Warfare by synthetic biology has begun the decimation of the armed forces of half the participant nations at the CISM World Military Games held in Wuhan in late October. The stealthy biological weapon COVID-19 infects the human body of young soldiers without showing any of the usual symptoms of influenza while burrowing into their host cells to replicate by the millions. Then the newly created viruses repeat the attack with every new generation to replicate over and over again, until the fifth generation overwhelms the last defenses of the human immune system, as the exhausted victim dies in horrific pain. War can hardly attain greater casual cruelty as in the mass killing off of targeted military personnel and civilians worldwide.This series has retraced the invention of COVID-19 used in this heinous assault against the US-led postwar system to demented virologists serving the interests of the "old" imperial powers Japan and the UK, which are aiming to restore the prewar system based on colonial mercantilism. The analysis was based on the research-lab origins of this hybrid virus, which contains the stripped-down core of SARS, an object of research in the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong then still dominated by British-trained scientists. HIV proteins were later attached to the coronavirus by a Japanese microbiologist at the veterinary school at University of Wisconsin at Madison in cooperation with the late director of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Manitoba, which has close link with Porton Down and DSTL in the UK. A strand of M.tuberculosis was also attached to complete the COVID-19 design so that it could replicate through several generations to "strip-mine" the host cells, eventually hollowing out the infected human over as many as 5 generations (5G) ending in death. Delivery of Death
Here in Part 11, I examine the research background of the bioweapon's delivery system based on an aquatic host organism, which is a gene-modified (GM) Tilapia developed in the State of Israel, the third research component for the assault to end the American Century. Israel, like Japan and the UK, is not a member of the CISM world games, which is the sporting body aligned with four of the Security Council powers.
Due to the technical complexity of this bio-weapon, there is a geopolitical strategic motivation for the attack against the elite special forces and military-intelligence officers who participated in the Naval Pentathalon and Army Triathlon held at two lakes in the Wuhan region. The tactical objective was to "decapitate" the military intelligence professionals of the postwar powers, along with regional players including Iran and the affected NATO member-states. The objective is, therefore, a classic re-division of the world between the major powers, which due to the ambitions behind this sneak attack could require a worldwide genocide while risking World War III, which the other side intends to win. Telltale casualties
No national leader dares disclose the coronavirus impact on their elite military units and intelligence agencies. Yet there are telling signs of a deep crisis for the military commands of the major powers. After an open border policy with China, the Russian military suddenly blocked Chinese entry along the boundary with Siberia. The US government has ordered quarantine centers initially at the Camp Pendleton Marines base (they being among the participants in the Naval Pentathalon event) and at March Air Base (which provides military travel across the Pacific). China's PLA has suffered thousands of casualties by infection, most of them during emergency duty in Wuhan, and other cases with probable earlier origins during the October CISM world games.
The most telling sign of the contagion's starting point at the World Military Games is the multiple deaths in Qom, Iran, which is the spiritual center for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who comprise the majority of navy pentathalon and army triathlon athletes. South Korea has seen three distinct outbreaks, including a scattered pattern of civilians employed in China; military personnel linked with the Wuhan games; and the Shincheonji sect whose members were possibly involved in the aquaculture sector in Wuhan during the perpetration of the infected Tilapia operation. To their shock, the assailants have also seen casualties to their nationals in Japan, Britain and Israel. By the end of the day, no country will be spared this plague. Mist on the Lakes
As discussed in this series, a swarm of fruit-eating Okinawan giant bats were driven away from southern Japan toward the Yangtze River along the 31st Parallel; and these COV-infected carriers gorged in the abandoned fruit orchards in Hubei Province and cast virus-tainted droppings on the Yangtze River, making all fish there dangerous to eat. This bat-conveyed virus stratagem failed, however, due to an unseasonal autumn heatwave and drought, which was triggered by atmospheric radioactivity from the hypersonic missile tests in Russia and China since early summer. Superweapons bring on super self-destruction, whether hypersonics or synthetic biologicals. One of the maxims of military preparedness is not to destroy your own country and allied nations.
