What went right and wrong on Covid?
No to Covid test, no to political revolution, and no to politics in China: A case study on a social media-based video of Xi Jinping in a lockdown
The financial hub of Shanghai soon became the epicenter. Local officials initially denied a citywide lockdown was necessary, but then imposed one after the city reported 3,500 daily infections.
Fighting back tears, she shouts abuse at the hazmat-suited workers below in a video that has recently gone viral on social media platform Weibo and which appears to encapsulate the Chinese public’s growing frustration with their government’s uncompromising zero-Covid policy.
Since returning from the university in the summer, the woman has been under medical vases for half a year. They looked back and seemed unmoved.
The zero- Covid policy is a defacto way of fighting Covid, because it ties in to the model of fighting that has been used by the leader, according to an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.
That claim comes even as infections flare and a new strain circulates just days before the country’s most important political event, the Communist Party Congress beginning in Beijing on Sunday at which Xi Jinping is expected to cement his place as the country’s most powerful leader in decades.
Observers around the world will be watching to see if there are any changes to the zero-covid stance of the party when it meets twice a decade.
“Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom. Yes to dignity, but no to lies. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform. Yes, to vote, but not a great leader. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” one banner read, while the other called for the removal of “dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.”
Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, immediately censored search results for “Sitong Bridge,” the site of the protest. Before long, key words including “Beijing,” “Haidian,” “warrior,” “brave man,” and even “courage” were restricted from search.
Numerous accounts on Weibo and WeChat, the super-app essential for daily life in China, have been banned after commenting on – or alluding to – the protest.
Many spoke of their support and awe. Some shared the Chinese pop hit “Lonely Warrior” in a veiled reference to the protester, who some called a “hero,” while others swore never to forget, posting under the hashtag: “I saw it.”
China’s latest big bang: the social crisis at the end of Golden Week, and the crisis in far western Xinjiang
The state media articles this week seem to damp speculation that China may change tack after Congress, as all the signs show the party is sticking to its zero- Covid approach.
In Shanghai, where 25 million people have already endured two months of the world’s strictest lockdown, residents are now on edge at any signs of a repeat as authorities begin to tighten measures once again.
Still, China is ramping up efforts to monitor variants circulating in its population, and has announced plans to get 3 hospitals in each of its 31 provinces to genetically sequence virus samples collected from 15 outpatients, 10 people with severe COVID-19, and all people who have died from COVID-19 each week. Many other nations have reduced their genomic monitoring, which means that it will be harder for these plans to detect a concerning variant that could cause new waves of infections.
Anxious about the possibility of unpredictable and random snap-lock downs, some people in the city have been storing their drinking water, and authorities have previously backtracked, saying that no such measures would be coming.
That panic buying has been made worse by an announcement that Shanghai’s water authorities have taken action to ensure water quality after discovering saltwater inflows to two reservoirs at the mouth of the Yangtze River in September.
In May 2020, researchers at the government-backed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory issued a classified report that found it was possible that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, which came at a time when that line of inquiry was considered taboo.
The country has seen an increase in cases of domestic tourist destinations even though it has banned tourists from going over China’s Golden Week holiday.
More than 240,000 university students in Inner Mongolia have been locked down on campuses due to the latest outbreak, according to Zhang Xiaoying, a deputy director of the regional Department of Education. The university communist party boss was sacked after 39 students from his institution tested positive for HIV, after the outbreak on campus.
Then there is the situation in far western Xinjiang, where some 22 million people have been banned from leaving the region and are required to stay home. Xinjiang recorded 403 new cases on Thursday, according to an official tally.
Beijing seems unwilling to move from its hardline stance. For three days this week, the state-run Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published commentaries reiterating that China would not let its guard down.
How to get out of the social circle after a bad case of zero-covid: The frustrations of China’s mobile health system
After sacrificing so much for zero-covid and waiting so long for it to open, the government allowed the virus to get through a population without warning or preparation.
When the Communist Party proclaims his third term as party chief on Sunday, it will likely make him the most powerful leader in decades.
Many are waiting for signs that restrictions might be loosened during the Communist Party National Congress this week. It would require a leader, who throughout his rule has sought to extend the control of the party on daily life, to change anything that is related to the policy.
China’s advanced online ecosystem – run on mobile phone superapps and ubiquitous QR codes – has offered arguably unrivaled convenience for consumers to shop, dine and travel. Those technologies are playing a role in limiting daily life.
Mobile phone health codes are the backbone of a system designed to track citizens and designate whether they are cleared to enter various venues, upping state control on people’s movement to an extent never before seen in China.
Across the country, basic activities like going to the grocery store, riding public transport, or entering an office building depend on holding an up-to-date, negative Covid test and not being flagged as a close contact of a patient – data points reflected by a color code.
Going out in public can be a risk in itself, as being placed under quarantine or barricaded by authorities into a mall or office building as part of a snap lockdown could simply depend on whether someone in the general vicinity ends up testing positive.
“(You see) all the flaws of big data when it has control over your daily life,” said one Shanghai resident surnamed Li, who spent a recent afternoon scrambling to prove he didn’t need to quarantine after a tracking system pinned his wife to a location near to where a positive case had been detected.
Li, who’d been with his wife at the time but received no such message, said they were eventually able to reach a hotline and explain their situation, ultimately returning her health code to green.
The Manifestation of the Communist Party on the Third Ring Road of Beijing: One Day to Be on a Bus, or Three Years Later?
One of the three editorials released last week by the People’s Daily stated that the essence of persisting with zero- Covid is to prioritize life and put people first.
The comment about being on that bus one day was deleted, but still had more than half a million likes, and was a glimpse into rising frustration with the policy.
The Third Ring Road of Beijing was the location of a rare political protest last week where banners hung from a bridge that were linked to social controls under the policy.
Speaking before some 2,300 mostly surgical-mask clad Communist Party members at the opening of the party’s five-yearly leadership reshuffle on Sunday, Xi gave a sweeping endorsement of China’s Covid controls, saying the party had “protected the people’s health and safety to the greatest extent possible” and “made tremendous, encouraging achievements in both epidemic and social development.”
The impact of controls has become sharper, as they have left people struggling for food and medicine and grappling with lost income and a mental toll.
In the run up to the Party Congress, controls amplified – as local authorities around the country sought to tamp down on outbreaks coinciding with the major political event.
“At the same time, the threat posed by Covid is reduced because of the higher vaccine coverage and the availability of antivirals. Taken together, I think the point has already been crossed where continuing zero-Covid could be considered a cost-effective strategy,” he said, adding that maintaining high vaccine coverage was key for a planned transition away from zero-Covid.
