The email said, "Go buy as much food as you can store. Buy some virus masks at the drug store. Lock your doors and don't leave your house again."

I had spoken to my friend Paul a couple of days ago and I mentioned the coronavirus epidemic. He seemed pretty sanguine about it, confident it would be brought under control. But that was two days ago, and there was only one reported infection in Seattle. As of tonight, however, there are five confirmed coronavirus cases in five large cities from Phoenix to New York. However, it wasn't any of this that had rattled Paul, who by-the-way, happens to be a public health physician.

I remember Paul once remarked, during the Ebola crisis, that "Viruses have learned to get around using modern aviation. Air travel is already factored in modern epidemiology." Later, I checked on that: It seems that up until one hundred years ago, plagues traveled at a rate of just 20 miles per day. The Plague was still coming for you, but it might take some time for it to arrive."

As if on cue, one of those flying germ-sacks landed and ejected a coughing passenger from the plane, today. It later turned out that the passenger actually did have the Chinese coronavirus. Another passenger filmed it with his cell phone.

.

After some email back-and-forth, I found out what had rattled my friend: It was apparent to all observers that the virus was likely airborne and it was being spread well before any symptoms appeared in the host. So, families, school children, militaries, and all sorts of normal social and business settings became the most vulnerable and dangerous places to be.

The damned virus is going to pick us off one-by-one, unless we can hide from it. One optimistic thought: Maybe it will infect the Swamp first. This would be one way to get rid of the neocon psychopaths and shut down their suicide mission. At last... a silver lining! In the meantime, I'm heading out to see if there are any virus masks still on the shelf somewhere.

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has it, and is in quarantine.
I fly to Sicily in March. I will be in 3 airports twice, 1 airport 4 times. 3 flights going, 3 flights returning. If this virus is spreading, I will use my "cancel for any reason" insurance, and just stay home.
MOA is advising to look closely at statistics and ratings, and not be in a panic.
However, even he admits that those numbers are from early data.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

the horses have already escaped.

A Chinese nurse said that 90,000 people have been infected and medical supplies are running out. There is a tweet in the article if you're interested.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Azazello's picture

I don't know what an R0 value is, or a virality coefficient, but this guy is alarmed.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@Azazello
to put things in perspective. (Courtesy of MoA)

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16 users have voted.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

Hawkfish's picture

@ovals49

Which did a good job of explaining R0 at one point, so thanks for the 3.8 value. The mortality appears to be about 0.5% right now, and even those are almost exclusively elderly men with compromised respiratory systems, so it isn't clear to me what the mortality for healthy people is.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

@ovals49
can be found here.
Current data from ground zero is worrisome. Fatality percentage now over 5%:
Hubei (Mainland China)
Confirmed: 1,423; Deaths: 76

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4 users have voted.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@Azazello @Azazello It's the multiplier in the total contagient. This bug is about as viral as the common flu while being many times as deadly - but not nearly as contagious or deadly as smallpox.

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is in Bryan College Station. Home of Texas A&M University.
It may actually be less that 90 miles from me.
The scariest part is the 2000 people the Brits are trying to locate, people who flew to London from Wuhan as their origin for departure.
I am sure lots of folks on this site know how huge and crowded and busy Heathrow is, and how comparatively small England is, and that city is an international travel and business hub.
Just from people passing through Heathrow, this virus could spread the world over.
I don't think it will take long to see it's spread.
I do think it will take a long time to resolve the problem.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Just how this virus kills, and who is most vulnerable.

As for where it came from, zoo-otic transmission, is possible, but:

Wuhan biohazard lab

Stolen from Canada and possibly weaponized?

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@Blue Republic Holy shit.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

before they disappear...

Picking up some star anise (Illicium verum) might not be a bad idea, maybe some oregano oil as well.

Still have star anise from the SARS scare, wonder if it's still any good?

Star anise

Take care, y'all.

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janis b's picture

@Blue Republic

Sounds like it could live up to it's name.

I love a hint of that flavour in many different kinds of dishes.

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wendy davis's picture

@Blue Republic

and grapefruit seed extract, as well, but then...i'm not traveling.

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janis b's picture

I guess because the Chinese travel a lot more broadly than sub-Saharan Africans do, we have more reason for concern. Why don't we ever learn how to do things better for the good of all of us?

ps. If there are no masks left on the shelves, I suggest you use a silk scarf. Who knows, it might even be more effective. It certainly would be more comfortable ; ).

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Thing is, it should be worn in the airport, airport restaurants, the plane, and so on.
I am much less concerned with plane that I am about airport.
Irony: my best silk scarves were purchased in a silk factory in China.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

janis b's picture

@on the cusp @on the cusp

in the neighbourhood that tie-dies silk (from somewhere else) ; ).

