Wuhan Flu: What, me worry?

one reason I haven't been posting a lot about the Wuhan Flu aka Coronavirus, is that the news is not accurate: 

The dirty little secret is that no one knows how many cases are out there. Not only are many mild cases and asymptomatic cases or early cases being missed, but a lot of reporting is "iffy".

and it makes you wonder: why the panic if the mortality rate is low: 2 percent of diagnosed cases die, according to the latest statistics.

But then you wonder if the number is artificially high because mild cases which are not diagnosed?

Or maybe people are dying at home, or in isolated villages, and/or are old, so not counted...so it's a lot worse than is being reported...



and the question no one is asking: is China lying about it? (yup. I expect Chinese trolls to fill my comment box on that statement).

Because China's attitude seems to be: Only report sweetness and light or we'll get back at you.

For example, this Feb 3 story notes that China condemned the USA for raising the alarm and causing panic.

Global voices notes that certain blogs have disappeared from the internet for their reports on Wuhan flu:

popular online media outlet posting high-quality commentary, suddenly vanished from the Chinese internet after it published an article headlined “The 50 days of Wuhan pneumonia: Chinese people are all paying the price of the death of media”.

Following the article's publication, the website of Tencent Dajia and its WeChat public account disappeared from the internet. Both Tencent Dajia and WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging and social media app, are owned by China’s biggest tech giant Tencent. The takedown happened on February 19, the same day three Wall Street Journal reporters were expelled from China in response to the publication of an opinion piece referring to China as “the real sick man of Asia.”

and the Chinese social network site Weibo, is full of happy happy Chinese folks making comments and posting happy happy videos to counter the reality of what's going on.

We Will Make Them Better” – Popular Online Video Promotes Chinese Unity in Times of COVID-19 Chinese state media are spreading more hopeful and positive online content in times of coronacrisis.

Just move along, folks, nothing to see here...




 and rumors of the failure of government to confront the disease spread is complicated by HongKong's pro democracy demonstrations:



China's bullying has led to some countries like Iran from not banning Chinese entering the country (i.e. limited flights were allowed), and now there are cases in their holy city of Qom...

NYTimes article mentions clusters of cases in the Koreas and in Iran.

(unrelated note: Iran is holding an election this weekend and the opposition is boycotting it. I wonder if they will spin the low turnout by blaming the virus).
I'm not sure where I should be getting news about this: The most recent CDC report was posted on Feb 7 and is probably out of date.

But it should comfort you to know the CDC is busy doing their thing, because since then they have released reports on the percentage of adults over 25 who saw a dentist this year, discussing a program that encourages people to take their BP medicines, a single case of Chaga's disease in Missouri who didn't catch it from travel, This is a headsup meaning it might be spread by local insects (probably an under reported disease thanks to the many unscreened illegal immigrants entering the US), a survey of which states prohibit teenagers from buying tobacco products, and a report that the seasonal influenza shot doesn't work very well. And in the recent past: Lots of stuff about Vaping.

When you read complaints about Trumpieboy cutting their funding, remember that it is this stuff that he is trying to cut, not the actual investigation of infectious diseases etc. but wasting lots of money on stuff about lifestyle and social problems: things that used to be called sin before the PC made sin a dirty name.

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here in the Philippines, the big stories are about the Chinese bribing immigration officials for visas. The whistleblower is in hiding, and unlike American "whistle-blowers" who raise money and get interviews on CNN with their claim of threats, here whistle-blowers and witnesses do tend to disappear one way or another.

The story mentions 2000 Chinese enter the country every day, but doesn't mention if that has changed.

So we have cases of Wuhan flu here, mainly in Chinese tourists: But the real crisis is among Filipinos working in cruise ships: 52 have been diagnosed in one ship alone.

Sigh.

And you know and everyone here knows that when things get bad, it will not be China helping the Philippines, but the USA who is offering China and other countries money to help stop the disease.

I'm so old that I remember when the World Health organization said don't close borders 

GENEVA, Switzerland – The World Health Organization cautioned Friday, January 31, that closing borders was probably ineffective in halting the transmission of the deadly novel coronavirus from China and could even accelerate its spread.
If you close official border crossings, you can "lose track of people and cannot monitor (their movement) anymore," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva.

Right. And that worked well, didn't it?

the other news is the Senate is opposing Duterte stopping the US/Phil joint military training agreement. Local politics in this one, but Duterte is pissed at suspected CIA money supporting his opponents and the human rights types in the US Congress and UN are trying to stop the (very popular) war on drugs here.

But even though locals dislike the idea that they are supposed to obey the US in these things, the dirty little secret is that outside of the elite bubbles, the average folk hate hate the Chinese and the way they bribe the elite and ignore custom and visa laws.

 John Bachelor had this from the Daily Beast about China trying to bribe their way to make a base in the Philippines.




well, nothing new: The Chinese even have printed articles in their press that quoted a General insisting that Luzon should be part of a Greater China.

But one wonders how the spread of Wuhan flu will affect China's territorial aggression and it's bribery/threats to influence the Philippines: I suspect it won't make them popular here.
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update:
criteria if you are in trouble according to the CDC. 

Interview with the guy who revealed China's forced abortion laws at a time when no one in the MSM noticed what was going on. He suspects they are lying here too



latest from the NEJM: asymptomatic patients can spread the disease. A report of German travelers coming home from China.

In this effort to evacuate 126 people from Wuhan to Frankfurt, a symptom-based screening process was ineffective in detecting SARS-CoV-2 infection in 2 persons who later were found to have evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in a throat swab. We discovered that shedding of potentially infectious virus may occur in persons who have no fever and no signs or only minor signs of infection.