

A puzzling sentence fragment:

  • Prior to the government importing the virus from China into the United States.

Was this meant to blame a government, such as the U.S., for some deliberate or negligent act? I wish the text were a little more clear. (Could it mean allowing infected people to enter the country? --Ed Poor Talk 09:28, 22 March 2020 (EDT)

It's an Introduction to the next two citations (in reverse order):
  • "Dr. William Walters, Executive Director and Managing Director for Operational Medicine for the Bureau of Medical Services at the U.S. Department of State, made the decision to bring the patients back to the US." [8]
  • "President Trump was furious about the repatriation of confirmed infected cases without his authorization." [9]
It's an effort to get ahead of the inevitable blame game that fake news and NeverTrumpers will lay on Trump's doorstep (also known as 'spin narrative'). Now elsewhere we also mention the fact that 340,000 Chinese students are in the US, and that over 2300 flights left Wuhan environs during and after the Chinese New Year holidays, so that needs some tightening up to show that the US outbreak did not necessarily begin with the Repatriation of US citizens from China and the Crown Princess.
Ultimately, we'll lay the CCP virus or ChiCom Flu blame where it belongs. Here's two good cites in the past two days on that subject. [10] [11] RobSDe Plorabus Unum 10:40, 22 March 2020 (EDT)

Snakes and alternative theories

Now that researchers have traced the virus to snakes, I would suggested cutting back on the "alternative theories." PeterKa (talk) 23:37, 31 January 2020 (EST)

The article says "might" come from snakes. More research may need to be done. Right now, they are probably focusing on coming up with a vaccine and slowing down the infection rate. I don't know how important it is in terms of coming up with a vaccine for scientists to know the exact animal type in terms of its origin.Conservative (talk) 00:17, 1 February 2020 (EST)
The Chinese are sharing information about the virus. I doubt they would do that if they were intent on creating some biological weapon. It is probably just conspiracy theory bunk. People come up with conspiracy theories sometimes when they don't want to take the time to think things through in terms of determining causes for things.Conservative (talk) 00:22, 1 February 2020 (EST)
If it stays, it's listed as a "bio-weapons theory", and stress on the theory part. And if it is indeed a bogus conspiracy theory - which I think it may be - stress that, too. Karajou (talk) 05:59, 1 February 2020 (EST)

Timestamp

Methodolgy

When speaking about the number of reported infections, it should be qualified as "confirmed infections". RobSDe Plorabus Unum 14:07, 6 February 2020 (EST)

Naming: It's a coronavirus, but not THE coronavirus

It might be a little late to point out a naming concern, but I don't know if this page should really be called "Coronavirus." A coronavirus is a type of virus which has "crown-like" tips. There are many strains of viruses, which are classified as "coronavirus."[1] It would be better if we could try to be a bit more encyclopediac and professional about this, and use this strain's name, COVID19. The into to this article does a good job of pointing this out, but as you continue into the text, and especially as you look at Template:Coronavirus, you can see incorrect terminology. --DavidB4 (TALK) 17:59, 17 March 2020 (EDT)

I'd change the title it to Wuhan virus or Wuhan coronavirus. PeterKa (talk) 07:09, 18 March 2020 (EDT)
That would work--I'd be fine with that option. --DavidB4 (TALK) 18:15, 18 March 2020 (EDT)
I don't see an issue. The first words of the article are "Coronavirus is a family of several viruses", which makes the title accurate for this important page. If there is an issue, it is that there is no page specifically for COVID-19, which needs to be created. Progressingamerica (talk) 19:41, 18 March 2020 (EDT)
Good point. Coronavirus is the virus, COVID-19 is the disease caused by coronavirus. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:04, 22 March 2020 (EDT)
Eventually, we should separate coronavirus from THIS particular strain of coronavirus, but not just yet. This is a portal page to the current crisis.
When that is done eventually, it needs to be made absolutely clear in no uncertain terms - the term virus may be ambiguous or a misnomer. There certainly are two extremely different types of viruses in the modern world: (1) those that occur in nature; and (2) those engineered in a laboratory. So the thoughts conjured up by the term 'virus' itself in common usage and understanding are incorrect.
This is no way is 'conspiratorial' or quackery; in our modern world opium occurs in nature and opioids are engineered in labs. Which is responsible for 'the opioid epidemic' - God and nature, or science and laboratories? RobSDe Plorabus Unum 10:57, 22 March 2020 (EDT)
My recommendation: Fill up the current mainspace with factual detail related to Coronavirus, both the hard scientific facts and the social/economic crisis. When that is outlined or complete, then we'll discuss renaming and spinoffs. Keep in mind this page is a Portal, and you don't want to create confusing or unnecessary forks at a time when there is high interest and traffic, RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:10, 22 March 2020 (EDT)
As to PeterKa's suggestion, "I'd change the title it to Wuhan virus or Wuhan coronavirus", Absolutely not. That plays into the ChiCom/DNC/fake news propaganda, branding Coonservapedia as "racist". It is suicide for anything we are trying to achieve. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:15, 22 March 2020 (EDT)
"Ebola" is named after a river in Africa. Then there is West Nile Virus and Ross River Fever. None of them are as racist as yellow fever. Don't let yourself be stampeded by irrational accusations of racism. PeterKa (talk) 03:52, 25 March 2020 (EDT)
You don't walk into the line of fire, either. You circle around and toss a hand grenade into the pill box. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 10:25, 25 March 2020 (EDT)
The G-7 foreign ministers are holding up a statement over this issue: G-7 failed to agree on statement after U.S. insisted on calling coronavirus outbreak 'Wuhan virus'." It seems that the Europeans see virus naming yet another way to make an anti-American gesture. PeterKa (talk) 01:13, 26 March 2020 (EDT)
Good. Let's see if the handgrenade Trump and Popmeao tossed in the G7 pillbox does any good. But the Euro G7 members aren't the main target; they're just commie fronts for the CCP. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 02:57, 26 March 2020 (EDT)