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@janis b They are good to go.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

janis b's picture

@on the cusp

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mimi's picture

people won't fly that much anymore and that can only be a good thing for the environment.
Wacko Wacko Wacko Wacko Wacko Wacko Wacko
Diablo Diablo Diablo Diablo Diablo Diablo Diablo
Next headline I expect to be that the coronavirus has spread to the White House.
Corona? Isn't that a beer?
Cheers!
Drinks
That virus definitely has an effect on my brain.
Move on, nothing to see here.

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In fact, coronaviruses have been around for decades and most people have contracted them without knowing it. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/about/index.html So it is nothing like the ebola virus, which is a hideous disease. But this particular strain can take out weakened, elderly, very young, and immunocompromised individuals. So use caution. Somewhere tonight I saw a medical professional saying that the virus is so small that most face masks can't protect from it. They recommended washing your hands a lot, refrain from touching your mouth, nose or eyes without first washing your hands, using your own pen to sign for purchases, and using sanitizing hand wipes as well as wiping objects that you handle in public places.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

wendy davis's picture

but FWIW, and i hope you can read the whole stream, if not: click this tweet to stand alone:

and from jacob levich:

Introduction

On March 18, 2015, the world’s wealthiest man issued a public call foran ambitious new project: the creation of a global, militarized, suprana-tional authority capable of responding decisively to outbreaks of infec-tious disease (Gates 2015a). Appearing in the pages of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)

Bill Gates’s article “The NextEpidemic — Lessons from Ebola” was a “global call to action” designed for maximum impact. A New York Times op-ed by Gates (2015b), timedto appear simultaneously with the NEJM piece, launched a flurry of media coverage that uncritically reproduced the multi-billionaire’s arguments. [snip]

Gates’s NEJM article seemed to call for an unprecedented and farmore muscular style of health-care management. Building on the worldwide panic inspired by the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Gates warned of catastrophic future epidemics that could be contained only through theintervention of a powerful “global warning and response system”explicitly modeled on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).U.N. officials had deemed the international response to Ebola too slowbut ultimately effective and, in some cases, “spectacularly successful”(WHO 2014e). But Gates called it a “global failure,” especially by com-parison with “our preparations for another sort of global threat—war”(Gates 2015a).

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wendy davis

...that is, they are out of the kind that stops viruses. Unless you can wait a month and order them from China, of all places.

Thanks for the Twitter links. Very informative. At this point, I am looking at data that the US and UK failed to pass along to their people. That seems like the best source of meaningful clues.

I saw a reference in your data to the Coronavirus hospital complex that China says they can build in six days. I love stuff like this from China. Like how their first practical use for 3-D printers was to print houses. Took about 24 hours to build/print a home. They can think with elaborate complexity, which is why I rely on the Chinese to solve climate change (as does much of the world). Anyway, China finished the first building of the new hospital in 16 hours:

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but this outbreak caught my eye because I happened to be looking into a series of biological catastrophes that had hit China last year. Remember, when the pigs all died? Well, that was just one of several killer mutations that were released in China 2019. All have a targeted economic impact on China. I'm assuming this highly improbable cluster of biological weirdness is part of our weaponized "trade war" with China. Alarming articles have been circulating from DC's evil think tanks about China's mastery in the sciences; China's "great leap forward" has created an infantile capitalist dilemma in the West.

Right now the Chinese, and most of the world, are racing to find some sort of defense against the Coronavirus.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic
Even basic information about the virus is already behind paywalls.

ARTICLE PURCHASE
This article may not be distributed to non-subscribers
DISTRIBUTION AND WEBSITE POSTING $995.00 USD
INDIVIDUAL USE $175.00 USD

Capitalism and the tenets of the Hippocratic Oath are fundamentally at cross purposes in our world. Unnaturally virulent pathogens suddenly appear.....hideously expensive treatments create remarkable investment opportunities....the rich survive and prosper....and the excess population is reduced.

Happenstance or plan? Looking up from the bottom, it appears to be the former. Looking down from the top, the view is altogether different.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

Pluto's Republic's picture

@ovals49

Happenstance or plan? Looking up from the bottom, it appears to be the former. Looking down from the top, the view is altogether different.

It's going to yield important information, although there are too many moving parts to grasp the whole thing. I really don't see it as someone's master plan. There's hardly any original action in the world these days. Everyone is caught in a constant state of re-action now.

