"More than 3,000 travelers on two coronavirus-stricken Carnival Corp. cruise ships are returning home, fanning out to more than 40 countries and fueling fears of further contagion from the deadly virus." "On Saturday, an 83-year-old American woman tested positive in Malaysia, a day after she and 2,200 others were cleared to leave the cruise ship Westerdam in Cambodia.The ship arrived there after being turned away by five other ports." Now there is a scramble to track thousands of contacts of the affected woman. "Westerdam representatives said the company had checked that no one on board the ship had traveled to mainland China in the 14 days prior to the cruise." 322 out of total of 380 Americans on board the Diamond Princess were evacuated to the US, of which 14 are positive for the virus. The affected people were taken to hospital while the rest will have to spend 14 days in quarantine. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) analysed records of 72,314 patients, of which 44,672 were confirmed cases of coronavirus, 16,186 were suspected cases and 889 cases were asymptomatic carriers of the virus. 81% of cases were classified as mild. We don't know how long the virus may last in airways of carriers and how infective they are during that period. "If the virus isn't halted, it could infect 60 percent of the world's population and kill one in hundred of those infected -- around 50 million people -- Gabriel Leung, at the University of Hong Kong, told The Guardian on 11 February." "Sen. Tim Cotton is persistently resurfacing a debunked theory which claims the deadly coronavirus sweeping the globe is the work of Chinese scientists at a secret Wuhan lab for biological warfare," wrote two Bill Bostocks. "The rumor is circulating but there is no evidence to date that this is true," said an expert. Right. But there is no evidence that it is untrue either. We know that the paradoxically named National Biosafety Laboratory that conducts research on "fulminant infectious disease pathogens" is based in Wuhan. We also know that initially local government officials tried to suppress news of the outbreak by threatening doctors to keep quiet and as soon as the government in Beijing became aware of the problem they put the entire Hubei province with 60 million people in lockdown. Why? This kind of isolation has never been practiced, even during the time of plague, cholera or smallpox epidemics. "China has flooded cities and villages with battalions of neighborhood busybodies, uniformed volunteers and Communist Party representatives to carry out one of the biggest social controls in campaigns in history." What do they know that we don't? The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 killed an estimated 20-50 million people worldwide and the ordinary seasonal flu kills around 650,000 people every year, according to the WHO. It maybe unproven but China's reaction is totally excessive for an illness which is mild in 81% of cases. Knowing China we are right to be suspicious.
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