The COVID-2019 Thread

[Latindancer]

[Latindancer]

Screw China.

The damn virus definitely started there, and most likely in one of their totally disgusting and unbelievably unhygienic wet markets.

[HuangLao]

Nature's design isn't political.


....or is it?

[Dragonfly]

Their approach was always poor.

Denmark, Norway and Finland have half the population and a third or less of the cases - they are now all recovering well as they come out of their limited period lockdowns. Sweden is on the up and will continue to grow in cases for sometime; this'll put a strain on their healthcare system, economy and social "well-being" that the other Scandos have avoided with sensible and early lockdowns...

Sweden decided to let the virus circulate freely, so of course numbers are increasing in that process. But make no mistake, those numbers will increase too for all of us once the virus resume circulating, so making all kind of stats comparisons at this point is still too early. There are leads and lags factors that affect the daily stats between countries, making direct comparisons impossible until the very end, once the virus run its course.

[harrybarracuda]

The stupidity of these fucking chimps never ceases to amaze....

This NY Barber was whinging about the lockdown, so he was craftily doing haircuts in the back of his salon and ended up infected.

Yet he said: “....I didn’t give it to anybody else. I got it from somebody that came into my shop.”

Thick as shit.

Barber Defied Rules and Cut Hair From Home. Now He Has the Virus. - The New York Times

[Dragonfly]

harry, why are you so worked up and angry about a poor guy trying to make a living during this idiotic pointless lockdown?

are you sure you don't have some kind of angry virus in you

[OhOh]

It's a social problem in the west, of course, but the greed culture is rampant in the "care home" industry, and it be nice to see authorities clamping down on this abuse.

Speaking from the UK perspective my opinion is:

Families have moved physically away from the previous generation's all living in the same neighbourhood..

The family members have their own careerer/family pressues away from their elderly parents care.

When a crisis occurs one of the children is appointed or agree amongst themselves who should take on the daily care responsibilities. Others more suitably equipped/competent may manage other aspects of an elderly family member's responsibilities.

One then enters the world of private/government mandated "taxes" who are able to provided "assistance" packages.

Careful monitoring/reporting is available in both, to those who wish to be involved. Unfortunately many don't.

[harrybarracuda]

It's a Khmer miracle....

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia’s last patient with the new coronavirus has recovered and left hospital, leaving the Southeast Asian country with zero cases, the health ministry said on Saturday, while urging continued vigilance.

No easing of restrictions related to the virus - including school closures and border entry checks and quarantines - were included in the Ministry of Health statement.

Cambodia has reported 122 cases of the virus that causes COVID-19 and no deaths from the disease since it emerged in China and started spreading around the world, infecting more than 4.5 million and killing about 300,000 since January.

A 36-year-old woman from Cambodia’s northwestern province of Banteay Meanchey was released from the Khmer Soviet Friendship Hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh, and was presented to the media in a livestream on Saturday, thanking the health authorities.

Cambodia’s last reported new case was on April 12. A total of 14,684 tests have been done since January, the ministry said.

Health Minister Mam Bunheng urged people to remain vigilant and take precautions such as not gathering in large groups.

“We think that most of the cases, generally, are imported, so we must be careful with all checkpoints at the border, at airports, at ports, at land checkpoints,” Mam Bunheng told reporters.

“People who travel from abroad must have a certificate confirming that they don’t have COVID-19. Only then would we allow them in, and once they are in, they will be quarantined for another 14 days,” he said.

Cambodia says all COVID-19 patients recovered, no new cases for a month - Reuters

[OhOh]

Thailand reports no new coronavirus cases, no additional deaths

"Thailand on Saturday reported no new coronavirus cases or deaths as the country begins to reopen businesses and ease restrictions. “Today there are two zeros ... thank you all Thais who have given their cooperation,” a spokesman for the government’s Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration, Taweesin Wisanuyothin, said.

This is the second day since March 9 that the country has reported no new daily cases.

Thailand on Sunday will allow malls and department stores to re-open. It will also shorten a nighttime curfew by one hour, to 2300 to 0400, from 2200 to 0400.