Fears about the impact of Covid-19 within China may also play out along generational and geographic lines, as younger people and those in more cosmopolitan urban centers may be more likely to support reopening the country and relaxing rules, residents said.
China’s Ministry ofForeign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the global industrial chain supply chain and the health of the world economy needed to be safeguarded against the epidemic.
There are fears that China’s health system could be overwhelmed by loosened restrictions on vaccinations among the elderly. A majority of people age 80 and older have received at least one dose, but less than one third have received a booster shot.
“If you don’t see any effort to prepare for the change, that suggests that they are not planning to change the policy any time soon,” said a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Where is the fish? Finding gaps in data collected by fishing vessels using the health code system to mask illegal fishing and femtosis
The health code system has been used to diffuse social protest, with petitions lost of their savings in rural banks after their health codes inexplicably turned red.
Automatic identification systems can be turned off for ships that have them, as they help to prevent accidents. Heather Welch and her colleagues analyzed over three years’ worth of signals from vessels at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They found gaps in the data to find areas where fishing vessels disabled their devices. Vessels hid up to 6% of their activity — more than 4.9 million hours over 3 years. According to the study some of these gaps were legitimate, but others could be used to mask illegal fishing. The world’s economy is affected by illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. It is bad for the marine life.
The team found that 82% of time lost to AIS disabling happened on ships flagged from Spain, the United States, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. Most vessels that use the tool come from upper-income countries.
COVID-19, the first virus that spreads from bats to people in China, and the United Nations Population Update: Implications for the rise of China and the world
In January 2021, an international team of experts convened by the WHO travelled to Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. Together with Chinese researchers, the team reviewed evidence on when and how the virus might have emerged, as part of phase one. The most probable scenario is that the disease can be spread from bats to people through an intermediate species. The first phase was supposed to begin the groundwork for the second phase, which is supposed to reveal what happened in China and elsewhere.
The latest UN population update, released in July this year, also revises its long-term projection down from 11 billion people to 10.4 billion by 2100.
Although approximate, this could be the most reliable estimate that the UN has produced so far. The organization is using annual intervals for analyzing data instead of five years. The ability and capacity of many countries to collect statistics has improved in recent decades.
The most significant factor behind the UN’s updated forecast is that data from China have been more reliable since the end of the country’s one-child policy in 2015. The UN predictions suggest that China’s population has already peaked, and will now shrink year-on-year until at least the end of the century.
Significant blind spots remain, however, particularly for countries that are experiencing humanitarian crises and conflicts, such as Somalia, Yemen and Syria.
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Here you can sign up.
After losing his father, a Chinese auto dealer died in a chaotic Covid lockdown: CNN reveals the case of Zhou and a 3-year-old girl
Zhou, an auto dealer in northeastern China, last saw his father alive in a video chat on the afternoon of November 1, hours after their home on the far outskirts of Beijing was locked down.
At the time, they didn’t even realize the snap Covid restrictions had been imposed – there was no warning beforehand, and the apartment building where Zhou’s parents and his 10-year-old son lived did not have any cases, he said.
“The local government killed my dad,” Zhou told CNN in his Beijing home, breaking down in tears. He said he’s received no explanation about why the ambulance took so long to arrive, just a death certificate stating the wrong date of death.
A 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning on the same day Zhou lost his dad, as he could not be taken to a hospital quickly. Two weeks later, a 4-month-old girl died in hotel quarantine in the central city of Zhengzhou after a 12-hour delay in medical care.
Zhou said he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report on his story, but no reporters came. Amid growing desperation and anger, he turned to foreign media – despite knowing the risk of repercussions from the government. CNN is only using his name because of the risk.
Workers at the biggest iPhone assembly factory in the world clashed with security officers because of delayed bonus payment and chaotic Covid rules.
The heat of Chinese public discontent: zero-Covid vs. zero-Tolensing in the city of Chongqing
A resident in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing delivered a speech on Thursday against the Covid lock up at his residence. Without freedom, I would rather die. He yelled to a crowd of cheering people, who hailed him a hero, and wrestled him from the grasp of police officers who were trying to take him away.
These acts of defiance echoed an outpouring of discontent online, notably from Chinese football fans – many under some form of lockdown or restrictions – who have only been able to watch from home as tens of thousands of raucous fans pack stadiums at the World Cup in Qatar.
“None of the fans are seen wearing face masks, or told to submit proof of Covid test results. Are they not living on the same planet as us?” asked a Wechat article questioning China’s insistence on zero-Covid, which went viral before it was censored.
Chinese officials are feeling the heat of the public discontent which came on top of the huge social and economic tolls caused by the widening lock downs.
Local officials are reverting to a zero- tolerance approach to infections, instead of relaxing controls.
The northern city of Shijiazhuang was among the first to cancel mass testing. After long periods of online classes, it gave students the chance to return to school. But as cases rose over the weekend, authorities reimposed a lockdown on Monday, telling residents to stay home.
On Tuesday, financial hub Shanghai banned anyone arriving in the city from entering venues including shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets and gyms for five days. Authorities also shut down cultural and entertainment venues in half of the city.
In Guangzhou, for the fifth time, the government locked down the city’s most populous district after a protest took place.
In the capital, restaurants were mostly closed. There are a lot of businesses that are not able to find enough staff that hasn’t gotten sick. Sanlitun, one of Beijing’s most popular shopping districts, was deserted despite its recent anti-COVID-19 fencing being taken down.
The government doesn’t have a stated goal of its new policy, which could cause confusion. The reopening will likely lead to a messy and hasty process where local governments ditch all the zero-COVID measures without investing seriously in preparing for the transition.
The Chinese officials have denied that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines were for a pivot to living with the virus.
The measures are about “optimizing” existing Covid prevention and control policy, Shen Hongbing, a disease control official, told a news conference last week. “They are not an easing (of control), let alone reopening or ‘lying flat’,” he said.
Back on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhou said while the zero-Covid policy “is beneficial to the majority,” its implementation at a local level had been too draconian.
I don’t want things to happen in China or anywhere in the world again. “I lost my father. My son lost his beloved grandfather. I’m furious now.”
China’s Zero-Covid Relaxation Reaction Revisited: A Moment of Uncertainty about the Future of Travel in China
After the government unveiled an update of its policy for disease control, Chinese workers have torn down some physical signs of the zero- Covid controls, as well as health code signs at metro station walls.
While the changes were greeted with relief by many and sparked discussion online of freer travel within the country – and perhaps even international travel in the future – there was also a sense of uncertainty about what lay ahead.
“The world changed overnight, and that’s really amazing,” said Echo Ding, 30, a manager at a tech company in Beijing. “I feel like we are getting back to normal life. This is important to me because if I don’t get back to a normal life, I might lose my mind.”
