Wuhan Coronavirus: Megathread -

[MadDamon]

Lol the virus has spread to Hong Kong. SARS boogaloo incoming.
Also, a reminder that Chinamen are soulless creatures that would rather drag other people to die with them then die a hero: the person who brought the virus in is from Wuhan. He knew he was sick yet still travel miles to Hong Kong to get cheap medical care. Fuck this man.

 

[Male Idiot]

Okey Chingchong, SARS was you fucking ducks and chicken, which farm animal did you molest with your "rittre yerrow rice rod" this time?

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE]

FUCKING CHINKS. that is all.

 

[NotSendingTheirBest]

I bet all that swine will be packaged and sold somewhere, the question is where.

Around the avian flu outbreak, I reduced my egg consumption. I guess Chinks want me to eat less meat.

Is this a 128D chess by Greta to reduce emissions? Since, you know, Animal Husbandry is one of the major contributors of CO2

 

[Large]

It's in the US now. Great.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

Can’t be worse than when Ebola came to US shores.

They can't.

Seattle thinks nothing bad can happen to them as long as they stay woke enough and suck enough Chinese dick.

Plus, it wouldn't surprise me if some of those woke-elite secretly hope a plague would kill off all the wrong-thinkers in the rest of the state.

 

[NotSendingTheirBest]

Hey Null, this is what your fucking EMERGENT SUPERPOWER LOOKS LIKE.

Keep sperging about their investments in tech and AI, while they fucking eat raw bats and shit.

 

[Comicsgeist]

it’s a combination of things:
1. their insistence on ‘wet markets’ where pretty much anything gets caged next to other stuff, slaughtered and eaten.
2. people living in close contact with pigs and waterfowl
3. High density /poor husbandry of animals
4. High density population
5. Migratory routes for waterfowl.

a lot of things like flu swirl about in pigs and waterfowl. When they cross over into humans you have the potential to create novel strains we have no immunity to. Wet markets/eating all sorts of random shit from the wild = exposure to all sorts of pathogens. very high population density of humans is also a bad idea.

crows mainly carry stuff like west Nile. Ducks and waterfowl and chickens are your bird reservoir for flu and coronoviruses. Pigs as well harbour all sorts of stuff. Actually MOST animals do, and occasionally it jumps to humans. Keeping hundreds of thousands of pigs in awful conditions is a reviled for disaster, as is high density duck/chicken rearing in areas where there are a lot of migratory birds.

the likelihood is that this will circulate, kill a few hundred, and then fizzle out. But make no mistake, one of these emergent viruses (probably flu, but maybe a respiratory something like a novel coronavirus) will emerge, spread and rival or exceed the 1917 flu pandemic. It’s just how nature works.

Minor Power-level:

I've had several Chink flatmates and every time I caught a minor sniffle I'd be offered packs of antibiotics that they brought back from China on holidays.
If the stew of filth they live in wasn't bad enough, the Chinese insistance on handing out antibiotics like sweeties with little or no control will surely lead to the emergence of a virus that's not just deadly but utterly antibiotic resistant.

Well at least we know were the solution to the climate crisis will come from. You can expect a severe drop in carbon emissions when those careless fucks spread something that wipes out most of the human race....

 

[Rei is shit]

Death toll at 17 now, over 500 confirmed cases.

China's Wuhan shuts down transport as global alarm mounts over virus spread

Deaths from China's new flu-like virus rose to 17 on Wednesday, with more than 540 cases confirmed, leading the city at the center of the outbreak to close transportation networks and urge citizens not to leave as fears rose of the contagion spreading.

www.reuters.com

- emu kidneys (wtf?)

This is China thinking ahead to how they'll win the great emu war 2.0 when Australia is a formal colony.

Minor Power-level:

I've had several Chink flatmates and every time I caught a minor sniffle I'd be offered packs of antibiotics that they brought back from China on holidays.
If the stew of filth they live in wasn't bad enough, the Chinese insistance on handing out antibiotics like sweeties with little or no control will surely lead to the emergence of a virus that's not just deadly but utterly antibiotic resistant.

Well at least we know were the solution to the climate crisis will come from. You can expect a severe drop in carbon emissions when those careless fucks spread something that wipes out most of the human race....

Antibiotics do nothing to viruses. But we will get some kind of super-bacteria from china eventually.

 

[Forever Sunrise]

Hey Null, this is what your fucking EMERGENT SUPERPOWER LOOKS LIKE.

Keep sperging about their investments in tech and AI, while they fucking eat raw bats and shit.

