The international community is growing suspicious of the Chinese claim that their Coronavirus outbreak originated from one seafood market. Why? Wuhan has “China’s sole declared facility capable of conducting research on deadly viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).”
A facility that is believed to serve both civilian and military research projects.
China declared a second laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as part of biological warfare research under the Biological Weapons Convention.
The State Department said in a report last year that it suspects China is working covertly on offensive biological weapons in violation of the convention.
Okay, so what? Where’s the proof it didn’t begin as the movie Contagion?
A group of 29 Chinese researchers, writing in the British medical journal The Lancet, said the first person to become ill from the Wuhan virus was identified on Dec. 1 and had no link to the animal market. The magazine Science reported the findings of the study on Sunday.
“No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases,” the report said. At least 13 victims of the virus had no apparent exposure to the seafood market. The market sold wild animals such as civet cats until it was closed on Jan. 1.
China is not saying why these earlier cases are not linked to the current advertised cause, which has experts around the globe leaning toward other possibilities, including the bio-weapon theory. But according to the reporting Georgetown University infectious disease specialist, Dr, Daniel Lucey doesn’t buy into that. He’s convinced the virus was spreading slowly through November and December, unreported or unidentified.
“Thus, the presumed rapid spread of the virus apparently for the first time from the Huanan seafood market in December did not occur,” Dr. Lucey said. “Instead the virus was already silently spreading in Wuhan hidden amidst many other patients with pneumonia at this time of year.”
He suggested that the virus may have spread from infected animals in other markets inside or outside Wuhan or along a supply chain of infected animals.
It’s not as sexy as “Bio-weapon” gets off the chain, but this is probably more accurate. The beginning of Flu and Pneumonia season. China’s notoriously crappy air-quality. Dozens of cases spread over a larger geographic area (even just around Wuhan or neighboring areas) could go unconnected until it began to appear suddenly in large swaths of the population.
Crap, what do we tell the world? Remember that movie, Contagion!? (Bad Choice, by the way.)
I have not read enough to convince me the ChiCom’s lost control of a test virus/bio-weapon. What they do have is a nasty virus spreading quickly, and unless they are hiding an antidote, all that matters at this point is containment. An international team of researchers has estimated that by Feb 4th, a quarter-million Chinese in Wuhan could be infected.
That’s just in Wuhan.
Global Confirmed cases of 4473 – 63 have recovered from the virus – 107 Deaths
