By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Attorney-General of Missouri has issued proceedings for damages against the “People’s Republic” of China, the Chinese Communist Party, the Wuhan Public Health Commission and numerous other entities for their “deceit” in covering up the outbreak and wilfully allowing it to spread worldwide when it could have been halted at source.
Missouri is the first State to sue China.
The key factual allegations are that in the critical weeks between December 2019 and January 23, 2020, the Chinese Government engaged in misrepresentations, concealment, and retaliation to conceal the gravity of the outbreak from the rest of the world, by –
1. Denying the risk of human-to-human transmission. The first known case of human-to-human transmission occurred in early December [actually November 17]. By late December, Chinese health officials had plenty of evidence of human-to-human transmission. On December 30, Chinese doctors at Wuhan hospitals posted on social media that they were observing human-to-human transmission. Until January 20, Chinese officials continued to insist that there was no evidence of human transmission, denying solid evidence to the contrary. Additionally, Chinese officials failed to report the potential for human-to-human transmission to the World Health Organization for weeks.
2. Silencing whistleblowers. From January 1-3, 2020, Chinese officials arrested eight doctors and forcibly silenced them as “rumor-mongers”—an action that was broadcast on state media, likely to deter others from speaking out. One doctor at a Wuhan emergency room was disciplined when she told her staff to wear masks when dealing with patients, fearing human-to-human transmission. Additionally, there were reports of journalists covering the outbreak who disappeared.
3. Failing to contain the outbreak. While denying human-to-human transmission, Chinese officials took little to no steps to contain the outbreak. By January 13, the Chinese government was aware of spread to Thailand. For the next week, they began treating COVID-19 as a serious and contagious virus without advising the public. During that time, millions of people traveled through Wuhan, and many thousands were infected, making a worldwide outbreak almost inevitable. A potluck event for 40,000 people went forward in Wuhan on January 16. The Chinese government took no serious steps to contain the outbreak until January 23, when it was far too late.
4. Hoarding personal protective equipment. Reports indicate that Chinese officials, while they were concealing the outbreak, began hoarding quality personal protective equipment while permitting only defective PPE to be exported to the rest of the world. This hoarding endangered the lives of health care workers and first responders in other countries.
Shills for China in the largely Communist academic community in the United States have fallen over themselves to maintain that the lawsuit should be dismissed on the ground that China is a “sovereign state” and is accordingly entitled to sovereign immunity from civil suit or criminal prosecution under the Federal Sovereign Immunity Act (28 U.S. Code 1604 et seq.). The various Marxist Professors who have rushed to China’s defense on this procedural ground (rather than on any substantive ground) have failed to notice the subtleties of Attorney-General Smith’s statement of claim.
First, it is a claim for pecuniary damages. Though the Act, at §1604, grants foreign states immunity from the jurisdiction of the United States courts, at §1605 there is a relevant exception:
“A foreign state shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of courts of the United States or of the States in any case (5) … in which monetary damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property, occurring in the United States and caused by the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any official or employee of that foreign state while acting within the scope of his office or employment; except that this paragraph shall not apply to … any claim based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function regardless of whether the discretion be abused …”.
Were the Chinese exercising a “discretionary function” in failing to notify the world timeously? No, they were not. The International Health Regulations (2005) are an instrument of international law legally binding upon signatory states, which include Communist China as well as the United States. Article 6 (Notifications) says –
“… Each State Party shall notify WHO, by the most efficient means of communication available, by way of the national IHR focal point, and within 24 hours of assessment of public health information, of all events which may constitute a public health emergency of international concern within its territory … Following a notification, a State Party shall continue to communicate to WHO timely, accurate and sufficiently detailed public health information available to it on the notified event, where possible including case definitions, laboratory results, source and type of the risk, number of cases and deaths, conditions affecting the spread of the disease and the health measures emploiyed; and report, when necessary, the difficulties faced and support needed in responding to the potential public health emergency of international concern.”
China was bound by, but did not comply with, Article 6, in that, inter alia –
a) it did not report the outbreak as soon as it was aware of a new and dangerous pathogen;
b) it falsely stated that person-to-person transmission had not been evidenced long after internal documents prove it knew the infection was thus transmissible;
c) it has continued to fail to comply with the obligation to report cases and deaths accurately (it is currently concealing outbreaks in Heiliongjiang province and in Peking, and yet has not reported any deaths for more than a week);
d) it ordered all original data samples to be destroyed, and swore all with knowledge of the original outbreak to secrecy (again, the original documents of the regime establish this fact);
e) it has not allowed international virologists access to the original data or samples, greatly hindering their efforts to find vaccines and antibody tests;
f) it delayed a WHO mission to Wuhan, the source of the outbreak, for approximately 10 days while evidence both at the Wuhan P4 laboratory that may have been the source of the outbreak and at the Huanan Seafood Market that the Chinese say was its source was destroyed.
There have been 250 deaths from the Chinese virus in Missouri. Since the facts establish that the “People’s Republic” of China is not entitled to sovereign immunity, the courts will not find it easy to dismiss the Attorney-General’s action, even though they will no doubt be besieged by amicus curiae briefs from Communist professors.
There is a further subtlety. The second defendant in the action is the Chinese Communist Party. Communist professors are already parroting the line that “the Chinese Communist Party is the State” (I quote from a legal paper by one such Professor in the U.S.). But it isn’t. Under the Chinese “constitution”, such as it is, China is governed by the Council of State. De facto, of course, the Chinese Communist Party wholly controls the Council of State, just as it wholly controls the World Death Organization, to which it has just increased its funding to compensate, in part, for the withdrawal of funding by the United States. However, de jure the Chinese Communist Party is just one of many political parties, and it is not coextensive with the State. Therefore, the Party is not entitled to sovereign immunity in any event.
In the event that the Attorney-General’s action in tort fails, he may like to consider a criminal prosecution. Here, the relevant international law is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to which Statute the United States is a signatory, though it has not yet ratified the Statute. But that does not stop him from collaborating with Canada, say, where there have also been deaths, and which is a State Party to the Statute.
Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
Of the various “crimes against humanity” defined in the Statute, two are relevant. First, extermination. The Chinese Communist Party, at municipal, provincial and national level knew full well that its virus was a killer, and yet it failed to notify the international community as international law as well as natural law required. Instead, acting in conspiracy with the WDO [I shall supply the evidence in a subsequent article], it delayed reporting the outbreak and then lied – and continues to lie – about it.
Secondly, disappearance of persons. Some seven doctors are known to have disappeared. Interestingly, a graduate student at the Wuhan lab has also been disappeared. She was splashed with the contents of a coronavirus-infected bat blood and urine when a fail-safe vaporizer failed to detonate upon breach of containment. Her name still appears on the laboratory’s website, but her photo, thesis and bio have been unpersoned. The intelligence community continues to investigate this and numerous other disappearances. The lab, which has always had a military wing, has now been placed under the direction of the “People’s Liberation” Army-Navy.
China is not going to get away with its systematic and continuing criminality. Even though it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, any State Party can call for it to be prosecuted.
Sweden has closed the “Confucius institutes” at its universities, which were in reality front groups ensuring that the universities in question were Communist. Britain, heavily in hock to China, from which it has borrowed hundreds of billions, will cravenly do nothing. Even the European tyranny-by-clerk has begun to look on China with less enthusiasm than before.
Even if it proves impossible to bring China to book via the courts, there is a simpler remedy available. For decades, China has been pursuing “debt-trap diplomacy”, particularly in Africa, from which it extracts on preferential terms vast quantities of the raw materials that its economy desperately needs.
In Britain, debt-trap diplomacy was the sole reason why China was allowed to build our latest nuclear power station, even though Britain has one of the largest nuclear industries in the world; and it was the sole reason why Huawei, which directly reports to the Chinese Communist Party, was allowed to build the UK’s 5G network. Well, it is time for the Augustan solution. The Roman Emperor Augustus, faced with the bankruptcy of the Empire, issued a decree canceling all public and private debt. This action led to 400 years of prosperity and imperial bling.
Chancellor Erhard of Germany did something similar after the Second World War. One spring weekend in 1948, when the Allied occupying powers were out shooting in the woods, he called in and canceled the German currency, replacing it with the Deutsche Mark, and every citizen was given 50 marks. This action led to the rapid economic regrowth of Germany, which only began to falter when the ridiculous and crippling Energiewende was introduced. When General Clay, the U.S. commander of the Allied occupying forces, visited Erhard on the Monday morning, he said: “Sir, my advisers tell me you’re making a terrible mistake.” “Don’t worry, General,” said Erhard, smiling. “Mine tell me the same.”
China should now be haled before the International Criminal Court. If the Communists are found guilty of extermination and disappearance of persons, the Court should specify the reparations that the Communist Party shall pay to each nation that has lost lives as a result of China’s crimes against humanity. If – as is likely – China simply refuses to pay, her ambassadors should be expelled from all nations, all trade with China should cease, and all nations owing debt to China should repudiate that debt and any interest thereupon in full.
So to today’s charts. Now that all nations tracked here have gotten the pandemic under control, so that the growth rate is below 5% daily just about everywhere, from tomorrow I shall no longer publish the benchmark test for cumulative cases unless it shows a resurgence in rapid exponential transmission. However, I shall continue to publish the benchmark test for deaths until it, too, shows a reduction to no more than a daily 5% compound growth rate in all countries, equivalent to a doubling of deaths every two weeks.
Fig. 1. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from March 28 to April 23, 2020.
Fig. 2. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative COVID-19 deaths for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from April 4 to April 23, 2020.
Ø High-quality images of the graphs are here.
Ø The text of the claim against China by the Attorney-General of Missouri is here.
Chinese Media Threatens Lawsuits Against U.S. For AIDS Deaths
An especially unhinged editorial from China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday threatened to sue the United States, for supposedly creating AIDS in the 1980s, in retaliation for the state of Missouri filing a lawsuit against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for unleashing the Wuhan coronavirus.
https://abc14news.com/2020/04/23/chinese-media-threatens-lawsuits-against-u-s-for-aids-deaths/
It seems to me that China has myriad ways of counter-attacking against Missouri and anyone else who pursues them in countries that have rule of law: They can just bring on any number of high-profile cases in China, which does not have rule of law. The cases can be as absurd as they like – the court process and the publicity will be fully controlled by them from beginning to end. They have already blamed the American military for deliberately infecting them with the Wuhan virus. There is absolutely nothing that is off limits to Xi Jinping, no matter how absurd.
Naturally, I don’t suggest for a moment that America and the west should cave in to any of China’s bullying tactics. On the contrary, I am well aware that appeasement never ever works (it’s a bit like “once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane”). Even in Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement – you can see that in world history, every attempt to avoid war by making concessions to a bully has led to war. America and the west need to stand up to China and to make it pay a high price for every attempt at bullying. Such efforts may come at an apparent high price to the west, but it is undoubtedly the case that they will pay a much higher price if they do not. With one exception, western politicians do not appear to understand this.
“China should now be haled before the International Criminal Court”
That will be an interesting avenue. Here is John Bolton, US national Security Adviser, 2018:
“Today, on the eve of September 11th, I want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the president of the United States. The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.
We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC.
We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”
China has also not joined the ICC.
Pompeo continues this position as of April 2019:
“Although Pompeo did not signal a particular policy response during his remarks following the decision, he did call it ‘a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body.’