Exaggerated death numbers

Shouldn't there be a note about how the fatalities from the Coronavirus may have been exaggerated? I know Candace Owens pointed out that there were a few instances where the hospital workers simply listed a deceased version as being killed by Coronavirus due to their happening to have it on them, even when their time of death was most likely unrelated outside of that bit (eg, a baby being smothered by its mother, or someone who was in hospice before the coronavirus outbreak). Pokeria1 (talk) 08:29, 12 April 2020 (EDT)

Oh yes, but not necessarily in those terms, "maybe". The factual evidence for such needs to be laid out. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:56, 12 April 2020 (EDT)

The evidence was provided on Talk:Main Page. Please keep abreast of that page when updating information that appears in the news; it serves as a valuable digest. Here is a copy:

Inflated United States Wuhan virus death counts

"Well, Dr. Birx just said it. Anyone in U.S. who dies with Covid 19, regardless of what else may be wrong, is now being recorded as a Covid 19 death." —Brit Hume

VargasMilan (talk) Wednesday, 06:07, 8 April 2020 (EDT)

I'm not going to reprint the directive, but it says the federal government is aiming for 50% accuracy on Wuhan virus reports. The reason is to compensate health care providers with Wuhan virus payments in exchange for the loss of business they are suffering from people not wanting to get infected at their establishments. VargasMilan (talk) Thursday, 01:12, 9 April 2020 (EDT)

I suggest beginning a page on CCP virus in the United States, or some such title and add the speculative information there. For now, it coud go in CCP_global_pandemic#United_States as the information is more fully developed and rounded off into its own subheading. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 13:51, 12 April 2020 (EDT)

Shi Zhengli

This article has nothing about Shi Zhengli yet, although speculation is mounting that the virus might have escaped from her lab. Shi has authored so many papers on bat coronavirus that Scientific American has dubbed her "bat woman." That there was a lab in Wuhan specializing in this type of virus at the time of the outbreak might not be a coincidence. At least those are the lines along which Shi herself was thinking: "“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”"[12] Shi runs a civilian lab that publishes the results of its research, so I find it unlikely that this virus is some kind of genetically engineered bioweapon. You can get the conspiracy theory version of what happened from the Epoch Times while a debunking is here. PeterKa (talk) 22:37, 13 April 2020 (EDT)

Conspiracy theory? RobSDe Plorabus Unum 22:51, 13 April 2020 (EDT)
Actually, it does have Shi Zhengli. "On January 23, 2020 the Wuhan virus exploded. While Wuhan announced the lockdown of the city, Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who had isolated the bat virus, spliced it, and made it transmissible to humans, provided the official Chinese communist cover story that the virus arose in nature." RobSDe Plorabus Unum 00:35, 14 April 2020 (EDT)
You want the article to state as a fact that Shi genetically engineered the Wuhan virus as a bioweapon? That's a step beyond what The Epoch Times is doing. Perhaps you should check out the article in Live Science that I linked to above. PeterKa (talk) 01:42, 14 April 2020 (EDT)
Read the Shi Zhengli article. All the evidence is there: "If the new virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory. Propagation could happen anywhere." RobSDe Plorabus Unum 02:01, 14 April 2020 (EDT)
The article you linked to has nothing to do with Shi or Wuhan. It is about a study in North Carolina that was done back in 2015. The Wuhan lab sent out grad students to collect blood samples from bats in southern China and isolated the coronaviruses. One these virus might have escaped from the lab. Or at least that's Shi's explanation of what happened. The scientists at her lab understood that the new virus could be was likely to be a SARS-like global pandemic back in December. That's a big admission on her part and does not conform to the party line. In any case, a first hand account is always valuable. PeterKa (talk) 02:37, 14 April 2020 (EDT)
Watch the whole video from The Epoch Times, 1st documentary movie on the origin of CCP virus, Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus with 1.46 million views in 6 days, all 55 minutes, and then we'll talk. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 03:45, 14 April 2020 (EDT)
The scientific community seems to be pretty convinced that this virus could not have been genetically engineered. Here is a full-length multi-author research paper in Nature, one of the most prestigious journals: "However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible." PeterKa (talk) 17:52, 15 April 2020 (EDT)
Oh. Ok. Who's that, some WHO experts? RobSDe Plorabus Unum 18:57, 15 April 2020 (EDT)
Me personally, I'll implement screening for scientific experts; if they test negative for communist or leftwing ideology, and demonstrate allegiance to a spiritual higher power other than science, I'll deem them credible enough to pay attention to. But given the record - scientists gave us the nightmare of nuclear weapons and now this, a sentence or two of scientific gobbledgook is meaningless in this situation. Send all all your scientific experts back to the drawing board and have them come up with something meaningful and useful. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 19:03, 15 April 2020 (EDT)
This story has risen up the foodchain to Fox News. PeterKa (talk) 20:23, 15 April 2020 (EDT)
Bottomline: In the 4 billion year history of the human species, it's just not credible to allege that bat coronavirus was never transmissible to humans until 4 years after Scientific American credited Shi Zhengli with the honorary title of Batwoman for isolating the virus and engineering a patch to make it transmissible to humans. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 23:32, 15 April 2020 (EDT)
SARS and MERS are also bat coronaviruses that transmitted to humans.[13] PeterKa (talk) 23:46, 15 April 2020 (EDT)
Bingo. That's when Shi Zhengli and the Chinese military took interest in this particular virus. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 23:54, 15 April 2020 (EDT)

