Coronavirus (COVID-19) Wuhan Pneumonia

[GeneChing]

The coronavirus panic is turning the UK into a hostile environment for east Asians
Sam Phan
Stereotypes are spreading as quickly as the virus. On the bus, in the street, people have started treating us as if we’re infected

Mon 27 Jan 2020 11.15 ESTLast modified on Tue 28 Jan 2020 09.19 EST


‘The virus has spread to at least eight other countries including Thailand, Japan and the US, and it’s ‘highly likely’ it will reach the UK, according to Public Health England.’ Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/REX/Shutterstock

The atmosphere on my morning commute is tense. As panic over the coronavirus deepens and dominates the headlines, as an east Asian I can’t help but feel more and more uncomfortable. On the bus to work last week, as I sat down, the man next to me immediately scrambled to gather his stuff and stood up to avoid sitting next to me.

Perhaps it did not occur to these people that I, as a UK citizen, was no more likely than them to be carrying the virus

On the train over the weekend, a group sat opposite me chattering about their weekend plans. One of them seriously advised the rest, “I wouldn’t go to Chinatown if I were you, they have that disease.”

As I made my way towards Chinatown in London, an elderly woman and her friend on the escalators at Leicester Square underground station were casually talking about how dangerous the area now was, and she complained she was obliged to go there for a meeting. “At least I’m old, I have nothing left to lose,” she laughed.

In another loud conversation, I overheard a woman talking about how terrified she was that her friend, who had spent some time working with Chinese students, might have infected her with the virus.

In light of current events, we east Asians in the UK are on high alert, paying close attention to how people interact with us. It is not their concern about health that is problematic, but the stereotyping of all east Asians as a coronavirus risk. At times such as this, even a simple bus trip can feel like a hostile environment.

A friend at a university library experienced something similar: as soon as they sat down at a desk, the person in front of them packed up their things to leave. We’re noticing odd things like this that we never saw happen before.

Perhaps it did not occur to some of these people, so happy to talk loudly in front of me, that I was also concerned about the virus – or that I, as a British citizen, was no more likely than them to be carrying the virus. They grouped all east Asian people together, without factoring in that perhaps we were British or, if not, we were from unaffected areas of China, or even came from other countries in the Chinese diaspora. We were all the same to them.

The virus that originated in Wuhan has spread to at least eight other countries including Thailand, Japan, Australia and the US, and it’s “highly likely” it will reach the UK, according to Public Health England.

As it spreads, the virus has revealed more and more stereotyped judgments about Chinese people. I have also heard accounts from east Asians, even if they are not Chinese, who have recently been profiled while travelling at airports or on trains due to the ignorant perception that all east Asians are Chinese.

George Osborne, editor of the Evening Standard, proudly tweeted his newspaper’s cartoon of a rat with a face mask to supposedly commemorate the lunar new year. Piers Morgan mocked the Chinese language on Good Morning Britain with a tired “ching chang chong” joke. East Asians have been accused of instigating the virus by having “revolting” eating habits. Most Asians know these stereotypes all too well.

These insulting depictions don’t reflect the reality of being Chinese at all, and encourage the misguided perception of more than one billion people being a monolithic and singular group in which everyone speaks, acts and looks the same. In fact, there is a huge diversity.

Language and culture vary massively within the region. Speakers of Hokkien would not be able to converse with people who speak Hakka. And despite Mandarin being the lingua franca, there are more than 200 dialects spoken across China. In fact in Wuhan itself, a beautiful and diverse city with more than 3,500 years of history, many of its population of 11.8 million speak a Wuhan dialect.

Elsewhere, natives of Aksu look completely different to the majority Han Chinese. And the food, too: dim sum from the south of China is vastly different from the tangy, spicy flavours of Sichuan.

This week, my ethnicity has made me feel like I was part of a threatening and diseased mass. To see me as someone who carries the virus just because of my race is, well, just racist.

As the lunar new year celebrations take place across the world, let’s take a moment to think about the way in which east Asians are perceived and how important it is to see us in all our diversity, as individual human beings, and to challenge stereotypes. The coronavirus is a human tragedy, so let’s not allow fear to breed hatred, intolerance and racism.

• Sam Phan is an MA student at the University of Manchester

THREADS
Coronavirus
Year of the Rat

[GeneChing]

Novel Coronavirus in China
Warning - Level 3, Avoid Nonessential Travel
Alert - Level 2, Practice Enhanced Precautions
Watch - Level 1, Practice Usual Precautions
Key Points
CDC recommends that travelers avoid all nonessential travel to China.
There is an ongoing outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus that can be spread from person to person.
Chinese officials have closed transport within and out of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, including buses, subways, trains, and the international airport. Other locations may be affected.

Older adults and people with underlying health conditions may be at increased risk for severe disease.

The situation is evolving. This notice will be updated as more information becomes available.

What is the current situation?
CDC recommends that travelers avoid all nonessential travel to China. In response to an outbreak of respiratory illness, Chinese officials have closed transport within and out of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, including buses, subways, trains, and the international airport. Additional restrictions and cancellations of events may occur.
There is limited access to adequate medical care in affected areas.
A novel (new) coronavirus is causing an outbreak of respiratory illness that began in the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. This outbreak began in early December 2019 and continues to grow. Initially, some patients were linked to the Wuhan South China Seafood City (also called the South China Seafood Wholesale Market and the Hua Nan Seafood Market).

Chinese health officials have reported thousands of cases in China and severe illness has been reported, including deaths. Cases have also been identified in travelers to other countries, including the United States. Person-to-person spread is occurring in China. The extent of person-to-person spread outside of China is unclear at this time.

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses. There are several known coronaviruses that infect people and usually only cause mild respiratory disease, such as the common cold. However, at least two previously identified coronaviruses have caused severe disease — severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus.

Signs and symptoms of this illness include fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. This novel coronavirus has the potential to cause severe disease and death. Available information suggests that older adults and people with underlying health conditions or compromised immune systems may be at increased risk of severe disease.

In response to this outbreak, Chinese officials are screening travelers leaving some cities in China. Several countries and territories throughout the world are reported to have implemented health screening of travelers arriving from China.

On arrival to the United States, travelers from China may be asked questions to determine if they need to undergo health screening. Travelers with signs and symptoms of illness (fever, cough, or difficulty breathing) will have an additional health assessment.

What can travelers do to protect themselves and others?
CDC recommends avoiding nonessential travel to China. If you must travel:

Avoid contact with sick people.
Discuss travel to China with your healthcare provider. Older adults and travelers with underlying health issues may be at risk for more severe disease.
Avoid animals (alive or dead), animal markets, and products that come from animals (such as uncooked meat).
Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available.
If you were in China in the last 14 days and feel sick with fever, cough, or difficulty breathing, you should:

Seek medical care right away. Before you go to a doctor’s office or emergency room, call ahead and tell them about your recent travel and your symptoms.
Avoid contact with others.
Not travel while sick.
Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when coughing or sneezing.
Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available.
Clinician Information
Healthcare providers should obtain a detailed travel history for patients with fever and respiratory symptoms. For patients with these symptoms who were in China on or after December 1, 2019, and had onset of illness within 2 weeks of leaving, consider the novel coronavirus and notify infection control personnel and your local health department immediately.