Once the CISM military games schedule was announced, Plan B could swing into action. As discussed earlier in this series, the delivery system was originally bat to fish in order to infest the biologically rich waters of the Yangtze basin, thereby transmitting COVID-19 to a human population dependent on piscine protein. The ecological geography and aquaculture of the Wuhan region was, of course, the foundation for this large-area biowarfare attack. Water by itself is not capable of transmitting infectious diseases to the local population, protected by multi-level purification systems plus the Chinese tradition of boiling water to suppress pathogens. Salads, sushi and other raw foods are forbidden as vectors for disease under traditional dietary rules, and the violations were introduced by foolish westerners, Japanese and educated but unaware overseas Chinese, careless fools all.
Therefore a host fish species with red blood cells, a sugar-rich diet and proven gene-modification (GM) for shutdown of its immune system is required to serve as a delivery system for the CoV bioweapon. While an infected Tilapia as a living equivalent of a submarine releases infected feces into the water, it also attacks the human targets by releasing virus-carry bubbles through its mouth and gills at or near the waterline, releasing infectious aerosols. This type of virus transmission is especially effective against swimmers, rowers and bystanders along a lake shore.
The primary targeted subgroups at the World Military Games are the intelligence officers and special forces who scout behind enemy lines and launch deep-penetration attacks against communication and command centers and other high-priority targets. These special forces commandos were gathered at the Army Triathlon at Liangzi Lake south of the Wuchang downtown and the Navy Pentathalon at Naval Engineering University campus by Lake Mulan on the northeast of Wuhan.
Both lakes are large and have multiple bays and inlets. There are no orchards around either lake, nullifying the possibility of bat-borne virus delivery. That left infected Tilapia as the only carrier option, its viral load amplified by injections of viruses in a sugary liquid medium and feeding them soy pellets soaked in a virus-containing solution. These super-infected fish were then released near the target sites on those two lakes. This operation therefore required control over one of the local aquaculture operations the crews, equipment and vehicles to deliver the killer fish to targeted site.
Weaponized fish made in Israel
At this point, there are few if any grounds for doubt that a Japanese-led biowar operation, so reminiscent of Unit 731, was involved in the infiltration of secret agents into the extensive Japanese and South Korea partnered fish farms in the Yangtze aquaculture sector, not only as buyers of fish but also suppliers of equipment and pharmaceuticals to prevent infection in the dense populations of farmed fish. This type of piscine delivery requires gene modification of the carrier species.
The research for bio-engineering bigger and fatter Tilapia was pioneered in Israel, to adapt these small perch-resembling fish indigenous to the Jordan River, Middle Eastern desert oases and the Nile riverine system. Traditionally known as St. Peter's fish, Tilapia is a common name in the marketing of its three subgroups, Oreochromis, Sarotheron and Tilapia. Most of the farmed fish on the world market are Nile Tilapia or Tilapia niloticus, partly due to the undesirable tendency of the chromis types to escape into river systems as an unwelcome invasive species. The most valuable type are the Red Tilapia, which resembles a salt-water red snapper.
Tilapia has oddly become an effective means for sending innocent souls to St. Peter. The Israeli experiments in biological warfare were inadvertently disclosed in a research paper published at mBio, April 2016, by Eran Bacharach et al. Following on an infectious outbreak that killed off millions of Tilapia in kibbutz fish ponds in 2009, Israeli microbiologists launched a massive research program on related piscine diseases. These research projects eventually converged onto a novel orthomixovirus, which has similarities with coronaviruses, meaning this project was the likely starting point for R&D in Tilapia as a delivery system for the CoV bioweapon.
That team of 16 microbiologists were with Tel Aviv University, the Mailman School at Columbia U; the New York Genome Center, Edinburgh University and St. George's U, Grenada, a former British colony. The NY genome project is affiliated with 12 institutes including Rockefeller University, a leading force in biological warfare and population reduction; the Icahn school at Mount Sinai, home base for Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, an ally of the notorious Yoshihiro Kawaoka; the New York Stem Cell Foundation; the Einstein College of Medicine, and others involved in Frankenstein research.