Pompeo went on to reiterate, ‘[t]he United States is not a party to the ICC, and we will take all necessary measures to protect our citizens from this renegade, unlawful, so-called court. This is yet another reminder of what happens when multilateral bodies lack oversight and responsible leadership and become instead a vehicle for political vendettas. The ICC today stumbled into a sorry affirmation of every denunciation made by its harshest critics over the last three decades.'”
https://tinyurl.com/rdwphwc
davidmhoffer below has a much more ultimately effective approach:
“The answer to China is not ICC prosecution. The answer is diplomatic and economic isolation . . . “
Unsurprisingly, not a word from Mr Stokes about whether China has perpetrated crimes against humanity. If the Chinese Communist Party is guilty of such crimes, then it is perfectly possible for the Western democracies to set up a new Nuremberg to hear the evidence. Even then, the definitions of crimes against humanity in the Rome Statute will be of persuasive authority.
“Unsurprisingly, not a word from Mr Stokes about whether China has perpetrated crimes against humanity.”
Well, fpr perspective, I’ll quote a tweet from President Trump, March 27th
“Just finished a very good conversation with President Xi of China. Discussed in great detail the CoronaVirus that is ravaging large parts of our Planet. China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!”
Since you asked, yes, I would have been more critical.
I see Mr. Stokes, this tweet clearly changes the facts. All that evidence that China lied can now simply be dismissed out of hand on the basis of one out of context tweet.
Who pays you to write this sh*t?
“I see Mr. Stokes, this tweet clearly changes the facts”
It is quite incongruous with the claim that “China has perpetrated crimes against humanity”. The President of the United States would not write in such a way about an international criminal.
It was just another Lie, by a lying head of state, this to time directly to the President of the United States of America.
Dr. Stokes:
Neither have you as far as I can tell. I can assume you and Trump are agreed on Xi then?
Dave:
Some folks don’t need to be paid, they just do it on their own. Even when the evidence suggests they’re intellectually two steps behind him. I think it’s TDS, but then I give them the benefit of the doubt.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/07/coronavirus-blowback-trump-to-withhold-funds-from-the-china-centric-un-who/#comment-2958525
Nick Stokes;
It is quite incongruous with the claim that “China has perpetrated crimes against humanity”. The President of the United States would not write in such a way about an international criminal.
The POTUS is in the middle of fighting a pandemic and has to walk a thin line between condemning China and working with China due to all the supply chains that run through China as well as accessing all the clinical data that China has. Beyond your out of context single tweet, POTUS has said multiple times that he’s very unhappy with China.
As I said in another comment, it would be dangerous for any country to go after China in a big way right now, retaliation could include being cut off from critical medications and other supplies. When the pandemic is over and countries have been able to secure alternate supply chains, all that changes.
But you know all that. Obviously you care more about scoring political points than you do about adding any value to the discussion.
sycomputing;
Some folks don’t need to be paid, they just do it on their own.
Every thread Nick jumps into, across a wide range of topics, he appears as one of the first few comments, and has at his finger tips quotes and data, impeccably referenced and linked to, at his finger tips. They invariably require some research or thought to expose for the half truths they invariably are. But one must ask, how does a single individual have so much troll bait ready at hand the moment a thread on nearly any topic is published? That implies active research on all those topics in advance that is ready to go.
Which makes Nick either a crank with nothing else to do with his life, or a paid troll with resources behind him. He denies being paid, I don’t believe him.
David:
Based upon a continual stream of confirming evidence from around the world, TDS appears to be an extremely powerful number of common sense.
But just to be fair to Dr. Stokes, I’ve never seen him deny being paid. At least if that were true one could understand his effort.
Hey Nick,
Well, fpr perspective, I’ll quote a tweet from President Trump, March 27th
Of course he did so. Hitler was also treated for some time as a serious leader. Political opinions can change though. Politics is not based on unchanged dogmas but on dynamic situation. That’s why we’ve got cynical leaders – to make such decisions and u-turns.
Not sure how viable is this legal avenue. But what we can do without any dependency on international or local courts is untangle ourselves from economical reliance on China. This ‘globalisation’ business is going too far – we cannot even produce johnny gowns ourselves or paracetamol and have to import it from foreign (and sometimes hostile) countries. Yes, we will have to pay bit more for some goods. But loosing economical – and subsequently political – independence has much greater cost.
“Yes, we will have to pay bit more for some goods.”
I would happily pay more for a product made in my own country. Especially now.
American companies ought to be advertising that their products are made in America, if that is indeed the case. If it’s not, they should change their supplier, or they shouldn’t expect any business from me.
Trump has an MO for dealing with leaders of bad countries. Think Kim in North Korea and Putin in Russia….Trump massages the leaders with nice words even as he turns up the heat with substantive moves: tariffs, travel restrictions, economic sanctions on individuals, troop and ship movements, dropping out of ineffectual treaties, and so on. This has worked, for the most part….better than the Obama apology tour or George W’s quick resort to firing weapons of war.
What was that about, “Talk softly and carry a big stick…”?
Once again, Nick evades the topic and tries to use his hatred of President Trump as a cover.
What Trump may or may not have said about the current dictator of China isn’t relevant to the conversation?
Will Nick go for the trifecta if ineffectiveness?
The pre-requisites for Nuremberg trials were WINNING A WORLD WAR against the nation in question, being able to physically apprehend those accused of wrong doing and having the means to punish them if found guilty.
None of those conditions currently exist in the case of China and become less likely with each day. To make such facile suggesting shows a complete disconnection from the political reality of today’s world.
Well since CofB has still to explain what part of his anatomy was the origin of this arbitrary 5% threshold and why we should be determining policy from a cumulative total of active cases, cured patients and dead ones when confinement is aimed at controlling the number of active infections requiring hospital treatment, it will be a relief that he stops wasting our time with his amateurish data processing.
Even Mickey Mann can do better than this, though he does seem to share Mann’s hubris, severe lack of awareness of his own limitations and arrogant disregard for technical criticism of his work.
By the time this plate half cooked pasta shows anything, the rest of the world will have worked it out long ago.
Anyone interested in keeping an eye on the effects of relaxation in EU countries may want to look at the daily change in reported cases. With all the caveats about these data being influenced by changes in testing methods or test availability they do seem to be the best rough guide which has a usefully rapid response time and have been fairly consistent in Italy and Spain.
Spain is showing the beginnings of strong up tick, Italy rather surprisingly does not seem to have altered noticeably though the recent gentle decline seems to be more level now.
Yes, it will be interesting to see which way the Spanish figures will go. As far as I can work out, the only restriction they have actually lifted to date is allowing manufacturing and construction workers back to their jobs. If the last 4 days of increasing daily new cases really do represent the start of a strong uptick, it will be back to the drawing board to get any idea of when the world can get back to work.
Nick Stokes,
Are you now or have you ever been paid by any China agent, company, or representative?
No. I have been quoting President Trump’s enthusiastic statements and tweets about China. That doesn’t mean I endorse them.
I guess Nick doesn’t understand diplomatic speech. He apparently takes everything Trump says seriously. If Trump says Xi is a very good friend, Nick thinks that means Trump and Xi are very good friends.
No it’s just a Stokes troll because he is a stupid old retired prat with more time on his hands and no life.
Bringing up irrelevant quotes in an effort to defect any and all discussions regarding the crimes committed by China causes one to doubt your claims.
What a completely stupid question JMac. Pointing out the US has refused to have anything to do with ICC and so has China makes it a pretty stupid suggestion that it could be use by the US to attack China.
Pointing that out does not make anyone “an agent of China”.
Nick Stokes had no problem answering my straight forward question, Greg. It was prompted not by one Stokes comment, as you attempt to narrowly define, but by many. In error, you jump to false conclusions, greg, and then compound your mental dereliction with personal attacks. By your words and actions, we know you….
While the article starts off talking about the state of Missouri, the gist of the argument is about what the whole world can do regarding China.
Last time I checked, the US wasn’t the world.
When it comes to stupid comments, you need to work harder.
Yes Nick, neither party agreeing to be bound by the rules under which one party is suing the other might be a problem
No doubt other means will be found to pursue this claim, which might include trade but then the other party can retaliate with calling in its debts.
We have truly got into bed with a state not friendly to the west and it is difficult to see how it ends.
I can perhaps see a grubby deal -probably not endorsed by Trump-whereby in crude terms the climate hierarchy will accept a Chinese climate deal on their emissions and building power stations, in return that any notions of their being held responsible for the pandemic is quietly shelved
tonyb
Without being too cynical Tony, I think that there will be moves to stricter international agreements on controlling stupidly dangerous gain of function research under the pretense that it is going help us protect ourselves from threats which would not exist if we did not keep creating them.
Since the US has realised the UN climate scam for what it is, I see no advantage in trading emissions for a non pursuance of COVID liability. That’s lose lose for USA.
“Yes Nick, neither party agreeing to be bound by the rules under which one party is suing the other might be a problem”
There are lots of ways of getting at the Chinese leadership. I understand Britain has banned all the Chinese “Confucius Institutes” at all the universities in Britain. The U.S. should do the same. The Confucius Institutes are influence peddlers for the Chinese position and they facilitate the theft of intellectual property.
The U.S. should send all Chinese students home.
That will be a good start. MUCH more to come. Next: Supply chain relocation. China’s leaders will love that.
Let them call in their debts and tell them that you are not paying them until they pay reparation.
In fact unless you pay it quick we will just call the debts cancelled.
If one state is followed by more states and then more countries China could find itself being sued by just about the whole world except NK and Cuba.
Once again Nick seeks to refute an argument by ignoring it and bringing up something utterly irrelevant.
1) Lord Monckton is not a US citizen, so Mr. Bolton’s comments aren’t relevant.
2) This can be done without the ICC, and indeed, by leaving that corrupt organization out of the loop, the process will go more smoothly.
The ICC is powerless to extract reparations. It will be up to each country negatively impacted by the criminal actions of the CCP to enact tariffs. Those tariffs can be used to collect money to repay some of the monetary damages due to negligent behavior in creating this virus, failing to secure the virus, failing to quarantine the area when it was discovered, and failing to notify the rest of the world vital information regarding the pathology of the virus.
China deserves to become a pariah in the International Community.
International trade requires trust. Trade involves dependency.
Who thinks anyone should be dependent on those they don’t trust?
Bill Gates should be suing China for not delivering a lethal virus as agreed, meaning that instead they had to hype the common cold.
Since when did we have reliable figures for either cases or deaths? Everyone know that there is no reliable test, and that deaths everywhere are being put down to covid19. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says
Very true. The Chinese numbers are too low and the USA is inflating their death count so what do we base decisions on? Bad data? Take an average of the two and say “Close Enough For Rock & Roll”?
So little good data and so many decisions based on bad data. Sigh.
“So little good data and so many decisions based on bad data.”
No, the initial decisions were not based on “bad” data, they were based on “no” data. The first virus models are educated guesses since there was no information known about the virus other than it was highly infectious and it was deadly. Making out like there was good data available, but mistakes were made and bad data was used is just not the case. No model predicted the course of events perfectly, so expecting perfection from the start is unrealistic.
Yes, we have a lot more information about the Wuhan virus today, but we didn’t have any of that when it first appeared. Decisions had to be made based on the best guess.
I didn’t “expect perfection from the start”. I never said that.
I am not “making out like there was good data available”. I never said that.
I did say “The Chinese numbers are too low and the USA is inflating their death count”. I stand by that statement.
“I didn’t “expect perfection from the start”. I never said that.
I am not “making out like there was good data available”. I never said that.”
