COVID-19/Pandemic

From Wikispooks
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Event.png COVID-19/Pandemic (“pandemic”) Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
Coronavirus control efforts in Iran.jpg
Containment efforts in Iran
DateDecember 2019 - Present
Exposed byHelen Chu
Interest ofDido Harding, White House/Coronavirus Task Force
DescriptionAn outbreak of Covid-19, a potentially fatal coronavirus, in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The disease is very similar to one described by researchers from that city's Institute of Virology in 2015.[1]

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic began with a virus outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China, in late 2019, where researchers identified a new coronavirus. The WHO later named the often asymptomatic but potentially fatal virus "COVID-19".[2]

Detection

In late 2019 Zhang Jixian, a doctor in Wuhan, China, noticed a cluster of severe infections all of which were linked to Huanan Seafood Market. On 30 December 2019 another Chinese doctor, Li Wenliang, warned colleagues of his suspicions that they faced a hitherto unknown virus. On 3 January 2020, Wuhan police summoned and admonished him for "making false comments on the Internet". Wenliang was allowed to continue working with patients. Although aged only 33, he reportedly died of the disease on 7 February 2020.

Containment efforts

COVID-19 spread by nation state logarithmic plot.png|450px|left|thumb|A logarithmic plot of virus cases numbers in different countries, after the 100th patient The Guardian reported in March 2020 that Xu Zhiyong, an activist who in early 2020 criticised the Chinese President Xi Jinping's handling of the virus outbreak "faces years in jail for 'subversion'".[3] In January 2020, the Chinese policy changed from aggressive censorship, to aggressive containment efforts. Researchers[Who?] quickly published the gene sequence of the virus.[citation needed]

Timing

The virus was first detected right before the Lunar New Year extended vacation, a time of intense travel activity in China. 5 million people left Wuhan, a central hub for train travel,[4] for their home village.

Location

The Wuhan Institute Of Virology (WIV), China's only biosafety level 4 facility, is close to the market where COVID-19 was first reported. In 2016 researchers at the WIV reported "the isolation and characterisation of a novel bat coronavirus which is much closer to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in genomic sequence than others previously reported." [1] The proximity of which could indicate that the virus may have been released from the WIV, or alternatively that it was developed elsewhere but released there in order to suggest that possibility.

Travel restrictions

In China

The Chinese military, on its website eng.chinamil.com.cn, republished a report from China Daily, saying the "fight against the epidemic is no less than a war".[5] Those who die in the line of duty will be honored as martyrs and their families will receive support by the government.[6] An opinion peace from Global Times remarked that "decoupling between the industries of the both countries" is now, while it generally has been discussed for a while,[7] a possibility and wanted from China hawks in the Trump administration.[8]

Internationally

News of the outbreak lead to increased attention at international borders, with various countries prohibiting arrival from China and/or quarantining travellers. Containing spread was largely restricted to China, raising hopes that the virus could be contained as SARS was. However, the ability of the virus to be asymptomatic was initially not recognised, and virus outbreaks in Iran, Italy and South Korea followed. By 25 February, community transmission of the disease was known to be ongoing not only in China, but also Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. In March it was understood to be ongoing in many countries, leading the WHO to declare it a pandemic.

Failure of containment

By March 2020, many nation states followed the example of Italy, declaring far reaching restrictions on travel and/or other activities due to a "state of emergency". These measures were intended to slow rather than halt the spread of the virus, to prevent too large a disruption at any one time - especially, to try to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by a spike in acute cases.

Economic impact

Stock markets

On 29 February 2020, The Guardian reported that "Stock markets globally lost about $5tn (£3.9tn) of value last week, as measured by the MSCI all-country index." Analysts at ING said:

“Even if China‘s factory production can recover in March, it will still face the risk of a low level of export orders. This is because the supply chain will continue to be broken, this time in South Korea, Japan, Europe, and the US, where COVID-19 has begun to spread.”[9]

Travel

Travel restrictions have had a major impact on consumer behaviour and on business; shipping from China has been reduced by over 50%.[citation needed][When?] This unpredicted disruption has lead to global anxiety about shortages of goods.

People

Professor Charles Leiber was charged on 28 January 2020 with two federal counts of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement to investigators regarding his participation in China's Thousand Talents Program.

External links

 

Related Quotations

PageQuoteAuthorDate
"COVID-19/Response"“To minimize COVID-19] infection the UK is granting early release to all non-violent, non-Julian Assange prisoners.”Caitlin Johnstone4 April 2020
2020s“I once asked the question: is this pandemic, this coronavirus, a man-made phenomenon? I don’t know the answer yet, but I have my suspicions. Are politicians and others using this situation for their own purposes? You and I both know the answer to that question. You already see how it is used today... Doesn’t it seem to you that the influential forces of the world would like to remake the world, without a ‘war’ (Emmanuel Macron has already called it a war), through this so-called ‘corona-psychosis’, or ‘info-demic’? Many people are asking: ‘what will happen after the pandemic?’”Alexander Lukashenko3 April 2020
Article 19“Freedom of expression is the fundamental human right that enables us all to demand the highest attainable standard of health. Unlike any other year in recent history, 2020 has driven home just how vital access to accurate, reliable and timely information is, and continues to be, during a global health crisis.

