Wuhan Residents Take 'Zero Cases' Claim With Pinch of Salt

[WILL CHINA WIN THE PANDEMIC WORLD WAR?

by Matt Bracken | Feb 26, 2020

Will China, the first country (and superpower) to suffer the effects of Covid-19, also be the first country to recover, and thereby gain an overwhelming strategic advantage, while the USA, Europe and the rest of the world suffer the pandemic’s worst effects for a longer and even more catastrophic period?

https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/02/will-china-win-the-pandemic-world-war/]

I doubt it. I think this is where our sigint and humint collection efforts in China earn their keep. We need to find out what the Chinese are really doing to get their patients’ infections under control and basically adopt those methods. Unfortunately, the complete embargo on actual news adopted by the Chinese government requires us to spy on them to discover what is actually happening during this pandemic. And the expulsion of US journalists by the Chinese government is one expression of the government’s view that all information about China that makes the Communist Party look incompetent (or like miscreants of the first order) is a state secret.

They haven’t gotten new infections down to zero. They’ve just figured out what works. My guess is that what works (and is cheap enough to adopt nationwide without busting the budget) is quinine derivatives like chloroquine.

As a brand new drug, it may take a while before Gilead’s remdesivir can be made cheaply and in volume. A Chinese company ripping off Gilead’s drug pretty much said the production costs are high, the drug is difficult to make and it is having to sell the pirated drug at cost to the Chinese government:

https://www.genengnews.com/news/coronavirus-chinas-brightgene-manufactures-apis-of-gileads-remdesivir/
[“Therefore, considering production costs, pricing, sales volume and other considerations, this product is not expected to have a significant impact on the company’s operating performance in 2020,” BrightGene’s statement continued.]

~20 new infections a day at a single hospital in China x 21,000 hospitals total means 420,000 new patients a day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hospitals_in_China

Even if we divided the number of new patients by 10, and came up with a number of 42,000 new patients, that’s 42,000 people a day who might have to be put on ventilators. At $5,000 a pop, minimum, that’s $21m in incremental ventilator expense, not to mention all the additional nursing staff that has to monitor these things and make sure they’re not glitching (a human can only survive for 3 minutes without oxygen).

https://hcpresources.medtronic.com/blog/high-acuity-ventilator-cost-guide
[Costs for these ventilators can range from $5,000 to $50,000.]

I’m willing to be that that these people are being injected with a mostly effective drug and sent on their way as this excerpt from the essay suggests:

[A resident of Hubei’s Xiangfan city said local authorities had only reported five coronavirus out of a total of 17 in Yuliang prefecture.

“Nobody’s allowed to talk about it,” the resident said. “They are reporting that only five people were infected, and the patients aren’t being held in a hospital.”

“They’re being given injections every day, but they’re not allowed to tell anyone.” ]

So for China, they’re getting their people back to work through a combo of prophylactic measures like the wholesale adoption of masks and social distancing, and an effective treatment manufactured in volume which is likely chloroquine, alone or in combination.

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