Ok, I stand corrected.
In response to Ms McKenzie, the Office for National Statistics in the UK has found that five-sixths of those listed in the UK as deaths associated with the Chinese virus are deaths arising directly from it: i.e., they are people who would not have died as soon as they did were it not for the infection.
However, the ONS also points out that more than nine-tenths of those who died had comorbidities. The impact of the virus on healthy people, particularly if they are under 50, is small.
Here is a more nuanced view from the always interesting Peter Hitchens with lots of stats and that properly reflects uncertainties.
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
Perhaps Mr Monckton could link to the ONS data that with such certainty quotes the five sixths figure?
I fully concur with his view that the UK needs to escape the clutches of China and should never have contemplated the Huwaei deal
tonyb
“the Huwaei deal”
Britain should cancel all the Huwaei deal with China. This is the perfect opportunity. Why would British politicians want the Chinese leadership listening in on all their nation’s communications, anyway?
Here is another way to express your unhappiness with the Chinese leadership. Although I hear some British politicians are still defending Huwaei. Maybe some British polticians are not that unhappy with the Chinese leadership. Maybe they don’t mind it when their nation is attacked by a virus out of Wuhan China. Or maybe they are getting something in return for their attitude.
Nor should they have accepted China be involved in the construction of Hinkley Point C .
Barbara, paranoia isn’t pretty.
Speaking of suing, Gates should probably sue you and those like you for libel.
Considering how China tried to cover up, would that suggest that the virus did escape from the lab???
Whoever knows ain’t telling.
Really we have better things to do that speculate in the absence of any real data. Was AIDS created artificially, SARS? Bird Flu??
Heck it doesn’t matter. What matters is that high density urban globalised society is vulnerable to global pandemics just as sexually liberated society is vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases.
Viruses mutate and hop species.
With or without assistance.Occasionally one hits the sweet spot between mortality and transmissability and we get sick and die.
Leo Smith is not correct in suggesting we should not be interested in trying to find the true origin of the Chinese virus. The more we know about its origin, the better the chance of finding a cure. For instance, the virus, at four points in its S protein, has fragments of the GP41 protein that is the primary mechanism by which HIV enters the human cell. It would be of great assistance to virologists to know whether those GP41 intrusions arose naturally or were spliced in.
I had originally thought that a medication on which I have worked would not be a suitable treatment for the Chinese virus. However, now that it seems there is GP41 code in the virus’ genome, it becomes important to know whether the code was spliced in or arose naturally.
You misread me Chris, yes in due course a cure would be nice, but do you seriously consider that right now a cure is anywhere near? No. The important thing now politically is to get the death rate down and the disease under control.
And that means lockdown first then testing and tracing.
AIDS could have been the result of a vaccination program in Africa; whether that occurred on our universe in not relevant for evaluating risks.
That did nothing to make people less extatic and in love with vaccines.
AIDs could also have been the results of space aliens coming to earth for the easy women.
Really, what inquiry was done to investigate that hypothesis?
Bingo!
The virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It was produced by an acclaimed virologist Shi Zhangli. She has been working on these viruses since 2004. And she knows the COV19 virus came from her lab, because she spent years creating it. Her intern Huang Yanling was the most likely patient 0 that got infected, spread the virus in the community, and was “disappeared”. Everything you need to know to understand this is online because it was never meant to be a secret. It was meant to be a way to produce pandemic virus strains in the lab, so they could be studied and understood. That way if they occurred naturally, we would know how to defend ourselves from them. That assumes you can control, a contagious, invisible threat.
They were unable to do that for unknown reasons. But our state department was worried enough about their lax security, that they sent a unrequested memo about it years before this virus got out.
The researcher:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/
The work:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
The only known parent virus to COV19 RatG13 lives in WIV lab:
The analysis of COV19 is exactly what you would expect from the original and the work they did on it:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v2.full.pdf
So they spent 15 years finding this virus and modifying it through Gain of Function experiments to produce a virus that originally was optimized to penetrate and reproduce in bat cells, to transition to using human cells.
There is a reason they call this a Novel virus. It has never circulated in humans before. Because it never had that capability. Now it does. And it does because it was created in the WIV. The person who did this knows that. The first thing she thought of when she heard of the outbreak was:
She knew it would never happen by a natural occurrence in Wuhan! That would never happen, and nobody knows it more than she does. Because she knows all the things that would have to come together for that to happen. They had the original, the tools and methods to modify it, and the expertise to do exactly that.
They have scrubbed the lab clean of COV19. But they can’t scrub the history of what led to its development and the destruction of its release.
Russ R.’s information accords with mine. Even before the Wuhan Institute of Virology was built (originally designed by French architects), and even before Mr Obama subsidized it, researchers now there were writing papers on their attempts to make bat coronaviridae more readily transmissible to humans so that they could work on vaccines.
One more issue that has to be investigated in this disaster to humanity. That is all the “coincidences” that happen on “schedule” with an outcome that benefits some at the expense of others.
First issue: China has a demographic time-bomb in their society. They enacted one child policy 40 years ago. Since that time 2 generations have produced less children than the adults required to produce them. 4 grandparents produce 2 parents that produce one child. It allowed the adult population to work hard and produce the China we see today. But the majority of those workers were unskilled labor. And now they are getting old, and sickly. But modern medicine can keep them alive for several decades more, at a high cost to those still working. No one knows this better than the CCP, who has a responsibility to provide care for those that built the society they now profit from.
Second issue: the release of the virus in Wuhan was perfectly timed to infect the New Years crowd of travelers. Any earlier and it would become known and the public would not participate in the celebrations. Any later and it would not have built up enough infected members of the public, to infect the foreign travelers so they would disperse the virus to the rest of the countries outside China. If the rest of the world was aware of who has it, before the infected can spread it, they can be quarantined and the virus cannot create the exponential growth that creates chaos.
Third issue: the CCP officials in Wuhan suppressed the knowledge of this virus in circulation. 8 doctors that we know of tried to warn others that viral pneumonia with SARS symptoms was spreading from person to person, in Wuhan. All were disciplined and are now dead or missing. No action to prevent the spread has been documented.
Fourth issue: Xi Jinping spent considerable money and politcal capital to get Tedros in charge of the WHO. Where he was a dutiful “lapdog” during this entire process as is well documented.
Fifth issue: China hoarded medical supplies before other countries realized they would need a tremendous excess of their normal usage. And then China used those medical supplies as leverage to hold other countries hostage to their control of vital supplies.
Since I have no official capacity to punish anyone for their criminal acts, I am free to speculate about what is the most probable cause of this pandemic. And I will state that my preferred scenario would be an accident that we can learn from, and prevent in the future.
But the evidence does not support that conclusion.
The most likely scenario is this. The CCP learns that one strain of COV, of many that are being studied at WIV, has the unusual property of killing old and sick people, without killing young “military age” adults or children. They encourage the study of this COV so that there will be multiple samples of it, in high concentrations in order for those studies to use. They arrange to have it released on schedule to infect the world as well as themselves.
They benefit through the stealth removal of their elderly.
They also benefit through the removal and intimidation of industry leaders that have been quietly building power in China. Several have the confidence to openly criticize the actions of the CCP and there is a fear in the upper echelon of the CCP of them rebelling against the stranglehold the CCP has over their operations and their ability to be successful.
They benefit through the chaos in the rest of the world. They don’t want to be suffering through lock downs while the rest of the world is still working. They had time to make sure the tools of government had access to medical supplies before they became scarce to maintain control of the public, and defend against any aggressive foreign countries that could exploit the weakness of a country in turmoil.
In short the most likely scenario is this was not an accidental release. The probability that a random event would occur on this schedule with these properties is very low. That does not mean it happened that way. It means that the evidence fits that scenario better than most of the others.
So when people try to shut down that theory as “racist” or “conspiracy theory” it means they are afraid of what the evidence shows, and they want to prevent you from knowing what the evidence shows.
I’m a fan of Christopher of Monckton , but this article misses the mark by long ways.
First of all, join with Canada? Justin Trudeau has sucked up to China since before he was elected and even if he wasn’t a total suck up, he doesn’t have the kahonies that he father had to stand up to anyone.
Secondy… the ICC? That institution has long since lost its legitimacy. They’ve sat on their hands while Syria slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, and drove millions from their homes, with the blatant help of Russia and Iran. Iran for its part is the number one sponsor of terrorism world wide, and just got done slaughtering thousands of anti-government protesters on their own soil. This would be the same Iran who insists they have no gay people, then executes people for the crime of… being gay. Turkey just added to the misery in Syria by driving still more thousands from their homes under the guise of “creating a safe zone”. China for that matter is reported to have over a million of their own people in “re-education camps”. The list of atrocities that the ICC has sat on their hands and ignored goes on and on and on.
It would be dangerous to take any strong action against China now, too many global supply chains that are critical to the war on the China Virus run through that country. Once the emergency is over however, no need to pursue a useless ICC prosecution. Countries should just take steps to drag their supply chains out of China, including making it clear to private enterprise that circling around the back door to make profits out of the ensuing economic vaccuum will not be tolerated.
The answer to China is not ICC prosecution. The answer is diplomatic and economic isolation to which the only answer is regime change.
“Syria slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, and drove millions from their homes, with the blatant help of Russia and Iran.” And Bashar al Assad eats kittens.
So what were ISIS and al Qaeda, al Zinki and all the other gangs sponsored by NAO, gulf states and Israel doing there? So not trying to destroy/partition Syria? Don’t tell me – they were saints there to help the Syrian people.
Ms McKenzie is off topic in bringing Syria into the discussion.
I believe Ms McKenzie was replying to a poster whom raised the Syria issue, which cost a journalist her life when she proved the West was indeed funnelling arms and ammunition to ISIS, so perhaps your criticism should have been aimed at the post that brought it up not the riposte.
That’s OK Christopher, if Ms McKenzie is adamant that Mr. Assad eats kittens, I accept her at her word. Why she would focus on that to the exclusion of all the other atrocities Assad has committed is beyond me. Perhaps she thinks that eating kittens is more barbaric than dropping chemical weapons on children?
It wasn’t Dr McKenzie that indulged in an uninformed selective-memory rant about Syria, Russia and Iran, “the number one state sponsor of terrorism” (eyeroll).
Ah, so Ms McKenzie now claims to be a Dr!
Well, perusing her web site, it seems her claim is that she has a PhD. In German Literature. Not exactly credentials for this discussion. Her credentials seem to be limited to quoting others followed by (eyeroll). Effective use of fact free criticism there Dr., your study of literature being put to good effect!
The conspiracy theory on your web site that the entire pandemic was engineered by Bill Gates was very entertaining (eyeroll).
First the nonsense about Bill Gates creating this virus in order to make money from the vaccine, now Israel is responsible for ISIS and al Queda. Once paranoia rots your brain, there is no bottom.
The answer, is for every single individual to vote with their wallets, and wherever possible , actively avoid buying products made in and by China. And be vocal about it.
If ever the worlds individuals ever had a common cause, this must be it.
This is exactly what we need to do. The whole “made in…” was created for reasons such as this.
It does not matter if not everyone does it. If enough do, Chinese economy will tank. ‘We the people’ need to stand up to these bullies when governments and the UN won’t.
Yep. The only vote you have that counts. I encourage everyone to consider it a vote to the type of world you want. I don’t care if you disagree with me on any particular issue. Vote with your dollars on what matters to you.
It is the only vote you have that matters and you cast it daily.