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter is calling the claim that covid-19 originated in a Wuhan lab a "conspiracy theory."[14] She blames bat-eating and "primitive Chinese customs." Of course, it's not really about bat eating. The disease didn't go directly from bats to humans. It must have gone through a third animal, possibly a pangolin. Pangolins are anteaters from Africa. They are brought to China illegally for wealthy people who like exotic meats. Perhaps the virus started with a horseshoe bat in Yunnan. Eating wild animals is associated with Guangzhou and the Cantonese (near Hong Kong). Various writers have interviewed dozens of people familiar with the Huanan Market. The market was selling camels, koalas, crocodiles, and peacocks.[15] But there are no reports of bats or pangolins. PeterKa (talk) 00:47, 16 April 2020 (EDT)

Shutting down wet markets is an issue related to the WHO. Coulter appears to be angling for an appearance on CNN where she can spew more CCP propaganda. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 01:00, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
And Chinese wet markets aren't going away anytime soon, given the Global Depression China put the world in. It's not surprising; Chinese progressive communists, inside and outside government, who got rich since China's WTO admission and U.S. MFN status, refused to "share the wealth" with the poor, the oppressed, the down trodden, and even the ordinary people of China. Instead, Chinese progressive communists used their wealth to expand greater mass surveillance technology, build gulags, and assert control over the people. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 01:05, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
Chinese wet markets are not the problem. It is wildlife animal sales (live wild animal sales) at wet markets that is the problem. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54 Conservative (talk) 02:47, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
I watched the video. It is quite interesting. It shows that eating wild animals isn't a primitive Chinese custom, contrary to Coulter. It is a modern form of conspicuous consumption by the nouveau riche. PeterKa (talk) 07:49, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
The problem here again is, from the opening line of the video, "It was News Years Eve and health official in China admitted they had a problem...." -- not true. It was health officials in Taiwan that contacted the WHO on News Year Eve and told them Covid 19 was transmissible between humans. The WHO claims "China" contacted them, and two weeks later said Chinese officials said it was not transmissible. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 10:49, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
Once again, you're ignoring the simple fact that bats were not sold in the Wuhan wet market. Unfortunately, both of you are furthering Communist Chinese propaganda by discussing wet markets in this context at this moment in time. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 10:59, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
Let's go one step further: for months the term "Wuhan Seafood Market" was used, to describe a wet market in an inland city where seafood is rare. Seafood, with a very limited shelf life, would have to be trucked in from the coast. CCP propaganda takes advantage of the cultural ignorance Westerners have of China.
These simple facts attest to the gullibility of Westerners, and effectiveness of CCP propaganda - (1) no one is questioning the assertion that China contacted the WHO on New Years Eve; (2) no one reports the fact Taiwan told the WHO the virus is transmissible, whereas the WHO accredits China as saying it wasn't transmissible 14 days later; (3) no one bothered to correct the fact that a "Seafood" market did not exist in Wuhan; (4) no one reported the evidence from Chinese student researchers, in support of the "conspiracy theorists" at The Lancet, that bats were not sold at the Wuhan wet market (misreported as "Seafood" market} nor did the virus arise in the market.
I for one sympathize with Western reactions; nothing is more frustrating than to have an enormous body of research forcibly thrust upon you that disrupts what you'd rather be doing. The mind looks for shortcuts and rationalizations to digest conflicting and confusing bits of information. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:26, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
In reviewing all the evidence, I would suggest the mis-translation of "wet market" to "seafood market" originates with Google translators. It was suspect from the beginning: How could a seafood market exist in an inland city where lakes and rivers are too polluted to provide a food source for the city, and the residents who eat live animals are too poor to pay the freight of luxury food items trucked in from the coast? But the brilliant geniuses at Google Translate, along with the brilliant geniuses in mainstream media are just plainly too stupid to question their own common sense. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:41, 16 April 2020 (EDT)
According to the Wuhan Evening News, the city buys 1.3-1.5 billion yuan ($210 million) worth of seafood a year. The Huanan Market is the "largest seafood and aquatic products wholesale trading market in central China." So, yes, it really is a seafood market. In Chinese, the name is 武汉华南海鲜批发市场/Wǔhàn huánán hǎixiān pīfā shìchǎng. This translates as "Wuhan South China Seafood Wholesale Market." (The article recommends that you eat more seafood as a cure for gout. This is such a stereotype-confirming touch that I had to mention it.)
Every theory that's been floated concerning the origin of the covid-19 pandemic has been convincingly debunked. It wasn't the Huanan Market. It wasn't Shi Zhengli's lab. It wasn't genetic engineering. It wasn't pangolins, etc. The virus developed in a bat in a cave in rural Yunnan in the far south. Then, for no obvious reason, it begin infecting humans near a bat coronavirus research lab in central China. Bats and humans don't interact much and disease rarely passes between them, at least not directly. The bat caves of Yunnan are 800 miles from Wuhan. Yet that's the story as it stands. PeterKa (talk) 06:23, 17 April 2020 (EDT)
Oh. So you're quoting a Communist-controlled media entity to establish facts. You should get job with CNN. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:38, 18 April 2020 (EDT)
Let me introduce one more theory that your friends at Google and Microsoft have been censoring: some medical scientists are not even certain 2019-nCoV is even a virus, making all assumptions about the pathology of viruses moot. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:43, 18 April 2020 (EDT)