“How can it change so fast?” “What do you mean?” Ding asked. I feel like we are like fools. It’s all up to them. They said it was good, so I think that is the way it is. It is so realistic that I have no choice but to accept it. I can only follow the arrangement.
The changes were welcomed but they also caused a feeling of disbelief in the city, which was locked down for over two months earlier this year.
“Of course I was very happy about these new changes – (but) most of my friends are showing typical signs of PTSD, they just can’t believe it’s happening,” he said.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/china/china-zero-covid-relaxation-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html
What should we do if Omicron is spread? Experts say the decision to remove the disease from China’s social media platform weibo made unanimous
Top health officials in Beijing on Wednesday said the changes to the rules were based on scientific evidence, including the spread of the comparatively milder Omicron variant, the vaccination rate, and China’s level of experience in responding to the virus.
The health officials made a major roll back of the rules that they had used to stop the spread of the disease. The health code use in designated places, as well as home isolation of cases, are still part of the measures.
The government and state media had long emphasized the dangers of the virus and its potential long-term effects – and used this to justify the maintenance of restrictive policies.
While Omicron may cause relatively milder disease compared to earlier variants, even a small number of serious cases could have a significant impact on the health system in a country of 1.4 billion.
There were many reports of panic buying of fever drugs on Thursday morning, when the topics and hashtags relating to what to do if Omicron trended high onChina’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo.
“People were not told what kind of medicine they should have and what they should do if infected until there was widespread infection. Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, said that the release felt sudden and arbitrary and should have been done a long time ago.
People expressed concern about living with the virus. If I am re-exposed to an infectious agent, I don’t know what harm it will bring to my body, so I want to keep myself safe.
Wang’s mother was getting high-quality N95 masks and readying for a “nuclear winter” as a potential first wave of cases passed.
Observational constraints on Covid-19 in high-risk public spaces and buildings in China, and implications for vaccine use in the 21st century
Many cities are watching to see how the guidelines are implemented as local authorities adjust and there has been some contradiction in how they are implemented.
The Beijing authorities said on Wednesday that it is against the national guidelines to require a negative Covid-19 test in restaurants or in some entertainment venues.
Mass testing is no longer required, according to the latest national guidelines. They also take a more measured approach to lockdowns: instead of shutting down cities, the government says movement restrictions should apply to high-risk communities, buildings and households. People no longer have to show evidence of a negative test to travel between regions or access public transport and other venues, except for high-risk settings such as nursing homes. And the guidelines prioritize boosting the low rates of vaccination among older people.
Some aspects of the new rules are open to interpretation, including when and where to test people during an outbreak, and how to manage high-risk areas.
If the goal is not zero carbon dioxide, then the guidelines don’t lift testing and scurries for international travellers.
Many people in China live in densely populated high-rise buildings, where it will be difficult to limit transmission. Allowing people to quarantine at home will contribute to viral spread, says George Liu, a public-health researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. This could overwhelm hospitals.
Some studies have estimated China’s abrupt and under-prepared reopening could lead to nearly a million deaths – close to the Covid death toll of the US.
China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care, so people often go to hospital for mild conditions.
Without additional support, the eased restrictions might not help businesses to recover from protracted lockdowns or remove the social stigma attached to COVID-19, says Joy Zhang, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. I am afraid that the risk will be passed on to individuals.
Cowling says there needs to be urgent guidance on how to stop transmission during a surge, like through mask mandates and work from home policies. And given the reduction in testing, it is not clear how officials will track whether cities are approaching, or have passed, the peak of an infection wave, he says.
Researchers are concerned that hasty changes will not leave enough time to ramp up vaccination among older people. Currently, some 70% of people aged 60 or older, and 40% of those aged 80 or more, have received a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The guidelines propose setting up mobile clinics, and training medical staff to address people’s safety concerns to boost vaccination. They don’t issue vaccine mandates or have strong incentives for local governments to increase their vaccine rates. Whether the inevitable rise in infections will lead to a spike in deaths remains to be seen. He says the full impact still has to be unfolded.
Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for the following day.
It had been a point of contention for many Chinese people, including due to concerns around data collection and its use by local governments to ban entry to those who have visited a city with a “high-risk zone,” even if they did not go to those areas within that city.
China’s Central Medical Center is Undermining the Covid-19 Pandemic: a Zero-Signal Problem for the Next-Generation China
The country’s health system is under some question about how it will handle a mass outbreak.
Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.
Health workers in the capital were also grappling with a surge in emergency calls, including from many Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms, with a hospital official on Saturday appealing to residents in such cases not to call the city’s 911-like emergency services line and tie up resources needed by the seriously ill.
The amount of emergency calls has risen from 5,000 to more than 30,000 in the last week, said Chen Zhi, chief doctor of the Beijing Emergency Center.
Covid was spreading rapidly in China because of highly transmissible Omicron variants, according to a top Covid-19 expert.
No matter how well the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain, which is the main concern in the Pandemic area, according to Zhong, who is a key public voice.
The rapid rollback of testing nationwide and the shift by many people to use antigen tests at home has also made it difficult to gauge the extent of the spread, with official data now appearing meaningless.
China may not be prepared for the expected surge of cases after removing measures following nationwide protests against the policy, as well as rising economic costs.
Zhong, in the state media interview, said the government’s top priority now should be booster shots, particularly for the elderly and others most at risk, especially with China’s Lunar New Year coming up next month – a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometowns.
Measures to be undertaken include increasing ICU wards and beds, enhancing medical staff for intensive care and setting up more clinics for fevers, China’s National Health Commission said in a statement.
Meanwhile, experts have warned a lack of experience with the virus – and years of state media coverage focusing on its dangers and impact overseas, before a recent shift in tone – could push those who are not in critical need to seek medical care, further overwhelming systems.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/china/china-zero-covid-impact-beijing-intl-hnk-mic/index.html
Drinfell: What is to be said in China after Covid-19? Comment on Lars Hamer on Weibo, CNN, and Twitter
China’s market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some “hot-selling” drugs and vowed to crackdown on price gouging, while major online retailer JD.com last week said it was taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales for certain medications surged 18 times that week over the same period in October.
A hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take medication to recover.
“People with asymptomatic inflections do not need medication at all. Li, the chief infectious disease physician at Beijing You An Hospital said in an interview that it is enough to rest at home and that it is important to maintain a good mood.
The China lifestyle magazine, That’s, is edited by the Editor-in-Chief, Lars Hamer. He lives in Guangzhou, China. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Follow him on Twitter @LarsHamer1. Read more opinion on CNN.