Stay well everyone.
unfortunately the average person will buy whatever is cheapest.
The West must unify against China on trade or will face huge problems.
In other words, government needs to step in and force people to buy only those things that the government approves of.
“Vote with your dollars on what matters to you. ”
Excellent advice.
The answer, is for every single individual to vote with their wallets
Agreed , but easier said than done. I said “supply chains” for a reason. Very few products are made in any one place anymore. A car assembled in Detroit may have an engine made in Brazil from steel refined in China using coal from Australia that was mined with heavy equipment made in France that was… Only governments can mandate against supply chains that run through China. “Made in” tells you little other than who exported the final product from their country to yours.
I am grateful to Mr Hoffer for his kind words, and I share his concern about the International Criminal Court. I mentioned Canada deliberately, for the far Left, there as in these columns and elsewhere, has been making the strategic mistake of avoiding criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, even though such criticism is merited. The Left’s culpable and revealing silence will certainly – and rightly – be exploited by the Republicans in the forthcoming presidential election.
It remains urgent that China, having twice – with SARS and now with its latest virus – failed to make timely disclosure to the rest of the world, is brought to book before an international court of some kind, so as to make sure that there is no repetition. Why should we have to endure one pandemic after another originating in China, simply because it is governed by the most brutal regime the world has seen? If not the ICC, then let us have a new Nuremberg.
“The Left’s culpable and revealing silence will certainly – and rightly – be exploited by the Republicans in the forthcoming presidential election.”
Yes, expect the Trump campaign to be referring to Joe Biden as “Joe China” quite a bit, with the aim of focusing on Biden’s pandering to China while he was Vice President, and his, and his son’s, possible illegal dealings with China.
That is if Biden makes it to November. He may forget who he is by then.
Lord Monckton stated: “It remains urgent that China . . . is brought to book before an international court of some kind, so as to make sure that there is no repetition.”
Unfortunately, there is a breakdown in logic there . . . the proclaimed result will not likely follow the presupposition that is stated.
That is, assuming the CCP continues its iron-fist control over China’s population and continues to sniff at international law and basic human ethics.
“The answer is diplomatic and economic isolation to which the only answer is regime change.”
I agree. I have no faith in the International Criminal Court to do anything other than harrass Americans.
The economic sanctions on China will be more devastating to the Chinese Regime than any court ruling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuSrmQ4Uv5o
And what if China demands that those 50+ people who died from “vaping” be exhumed and tested? Will the USA comply? The x-rays that are available of the “vaping” victims show both lungs filling and the “shards of glass” look (pneumonia attacks one the majority of the time).
What about Maatje Benassi? World class cyclist who collapsed on during her race in Wuhan with oxygen deprivation symptoms? Where is she? Why has the US government refused to release her medical file?
I’m not saying it started in Fort Detrick but it sure could have and if the USA wants to sue China then all the information China wants will have to be handed over or the suits dropped. I predict the lawsuits will go nowhere and be shelved.
What really happened? Nobody knows. I sure don’t but I find it funny that so many folks who are rightly skeptical about climate pronouncements jump all over this and are so sure of themselves.
Stay safe everyone.
“What really happened? Nobody knows.”
What makes you think no one knows?
The old saying from the spy world (or Spy vs Spy world if you prefer):
“Those who talk don’t know, and those who know don’t talk.”
“and those who know, and talk, don’t live”
Are you out of your mind TRM?
Choosing to smoke vaporized nicotine is a choice, and the CCP is quite capable of regulating U.S. vapor products from entering the country.
Your feeble attempts to equivocate vaping and criminal negligence in the unnecessary deaths of thousands, and the destruction of trillions in wealth, is morally reprehensible and indicative of a callow mind.
Alternatively, the CCP has taken an interest in these postings, and you’re here to spread uncertainty and doubt.
Either way, you’ll need to up your game if you want to fool the folks on this site. The truth will prevail, as oppression fosters dissection.
Choosing to act on known information about COVID-19 is also a choice, which governments around the world are forbidding, and instead dictating, thereby robbing individual freedom from people who can full well make their own choices in this situation.
Have you considered the possibility (however remote) that the current, fashionable information war against China might be a planned information war? … in which case your accusations of “morally reprehensible and indicative of a shallow mind” might be a bit hasty?
As I see it, trustworthy sources of information are as scarce as toilet paper, which makes this a real heap of crap in so many ways, … and disturbingly poetic.
Re. “As I see it, trustworthy sources of information are as scarce as toilet paper, which makes this a real heap of crap in so many ways, … and disturbingly poetic.”
Have you ever considered that it has already been established that the CCP knowingly lied about human to human transmission; thereby, foisting the CCP virus scourge on the world?
Any effort to equivocate the CCP virus and vaping is nonsensical.
+100
How did it get to Chad so quickly?
robR April 24, 2020 at 9:03 pm
“it has already been established that the CCP knowingly lied about human to human transmission”
—————–
you have evidence of this?
“ you have evidence of this?”
Yes, Communist China lies. They cannot be trusted.
Yes, the WHO statements versus Tawain’s statements.
The WHO statements versus the Chinese doctor’s statements.
Just how much information do you need?
Patrick, how long does it take a jet plane to fly to Chad from pretty much any point on the planet?
The symptoms for covid19 and vaping are identical. Was vaping just used as a cover up for the loss of containment at Fort Detrick? Like I said in another post, play devil’s advocate more often. Put yourself in the shoes of a defense lawyer. What do they do? Raise issues, make demands and generate doubt. Do you think China won’t do that?
The fact that a lot of people are putting the blinders on to all other possibilities and starting lawsuits shows they have not thought this through. What will China demand at discovery? Will the US government comply or claim “national security” and refuse ending any chance of the lawsuit proceeding?
TRM posted: “The symptoms for covid19 and vaping are identical.”
Really? And your medical qualifications to make such a definitive statement are?
My knowledge is that two of most common symptoms in a human body that is responding aggressively to COVID-19 infection are (a) shortness of breath, and (b) body aches.
I have not ever heard that vaping causes either of these symptoms, but will eagerly await you pointing me to clinical reference(s) that state such.
That is the claim being floated already by some and the Chinese will undoubtedly be aware of it. Do you really think the Chinese won’t latch on to it and demand exhumation and testing? Do you really think the Chinese won’t demand the medical files for Maatje Benassi?
Wait until this gets to discovery in an actual court. The Chinese will demand access to almost anything they can think of. How much of Fort Detrick’s research and information about the breaches and leaks do you think the US government will hand over?
Do you think the Chinese will just plead guilty and throw themselves at the mercy of the court?
If calling me a shill is the best you can do then you are woefully prepared for what is coming.
Like I said before the lawsuits are just publicity stunts by politicians and will be shut down by the US government on national security grounds.
TRM posted April 25, 2020 at 3:14 pm: “That is the claim being floated already by some and the Chinese will undoubtedly be aware of it.”
Actually, TRM, look back at your earlier post and you will see that you posted the claim that “The symptoms for covid19 and vaping are identical” as a statement of fact, without any such qualification.
Furthermore, go reread my above post in reply to your earlier comment and you will see that I never referred to, or insinuated, that you were a shill. I just asked a simple question and made a simple request for which you conveniently provide no answer and no response.
Anyway, your strawman claim is very consistent with one being, in fact, a shill for the CCP, so since the shoe fits wear it proudly.
And the rest of your post goes even further to highlight where you are coming from.
TRM is steering dangerously close to shilling for the Chinese Communist Party. The evidence that it failed to honor its obligation to report a new and fatal infection to the international community under the International Health Regulations is overwhelming. There is certainly more than sufficient prima facie evidence for the matter to be brought to trial. It will then be for the judges to determine whether the Communist Party is guilty of crimes against humanity. Recall that the primary purpose of such trials is not so much to exact retribution from the guilty as to discourage dictatorships and oligarchies everywhere from thus acting ever again.
So, with the millions of dollars to set up enquiries and trials and the best outcome you can hope for is a strongly worded rebuke to the Chinese government? WTF?
Just because someone sees the nonsense and complete illogicality of some comments, you’re automatic fallback position is to call them a commie.
Before you make a comment about me being a commie (again), I might point out, as I did, to another commenter that I lost a grandfather in a gulag and had our family possessions confiscated by the communists.
You will be more accurate if you refer to me as an anarchist. I hate all forms of government.
“The evidence that it failed to honor its obligation to report a new and fatal infection to the international community under the International Health Regulations is overwhelming.”
The screed here does not report what they actually did do. On 31 December, 2019, the Wuhan Municipal health Commission reported the outbreak to WHO. The text of the report is here (in Mangarin, but Google will translate). At that stage there were 27 known cases.
Here is a Jan 5 WHO report discussing what was known about it.
What did WHO say about the Wuhan virus on January 14? Something about the virus not being transmissable human-to-human. Two weeks later, Trump put a travel ban on China.
Not “shilling” for either side. Try playing devil’s advocate sometime. Put yourself in the role of a defense lawyer. What would you do? You would raise issues and make demands. You would try to create as much doubt about it as possible. Do you think China won’t do that?
Do you think China won’t bring up the 9,200 vials missing from Fort Detrick? How much discovery do you think they will do? At some point the US government will shut it down claiming “national security” and that will be the end of it.
And who will sit in judgement? American courts? International courts that the USA disparages? The UN? IMHO the whole lawsuit against China is a publicity stunt by politicians.
PS. My wife’s family fled a communist country. To say there is no love for communists in our house is the understatement of all time.
” . . . the 9,200 vials missing from Fort Detrick?”
Errr . . . wasn’t that 9,200 ± 3 db?
If you are going to make up data, why don’t you give us the lot numbers for those vials, and the name of the soldier who was in charge of keeping them safe while you are at it?
It would make your fantasies a lot more believable.
The information that China is demanding isn’t relevant to the case.
The fact that China knew this virus was contagious and deadly long before it told the rest of the world is well documented. The tracing of the virus back to a Chinese lab is also a solid case.
The fact that so many people really want to believe that the US must be guilty is quite disappointing, but not unusual.
The evidence out of China is that the virus was already infecting people weeks to over a month prior to these military games.
Today’s C-19 reported deaths/1M pop update – Sweden seems to be gaining traction:
US: 158
EU: 213
Sweden: 213
Sweden’s reported deaths/1M pop is 2.5 standard deviations above the average northern-tier countries plus Alaska (Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Alaska, and Canada)
Sweden’s reported deaths per 1M is much better than the UK’ for instance. Swedes dropped the ball in not protecting care homes early enough – I reckon half of their deaths occurs in the care homes. But they haven’t followed like sheep rest of Europe in imposing strict lockdown – they must have the balls! While long-term impact of this strategy is still to be seen at very least we can say that at this moment cases are not rocketing there and the healthcare system is not overloaded.
Okay, Sweden is doomed:
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/7459717
Such an ignorance from their head epidemiologist leaves me speechless. What real in-field expertise does he actually have with epidemics? I take a bet on all I own that countries will come out with a different death toll by the end of the year based on their policy. He denies that.
Best part where her blames the non-native Swedes for not following the rules in nursing homes though he did recommended protective measures way too late. What a nice guy.
Maybe better listen to this expert with real field expertise:
That is NOT the video I linked to!
Here it is:
Sorry, now I am confused because now it shows the right one.
Don’t know why this happened. Weird glitch but everything’s fine now.
