Newsmax – March 13, 2020

President Donald Trump declared a coronavirus national emergency in a speech from the Rose Garden on Friday afternoon, invoking the Stafford Act for disaster relief and emergency assistance. The step will mean billions of dollars in additional federal cash for testing, resources and the shoring up of the flailing national economy.

In no uncertain terms, Trump also addressed the lack of sufficient testing capabilities, an issue that has inflamed critics who’ve deemed the administration’s pandemic response haphazard. He said that going forward, there would be a partnership with the private sector “to vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus” — including providing drive-through sites that will be able administer the tests and a way to self-screen online.

Trump assured the nation, “We will get through this together.”

In recent days, the Trump administration has been under intense fire for conflicting messages, a sluggish national response and insufficient testing for the COVID-19 virus, which began in China and has since afflicted tens of thousands of people around the world. (Vice President Mike Pence said the virus has now been detected in 46 states.)

In his speech, Trump touted Americans’ response thus far, compared to that seen in other parts of the world. But then he somberly declared, “I am officially declaring a national emergency,” saying that doing so would open up access to $50 billion.

He also urged every state to set up emergency operations, and hospitals to invoke their emergency preparedness plans.

https://www.newsmax.com

Stephanie Stahl – February 18, 2020

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — It’s been a bad flu season for children nationwide and now officials say there is a second wave of influenza spreading. Pennsylvania has more than 72,000 confirmed cases of the flu, which is just a small reflection of the number of people who are sick.

The flu can be dangerous for children, especially if they have a weakened immune system or have not been vaccinated.

Dr. Aditi Joshi, with Jefferson Health, says it’s easily spread in schools.

“Because it’s very contagious, it can live on surfaces for a few hours even if you’re not there and if you don’t wash your hands, it tends to be very contagious for that reason, so kids tend to get it a lot,” Dr. Joshi said.

The CDC says this is one of the worst flu seasons for children. Ninety-two have died since last fall, which is the highest total at this point in the season in the past decade.

There is now a second wave of flu cases.

Overall, about 14,000 Americans have died from the flu this season.

“Now with flu A, we are seeing people feeling sicker,” Dr. Joshi said.

Health officials say two strains of the flu, A and B, have circulated this season and it’s possible to get both.

“We want to keep the spread down, the contagion down,” Dr. Joshi added.

https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com

Strange Sounds – February 12, 2020

The new unknown virus has been discovered in Lake Pampulha, an artificial lake in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil in January.

Named after the mythological mermaid Yara, the Yaravirus has left scientists baffled because it doesn’t appear to be related to any other viruses in the world.

The new virus contains 74 genes in total, from which only six had already been recorded in literature. In other words, 90 per cent of Yaravirus genes have never been seen before, making it wholly unique.

The discovery comes amid the outbreak of a new killer virus across the world which started in China.

Yaravirus was taken from a single-celled creature called amoeba and scientists already speculate it represents the first isolated case of an unknown group of amoebal virus, describing the Yayavirus as a ‘new lineage of amoebal virus with a puzzling origin and phylogeny.’ in a published paper on the server bioRxiv.

For now, Yaravirus doesn’t appear to pose any threat to humans. It can only transfer between amoeba.

https://strangesounds.org

Reuters – February 14, 2020

BEIJING/SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia, Feb 14 (Reuters) – China’s coronavirus outbreak showed no sign of peaking with health authorities on Friday reporting more than 5,000 new cases, while passengers on a cruise ship blocked from five countries due to virus fears finally disembarked in Cambodia.

Policymakers pledged to do more to stimulate Asian economies hit hard by the virus, helping Asia stock markets edge higher, with Chinese shares headed for their first weekly gain in four.

In its latest update, China’s National Health Commission said it had recorded 121 new deaths and 5,090 new coronavirus cases on the mainland on Feb. 13, taking the accumulated total infected to 63,851 people.

Some 55,748 people are currently undergoing treatment, while 1,380 people have died of the flu-like virus that emerged in Hubei province’s capital, Wuhan, in December. The latest toll takes account of some deaths that had been double counted in Hubei, the health commission said.

The new figures give no indication the outbreak is nearing a peak, said Adam Kamradt-Scott, an infectious diseases expert at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

“Based on the current trend in confirmed cases, this appears to be a clear indication that while the Chinese authorities are doing their best to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the fairly drastic measures they have implemented to date would appear to have been too little, too late,” he said.

https://news.trust.org/item

Michael Snyder – February 2, 2020

The coronavirus outbreak that is raging all over China right now has been making headlines on a daily basis all over the globe, and rightly so.  At this point we don’t know if it will ultimately become a horrifying global pandemic that will affect tens of millions of people, but what we do know is that the virus spreads very easily and the number of cases has been rising at an exponential rate.  Meanwhile, three other plagues have also been marching across Asia, and most people in the western world don’t even realize that this is happening.  What I am about to share with you in this article is quite chilling, and the months ahead will be very dark if these plagues continue to spread.

Long before we ever heard of this new coronavirus, African Swine Fever was devastating pork farms from one end of China to the other.  There is no vaccine for “pig ebola”, there is no cure, and once it hits a farm the only thing that can be done is to kill every single pig so that it won’t spread anywhere else.  But even though draconian measures have been implemented, it has just kept spreading, and at this point “about two-thirds of China’s swine herd has been lost”.

Unfortunately, this insidious disease has also been devastating farms in many other nations all over the planet.  In particular, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines have been hit particularly hard.

Meanwhile, there has been a very alarming resurgence of the H5N1 bird flu in China.