Mulan Lake as primary target
The target lake is named after the fictional character in a song composed for the Xianbei Mongol court of the Wei Northern Dynasty, about a Xiongnu or Hun woman serves in her tribal cavalry corps under the Five Barbarian Alliance of pastoral tribes that ruled the north during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, a topic I studied in Nanjing, the former southern capital of the agrarian Han Chinese people. As I have previously written about, the Disney travesty is based on a 1930s propaganda film by the Kuomingtang government aimed at military recruitment of Han women, an absurd modern myth ignorant of the facts of ancient and authentic Chinese history.
The lesson here is that it's difficult to get things right about any society, especially one as complex as China, without intensive study and field research, which has not been done by the fools who've loudly blamed a new inexperienced virology lab in Wuhan for creating COVID-19, a wild-eyed claim for propaganda motives much like the Mulan movies. I deal with hard facts not cheap fiction, to wherever those pointers may lead, in this case, to Mulan Lake.
The Navy Engineering Campus' Mulan Tianchi-hu (Mulan Heaven Lake) which was the venue tor the naval pentathlon (lifesaving, utility swimming, obstacle race, seamanship race and amphibious cross-country race). The aquatic environment of that lake, plus its symbolic name, makes it an ideal target for viral bio-terrorism. Specific targeting is the primary element, however, because the aquatic pentathlon, with 46 participant nations, is a contest between their elite special forces, for example the U.S. Navy Seals, Russia's combined naval Spetznaz-V-Alpha Group, the Italian Operational Raider Group (Grupo Operativa Incursori), the French Commando Marine, the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, the Iranian naval commandos and Revolutionary Guards naval Sepah unit, and so on.
Heavy attendance by officers of all branches and special forces enlisted men was expected to watch the naval pentathlon, the best-trained fighters of the world gathered at one spot, making Mulan Lake the perfect target for the Japanese-British-Israeli adversary. The virus was then spread through the indoors air at the new special-built Athletes Village in Wuhan. The fact that these athletic soldiers are young and physically fit accounts for their immune resistance over the next three months, before the infectious replication process began to take a serious toll on their internal organs, resulting in a spate of deaths that can be expected to increase over the coming month.
Releasing an insidious bio-agent is the most convenient way to equalize the strategic balance between the major powers and the much-reduced legendary great powers, the Royal Navy-Army, Imperial Japan and the ancient Kingdom of Israel. Ordinary civilians count time by the year, true warlords reckon by centuries, even millenniums.
Another factor for targeting the special-forces is the code of secrecy regarding their identities. No government is going to reveal their names or tally of casualties. This factor indicates that the operation planners were themselves former members of special forces units of the UK, Japan and Israel. That, in turn, puts Target Wuhan in the category of highest-level approval in the category of state sponsorship. This is a world war.
Of course, the watery environment of Lakes Mulan and Liangzi, and a month later the Huanan fish market was not only conducive for use of Tilapia as the spreader, but also the best medium for protecting the virus inside an adaptive and strong carrier. Therefore, the earliest site of bottle-to-fish and fish-to-human CoV infection was an aquaculture operation near the Yangtze River, operated by a Japanese or South Korean corporation with strong roots during Tokyo's half-century colonization era.
St. Peter's Fish versus Armies of Armageddon
In contrast to the adverse effects of intense heat on the Yangtze River, the heatwave had a conducive effect on lakes Mulan and Liangzi, raising their water temperatures to abnormal warmth, which was ideal for Tilapia, a warm-water species.
Who could have released these toxic fish into the two lakes? Following the massive outbreak in the Shincheonji congregation in Daegu, South Korea, due to the refusal of its programmed members to report to medical doctors, it turns out that the Book of Revelations-obsessed apocalyptic cult has a branch in Wuhan with 200 members, among these the probable suspects in "Operation St. Peter's Fish" against the "Armies of Armageddon" aka the Security Council powers minus Britain.
The cult leader Lee Man-hee believes himself to be the reincarnation of Jesus, who breaks open the Seven Seals of Apocalypse as described in Revelation 6. If your parents did not send you to a fire-and-brimstone Protestant Sunday school or your birth arrived too late for old-style Catholic training, both of which I endured through childhood due to upbringing by my father, one of the former, and my stepfather, with the latter, you're not up to speed with what's happening now.