Although routes of transmission have yet to be definitively determined, CDC recommends a cautious approach to interacting with patients under investigation. Ask such patients to wear a surgical mask as soon as they are identified. Conduct their evaluation in a private room with the door closed, ideally an airborne infection isolation room, if available. Personnel entering the room should use standard precautions, contact precautions, and airborne precautions, and use eye protection (goggles or a face shield). For additional infection control guidance, visit CDC's Infection Control webpage.

Hope no one was China-bound.

[GeneChing]

Here I've been waiting for someone to suggest banlangen or something.

Asia & Pacific
Kimchi, cow poop and other spurious coronavirus remedies


An employee works at a traditional Chinese medicine store in Beijing on Saturday. (Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images)
By Anna Fifield
Feb. 2, 2020 at 12:43 p.m. PST

BEIJING — The new coronavirus has killed more than 300 people in China and infected thousands more. As the virus spreads and with no cure in sight, some people are looking to alternative remedies to protect them from infection or cure themselves if they’ve already contracted it.

Here are some of the theories floating around. Some of these have been proposed by medical doctors, and some of them are just common sense. Others, not so much.

As the ads say: If your symptoms persist or get worse, see your physician.

China
Traditional Chinese medicine for humans (and cows and chickens)
Chinese people have been flocking to buy Shuanghuanglian — literally “double yellow connect” — an herbal remedy that follows the principles of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

The liquid is made from the bud of the Lonicera japonica flower, and the fruit of Forsythia suspensa and Scutellaria baicalensis plants.

The Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, part of the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences, has said that the medicine could help inhibit the coronavirus.

State media including the Xinhua News Agency and CCTV have reported that clinical trials suggested the medicine might be effective, leading to long queues at TCM outlets around the country. Major Chinese e-commerce platforms including Taobao.com and JD.com are out of stock of Shuanghuanglian.

After some criticism about its endorsement of the product, the Shanghai Institute doubled down, saying its findings were endorsed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology as accurate.

Not all eager customers have found the right product, however. It turns out there are brands of medicine for poultry and livestock called Shuanghuanglian, and some consumers bought the wrong ones.

One Taobao vendor of the livestock remedy happily told local media he never expected so many people would support his veterinary medicine business, while the makers of the product for birds had to urge consumers not to ingest their product.

Chicken soup for the lungs
Speaking of poultry, chicken soup is not just good for the soul. It’s also good for mystery viruses, according to one Wuhan doctor. Zhang Jinnong of Wuhan Union Hospital contracted coronavirus and said he nursed himself back to health with standard medication and chicken soup, all in the comfort of his self-quarantine.

“In terms of diet, you should drink chicken soup often,” Zhang said in an interview with the Changjiang Daily and Wuhan Evening Daily. “When you drink it, you should sweat. The rise in body temperature is good for fighting the virus.”

'Herbs that expel parasites'
The areca nut, or betel nut — usually used to get rid of hookworms, tapeworms and other intestinal parasites — are known as “purgative herbs that drain downward,” according to the TCM site Me and Qi.

The areca nut branch of the China Fruit Association says the nut can also be used to treat coronavirus. Well, it would say that, wouldn’t it? Its claims are, however, backed up by China’s National Health Commission, which has included areca nut in its recommended prescription for the pneumonia-like illness.

The National Health Commission and National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine recommended many TCM remedies to help alleviate symptoms of coronavirus, although they stressed they could not cure the virus.

One of the TCM ingredients was the areca nut, which they said could help detoxify and clear the lungs.

Putting the tea in TCM
A respiratory expert from Hubei People’s Hospital, Hu Ke, recommended people make prevention tea following the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. At a news conference at the provincial government buildings, he gave two precise recipes, which have been listed in Hubei’s recommended treatment for the coronavirus.

One: make a tea bag comprising atractylodes root (three grams), dried bunga mas flower (fice grams), sun-dried tangerine peel (three grams), reed rhizome (two grams), mulberry leaf (two grams) and astragalus root (10 grams).

Two: boil astragalus root (10 grams), tuber of white atractylodes rhizome (10 grams), siler (10 grams), fern rhizome (six grams), dried bunga mas flower (10 grams), eupatorium (10 grams), sun-dried tangerine peel (six grams).

They should be consumed twice a day for seven to 10 days, Hu said.

Warm salty water
The renowned 83-year old pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan, a veteran of the SARS crisis who is considered a national hero, has recommended swishing warm salty water around in your throat and nasal cavities a few times every morning and night to prevent infection.

But experts said this was bogus and that saline would not “kill” the new virus, according to Agence France-Presse. The World Health Organization also told AFP there was no evidence that saline solution would protect against infection from the new coronavirus.

South Korea
Kimchi finds its limits
Koreans have long claimed that kimchi, the spicy fermented cabbage dish that is a requirement at every meal, cures all manner of illnesses. SARS, bird flu, regular flu, you name it. But kimchi appears to have met its match.

“Eating kimchi does not prevent coronavirus infection,” South Korea’s Health Ministry said in a news release, disseminated to quell talk that, on the one hand, eating kimchi could boost immunity against coronavirus and that, on the other, it could spread the virus.

There had been rumors in some corners of the South Korean Internet that kimchi, much of which is made from Chinese cabbage, could contain the virus. The Health Ministry said that the illness could not be contracted from eating kimchi imported from China or receiving a parcel from China.

“The best way to prevent the novel coronavirus is to wash hands frequently,” it said.

India
Cow waste
The urine and dung of cows can be used for treating coronavirus infections, according to Swami Chakrapani Maharaj, president of Hindu Mahasabha, an Indian political party.

“Consuming cow urine and cow dung will stop the effect of infectious coronavirus,” Chakrapani said. If accompanied by a special yagna — or Hindu ritual, performed in front of a fire — it can “kill the novel coronavirus and end its effects on the world,” he said, according to Outlook India.

“A person who chants Om Namah Shivay and applies cow dung on body, will be saved. A special yagna ritual will soon be performed to kill coronavirus,” said Chakrapani.

Beyond that, however, he did not provide any specific recipes to make the cow excretions more, erm, palatable.

Ayurveda and homeopathy
The Indian government released a health advisory based on the traditional medicine practices of Ayurveda, homeopathy and Unani.

The main gist of the ayurvedic recommendations was, well, universal: maintain personal hygiene and wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, cover your face while coughing or sneezing and stay home when you are sick.

The Indian authorities also prescribed Shadang Paniya, a concoction given to fight headache and fever, along with other traditional remedies that included putting two drops of sesame oil in each nostril every morning.

Other suggestions included rubbing roghan baboona, a classical Unani oil-based concoction considered beneficial in treating gout, joint pain and backache, and the scalp and chest.

United States
For some more orthodox information from our public health correspondent in Washington, here’s: “What we know about the mysterious, pneumonia-like coronavirus spreading in China and elsewhere.”