Unit 731

Read this article [16]

Unit 731 ... was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) of World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Imperial Japan....Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644 and Unit 100 among others) were involved in research, development and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II..

What is the point of mentioning this? Active biological warfare was conducted against the Chinese population from 1937-1945; in 1949 when the Communist Party came to power, based on their experience, biological warfare was considered an accepted part of modern warfare and incorporated into Chinese Communist military doctrine. China has no tradition of "forgive and forget," and communism is based on the doctrine of scientific progress. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 12:01, 18 April 2020 (EDT)

Wuhan Center for Disease Control

While the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the internationally-connected level 4 lab that Shi Zhengli works at, gets all the attention, there is another lab closer to the Huanan Market that also has bat coronavirus: "China Coronavirus : Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) Laboratory: Research Facility A Mere 300 Yards from Wuhan Wet Fish Market." This lab "kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats."
I assume the reason the U.S. and France helped with the upgrade of WIV was the hope that China would move it's dangerous research to that lab. But it seems that things didn't work out that way. PeterKa (talk) 10:47, 18 April 2020 (EDT)

There's much to be investigated here; the Wuhan CDC was a local or provincial entity, while the virology lab was a national or national party-level controlled entity. Also, it appears there may have been some overlap in staffing, personnel, and sharing of facilities between the two. By the time any sort of outside or internal investigation can ever establish and make public any facts, the CCP (should it still exist by then) will have restructured its organization. Reports already claim the Chinese military has taken direct control of the virology lab after the outbreak, and as alluded to earlier, there is overlap between national party-level controlled institutions and local level entities. RobSDe Plorabus Unum 11:35, 18 April 2020 (EDT)

Costa Rica

Spain, Italy, and now Costa Rica all seem to be able to prescribe HCQ without suffering a constitutional crisis: "Hydroxychloroquine: The Drug Costa Rica Uses Successfully To Fight Covid-19." The Costa Ricans steer clear of azithromycin because of cardiac issues. PeterKa (talk) 03:00, 20 May 2020 (EDT)

Covid-19 compared to seasonal flu

If you leave out the old age homes of New York City, mismanaged by Governor Cuomo, covid-19 was a seasonal flu. See "Coronavirus hype biggest political hoax in history." The mortality rate is between 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent compared to 0.1 percent for the flu, according to this article. It occurs to me that this makes theories about lab leaks and bioweapons a lot less likely. The virus could have circulated in backwater China without anyone noticing for quiet some time. The outbreak was more about mass hysteria than pandemic, a modern version of the dancing plague of 1518. PeterKa (talk) 21:11, 7 June 2020 (EDT)