"So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the Earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth." (Revelation 6:8)
Death and with Hell following will kill with the sword, hunger, disease, and wild beasts; those four judgments in Ezekiel 14:21. Although the pale rider and his three companions (and remember well famine) will wreak havoc during this time of Tribulation, Jesus holds the ultimate power and will throw them both into the Lake of Fire after the Battle of Armageddon. Which Jesus were the prophets referring to? There's only one that I know of, not some double in Daegu.
So now, isn't it interesting that death came stealthily in the lakes of Wuhan? If the Korean cult did not send their aquaculture team from Daegu to Wuhan, I'm getting on my horse and riding off into the sunset. The Bible actually had nothing to do with this COVID-19, even though its scary last chapter has been twisted by cynical atheist of Satanic bent to manipulate the "true believers" to a launch the global genocide.
The mass destruction of human lives starting to sweep the planet is a man-made epidemic under a misanthropic secularist post-human agenda being promoted by Anglophiles Bill and Melinda Gates, the Rothschild henchman Michael Bloomberg, a London elite out to restore the British Empire, the Unit 731 revivalist Shinzo Abe seeking to re-establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere; and Zionist warmongers out to genocide Arabs and Iranians to create Greater Israel, all these driven by indecent ambitions to reverse history with falsification.
So the battle is upon us, ordinary citizens who do not believe in these diabolical manifestations created by illusions of power and dreams of conquest, nor should we be diverted from the defense at the gates of human dignity by the genocidal Green Agenda of the AOC squad and the Greta Thunberg children's crusade. The enemies are real and intend to murder the lot of us, so to arms, friends.
We have families, communities, cities, nations, civilizations and a tradition to defend against those brain-dead neo-barbarians and their preposterous idols. If you're not read up on Augustine of Hippo's City of God, your philosophical foundations are lacking, erected on sand instead of being firmly set on solid rock. Another Dark Age is upon us, and the battle will be met by men in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius, King Arthur, Zhuge Liang and Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty, warriors who refused to surrender to the forces of darkness and whose light shines onto our hour of desperate battle.
Faith and Reason must be combined like shield and sword in this fight to the death. As the philosopher Augustine stressed, the City will fall when its time is done but the continuity of a grand cultural Tradition is to be defended at all cost by heroes for it to be passed on down through the ages, or in cowardly refusal failing that duty they will be forgotten as lost fools. The decision is yours to trust in outright lies or to take a stand whatever the consequences on the side of the truth.
This is the upside of hyper-litigiousness: prevention is prioritized as the most effective means of limiting future liability.
Never mind prevention or vaccines; the big question is "who can we sue after this blows over to rake in millions of dollars?" Yes, this is pathetic, tragic, perverse and evil, but that's reality in a hyper-litigious society like the U.S.
Many people are struck by the apparent over-reaction of Corporate America to the Covid-19 threat, but this is the only rational response in a hyper-litigious society:the number one priority in a hyper-litigious society is to limit liability. Everything--and yes, we mean everything--flows from this obsessive concern with limiting future liability.
Imagine the lawsuit brought by an employee of Corporate America who could have worked from home but was ordered by her employer to come to the workplace, and who was subsequently infected by the virus.
The corporation's defense team would naturally claim there was no evidence the employee caught the virus at work, but alas, one employee in the building was confirmed as a carrier of Covid-19, so that defense won't work: the employee could have been infected by this other employee in the workplace, and lacking any solid evidence to the contrary, it's clear the company failed to protect its employees from exposure to the virus by forcing employees to work in a virus-infected work place when they could have worked from home.
By forcing an employee who could have worked from home to come to the office, the company is liable for damages. Multiply this case by thousands, and it's easy to see why Corporate America has proactively moved so aggressively to a "work at home" policy and why corporate legal, HR and risk management teams are quickly issuing press releases and internal memos stressing all the measures the company is taking to lower the risks for employees and customers.