It's amazing to me that anyone can take their tech investments seriously when they have a positively Iranian-level habit of making big claims and then failing to deliver. Their tech industry is decent, but they're seriously hampered by the structure of their education system and the simple fact that there's no incentive to ever be honest.

A good example was something I read once about a US investor who tried for years to work with Chinese companies to create hardware. The first prototypes would always be of high quality and meet industrial standards. But every single batch after that would be sub-standard, shoddy, or outright faked. They were just stringing the investor along until he gave them the money for a full production run, then walking away with it.

As the guy said himself; if they'd actually stuck with the deal, they'd have made tens of millions. Instead, they were happy to walk away with the million or so he gave them as a startup fund. They'll always, always, always lie to you if it'll get them some money right now. More money in the future doesn't matter. Short term gain is GOD.

 

[Water Underground]

Hey Null, this is what your fucking EMERGENT SUPERPOWER LOOKS LIKE.

Keep sperging about their investments in tech and AI, while they fucking eat raw bats and shit.

I'd still be a bit wary on their Scramble to Africa boogaloo. You don't need to worry about the anthill when it's in your backyard, you do worry when they get into the shoddy part of the house you're trying to fix up and start getting into the food.

 

[Questionable Ceviche]

Total bullshit that the Chinese government isn't covering up the extent of infections. There's been a huge swine flu outbreak going on there for the better part of a year that the government totally bungled. Nothing is different, nothing is new.

Local officials provided strong disincentives for reporting the disease in order to make their numbers for Bejing look better. Farmers weren't being properly compensated for culling sick animals, so they rushed to sell them as soon as possible or illegally dumped them to get rid of them. Criminal rings were intentionally spreading the virus to force farmers to illegally sell infected swine for super cheap. Every policy that was implemented furthered the spread of the virus instead of impeding it.

It is incredibly naieve to think that these same people are properly responding to this new virus when they basically set all of the country's pigs on fire a few months before.

Opinion | Why Did One-Quarter of the World’s Pigs Die in a Year?

Swine fever devastated China’s stock because with unsound governance, even sound regulations have perverse effects.

www.nytimes.com

On a recent visit to my hometown by the Yangtze River in eastern China, relatives welcomed me, as ever, with a feast: steamed perch and hairy crab, deep-fried river shrimp — and braised pork. My 84-year-old father made sure to serve pork, even though it was now twice as expensive as the year before. This time, he didn’t get the meat from my brother, who until this fall had been the village’s largest pork producer: All 150 pigs on my brother’s farm had either died or been culled because of African swine fever.

The disease was first reported in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, in early August 2018. By the end of August 2019, the entire pig population of China had dropped by about 40 percent. China accounted for more than half of the global pig population in 2018, and the epidemic there alone has killed nearly one-quarter of all the world’s pigs.

By late September, the disease had cost economic losses of one trillion yuan (about $141 billion), according to Li Defa, dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing. Qiu Huaji, a leading Chinese expert on porcine infectious diseases, has said that African swine fever has been no less devastating “than a war” — in terms of “its effects on the national interest and people’s livelihoods and its political, economic and social impact.”

“We lost hundreds of thousands of yuan,” my sister-in-law bemoaned, several tens of thousands of dollars. “Haven’t you been compensated by the government for the dead pigs?” I asked. “Only 100 yuan per head,” less than $15, she said, “That didn’t help.”

She wasn’t being entirely forthright. The government said that it would hand out 1,200 yuan (about $170) per animal culled, but her calculation was based on the total number of pigs she and my brother lost to swine fever. For a time, the two of them tried to furtively bury the dead pigs, hoping they might be able to quickly sell off the ones that were still alive, sick or not.

My brother’s and his wife’s losses, as well as their attempts to prevent them, are emblematic of what the epidemic has brought out across China. A crisis that might have been manageable quickly became a small catastrophe because of how the Chinese state operates.

Much like severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, exposed the shortcomings of China’s public health system when it became an epidemic in 2002–3, swine fever today exposes the weaknesses of the country’s animal-disease prevention and control. But it also reveals something much more fundamental: notably, the perverse effects that even sound regulations can have when they are deployed within a system of governance as unsound as China’s.

According to Yu Kangzhen, a deputy minister of agriculture, the localities that struggled to control the spread of African swine fever were also those that lacked staff, funding or other resources in animal-epidemic prevention. Yet that alone cannot explain the breadth of the epidemic or the speed with which it swept across China.
Back in 2007, Russia was also hit by an outbreak of swine fever, first in the southern Caucasus region. And yet though it, too — like China today — had in place only a flawed system for monitoring and reporting animal diseases, African swine fever took about a decade to reach eastern Siberia, some 3,500 miles away from the outbreak’s source. In China, the disease spread throughout most of the country in just over six months.

