Wuhan Flu Truth and Big Brother Narratives

[ed]

Might be time to hunker down investment wise

[Rob Lister]

I'm staying with much ado about not so much. And old people are so overrated. Bunch if boomers. Fuck um.

[Witness]

China bans human consumption and trade of wild animals

BEIJING, CHINA -- China on Monday declared an immediate and "comprehensive" ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals, a practice believed responsible for the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

The country's top legislative committee approved a proposal "prohibiting the illegal wildlife trade, abolishing the bad habit of overconsumption of wildlife, and effectively protecting the lives and health of the people," state television reported.

Previous temporary bans have been put in place, including after the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in 2002-03 and was also traced to wild animal consumption.

That prohibition was short-lived, however, and conservationists have long accused China of tolerating a cruel trade in wild animals as exotic menu items or for use in traditional medicines whose efficacy is not confirmed by science.

The decision was made by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), which oversees the country's rubber-stamp legislature.

The coronavirus epidemic had highlighted "the prominent problem of excessive consumption of wild animals, and the huge hidden dangers to public health and safety," said the report by China Central Television (CCTV).

Chinese health officials have said the virus likely emerged from a market in the central city of Wuhan that sold wild animals as food.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/sci-tech/ ... -1.4824540

The market will go underground, of course. Joining all the already existing ones.

[The Atheist]

Might be time to hunker down investment wise

Even better time to take my advice and sell the fuck out of everything.

I've been recommending TVIX, which is a hedge against stock markets falling.

They were $38 a share Friday, currently $58 after touching $64 this morning.

Still buy them. $58 is a snip. The markets will bounce back a little tomorrow, then shit themselves when the next country goes Italy/S Korea, which will be approximately Thursday.

[Anaxagoras]

Oh great. I can already imagine the political fuckery this will engender.

[Anaxagoras]

Too late. It's already here in the States. Folks released off of that cruise ship came back home and have tested positive. I assume they're being quarantined somewhere...

Apparently in Japan, they just let the Japanese people out without quarantine. One of them immediately went to 回転寿司.

[Anaxagoras]

Consuming. I heard this from my wife.

[sparks]

Great! How many can we expect to visit a place like that in a day? :)

[ed]

Consuming. I heard this from my wife.

So everybody at the table, but not necessarily in the restaurant.

Meanwhile in Wuhan ...

https://i.imgur.com/pA2Mokz.jpg

Who is he and why is he doing that buck-tooth racist caricature? In front of a shrine sacred to every Chinese person on the planet.

Talk about racial insensitivity.

Just to remind you of how horrid such sterotyping is remember this shameful portrayal.
http://dvdmedia.ign.com/dvd/image/artic ... 06-000.jpg

[ed]

You mean his teeth are <supposed> to be that way?

are you sure that he isn't a brit?

[The Atheist]

Oh great. I can already imagine the political fuckery this will engender.

Hey, look on the bright side - with a death rate as high as it is among oldies, it might take out POTUS and some of his cronies. I don't see him as a particularly healthy specimen. Also, I'm fairly sure Trump's support is overwhelming among old men. A lot of them won't see election day.
________________________________

I was slightly wrong in the speed of the next market shit-storm - it was today, not tomorrow.

TVIX currently double last Friday's price, at $76.

Still buy! ($200, easy)

Just the leverage is getting a bit lower.

[The Atheist]

Nope.

I reckon it's got at least 2000 more points to fall yet.

Tomorrow, the numbers should start reflecting new test results and I expect a large boost in infections. When it hits USA I can the Dow dropping 10% more than it already has.

[Witness]

More than 550,000 sign petition to dissolve Shincheonji by force

Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans have called for the forcible dissolution of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, a shadowy Christian sect that has been identified as a hotbed of new coronavirus infections.

Over 552,000 people have signed an online petition to that effect since Saturday, when it was filed on the website of the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae. Any petition that gets more than 200,000 signatures within a month requires an official response from Cheong Wa Dae.

The opaque group, which claims to have over 240,000 followers, has come into the spotlight as the majority of COVID-19 cases were traced to its branch in Daegu.

As of Monday morning, 456 people linked to the sect tested positive for the virus, accounting for 59.8 percent of the country’s 763 cases. The tally rose to 833 in the afternoon, but it was unclear how many of the new cases were linked to Shincheonji.

Public uproar intensified as health authorities said they were struggling to reach out to Shincheonji members in Daegu but hundreds had not responded.

