Brahma Chellaney, a Professor of Strategic Studies, writing in March, in Project Syndicate:
“The new COVID-19 coronavirus has spread to more than 100 countries–bringing social disruption, economic damage, sickness and death–largely because authorities in China, where it emerged, initially suppressed information about it. And yet China is now acting as if its decision not to limit exports of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and medical supplies – of which it is the dominant global supplier – was a principled and generous act worthy of the world’s gratitude.”
When the first clinical evidence of a deadly new virus emerged in Wuhan, Chinese authorities failed to warn the public for weeks and harassed, reprimanded, and detained those who did.
This approach is no surprise: China has a long history of “killing” the messenger. Its leaders covered up severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), another coronavirus, for over a month after it emerged in 2002, and held the doctor who blew the whistle in military custody for 45 days. SARS ultimately affected more than 8,000 people in 26 countries.
The Wall Street Journal, in an article written by Jeremy Page, Wenxin Fan and Natasha Khan, tells of a seafood merchant in Wuhan, who first started to feel sick, perhaps a cold. She walked to a small local clinic to get some treatment and then went back to work
Eight days later, she was barely conscious in a hospital bed., one of the first suspected cases in a coronavirus epidemic that has paralyzed China and gripped the global economy.
There were many early cases, many from the same seafood market as the original patient, but many like her, visited small, poorly resourced clinics and hospitals. Some patients balked after paying for chest scans; others including the original patient, Ms.Wei, refused to be transferred to bigger facilities that were better equipped to identify infectious diseases
Page and his associates write “when doctors did finally establish the Huanan link, the fish markets, in late December, they quarantined Ms. Wei and others like her and raised the alarm to their superiors. But they were prevented by Chinese authorities from alerting their peers, let alone the public”.
Chinese President Xi personally ordered officials to control the outbreak on Jan. 7, but authorities kept denying it could spread between humans, something the doctors had known was happening since late December.
The Chinese Lunar Year banquet involving tens of thousands of families in Wuhan went on as scheduled.
China has rejected any criticism of its epidemic response, saying it bought time for the rest of the world.
A prominent physician and epidemiologist and leader of the National Health Commission in China, Zhong Nanshan, identified a coronavirus by December 31 and took too long to publicly confirm human to human transmission
President XI was in charge when some 5 million people left Wuhan without screening, and when they waited until January 20 to announce the virus was spreading between humans.
As a result, the virus spread much more widely than it might have by the time Beijing locked down Wuhan and three other cities on Jan. 23.
The World Health Organization, WHO, has its China office and was informed on December 31, the same day the Wuhan health authorities issued their first official public health statement on the outbreak announcing 27 cases of suspected viral pneumonia to the Huanan market in Wuhan.
“The investigation so far has not found any obvious human-to-human transmisssion or infection of medical staff,” the statement from the Wuhan branch of the National Health Commission said. “The disease is preventable and controllable.”
Page, Fan and Khan, wrote “Medical authorities in Wuhan, meanwhile, were trying to get as many as possible of the suspected cases transferred to Jinyintan, the hospital that specializes in infectious disease, where staff had built dedicated quarantine areas, fearing the virus could spread between humans,”
On Jan. 5, a medical research center in Shanghai notified the National Health Commission that one of its professors has identified a SARS-like coronavirus and mapped the entire genome using a sample from Wuhan, according to an internal notice.
“Still, Chinese authorities didn’t publicly confirm an outbreak of a new coronavirus until Jan.9, two days after the Wall Street Journal revealed it.
The WHO-China joint commission of 25 national and international experts was held from Feb. 16-24. It was led by Dr. Bruce Aylward of WHO and Dr. Wannian Liang of the People’s Republic of China.
The overall goal of the Joint Mission was to rapidly inform national (China) and international planning on next steps in the responses to the ongoing outbreak of the COVID-19 and the next steps in readiness and preparedness for geographic areas not yet affected.
Findings in this report are based on the Joint Mission’s review of national and local experts and response teams, and observations made and insights gained during onsite visits, and with the agreement of the relevant groups.-
Now we are approaching a new challenge in that our government wants to reopen our “country” to a sense of normalcy and many questions are still to be answered.
A study at the University of California, Los Angeles, found the virus that causes COVID-19 remains for several hours to days on surfaces and in aerosols.
The study suggested that people may acquire the coronavirus through the air and after touching contaminated objects.
“The virus is quite transmissible through relatively casual contact, making this pathogen very hard to contain,” said James Lloyd-Smith, a co-author of the study and a UCLA professor of ecology “If your touching items that someone has recently handled, be aware they could be contaminated and wash your hands.”
A small study reported by researchers in Beijing and the United States found that 50 percent of patients treated for COVID -19 infection still carry the virus for up to eight days after their symptoms have disappeared.
The authors of this report published their results in “American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine”a biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Thoracic Society.
The authors as of March 30, say they don’t yet know whether the virus might still be capable of transmission at the later stages of the disease.”
However, the results indicate that quarantine periods might need to be lengthened in some recovered patients”
Now, while the President and his advisors discuss the possibility of “opening up America” a new report appears from South Korea.
They call them “reactivated” or patients who had coronavirus, recovered, were cleared by health officials, but are now testing positive for the active virus again.
Always more questions than answers.
Bert Drachtman
Great Neck