Lyric Li and Liu Yang in Beijing, and Min Joo Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

Good luck with these...especially the cow dung.

[GeneChing]

‘Made in China’: how Wuhan coronavirus spread anti-Chinese racism like a disease through Asia
Xenophobic chatter about Chinese eating habits is going viral on the internet
Such ignorance isn’t just unpalatable – in misdiagnosing the problem, it’s dangerous, too
Kok Xinghui
Published: 8:00pm, 29 Jan, 2020


A video by Chinese social media influencer Wang Mengyun, in which she tries bat soup has been held up by some as evidence of ‘disgusting’ Chinese eating habits – even though the video was shot in Palau. Photo: Sohu

As Singaporeans gathered over the Lunar New Year weekend, jokes were cracked about Chinese eating habits and how a propensity to eat “anything with four legs except the table and everything that flies except planes” had given rise to the Wuhan coronavirus.
One meme said there was no need to worry – the virus would not last long because it was “made in China”.
The jokes, tinged with racism, soon grew into a call for the city state to ban Chinese travellers from entering. A change.org petition started on January 26 had 118,858 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon. Among those calling for health to be prioritised over tourism dollars was Ian Ong, who wrote: “We are not rat or bat eaters and should not be made to shoulder their nonsense.”
Xenophobic chatter about mainland Chinese and their eating habits has spread across the world since the first cases of the novel coronavirus 2019 (2019 n-CoV) emerged in China’s Hubei province in December.
The virus has now infected more than 6,000 people, most of them in mainland China where at least 132 people have died. Dozens of people have been infected in the rest of Asia – including 10 in Singapore and seven in Malaysia.
Some countries, including the Philippines, have stopped issuing visas on arrival to all Chinese nationals. Papua New Guinea has gone further, shutting its air and seaports to all foreigners coming from Asia.


Passengers arriving from Guangzhou, China, at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila. The Philippines has stopped issuing visas on arrival to all Chinese nationals. Photo: EPA

In Malaysia, there have been calls to block Chinese tourists and social media posts claiming the outbreak is “divine retribution” for China’s treatment of its Muslim Uygur population. Some mosques in Malaysia have also closed themselves off to tourists.
In Japan, a shop in a mountain town prompted an apology from tourism authorities after it posted a sign saying: “No Chinese are allowed to enter the store. I do not want to spread the virus.”
From noon on Wednesday Singapore has blocked the entry of tourists who had visited Hubei province in the past 14 days, or who hold passports issued in the province. Malaysia has also stopped issuing visas to Chinese travellers from Hubei.
The Singapore government has said the travel ban was due to global trends showing that most of the infections were in people who had been to the province and the country wanted to minimise import of the virus to Singapore.
The growing stigma has even reached European shores. Graduate student Sam Phan wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian about how a man on the bus in London had scrambled to get up as soon as Phan sat down. “This week, my ethnicity has made me feel like I was part of a threatening and diseased mass. To see me as someone who carries the virus just because of my race is, well, just racist,” he wrote.
In Canada, Toronto website BlogTO said a stigma was also attached to Chinese food, noting that a similar thing happened during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which infected 8,000 people globally and killed nearly 800. The website noted racist comments on its Instagram post about a new Chinese restaurant, which some posters urged diners to avoid because it “may have bat pieces in there or whatever else they eat”.
The comments were in part a reference to a video of a Chinese social media influencer tucking into a bowl of bat soup. Some posters have claimed the video is evidence of “disgusting” Chinese eating habits, though the video was in fact filmed three years ago in Palau, a Pacific island nation where bat soup is a delicacy.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Wrongly accused? The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Photo: Simon Song

It is still unknown how the coronavirus made the jump from wildlife to humans, but early on in the outbreak the Huanan Seafood Market in the central city of Wuhan was widely assumed to be the origin of the disease. The market has a thriving wildlife trade, selling animals from foxes to wolf puppies, giant salamanders to peacocks and porcupines.
However, in recent days research has emerged suggesting the market may not be the source of the virus.
The medical journal The Lancet on January 24 said that of the first clinical cases, 13 out of 41 had no link to the market.
The first patient showed symptoms on December 1, meaning human infections must have occurred in November 2019 given the two-week incubation period. Researchers said the virus could have spread in Wuhan before the cluster within the market was discovered.
Similarly, the virus’ genome has been sequenced but researchers are not sure if it comes from bats – as Sars did – or snakes. Still, experts said it is not so much about what meat is eaten, but how thoroughly it is cooked and the hygiene precautions taken during food preparation.
“The chef is at greatest risk,” said infectious disease specialist Leong Hoe Nam, who was closely involved in Singapore’s fight against Sars, which killed 33 people and infected 238 in the city state.
Leong said anybody could catch a virus from an animal.
“It is a case of the right person meeting the wrong virus at the wrong time. It could happen to anyone studying viruses, or meeting the bats in the most inopportune time,” he said, referring to a case in Melaka, Malaysia, when a bat flew into a house and infected a 39-year-old man and his family.
Painting the coronavirus as a Chinese problem was like “dealing with the problem with a sledge hammer, implicating all Chinese nationals rather than dealing with bad food safety practices and diets”, said National University of Singapore sociologist Tan Ern Ser.
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) sociologist Laavanya Kathiravelu said xenophobic social media posts were an extension of colonial-era stereotypes.
“Chinese, in these xenophobic accounts, are seen as taking resources away from deserving local populations, and having uncouth behaviour. More broadly, this can also be seen as informed by older stereotypes of Chinese as dirty, having bad hygiene and undesirable culinary practices,” she said.
Even Singapore government ministers have spoken out.


Singapore’s National Development Minister Lawrence Wong, pictured with Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, has cautioned his countrymen against ‘turning xenophobic’. File photo

Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs a task force set up to deal with the virus, said on Monday: “I want to assure Singaporeans that the government will do everything we can to protect Singaporeans and Singapore but this does not mean overreacting, or worse, turning xenophobic.”
Singaporean playwright Zizi Azah, who is based in New York, said it was illogical to pin the virus on a race. “Illness knows no geographical or racial boundaries and it really is the luck of the draw, isn’t it? Where something starts and where it gets to,” she said.
Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, director of the Centre for Interfaith Understanding, cautioned against the effects of dehumanising Chinese people as uncivilised. “It is not due to ‘Chinese-ness’; the fact that these people are Chinese is incidental, not the reason for the emergence and transmission of the virus. The virus could have emerged in any other part of the world, just as Ebola started in Congo and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Singapore’s Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung on Monday called for empathy, saying that Singaporeans would not have liked it if during the Sars outbreak other countries had asked Singaporean expatriates to leave.
“We’re an international hub, we can well be quite hard hit by such epidemics. So I’d say do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you. We all must tackle the problem objectively.”
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad clarified that any mosques that had closed themselves off to tourists had not done so on the government’s advice.
“This is not a government policy and it is an irresponsible act,” he said on Wednesday, warning the public against spreading fake news that could stir racial tensions.
“Even though we believe in freedom of expression, it does not mean we can be antagonistic and agitate the feelings of others.”


This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: racism aimed at chinese spreads fear and panic

THREADS
Coronavirus
Made in China
Chinese Food

[GeneChing]

China’s coronavirus cases jump to 7711, Yuan to extend selloff
By ActionForex.com -Jan 30, 03:26 GMT

China’s National Health Commission reported that, as of January 29, number of confirmed coronavirus case in the country rose 1737 from 1459 to 7711. Serious cases rose from 1239 to 1370. Death toll rose from 132 to 170. Suspected cases rose from 9239 to 12167. Number of people being tracked rose from 65537 to 88693.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva, “in the last few days the progress of the virus especially in some countries, especially human-to-human transmission, worries us.” “Although the numbers outside China are still relatively small, they hold the potential for a much larger outbreak.”

Offshore Chinese Yuan is back under selling pressure today. USD/CNH’s rebound suggests that rise from 6.8452 is resuming for channel resistance (now at 7.0061). Sustained break there should confirm that corrective fall from 7.1953 has completed. Further rally would be seen to 7.0867 resistance next. Nevertheless, break of 6.9420 support will indicate rejection by the channel resistance and turn focus back to 6.8452 low.

The economic impact could be devastating on the martial arts world what with us already grappling with the trade war issues.

[GeneChing]

I always cherry-pick the news that I post here but even I was taken in by the bat soup story. The news is happening so quickly that it's hard to keep up.

Coronavirus Misinformation Is Spreading All Over Social Media
By Gerrit De Vynck, Riley Griffin, and Alyza Sebenius
January 29, 2020, 1:09 PM PST
Racist rants, dubious claims surface in wake of outbreak
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook trying to suppress misinformation

The new coronavirus roiling financial markets and prompting travel bans is taking on a life of its own on the internet, once again putting U.S.-based social media companies on the defensive about their efforts to curb the spread of false or dangerous information.

Researchers and journalists have documented a growing number of cases of misinformation about the virus, ranging from racist explanations for the disease’s origin to false claims about miracle cures. Conspiracy theorists, trolls and cynics hoping to use the panic to boost traffic to their own accounts have all contributed to the cloud of bad information.


Workers clean gates at a Hong Kong High Speed Rail Station on Jan. 29.Photographer: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

“It’s the perfect intersection of fear, racism and distrust of the government and Big Pharma,” said Maarten Schenk, co-founder of the fact-checking site Lead Stories. “People don’t trust the official narrative.”

The novel coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has killed 132 people and infected over 6,000, with cases in 19 countries.

One set of tweets and Facebook posts from U.S. conspiracy theory accounts said drinking bleach could protect against the virus or even cure it. On YouTube, a series of videos accusing media organizations of suppressing information had hundreds of thousands of views.

Fact-checkers, medical experts and academics reviewing coronavirus-related misinformation said some of the most viral hoaxes have concerned vaccines that claim to prevent or cure the disease and that would soon be commercially accessible to the public. Though medical authorities and biotechnology companies have begun researching and developing vaccines, they’re far from being stocked on pharmacy shelves.

“Rumors can travel more quickly and more widely than they could” in an era before social media, said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, who has a forthcoming book on the history of disinformation. “That of course lends itself to conspiracies spreading more quickly. They spread more widely and they are more persistent in the sense that you can’t undo them.”

Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak

Some of the internet traffic and misinformation has been outright racist against Chinese people and Asians in general. Posts attributing the coronavirus to Chinese culinary practices have blown up, and a review of a new Chinese restaurant in Toronto was swarmed by racist trolls.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and some of that can be quite dangerous,” Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s emerging diseases unit, said at a Wednesday press conference in Geneva.


Customer wait in line to purchase protective masks at a store in Hong Kong.Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg

Viruses have always sparked fear and misinformation, striking panic as rumors spread and people desperate for information latch onto whatever snippets they can find -- whether they’re true or not. But the advent of social media has supercharged this process, leading to waves of misinformation over elections, mass shootings, plane crashes and natural disasters.

The outbreak is just the latest test of social networks’ ability to handle the spread of false and dangerous information.

Twitter Inc. is trying to stave off bad information related to coronavirus by directing users to more reliable sources, prompting users who search for “coronavirus” to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. The company has not seen an uptick in disinformation since coronavirus became a worldwide problem, a spokeswoman said. Twitter has a policy against people trying to “mislead” others with “deceptive activity.”

Facebook Inc.’s fact-checking partners -- independent organizations that flag problematic posts on the platform -- have been labeling misinformation about the coronavirus so users know it’s false, according to a company spokeswoman. Facebook is also alerting people who may have shared misinformation before it was fact-checked. On Tuesday, Facebook searches for “coronavirus” and related terms surfaced mostly credible reports from sites like the BBC and CNN, but there were also links touting dubious immune-boosting services and posts from users that questioned whether the virus news was a conspiracy from the World Health Organization.

Information shared in private groups are outside of Facebook’s fact-checking apparatus, and they have been known to incubate conspiracies on many different topics.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google searches for the virus are topped with a special panel linking to the Centers for Disease Control.

On Google’s YouTube, coronavirus was being treated as a news event, so searches for videos related to the outbreak mostly returned results from large, mainstream news organizations, though some conspiracy theory videos slipped through. Much of the dubious information being shared could be considered what YouTube labels “borderline” content. That’s information that isn’t necessarily wrong or racist but peddles unconfirmed conspiracies or shoddy medical information. YouTube said its algorithms are built to lower the number of times “borderline” content is recommended to viewers.

In China itself, where homegrown social media apps like WeChat and Weibo dominate, misinformation has spread alongside protests against the government’s handling of the situation. Generally, social media is closely monitored and censored by the communist party. But the sheer amount of posts criticizing the government and demanding more action mean some have evaded censors. Videos and posts that otherwise wouldn’t have left China have circulated through the internet, giving the world a view into the situation that isn’t totally controlled by the government.

“Early days in an outbreak, there’s so much uncertainty. People don’t like uncertainty. They want answers,” said Timothy Caulfield, a health law professor at the University of Alberta.

“Social media is a polarization machine where the loudest voices win,” he said. “In an outbreak, where you want accurate, measured discourse, that’s kind of a worst-case scenario.”

— With assistance by Kurt Wagner, Kartikay Mehrotra, and Sarah Frier

The racist issues are particularly disturbing. And shameful.

[GeneChing]

Coronavirus: Worldwide cases overtake 2003 Sars outbreak
31 January 2020

The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has overtaken that of the Sars epidemic, which spread to more than two dozen countries in 2003.

There were around 8,100 cases of Sars - severe acute respiratory syndrome - reported during the eight-month outbreak.

But nearly 10,000 cases of the new virus have been confirmed, most in China, since it emerged in December.

More than 100 cases have been reported outside China, in 22 countries.

The number of deaths so far stands at 213 - all in China. In total, 774 people were killed by Sars.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency over the new outbreak.

The UK on Friday confirmed its first two cases of the virus.