The wake of Guangzhou: From a ghost town to a metropolis after a Covid-19 lockdown — a moment of pure disbelief
Every resident here dreads the knock. A loud banging on the door of my apartment in southern China woke me up early Tuesday. Health care workers dressed in hazmat suits ordered everyone to go downstairs after a neighbor tested positive for Covid-19.
I had good reason to worry. One month ago, a teacher friend and his colleagues were sent to the centralized quark because one of his students had tested positive for Covid-19. I feared the same was about to happen to me.
To my surprise, nothing of the sort. I took a Covid-19 test and underwhelmingly, that was it. Before my result even came out, I was free to leave my house and go about my day, totally unrestricted.
I would have become a close contact and would have been powerless to escape the facility since I was labeled a person with a vice-like grip.
Almost overnight, Guangzhou, a city of some 15 million people, has been transformed from a Covid-19 ghost town back to the bustling metropolis I first encountered when I moved here five years ago.
In the event of a lock down, the blocking of fire exits is forbidden in the new measure. Now, people who are infected can isolate themselves at home. Quarantine facilities are going to be abolished in a few months.
Friends and families who had not seen each other for months gathered in bars and restaurants, and QR codes were being ripped down from walls; our movements no longer tracked.
I spent most days working until late at night because there weren’t many other things to be done, businesses were shut, and millions of people were stuck indoors. I too began to feel the strain and started considering leaving the country.
It was a moment of pure disbelief. Guangzhou had almost 8,000 cases that day, numbers similar to those that triggered a city-wide lockdown in Shanghai in April.
Do we need a national pandemic panel? Redesigning the Covid Commission, Sen. Richard M. Burr, R. C. Zelikow
One of the sources said that the new assessment from the Department of Energy is similar to information from a House Republican Intelligence Committee report released last year on the origins of the virus.
But those inquiries are partisan. Congressional leaders from both parties would be tasked with appointing a 12-member panel of highly qualified citizens for the independent commission. Like the Sept. 11 panel, it would have subpoena power and hold public hearings. It would be charged with examining the origins of the pandemic as well as the response by the Trump and Biden administrations.
There is no substitute for showing the vision that we showed in the early 2000s when we created an architecture that fixes things we got wrong and addresses things we didn’t think of then, said Senator Richard M. burr.
A group of three dozen independent experts has spent the last two years conducting research to lay the groundwork for a national inquiry, and Mr. Zelikow is now the leader of the Covid Commission Planning Group. The group, which has held several hundred interviews, grew tired of waiting for Congress and plans to publish its findings in a book this spring, Mr. Zelikow said. He wouldn’t discuss the details.
Public opinion on COVID-19 epidemics in Beijing, China: a moment in the life outside of a fever clinic in order to protect the public from terrorist attacks
Global travel, climate change and humans moving into close proximity with animals will cause Pandemics in the future according to experts. Pandemics are a bigger threat to national security than terrorist attacks, according to biodefense experts. But the public may not see it that way.
The daily report by the National Health Commission has been reduced since the government relaxed its anti-viruses measures after they hit record highs.
A notice on the commission’s website said it stopped publishing daily figures on numbers of COVID-19 cases where no symptoms are detected since it was “impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infected persons,” which have generally accounted for the vast majority of new infections. The only numbers they’re reporting are confirmed cases detected in public testing facilities.
There were shortages of cold medicine at websites and at the pharmacy because of the sudden lifting of restrictions. Long lines have become routine outside fever clinics and hospital wards overflowing with patients in the capital Beijing and elsewhere in the country.
Two centers set up in Beijing to give shots for the elderly were empty except for medical personnel. Despite fears of a major outbreak, there was little evidence of a surge in patient numbers.
People are waiting for test results at a Beijing fever clinic. Nurses in full-body white protective gear checked in patients one by one.
A few kilometers (miles) south, at Chaoyang Hospital, about a dozen people waited in a line of blue tents, deflecting winds amid subzero temperatures. One person in the queue took out a bottle of disinfectant and sprayed it around her as she waited.
People were waiting in line to get cough medicine and Chinese herbal remedies at the pharmacy. A sign at the front said to avoidpanic and hoarding, we are doing all we can to fulfill your needs. A man coming out purchased some packages of the Chinese herbal remedy, saying each customer was limited from buying more than that.
The impact of COVID-19 on Chinese healthcare systems and the protests of Xi and the CPV adversarial leader
As skepticism grew that it’s downplaying Covid deaths, the Chinese government revealed it had updated its method of counting fatalities caused by the virus.
Emergency services have been offered in both the central and northeastern cities of the U.S. in order to deal with an increase in COVID-19 cases.
Hospitals were struggling to keep staff because of the shortage of China’s motorized tricycle delivery drivers, while packages were piling up at distribution points.
Some Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in order to reduce the risk of a bigger outbreak during the January New Year travel rush.
The move follows the announcement last week by the government that it would be ending some of the strictest measures following three years of strict virus restrictions.
In Shanghai, protesters even demanded that Xi step down – an unimaginable act of political defiance toward the country’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades.
If Liang was shifting focus to less stringent protocols, another prominent public health expert, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a pulmonologist who made his name fighting the SARS outbreak, made outright misleading claims about the virus. He told a state media outlet that he had not seen cases of long-term organ damage caused by COVID-19.
Almost 80% of patients will not be re-inferior to theOmnicron variant for a long time. Most people will be reimpregnated every one to two years, when studies show protection against reinfection declines dramatically.
China’s COVID policy reverses its zero-covid-policy: the about-face of Chinese medicine has come crashing down
The about-face did not go unnoticed on the Chinese internet. Posts juxtaposing several experts’ TV appearances before and after policy changes have gotten more than 100,000 views.
Wu Fan, a member of Shanghai’s disease outbreak containment expert commission famous for insisting that Shanghai could not shut down is now receiving apologies online.
The online discussion has turned to the consequences of the policy change, which included preventative measures and treatments.
Untested remedies have flourished again in the last few days. An internal medicine doctor who’s a member of China’s prestigious Academy of Engineering recommended the unproven method of rinsing out your mouth using iced salt water daily. Commenters online were baffled. Two years ago, was there a conclusive answer on salt water rinse? Does an iced version make a difference?” one wrote in a blog post.
A local government in southwest China suggested to make tea from oranges and monk fruit, which are ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine. The doctor had said weeks ago that there was no medication that was effective at preventing the COVID disease.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1143413739/confusion-and-falsehoods-spread-as-china-reverses-its-zero-covid-policy
Getting Public Health Messages Out to the Urban and Rural Populations of China: COVID, the Global Times, and The Diaspora
The uncertainty and chaos reminds an associate professor of media studies and Sociology at the University of Texas of early 2020 when COVID was first spreading. “It’s kind of flying in the dark.”