The person who submitted the petition criticized Shincheonji for violating the people’s rights and freedom by propagating its religion in indiscriminate and deceptive ways for the sake of its leader. The leader and self-declared messiah, Lee Man-hee, called the spread of the virus “a devil’s deed” in internal messages to the laity.

“The infection crisis occurred in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, which stemmed from the church’s Daegu branch … because of its immoral religious dogma and uncooperative attitude,” the petitioner wrote in the complaint posted on the Cheong Wa Dae website.

Citing news reports, the petitioner claimed the church had ordered its members to obstruct epidemiological investigations and quarantine efforts by the city government and health authorities.

In response, the government is investigating to determine whether Shincheonji has violated any laws related to public health and infectious disease, according to the newspaper Herald Business.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200224000676

[Anaxagoras]

It definitely has a very culty sort of feel. The leader claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. That sort of thing makes me roll my eyes and wonder how is it that people fall for claims like that? All that said, if they have freedom of religion, there's not much to be done about it. This petition sounds like they are calling for religious persecution and probably something that would be unconstitutional.

[The Atheist]

It definitely has a very culty sort of feel. The leader claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. That sort of thing makes me roll my eyes and wonder how is it that people fall for claims like that? All that said, if they have freedom of religion, there's not much to be done about it. This petition sounds like they are calling for religious persecution and probably something that would be unconstitutional.

This is why I despise all religions equally.

I once had a bloke who claimed that Muhammad Ali was an idiot, because he believed white people were aliens.

I don't even know if it's true, I just asked the bloke how that was dumber than thinking the ghost of a dead Jew and his equally-ghostly old man ran the universe.

They're all idiotic.

[Anaxagoras]

It definitely has a very culty sort of feel. The leader claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. That sort of thing makes me roll my eyes and wonder how is it that people fall for claims like that? All that said, if they have freedom of religion, there's not much to be done about it. This petition sounds like they are calling for religious persecution and probably something that would be unconstitutional.

This is why I despise all religions equally.

I once had a bloke who claimed that Muhammad Ali was an idiot, because he believed white people were aliens.

I don't even know if it's true, I just asked the bloke how that was dumber than thinking the ghost of a dead Jew and his equally-ghostly old man ran the universe.

They're all idiotic.

They all have irrational beliefs, but some of those are more dangerous than others. Like the Aum-Shinrikyo cult in Japan that actually murdered people they didn't like and committed a terrorist attack with Sarin gas. I think it's still useful to make some distinctions, although all organized religion is ultimately somebody telling people to believe something without evidence.

[The Atheist]

I've been right every step of the way with predictions on this, and I reckon I will be there, too.

A lot of people have their heads in the sand over this outbreak, thinking it will go away and cause no major damage.

I think they're wrong.

When I spoke to the broker last Friday he pooh-poohed the idea that the market was going to tank and wasn't recommending betting against it.

I've doubled my money already & he's wondering what the fuck happened.

Mark my words, it will break through last year's low and probably not even stop for a breather on the way past.

[The Atheist]

I'll just add, while I've made a couple of grand, I'm not getting a good feeling by being right - 50 million deaths is something I'd rather not see, but it's a rational position based on maths & statistics.

[The Atheist]

Huh, no sooner do I click out and onto a new site than I see this piece: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/ ... udden-halt

Equity markets are essentially "looking through" the Covid-19 saga. The "Fed put" lives on in the collective mind. Fund managers have become so reflexively certain that there will always be a central bank rescue whatever happens, that they will continue to buy the dips into the teeth of almost any storm.

But this is a risky proposition. Monetary stimulus is useless against a genuine supply shock because the transmission channels are blocked and demand for fresh credit collapses.

[Anaxagoras]

Huh, no sooner do I click out and onto a new site than I see this piece: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/ ... udden-halt

Equity markets are essentially "looking through" the Covid-19 saga. The "Fed put" lives on in the collective mind. Fund managers have become so reflexively certain that there will always be a central bank rescue whatever happens, that they will continue to buy the dips into the teeth of almost any storm.

But this is a risky proposition. Monetary stimulus is useless against a genuine supply shock because the transmission channels are blocked and demand for fresh credit collapses.

That's true. There are limits to what you can do with monetary stimulus alone, if economic activity is stopping due to quarantines, etc. monetary policy won't make much difference.

So your guess is something on the order of 50 million deaths worldwide by the end of the year? If true, that would be about 100 times average annual deaths attributable to the flu (or something roughly on that order). Let's say about 500,000 for the flu in a typical year.