According to the Daily Mail, more than 17,000 chickens have been culled in an effort to keep this new outbreak from spreading further…

China has reportedly seen an outbreak of a ‘highly pathogenic’ strain of H5N1 bird flu which has already killed 4,500 chickens.

Alarmingly, the H5N1 bird flu has also popped up at a facility in India.

Not too long ago, the H1N1 swine flu caused mass panic all over the globe, and I personally knew someone that was killed by it.

So the truth is that all of these outbreaks are very concerning.

And never before have we seen so many alarming outbreaks occur simultaneously.  Could it be possible that we have entered a period of time when mass pandemics are going to become “the new normal”?

Hopefully none of these current outbreaks will end up killing millions of people all over the globe.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Newsmax – January 30, 2020

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak sparked by a new virus in China that has spread to more than a dozen countries a global emergency after the number of cases spiked more than tenfold in a week, including the record number of deaths in 24 hours reported Friday.

China counted 9,692 confirmed cases with a death toll of 213, including 43 new fatalities. The vast majority of the cases have been in Hubei province and its provincial capital, Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. No deaths have been reported outside China.

The U.N. health agency defines an international emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.

China first informed WHO about cases of the new virus in late December. Eighteen other countries have since reported cases, as scientists race to understand how exactly the virus is spreading and how severe it is.

Experts say there is significant evidence the virus is spreading among people in China and have noted with concern instances in other countries — including the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea and Vietnam — where there have also been isolated cases of human-to-human transmission.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted the worrisome spread of the virus between people outside China.

“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries,” he said. “Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it.”

https://www.newsmax.com

Bloomberg – January 24, 2020

(Bloomberg) — China’s lockdown of Wuhan and its surrounding areas to contain the coronavirus represents the first large-scale quarantine in modern times.

The effectiveness of attempting to cordon off the epicenter of the disease — an area of roughly 40 million people — will probably be scrutinized far into the future.

“The containment of a city hasn’t been done in the history of international public health policy,” said Shigeru Omi, who headed the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Region during the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s. “It’s a balance between respecting freedom of movement of people, and also prevention of further disease and public interest. It’s not a simple sort of thing; it’s very complex.”

Aside from raising questions about its probable effectiveness and implications for human rights, a quarantine could cause panic, public health experts said. The government will also have to ensure supplies of food, water and medical materials.

Some argue the authorities may have had no choice, since certain patients appear to have milder symptoms that can go undetected, allowing them to unwittingly spread the disease. Saturday also marks the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, when more than 500 million trips by plane and rail may be taken within and out of China.

Restricting the movement of those who may be carriers of diseases is an approach that goes as far back as the 14th century, though historically it was used mainly in smaller cities or neighborhoods. In China, the city of Wuhan alone — where the first outbound travel restriction was announced — has a population greater than any U.S. city at 11 million.

Chinese authorities first suspended all plane and train travel out of Wuhan early Thursday. The restrictions were later extended to other nearby cities.

https://www.msn.com

Anders Anglesey – January 16, 2020

Japanese officials have confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus in the country as epidemic fears grow.

A government official said today that a Japanese man in his 30s, who travelled to Wuhan in eastern China, tested positive for the virus.

The SARS-like virus has struck down dozens in China since the outbreak was first recorded in December.

It is believed an outbreak of pneumonia caused the fresh coronavirus strain.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned the virus could spread further and has told hospitals across the world to be alert.

Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of the WHO’s emerging diseases unit, said: “From the information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families, but it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission.

She added: “It is still early days, we don’t have a clear clinical picture.”

Coronaviruses are infections that can cause colds to more-serious illnesses like SARS.

In all, 41 cases of pneumonia have been reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which preliminary lab tests cited by state media showed could be from a new type of coronavirus.

One of the patients has died, a 61-year-old man who had bought goods from a wholesale seafood market in Wuhan.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk

Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield – January 6, 2020

(CNN)This flu season is shaping up to be one of the worst in decades, according to the United States’ top infectious disease doctor.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said while it’s impossible to predict how the flu will play out, the season so far is on track to be as severe as the 2017-2018 flu season, which was the deadliest in more than four decades, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The initial indicators indicate this is not going to be a good season — this is going to be a bad season,” Fauci said.

So far this flu season, at least 2,900 people in the US are estimated to have died of the flu, according to data released Friday by the CDC. That’s 800 more deaths than estimated the previous week.

Flu cases and hospitalizations because of the flu have also risen sharply since the season began in October. CDC estimates there have been at least 6.4 million flu illnesses and 55,000 hospitalizations.

https://www.cnn.com

Sputnik News – January 3, 2020

BEIJING (Sputnik) – The toll of people infected with pneumonia of unknown kind in the Wuhan city of the central Chinese province of Hubei has risen to 44 as authorities fear the return of deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, the local health committee said in a statement on Friday.

“As of 3 January, a total of 44 pneumonia cases have been detected, with 11 people currently in severe condition, while the vital signs of the rest are considered generally stable”, the Wuhan health authorities said.

The infected patients have been quarantined along with 121 people who had been in close contact with them, the statement read.

An investigation of experts from the central Chinese National Health Commission has found that the outbreak in Wuhan could have begun in the seafood market. At the same time, the nature of the viral outbreak remains unknown. The investigators have so far ruled out common flu, avian flu, adenovirus infection and other common respiratory diseases.

The infected individuals reportedly display symptoms typical of pneumonia and other acute respiratory diseases. It prompted fears on the Internet that the nation might be experiencing a return of the SARS, an epidemic that had claimed more than 600 lives in China throughout 2002-2003.

The Wuhan authorities confirmed the outbreak on 31 December, saying that 27 people have tested positive since the beginning of that month.

https://sputniknews.com