Hey Ron,
Such an ignorance from their head epidemiologist leaves me speechless. What real in-field expertise does he actually have with epidemics? I take a bet on all I own that countries will come out with a different death toll by the end of the year based on their policy. He denies that.
You can bet as much as you like but only time will tell if he’s right or not – and I mean at least few months, possibly till end of the year. We were told that strict lockdown is necessary to protect healthcare system from overflowing. Now, looks like not alwats and not everywhere – there are circumstances where you can avoid strict lockdown – Sweden is the example. Granted – it may not be applicable to every country but that demanding the same solution (strict lockdown) for everyone and labeling everyone who disagree as irresponsible freak may be too far. Looks on this sad graph for the UK: in recent weeks non-covid related deaths are rocketing, already shadowing covid-related deaths. Thus, if lack of lockdown causes surge of deaths, conversely we can say strict lockdown is responsible for surge in deaths too.
“in recent weeks non-covid related deaths are rocketing, already shadowing covid-related deaths. Thus, if lack of lockdown causes surge of deaths, conversely we can say strict lockdown is responsible for surge in deaths too.”
That is also true for Sweden. Non-COVID-19 deaths are sky rocketing – no lockdown. Strange coincidence, isn’t it?
Lockdowns are a meaningless term. Important is if people are minimizing contacts that could transmit the virus. Lockdowns are only one way to achieve this.
Lockdowns are only necessary at the moment because people often behave like idiots and don’t follow rules with the complete lack of enforcement even if they are in their best interest, we have too many cases to track, we don’t have the right type of masks to protect from aerosols in closed, air conditioned rooms as well as public transportation and the CFR is at least 0.3% – according to Prof. Woo-Joo Kim maybe even up to 4% – with probably nobody immune to the disease except for people already recovered. Although that might even not apply to everybody.
In addition, Lord Monckton had posted some very different numbers as on the graph you’ve linked to:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/21/revealing-chinese-virus-excess-death-graphs-coronavirus/
His data shows the opposite of your claim.
Sweden’s numbers seem to be catching up with the UK:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajectory-per-million?country=CAN+SWE+USA+GBR
In response to the Farmer, Sweden’s death count is beginning to look serious, particularly when compared to the other comparatively sparsely-populated Scandinavian countries. However, Sweden – for the present, at any rate – has no worse a death count per head of population than Europe as a whole, and it has achieved that without a lockdown. That circumstance does raise the question whether lockdowns are useful once they have achieved their primary purpose of preventing the hospitals from being overwhelmed. Rightly, therefore, nations with lockdowns are beginning – with appropriate carefulness – to dismantle them.
MoB, Thank you for your response. I’ve been keeping track of Sweden’s progress especially since the reporting has been biased in terms of what is claimed and what is omitted (Watt’s Up with That!). Sweden compares itself with other places like US flyover states with similar similar C-19 policies. It then compares itself with the UK and (OAN report from yesterday) and I scratch my head and say “Where is Sweden’s Heathrow and Gatwick? What is Sweden’s population density? How does Sweden compare with their Northern-tier neighbors? How do Sweden’s no-go zones compare with the general population?” I then realize what is NOT being reported and lose trust in the next narrative that comes along – like has happened with the AGW narrative. I wish them the best as my wife is of Swedish decent, but do not take the “no-lock-down” claims at face value.
Can I sue Vietnam for being the proximate cause of starting a war that resulted in the death of one of my relatives?
Can I sue a country for harboring terrorists that oversaw a suicide bombing campaign that caused my puppy to get blown to bits?
In short, this is a ridiculous suit. China is laughing at us, I would imagine.
Can I sue the CIA and MI6 for not being more on top of this?
You should sue the FBI, CIA and NSA for letting Russian intelligence hack the DNC not just once, but twice, and not telling the Dems about it when they found out (allegedly).
That is, if any of these hacking operations were real.
Mr Kernodle comes too close to shilling for the Chinese Communist Party, which, having previously been censured for its failure to disclose the SARS outbreak in time, has now killed 200,000 people worldwide by failing to disclose the latest outbreak in time. Does Mr Kernodle have no understanding of the concept of mens rea, and no desire to prevent China or any other country from committing similar crimes against humanity in future?
And since he irrelevantly raises the Vietnam war, the Chinese virus will soon have killed as many Americans as the Vietnam war did.
“the Chinese virus will soon have killed as many Americans as the Vietnam war did.”
Yes, and it took ten years to reach the death toll in the Veitnam war (58,000+). It’s only taken a couple of months for the Wuhan virus to reach the same level.
BREAKING NEWS, Monckton of Brenchley:
Since Jan 1, 2020:
World smoking-related deaths hit 1,750,000.
World heart-disease deaths hit 2,181,917.
World road-traffic deaths hit 337,500.
Who shall we sue for all thse? Let’s see, we can start with the following:
* Altria/Philip Morris USA [Generally, we should sue the United States, in general, for allowing it.]
* British American Tobacco [Likewise, we should sue Great Britan]
* Imperial Tobacco [This would be a second suit against Great Britan]
* Japan Tobacco International [Sue Japan, … excellent!]
* Philip Morris International [Wow, this one could be gold mine, because it has a presence in 200 countries, all of which we could sue.]
* China National Tobacco Corporation [Of course, the Chinese firm is the single largest in the world, so, whoohoo! — we can sue China for smoking deaths too!]
Now we should move to the food companies and the motor vehicle manufacturers — I’ll leave it to you to look up all those.
Ah, so many lawsuits, … so little time.
Yours truly,
Kernodle of Greensboro
P.S., Tom A, you are welcome to join the Monckton of Brenchley/ Kernodle of Greensboro actions, as well, but your name on all the suits must read as, “Tom of Abbott”.
I’m going to get a 3″ X 6″ photo of myself from the shoulders up, and I’m going to pin it to my shirt when I go out in the public wearing my face mask, so people can see who they are interacting with, and I’ll put my new title right on the bottom of the picture. Thanks for the invite. 🙂
Robert,
I think the Vietnamese would have a better claim given that the USA fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin
incident and so illegally started the war. Plus Cambodia would have a very good case to compenstation following the illegal bombing war started by Nixon. And what about Chile sueing the USA for engineering a coup again Allende. Plus there is Iraq suing the USA for the illegal invasion since there were no weapons of mass destruction and Bush and Blair lied to everyone.
There are of course plenty of reasons to sue China for violations of human rights. The mass imprisonment of over one million muslims in concentration cames being only the most recent. So
it really is a case of the pot causing the kettle black. But until people in the are prepared to pay
signifcantly more for consumer goods and pay US workers a proper living wage to make them in the
USA nothing will be done.
“Plus there is Iraq suing the USA for the illegal invasion since there were no weapons of mass destruction and Bush and Blair lied to everyone.“
The US should sue Hillary, the DNC and the fBI for Russia Collllluuuusion. That story still cracks me up.
That WMDs were found as well as mothballed chemical and nuclear programs is well known.
Once again, the left prefers the lies that they tell each other.
I see where one of the Chinese guys who initially exposed the Wuhan virus infection through his videos, and was subsequently “disappeared” by the Chinese leadership, has now surfaced again and is singing the praises of the Communist Party.
So let us hear from the graduate researcher who was unpersoned from the Wuhan lab’s website. Let us hear from the seven doctors who were disappeared. If they are all alive and well, the Chinese Communist Party has an easy defense against the charge that, in disappearing them, it had committed a crime against humanity. Interesting how many shills for the Chinese Communist Party are infesting this thread. I thought that might happen.
“the Chinese Communist Party has an easy defense against the charge that, in disappearing them, it had committed a crime against humanity. Interesting how many shills for the Chinese Communist Party are infesting this thread. I thought that might happen.”
No doubt the Chinese leadership let this guy out in public as part of their disinformation campaign. See, we’re not bad guys, we don’t murder people, we just hold them in jail until they get their heads right.
The Chinese leadership is mounting a large disinformation campaign to try to weasel out of their responsibity for spreading the Wuhan virus all around the world, so it’s no surprise that some of that is going to show up here.
The good thing is the Chinese leadership has been caught dead to rights. They can’t weasel their way out of this with disinformation. Their deliberate foisting of this virus on the rest of the world is documented in numerous places, and Chinese disinformation experts are invited to try to change that. Bring them on!
As well as their absurd disinformation cover story blaming the US Army for deliberately importing the virus into Wuhan in September-October.
They have also blamed Italy for the virus.
Yep…getting more like twatter every day…
EUROMOMO stats have been updated for week 14 and 15:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
Sweden now at 10.91 in week 15. Might be adjusted further up. No decrease from week 14 and week 14 was adjusted upwards as well. Just 7.81 before when I checked.
Week 16 is still delayed cause there is no way Belgium stays so low.
Spain might have a lot of under-reporting of COVID-19 deaths as excess mortality is a lot above Italy which can not be deducted from COVID-19 reported deaths.
Excess mortality has topped flu season 2018 in merely 5 weeks and still counting.
In response to Ron, the European mortality statistics decisively give the lie to the notion that the Chinese virus is “no worse than the annual flu”. It is a great deal worse, unfortunately.
It is certainly worse than an average annual flu – particularly since flu deaths have tended to drop over the years. But at the moment the case rate seems to be falling, and the death ratess are within the range of a bad flu year.
There are substantial clinical differences between Covid-19 and flu. The major epidomogical difference is that it ramped up so rapidly. If it drops as rapidly, we might even see less deaths in total than a bad and prolonged flu season. Though this will doubtless owe something to the lockdown countermeasures.
I suggest that comments that “this is just flu” are to some extent true – not because it is a minor disease, but because flu can be very damaging, and we have traditionally not recognised this. Perhaps that will change in future….
“But at the moment the case rate seems to be falling, and the death ratess are within the range of a bad flu year.”
That is just not true.
Accumulated excess deaths are already at 140,000, worst flu season so far ended with 120,000. And the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is far from over and there are indications it will not be seasonal.
“If it drops as rapidly, we might even see less deaths in total than a bad and prolonged flu season.”
And if I could fly, I could fly… sorry, this beast will not be beaten by wishful thinking or best-case scenarios. The body bag count clearly indicates it is not to be underestimated.