Thailand has reported a total of 3,025 cases of the coronavirus and 56 fatalities. "

Thailand extends ban on incoming international flights until end June - Reuters

China reports eight new COVID-19 cases, up from four a day earlier

"Mainland China reported eight new confirmed COVID-19 cases for May 15, up from four the previous day, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement on Saturday.

Six of the eight confirmed cases are so-called imported infections, while two are locally transmitted in northeastern Jilin Province.

The number of new asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus rose to 13 from 11, the NHC said.

The number of confirmed cases in the mainland stands at 82,941 and the death toll at 4,633. "

China reports eight new COVID-19 cases, up from four a day earlier - Reuters

[HuangLao]

Insightful and developed Asians.
Per usual.

[Chittychangchang]

[misskit]

The eye covers don’t seem that over the top anymore.


Doctor Joseph Fair Diagnosed With COVID-19 Believes He Got It Through His Eyes

NBC medical expert Dr. Joseph Fair is in critical condition after he contracted COVID-19. He believes the virus entered his body through his eyes while he was on a crowded flight. People are now asking if they should be wearing safety glasses as well as masks. Public health expert Professor Anthony Fantella says that’s just not practical. But some airlines are taking measures to allow social distancing on flights.

JetBlue says 40% of it’s seats will be blocked out to keep passengers apart.

VIDEO https://news.yahoo.com/dr-joseph-fai...114639983.html

[Chittychangchang]

The price of flights are going to be astronomically high..

[Iceman123]

If I have to go to all that bother, I would prefer to stay home.

[tomcat]

China Faces Angry World Seeking Virus Answers at Key WHO Meeting

By Karen Leigh and Jason Scott
May 17, 2020, 4:00 AM GMT+7
https://www.bloomberg.com/asia

• U.S., Australia, EU to pressure Beijing on virus probe, Taiwan
• China likely to prevail thanks to its economic influence

Medical staff members wearing protective clothing arrive with a patient at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan on Jan. 25. Photographer: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

At the first meeting of the World Health Organization’s governing body since Covid-19 stormed the globe, China is set to be challenged on two of its most sensitive issues: The Communist Party’s initial handling of the virus and the status of Taiwan’s participation.

While the U.S. has launched a daily barrage of attacks on China, including suggesting the virus escaped from a laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, the European Union and Australia are set to play a key role pushing for a probe into the virus’s origin when the World Health Assembly -- the WHO’s decision making body -- gathers on Monday for an annual meeting in Geneva.

A U.S.-backed bloc is also pushing for Taiwan, whose handling of the virus has been a rare success story, to attend the meeting as an observer. The move -- aimed at strengthening Taiwan’s official and unofficial diplomatic relationships -- has angered China, which views the island as a province and has long sought to isolate it on the world stage.

The showdown reflects a broader geopolitical struggle pitting the U.S. and its allies against China, whose authoritarian system has come under scrutiny in the wake of a pandemic that has killed about 300,000 people and devastated the global economy. The U.S. has suspended funding for the WHO, claiming it’s biased toward China, and even suggested setting up an alternative body.

Yet for all the noise, most analysts expect China to command support from a large swathe of the nearly 200 countries taking part in the assembly that need good relations with the world’s second-biggest economy to shore up domestic growth. And any effort to replace the WHO is also unlikely to gain traction.
“As much as the WHO has struggled and been the subject of criticism in this crisis, any replacement would look remarkably similar to what we have today,” said Natasha Kassam, a former Australian diplomat in China who is now a research fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. “It is hard to imagine an effective global health institution that excluded China, and it’s hard to imagine the United States making Taiwan’s participation a red line.”

Boycott Threats

Still, the anger in some parts of the world over China’s response to the pandemic is still fresh, and will likely play out this week. Apart from an initial cover up, the world has become increasingly upset with China’s heavy-handed response to any criticism.

Australia in particular has felt the heat from Beijing, which threatened a boycott of its goods and also suspended meat imports from four processing plants for “technical” reasons. The government in Canberra called the boycott threats “economic coercion” and hasn’t backed down on its calls for a virus probe.

“You can’t let the trail go cold,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters on May 8. “And I think Australia and the United States and the United Kingdom and countries all around the world would like to know what happened, because we don’t want to see it happen again.”