As bizarre as this may sound, one major reason the disease disseminated as rapidly as it did is because of the Chinese government’s measures to combat pollution.

In 2015, in order to prevent water from being contaminated by animal feces and other waste, the authorities began to heavily regulate — and in some places, ban — livestock breeding in certain water-rich areas in the south. Yet instead of giving industrial pig farmers enough time to upgrade their facilities in compliance with new waste-disposal standards, local governments quickly dismantled pig farms, leading to a major cutback in production in the south.

But pork is China’s favorite meat, and so, fearful of a shortage, in April 2016 the central government mapped out a strategy called “nanzhu beiyang”: “raising pigs in the North for consumption in the South.” Much of the production became concentrated in northern China, and the livestock was then transported long-distance to the south.

Of the 689 million pigs that China produced for slaughter in 2017, 102 million were taken across provinces, according to the agriculture ministry — a practice that posed a major biosecurity risk as soon as the first outbreak of swine fever was identified in Liaoning, in the northeast. (The disease is extremely contagious, and though it doesn’t harm humans, they can spread it.) In fact, some 45 percent of the 87 outbreaks reported by mid-December 2018 involved long-distance transport. Call this problem No. 1.

At that point, the spread of the disease could still have been prevented with accurate and timely reporting. This, presumably, is the reason that China’s Law on Animal Epidemic Prevention prohibits “cover-up, misreporting, late reporting and underreporting” of any animal diseases. Other government regulations stipulate that once an infected pig is identified on a farm, the farm’s entire stock must be culled.
Enter problem No. 2: The central fiscal authorities were called on to cover only part of the compensation to farmers, leaving local governments to shoulder the rest. But by the end of June 2019, China’s local authorities had amassed a total debt of at least 21 trillion yuan (more than $3 trillion), according to the Ministry of Finance — about 23 percent of China’s gross domestic product in 2018. And so even as the authorities in Beijing instructed local governments “to resolutely defend and prevent further spread and dissemination of the disease,” those local governments — given the financial burden they would have to bear to cover any culling of stock — had an incentive to not report the disease.

In Shandong Province, even though there were suspected outbreaks immediately after August 2018 and pig inventories soon dropped significantly, only one outbreak at one farm (involving 17 sick animals) had been reported by February 2019. While some farmers were saying that swine fever was spreading like fire in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, the local authorities did not officially disclose the problem. And when they did respond to farmers’ requests for compensation, the authorities provided amounts that were often much lower than what the central government had stipulated.

As a result, pig farmers themselves had strong disincentives to report suspected cases on their farms. They might quietly dump or randomly bury dead pigs, bypassing official safety measures. There was also panic selling of pigs, with farmers desperately trying to offload their hogs, sick or healthy, at fire-sale prices.
Pig speculators (“chao zhu tuan”) — yes, there is a specific term for them — traveled to various households and villages to collect these pigs and ship them to other localities, enabling the disease to cross administrative borders and disseminate. In northern and central China, some speculators even deliberately tried to spread the disease by using drones to drop contaminated pork products into farms. After causing an outbreak, or at least sparking fears about one, speculators could buy pigs for cheap — then stockpile the animals for a time to create shortages locally and sell them only after the prices had gone back up.

Under such circumstances — problem No. 3 — even the rules and regulations designed to ensure safety only fueled the spread of swine fever. For example, the requirement that slaughtering occur only at appointed abattoirs, a measure that was supposed to prevent sick pigs from being slaughtered illicitly (and, possibly, unsafely), turned those slaughterhouses into transmission hubs: Contaminated hogs came into contact with more animals and more people as they were brought to the facilities.

The government claims that the situation is now “under effective control.” And in light of a serious shortage of pork, it has begun to lure some farmers back into production. Outside my brother’s village, a large pig farm that was slated for demolition has been resurrected after the government showered it with vast amounts of subsidies and low-interest loans.

People who run small farms, like my brother, have not been so lucky. He converted his pig farm to house chicken coops, all at his own expense, and now raises about 400 chickens. It is a far less lucrative business than hog raising, yet no less risky. “What are you going to do if there’s a bird-flu outbreak next year?” I asked him. He didn’t answer and cracked a helpless, fatalistic smile.

Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
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[Oglooger]

Hey Null, this is what your fucking EMERGENT SUPERPOWER LOOKS LIKE.

Keep sperging about their investments in tech and AI, while they fucking eat raw bats and shit.