Future court cases will likely come down to basic tests, such as: did the corporation act promptly, prudently and in good faith? Did it pursue its preventative policies rigorously, or in a piecemeal, slapdash manner? Did the management quickly correct flawed execution, or did management fail to provide the necessary oversight, accountability and problem-solving to address the flawed execution of preventative measures? Did the company follow accepted industry protocols and standards? Did it make every available practical effort to reduce the risks to employees and customers?
If the measures are practical, coherent and applied consistently, this is a good thing. In prevention against a highly contagious virus, half-measures and window-dressing will not be effective: the execution of preventative measures must be 100%.
Thus it would be prudent to instruct all employees to wear masks, wash their hands often, conduct digital-online meetings, limit company gatherings, hire crews to regularly disinfect company facilities, etc. Companies that fail to impose and promote preventative policies and execute preventative measures uniformly will be opening Pandora's Door to lawsuits that could stretch on for years.
This is the upside of hyper-litigiousness: prevention is prioritized as the most effective means of limiting future liability. The downside--extortionist lawsuits seeking quick out-of-court settlements as the cheaper way out of costly litigation--is an ugly reality of conducting commerce in America. But the upside--practical preventative policies that impose "social distancing" and high standards of personal hygiene and the regular disinfecting of common areas--could have a profound impact in lowering the spread of the virus.
When you think of Tulsa, Oklahoma, you may not think it's becoming a hotbed for coworking spaces filled with young professionals working remotely. The landlocked city with a population of about 400,000 people is often referred to as the "Oil Capital of the World."
Thanks to a program called Tulsa Remote, that's exactly what is happening.
The program, which is funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation - an influential Tulsa-based philanthropy, is attracting people to Tulsa by paying them $10,000 in cash, providing desk space and offering other perks. The program is one of the first of its kind in the U.S., with similar ones implemented in Vermont, Alabama and Kansas.
After seeing its population peak in 2016, Tulsa Remote is seen as a way to lure in talent to help reverse the declining population and boost the city's economy.
"The last few years have been the slowest population growth [in the state] since the late ‘80s, early ‘90s,"said Chad Wilkerson, branch executive of the Kansas City Fed’s Oklahoma City Branch office. "A good amount of it is driven by the downturn of the energy sector in 2014 and 2015, and people seeking jobs elsewhere."
Tulsa Remote is touting the city's cost of living as its selling point to attract people from expensive coastal cities. The median home price in Tulsa is $157,200—43% below the national average, while the average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is $658 per month.
Tulsa Remote's website even compares Tulsa's cost of living to popular coastal cities that are facing affordability crises. Compared to San Francisco, the cost of living in Tulsa is 50% lower with the median home price 83% lower. Compared to Seattle, the cost of living and median home price in Tulsa are 38% and 68% lower, respectively. Compared to New York, the cost of living in Tulsa is a staggering 61% lower with the median home price 60% lower.
"The citizens of Tulsa have invested substantial public funds to build the types of things that we believe make Tulsa a more appealing place for a new generation of workers," said Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum.
"And the Tulsa Remote program is really a great way to introduce the very kinds of workers that we’re hoping to appeal to, to the city that we’ve been building for the last decade to appeal to them."
Given some of the fastest-growing cities in the country are in states such as Texas, Arizona and Nevada, Tulsa Remote knows exactly what it's doing by literally paying people to come work in a place that is significantly cheaper than most cities. Given Tulsa Remote is now accepting more workers than it did when it began in November 2018, it won't be surprising to see more cities across the country introduce similar programs.
We don’t yet know the full ramifications of the novel coronavirus. But three crucial facts have become clear in the first months of this extraordinary global event.
And what they add up to is not an invocation to stay calm, as so many politicians around the globe are incessantly suggesting; it is, on the contrary, the case for changing our behavior in radical ways—right now.
The first fact is that, at least in the initial stages, documented cases of COVID-19 seem to increase in exponential fashion. On the 23rd of January, China’s Hubei province, which contains the city of Wuhan, had 444 confirmed COVID-19 cases. A week later, by the 30th of January, it had 4,903 cases. Another week later, by the 6th of February, it had 22,112.
The same story is now playing out in other countries around the world. Italy had 62 identified cases of COVID-19 on the 22nd of February. It had 888 cases by the 29th of February, and 4,636 by the 6th of March.