In another development, the US also declared a public health emergency and said it would bar any foreign nationals who have visited China in the past two weeks from entering the country.

Estimates by the University of Hong Kong suggest the true total number of cases could be far higher than official figures suggest. Based on mathematical models of the outbreak, experts there say more than 75,000 people may have been infected in the Chinese city of Wuhan alone, where the virus originated.

Most cases outside China are in people who have been to Wuhan. But Germany, Japan, Vietnam, the United States, Thailand and South Korea have reported person-to-person cases - patients being infected by people who had travelled to China.

Wuhan's Communist Party chief said on Friday the city should have taken measures sooner to contain the virus.

"If strict control measures had been taken earlier, the result would have been better than now," Ma Guoqiang told state broadcaster CCTV.

As governments around the world acted to contain the virus, WHO spokesman Chris Lindmeier warned that closing borders could in fact accelerate its spread, with travellers entering countries unofficially.

"As we know from other scenarios, be it Ebola or other cases, whenever people want to travel, they will. And if the official paths are not opened, they will find unofficial paths," he said.

He said the best way to track the virus was at official border crossings.

How does this outbreak compare to Sars?

Sars was a type of coronavirus that first emerged in China's Guangdong province in November 2002. By the time the outbreak ended the following July, it had spread to more than two dozen countries.

The new coronavirus emerged only last month. So far, it has spread to fewer countries and - while more people have been infected globally - it has resulted in fewer deaths.

On Wednesday, the number of confirmed cases within China surpassed the Sars epidemic.



Sars was also estimated to have cost the global economy more than $30bn (£22bn).

But economists have said the new coronavirus could have an even bigger impact on the world economy. It has forced global companies including tech giants, car makers and retailers to shut down temporarily in China.

China was also criticised by the UN's global health body for concealing the scale of the original Sars outbreak.

It has been praised for responding to the latest virus with tough measures, including effectively quarantining millions of residents in cities.

But in his interview with CCTV on Friday, the Wuhan Communist Party chief said transport restrictions should have been brought in at least 10 days earlier.

"The epidemic may have been alleviated somewhat, and not got to the current situation," Mr Ma said.

The estimates from the University of Hong Kong suggest the epidemic is doubling in size roughly every week and that multiple Chinese cities may have imported sufficient cases to start local epidemics.

"Large cities overseas with close transport links to China could potentially also become outbreak epicentres because of substantial spread of pre-symptomatic cases unless substantial public health interventions at both the population and personal levels are implemented immediately," Professor Joseph Wu said.

Harder to spot and harder to stop

Why is this outbreak more difficult to stop than Sars?

The answer is not down to China - the speed and scale of the country's response to this new virus is widely considered to be unprecedented. The difference is the way the virus behaves inside the human body.

Sars was a brutal infection that you couldn't miss - patients were contagious only when they had symptoms. This made it relatively easy to isolate the sick and quarantine anyone who might have been exposed.

But the new virus, 2019-nCov, is harder to spot and therefore harder to stop.

From the virus's perspective, it has a far smarter evolutionary survival strategy than Sars.

The best estimate is only one-in-five cases cause severe symptoms, so instead of infected people turning up in hospital, you have to go out and find them.

And we are getting detailed documented cases of people spreading the virus before they even have symptoms.

There is a tendency to focus only on how deadly a virus is. But it is this, in combination with a virus's ability to spread, that determines its true threat.



How is China handling this?

A confirmed case in Tibet means the virus has now reached every region in mainland China.

The central province of Hubei, where nearly all deaths have occurred, is in a state of lockdown. The province of 60 million people is home to Wuhan, which is at the heart of the outbreak.

The city has effectively been sealed off and China has put numerous transport restrictions in place to curb the spread of the virus. People who have been in Hubei are also being told to work from home.

China has said it will send charter planes to bring back Hubei residents who are overseas "as soon as possible". A foreign ministry spokesman said this was because of the "practical difficulties" Chinese citizens had faced abroad.

The virus is affecting China's economy, the world's second-largest, with a growing number of countries advising their citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to the country.

How is the world responding?

Voluntary evacuations of hundreds of foreign nationals from Wuhan are under way.

The UK, Australia, South Korea, Singapore and New Zealand are expected to quarantine all evacuees for two weeks to monitor them for symptoms and avoid contagion.

Australia plans to quarantine its evacuees on Christmas Island, 2,000km (1,200 miles) from the mainland in a detention centre that has been used to house asylum seekers.

In other recent developments:

Sweden confirmed its first case - a woman in her 20s who arrived in the country on 24 January after visiting the Wuhan area

Russia said two Chinese citizens had been placed in isolation after they tested positive for the virus

Singapore closed its borders to all travellers from China

Germany confirmed its seventh case - a man from a company in Bavaria where five other workers have tested positive

Italy declared a six-month state of emergency after two Chinese tourists in Rome were diagnosed with the coronavirus

Thailand confirmed its first case of human-to-human transmission

Mongolia suspended all arrivals from China until 2 March. It also banned its citizens from travelling to the country

In the US, Chicago health officials reported the first US case of human-to-human transmission

Russia decided to close its 4,300km (2,670-mile) far-eastern border with China

Japan raised its infectious disease advisory level for China

Some 250 French nationals were evacuated from Wuhan

India confirmed its first case of the virus - a student in the southern state of Kerala who was studying in Wuhan

Israel barred all flight connections with China

North Korea suspended all flights and trains to and from China, said the British ambassador to North Korea

Guatemala announced new travel restrictions, saying anyone who had been to China in the past 15 days would be prevented from reaching the country

THREADS
Coronavirus
SARS

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

I had a racist slur hurled at me by some drunk dude last weekend. That hasn't happened to me in years.

Coronavirus is spreading. And so is anti-Chinese sentiment and xenophobia.
Marco della Cava
Kristin Lam
USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, Russell Jeung follows each development with concern.

Jeung, chairman of Asian-American Studies at San Francisco State University, applauds the various measures undertaken to quell the virus by everyone from airlines to the World Health Organization.

But he also cautions that one unhelpful reaction to the China-originating virus — racist reactions towards the Chinese and sometimes anyone merely Asian-looking — just adds hatred to hysteria.

"If you look at social media and some of the news, it's fear of the 'Yellow Peril' all over again," says Jeung, referring to a term that gained traction after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. "'Coughing while Asian' is like 'driving while black,' something you get stereotyped for."

Although San Francisco's Asian-American history dates back to the Gold Rush of the 1850s, Jeung says since the coronavirus scare hit U.S. shores he has seen non-Asians move away from Asian-Americans who are coughing or wearing masks. "The masks are there out of courtesy, but instead they're viewed in other ways," he says.


Passengers wear face masks to protect against the spread of the Coronavirus as they arrive on a flight from Asia at Los Angeles International Airport, Calif. on Jan. 29, 2020.

Often the reactions are more hurtful than mere shunning. Fear of the coronavirus around the world has so far led to everything from anti-Chinese signs at businesses to misrepresented videos.