I thought it was Andrew Anglin that sucked Chink cock

 

[Forever Sunrise]

Pig speculators (“chao zhu tuan”) — yes, there is a specific term for them — traveled to various households and villages to collect these pigs and ship them to other localities, enabling the disease to cross administrative borders and disseminate. In northern and central China, some speculators even deliberately tried to spread the disease by using drones to drop contaminated pork products into farms. After causing an outbreak, or at least sparking fears about one, speculators could buy pigs for cheap — then stockpile the animals for a time to create shortages locally and sell them only after the prices had gone back up.

I think this more than anything else underlines the fundamental difference between China and the Western world, and highlights why they'll never be an equal to the West without another Cultural Revolution. You can't build a superpower on a foundation where everyone always has incentive to shift the blame for everything.

In the West, there are groups that will try and fight responsibility tooth and nail. People like the Oil Companies will argue till they're blue in the face that they're not responsible for environmental damage or climate change. But everybody knows they're just using legal arguments to preserve their businesses. In a way most people accept that. They even expect it. But in China, these kinds of people are genuinely baffled by the concept that they're supposed to be responsible for the wellbeing of the nation, environment, or any other entity larger than themselves. The concept simply does not compute on a fundamental, even biological level. These are the kinds of people that will stay in a sinking ship because somebody higher up the chain told them it was the right thing to do. This isn't even an exaggeration. Asians have drowned in their hundreds by staying aboard sinking vessels because nobody told them to get off. Even as the water rose around their ankles and the doors to the upper decks were clearly open, they let themselves die because it was unthinkable to go against the authority figures that assured them there was no reason to panic and that staying put was the safest thing to do.

Now imagine that mindset in the military. In the coding industry. In every industry. All run by increasingly decrepit men who have a worldview solidly locked in the 1960's. The idea that this system won't implode like a collapsing supergiant at some point in the next few decades is laughable. I just pray to god it doesn't take the West down with it.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

Now The Philippines has a possible case:

Philippines Investigates Potential Coronavirus Case

A 5-year-old boy from China was detected with high fever, throat irritation and cough.

www.benarnews.org

Philippines Investigates Potential Coronavirus Case
Jeoffrey Maitem and Jojo Rinoza
Manila
2020-01-21

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Philippine Health Secretary Francisco Duque III speaks to reporters following a measles outbreak, March 6, 2018.
AFP

Philippine officials on Tuesday reported the country’s likely first case of the new coronavirus, saying a 5-year-old Chinese boy from Wuhan city, where the disease appears to have originated, had shown symptoms and was under strict observation.
The boy, confined at a hospital in central Cebu City, was detected to have fever, throat irritation and cough upon his arrival in the Philippines from Wuhan on Jan. 12, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III told reporters.
Duque said samples were sent to specialists in Australia to identify which coronavirus strain the boy was carrying.
“Samples from the patient were first tested at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and yielded negative results for the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome-related coronavirus or more often referred to as MERS-COV and severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus,” Duque told reporters in Manila.
He said the samples tested positive for non-specific coronavirus, meaning it could be the Wuhan coronavirus or any of the other four existing coronaviruses that can infect humans.
“There are coronaviruses that can cause very mild symptoms. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses ranging from the common cold to more serious infections such as MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. Common signs of coronavirus infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties,” he said.
“In severe cases, it could cause pneumonia, respiratory syndrome, kidney failure, and even death,” Duque said.
The new coronavirus has already claimed the lives of at least six people while more than 200 have been infected internationally, according to news service reports on Tuesday.
If proven to be the Wuhan coronavirus, the boy would be the first case reported in the Philippines. Thailand has detected two cases linked to travelers from China.
As of Tuesday, the boy had a cough, although his condition is stable and his fever broke, according to health officials.
Duque said health workers should be vigilant in dealing with suspected cases, especially if patients had a known history of travel to China.
“I urge travelers with symptoms of respiratory illness, either during or after travel, to seek medical attention immediately,” Duque said. “I also call on our health facilities to enhance standard infection prevention and control practices, especially in our emergency departments.”
WHO efforts
Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the World Health Organization’s representative in the Philippines, said the U.N. agency was working with member states to better understand the new SARS-like disease.
SARS originated in China in 2002 and killed about 775 people, according to health figures. MERS, meanwhile, was identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and killed about 850.
“We need to emphasize that at this point of time there are still a lot of unknown issues. We are not sure of the source of the virus … where it came from … an animal or another source. We believe that there may be human-to-human transmission, however, this is a premature situation,” Abeyasinghe said.
Aside from the boy, three other Chinese tourists – a 21-year-old woman, a 3-year-old girl and a 65-year-old man – were being monitored after exhibiting mild symptoms of respiratory disease, according to provincial health officer Dr. Cornelio Cuachon.
“We collected their specimens for confirmatory tests. Nonetheless, once they go back to China, they will have to get tested in the provincial hospital and be issued a medical clearance,” Cuachon said.
“They do not have a history of travel to Wuhan City, where the mysterious pneumonia started,” he said.