Nobody's buying the wet market theory cause the CCP isn't even pitching it anymore. RobSLive Free or Die 21:19, 7 June 2020 (EDT)
Perhaps some villager in Yunnan got infected at the secret coronavirus bat cave: "Cave full of bats in China identified as source of virus almost identical to the one killing hundreds today." The cave is 900 miles from Wuhan. But if the disease has a low mortality, it could have circulated for a while before anyone noticed. PeterKa (talk) 22:22, 7 June 2020 (EDT)
The consensus seems pretty strong - it came from a lab. To avoid sanctions at this point the CCP must allow outside inspectors in. Not that it would do any good since the PLA has taken over the lab and has plenty of time to scrub the location. It's too late.
De-coupling relations will take awhile. The D10 organization is already being formed which is the G7 + India, South Korea, and Australia. Air travel is cancelled. Next will be cancelling student exchange programs - the D10 nations will not be training any more microbiologists for the PLA. Businesses need more time to withdraw, but the government of Japan is already granting taxbreaks to companies to withdraw. Other D10 countries probably will follow this model.
Then there's the Global Magnitsky Act - John McCain's legacy. This means once all D-10 nations severe commercial relations (over the next two years roughly), smaller economies outside the D10 likewise may face sanctions from all D10 countries if they continue trade with the CCP.
The big question is, can the CCP survive this upheaval internally? Make no mistake, none of this is happening cause of a dispute or misunderstanding over whether the virus came from a wet market or not. If it did, the CCP would have shown evidence to contradict the evidence of lab origins by now.
The CCP right now is biding its time and pulling out the stops in hopes to defeat Trump; but if Trump wins, and Xi overcomes internal challenges on policy, they have to decide on escalating the dispute to blackmail their way back into the global trading system with either a bio or conventional attack. (The blackmail strategy is almost certain with a Trump defeat).
We got 40 million unemployed, but except for the Democrats and violent revolution, there is hope for a comeback; China by contrast has way more than 40 million now more or less permanently unemployed, unless young people begin returning from the cities to farm villages and rice paddies to eat. RobSLive Free or Die 23:04, 7 June 2020 (EDT)
As to wet market claims, the evidence is the same as how the FBI got a FISA warrant against Carter Page; the FBI leaked BS to Yahoo News about Page, than cut and pasted the Yahoo News article into a FISA warrant claiming it was independent corroborative evidence. CCP did the same thing - fed world media BS talking points which remains the only evidence of wet market origins - contradicted by independent lab investigations outside of China. It's just not worth inflaming world public opinion and starting WWIII over. A phased de-coupling is in order, while being ever alert to more Chinese hostile deception. RobSLive Free or Die 23:25, 7 June 2020 (EDT)

Covid-19 is not a synonym to the virus

I may be a parodist, but the following real error exists in the definition:

" Covid-19 or the Wuhan coronavirus as CNN refers to it,"

Covid-19 is the name of the disease casue by the virus, but not of the virus itself. As is AIDS to HIV - AIDS is the disease, HIV is the virus that causes it.

YOu may ban me now, but please fix this. Look it up if you don't believe me. --Greg Jones (talk) 14:16, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

No sh** Sherlock. And what do you know about Covid and/or coronavirus from CNN? RobSFree Kyle!
And why split hairs? Since racism is a characteristic of all Democrats, and all Democrats are racists, and fascism is a characteristic of liberalism and all liberals are fascists, why can't they be used interchangeably? RobSFree Kyle! 14:27, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

State Department factsheet

Pompeo's State Department is hard at work getting out the truth: "Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology." RaTG13, the percusor virus to covid, was "sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness." This is two years earlier than previously reported. In this version of the story, the virus was taken from an abandoned mineshift rather than from a bat cave. In the earlier version, it sounded like Shi Zhengli came across RaTG13 in the course of investigating bat coronavirus. But now it seems that the virus was already suspected of causing human illness when it was first sampled. PeterKa (talk) 10:03, 17 January 2021 (EST)

Is this interpreting it to say it was transmissible to humans by nature, and not modified in the lab? RobSFree Kyle! 12:41, 17 January 2021 (EST)
The Wuhan virus has a protein hook that makes it vastly more infectious than RaTG13. That the precursor is also infectious makes the genetic engineering theory more plausible. If the precursor was just some random virus in the inventory, no one would select it as a target of gain-of-function research. PeterKa (talk) 08:16, 18 January 2021 (EST)
That fact has been known since last May. RobSFree Kyle! 16:23, 18 January 2021 (EST)
IMO, with the change of regime in D.C., we should stop pussyfooting around and refer to covid as a bio attack. RobSFree Kyle! 16:24, 18 January 2021 (EST)

DRASTIC

DRASTIC sounds like a source we should be following. See "Exclusive: How Amateur Sleuths Broke the Wuhan Lab Story and Embarrassed the Media." Some highlights:

  • "a cluster of eight SARS-related viruses mentioned briefly in an obscure section of one WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] paper had actually also come from the Mojiang mine. In other words, they hadn't found one relative of SARS-CoV-2 in that mineshaft; they'd found nine." Information on only one these viruses (RaTG13) is available. The genome of this virus 96 percent consistent with the covid.
  • WIV took down it's main virus database on September 12, 2019, shortly before the start of the pandemic. This database is administered by Shi Zhengli. The lab's other databases were taken down soon afterward.
  • DRASTIC found a full length thesis on the original infections in Mojiang: "The Analysis of 6 Patients with Severe Pneumonia Caused by Unknown Viruses." They also established the coordinates of the mine.
  • They found that WIV was actively studying RaTG13 in 2017 and 2018, although Peter Daszak has denied this. PeterKa (talk) 01:37, June 4, 2021 (EDT)

Putting it all together

If nothing else, the covid episode has taught us that you can infect the world with Franken-virus for a just a few million dollars. If China wanted to do a biological attack, they'd engineer it in a military lab and not leave a paper trail in the civilian literature. Surely they can afford to pony up the $7 million that they got from Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak. The Wuhan researchers wanted a grant, Daszak had money. That might have been as far as the Chinese thought about this issue. Was Daszak acting on behalf of Bill Gates, who has morphed into a Bond villain trying to kill us all?