Because the United States has been extremely sluggish in testing patients for the coronavirus, the official tally of 604 likely represents a fraction of the real caseload. But even if we take this number at face value, it suggests that we should prepare to have up to 10 times as many cases a week from today, and up to 100 times as many cases two weeks from today.
The second fact is that this disease is deadlier than the flu, to which the honestly ill-informed and the wantonly irresponsible insist on comparing it. Early guesstimates, made before data were widely available, suggested that the fatality rate for the coronavirus might wind up being about 1 percent. If that guess proves true, the coronavirus is 10 times as deadly as the flu.
But there is reason to fear that the fatality rate could be much higher. According to the World Health Organization, the current case fatality rate—a common measure of what portion of confirmed patients die from a particular disease—stands at 3.4 percent. This figure could be an overstatement, because mild cases of the disease are less likely to be diagnosed. Or it could be an understatement, because many patients have already been diagnosed with the virus but have not yet recovered (and may still die).
When the coronavirus first spread to South Korea, many observers pointed to the comparatively low death rates in the country to justify undue optimism. In countries with highly developed medical systems, they claimed, a smaller portion of patients would die. But while more than half of all diagnosed patients in China have now been cured, most South Korean patients are still in the throes of the disease. Of the 7,478 confirmed cases, only 118 have recovered; the low death rate may yet rise.
Meanwhile, the news from Italy, another country with a highly developed medical system, has so far been shockingly bad. In the affluent region of Lombardy, for example, there have been 7,375 confirmed cases of the virus as of Sunday. Of these patients, 622 had recovered, 366 had died, and the majority were still sick. Even under the highly implausible assumption that all of the still-sick make a full recovery, this would suggest a case fatality rate of 5 percent—significantly higher, not lower, than in China.
The third fact is that so far only one measure has been effective against the coronavirus: extreme social distancing.
Before China canceled all public gatherings, asked most citizens to self-quarantine, and sealed off the most heavily affected region, the virus was spreading in exponential fashion. Once the government imposed social distancing, the number of new cases leveled off; now, at least according to official statistics, every day brings more news of existing patients who are healed than of patients who are newly infected.
A few other countries have taken energetic steps to increase social distancing before the epidemic reached devastating proportions. In Singapore, for example, the government quickly canceled public events and installed medical stations to measure the body temperature of passersby while private companies handed out free hand sanitizer. As a result, the number of cases has grown much more slowly than in nearby countries.
These three facts imply a simple conclusion. The coronavirus could spread with frightening rapidity, overburdening our health-care system and claiming lives, until we adopt serious forms of social distancing.
This suggests that anyone in a position of power or authority, instead of downplaying the dangers of the coronavirus, should ask people to stay away from public places, cancel big gatherings, and restrict most forms of nonessential travel.
Given that most forms of social distancing will be useless if sick people cannot get treated—or afford to stay away from work when they are sick—the federal government should also take some additional steps to improve public health. It should take on the costs of medical treatment for the coronavirus, grant paid sick leave to stricken workers, promise not to deport undocumented immigrants who seek medical help, and invest in a rapid expansion of ICU facilities.
The past days suggest that this administration is unlikely to do these things well or quickly (although the administration signaled on Monday that it will seek relief for hourly workers, among other measures). Hence, the responsibility for social distancing now falls on decision makers at every level of society.
Do you head a sports team? Play your games in front of an empty stadium.
Are you organizing a conference? Postpone it until the fall.
Do you run a business? Tell your employees to work from home.
Are you the principal of a school or the president of a university? Move classes online before your students get sick and infect their frail relatives.
Are you running a presidential campaign? Cancel all rallies right now.
All of these decisions have real costs. Shutting down public schools in New York City, for example, would deprive tens of thousands of kids of urgently needed school meals. But the job of institutions and authorities is to mitigate those costs as much as humanly possible, not to use them as an excuse to put the public at risk of a deadly communicable disease.
Finally, the most important responsibility falls on each of us. It’s hard to change our own behavior while the administration and the leaders of other important institutions send the social cue that we should go on as normal. But we must change our behavior anyway. If you feel even a little sick, for the love of your neighbor and everyone’s grandpa, do not go to work.