To your point about exploiting the events for cash, that happens. You know what the ancient Chinese said about those times when you look up and find yourself surrounded by danger and chaos? They say a time of great danger is a time of great opportunity and luck for those who keep their wits about them.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

of your free ranging comment to respond to, given that i)the bias against china; ii) not enough information on coronoavirus, and iii) the vast speculation on what the various inoculations may be, what efficacy, and what dangers.

as a side note, this ain't my issue, especially as i'm watching for the white house to release the official version of the I/P 'deal of the century' today.

yesterday i'd read 'Rising concerns over spread of the Wuhan coronavirus', Benjamin Mateus, 27 January 2020 and you can read the tenor of his coverage, not that i know where he'd gotten all his information, of course.

but he does seem pissed at the chinese government, but a few squibs:

In China itself, the emergency is being exacerbated by the lack of supplies. According to local medical personnel and staff, masks are running short and sanitary equipment is being quickly exhausted. Physicians, nurses and aides are on 24-hour standby, even as the travel ban within the affected cities makes commuting to hospitals difficult. This has created the added problem of making routine tasks, such as other forms of medical care and even getting groceries, much more difficult in population centers as large or larger than New York City and Los Angeles. Local hospitals have been forced to appeal on social media for donations of supplies and funds to stock and run their services.

Dr. Xu Wenbo, the director of the Chinese National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Beijing, announced to reporters on Sunday that researchers had isolated viruses and were selecting strains to use in developing a vaccine against the coronavirus. The US National Institutes of Health has also stated that it can potentially develop a vaccine for human trials in a few months. It remains unclear if these efforts are being jointly coordinated.
.............................
Meanwhile, three Beijing hospitals—Beijing Ditan Hospital, Beijing Youan Hospital and No. 5 Medical Center of PLA General Hospital—have turned to administering the anti-HIV retroviral drugs Lopinavir and Ritonavir to treat patients. This ad-hoc treatment is being used with limited data to support or refute its efficacy. The medical journal Lancet has announced that it has commenced a clinical trial using these agents to treat new cases of coronavirus.
.......................
This state of affairs is not the result of new viruses evolving more quickly or a lack of advances in medical technology, but of the subordination of modern medicine to private profit. In one revealing episode, China’s vice minister of industry and information technology, Wang Jiangping, told news outlets that Hubei Province is going through more than 100,000 protective suits each day, while their manufacture lags by 30,000 per day. The sheer material needs are overwhelming the capacity to address these demands. Yet Chinese companies manufacture more than 50,000 such suits per day for export.

now from commenter Maxwell below his piece mirrors Politiké's above:

Please stop- this is the most debased fear mongering. Remember the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic, SARS, MERS, Bird Flu, Hantavirus, Lyme Disease, West Nile Virus, Ebola, Gulf War Syndrome, ZIKA and on and on.

All of this should be treated with the greatest skepticism at the very least. Consider for example that the first reported death in Hubei province was a 61-year-old man who'd frequented the Wuhan market and had chronic liver disease and abdominal tumors. The second was a 69-year-old man who went to a hospital with severe damage to multiple organs.

At present it is understood that the vast majority of those who have died from the disease in Wuhan and other cities have been of elderly people who had been suffering serious prior medical conditions with compromised immune systems. Local environmental factors that may also have made their illnesses worse.

Meanwhile Philadelphia-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals has received a grant of $9 million to combat the Wuhan outbreak. Inovio previously hit the headlines a few years ago, when they received a grant to create an anti-Zika vaccine (something they managed to do in less than six months).

The grants were distributed by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an NGO that promotes global vaccination. Take a look at who funds that outfit.

Co-Diagnostic Inc. has also received a grant to develop a coronavirus “screening test." Co-Diagnostics Inc.’s stock nearly doubled (up 80%) to a one-year high. Trading volume shot up to 36.1 million shares, compared with the full-day average of about 161,000 shares. Chief Executive Dwight Egan said in a statement that if the WHO declares the illness a global health emergency, he believes Co-Diagnostics would be in position to “quickly assist” in providing its test to the affected countries.

Much more could be examined here- to call this an "epidemic" at this point is a knee-jerk reaction expected from the heavily funded MSM but not here.

And BTW anyone who trusts the CDC, the WHO and any of these thoroughly bought off alphabet soup national and international "health" agencies is not paying attention.

wish i had time to bring excerpts from my march 2018 of jacob levitch's ‘The Real Agenda of the Gates Foundation’, but i'd at least refer you to:

III.Gates and Big Pharma

“Guinea pigs for the drugmakers”

Despite annual revenues approaching $1 trillion, the global pharmaceutical industry has lately experienced a critical decline in the rate of profit, for which it lays most of the blame on regulatory requirements. A US think tank has estimated the cost of new drug development at $5.8 billion per drug, of which 90 per cent is incurred in Phase III clinical trials mandated by the US Food and Drug Administration and similar agencies in Europe.41 (These are tests administered to large groups of human subjects in order to confirm the effectiveness and monitor the side effects of new vaccines and other medicines.) The international business consulting firm McKinsey & Company called the situation “dramatic” and urged Big Pharma executives to “envision responses that go well beyond simply tinkering with the cost base” – primarily the relocation of clinical trials to emerging markets, where drug safety testing is seen as relatively cheap, speedy, and lax.42

It is in this specific context that BMGF’s intervention in the distribution of certain vaccines and contraceptives must be seen. Heavily invested in Big Pharma,43 the Foundation is well positioned to facilitate pharmaceutical R&D strategies tailored to the realities of the developing world, where “[t]o speed the translation of scientific discovery into implementable solutions, we seek better ways to evaluate and refine potential interventions—such as vaccine candidates—before they enter costly and time-consuming clinical trials.”44 In plain language, BMGF promises to assist Big Pharma in its efforts to circumvent Western regulatory regimes by sponsoring cut-rate drug trials in the periphery.”