“Professor Detlef Krüger, the direct predecessor of the well-known German virologist Christian Drosten at the Charité Clinic in Berlin, explains in a recent interview that Covid19 is „in many respects comparable to the flu“ and „no more dangerous than certain variants of the flu virus“. Professor Krüger considers the „mouth and nose protection discovered by politicians“ to be „actionism“ and a potential „germ-slinger“. At the same time he warns of „massive collateral damage“ caused by the measures taken”
“Swiss pathologists have come to the conclusion that many of the test-positive deceased did not suffer from pneumonia, but had a disorder of the blood vessels and thus of the oxygen exchange in the lungs. This could explain why the ventilation of critical Covid19 patients is often not effective and why patients with existing cardiovascular problems belong to the risk group. In fact, all of the autopsied patients suffered from high blood pressure, a large proportion were severely overweight (obese) and two thirds had pre-damaged coronary arteries”
“The latest figures from Italy show (pp. 12/13) that 60 of almost 17,000 doctors and nurses who tested positive died. This results in a Covid19 lethality rate of less than 0.1% for those under 50, 0.27% for those aged 50 to 60, 1.4% for those aged 60 to 70, and 12.6% for those aged 70 to 80. Even these figures are likely too high, as these are deaths with and not necessarily from corona viruses, and as up to 80% of people remain asymptomatic and some may not have been tested. Overall, however, the values are in line with those from e.g. South Korea and give a lethality rate for the general population in the range of influenza”
“The head of the Italian Civil Defence declared in mid-April that more than 1800 people died in nursing homes in Lombardy, and that in many cases the cause of death was not yet clear. It was already known beforehand that the care of the elderly and nursing homes and, as a result, the entire health care system in parts of Lombardy had collapsed, in part due to fear of the virus and the lockdown”
“The latest figures from Belgium show that there too, just over 50% of all additional deaths occur in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general lockdown. In 6% of these deaths Covid19 was „confirmed“, in 94% of the deaths it was „suspected“. About 70% of the test-positive persons (employees and residents) showed no symptoms”
“The former Swedish and European chief epidemiologist Professor Johan Giesecke gave the Austrian magazine Addendum a candid interview. Professor Giesecke says that 75 to 90% of the epidemic is „invisible“ because that many people develop no or hardly any symptoms. A lockdown would therefore be „pointless“ and harm society. The basis of the Swedish strategy was that „people are not stupid“. Giesecke expects a death rate between 0.1 and 0.2%, similar to that of influenza. Italy and New York had been very poorly prepared for the virus and had not protected their risk groups, Professor Giesecke argues’
“The German newspaper DIE ZEIT focuses on the high vacancy rates in German hospitals, which in some departments are as high as 70%. Even cancer examinations and organ transplants that were not acutely necessary for survival had been cancelled to make room for Covid19 patients, but these have so far been largely absent’
“In 2019, a WHO study found „little to no scientific evidence“ for the effectiveness of measures such as „social distancing“, travel restrictions and lockdowns’
“A first serological study by the University of Geneva concluded that at least six times more people in the canton of Geneva had contact with Covid19 than previously thought. This means that the lethality of Covid19 in Switzerland also falls well below one percent, while official sources still speak of up to 5%”
If I had to defend the CCP against this charge (though I suspect they will never face proceedings) I would simply state that the administrators responsible for concealing evidence and allowing the uncontrolled spread of a dangerous pathogen were NOT working as CCP members, but as Chinese State employees. Hence the CCP is blameless in this matter.
Further, the state employees have already been disciplined, since they have not followed the proper procedures for reporting the virus. The Chinese State did not intend to distribute this virus, and cannot be held responsible for some of its employees disregarding their instructions. There is therefore no case to answer.
“The Chinese State did not intend to distribute this virus, and cannot be held responsible for some of its employees disregarding their instructions. There is therefore no case to answer.”
No, the “underling” defense isn’t going to work.
The Chinese Regime was the entity that shut down travel out of Wuhan, and they did so to try to stop the spread of the virus. No underling has the authority to shut down travel like that.
And the Chinese quaratine demonstrates that the Chinese Regime knew it had a big virus problem, yet it encouraged international travel out of China for weeks after they stopped domestic travel, knowing there had to be infected people taking those flights out.
No, the two main decisions in this disaster, shutting down domestic Chinese travel, and promoting international travel, had to have been made at the highest levels of the Chinese Regime. No underling has the authority to shut China travel down.
And there is no doubt the Chinese Regime and the WHO publicly berated Trump for his travel ban and actively lobbied other nations not to follow the U.S. example. And they did this while knowing what was going out of China: a deadly, infectious virus.
Guilty! No way around it. The Chinese Regime knew they had a deadly virus on their hands and they actively encouraged its spread around the world.
And which region has the strongest ties to the region of Wuhan and the biggest Chinese population in Europe and many direct flights as well?
Correct, Northern Italy, Lombardy.
Curiously, the Chinese in Italy have a way lower death toll than the native inhabitants because they basically went into self-imposed lockdown as much as possible. Might they have had some insider information from back home how dangerous the disease really is?
The Chinese Regime in its flailing about for a way out of the Wuhan virus mess, has occasionally even suggested that the Wuhan virus originated in Italy.
Italians, Americans, anyone but the Chinese Regime.
But no Italians or Americans were involved in the decision of the Chinese Regime to ship the Wuhan virus out of Wuhan and into the rest of the world. And this is the decision that caused the whole world to be infected. The origins of the virus are a side issue.
Who is this “Chinese Regime” you speak of? This thread is discussing the prosecution of the CCP, and my point is that the Chinese State is a different entity…
Chinese Regime = Chinese leadership = Chinese State
I just thought using using “leadership” was a little too favorable to the Chinese Regime, so I started calling them a “Regime”.
Did I really need to give this explanation?
If CMoB’s analysis of The State of Missouri’s legal case is correct (May It Be So!), I’d say the Show Me State has China by the short curly red ones. Let’s see how this all plays out…
Barkeep! Another round of doppelbock bier, pretzels, and popcorn!
Of course, one can monetize anything.
However, China carries only 1/3 blame for the”China”-virus.
1/3 blame goes on the US,
1/3 goes on Singapore
and the virus must be named “USSGCN-Virus”.
Well, may be, 50-50.
The “authors” of the virus are
Dr Zheng-Li Shi (Wuhan)
Dr Danielle E. Anderson, is the Scientific Director of the Duke-NUS Medical School ABSL3 laboratory
Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based organization.
He funded all this scum.
Dr Danielle E. Anderson is presently the head censor by Facebook. She is responsible for “fact checking” of anything concerning COVID19 on that network (anybody still with Zuckerberg???)
Google her and how she is censoring Facebook!
Zheng-Li Shi, Danielle E. Anderson and Peter Daszak have published a bunch of papers on Bat Coronaviruses Their collaboration started quite long ago.
A few examples of their publications:
Discovery of Bat Coronaviruses through Surveillance and Probe Capture-Based Next-Generation Sequencing
Bei Li, Hao-Rui Si, Yan Zhu, Xing-Lou Yang, Danielle E. Anderson, Zheng-Li Shi, Lin-Fa Wang, Peng Zhou
Matthew B. Frieman, Editor
Published online January 29, 2020
https://msphere.asm.org/content/5/1/e00807-19/article-info
Выделение и полногеномная характеристика вирусов Нипах у летучих мышей в Бангладеш
Isolation and Full-Genome Characterization of Nipah Viruses from Bats, Bangladesh
Danielle E. Anderson,1 Ariful Islam,1 Gary Crameri,1 Shawn Todd, Ausraful Islam, Salah U. Khan, Adam Foord, Mohammed Z. Rahman, Ian H. Mendenhall, Stephen P. Luby, Emily S. Gurley, Peter Daszak, Jonathan H. Epstein,1 Lin-Fa Wang.
January 2019
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330054457_Isolation_and_Full-Genome_Characterization_of_Nipah_Viruses_from_Bats_Bangladesh
Review of Bats and SARS
Lin-Fa Wang, Zhengli Shi, Shuyi Zhang, Hume Field, Peter Daszak, and Bryan T. Eaton
Emerg Infect Dis. 2006 Dec; 12(12): 1834–1840.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291347/
Here is a VERY interesting paper:
Review of Bats and SARS
Lin-Fa Wang, Zhengli Shi, Shuyi Zhang, Hume Field, Peter Daszak, and Bryan T. Eaton
Emerg Infect Dis. 2006 Dec; 12(12): 1834–1840.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291347/
Citation:
Although at this stage we cannot rule out the possibility of direct transmission from the natural reservoir host to humans, molecular epidemiologic studies (2,10) and studies of the receptor-S protein interaction (35) indicate that the progenitor viruses are unlikely to be able to infect humans and that a rapid viral evolution in an intermediate host (such as civets) seems to be necessary to adapt the virus for human infection. Ability to efficiently use the receptor molecules (ACE2 for human and civet) seems to be a major limiting factor for animal-to-human and human-to-human transmission (35). This also explains why the SARS-CoV was able to cause the human pandemic but the closely related bat SARS-like–CoVs were not.
For the SARS-like–CoVs to infect humans, substantial genetic changes in the S1 receptor-binding domain will be necessary.
These changes may be achieved in 1 of 2 possible ways. They could be achieved by genetic recombination, as coronaviruses are known to be able to recombine. For example, bat SARS-like–CoVs and another yet unknown coronavirus could coinfect an intermediate host, and the bat viruses would gain the ACE2 binding site in the S1 domain by recombination. The alternative is continuous evolution independent of recombination. Coronaviruses in bats could have a spectrum sufficiently diverse to encompass the progenitor virus for SARS-CoVs. The progenitor virus’s ability to bind human ACE2 may be acquired or improved by adaptation (i.e., point mutations) in >1 intermediate host before it could efficiently infect humans. The existence of at least 3 discontinuous highly variable genomic regions between SARS-CoV and SARS-like–CoV indicates that the second mechanism is more likely.
Finally, a very interesting article in NY Post:
https://nypost.com/2020/04/17/facebook-fact-checkers-foul-again-after-censoring-post-story/
“Of course, one can monetize anything.
However, China carries only 1/3 blame for the”China”-virus.”
This argument is a distraction from the real issue. The origin and history of the Wuhan virus (not that I automatically agree with your arguments about this) are not relevant in this case.
What is relevant is whether the Chinese Regime knew they had a fast-spreading virus on their hands and whether they deliberately shipped this virus out to the rest of the world, and the evidence shows they were aware of how deadly and infectious this virus was, because they took drastic steps to quell it by shutting down travel inside China, and after that, they deliberately encouraged travel from China to the outside world after knowing all this.
Alex – you are glossing over several critical factors when you assign blame. I do appreciate someone that has taken the time to research the history of this sordid affair.
Where your history leaves off is when this effort departed from investigating the actual viruses that “could” happen in the natural world, to “producing the very virus strains” that could create a pandemic. At that point the US decided to freeze the research they could, and de-fund any research they couldn’t stop, but could choose to not support financially. And this is why:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
It is a different level of responsibility that is required, when you create the very pandemic virus you fear will cause death and chaos. It is the same responsibility of creating WMD.
No country can blame others for their own decisions to persue dangerous technologies that have the potential for mass casualties.
When you make that decision you accept the responsibility to prevent it’s release into the public.
China accepted that responsibility, but did not live up to the requirements that were essential to the safety of the public. They showed a pattern of behavior that is not acceptable. They showed that they will fail to enforce strict protocols in the handling of dangerous pathogens, a cover-up of a threat to the global community, and a pattern of pathological lying and propaganda distribution to avoid responsibility for what they have done.
There is no guilt sharing when it comes to this. They did this to their own citizens and the citizens of the world. And they are still stonewalling a reasonable investigation and determination of what happened and why. They know what happened and why. And they don’t want anyone else to know.
That’s like claiming that who ever made the care is equally responsible with the driver every time there is an auto related fatality.
How exactly will Missouri assess damages? The first witness for the defense will be Trump who spent
months praising China for their actions and downplaying the virus. Then you have to somehow convince
people of what would have happened had China acted differently? Are there really any models that accurate
(all I hear about here is how bad models are and how usefully they are at predicting the future). Plenty of
people have claimed that lockdowns don’t work or at best just delay deaths so all China’s inaction did was
bring forward the deaths of tens of thousands of US citizens by a couple of weeks.
If China had done their jobs right, the virus never would have escaped from the lab.
If China had done their jobs right, once the virus escaped, they would have locked down the area to prevent it’s spread.
If China had done their jobs right, once the virus escaped to the point where local controls were no longer possible, they would have shut down international travel at the same time they shut down local travel.
If China had done their jobs right, they would not have lied about how wide spread the virus had become.
If China had done their jobs right, they would not have lied for months about the virus not being able to jump from human to human.
