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COVID-19 News

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Gene Steinberg said:
The issue is mostly that China underplayed its severity. Remember WHO includes people from the CDC. So they knew what WHO knew.
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The question is then who in the CDC knew what either before or after the WHO did. Whatever the case, if I'm recalling correctly, the CDC were making more serious recommendations than the WHO. Perhaps that may have helped. But how much? Travel advisories were issued and airlines began cancelling flights back at the end of January. Maybe some before. I don't have all the data.

The first cases that really got our attention were the ones on the cruise ships, and most of those cases were being isolated or quarantined. By then, the virus had already flown in by whatever escape routes it had taken from Wuhan. At that time the US healthcare system had no way to track them, didn't know the numbers, and was in no position to immediately launch a crackdown anyway.
 
Lots of conspiracy theories that are being investigated as we cope with the current mess. As China tries to play hero now, they have lots to answer for regardless of how far it extends.

But it doesn't absolve certain people in the U.S. from doing nothing even after WHO announced the pandemic. Remember, too, that WHO is not an isolated body. The U.S. authorities who got an early indication something was going on were there all along. That's what the article way way above confirmed.
 
"The Times of Israel reported that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of the disease as early as the second week of November and shared the information with President Donald Trump’s White House, NATO, and Israel. The U.S. administration did not deem the report “of interest” while Israeli officials discussed the possibility of the threat but ultimately took no action. What NATO’s response was to the report—if any—is thus far unknown."


US intel on threat of coronavirus shared with Israel and NATO in November: report
 
Constance said:
"The Times of Israel reported that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of the disease as early as the second week of November and shared the information with President Donald Trump’s White House, NATO, and Israel. The U.S. administration did not deem the report “of interest” while Israeli officials discussed the possibility of the threat but ultimately took no action. What NATO’s response was to the report—if any—is thus far unknown."

US intel on threat of coronavirus shared with Israel and NATO in November: report
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Good one. A look for more on this reveals that: "The information reportedly came from U.S. intelligence monitoring of internal Chinese communications that revealed the potential danger of the outbreak before it was publicly known.

The Times of Israel reported that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of the disease as early as the second week of November and shared the information with President Donald Trump’s White House, NATO, and Israel. The U.S. administration did not deem the report “of interest” while Israeli officials discussed the possibility of the threat but ultimately took no action."
 
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How Much Is a Hardline Party Directive Shaping China’s Current Political Climate?

www.chinafile.com

Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation

This weekend, China’s leaders gather in Beijing for meetings widely expected to determine the shape of China’s economy, as well as the nation’s progress, over the next decade. What exactly the outcome of this Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will be...
www.chinafile.com www.chinafile.com
 
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Gene Steinberg said:
And here's the latest update about what the U.S. authorities knew and when they knew it:

Americans at World Health Organization transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration

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The article says:

“We were looking to WHO to provide that information, and they did not. It was unclear as to whether they didn’t get that transparency from the Chinese, or that they chose not to share what they did get under pressure from the Chinese,” said the aide, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.​

I haven't found any evidence that China made an official announcement to the WHO before Dec 31, 2019. ?

The article also says:

The organization “has no intelligence capabilities, and no investigatory power,” said Daniel Spiegel, who served as ambassador to the United Nation’s Geneva-based organizations, including the WHO, for the Clinton administration. “They should have been more skeptical about what the Chinese were telling them, but they’re totally at the mercy of what governments provide.”​

I'm no fan of Trump, but I can see how given the information from the WHO, another President could have made the same mistake . What I wonder about is the info from US intelligence sources. Other articles talk of satellite reconnaissance and info coming from where the outbreak was taking place. There were also leaked videos from Chinese citizen that US intelligence must have known about.

Plus there's still a lot of resistance to idea that SARS-CoV-2 had lab assistance in making the jump from animals to humans, despite some compelling evidence to the contrary. At first I simply believed the reports that said scientists have proven it not to be manufactured. But what we weren't being told is that not all scientists shared that opinion, and there was indeed an evidence trail leading right back to the virology lab in Wuhan.

Scientists and scientific skeptics like to think science is immune from political agendas. Unfortunately, like all truths, it is also one of the first victims. Tonight we watched the movie Contagion, and if COVID-19 was as deadly and transmissible as the virus in the movie, things would be much, much, worse. Then again, we don't know the extent of damage that COVID-19 can do yet. And why haven't we heard more about this:

Remdesivir is a direct-acting antiviral that inhibits RNA-dependent RNA polymerase from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 with high potency

www.jbc.org

Remdesivir is a direct-acting antiviral that inhibits RNA-dependent RNA polymerase from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 with high potency

Calvin J Gordon, Egor P Tchesnokov, Emma Woolner, Jason K Perry, Joy Y. Feng, Danielle P Porter, Matthias Gotte
www.jbc.org www.jbc.org
 
Remdesivir Treatment Update

"By his second dose on Sunday, Michalak said he was being weaned off oxygen. He received two more daily infusions of remdesivir and recovered enough to be discharged from the hospital on Tuesday, April 7. 'Remdesivir was a miracle,' he said. "


www.statnews.com

Early peek at data on Gilead coronavirus drug suggests patients are responding to treatment

A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead's remdesivir is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, STAT has learned.
www.statnews.com www.statnews.com

Gilead Sciences shares jumped 9.7% after a clinical trial of remdesivir on severe COVID-19 patients reportedly resulted in quick recoveries from the disease's symptoms. Almost all the patients in the study were discharged in less than a week

www.cbsnews.com

Gilead stock surges, market rallies behind COVID-19 treatment remdesivir

Stocks spiked amid hopes the U.S. economy could reopen and promising early results for a remdesivir drug trial.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com
 
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No I think Trump did far far worse thank any President in our memory.

just listen to any of his daily briefings and you’ll see evidence that he is not remotely capable of properly running a country. He was barely a builder who mostly succeeded because his dad was around to fix his messes.