 

[Otterly]

Think I said this on another thread but I’ve worked with China on some big medical research projects and it’s really frustrating for exactly the reasons given above. The culture is of saving face, and you can’t do that when lives are at stake . If something goes wrong you need to look at what, why, how ,when etc, and you cannot do that in a culture that won’t look dispassionately at failure in the way we do.
If something went wrong, the process would be denial, denial, cover up, exposure, more denial, some minion getting absolutely crucified, papering over the cracks, business as normal. Then a year down the line you find out what really happened and suspect the data is fucked.
It’s really disturbing to see it.
I started off being quite idealistic about working across cultures and sometimes it does work really well (I very much enjoy working with Eastern Europe and Russia because damn they are educated and cynical and will do stuff right.) but when you’re trying to apply seriously rigorous clinical process to places where it’s a kleptocracy, corruption exists at every level, or where nobody will take responsibility, or where the answer is always yes but nothing gets done, it’s infuriating, and in my line of work, dangerous.
This is a country where in multiple factories baby milk got cut with melamine to make it look like it had the correct protein levels. A lot of babies died or were injured (melamine fucks your kidneys) so that someone could make a few quid. So god alone knows what shortcuts are made in drug manufacturing. God alone knows how many cases of disease go unreported because some minor regional party official doesn’t want to look bad.
It’s not a system with honesty and accountability built in. While the West has corruption, it’s not endemic like that. A system can take some corruption. Beyond a certain point such corruption kills the host.

 

[MagneticTowels]

Is it possible the Chinese Coronavirus is a foreign bioweapon like anthrax?

 

[Sissy Galvez]

Is it possible the Chinese Coronavirus is a foreign bioweapon like anthrax?

No, they’re just disgusting and filthy people. It originated from an illegal seafood market.

The Chinese don’t understand concepts like proper hygiene or food handling. They do whatever they want according to their stupid beliefs and superstitions.

 

[Questionable Ceviche]

Think I said this on another thread but I’ve worked with China on some big medical research projects and it’s really frustrating for exactly the reasons given above. The culture is of saving face, and you can’t do that when lives are at stake . If something goes wrong you need to look at what, why, how ,when etc, and you cannot do that in a culture that won’t look dispassionately at failure in the way we do.
If something went wrong, the process would be denial, denial, cover up, exposure, more denial, some minion getting absolutely crucified, papering over the cracks, business as normal. Then a year down the line you find out what really happened and suspect the data is fucked.
It’s really disturbing to see it.
I started off being quite idealistic about working across cultures and sometimes it does work really well (I very much enjoy working with Eastern Europe and Russia because damn they are educated and cynical and will do stuff right.) but when you’re trying to apply seriously rigorous clinical process to places where it’s a kleptocracy, corruption exists at every level, or where nobody will take responsibility, or where the answer is always yes but nothing gets done, it’s infuriating, and in my line of work, dangerous.
This is a country where in multiple factories baby tard cum got cut with melamine to make it look like it had the correct protein levels. A lot of babies died or were injured (melamine fucks your kidneys) so that someone could make a few quid. So god alone knows what shortcuts are made in drug manufacturing. God alone knows how many cases of disease go unreported because some minor regional party official doesn’t want to look bad.
It’s not a system with honesty and accountability built in. While the West has corruption, it’s not endemic like that. A system can take some corruption. Beyond a certain point such corruption kills the host.

The great leap forward and cultural revolution cultivated the most extreme manifestation of FYGM possible. People had to do anything in order to survive. "Anything" in this context means just that. There were too many people and not enough resources, and this environment forced people to bribe, lie, and cheat in order to make it. The good and charitable weren't so fortunate. There are accounts of people mudering their neighbors' female children to eat them, lest they starve to death. The descendents of these people are now the populace of modern China. They inherited these attitudes from their parents and grandparents. The Chinese sense of civility and critical thought was completely destroyed during this time period, and the current government is actively stamping out regrowth. It is fundamentally, absolutely corrupt.

It is laughable to me that anyone could take the infection and mortality numbers from the Chinese government seriously. They do not give a single shit how many of their own citizens die, much less non-Chinese people in other counties. It's embarassing, so they obfuscate as much as possible with consequences be damned.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

I thought it was Andrew Anglin that sucked Chink cock

Jersh got booty blasted in the Embassy attack/Sulemani thread while shit was still moving fast and started going on about China