South Korean restaurant owners have displayed "No Chinese allowed" signs and Japanese Twitter users made the hashtag #ChineseDontComeToJapan trend. In Singapore, more than 125,000 people have signed a petition urging the government to ban Chinese nationals from entering the city-state.

One social media post that has gone viral speculates on the source of the virus and features a 2016 video of Chinese vlogger Wang Mengyun eating a bat soup in Palau, a nation in Oceania.

Even the University of California, Berkeley, where the student population is about 34% Asian American, faced backlash for a since-deleted post on the coronavirus.

The post featured an infographic listing a range of expected reactions to the virus, including anxiety, worry and panic. But it noted that another common reaction could be "xenophobia: fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia and guilt about those feelings."

UC Berkeley officials soon amended the infographic and apologized for "any misunderstanding."



Some media influencers also are fanning the flames. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, whose show on Premiere Networks is heard by 27 million people weekly, said Monday that the virus comes from the "ChiComs," a slur referencing the Chinese communist government.

"I don’t see where we’ve put any ban on Chinese passengers being permitted into the country," Limbaugh said. "This is a serious thing that could be brewing out there."

And in France, the newspaper Le Courier Picard featured a front page Sunday with an Asian woman wearing a mask and the headline "Yellow Alert." The color referencing Asian skin tones drew immediate condemnation from French Asians — who started the hashtag #IAmNotaVirus — and an apology from the publication.

The health scare that started in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, overwhelmed local officials in China's Hubei province, as victims suddenly developed pneumonia without clear causes and for which vaccines were not proving effective.

On Monday, patients arrived at Wuhan's Huoshenshan Hospital, the 1,000-bed treatment center constructed in just 10 days to help battle the outbreak. The death toll in China has risen to 361, with more than 17,200 people infected. Outside of China, there have been 151 confirmed cases in 23 countries, and one death in the Philippines.

Based on the latest figures, the coronavirus fatality rate is roughly 2%. That compares to a fatality rate of the 9.6% for the 2002 SARS health scare.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said last week that "this is the time for facts, not fear. This is the time for science, not rumors. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma."

Some observers note that the current administration's hardline stance against immigrants may exacerbate racist incidents until the virus threat abates.

"The headlines have framed the coronavirus as an invasion into our country, and it surfaces the historical xenophobia and perpetual foreigner stereotype for Asian-Americans once again," says Aarti Kohli, executive director at Asian Law Caucus, a civil rights organization focused on Asian Pacific communities.

Kohli says a Filipino staffer with a cold "got weird looks" while at a Los Angeles area airport early this week.

"She isolated herself at a cafe to avoid the feeling of being targeted," says Kohli. "It's a problem when a whole population is being discriminated and being treated as a threat."

That sentiment has deep roots, dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which grew out a desire to block cheap Chinese labor that had in fact been critical to many Western projects, including the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869.

More recently, officials issued travel restrictions for the 2003 outbreak of SARS, a viral respiratory illness that sickened 8,096 people worldwide, eight of whom lived in the U.S..

"The danger here is that more extreme measures are taken," says historian Jeung, recalling past health scares in the early 1900s that caused San Francisco's Chinatown to be quarantined and Honolulu's Chinatown to be burned to the ground.

"The irony of the Hawaiian reaction was that the bubonic plague was caused by rats, so burning down the Chinatown only meant that the rats left and infected other non-Chinese neighborhoods," says Jeung. "This is not an Asian-American problem so much as it is an other people's problem with Asian-Americans. This coupling of xenophobia with health scares needs to get uncoupled."

Follow USA TODAY reporters @kristinslam and @marcodellacava

[GeneChing]

I'll be posting an announcement about our company very soon. Yes, as I've been saying, we are on the front lines. And we are seeing one of the first effects upon us right now.

Sputtering restaurant sales, obstacles to adoption, xenophobia: All the unexpected ways the coronavirus has impacted the world
By Scottie Andrew, CNN
Updated 7:16 AM ET, Wed February 19, 2020

Coronavirus outbreak shows no sign of slowing down
(CNN)There are still several unknowns surrounding the novel coronavirus: How quickly it spreads, the symptoms it presents (or lack thereof) and the impact it will ultimately have on the global population.
But the virus is already affecting pockets of business, travel and life in unexpected ways in China, where it originated, and beyond.
Chinese nationals bear the brunt of the coronavirus's impact -- most of the people it's sickened or killed are Chinese. But the virus and fear surrounding it have hurt business at Chinese restaurants across the world, dented Disney's annual earnings and even impeded American families meeting their adopted children in China because of travel restrictions.

Top companies are seeing profits drop

Brands such as Starbucks, Nike and Capri Holdings, which owns luxury brands including Versace, have closed thousands of stores in China because of mandatory lockdowns. The stores that remain open operate under limited hours and see few customers.
And Apple, one of the most profitable companies on Earth, warned investors this week it won't meet revenue guidelines it provided for the upcoming March quarter. The virus outbreak and ensuing closures and shortages have limited the number of devices it can make and sell in China.
Disney, another major investor in China, could lose as much as $280 million while its theme parks in the region are shuttered. Both Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland are closed indefinitely, and the company said its 2020 earnings will likely suffer as a result.

There are fewer parts for the world's cars

China makes more cars than any other country, so extended closures at plants and suppliers could have a global impact. Major automakers source many of their parts from China, which is considered the international manufacturing base for electric car parts.
Car plants were ordered to shut down since the Lunar New Year in January, and many have remained closed since. Toyota, the world's second-largest carmaker, only reopened a few of its production plants this week.

Oil demand is shrinking for the first time in 10 years

Because the virus has forced factories to close and kept people shut in, the amount of oil needed to keep the global economy running has sharply declined. Global oil demand is expected to drop by 435,000 barrels in the first three months of 2020 compared to the same period last year.
It's the first quarterly decline in a decade, according to the International Energy Agency.
It's too early to tell exactly how lower oil demand will affect the global economy, but the agency has some predictions: "Consequences will vary over time, with the initial economic hit on transportation and services, likely followed by Chinese industry, then eventually exports and the broader economy," it said in a statement.

Fear of the virus is fueling racism and xenophobia

Misinformation campaigns have falsely linked the outbreak to Chinese people eating wild animals, backed up by misleading photos that predate the outbreak by several years. They've contributed to xenophobic rumors surrounding the coronavirus, all targeted at people of Chinese and East Asian descent.
Unfounded fears have traveled overseas: Chinese restaurants in Australia, Canada and prominent Chinatowns in the US have seen sales sputter as fewer people visit them. A viewer sent CNN a sign outside of a restaurant in Vietnam that said, "No Chinese." A French newspaper published an image of a Chinese woman in a mask alongside the headline, "Yellow Alert."
The xenophobia surrounding the coronavirus is evocative to the racism Chinese people faced in the 19th century US or in 2003 during the SARS outbreak, CNN's Jessie Yeung said.

Airlines suspended flights to China

More than 20 airlines have suspended flights to and from China since the outbreak began. In the US, those include American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta. The third airline suspended all flights until the end of April.
Click here to read the rest of the airlines that have suspended travel to and from China.