Personally, I'm still a bit agnostic about the accuracy of the data, but we'll see. I probably haven't been following this story as closely as you have, so I wouldn't venture a guess at this point.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease ... n-reports/
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/ ... ruary-2020

They found that the fatality rate is between 2% and 4% in Wuhan, and 0.7% outside Wuhan.

So, which of those numbers is closer to the truth? 2% and 4% or 0.7%? Also, what percentage of the population will catch it by the end of the year.

For reference, if there's 7 billion people on the planet, 1% is 70 million, and 0.1% is 7 million.

What percentage of the population is likely to be infected this year? 10%? 50%? These are things I don't know enough to guess at. But the number in the tens of millions range doesn't seem totally out of the question to me, depending on the answers to those questions.

[The Atheist]

They found that the fatality rate is between 2% and 4% in Wuhan, and 0.7% outside Wuhan.

So, which of those numbers is closer to the truth? 2% and 4% or 0.7%? Also, what percentage of the population will catch it by the end of the year.

For reference, if there's 7 billion people on the planet, 1% is 70 million, and 0.1% is 7 million.

What percentage of the population is likely to be infected this year? 10%? 50%? These are things I don't know enough to guess at. But the number in the tens of millions range doesn't seem totally out of the question to me, depending on the answers to those questions.

The WHO notes a current death rate of 2%, while Imperial College London predicts 1%, so I'd expect somewhere in that range. Developed countries a little less, underdeveloped countries a lot more.

I think the Hubei/Wuhan totals are higher due to the slow response and the wrong medicine in many cases. Apparently there was widespread use of corticosteroids early on that helped kill quite a few people.

How many people get it is the big unknown, but again, the expert opinion is that 60% of the population will contract it, over the course of two years.

The speed of spread in Italy & South Korea shows that's possible, because there you have two very well-organised systems with excellent resources and they're still spreading fast. Imagine what will happen in India or Uganda, or 50 other developing countries. I think the best we can hope for is to slow the spread down by shutting down cluster areas until a vaccine or treatment can be found. I suspect at some stage the clusters will merge into an entire country, though.

Finding a useful treatment is the best bet, because a vaccine will take 18 months, by which time it could have mutated and the vaccine be worthless.

China's doing double-blinded trials on several antivirals, so we'll know whether any are working by the end of March.

[Witness]

Coronavirus closures reveal vast scale of China’s secretive wildlife farm industry

https://i.imgur.com/qM4W0va.jpg

Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus

Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.

But the Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to 2,666 deaths and over 77,700 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan in early December, prompting a massive rethink by authorities on how to manage the trade.

China issued a temporary ban on wildlife trade to curb the spread of the virus at the end of January and began a widespread crackdown on breeding facilities in early February.

The country’s top legislative officials are now rushing to amend the country’s wildlife protection law and possibly restructure regulations on the use of wildlife for food and traditional Chinese medicine.

The current version of the law is seen as problematic by wildlife conservation groups because it focuses on utilisation of wildlife rather than its protection.

“The coronavirus epidemic is swiftly pushing China to reevaluate its relationship with wildlife,” Steve Blake, chief representative of WildAid in Beijing, told the Guardian. “There is a high level of risk from this scale of breeding operations both to human health and to the impacts on populations of these animals in the wild.”

The National People’s Congress released new measures on Monday restricting wildlife trade, banning consumption of bushmeat and sales of wildlife for meat consumption at wet markets between now and the time the Wildlife Protection Law can be amended and adopted. Untouched however, are breeding operations for traditional Chinese medicine, fur and leather, lucrative markets known to drive illegal poaching of animals including tigers and pangolins.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... m-industry

[sparks]

Corps says: "... FakeNews reported it as "Crackpot Claims Corona Weaponized Against Trump" (meaning, the virus was created to take him out)."

Most likely is fake news, but hey... we can dream, can't we? :)

[The Atheist]

Yesterday the American media finally woke up to the Kung Flu.

Well, they've woken up to fake stories. They'll get onto the real McCoy when a cluster gets found in USA.

Excellent name for it, by the way - I'm going to use that myself from here on.

[sparks]

When do you anticipate our first case confirmed here in the States? I thought I'd read somewhere (maybe just wishful thinking :) ) that is was already here thanks to releasing all those Umercans off that cruise ship and some of them tested positive.

[The Atheist]

According to my records, you already have 60, with 3 new today.

Yes, those will mostly be ex-Diamond Princess or traceable, but I'd bet it's there in much bigger numbers. For starters, Hawaii being part of USA, I'd stake my life they've got cases there. The chances of them having nil, when everywhere else in the rim have got some, is complete bullshit.