Another challenge is that Chinese news outlets often translate COVID misinformation from English-language sources and share it with their audience. “It doesn’t matter whether [the sources] are reputable or not,” says Huang. “They find anything that they thought would be useful to them, they start to translate that into Chinese, and start to spread it, and it becomes viral.”
A recent example was how the Communist Party-controlled newspaper, The Global Times, cited a misleading report in the British tabloid, Daily Mail, that suggested without evidence that vaccine maker Moderna manufactured the virus. The coverage was extensively cited by The Global Times to attack other theories regarding the origin of the disease, one of which claimed that it leaked from a government research lab. Smaller social media accounts made videos of the report and put it in the headlines.
Chen says that the Chinese diaspora has helped to share information with Chinese people in China about their own COVID experience, knowing that it will not be that serious.
She points out that while researchers and journalists often pay attention to social media discourse, many rural, often elderly residents rely on television and family members in larger cities to stay informed. Many are vulnerable to the disease, live in places where healthcare resources are scarce, and aren’t adept at finding information on social media.
The Chinese government needs to act fast to get public health messages out to vulnerable people because the disease is rapidly spreading from large cities to towns and villages.
Many considerations are also pragmatic and culturally based when it comes to public health messages.
Chen says that scientists have some soul searching to do in the next couple of years. Politics are going to be a part of public health and also science, so how do we conduct ourselves? What are our ethics?
China’s zero-Covid crisis has ended: a closed-door NHC briefing and the publication of a document seen by CNN
China is no longer counting its total number of infections, as authorities shut down their nationwide network of test booths, which was how the NHC came up with their estimates.
On Friday, a copy of what was purportedly the NHC meeting notes was circulated on Chinese social media and seen by CNN; the authenticity of the document has not been verified and the NHC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Financial Times said it was Sun Yang – a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention – who presented the figures to officials during the closed-door briefing, citing two people familiar with the matter.
The figures are in stark contrast to the public data of the NHC, which reported just 62,592 symptomatic Covid cases in the first twenty days of December.
According to the latest NHC guidelines, only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting the virus are classified as Covid deaths, Wang Guiqiang, a top infectious disease doctor, told a news conference Tuesday.
According to both reports and a document CNN viewed, the closed-door NHC meeting on Wednesday did not mention discussion of how many people may have died in China.
Beijing will begin distributing Pfizer’s Covid-19 drug Paxlovid to the city’s community health centers in the coming days, state media reported Monday.
According to a state-run China News Service, community doctors will give instructions to Covid-19 patients on how to use the medicine after they receive training.
A worker at a community health center in Beijing said that they had received notice from officials but that it was not clear when the drugs would arrive.
After nearly three years of lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing, China abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid policy this month following nationwide protests over its heavy economic and social toll.
Xi Jinping’s 2022 victory came as a blow to the Chinese healthcare system and to the collapse of the Omicron pandemic
An emergency room doctor in Beijing said in the paper that four of his colleagues had no time to eat or drink. “We have been seeing patients nonstop,” he said.
Another emergency room doctor told the newspaper he had been working despite having developed fever symptoms. The doctor said that with fewer medical staff, the pressure is increased.
In a sign of the strain on Beijing’s medical system, hundreds of health professionals from across China have traveled to the city to assist medical centers.
2022 was supposed to be a triumphant year for China and its leader Xi Jinping, as he began his second decade in power with a pledge to restore the nation to greatness.
The chaos and disarray is a stark contrast to Beijing, where the success of its Covid containment measures was showcased by keeping the coronaviruses largely out of the Winter Olympics.
The party’s narrative that its political system is superior to Western democracies in handling the epidemic was reinforced by the success.
Having tied himself so closely to zero- Covid, he was stuck in a trap. He could not move away from it, even though it was a risk to his authority, and he needed to secure a third term at the congress.
And so instead of vaccinating the elderly and bolstering ICU capacity, authorities wasted the next crucial months building larger quarantine facilities, rolling out more frequent mass testing, and imposing wider lockdowns that at one point affected more than 300 million people.
Then, in late November, a deadly apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi finally ignited public anger that had been simmering for months. Even though official denials were not made, many believed that the measures had hampered rescue efforts.
Protests erupted across the country, on a scale unseen in decades. On major city streets, crowds gathered to call for the end of Covid tests and to demand greater political freedom.
The nationwide demonstrations posed a challenge to the president. By then, Omicron had seemingly spun out of control, with the country logging a daily record of more than 40,000 infections, and the economic strain becoming too severe, with local governments running out of cash to pay huge lockdown bills.
The sudden and chaotic manner of the easing of restrictions has caught an unprepared public off guard and left them to fend for themselves.
The over-the-counter cold and fever medicines that were restricted from purchase quickly sold out on online shopping sites. Huge lines have formed outside fever clinics and hospital emergency rooms overflow with patients, many elderly. Crematoriums are struggling to keep up with an influx of bodies.
Now, the true scale of the outbreak and deaths could deal a serious blow to the credibility of a government that had justified years of painful restrictions on the grounds that they were necessary to save lives.
The Covid-19 outbreak in China and the role of the WHO, the WHO and GISAID as a case study: What are the implications?
History told me to be aware of the potential for panic since the C.D.C requirements are not a travel ban. The Biden administration rolled out a policy requiring travelers from China to present negative Covid-19 tests before entering the United States.
In the US and many other countries around the world public health officials have been having discussions about the case surge and possible steps that can be taken to better monitor it.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has called on European countries to set up random testing for travellers from China and sequence the virus from all positive samples to detect emerging variant of the disease. The United States, Japan and Australia have put in place measures for travellers from China.
“The US is following the science and advice of public health experts, consulting with partners, and considering taking similar steps we can take to protect the American people,” the officials said.
China has been criticized by the World Health Organization for understating the severity of the Covid outbreak and for its narrow definition of what constitutes a Covid death.
WHO officials, who have grappled with China’s tight control of data access throughout the pandemic, have become increasingly vocal in their calls for reliable information as a major outbreak rips across China’s urban centers in the wake of an abrupt relaxation of disease controls last month.
There, the outbreak has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums, triggered shortages of basic medicines, and sparked fears of an even darker month ahead as experts warn of a spread to less resourced rural areas during the upcoming Lunar New Year.
The European Union encouraged its member states to require a negative Covid test for Chinese passengers travelling to theEU, according to the Swedish presidency of the bloc.
The WHO’s Tedros said Wednesday it was “understandable” that some countries were taking these steps, “with circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming.”
But the group and WHO officials continued to stress the need for more forthcoming genomic data. The UN was criticized at the beginning of the epidemic for not pushing China hard enough for data and for Beijing’s apparent indifference to critical information. Beijing has defended transparency many times.