Families can't meet their newly adopted children

Several American families' plans to adopt children from China have been temporarily derailed by the virus -- the State Department has issued a "Do Not Travel" advisory for China for all US citizens, including adoptive families.
As a result, the adopted children are stuck in Chinese orphanages, though the facilities have not allowed visitors or caregivers to stay on the property to avoid infecting children there.
Adoptive parents told CNN they've been given no timeline as to when they can meet their children.

China is cleaning or destroying cash

Buildings in affected areas in China are disinfecting elevator buttons, door handles and now, cash.
The People's Bank of China announced last week it would begin deep cleaning cash to prevent the spread of the virus. Every bank in the country will disinfect it using ultraviolet light and high temperatures, then store it for a week to two weeks before it's approved for use by customers.


CNN's Jessie Yeung, Harmeet Kaur, Seth Fiegerman, Jill Disis, Charles Riley and Michelle Toh contributed to this report.

[GeneChing]

Patients lie in an influenza ward at a U.S. Army camp hospital in Aix-les-Baines, France, during World War I.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CORBIS

1918 Flu Pandemic That Killed 50 Million Originated in China, Historians Say
Chinese laborers transported across Canada thought to be source.
6 MINUTE READ
BY DAN VERGANO, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

PUBLISHED JANUARY 24, 2014

THE GLOBAL FLU outbreak of 1918 killed 50 million people worldwide, ranking as one of the deadliest epidemics in history.

For decades, scientists have debated where in the world the pandemic started, variously pinpointing its origins in France, China, the American Midwest, and beyond. Without a clear location, scientists have lacked a complete picture of the conditions that bred the disease and factors that might lead to similar outbreaks in the future.

The deadly "Spanish flu" claimed more lives than World War I, which ended the same year the pandemic struck. Now, new research is placing the flu's emergence in a forgotten episode of World War I: the shipment of Chinese laborers across Canada in sealed train cars.

Historian Mark Humphries of Canada's Memorial University of Newfoundland says that newly unearthed records confirm that one of the side stories of the war—the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines on World War I's Western Front—may have been the source of the pandemic.



Writing in the January issue of the journal War in History, Humphries acknowledges that his hypothesis awaits confirmation by viral samples from flu victims. Such evidence would tie the disease's origin to one location.

But some other historians already find his argument convincing.

"This is about as close to a smoking gun as a historian is going to get," says historian James Higgins, who lectures at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and who has researched the 1918 spread of the pandemic in the United States. "These records answer a lot of questions about the pandemic."

Last of the Great Plagues

The 1918 flu pandemic struck in three waves across the globe, starting in the spring of that year, and is tied to a strain of H1N1 influenza ancestral to ones still virulent today.

The outbreak killed even the young and healthy, turning their strong immune systems against them in a way that's unusual for flu. Adding to the catastrophic loss of lives during World War I, the epidemic may have played a role in ending the war.

"The 1918 flu was the last of the great plagues that struck humanity, and it followed in the tracks of a global conflict," says Humphries.

Even as the pandemic's origins have remained a mystery, the Chinese laborers have previously been suggested as a source of the disease.

Historian Christopher Langford has shown that China suffered a lower mortality rate from the Spanish flu than other nations did, suggesting some immunity was at large in the population because of earlier exposure to the virus.

In the new report, Humphries finds archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu.

He also found medical records indicating that more than 3,000 of the 25,000 Chinese Labor Corps workers who were transported across Canada en route to Europe starting in 1917 ended up in medical quarantine, many with flu-like symptoms.

Origins Debated

The Spanish flu reached its height in autumn 1918 but raged until 1920, initially gaining its nickname from wartime censorship rules that allowed for reporting on the disease's ravages in neutral Spain.

Physicians began debating the origin of the pandemic almost as soon as it appeared, Higgins says, with historians soon joining them.

France's wartime trenches, ridden with filth, disease, and death, were originally seen as the flu's breeding ground. The flu's tendency to strike young adults was explained as the disease targeting itself to young soldiers in trenches. The theory also purported to explain how the illness spread from Europe to cities such as Boston and Philadelphia by pointing a finger at returning troop ships.

A decade after the war, Kansas was identified as another possible breeding ground, due to reports of an influenza outbreak there that spread to a nearby Army camp in March 1918, killing 48 doughboys.

But in his study, Humphries reports that an outbreak of respiratory infections, which at the time were dubbed an endemic "winter sickness" by local health officials, were causing dozens of deaths a day in villages along China's Great Wall. The illness spread 300 miles (500 kilometers) in six weeks' time in late 1917.

At first thought to be pneumonic plague, the disease killed at a far lower rate than is typical for that disease.

Humphries discovered that a British legation official in China wrote that the disease was actually influenza, in a 1918 report. Humphries made the findings in searches of Canadian and British historical archives that contain the wartime records of the Chinese Labor Corps and the British legation in Beijing.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Sealed Railcars

At the time of the outbreak, British and French officials were forming the Chinese Labor Corps, which eventually shipped some 94,000 laborers from northern China to southern England and France during the war.

"The idea was to free up soldiers to head to the front at a time when they were desperate for manpower," Humphries says.

Shipping the laborers around Africa was too time-consuming and tied up too much shipping, so British officials turned to shipping the laborers to Vancouver on the Canadian West Coast and sending them by train to Halifax on the East Coast, from which they could be sent to Europe.

So desperate was the need for labor that on March 2, 1918, a ship loaded with 1,899 Chinese Labor Corps men left the Chinese port of Wehaiwei for Vancouver despite "plague" stopping the recruiting for workers there.

In reaction to anti-Chinese feelings rife in western Canada at the time, the trains that carried the workers from Vancouver were sealed, Humphries says. Special Railway Service Guards watched the laborers, who were kept in camps surrounded by barbed wire. Newspapers were banned from reporting on their movement.

Roughly 3,000 of the workers ended up in medical quarantine, their illnesses often blamed on their "lazy" natures by Canadian doctors, Humphries said: "They had very stereotypical, racist views of the Chinese."

Doctors treated sore throats with castor oil and sent the Chinese back to their camps.

The Chinese laborers arrived in southern England by January 1918 and were sent to France, where the Chinese Hospital at Noyelles-sur-Mer recorded hundreds of their deaths from respiratory illness.

Historians have suggested that the Spanish influenza mutated and became most deadly in spring 1918, spreading from Europe to ports as far apart as Boston and Freetown, Sierra Leone.

By the height of the global pandemic that autumn, however, no more such cases were reported among the Chinese laborers in Europe.

Medical Evidence

Humphries concedes that a final answer to the mystery of the Spanish flu's origins is still a ways off.

"What we really need is a sample of the virus preserved in a burial for the medical experts to uncover," Humphries says. "That would have the best chances of settling the debate."

For the last decade, experts such as Jeffery Taubenberger, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have sought burial samples across continents, seeking to find preserved samples of the virus in victims of the outbreak.

Taubenberger led a team in 2011 that looked at flu virus samples taken from autopsies of 32 victims of the 1918 outbreak.

