Who thinks the Chinese figures are complete BS?
It doesn't make sense - yes, their figures from Wuhan seem kosher with the extreme lockdown which long surpassed any incubation and recovery period, so all that were going to be ill would have been by now.
But there are 1.7bn people there, and huge conurbations that were infected BEFORE the Wuhan lockdown such as Beijing and Shanghai. So we are expected to believe that the rest of China has not followed the pattern of all the other nations and nobody is dying any more?
Something doesn't add up when you look at the chronology of COVID events there and its behaviour everywhere else, it's anomalous to say the least.
Now they've ended lockdown, they haven't a clue who has had it and is immune, they have no vaccine or done mass screening. The virus hasn't gone away so if we do NOT see a new outbreak in China something is definitely odd?
Unfortunately china have lied from the outset. Delaying telling the world that the virus was there and killing people. Silencing the doctors who tried to tell what was really going on.
They are used to controlling their citizens and limiting what they know and can do and they are used to managing what they tell the rest of the world to keep themselves where they want to be.
The figures will be wrong. Plus as you say if there is even one infected person it could start up again . It would have been really helpful if they were honest as the rest of the world could have learnt from what happens in a full lockdown and then again learnt what happens when the lockdown lifted. Instead we will be fed whatever China want to feed us. This is the way it works there. Simple as.
I don't think it is that straightforward.
As a comparison, MERS emerged in Sep 2012 and it took until Jan 2013 for proper action to be taken. Which is still very fast.
The big difference to any other Corona pandemic (MERS, SARS) is the asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19. Plus, appr. 80% of infected people do not have majorly different symptoms compared to normal flu or no symptoms at all.
Now, going back to MERS for a sentence. The origins of the first mutation of the coronavirus that led to the MERS virus was traced back to a time range between 2007-2011. In between, it mutated continuously and probably had some "zoonotic" transmissions in between as well but it wasn't as dangerous as it became years later.
Hence, COVID-19 is not something that simply popped up out of nowhere. New coronavirus genomes are found every year, the difference is that they are/were not dangerous. COVID-19 is that one mutation from 100s or 1000s (could be just two or three as well) that makes it lethal for some people, in this case mainly older people or with existing lung conditions, who have weaker defences against the virus.
Now, going back to the timeline for COVID-19. There are reports of some cases going back as far as September and others put it to November'19. The Chinese government put the first detection to a case on 17th December 2019.
Anyone with some knowledge of the matter (I know next to nothing), will tell you that detecting and deciphering the genome of a new virus is not done overnight. With the first cases, doctors and scientists tap around in the dark, where they first have to establish that no other factors played a role in the illness. Second, the genome of the virus has to be collated to actually determine that it is a new virus.
Going back to putting the first reported case to November or even September, I can see why it took until Jan before everyone had a clearer picture. No country, and most certainly not the US either (they are the masters in cover-ups) would just blurt out every single pneumonia case that cannot be immediately explained.
Now, picking November 2019 to Jan 3rd when China informed the WHO and the US about the virus and Jan 7th when China provided the complete genome, we are talking of 6 weeks in total. Taken by their Dec 17 detection, we are looking at 3 weeks max. In either case, that is really fast.
However, given the asymptomatic transmission, which is totally new with regards to coronaviruses, you had weeks of people travelling the globe, foreigners to China and other countries and back to their home country as well as Chinese travelling abroad, spreading the virus undetected. That became months as most countries didn't do anything to stop the spread.
Now, you can blame China and I agree that they most probably have not been totally honest with their numbers, but given the incubation period of 2-14 days and an acute illness period of 7-21 days, then you have to admit that the spread of most cases we have today happened somewhere mid-Feb to mid-March. At that time, the dangers of the virus were apparent to everyone, yet hardly anyone had taken any serious measures to contain it.
Going by the same logic with incubation and illness periods, claiming the virus was around much earlier than December does not make sense. We should have seen then sick people much earlier too, not just in Feb/March/April 2020. The travelling was just as much in Oct, Sep, Aug or July 2019. If the virus was around at that time, then we should have seen outbreaks much earlier too but we didn't.
Question is also, are the US, the UK, Spanish or the German numbers accurate? Given the wide range of methodologies used by the countries to report, test etc., you can safely assume that they are not correct either. A study in Germany's most heavily hit area (Heinsberg) showed that roughly 15% of the area population were "silent spreaders". They had the virus but never showed symptoms or didn't have majorly different symptoms to the normal flu.
flouting rules blatantly theres a patch of grass near chemist groups of teens drinking people in groups doing excersise then on the way back home saw plenty of cars road seemed busier than it has done for weeks. Very worrying indeed.
germany 2728 deaths due to covid 19; the uk 8958 deaths due to covid 19. uk 67 million, germany 83 million population:
