Posted on 04/28/2003 1:51:19 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The first cases of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome showed up in China in November of last year. Until this lethal mutating virus escaped the vast borders of that ancient nation, the response of the Communist Party was to say nothing - not even to its own people.
This tells you everything you need to know about those who rule Red China. This is not a nation that savors a free press, freedom of speech, or even what Westerners would consider a normal response to a serious internal health threat.
Not until it began to kill people in other nations did China's new Mandarins admit they had a problem. If a reporter for a Red China newspaper had written a word about SARS, he would have been jailed. China's solution has been to fire the health minister and the mayor of Beijing. Now they have a full-blown health crisis on their hands. Their first response was to protect their political grip.
From its emergence some six months ago in Guangdong Province, home to Hong Kong, SARS has rapidly spread to almost thirty other nations, infecting thousands of people and killing, as of this writing, over two hundred that we know about. China's leaders initially tried to prevent the World Health Organization from visiting.
As word began to get out, I was reading Ross Terrill's book, "The New Chinese Empire and what it means for the United States." I highly recommend this book if you want to understand both the history of China and how Mao Zedong became its emperor in the last century. He may have been called "Chairman," but he was in every way the latest in the long line of emperors who have ruled China.
Like the mutated virus called SARS, the Chinese form of Communism was a Mao mutant of Soviet Marxist-Leninist Communism. It need hardly be said that it failed in Russia and that it will fail in China. The only question is when? Until then, America had best be careful to avoid any snares the Red Chinese put in our path, and we should be sure we remain the most powerful nation militarily. And, until then, the US will have to work with the Red Chinese on common problems such as the North Koreans.
Who is China's new emperor? He is President Hu Jintao, someone virtually no one knows much about. He succeeded former President Jiang Zemin, but it is Zemin who has retained control over the military. Up to now, all power has been concentrated in the hands of whoever was in charge of the Central Party apparatus. This was the way Mao ran China and it continued under Deng Xiaoping.
Much has been said of the reforms Deng introduced after the death of Mao. There was a flowering of Red China's economy as he jettisoned much of the Communist baggage such as many State-run industries. What did not change, though, was the total commitment to the "Four Absolutes" the Party asserted. They are the socialist road, the proletarian dictatorship, the Communist Party's leadership, and Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. This garbage rules the lives of more than 1.2 billion Chinese and other ethnic groups under the control of Beijing.
What has not changed in China for centuries reaching back to the earliest dynasties is its autocratic tradition. Just as the emperors were the living embodiment of Heaven (unless murdered to make room for a new successor or overthrown by a new dynasty), the handful of men who run the Communist Party are above the law because they are the law.
Terrill says, "China is not on the way to capitalism; it is building a new genus of 'market socialism.'" He predicts, "This Chinese formula for prosperity under authoritarianism will be Beijing's springboard to world leadership." I respectfully disagree. By virtue of its size and huge population, China has a place among the world's great nations, but it has no place at the table in terms of human rights, the participation of citizens in the rule of their nation, free speech, freedom of the press, and the other accoutrements of a modern society.
Red China is a Potemkin village that looks modern from a distance, but it has a very shaky financial and social infrastructure. After more than seventy years in power, it took a nudge to push the Soviet Union into the ashcan of history. Red China could well be next in line.
The SARS outbreak has jumped the Great Wall of secrecy that surrounds Red China. It has let the world peer into a society that, if it opened its doors, would see its citizens flood outward to anywhere else. Chinese people want to be Chinese, but, given the choice, they would not willingly be Red Chinese.
So far, SARS has killed
321
across the whole globe.
Here in the US,
284
were killed by West Nile.
Don't get sneezed on. But
also keep an eye out for
angry mosquitos...
Well, the WHO is making noises like they think all countries apart from China now basically has it under control.
Only a small blemish in all this joy:
Recovered sars patients are still shedding virus, long after the recovery and end of quarantine...
Dunno how it'll pan out eventually (cell activity).
SARS - WORLDWIDE (75): DIAGNOSTIC TESTING ************************************ A ProMED-mail post ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases Date: Sun 27 Apr 2003 From: Julian Wei-Tze Tang Recovered SARS Patient Continues to Shed Virus in Stool --------------------------------------------------- An issue that has not been discussed anywhere in ProMED-mail in detail (perhaps because little is known about it) is that of continual viral shedding by clinically recovered SARS patients. A colleague of mine in Singapore, who has had the SARS illness and was diagnosed with the SARS coronavirus by RT-PCR culture and electron microscopy, has informed me that SARS coronavirus RNA has continued to be detected in stool samples by RT-PCR, although it has not yet been successfully grown in culture. This continued for sometime after the quarantine period of 10-14 [days?] after recovery from illness (up to 3 weeks post-recovery). If such is the case for most -- or even some -- of the recovered SARS patients, perhaps this may account for the ongoing transmission we are seeing in places like Singapore in household and workplace contacts of clinically recovered SARS patients. Perhaps the laboratories of the WHO collaborating network should ask for convalescent stool samples as well as sera to monitor and characterise this phenomenon. -- Dr. Julian W. Tang MA PhD MRCP Clinical Academic Training Fellow/ Lecturer in Virology Department of Virology Windeyer Building University College London Hospitals London W1T 4JF, UK [The current RT-PCR tests utilize primers that amplify short sequences of the polymerase gene of the putative SARS coronavirus. These tests may do no more than detect the presence of defective virus in gut contents. The replication of many RNA viruses is accompanied by the progressive accumulation of defective interfering particles (the equivalent of deletion mutants), which are thought to be a determining factor in the self-limiting characteristics of some acute virus infections. The failure to isolate infectious virus from the patient after recovery suggests that transmission of SARS via gut contents post-recovery does not represent substantial risk. Nonetheless, it is not possible to discount this route of transmission of SARS virus without knowledge of the relative sensitivity of the cell culture employed, and Dr. Julian Tang has drawn attention to an important question. - Mod.CP] [see also: SARS - worldwide (74): etiology 20030427.1039 SARS - worldwide (73): cases 20030427.1038 SARS - worldwide (72): treatment 20030427.1037 SARS - worldwide (71): cases 20030426.1026 SARS - worldwide (70): cases 20030425.1013 SARS - worldwide (69): diagnostic testing 20030425.1015 SARS - worldwide (68): etiology 20030425.1010 SARS - worldwide (67): cases 20030424.1007 SARS - worldwide (66): cases 20030424.1006 SARS - worldwide (65): cases 20030423.0994 SARS - worldwide (62): cases 20030422.0984 SARS - worldwide (58): diagnostic testing 20030419.0958 SARS - worldwide (53): etiology 20030417.0935 SARS - worldwide (51): etiology 20030416.0925 SARS - worldwide (46): diagnostic test 20030413.0901 SARS - worldwide (42): WHO historical overview 20030411.0878 SARS - worldwide (41):overview 20030411.0876 SARS - worldwide (38): etiology 20030410.0869 SARS - Worldwide (34): etiology 20030408.0857 SARS - worldwide (13): etiology 20030327.0758 SARS - worldwide (04): etiology 20030322.0713 Severe acute respiratory syndrome - Worldwide: alert (03) 20030316.0660 Severe acute respiratory syndrome - Worldwide (02):alert 20030315.0649 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - Worldwide 20030315.0637] .........................cp/pg/lm *##########################################################* ProMED-mail makes every effort to verify the reports that are posted, but the accuracy and completeness of the information, and of any statements or opinions based thereon, are not guaranteed. The reader assumes all risks in using information posted or archived by ProMED-mail. ISID and its associated service providers shall not be held responsible for errors or omissions or held liable for any damages incurred as a result of use or reliance upon posted or archived material. ************************************************************ Visit ProMED-mail's web site at . Send all items for posting to: promed@promedmail.org (NOT to an individual moderator). If you do not give your full name and affiliation, it may not be posted. Send commands to subscribe/unsubscribe, get archives, help, etc. to: majordomo@promedmail.org. For assistance from a human being send mail to: owner-majordomo@promedmail.org.
Yes, but, Canada
researchers discovered that
lots of their patients
tested negative
for "SARS coronavirus."
Coronavirus
may be some kind of
artifact that latches on
to many sick folk...
I looked up the phrase
"deletion mutants" and found
an article on
hepatitis in
woodchucks [!]. I can't say I know
what all the stuff means,
but it seems to me
finding "deletion mutants"
is a "signal" that
the living virus
is still alive and working
in the host body.
(If the active cause
of SARS does turn out to be
coronavirus,
then this article
seems more frightening than its
post-script would admit.)
Everything about sars is more frigthening than anyone is willing to admit. Look for further development in Vietnam.
So good for the cretinous Canadians that WHO has lifted the Toronto travel advisory. Now the insane little creeps will be free to spread their misfortune far and wide.
Yes - 60%. So there are a few possibilities here:
1. The coronavirus is something the victims already had when they got sick. If so, the infective agent seems able to actually start a mutation in the already present coronavirus, which is scary as all h*ll. And if the mutated coronavirus is able to infect another victim with sars, that may tell you that the infective agent is basically unseen but able to hitch a ride in the coronavirus.
2. The coronavirus is really the infective agent, but is mutating so fast and to such a degree that it's not obvious as coronavirus in the cases where it's not found.
3. Sars and corona has nothing to do with each other, basically leaving the coronavirus as not an artifact of the sars infection or even influenced by it - just pure coincidence. That would mean that no one has the slightest idea what causes sars, and that every diagnostic lead being followed is worthless.
Oh, and sars has nothing to do with flu. The most deadly flu known to date - the spanish - had a mortality rate of something over 2%. Sars, in the most optimistic scenarios, stands at the double, realistic scenarios gives us around 10%, and worst case (but highly believable) would fall anywhere between 70 - 90%.
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