She said that we need more information about the sequence of things around the country, so that deeper analyses can be done. GISAID is a global initiative that provides access to the genomic data of different influenza viruses.
The study, which also looked at sequencing efforts in 189 countries up to the end of February 2022, found that during the first two years of the pandemic, 78% of high-income countries sequenced more than 0.5% of their COVID-19 cases, with some, including Denmark, Japan and the United Kingdom, consistently sequencing more than 5% of cases each week. The earlier such data are gathered and shared, the faster scientists can run laboratory tests to look at the new variant’s immune evasion, resistance to antiviral drugs and ability to infect cells, says Sintchenko.
The testing landscape has changed a lot over the last year, said evolutionary practicioner Verity Hill at the Yale School of Public Health. Broad-scale population-based screening was feasible in countries such as the United Kingdom because researchers could tap into samples collected at community-based PCR testing facilities. But in many countries authorities are no longer offering such services because of the expense and the decrease in demand, says Hill. People are choosing to self-test or not test at all.
The main target of body’s immune response, the spikeprotein which allows the virus to enter host cells, is something experts look for. A jump in the number of mutations in a new variant is one thing to watch out for, says Hill. “That’s a warning flag,” she says. The Omicron variant, which first appeared in a sequence from Botswana, had more than 30 mutations in its spike protein.
The World Health Organization (WHO) only designates a new ‘variant of concern’ if a variant is better at evading existing immune system protections, causes more severe disease or is much more transmissible than currently circulating variants.
Omicron was a dominant variant of the population, due to the fact it contained many mutations and was rapidly spreading around in the community. The WHO designated Omicron a variant of concern within days of South African researchers alerting the international community to the variant’s rapid spread. The first Omicron sequence was deposited intoGISAID three weeks before that.
The Delta variant was designated a variant of concern in May 2021, seven months after the first known sample was collected in India. The first sign that there could be a concerning new variant around was a rapid rise in case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths in India at the start of 2021. The genetics and case counts are connected as much as possible.
Most of the China’s submissions have come from Omicron subvariants already in circulation elsewhere. Because of pre-existing immunity, the new lines are not likely to gain a foothold outside China.
The less population-wide internet monitoring outside China makes it more likely that a variant will emerge in China.
A researcher in China who asked not to be identified says that China is increasing the amount of data it uploads to Geographical Information System for Asia and the Pacific.
In the midst of simmering hostility between the two superpowers, WHO member states requested in May 2020 that the agency put together a science-led effort to identify how the pandemic started. Although China agreed to the mission, tensions were high by the time the WHO group left for Wuhan, and engagement with China quickly unravelled after the group returned.
Most of the agencies believe the virus was not genetically engineered. (Two agencies did not think there was sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way.)
That July, the WHO sent a circular to member states outlining how it planned to advance origins studies. Proposed steps included assessing wild-animal markets in and around Wuhan and the farms that supplied those markets, as well as audits of labs in the area where the first cases were identified.
The Chinese officials rejected the WHO’s plans, taking issue with the plan to investigate lab breeches. The second phase of the WHO proposal was not agreed on by all member countries and should not focus on pathways, as the mission report found extremely unlikely, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
The lab leak theory needs more study after a lack of answers about the origins of Covid-19 led some scientists, the Biden administration and the World Health Organization to argue. If only China were cooperating.
It is a proof of a “zoonotic conspiracy” that so many experts came around quickly on a declaration of natural origin, even after they expressed their doubts. For their part, many of those participants have described the conference call as an honest exchange of perspectives and the “consensus” that emerged afterward the genuine result of scientific reflection and debate: Further consideration and conversation moved their collective dials away from “possible” to “unlikely” or even “vanishingly unlikely,” with better understanding of the viral genome resolving many of their initial questions about its features.
Outside the formal WHO-led process, some studies proposed for phase two have gone ahead. In May last year, researchers in Beijing and Wuhan published the results1 of an analysis of donor blood supplied to the Wuhan Blood Center before December 2019. The researchers were looking for the SARS- CoV-2 antibodies that could give an indication of some of the earliest infections. During a three month period starting September 1 and ending December 31st, the team screened 88,000 samples and did not discover any anti-SRS-CoV-2 antibodies in them.
“I still hope that progress will be made,” says Thea Fischer, a public-health virologist at the University of Copenhagen, who was a member of the mission to Wuhan and is part of SAGO.
China’s top decision-making body and the zero-Covid outbreak: What is happening after the last pandemic outbreak, and what will we need to do next?
The Communist Party’s top decision-making body assessed the country during a closed-door meeting presided over by the Chinese leader, signalling the country is seeking to minimize the political backlash from zero- Covid.
The years-long policy had generated widespread discontent – including rare nationwide protests – before it was scrapped in December amid rising economic costs, in a decision that caught the public off-guard.
The swift rollback of stringent disease controls sparked a surge in cases that saw hospitals overwhelmed and people scrambling for basic medicines. According to the most recent figures from the Department of Public Health, visits to doctor’s offices for viral tests seem to have subsided in intensity over the last few weeks, with levels returning to normal before the restrictions were lifted.
The Politburo Standing Committee said in its meeting that the nation had created a miracle in human history, as it had successfully pulled through the Pandemic.
The assessment from China’s top leaders, the first since the surge of cases has appeared to abate, underscores the questions that remain about the impact on the country.
Around 80% of people in China have already been colonized by disease, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s chief epidemiologist said on his personal social media account.
According to the latest data from the CDC, 912 hospital deaths were reported by China in the week of February 3-9, down from a previous week of 912 deaths which was reported on January 4.
According to a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, providing a more complete picture of the outbreak and the death toll may not be in the interests of the government.
The death toll has been calculated based on several international reports, and it is estimated to have been up to one million over the past two months. It will be difficult for the government to come up with a solution that is equal, because people are going to ask the question of how much we have spent.
Instead, Huang said, Chinese leaders were seizing the moment to take control of the narrative around the outbreak as the surge appears to have receded.
“People’s lives are returning to normal, and the viral wave comes to an end, so that kind of uncertainty (about the outbreak) is no longer there, and there is a need to reconcile the contradictory narrative, the credibility crisis that the abrupt policy U-turn created,” Huang said, referring to the shift in official tone as China swiftly adjusted from warning about the dangers of the virus and the need to contain it, to allowing it to spread.
The Politburo Standing Committee has advocated for the enhancement of health care and called for the planning of the next phase of vaccinations, according to a summary from the meeting.
He said that covid was with them for a long time. “After this tsunami, still they have the new challenge of strengthening the health care system.”