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wendy davis

...together rapidly a provocative backstory on just about any controversy. What's spooky is that the examples you casually pluck from the billowing cloud of emerging data and use to make your point, invariably become the main triggers that disrupt the official narratives. Some people have a 'nose' for the news. You have a heat-seeking missile.

I've been following the news as reported by China and neighboring countries, and monitoring China's communications with the CDC and WHO. I've never seen undistorted news about China produced by the US media, except in scientific publications, so I've learned to skip the 'round eye' feeds on things Chinese. So, we start with different assumptions that produce different realities. But your link to Benjamin Mateus at WSWS helped me recalibrate a bit. Here's an example. Mateus begins:

...the [Chinese] government has partially or fully locked down 13 major population centers, encompassing nearly 60 million people.

This is what China "hopes" to accomplish, but I don't believe this strategy is in place yet. It is an aspiration, the fulfillment of which happens to be 'best practice' in a nation at this stage of a potential pandemic. Both both WHO and the CDC are praising China for attempting the ideal because successes in early containment controls in China will save lIves in the US and Europe, according to the infection models. China's neighbors, too, have also expressed appreciation for the sacrifice. China is further praised for facing the challenge while so many Chinese are mobilized for vacations. The last thing China's government wants to do is to aggravate the people, which is the First Principle of government policy. It's late afternoon in China as I write this. I saw last night that millions of young Chinese in the domestic guard and medical corp were deployed to China's busiest travel hubs and portals to aid in containment and provide health checks to travelers. Maybe by tonight there will be meaningful progress.

That is not how most Westerners, who read that statement, above, will interpret it. Americans have been programmed to respond to these facts — not with appreciation and admiration for the sacrifices that the Chinese will make on their behalf — but with hatred and rage toward the Chinese Government. Thus, they will reinforce their willingness to go to war with China, and to crush China's economy in order to force them into the familiar horrors of regime change.

"In Wuhan, citizens are calling for their local leaders to be held accountable."

.

That's not what the citizen movies show that I saw posted earlier.

"Doctors on the front line of treating victims of the coronavirus infection are leading this call by bluntly declaring, 'The city’s leaders should be removed immediately.'"

LOL.

"These tensions have begun to spread to Shanghai, one of China’s major commercial centers and one of its most populous cities, where an 88-year-old man died as a result of the virus, sparking concerns about the complex spread of the disease and its ramifications on an international scale."

.

That's a preposterous statement. Because an 88 year old man died of pneumonia Shanghai ... international concerns have been sparked? I wonder what drives such verbal desperation?

In response, Chinese President Xi Jinping was forced to state, “Confronted with the grave situation of this accelerating spread of pneumonia from infections with the novel coronavirus, we must step up the centralized and united leadership under the party central.

.

Is this a communist alert that needs an American intervention?

::

Actually, I'm sensitive to subversive innuendo toward the Chinese. As a lifelong sinophile, I've observed it for many years. The fact is, the WSWS article was very good on the state of health care, globally. The author identifies a few surprising trends and rightly warns that the world's public health care systems that currently work well for the people are at risk of becoming inaccessible for many. Parts of government-funded health care systems, around the world, are being privatized by neoliberals and sold off to predatory capitalists seeking unlimited profits. Who exactly is going to stockpile medical supplies for the people, after the government no longer protects the health and education of its citizens? I'll chalk those results up to the Great Depopulation.

If you want to see this in action, try to buy a face mask that blocks viruses. Right now. Go to google and give it your best shot. The only protective mask I could for sale in the United States tonight is selling for $47,000 on Amazon.

This is what we have become.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

I'd just come back to grab my response to you and PM it along to you. I got on a new prowl for a probably subversive diary and have done run myself outta time for now. but along the way I'd found an old diary from 2012 that ended with this lobo song, near and dear to my heart. until tomorrow, then.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVbUD7kO4Ho]

come to think of it, this one might be more on point for your diary, though:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjq4y9EFLMA]

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wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

i don't seem to be able to get my head back into all this. but i do thank you for your longer thoughts, although i will say that you and CB are definitely sinophiles, and both of you believe that China will solve the climate crisis.

on the other hand, i believe it's far past time to reverse it. and yes, i've seen the many heady titles about 'climate change fatalism'. ; )

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