Now we learn that Fauci lifted the ban on gain-of-function research in 2017. This was a well-kept secret until recently. It allowed the NIH to fund Daszak as a cutout. If this arrangement was on the up and up, why wasn't there transparency and oversight? One witness said that he attended all of Fauci's covid meetings. Fauci never once brought up gain-of-function research. Judging from his email, the possibility that covid was man-made was on Fauci's mind almost from the beginning.

Finally, why did the media do a U-turn on the lab leak issue? Supposedly, it was because of the Wall Street Journal's reported that three lab workers fell sick in November 2019 of a SARS-like virus, several weeks before the first on-the-record covid case. That's certainly a good reason to suspect a lab leak. But it's been reported before. IMO, they must have known that Fauci's emails were about to be declassified. I wonder which judge did this. PeterKa (talk) 07:17, June 4, 2021 (EDT)

A few weeks ago, covid was the most mysterious virus. Now it's on its way on its way to being to one of the best documented. We have yet another blockbuster deep dive on its origin. This one is in Vanity Fair: "The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins." Insiders knew that Wuhan was one of only three labs in the world that did genetic manipulation of coronaviruses. The other two are in Galveston and Chapel Hill. So "lab leak" was an explanation that popped into the minds of a lot of people right at the beginning of the outbreak.
Dr. Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, said that from the very first reports of a novel bat-related coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, it took him “a nanosecond or a picosecond” to consider a link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Wuhan researcher Shi Zhengli also thought lab leak. She immediately headed back to her lab to check her virus samples.
Daszak decided he had to put a stop to that kind of thinking. He organized a letter published in The Lancet on Feb. 19, 2020 to "strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin." Anyone who mentioned lab leaks was a conspiracy theorist. This is the language of intimidation, not science. The medical community fell into line and stopped thinking naughty thoughts for the next year.
In the early days of the epidemic, the Wuhan lab's BSL-4 rating was widely touted. This was highly misleading. The part of the lab where Shi's experiments took place was rated as BSL-3, and substandard BSL-3 at that. A well-maintained dentist's office in the U.S. could qualify for a BSL-3 rating. Perhaps the BSL-4 section of the lab was reserved for military research.
The Obama administration banned gain-of-function research in October 2014. It proved to be a fateful decision. Ralph Baric and other gain-of-function researchers began working with Shi so they could continue their research, even though the Wuhan lab could scarcely be considered a secure facility at that time. Fauci lifted the ban in December 2017, in the closing days of Obama administration.[17] PeterKa (talk) 22:50, June 4, 2021 (EDT)
The Chinese government knowingly and wittingly released the virus to the world. This fact is indisputable. The question of an accidental release is moot. Why did an accidental leak also serve China's foreign policy purposes? RobSFree Kyle! 14:11, June 5, 2021 (EDT)
The Chinese media has gone back to being incredibly boring. Perhaps it is an attempt to avoid an Olympic boycott. They now have what they wanted all along, namely Hong Kong and trade advantages. See "Xi defangs the ‘Wolf Warrior’." PeterKa (talk) 12:49, June 8, 2021 (EDT)
We made it past May without an attack on Taiwan. That still leaves this October. Wildcard in the scenario: Biden has pushed North Korea back into the CCP camp. RobSFree Kyle! 13:00, June 8, 2021 (EDT)

Case study

The first posting on this talk page was made by me on Jan. 27, 2020, four days after the CCP could no longer deny an epidemic. I wrote, "avoiding conspiratorial language of its origins (although it may in fact be a bio-weapon)." What happened? my advice was ignored and other editors fill the page up with CCP & MSM conspiracy theories about bat stew.

Are we conservatives thinking people? or are we just sheeple who will fall for any line of fake news crap simply because it appears in the MSM for four consecutive days? Do we even pay attention to who these sources are? It's been the same story over and over again with WMD, Trump-Russia, election fraud, and now a bio-attack upon the United States.