Your attempt to excuse China’s actions are hardly unusual, after all to your average communist, there are no enemies on the left.
Had China not lied for months about the extent and severity of this disease, all governments around the world would have acted more swiftly and strongly.
The call center cluster
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1274_article
Saw that yesterday as well. Fits perfectly with all the other superspreading events.
High density of people, closed in a room, for hours, air condition lot of verbal action.
So yeah, opening schools and churches will be a great idea, as well as crowded public transportation…
“Response Measures
Building X was closed on March 9, 2020, immediately after the outbreak was reported. We offered testing to all occupants (office workers and apartment residents) during March 9–12. We collected nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab specimens from PUIs for immediate real-time reverse transcription PCR testing; the average turnaround time was 12–24 hours. Confirmed case-patients were isolated, and negative case-patients were mandated to stay quarantined for 14 days. We followed and retested all test-negative case-patients until the end of quarantine. We also investigated, tested, and monitored household contacts of all confirmed case-patients for 14 days after discovery, regardless of symptoms. During March 13–16, we sent a total of 16,628 text messages to persons who stayed >5 minutes near the building X; we tracked these persons by using cell phone location data. The messages instructed the recipients to avoid contact with others and go to the nearest COVID-19 screening center to get tested.”
“Discussion
We described the epidemiologic characteristics of a COVID-19 outbreak centered in a call center in South Korea. We identified 97 confirmed COVID-19 case-patients in building X, indicating an attack rate of 8.5%. However, if we restrict our results the 11th floor, the attack rate was as high as 43.5%. This outbreak shows alarmingly that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can be exceptionally contagious in crowded office settings such as a call center. The magnitude of the outbreak illustrates how a high-density work environment can become a high-risk site for the spread of COVID-19 and potentially a source of further transmission. Nearly all the case-patients were on one side of the building on 11th floor. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, the predecessor of SARS-CoV-2, exhibited multiple superspreading events in 2002 and 2003, in which a few persons infected others, resulting in many secondary cases. Despite considerable interaction between workers on different floors of building X in the elevators and lobby, spread of COVID-19 was limited almost exclusively to the 11th floor, which indicates that the duration of interaction (or contact) was likely the main facilitator for further spreading of SARS-CoV-2.”
“Despite considerable interaction between workers on different floors of building X in the elevators and lobby, spread of COVID-19 was limited almost exclusively to the 11th floor, which indicates that the duration of interaction (or contact) was likely the main facilitator for further spreading of SARS-CoV-2.”
This sounds like a situation where they might benefit from ultraviolet lamps that destroy viruses like the Wuhan virus.
I heard a doctor who specializes in tuberculousis talking on tv a couple of days ago about the UV lights they use in his office settings to kill viruses. He said you can buy them for around $150 each, and they resemble flourescent lights. He said they had their airconditioning setup so the air was drawn up to the ceiling where the lights could destroy the virus (I believe the lights are suspended from the ceiling a little distance and point up at the ceiling instead of down). People friendly, virus unfriendly.
Necessity: The Mother of Invention
What flux of UV radiation reflected off an “ordinary ceiling” from the proposed UV lights would permeate the room below?
Intense UV radiation poses a threat to humans not taking active, protective measures against such UV exposure. It is widely known that long-term exposure to the UV flux present is sunlight can cause cataracts and skin cancer.
“People friendly”? Will patients passing through such UV-irradiated rooms/corridors be given the necessary PPE for UV exposure?
Well, I do not have the knowledge of this subject to weigh in on it, but the tuberculousis doctor gave the impression that his setup posed no danger to humans.
Probably UVA or UVB fluorescent tubes which have a lot of different applications, including indoor tanning beds and solar weathering testing. The UV irradiance from the tubes is diffuse and falls rapidly with distance. For virus killing, seems like they could be set up to operate when people are not present or at a safe distance.
Well at least with the data in we now know that it at the same level as flu.
The first step to punish China would be to eliminate their status as a Most Favored Nation. It ain’t going to happen. We’re going to hear and see all kinds of expressions of indignation from the politicians in the west all over but very few are really going to actually support such a move. However that is what I will be watching as a key indicator of the west actually uniting to address the threat of the PRC .
well face it..its tad hard to punish china when they control almost all the meds base materials, huge swathes of IT componentry almost all the gadgets fabrics whitegoods etc and then the seemingly forgotten billions of Tbills from waaay back in ohbummers reign.
theyve been very very good at war by stealth via biz and moneylending etc
hell they OWN Smithfield meats thats just shut n thrown YOUR food supply into a tizz
and theyd be also supplying Chinas markets too after the ASF sprea n wiped out their pigglies
hmm what if?
China sued africa and all the EU nations that were sloppy re quarantine and animal health and spread that globally?
leg to stand on?
ha ha ha
I liked this post for the laugh it gave me..
lawyers might get richer but nothings going to happen
Yes, we are going to see who is beholden to China and who is not. They are finally going to have to publicly take a stand on China. China will probably demand they take a public stand in favor of China. I think a lot of the China apologists are used to kowtowing and might want to continue that behavior. We shall see. And we shall vote them out of office, if they do.
Seems the ability of the virus to spread completely in an asymptomatic way or before symptoms appear has caught public health institutions off guard.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2009758
Waste of an article. Surely, you’re familiar with the Melian Dialogue.
In international relations issues are invariably decided by expediency and power. If you want to ‘punish’ China for acting in a manner of which you happen not to approve, the first step is to either find a court from which China is prepared to accept judgement (Good luck with that!) or beat the crap out of them and force China to accept the judgement of a court that you, the winner, find congenial. Good luck with that, too!
Missouri’s case is merely empty posturing.
Any steps taken to hurt China must involve some serious circumspection regarding any retaliatory action that China may take.
Just think of all those smart Western companies that moved their manufacturing to China, ‘disemploying’ their overpaid Western employees. It’s certainly tempting (not to mention, convenient) to repudiate all that debt held by the filthy Commies who were so enthusiastically embraced when they offered cheap labour. It should be a piece of cake to restart all those abandoned industries and rehire all those discarded workers. No problem with rare earth elements, either. Plenty of alternate suppliers.
How about we take legal action against all government, state, local, federal for their insane actions against the citizens regarding the virus.
My home-alone very smart mate with whom I spend 2 hours each day discussing all things geopolitical, and much else, asks why the potential impact of air conditioning is not being aired ?
3 clusters (out of total of 15) in NZ that have had average of 85 infections:
Wedding: One day. Restaurant-bar. Infection rate: 50% . Father of groom dies
Conference: 5 days (2 in conference centre, 3 field trips in buses): Infection rate 10%
Party: One evening, Restaurant-bar. Infection rate 25% Approx
They can’t have all been kissing
There are others involving “private functions” but details are sparse
Just looked up circulation paths of heat pumps. The internal system is closed. Are all air conditioners like this? Retirement homes/hospitals?
Air condition/heating might actually promote the transitions from droplets to aerosols by removing humidity where then aerosols can relatively easily circulate by airflow but droplets cannot.
If the one study is right about that the virus is mainly entering via the nose’s epithelium that would explain the high infection rates at such events. People just have to breath a sufficient amount in to get it. And it would increase the need for filter masks by a lot.
I psted this before
required reading
https://quillette.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-superspreader-events-in-28-countries-critical-patterns-and-lessons/
super spreader events
https://icjournal.org/Synapse/Data/PDFData/0086IC/ic-48-147.pdf
Could someone possibly explain this data to me?? https://www.iceagenow.info/death-rates-in-the-united-states-have-been-going-down-not-up/
Easy to change. Just infect more people.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html
At the moment it is more about local hot spots in the US so the deaths numbers are not dominating the country-wide statistics (yet).
What I don’t get:
Why do people think that cannot happen everywhere if people doing business as usual?
Cause that is what happened. In very different countries.
I tried to locate the original data at CDC, could not find them.
I am very grateful to Mr. Monckton of Brenchley that he opened my eyes: He is a globalist with a mindset from the era of the British Empire. Seemingly he has not understood yet, that the British Empire does not exist any more, and China is an independent country, and not a british/US Colony: Neither GB nor US have any rigth to interfere with the internal affairs of China (see the leftist blabla on “dissidents”, etc.).
As to the state of Missouri (US, EC): A curfew was introduced in Vuhan at the beginning of February, even the chinese army was involved. After this measure all other states had to switch immediately to alarm state red, and all states had to initiate proper measures pro-actively. Instead of we could see a tsunami of articles from MSM on the “violation of basic human rights by the chinese communists”. And now the state of Missouri tries to hide the own incompetence und impotence starting a legal process against China.
Last but not least: WUWT should return back to the roots, to climate issues.
“Last but not least: WUWT should return back to the roots, to climate issues.”
Haven’t you heard the latest from the AGW alarmist? . . . (a) the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic was the direct result of “climate change”, and (b) the eventual worldwide recovery from the economic shutdowns caused from humanity’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic are the ideal opportunity to impose a GND-type restructuring of the world’s energy source-and-use structure.
Therefore, it is these same alarmists that have made COVID-19 inseparable from “climate issues”. WUWT is continuing to follow its raison d’etre.
Thank you very much for your reply. I write from Germany (English is not my first language), and here is the situation a little bit different. The alarmists start losing positions. In Germany there are serious restrictions (enforced by the German green alarmists) concerning the use of diesel cars, and in most towns the use of diesel cars is not allowed (keyword: “air pollution”). Due to the general lockdown the car traffic in towns is now much lower than usual. However, according to the measured values, the concentration of the air pollutants practically has not changed. Based on this evidence, some German towns now lifted the restrictions on the use of diesel cars. Green NGOs sued these towns, but before losing the case, they withdraw their lawsuits, so they lost positions. As to GND, there is now a new movement (led by scientists, academicals, and leading intellectuals) against GND. Even a new political party has been launched very successfully: In 2017 this new political party has became the third strongest political force in the German Parliament (Bundestag) from zero (I am not a member in of any political party). Local conservative groups will be established, and the climate hysterie/globalism are among the most important topics on the agenda of such groups. My interest is also mainly focused on the climate alarmism and energy strategy (it is called “Energiewende” in Germany). Our group tries to produce a presentation on the climate hysterie/globalism for laymen to inform (“educate”) the population about the background of climate hysterie and globalism. During this activity I have found my way to WUWT. Any support on this field would be highly appreciated.
Hari,
And thank you for commenting back and giving some details on what is happening in Germany regarding the so-called “green energy” movement there.
I am very glad to heat that you have discovered the WUWT website . . . it has been, and continues to be, beyond value to me.
As to how WUWT may support your personal endeavors for searching out facts related to climate . . . just keep reading.
In case you haven’t already read this WUWT article with accompanying video— (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/22/earthday-epic-michael-moores-new-film-trashes-planet-saving-renewable-energy-full-movie-here/ —I highly recommend you take the time to read/watch . . . it provides information that you can pass on for the benefit of Energiewende proponents that, as the saying in the US goes, remain “fat, dumb and happy” in their world view of how things are.
