SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

China is a notoriously tight lipped country.

Xi the leader of China has just said that the country is facing a "grave situation" dealing with this outbreak. And China is allowing video and pictures out that show some disturbing stuff like bodies in the street.

Kinda makes me start thinking I should buy some masks......

And in a lighter moment......

I saw Xi and was baffled at what gender that was before I remembered it was his name.

You were saying....

I've seen your face....yes, buy a mask!

talk about counter-productive destruction! Burn down your own neighborhood? Fuck that, let's take it up a notch - torch a place that might keep a deadly virus contained! That'll show em!

Considering it's Hong Kong, do you really trust the government to not use a big new quarantine building for nefarious purposes? Is the outbreak there really so bad that existing hospitals can't deal with it?

I really think the Seafood Market thing is a red herring and that the real source is the biolab they've got in the city. Either they were messing around making bioweapons and it got loose or they were just studying it and it got loose by accident.

I also think it's worse than they are letting on even though they are giving a lot of information out there for a normally secretive government.

N95 masks are sold out on Amazon. Apparently they are being shipped to China.

Here's someone who lives in China and provides some intersting things on what's happening including that hand washing is not a big thing in China and that doctors don't have the right equipment.

I'd really recommend that everyone watch the video. Food safety is not a huge thing either. Shit just based on what I'm hearing from this guy maybe the disease did start in the market place.

I don't think I could eat if I went to China after watching that video.

In college, I had a Chinese history professor who'd spent about 8 years living in Bejing and Hong Kong. He said that you had to be careful where you ate and that food from street vendors in certain cities was a sure-fire ticket to a number of health problems.

It doesn't help that the air quality in China is so bad that breathing is equivalent to smoking 10 cigs a day. And they hate doctors. And health standards don't exist there. And people think eating commercially farmed meat is a sign of lower status, " only poor plebs eat beef, I've got an exclusive guy who gets me bat and armadillo, very exclusive meat which you can't afford." And they believe that the best way to get rid of an illness is to pass it on.

That depends upon where you live in China. It can range from a low of 2.4 cigarettes per day to a high of 60 cigarettes per day.

I saw a more recent (this article is from 2010) bit about how they use recycled and questionable oil for cooking.
Sure other nations can clamp down on it but in China who knows what the average citizen is exposed to? Damn that is some scary stuff right there!



"The Taipei Times reported that one-tenth of drainage oil is most likely made from highly toxic, recycled kitchen or restaurant waste containing aflatoxin. Chronic exposure to aflatoxin can cause cancer.

He Dongping, a food science expert at the Wuhan Polytechnic University told the China Youth Daily that, “People in China consume about 2 to 3 million tons of illegal cooking oil every year.” Dongping cited statistics indicating that the Chinese population consumes about 22.5 million tons of cooking oil per year."

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/03/contaminated-chinese-cooking-oil-supplies/

So I’m a bit behind on following this. Is it still the case that everyone has contracted this in Wuhan? Is it being transmitted outside of there yet?

Suspected cases have shown up in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Right, but to my knowledge all those folks contracted the virus in Wuhan. Or am I behind the news?

Let's chow down on some delicious fortune cookies:

"Death is the next stage of life - welcome it lovingly!"
"The journey to heaven begins six feet under the ground!"
"Don't worry about money - you won't need it for much longer!"

Two suspected cases in Virginia found not to be coronavirus after all.

Presumably. The disease is thought to have a 10 day incubation period, so we may well see cases spring up in people who’ve not been to China.

https://qz.com/india/1792388/three-suspected-cases-of-coronavirus-reported-in-delhi/

I'm flying to India next month, landing in Delhi.

It was nice knowing you.

My parents are going away on a big tour of some places outside the US for a month. Perhaps they will bring back the neo plague and destroy boca. I am totally wishing on Kyubey as we speak.

You have your comet attractors, I have my methods.

I haven't been following this closely and I'm sure that the following is just a result of my ignorance, but why is this such a big deal in the grand scheme of things? The ordinary flu virus kills many times more than this is doing, every year.