While the EU was still working out the wording of the proposal in the run-up to the assembly, the European Commission has said a draft resolution envisaged calling for “an independent review on lessons learned from the international health response to the coronavirus.”

Australia has said that could happen through the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, which was set up after the Ebola crisis in 2014, and the International Health Regulations Review Committee, which assessed the response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.

Red Line

The building acrimony has also made more countries willing to pressure China on Taiwan, which is a red line for authorities in Beijing. President Tsai Ing-wen’s government in Taipei has made a vocal pitch to be included in the proceedings this week, saying it needs access to firsthand information about the spread of the disease.

The WHO has said its Ethiopian director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has no mandate to offer Taiwan an invitation to the assembly because there is “no clear support” among member states. Tedros in April had accused Taiwan of being behind a racist campaign against him and Africans in general -- a charge that Taipei rejected as “slander.”

A proposal backed by 13 member states has called for the assembly to make a call on whether Taiwan can attend. China has blocked Taiwan’s participation in the organization since the independence-leaning Tsai was elected in 2016 and refused to accept that both sides belong to “one China.”

The U.S. is “determined” to see Taiwan participate in the meetings as an observer, with a spokesperson at the U.S. Mission in Geneva saying that lessons from its successful experience fighting Covid-19 “would be of significant benefit to the rest of the world.”
“The People’s Republic of China would rather that success not be shared, no doubt to avoid uncomfortable comparisons,” the spokesperson said.

Blocking Taiwan

For its part, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said it “firmly rejects” countries’ proposal to invite Taiwan to attend the assembly, and has also blasted the call for an independent probe into the virus origin as “political maneuvering.”
“Certain countries insisted on discussing proposals involving Taiwan to politicize a public health issue,” Zhao said Friday. “This consequence can only severely interfere with the progress of the conference and undermine international cooperation.”

China is confident that the majority of countries won’t allow Taiwan to participate as an observer, and Beijing would “never” allow an independent investigative team inside its borders, said Shi Yinhong, an adviser to China’s cabinet and also a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
“It’s becoming clear that China’s basic stance is to reject criticism, and focus on the efforts it has made in the global fight,” Shi said. “This is a position that China won’t change, hence posing a sharp opposition to the voices of accusing its cover-up and claiming accountability.”

Legally there’s no provision in the WHO’s constitution, resolutions or rules of procedure that would prevent Tedros from inviting Taiwan to the assembly as an observer, said Julian G. Ku, a distinguished professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University, who studies China’s relationship with international law. Since nobody is asking the WHO to invite Taiwan as a member state or to recognize Taiwan as the representative of China, the body’s citation of a 1971 United Nations decision recognizing Beijing is “irrelevant,” he said.

Still, a majority of assembly members are likely to block Taiwan’s participation, according to Kharis Templeman, an adviser to the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“It’s just a fact of international politics now that most countries aren’t willing to risk their relationship with the PRC to take symbolic actions in support of Taiwan,” he said, referring to China’s formal name. “As long as Beijing makes countries choose between them, Taiwan is going to lose.”

The U.S. can hardly complain about China’s influence in the WHO given that it encouraged Beijing to play a greater role in international organizations for years, said Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“Now the U.S. is crying foul because it turns out Chinese interests don’t align with its own and China is pretty darn good at playing this game,” Kennedy said. “If the U.S. doesn’t want a Chinese-led international order, it needs to do a better job of fighting for its own vision within these organizations.”

[Latindancer]

[tomcat]

...God appreciates a good joke...build another church to repay his love and He laughs even louder with his Right Hand Occupant, C. Darwin...

[Seekingasylum]

The price of flights are going to be astronomically high..

EVA Air are flying weekly out of Swampy, on a Sunday, to LHR charging 20,000 baht for a one-way ticket in economy class.

I think the demographic of current demand suggests a typical load could be, say, 100-150 pax.

That is pretty typical of a one-way ticket pre-Covid.

[Chittychangchang]

EVA Air are flying weekly out of Swampy, on a Sunday, to LHR charging 20,000 baht for a one-way ticket in economy class.

I think the demographic of current demand suggests a typical load could be, say, 100-150 pax.

That is pretty typical of a one-way ticket pre-Covid.

Did you buy the ticket?

[Iceman123]

Did you buy the ticket?