That is separate from WHO and China and whatever they did wrong.
 
Wuhan Institute of Virology (China) Sought to Patent Gilead’s Remdesivir

www.trialsitenews.com

Wuhan Institute of Virology (China) Sought to Patent Gilead’s Remdesivir

Gilead’s experimental drug remdesivir shows possibly the most promise of all experimental COVID-19 vaccine prospects as evidenced by China’s reported possible move, via the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to patent the drug to treat coronavirus. The experimental...
www.trialsitenews.com
 
Gene Steinberg said:
No I think Trump did far far worse thank any President in our memory.
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No other President in history has been in this exact situation, so there's no way to compare.
just listen to any of his daily briefings and you’ll see evidence that he is not remotely capable of properly running a country. He was barely a builder who mostly succeeded because his dad was around to fix his messes. That is separate from WHO and China and whatever they did wrong.
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If we're moving the goalposts outside the scope of the article, then I don't know enough about every decision Trump's made to make a well informed enough opinion specifically about his handling of the pandemic. His overall score for accuracy, honesty, decency, and transparency, are another matter.

I do know the war between the Democrats & Republicans led Obama to call the American system "broken". So the problems down there go farther than the presidency.

One thing I do feel is that the USA will survive and push through the pandemic with or without Trump. It's people and potential are amazing. Not that things couldn't be better, but even with a bad government, it would take a lot more than this pandemic to bring it down.
 
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USI Calgary said:
No other President in history has been in this exact situation, so there's no way to compare.
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You make a lot of excuses for Trump, which leads me to doubt your objectivity. Also your background in modern American history if you don't see the parallels between this economic crisis and the one FDR successfully overcame.
 
USI Calgary said:
One thing I do feel is that the USA will survive and push through the pandemic with or without Trump. It's people and potential are amazing. Not that things couldn't be better, but even with a bad government, it would take a lot more than this pandemic to bring it down.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we're all that and a bag of chips. Try to get real Randle.
 
And before you get completely carried away with your conspiracy theories, read this:

Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers DebateInt

Remarks by Greg Orme:

"This research was definitely happening then, this article is from 2015. "Baric’s study on the SHC014-chimeric coronavirus began before the moratorium was announced, and the NIH allowed it to proceed during a review process, which eventually led to the conclusion that the work did not fall under the new restrictions, Baric told Nature. But some researchers, like Wain-Hobson, disagree with that decision.

The debate comes down to how informative the results are. “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers University, told Nature.

But Baric and others argued the study’s importance. “[The results] move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger,” Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which samples viruses from animals and people in emerging-diseases hotspots across the globe, told Nature."


The creation of a chimeric SARS-like virus has scientists discussing the risks of gain-of-function research.

I know which side I'm on. I've always thought it was insane for mere humans to muck about with potential, let alone intentional, biological risks and threats to living species and nature itself. As I recall, the unregulated development of nanotechnology fifteen years ago led to manifold risks and dangers. Scientists, like medical practitioners, need to be internationally bound to this principle: "first, do no harm." This should be obvious to anyone who has recognized the intricate integration and balances evolved in nature.
 
Long and short is that I largely agree with Randall about the conspiratorial/incompetence aspects of handling the crisis.

As far as Trump is concerned, he has been an impediment in actually helping to deal with the crisis and should get out of the way. Remember that there are more reports of infected people and fatalities due to coronavirus in the U.S. It's a total disaster here.
 
Constance said:
And before you get completely carried away with your conspiracy theories, read this:

Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers DebateInt

Remarks by Greg Orme:

"This research was definitely happening then, this article is from 2015. "Baric’s study on the SHC014-chimeric coronavirus began before the moratorium was announced, and the NIH allowed it to proceed during a review process, which eventually led to the conclusion that the work did not fall under the new restrictions, Baric told Nature. But some researchers, like Wain-Hobson, disagree with that decision.

The debate comes down to how informative the results are. “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers University, told Nature.

But Baric and others argued the study’s importance. “[The results] move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger,” Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which samples viruses from animals and people in emerging-diseases hotspots across the globe, told Nature."

The creation of a chimeric SARS-like virus has scientists discussing the risks of gain-of-function research.

I know which side I'm on. I've always thought it was insane for mere humans to muck about with potential, let alone intentional, biological risks and threats to living species and nature itself. As I recall, the unregulated development of nanotechnology fifteen years ago led to manifold risks and dangers. Scientists, like medical practitioners, need to be internationally bound to this principle: "first, do no harm." This should be obvious to anyone who has recognized the intricate integration and balances evolved in nature.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you don't listen to the show or read the newsletter, but I've changed my views on the issue of whether or not SARS-CoV-2 had lab assistance twice now because new evidence has surfaced along the way. If you didn't watch the Epoch Times documentary or the Australian 60 minutes segments I posted earlier, then I would understand why you might assume it was "my conspiracy theory".

The truth is that others have already done a much better job than me of making a convincing case, not just for the COVID-19 pandemic, but for the atrocities of the CCP. So much so, that IMO anyone who doesn't see it, and prefers instead to blame it all on Trump, are the ones who have lost their objectivity. Maybe think about that before taking any more swipes at me. Even Gene sees it, and he and I agree on Trump.

Lastly, I'm not sure exactly where you're from. You imply you are from the USA, yet you're dismissive of my optimism about the ability of American citizens to rally. I'm a Canadian and I know there are political problems down there, but I see Americans as my neighbors and friends. I'm sad for the citizens affected there by the current situation, so if I decide to relay a message of optimism and hope for them, maybe you could save your negative backlash for another forum, and instead try to say something positive.
 
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