The problem is, they have no test kits. Someone hasn't been doing their job, and I see there are only five cities in USA right now that do have test kits.

Being a mathy guy, you'll appreciate this graph, of cases outside China, and the trajectory it's on. Note that right now it doesn't have 600+ cases from today, which will make the climb steeper than it is. We've reached logarithmic rise in just a few days and cases will double every three days, so in another week, that 3500 cases will be 15,000+.

It's out and wild and we are in deep fucking shit, mate.

I'm writing an article for our national newspaper that they may or may not print, where I say that every person on the planet will be touched by this pandemic. We will all lose a relative or friend, with a death rate of 1%. The economic impact will be felt for decades - it's going to make the GFC look like a bad day at the office. Tomorrow's futures are already down 270 points, a drop of almost 10% in the past ten days. Pension funds will be savaged, life insurance companies will be savaged, travel & tourism will take a much bigger hit than it is right now.

Buy funeral director shares.

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/uhweaY8.jpg

Spoiler, if needed.

https://i.imgur.com/MVTYeJF.jpg

[The Atheist]

I'm worried about Newark, JFK, Hartsfield and Ohare with the Italy outbreak.

Well, don't be.

You now have Mike Pence in charge, so all will be well.

[Witness]

Chinese city of Shenzhen to ban eating cats and dogs as part of moves to stop spread of coronavirus

• The authorities in the south China tech hub include protection for pets as part of measures to implement total ban on wildlife consumption
• Draft regulations put nine permitted meats on a ‘white list’ – but eating anything else risks a US$2,800 fine

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society ... moves-stop

China city offers $1,400 reward for virus patients who report to authorities

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A city in China’s Hubei province, the epicenter of the global coronavirus epidemic, will pay residents as much as 10,000 yuan ($1,425.96) if they proactively report symptoms of the illness and it is confirmed after testing.

Qianjiang, a city of around one million people located about 150 km (90 miles) from the stricken provincial capital of Wuhan, has reported a total of 197 cases so far and is stepping up efforts to ensure its infected people are confined and treated.

It is the latest of a number of regions to offer cash rewards to encourage members of the public to volunteer for medical checks.

Hubei has reported over 65,000 cases and more than 2,600 deaths from the epidemic. Worldwide, the death toll is about 2,800 and about 80,000 have been infected.

The Qianjiang task force handling the epidemic said in a notice that residents would be entitled to the full 10,000 yuan payment if their coronavirus diagnosis is confirmed. Those who have previously been diagnosed will not be eligible.

Those who are not immediately ruled out as suffering from the disease will be given 1,000 yuan, while those declared to be “suspected” cases will earn 2,000 yuan, it said.

Other parts of Hubei, including the Wuhan district of Hanyang and the neighboring city of Huangguang, have also offered cash rewards for people volunteering for medical checks, but at a much lower rate of around 500 yuan.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chin ... SKCN20L0GE

[The Atheist]

Beats paying to go to the doctor - looks a good plan to me.

[sparks]

Sure. If they bypass clinical trials.

[Anaxagoras]

Might be worth the risk.

[sparks]

Foregone conclusion. The anti-vax slogan will be "Better dead than vegged".

[Witness]

Mongolian president placed under quarantine after returning from China - state media

ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) - Mongolia’s President Battulga Khaltmaa and other government officials have submitted to a 14-day quarantine after returning home from their visit to China, the state news agency Montsame reported on Friday.

Battulga is the first head of state to visit China since the country began implementing special measure to curb the coronavirus outbreak in January.

He arrived in Beijing with Foreign Minister Tsogtbaatar Damdin and other senior government officials on Thursday, and held a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

They were taken into quarantine as soon as they arrived in Mongolia as a precautionary measure, Montsame said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKCN20M0WW

:mrgreen:

[The Atheist]

Sure. If they bypass clinical trials.

They're not.

As I read it, they were developing a vaccine that turned out to be for a virus almost identical to covid-19, so they can start clinical trials at once.

Definitely worth a crack.

[Anaxagoras]

Tokyo Disneyland is closed!

Wtf?

[Rob Lister]

https://i.imgur.com/wJzvCKD.jpg

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/L1ELRnD.jpg

[Witness]

Everything becomes clear! It's radiation!!! https://i.imgur.com/1WJDJCA.gif

https://i.imgur.com/HayNWH5.png

Reader comment on a conspiracy site unironically named nomorefakenews

[sparks]

Fuck but idiots are easily led.