This is a testament to the sorry state of communication between editors, which has been discouraged by management from the founding. Proposals for reform have been dealt with harshly. So what does that leaves us? The New York Times? CNN? and the CCP for credible sources? Next go-round with global crisis (which may be sooner than you expect), I hope we allow for some discussion of issues and qualifying sources before going off half-cocked with communist talking points to mislead out readers. RobSFree Kyle! 13:39, June 5, 2021 (EDT)

Just as an FYI, there were plenty of editors on here who have been reporting stuff NOT relating to NYT, CNN, WaPo, or anything issued directly or indirectly from the CCP, such as myself and Northwest, and if anything we went out of our way to denounce communist propaganda, and not just with COVID, but even with other stuff such as election fraud (and just as an FYI, you yourself didn't exactly help with that bit, as I can cite with your undoing several of Northwest's edits, including some that up and out stated Biden was a usurper back in January while implying you would report him to DHS.). Pokeria1 (talk) 19:54, June 5, 2021 (EDT)
Bottomline: Four days after the biggest crime in modern history, conservative editors allowed themselves to be sucker-punched by people they knew were proven liars. RobSFree Kyle! 03:55, June 6, 2021 (EDT)
Like I said, you yourself didn't help with that, since you actually blocked and undid quite a few edits trying to condemn Biden as a usurper and implied you'll sic the DHS on editors back in January. Now, I will acknowledge that Conservative right now has been sounding more left-wing lately, though I'm suspecting since SamHB implied that "Conservative" is actually a conglomerate of users rather than an actual single user that a leftist must have infiltrated the account.
The only time we should actually CITE left-wing rags is if they actually acknowledge for once something Conservatives agree are right, likely breaking ranks from the left in the process. Case in point, Huffington Post made an article back in 2009 where they condemned Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, which is not something most leftists even back then, let alone today, would have done (Castro and Che were not exactly hated by the left, being huge icons for them). Unless it fits into that bit, we shouldn't cite left-wing MSM sites, period. Pokeria1 (talk) 06:42, June 6, 2021 (EDT)
Ok Mr. God-is-angry, tell me what a Canadian has to fear from DHS and why he/she/it should be concerned? RobSFree Kyle! 13:02, June 8, 2021 (EDT)

Military World Games

It seems that China used the International Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019 to spread the virus to other countries. "Chinese whistleblower claims first COVID outbreak was INTENTIONAL and happened in October 2019 at Military World Games in Wuhan - two months before China notified the world about virus." The article mentions blood samples taken Italy in September 2019 that later tested positive for covid. I don't know if I buy that. But I suspect the virus was in circulation before the games. The Chinese wanted the first reported outbreak to be in a country other than China so that they could evade blame.

Here's a September 2020 report about the blood samples from Milan: "Covid was circulating in Italy in September 2019, new study shows." PeterKa (talk) 19:13, September 23, 2021 (EDT)