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas: Bringing the Department of Energy Closer to the Establishment of the COVID-19 Vaccine
The agency’s conclusion was derived from classified evidence that is not available to the public. The federal government says “low confidence” means that the information used in an analysis is questionable, fragmented or cannot be inferred from the information.
The Department of Energy has a new assessment that was reported by the Wall Street Journal. The new intelligence, further study of academic literature and consultation with experts outside the government were some of the reasons for the update to the intelligence assessment, according to a senior US intelligence official.
McCaul wants the entire Biden administration to join the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the majority of Americans in concluding that the COVID-19 vaccine came about because of a lab leak in China.
The DOE office is one of 18 government agencies that make up the intelligence community, which are under the umbrella of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Republicans on Capitol Hill accused the Biden Administration of playing down the possibility of a theory in the intelligence assessment that was given to Congress.
“I’m pleased the Department of Energy has finally reached the same conclusion that I had already come to,” Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.
“I have requested a full and thorough briefing from the administration on this report and the evidence behind it,” the Texas Republican said in a statement.
“It is critical the administration also begin to work immediately with our partners and allies around the world to both hold the (Chinese Communist Party) accountable and to put in place updated international regulations to ensure something like this cannot happen again,” McCaul said.
We need to do a lot of hearings. I hope our Democratic colleagues in the Congress can support that. I know the Republicans in the House are certainly supportive of that,” the Senate Armed Services Committee member said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has never been seen before: Why the intelligence community is divided on the matter, and where the U.S. epidemic came from
These statements do not understand that the intelligence community is still divided over the matter. Republicans have long sought to prove that the virus was part of a bigger conspiracy by China to cause a world-wide epidemic and many have been seeking an explanation for the epidemic that could mask Trump’s carelessness.
A spokesperson for House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement that the committee was “reviewing the classified information provided” by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to a letter requesting information earlier this month.
Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser, said on State of the Union that the intelligence community is divided on the matter and that President Joe Biden has put more resources into investigating the origin question.
So why does it matter where Covid-19 came from? As Relman, the Stanford microbiologist, previously noted to CNN, finding the answer can help prevent the next pandemic.
The US Energy Department’s assessment adds to the confusion about what really happened when the H1N1 outbreak started three years ago.
The community’s report said three other intelligence elements couldn’t coalesce around either explanation.
For the better part of 2020, advocates of the lab leak theory had to fight against claims they were being xenophobic or racist — in part thanks to anti-Chinese rhetoric from then-President Donald Trump, who embraced the theory.
An inquiry launched by Trump’s State Department, which sought to investigate whether China’s biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, was shut down early on in the Biden administration.
A letter from public health experts published in February 2020 in The Lancet, an influential scientific journal, also set the tone early by declaring the virus to have a natural origin.
The US-China Relationship During Covid-19: Implications for the American Intelligence Community and the New Biden Law in the Chip Industry
She said that looking at the entire analysis of the intelligence community is important. And the evidence does not conclusively point to any one theory.
An already inflamed relationship between the US and China is being exacerbated by two fresh controversies – one over the exact origins of Covid-19 and the other stemming from stern US warnings that China must not arm Russia in its war in Ukraine.
This trio of confrontations – along with rising tensions between US and Chinese forces in Asia and escalating standoffs over Taiwan – are dramatizing a long-building and once theoretical superpower rivalry that is suddenly a daily reality.
The new Select Committee will have to break this cycle of politicized competition in order to give a useful and effective examination of US-China relations.
Wray’s comments come just days after news of the Department of Energy’s “low-confidence” assessment that Covid-19 most likely originated from a laboratory leak in China, underscoring a divide in the US government as the majority of the intelligence community still believes that Covid either emerged naturally in the wild, or that there is still too little evidence to make a judgment one way or another.
“We want to understand what we got wrong about the Chinese Communist Party and what we need to understand about it going forward in order to get our policy right,” the Wisconsin Republican said.
On CBS News on Sunday, Gallagher warned: “We may call this a strategic competition, but it’s not a tennis match. This is about what type of world we want to live in. Do we want to live in Xinjiang-lite or do we want to live in the free world?” he said, referring to the Chinese region where the US has accused China of inflicting genocide on the Uyghur minority, a charge China continues to vehemently deny.
The committee can be one of the only areas where Congress and the White House can find common ground. The Biden administration has continued the tough stance against China adopted by Donald Trump. The new law signed by President Joe Biden last year will allow the government to spend $200 billion in a bid to take back the leadership of the chip industry, which is critical to the future economic health of the US and China.
Keeping China’s lab leak accountable for its support of Russia, the US and Eurasia: Analyzing the Covid-19 controversy in Washington
Virologist Angela Rasmussen, who contributed to one of the Science papers, says the DOE’s “low confident” conclusion doesn’t “negate the affirmative evidence for zoonotic [or animal] origin nor do they add any new information in support of lab origin.”
The Republicans immediately claimed political victory in the wake of the Wall Street Journal report about new intelligence that made the Department of Energy believe that a lab leak was to blame. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories about the pandemic, tweeted, “Conspiracy theorists – 100 Media – 0.”
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. China’s lab leak, being proven right doesn’t matter. It is important for the Chinese Communist Party to be held accountable so this doesn’t happen again.
In Washington this week the issue has turned into an excuse for Republicans to focus on scientists and government health experts, as well as twist a narrative about Covid-19 that still has massive gaps.
“China has never had to incur any costs for its support for Russia. This would be the first time, and it is a very important crossroads according to a former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia.
The antagonism between the US and China is starting to trickle into US politics. While being tough on Beijing is a bipartisan idea, the idea of broadening a conflict in Ukraine goes against the more cautious view of US power abroad by America First Republicans. Even thoughMitch McConnell is a traditional hawk, he supports even more US aid for Ukranian. Ron DeSantis and other conservatives warned against escalating conflict. He mentioned potential Chinese involvement in a foreign policy comment last week.
His comments were a reminder that everything in Washington is ultimately political. And few issues are as politicized as tortured US relations with China.
What Do We Want to Know About Covid-19? The American Public Sensitivity to the Lab Leak Theory of Swine Flu
Three elements of the intelligence community did not believe there was enough evidence to make a determination. The FBI, according to CNN, had medium confidence in the lab leak theory.
The Chinese government probably played a role in the creation of the swine flu, a majority of Americans said in a new survey. Asked whether they believe the virus originated from a laboratory leak in China or from human contact with an infected animal, about half (52%) said that they believed a lab leak was responsible.
US lawmakers who have pushed the lab leak theory seized on reporting about the new Department of Energy assessment, although the details of what led to the assessment are not yet public.
A senator from Missouri demanded more information about the report from the Department of Energy, and promised to push for its declassification.