When the influenza epidemic of 1918 infected a quarter of the U.S. population, killing tens of millions of people, seemingly small choices made the difference between life and death.
As the disease was spreading, Wilmer Krusen, Philadelphia’s health commissioner, allowed a huge parade to take place on September 28; some 200,000 people marched. In the following days and weeks, the bodies piled up in the city’s morgues. By the end of the season, 12,000 residents had died.
In St. Louis, a public-health commissioner named Max Starkloff decided to shut the city down. Ignoring the objections of influential businessmen, he closed the city’s schools, bars, cinemas, and sporting events. Thanks to his bold and unpopular actions, the per capita fatality rate in St. Louis was half that of Philadelphia. (In total, roughly 1,700 people died from influenza in St Louis.)
In the coming days, thousands of people across the country will face the choice between becoming a Wilmer Krusen or a Max Starkloff.
In the moment, it will seem easier to follow Krusen’s example. For a few days, while none of your peers are taking the same steps, moving classes online or canceling campaign events will seem profoundly odd. People are going to get angry. You will be ridiculed as an extremist or an alarmist. But it is still the right thing to do.
Aerosolized coronavirus can hang in the air for at least 30 minutes and travel up to 14 feet - approximately twice the "safe distance" recommended by health officials, according to SCMP.
The study, conducted by a team of Chinese government epidemiologists from Hunan province, also found that the virus can survive for days on a surface where respiratory droplets land.
The length of time it lasts on the surface depends on factors such as temperature and the type of surface, for example at around 37C (98F), it can survive for two to three days on glass, fabric, metal, plastic or paper.
These findings, from a group of official researchers from Hunan province investigating a cluster case, challenge the advice from health authorities around the world that people should remain apart at a “safe distance” of one to two metres (three to six and a half feet). -SCMP
The researchers warned that the virus could survive over five days in human feces or bodily fluids, and that it could remain floating in the air after a carrier had left a public bus.
"It can be confirmed that in a closed environment with air-conditioning, the transmission distance of the new coronavirus will exceed the commonly recognised safe distance," the researchers wrote in their paper, published in peer-reviewed journal, Practical Preventive Medicine.
"Our advice is to wear a face mask all the way [through the bus ride]," the researchers recommended.
They said the study proves the importance of washing hands and wearing face masks in public places because the virus can linger in the air attached to fine droplet particles.
...
Their work was based on a local outbreak case on January 22 during the peak Lunar New Year travel season. A passenger, known as “A”, boarded a fully booked long-distance coach and settled down on the second row from the back.
The passenger already felt sick at that point but it was before China had declared the coronavirus outbreak a national crisis, so “A” did not wear a mask, nor did most of the other passengers or the driver on the 48-seat bus. -SCMP
Because China requires closed circuit television cameras to record all long-distance us rides, researchers were able to reconstruct the spread of the virus on the bus, which had no open windows.
Lead author Hu Shixiong said that the camera footage revealed patient "A" did not interact with anyone throughout the four-hour ride, yet the virus infected seven other passengers by the time the bus stopped at the next city. Infected passengers included not only those sitting relatively close to "patient zero," but people six rows away - or 4.5 meters (14.76 feet).
All seven tested positive, including one passenger who displayed no symptoms. Then, 30 minutes later, another group of passengers got on the bus - one of whom was sitting in the front seat when they also became infected. Patient "A" meanwhile, got on another minibus and infected two other passengers.
Hu said the patient, who was not wearing a mask, was likely to have inhaled aerosols, or tiny particles, breathed out by the infected passengers from the previous group.
Aerosols are light-weighted particles that are formed from tiny droplets of bodily fluids. -SCMP
"The possible reason is that in a completely enclosed space, the airflow is mainly driven by the hot air generated by the air conditioning. The rise of the hot air can transport the virus-laden droplets to a greater distance," the paper reads.
"When riding on more closed public transportation such as subways, cars, planes, etc, you should wear a mask all the time, and at the same time, minimise the contact between your hands and public areas, and avoid touching your face before cleaning."
In total, patient "A" is believed to have infected at least 13 people.