When faced with such crises, governments have a fundamental duty to be transparent about their decisions, and a legal obligation to protect people’s lives. This means ensuring that health-care professionals have access to accurate global information about the disease, educating the public about the pandemic, and ensuring that health data is accessible to everyone – no exceptions. The Global Expression Report for 2021 reveals that rather than focusing on controlling the virus, protecting public health and improving access to information, governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to:

   Suppress critical information
   Implement states of emergency without proper limits 
   Place unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions on the media 

And by presenting a false choice between human rights and public health, governments have used a cunning tactic to shut down public discussion and any scrutiny of their decisions. In other words, they have wasted public money and valuable time using the pandemic to entrench their power.

As a result, these actions have prolonged the pandemic and cost lives.”
Article 19
Yvette D'Ath“If you don't want to be vaccinated stay home. Don't go out because if you want to go out, go on holiday, travel around this country and internationally, if you want to go out and enjoy the footy. If you want to hug a loved one, you want to shake hands again, then you need to get vaccinated.”Yvette D'Ath2021
Event 201“[M]y team has been monitoring the public response. And on various social media channels and cable networks, there's been some conspiracy theories that are around about the potential that pharmaceutical companies or the UN have released this for their own benefit... if conspiracy theories like this come up already, so we are on the edge of hysterical reactions.”18 October 2019
Event 201“The policy crisis for the board to consider in this meeting is this. How should national leaders, businesses and international organizations balance the risk of worsening disease that would be caused by the continued movement of people around the world against the risks of profound economic consequence of travel and trade bans?”18 October 2019
Event 201“To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction (...) We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people. Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.”24 January 2020
Event 201“it shouldn't be controversial to suggest our response should prioritize both lives and livelihoods. Absolutely. We need to save lives. We all know someone who's been affected by cats. But we literally cannot afford a heavy handed response that suffocates our economy. pragmatism is a wise choice. I mean, what exactly are the risks and benefits of slowing air travel of staying home from work, closing schools, disrupting supply chains, interfering with our reliable channels of communication and news? Sure, some of these steps can help slow caps but often only most - 3:00 - Generally and with serious costs, when this is all over some families, some cities will have suffered more from our interventions, then from CAPS.”18 October 2019
Event 201“My team has been monitoring the public response. And on various social media channels and cable networks, there's been some conspiracy theories that are around about the potential that pharmaceutical companies or the UN have released this for their own benefit. So as we move forward, obviously, trust in pharmaceuticals and government is very important at this moment. And so as we move forward with developing the right scenarios, we have to make sure that the public communication is a major part of that because of these conspiracy theories.”18 October 2019
Henry Kissinger“The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”Henry Kissinger3 April 2020
Alexander Myasnikov“It’s all bullsh*t... It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality. Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know.”Alexander Myasnikov

 

Related Documents

TitleTypePublication dateAuthor(s)Description
Document:COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the USArticle4 March 2020Larry RomanoffThe varieties of COVID-19 in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere.
Document:Capitalism normalizes death: From COVID-19 to the threat of nuclear warArticleAndre DamonThe total devaluation of human life, the indifference to mass death in the pandemic and the recklessness with which American capitalism is rushing into conflict with Russia, reflect the views and social character of the American ruling class. This parasitic oligarchy feasts upon the impoverishment and exploitation of the working population.
Document:Hidden Alliance of former WEF Young Global Leaders working in LockstepArticle27 January 2022Nota Akhir ZamanJust listen to the President of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, himself say the following: “I have to say when I mention names like Mrs Merkel, Vladimir Putin and so on they have all been Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, but what we’re really proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, the President of Argentina and so on.
Document:Logistical and Technical Exploration into the Origins of the COVID-19 virusreport31 January 2020Jonathan Jay CoueyReport of a thorough investigation into the origins of the virus that caused the pandemic. Whilst the author is circumspect, the evidence presented points clearly to the virus being the product of laboratory engineering.
Document:Renowed German Mathematician and Professor of Statistics Slams Dramatization of Covid-19webpageJens Berger
Gerd Bosbach
A statistical demolition of the assumptions underlying official models being used to manage the COVID-19 pandemic
File:Prof. Maria Rita Gismondo- The situation was never dramatic.pdfinterviewBilly SixInterview with Italian virologist Maria Rita Gismondo

 

The Official Culprits

NameDescription
ChinaThe most populous nation state in the world
Wuhan Institute of VirologyChina's only BSL4 facility, which carries out "gain-of-function" research, including creation of transgenic novel coronaviruses by combining SARS with HIV.
Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.


References

Coronavirus Cases Doubling Overnight In Many Countries (26:45), by Peak Prosperity, 2020-02-22, on YouTube.