The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, has persistently insisted that he believes the most likely origin of the disease is a natural occurrence, since other, more similar viruses have evolved that way.
Each party should appoint subject matter experts on pandemics, epidemiology and emergency response to take part in this Covid-19 commission. It should have sufficient staff and money and subpoena power to investigate questions such as, “How did we get here?” And, “What can be done to mitigate the next pandemic?”
At this point in time, where the virus comes from, why is it important? Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, replied that it was important.
We know the next step, regardless, according to Ranney. “While we’re focusing on where Covid-19 started, we’re not spending time about how to keep America from ever having to go through the last three years again.”
The Covid-19 pandemic is not the result of a lab accident: China’s response to the U.S. response is patchwork
Sanner was the deputy director of national intelligence in the Trump administration.
She said that it was clear that China hid this and did not move quickly enough to investigate, and that now is blocking investigation.
“We don’t just take information or just take a feeling and turn it into analysis,” she said. We are actually doing a tough process that is why we are not sure yet. The evidence isn’t there.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday acknowledged that the bureau believes the Covid-19 pandemic was likely the result of a lab accident in Wuhan, China.
The FBI’s experts focus on the risk of biological threats that can come into the wrong hands, including by a hostile nation state, according to the FBI’s expert team.
It was designed to allow for a leak from a Chinese government controlled lab, which is what caused the coronaviruses to kill millions of Americans.
Wray said that most details of the FBI’s investigation remain classified, and that it has been difficult to work with the Chinese government on investigating the pandemic’s origin.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs pushed against the Department of Energy’s updated assessment during a briefing on Monday, with spokesperson Mao Ning saying that “the parties concerned should stop stirring up arguments about laboratory leaks, stop smearing China and stop politicizing the issue of the virus origin.”
The government does not have a comprehensive database of where such experiments are taking place, let alone practice any rigorous oversight of them. Different standards are generated by crude risk categorization and funding source. In an interview with Lentzos, it was described as a system with a “total crazy quilt of rules” and a “big zone of uncertainty” about which labs are doing what. Globally, the governance and oversight structure is even more patchwork. The number of places doing these experiments may not be indicative of the risks.
“Many other [news] outlets are presenting this as new conclusive proof that the lab origin hypothesis is equally as plausible as the zoonotic origin hypothesis,” Rasmussen wrote in an email to NPR, “and that is a misrepresentation of the evidence for either.”
What do the studies say about the origins of the sarscov-2 pandemic tell us about the early days of the 1918 influenza?
We now know that one of the surfaces that was positive for the respiratory disease was a metal cage in a back room, when the market was shut down.
The early days of the Pandemic can be seen in the data from the studies from the year 2022. There is photographic and genetic data that shows a stall in the market where the coronavirus likely came from. And a genetic analysis estimates the time, within weeks, when not just one but two spillovers occurred. It calculates that the coronavirus jumped into people once in late November or early December and then again few weeks later.
At this exact same time, a huge COVID outbreak occurred at the market. Many people working and shopping at the market were likely affected by the disease. That outbreak is the first documented one of the pandemic, and it then spilled over into the community, as one of the Science papers shows.
Evolutionary Biologist Michael Worobey was part of the team that was researching the origins of the Pandemic. He tracked down the beginnings of the 1918 flu, as well as the origin of HIV.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/28/1160162845/what-does-the-science-say-about-the-origin-of-the-sars-cov-2-pandemic
The Huanan market is not the first place to sell live animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, but the first cluster of respiratory infections could be seen at a market
There were live animals in the market, such as red foxes and raccoon dogs. There was photographic evidence from December. A concerned customer took pictures and videos of the market and posted them on Weibo, so it was illegal to sell certain live animals. The photos were promptly scrubbed. The person who took the photos was spoken to by a CNN reporter. I was able to get in touch with this reporter, and they passed on those photos from the source. We don’t completely verify the photos.
We analyzed a leaked report from the Chinese CDC detailing the results of this environmental sampling. Virtually all of the findings in the report matched what was in the World Health Organization’s report. There was more information in the leaked report. For example, there was information not just on which stalls had virus in them — or had samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 — but also how many samples in a given stall yielded positive results.
After our investigation, we realized that he took a photo at the same stall where five of the samples tested positive for the disease.
With a virus, such as SARS-CoV-2, that causes no symptoms or mild symptoms in most people, you don’t have any chance of linking all the early cases to the site where the outbreak started. The virus is going to quickly spread to people who aren’t where it started.
And yet, from the clinical observations in Wuhan, around half of the earliest known COVID cases were people directly linked to the seafood market. The case that isn’t linked through epidemiological data has a closer geographical association to the market. That’s what we show in our paper.
You should remember that the city of China’s Wuhan has 11 million people. And the Huanan market is only 1 of 4 places in Wuhan that sold live animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, such as raccoon dogs.
If you want to know where the first cluster of respiratory infections is going to appear, think of it. It could be seen at a market. It could be found at a school, university or meatpacking plant.
I would put the odds at 1 in 10,000. But it’s interesting. There is an analysis we have that shows the likelihood of having this pattern of cases around the market being 1 in 10 million. If the market isn’t a source of the virus. We consider that strong evidence in science.
And the data zeroing in on the Huanan market, to me, is as compelling as the data that indicated to John Snow that the water pump was poisoning people who used it. [John Snow was a doctor in London who helped launch the field of outbreak investigations by figuring out the source of a cholera outbreak in the city in the mid-19th century].
Sometimes you have these rare moments where you’re maybe the only person on Earth who has access to this kind of crucial information. I felt like I had more cases around the market than I could expect, when I began to research it. It brings a tear to your eye, those kinds of moments.
The Covid-19 Commission: How Cold Was America? CNN’s National Security Analyser on the COVID-19 Anomaly
That’s unfortunate for everyone, but the Chinese government appears to me to be trying to subvert and obscure the work here.
The assessment has not changed a lot. The bureau previously concluded with moderate confidence that COVID first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which worked on coronaviruses.
Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of The Cost of Chaos. The views expressed in this commentary are of the author. CNN has more opinion on it.
Take the number of Americans who have died of Covid-19 and compare it to how many have died in every war since the American Revolution. If that isn’t a significant national security problem, I’m not sure what is.
The United States has yet to have a systematic examination by the government of how this happened. The whole issue of the swine flu is so politicized that it’s reasonable to wonder if George W. Bush’s administration might have done a better job of stopping the 9/11 attacks.
The Bush administration initially refused to allow the commission to investigate. The administration relented and agreed to allow the commission to be formed more than a year after the attacks.
The 9/11 commission’s proposals for reforms made America safer when they were implemented, such as creation of a National Counterterrorism Center to coordinate all counterterrorism intel across the US government and a new Office of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