Give him a chance Chitty. He’s just about to get started with his “hungry and homeless” placard. Should be good to go in a month.

[jabir]

Sweden decided to let the virus circulate freely, so of course numbers are increasing in that process. But make no mistake, those numbers will increase too for all of us once the virus resume circulating, so making all kind of stats comparisons at this point is still too early. There are leads and lags factors that affect the daily stats between countries, making direct comparisons impossible until the very end, once the virus run its course.

2 weeks ago today Sweden death toll was level with USA at 204 per million; Sweden has since risen to 364/m while US is at 273/m. Never mind a demented msm that's more concerned with attacking Trump than reporting reality, this is not as bad as it looks for the US now on a war footing, with testing gone into overdrive resulting in more cases being detected, while Birx confirmed that anyone that dies 'with' C19 is counted as having died 'of' it. Sweden gives no info on this respect, while most other western countries are plodding along much like China and Russia, except their false reports and lost numbers are probably down to incompetence and inefficiency rather than outright lies.

So what is there to read in any of this? - absolutely nothing, because there is too much confusion within the system to take 'official' figures as more than a possible, plausible or hopeful measure.

And to the point, blame for this debacle must lie at the feet of the WHO, which ought to be protecting its title and claims as the World's health authority; after SARS they have no excuse for having failed to even attempt to formalise reporting procedures and data usage.

Anyone reckon they'll stop scratching their bum after this one?

[Seekingasylum]

Did you buy the ticket?

God no, it's far too dangerous for a man of my calibre. The wingman is in fine fettle having that Thai attribute whereby her immunity to any cold or flu bug infection known to man is assured, but I am in a demographic that renders me acutely vulnerable.

I shall remain in situ until the RO is negligible.

[HermantheGerman]

No need for ‘show trials’ of Western journalists, but responsible reporting is key – Lavrov on unproven Covid-19 allegations
15 May, 2020

Journalists should be held responsible for the articles they publish, but public “show trials” are not necessary, according to Russian FM Sergey Lavrov’s comments on the conduct of several Western media outlets.

Earlier three major Western news outlets – Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Financial Times – published headlines that asked why the coronavirus hasn’t killed more Russians, and made unproven allegations that the Russian authorities have been under-reporting the true Covid-19 death toll by as much as 70 percent.

“I am generally opposed to holding a show trial of journalists, but journalists should be held responsible for what they publish,” the foreign minister told RBK on Friday.

He added that issues with the accuracy of reported information deserve “special attention” from the regulating authorities and expressed his disdain for those who are using the extreme and devastating situation of a global pandemic to “smear their political opponents.”

He also mentioned the £200,000 fine levied by the UK media regulator Ofcom on RT London in 2019 for its allegedly biased reporting of the Syrian conflict, and noted that RT has yet to see any concrete evidence that justified the penalty.

The Russian embassy in the United States has asked the New York Times for a retraction, while the Russian Embassy to the UK has asked the same from the Financial Times. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, has launched a formal investigation into the conduct of these publications.

No need for ‘show trials’ of Western journalists, but responsible reporting is key – Lavrov on unproven Covid-19 allegations — RT World News

So why doesn't that old lying communist bastard tell us the secret of the low death rates?
The bodies will be lining up pretty soon, mark my words.

[HermantheGerman]

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan will call for an investigation into the World Health Organization's initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday.

"With the European Union, (Japan) will propose that a fair, independent and comprehensive verification be conducted," Abe said on an internet program.

He said the proposal will be made at WHO's general assembly to begin Monday.

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi also said Friday that Japan is joining a chorus of calls for such an investigation and the probe should be conducted by an independent body.

"This disease has had a devastating impact on the entire world, and information must be shared between countries in a free, transparent and timely manner, lest we risk it spreading even more quickly," Motegi said in a parliamentary session, in reference to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus........

That useless Tedros Adhanom is a liar, a fraud, not medical Doctor. He should have been fired a long time ago, as I said all the way in the beginning.

[HermantheGerman]

Thus, although the outbreak was controlled and therefore might have granted valuable time before more intense transmission occurred in Germany, successful long-term and global containment of COVID-19 could be difficult to achieve.

No shit Sherlock! But if you like you can look it up here.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...314-5/fulltext