The earliest sample found so far was from a U.S. soldier who died on May 11, 1918, at Camp Dodge, Iowa, but the team is looking for earlier cases.

A broad number of samples from flu victims before and after the pandemic might finally narrow down its origins. Essentially, scientists would need a genetically identified sample of the influenza's H1N1 virus taken from a victim who died before the first widespread outbreak of the pandemic in spring 1918 to point to a time and place as the likely origin point of the pandemic.

One from China in 1917, for example, would fill the bill.

"I'm not sure if this question can ever be fully answered," Taubenberger cautions, noting that even the origin of a smaller flu pandemic in 2009 still eludes certainty.

Ultimately, "these kinds of [historical] analyses cannot definitively reveal the origins and patterns of spread of emerging pathogens, especially at the early stages of the outbreak," Taubenberger said, of the new historical report.

In the end, however, knowing the origin of the disease might provide information that could help stop a future pandemic, making the search worthwhile.

"I would say that the takeaway message of all of this is to keep your eye on China" as a source of emerging diseases, Higgins says. He points to concerns about avian flu and the SARS virus, both arising from Asia in the last decade.

The SARS outbreak claimed perhaps 775 lives in 2003, and avian flu A (H5N1) has killed 384 people since 2003, according to the World Health Organization, which is carefully watching for signs of an outbreak of the diseases.

"We have seen a lot of emerging diseases travel around the world in recent decades," Higgins says.

History has a way of repeating, he says, and research into the origins of the 1918 flu could help prevent a scourge like that from happening again.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct the location of Camp Dodge.
Follow Dan Vergano on Twitter.

Fascinating historical backstory on Chinese and plague.

[GeneChing]

...what the heck is in Qingfei Paidu soup?

16:06, 25-Feb-2020
Traditional Chinese medicine used to treat 85% of COVID-19 patients
Updated 16:54, 25-Feb-2020
By Hu Chao

As the fight against the novel coronavirus continues, traditional Chinese medicine or TCM has been widely used to treat COVID-19 patients in China. The National Administration of TCM said TCM was used to treat over 85 percent of confirmed coronavirus patients, and a combined treatment of TCM and Western medicine has proven to be effective.

A work unit of the Shanxi Provincial TCM Hospital in the capital city of Taiyuan has been working round the clock to produce TCM treatment for the coronavirus infection.

The hospital has so far given free TCM treatment to over 13,000 patients and medical staff. Over 90 percent of the confirmed patients in the province have used TCM in the early stages of their treatment.

Wang Xixing, former deputy president of the Shanxi Provincial TCM Hospital, is a renowned TCM doctor in Shanxi. He has been actively participating in the treatment of coronavirus patients.

"We follow the basic TCM theory, which is to treat patients according to their different symptoms. We ensure that everyone's prescription is individually tailored," he said.


Local TCM hospitals in Shanxi have recommended a preventive prescription against the coronavirus to the public. /CGTN

The National Health Committee and the National Administration of TCM have jointly recommended a TCM prescription of Qingfei Paidu soup, or a soup for lung clearance and detoxication in English, to treat coronavirus patients. Nearly all confirmed patients in Shanxi have taken it.

Shanxi set up a provincial TCM expert group against the novel coronavirus as soon as it spread to the province. Li Tingquan is the leader of the group and also the president of the Affiliated Hospital of Shanxi University of Chinese Medicine.

"After taking three sets of the Qingfei Paidu soup, 60 percent of patients experienced a reduction in the severity of their symptoms. While the condition of 30 percent of confirmed asymptomatic patients has remained stable," Li said.

Cover image: TCM doctors observe the tongue of a COVID-19 patient in Shanxi Province. /CGTN

[GeneChing]

The effect this has had on me personally with the direct impact on Tiger Claw and Kung Fu Tai Chi, along with my karma work volunteering as a psychiatric consultant, continues to spread.

I sincerely hope that all our members here stay healthy.

Yes, it is worse than the flu: busting the coronavirus myths
The truth about the protective value of face masks and how easy it is to catch Covid-19
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
@hannahdev
Tue 3 Mar 2020 05.50 ESTLast modified on Tue 3 Mar 2020 20.56 EST


Commuters wearing face masks in Bangkok. Photograph: Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images

Claim: ‘It is no more dangerous than winter flu’
Many individuals who get coronavirus will experience nothing worse than seasonal flu symptoms, but the overall profile of the disease, including its mortality rate, looks more serious. At the start of an outbreak the apparent mortality rate can be an overestimate if a lot of mild cases are being missed. But this week, a WHO expert suggested that this has not been the case with Covid-19. Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and the country’s response, said the evidence did not suggest that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If borne out by further testing, this could mean that current estimates of a roughly 1% fatality rate are accurate. This would make Covid-19 about 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which is estimated to kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people a year globally.

Claim: ‘It only kills the elderly, so younger people can relax’
Most people who are not elderly and do not have underlying health conditions will not become critically ill from Covid-19. But the illness still has a higher chance of leading to serious respiratory symptoms than seasonal flu and there are other at-risk groups – health workers, for instance, are more vulnerable because they are likely to have higher exposure to the virus. The actions that young, healthy people take, including reporting symptoms and following quarantine instructions, will have an important role in protecting the most vulnerable in society and in shaping the overall trajectory of the outbreak.

Claim: ‘Face masks don’t work’
Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although others have found lower levels of effectiveness).

If you are likely to be in close contact with someone infected, a mask cuts the chance of the disease being passed on. If you’re showing symptoms of coronavirus, or have been diagnosed, wearing a mask can also protect others. So masks are crucial for health and social care workers looking after patients and are also recommended for family members who need to care for someone who is ill – ideally both the patient and carer should have a mask.

However, masks will probably make little difference if you’re just walking around town or taking a bus so there is no need to bulk-buy a huge supply.

Claim: ‘You need to be with an infected person for 10 minutes’
For flu, some hospital guidelines define exposure as being within six feet of an infected person who sneezes or coughs for 10 minutes or longer. However, it is possible to be infected with shorter interactions or even by picking the virus up from contaminated surfaces, although this is thought to be a less common route of transmission.

Claim: ‘A vaccine could be ready within a few months’
Scientists were quick out of the gates in beginning development of a vaccine for the new coronavirus, helped by the early release of the genetic sequence by Chinese researchers. The development of a viable vaccine continues apace, with several teams now testing candidates in animal experiments. However, the incremental trials required before a commercial vaccine could be rolled out are still a lengthy undertaking – and an essential one to ensure that even rare side-effects are spotted. A commercially available vaccine within a year would be quick.

Claim: ‘If a pandemic is declared, there is nothing more we can do to stop the spread’
A pandemic is defined as worldwide spread of a new disease – but the exact threshold for declaring one is quite vague. In practice, the actions being taken would not change whether or not a pandemic is declared. Containment measures are not simply about eliminating the disease altogether. Delaying the onset of an outbreak or decreasing the peak is crucial in allowing health systems to cope with a sudden influx of patients.

• This article was amended on 2 March 2020 to expand the answer relating to face masks.