Dear Mr. Drexler,
Thank you very much for your answer. Our local group has already watched the video from Michael Moore. I hope that soon a German version will also be available. From my point of view this video should be part (compulsory!) of the education on enviromentel protection in the schools. However, the length of the video is 140 minutes. To be successful at laymen (ordinary people) we need something not longer than 30 minutes (max. 20-25 ppt slides). Most of the stuff available on WUWT is simply to complicated (too much mathe and physics) for ordinary people. For our purpose the best fit would be a similar presentation like “No Climate Crisis — But the “Profits of Doom” Will Continue” from Mr. Roy W. Spencer. Unfortunately it is rather difficult to translate the presentation for our target audience, because Mr. Spencer’s target audience was the investment community and not ordinary people. There are also some cultural differences between Germany and US, and some terms in the presentation are not completely understandable for ordinary people in Germany. However, the concept of this presentation is very good, but we need an adaptation (not only a simple translation) for Germany. If we would like to be successful against the alarmists, it is not enough to discuss deep technical details on WUWT. The most important informations concerning the alarmist lies should be communicated on the right way for the masses. We should also learn on this field from the alarmists. For example maybe you remember Al Gore’s presentation for potential investors at the end of the Moore’s video. The slide with the gold bars on one side and with planet Earth on the other side is genial. To be understandable for ordinary people we need similar visualization. Mr. Spencer’s presentation is an important step toward this goal.
Dear Mr. Dressler,
Thank you very much for your answer. I write from Germany, and currently it seems, that the green NGOs lose positions due to some effects of the lockdown. Some towns now will lift the restrictions on the use of diesel cars in towns, because the measured values of the air pollutants practically has not changed despite the strongly reduced car traffic. Green NGOs tried to suit such towns, however before losing in court they have withdrawn their cases.
Eventually there is no any epidemic in Germany, because only 0,18% of the population has became ill (the official threshold value for an “epidemic” is much higher). However I think (personally), that a lockdown is absolutely necessary to be successful against COVID-19.
I love the way our trolls completely ignore all the evidence given in order to declare China absolutely blameless.
Dear Mr. MarkW,
On the basis of two cases I am not completely sure, that COVID-19 comes from China, and I have also the strong feeling, that COVID-19 was earlier under way.
Case 1: Last year April-May there were some very mysterieous pneumonia cases on Palma de Mallorca. Because some celebrities also died (Niki Lauda and two singers) there was some media echo.
Case 2: One of my colleagues (45 y, he lives a very active life, regular sport, er ist strong like a bear, during his 20+ years of employment he has never missed any day at the company due to illness) had a in September 2019 6 weeks absence due to “flu” (he was treated against “flu”). He had also vaccination against flu. He has never been in China, lives in a small German village without any Chinese, no contact to chinese people. And a flu case doesn’t take 6 weeks to recover.
In May-September 2019 COVID-19 was known maybe for some scientists and not for the ordinary doctors, so in an ordinary hospital COVID-19 could not be diagnostised at that time.
You can qualify me as a troll, however I prefer the approach “seeing and believing”. Analogy from the climate discussion: Measured values are preferred instead of values calculated by a model.
It doesn’t take much to convince you to make up your mind once you have decided on it.
2 cases? Wow, really, two whole cases. Some flus you recover from quickly, some you don’t.
Trolls make up their minds then find evidence to support them.
That’s what you are doing.
“had also vaccination against flu.”
Why do you mention that?
Hey Tom,
I would happily pay more for a product made in my own country. Especially now.
#meetoo. Manufacturing especially all strategic and highly processed products should be brought back home. Sure, we need to be practical here – some -non-strategic products can be still easily outsourced but this kind of dependency where western governments beg China for some PPE is just ridiculous.
Hey Ron,
That is also true for Sweden. Non-COVID-19 deaths are sky rocketing – no lockdown. Strange coincidence, isn’t it?
It is – could you share some data? I haven’t seen that.
Lockdowns are a meaningless term. Important is if people are minimizing contacts that could transmit the virus. Lockdowns are only one way to achieve this.
I reckon vast majority of population accepts even acute limitations as long as there are ‘exit strategies’ and trade offs of such strategy justify it. Methinks we’re reaching the point where cost of lockdown may exceed cost of covid epidemic. And that’s only the beginning.
In addition, Lord Monckton had posted some very different numbers as on the graph you’ve linked to:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/21/revealing-chinese-virus-excess-death-graphs-coronavirus/
His data shows the opposite of your claim.
That’s actually not my claim and mine numbers – it is the claim and numbers from The Telegraph. Few quotes:
“A new analysis by Edge Health, a leading provider of data to NHS trusts, warns that a second and then a third wave of “non-corona” deaths are about to hit Britain. Unless radical solutions can be found to resume normal service and slash waiting lists, the NHS may be forced to institute a formal regime of rationing.
The “second wave” is already breaking. It is made up of non-coronavirus patients not able or willing to access healthcare because of the crisis. Based on ONS and NHS data, Edge Health estimates these deaths now total approximately 10,000 and are running at around 2,000 a week.”
Source.
“Air condition/heating might actually promote the transitions from droplets to aerosols by removing humidity where then aerosols can relatively easily circulate by airflow but droplets cannot.
If the one study is right about that the virus is mainly entering via the nose’s epithelium that would explain the high infection rates at such events. People just have to breath a sufficient amount in to get it. And it would increase the need for filter masks by a lot.”
Is every one missing the obvious? It is about air circulation! A fan on the roof would do it
The tidal wave rolls further.
NYC was just the very beginning…
+40k new infection in a single day.
Many states show growth of 5-10% per day!
Shhhh . . . don’t confuse us with the asymptotic growth rate, which remains positive everywhere. The most important thing is that we are “bending the curve”, don’t cha know.
/sarc off
The actual official numbers from Germany (9:30 oçlock GMT+1, 25. April 2020):
—Confirmed cases: 152.438 (+2055)
—Deaths: 5500 (+179), 3,6%
—Recovered: About 109.800
Population: 83,02 million in 2019 –> 0,184%
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-04-25-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
We only care about growth rates in hospitalizations, and ICU requirements.
The rest of the statistics are useful only if they are leading indicators for the lagging result values we care about.
Asymptotic growth rates is measuring people that don’t need scarce resources.
If they take care to not spread the disease, they are part of the solution. They will become immune.
There are plenty of soft numbers that are leading indicators. Those soft numbers impact the numbers we care about, but the relationship is not fixed. It is based on human interactions, that varies with emotional factors and situations of interactions. An unknowable value, that can only be roughly estimated. It will vary widely from urban to suburban to rural areas. It will change if people work in large buildings with thousands of workers, or work in a closed shop with a few employees. Trying to treat everyone the same, and place uniform restrictions on them is stupid. And there seems to be plenty of stupid people advocating that solution.
We don’t really need to know all the statistics. We only need to know how many vulnerable people are getting infected and keep that value low. The weakness of this virus is that it doesn’t harm people equally. Vulnerable people need to know what they need to do to stay safe. And they may need help with that, so that should be the primary focus of preventative care.
People that have a low risk of hospitalization need to treat this like the flu, and assume they could be contagious and everyone else could be contagious. And then go about your life.
This virus takes advantage of an unaware public in crowded situations. That is were “exponential growth” comes from.
Avoid crowds. When you can’t keep a safe distance from others, use masks.
Some businesses that can’t do that will have to stay closed until they can find a way to do that.
This is a risk mitigation problem, not a “panic” situation.
We have to get back the recently unemployed back to work. The sooner the better. Most of the people that need to get back to work can do so safely.
The crowded bars, concerts, sporting events, political conventions, and keg parties are going to have to wait until we get a better solution.
French doctors don’t even treat the flu like the flu. They refuse to wear masks during the flu seasons because “they are vaccinated”. Don’t they know vaccinated people can carry a disease? If flu vaccinated people could not, we should see a clear signal of population wide efficiency of that vaccine, as its usefulness for the individual is unlikely to be exactly zero each and every season.
Tidal waves (tsunamis) are a devastating phenomena. Unless you know it is coming and have a good idea of what impact it will have. Then you can predict and prepare. When you are not taken by surprise you have an ability to create strategies and counter-attack.
Japan was very successful at Pearl Harbor. But their over confidence and disbursed strength left them vulnerable to a staggering defeat at Midway Island. And from then on they were on the defensive. And their limited natural resources and vulnerability to a navel siege, left them in a losing position as long at their attackers failed to make similar mistakes.
China has decided the path to power is through weakening the rest of the world. Fighting a war on many fronts with limited supporting allies is a weak position, no matter what your tactical advantages. They have a lot to answer for and the longer they stonewall, the less likely they will remain a long term global leader.
Important
” One
missed super-spreader could cause a new outbreak. LloydSmith et al. showed that individual-specific strategies (for example, isolation of the infected individuals) were more likely
to exterminate an emerging disease than population-wide interventions such as advising an entire population to reduce
the behaviors associated with transmission [7, 11]. According
to the model proposed by Lloyd-Smith et al., isolating infected
individuals increased the heterogeneity of infectiousness and
when the variation of infectiousness was large, extinction occurred rapidly [7, 11]. By taking advantage of heterogeneity,
control measures could be directed towards the smaller group
of highly infectious cases or the high-risk groups.
7. Lloyd-Smith JO, Schreiber SJ, Kopp PE, Getz WM. Superspreading and the effect of individual variation on disease
emergence. Nature 2005;438:355-9.
8. James A1, Pitchford JW, Plank MJ. An event-based model of
superspreading in epidemics. Proc Biol Sci 2007;274:741-7.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16292310
I raised this paper when folks were discussing the diamond princess trying to use it as a “gold standard”
I argued that it was not a gold standard for understanding the transmission because it did not exhibit
what we see in the wild.
Super spreader events.
These events dominate your statistics.
Control them ( like Korea does ) and you have a better chance at controlling the spread
That means understanding them first.
If you want to end lock downs, appeal to science.
“Population-level analyses often use average quantities to describe heterogeneous systems, particularly when variation does not arise from identifiable groups. A prominent example, central to our current understanding of epidemic spread, is the basic reproductive number, R(0), which is defined as the mean number of infections caused by an infected individual in a susceptible population. Population estimates of R(0) can obscure considerable individual variation in infectiousness, as highlighted during the global emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) by numerous ‘superspreading events’ in which certain individuals infected unusually large numbers of secondary cases. For diseases transmitted by non-sexual direct contacts, such as SARS or smallpox, individual variation is difficult to measure empirically, and thus its importance for outbreak dynamics has been unclear. Here we present an integrated theoretical and statistical analysis of the influence of individual variation in infectiousness on disease emergence. Using contact tracing data from eight directly transmitted diseases, we show that the distribution of individual infectiousness around R(0) is often highly skewed. Model predictions accounting for this variation differ sharply from average-based approaches, with disease extinction more likely and outbreaks rarer but more explosive. Using these models, we explore implications for outbreak control, showing that individual-specific control measures outperform population-wide measures. Moreover, the dramatic improvements achieved through targeted control policies emphasize the need to identify predictive correlates of higher infectiousness. Our findings indicate that superspreading is a normal feature of disease spread, and to frame ongoing discussion we propose a rigorous definition for superspreading events and a method to predict their frequency.”
The trouble with all communist style ‘command’ states is that the virus doesn’t get the Memos.
“A German laboratory stated in early April that according to WHO recommendations, Covid19 virus tests are now considered positive even if the specific target sequence of the Covid19 virus is negative and only the more general corona virus target sequence is positive. However, this can lead to other corona viruses (cold viruses) also trigger a false positive test result. The laboratory also explained that Covid19 antibodies are often only detectable two to three weeks after the onset of symptoms. This must be taken into account so that the actual number of people already immune to Covid19 is not underestimated’
How are they immune when their antibodies are not “detectable”?
Wonderful.
Now do the CDC.