Yes, the recent Australian SkyNews documentary also says the virus was probably released as early as September 2019.
IMO, if you look at the timeline of trade talks, [18] sometime after June 2019 the boys in the Politburo Standing Committee went ahead with Plan B when it became obvious they were getting stuck with a $350 billion a year tariff bill if they wanted to keep trade at the same level, which of course, upset and destroyed the whole Communist party system and its control over China. RobSFree Kyle! 19:49, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
As mentioned before, the SKYnews Australia docu made it clear: it was an attack, not an accident. I find that convincing. Conservapedia Guard (talk) 20:12, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
My personal editorial commentary: I think about June or July 2019, when it became obvious to the boys in the Politburo that Trump was going to be re-elected, and the gravy train of economic growth they had been riding since 2002 on their $500 billion-a-year trade surplus with America was ended, at least for another 4 or 5 years, they found the situation hopeless and intolerable, and released the bioweapon on the world and to cut America down to size. The two and half previous years had hurt them enough. RobSFree Kyle! 20:20, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
It was a desperate decision on the Politburos' part; free trade with the U.S. and prosperity in China was the only thing keeping the CCP in power. Now the CCP has already reverted back to Maoist authoritarianism, cause there is no way they will ever regain the unfettered access to sell in the U.S. consumer market the way they did throughout the War on Terror, 2001-2021. RobSFree Kyle! 20:32, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
Few times in modern history have countries made such colossal errors in strategic judgement as the U.S. did - across partisan and ideological lines - to destroy our own manufacturing base while at the same time fighting a war of attrition. RobSFree Kyle! 20:37, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
The CCP Politburo rolled the dice sometime after July 2019. If they accepted Trump's tariffs, they knew they'd be out of power by 2024; if they released covid, they felt they had a 50/50 chance to survive. RobSFree Kyle!
There were nine "SARS-type" viruses recovered from the mine shaft in Mojiang and taken to the Wuhan Lab. The one that we have detailed information about is 96 percent the same as the covid virus. That's not close enough for it to be considered an ancestor or a backbone.
There was "significant renovation" at the Wuhan lab sometime around August 2019. Perhaps this was closing the barn door after the horse escaped. What about the other eight viruses obtained from Mojiang? If the Wuhan lab's database was still up, that would be public information. But it was taken down on September 12, 2019. Somebody's next thought must have been, "Let's get this virus over to Italy or the U.S. as quickly as possible so that no one in Wuhan will be blamed." PeterKa (talk) 22:04, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
Well, that is getting into the debate of, Was it deliberate or an accident? I've stated my position, it was a policy response to Trump tariffs. Basically, the fact that it originated in the lab has been in open source reporting since at least mid-March 2020. RobSFree Kyle! 22:53, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
In historical research, the farther you get away from an event the more difficult it becomes to prove anything. Hence the importance of contemporaneous reporting. Let me give you one example from this thread alone: Above the OP quotes a headline source that reads, "....October 2019 at Military World Games in Wuhan - two months before China notified the world about virus," implying that "China notified the world" in December. China did not "notify the world" in December, Taiwan did on December 30, 2019. Taiwan notified the WHO on December 30, 2019. So you see, how easily CCP disinformation seeps into even good-faith reports. RobSFree Kyle! 23:05, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
I'm speaking from memory now, but most of this can be verified or corrected from the various timelines here in CP. Taiwan informed the WHO of the contagious outbreak about Dec 30, 2019; about 10 days later, the WHO contacted Beijing with inquires, and issued a false statement about Jan. 12. We also know that Xi Jinping and the Politburo were fully aware by about January 6, 2020. Even though the NYT, Brookings Institute and others all say, "China notified the world," the truth is China was never forthcoming with any truthful information about covid, and only responded to WHO inquiries when asked. The known January 6 Politburo meeting was not a response to the crisis, but rather only to give instructions to local CCP leaders as knowledge of the outbreak was spreading on social media. RobSFree Kyle! 23:23, September 23, 2021 (EDT)
I was following China news quite closely at this time. My sense is that the Hong Kong issue overshadowed the question of tariffs. For example, China retaliated against Trump's tariffs by refusing to buy American soybeans. Soybeans are used mainly as food for pigs. The soybean crisis led to a major increase in the price of pork in China. The Chinese I talked to said they just switched to beef or something. Nobody viewed the trade war as something that had a major effect on them (or China).
As for Hong Kong, Beijing's strategy hinged on winning the local election on 24 November 2019. If the virus escaped in August or September, that was at a time when the communists still assumed that they could win this election. PeterKa (talk) 00:04, September 24, 2021 (EDT)
Actually the AP link I used is not a good one. Much is made about how the agreement to pay the $350 billion in tariffs was signed on January 15, and four days later on January 19 the covid panic ensued. That's not quite the full story. An agreement was reached and signed between negotiators on something like July 15, 2019, to be ratified by their respective leaders in the respective capitals 6 months later on January 15, 2020. It appears to me, IMHO, the Chinese negotiators had no intention of living up to the agreement, signed it to buy time, while reporting back to their bosses that they had failed. And of course, the Chinese negotiators were acting on instructions from their bosses all along. They inked the agreement in July with no intention to ever abide by it. So the decision to take Trump out and destroy the U.S. and global economy was made by July 15, 2019. RobSFree Kyle! 00:35, September 24, 2021 (EDT)
All this fits with other known, reliable, and credible open source information, like the Beijing business professor's statement:
"We know that the Trump administration is in a trade war with us, so why can’t we fix the Trump administration? Why did China and the US used to be able to settle all kinds of issues between 1992 and 2016? I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here. It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence. During the US-China trade war, Wall Street tried to help, and I know that my friends on the US side told me that they tried to help, but they couldn’t do much. But now we’re seeing Biden was elected, the traditional elite, the political elite, the establishment, they’re very close to Wall Street, so you see that, right?"
Not only is this a confession to interfering in U.S. elections, it supplies the motive for doing so. They never intended to honor the trade agreement from the moment negotiators signed it in July 2019. RobSFree Kyle! 00:52, September 24, 2021 (EDT)
[Editorial comment]: from the founding of the EU in the late 1950s (by whatever name back then), NAFTA, etc etc etc, free trade was viewed in the West as the panacea for all problems and global peace. Yes, free trade was pitched to end the Cold War and flourished thereafter. But the downside is, dependency. Once you make someone dependent on you, you don't know how they may react when you cut them off.
If the Trump administration is to be criticized, it's for being naive. Just as Fauci was naive about the Wuhan lab and PLA doing gain of function research, so too were Trump and negotiators naive about the CCP retaliating to tariffs with bioweapons. As Rummy said, "There are things that we know, and things that we don't know, and things that we don't know we don't know," like the ability of our enemies to learn to fly a 747 and convert commercial aircraft into a deadly weapon, or the ability of our enemies to smile in your face all the while wanting to take your place. Should have learned that when Pearl Harbor was attacked in the midst of negotiations. RobSFree Kyle! 01:08, September 24, 2021 (EDT)
Let me clarify some of the details on trade negotiations in July 2019. They were finalized by June and July. China was to pay a bill of $350 billion based on the volume of trade at that point. China retaliated with the soybean tariff (and one other, I believe). Negotiations were re-opened for a moment, and Trump agreed to suspend full implementation until December 15, so that U.S. retailers could stock their shelves one last time with cheap Chinese-made crap for Christmas and soybean sales would remain untouched (none of that would negatively impact the election). But the Chinese knew in July 2019 that it was the end of the trail on easy street for at least another 5 or 6 years, and probably never, even if a China-friendly candidate succeeded Trump in 2024 and Trump had 5 years to rebuild U.S. manufacturing jobs. RobSFree Kyle! 04:05, September 24, 2021 (EDT)