Coronavirus: China Cities In Lockdown

China locks down more cities to stop spread of deadly coronavirus

ED MORRISSEY

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In a measure of just how worried Beijing has become over its new coronavirus outbreak, China has expanded its new lockdown policy to two more major cities around its epicenter of Wuhan. Huanggang has over seven million people and Ezhou has more than a million, but both cities will also have their transportation systems shut down and their populations effectively quarantined in order to stop the spread the virus. Not only will residents be unable to leave, they won’t have many places to in public within them either:

On Thursday, authorities in Huanggang—a city of 7.5 million people—said they won’t let long-distance trains and buses run from the urban center and will shut its public transportation system in the lockdown zone, effective midnight Friday local time. Ezhou, another neighboring city with just over a million residents, said it would enact similar restrictions.

Huanggang is about 35 miles east of Wuhan, a city of 11 million and a major hub for travel, where the new pneumonia-causing coronavirus originated. Wuhan just hours earlier halted outbound trains and flights and shut down its public-transportation system.

The Huanggang local government also said movie theaters, internet cafes and other entertainment and cultural facilities in the city center would temporarily halt operations and a central market would be shut down for an indefinite period.

That’s certainly a dramatic move, but will it work? The World Health Organization’s representative in China isn’t so sure:

“To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science. It has not been tried before as a public health measure, so we cannot at this stage say it will or will not work,” Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization’s country representative for China, said in an interview Thursday with the Associated Press, referring to the Wuhan lockdown.

Mr. Galea added that while such a radical measure “obviously has social and economic impacts that are considerable,” it also “demonstrates a very strong public health commitment and a willingness to take dramatic action.”

It also rather dramatically shows the power Beijing has over life in every corner of China. This may or may not be the right move, but it seems pretty clear that the cities themselves aren’t making this call.

This has the potential to backfire too, at least with the internal lockdowns. These lockdowns, especially within the cities, will create more than “social and economic impacts.” People don’t necessarily stock food in these areas the way Americans tend to do, and if they can’t get out to get food and basic necessities, China might have more than one public-health crisis in Wuhan and Huanggang on their hands. Also, if the lockout includes the transport of food and basics into the cities, that creates the same problems even if the markets remain open.

That’s not the only way in which this could backfire. The resentment over this new policy might awaken dissent, which the efforts to build a Xi Jinping cult were designed to contain, the Washington Post reports:

Analysts said the heavy-handed reaction underscored the political risks for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party, already under pressure amid an economic slowdown and accused of mishandling an outbreak of swine flu last year, which led to a sharp spike in prices for China’s beloved pork.

“This outbreak may be the biggest threat to Xi and the Party in years, which is why they will stop at nothing to try to control and then eradicate it,” said Bill Bishop, publisher of the influential Sinocism newsletter.

The central Chinese city of Wuhan pulsated with fear and anger Thursday, as 11 million people awoke to news that they were being confined to a metropolis-sized quarantine zone designed to contain a widening coronavirus outbreak. …

In Wuhan, a city with about 3 million more people than New York, many residents were incensed at the sudden announcement of the travel restrictions on Thursday.

“I didn’t even receive a notice,” said one woman who found herself stranded at Hankou Station. She had been on her way from Henan province southwest to Sichuan and was changing trains in Wuhan when she got caught up in the suspension.

This unprecedented action will generate unprecedented side effects that might overwhelm the original crisis. That will be especially true if these quarantine efforts don’t do anything to stop the expansion of the disease.

CNN reports on the Wuhan lockdown but spends more time looking at the disease itself. Thus far only one confirmed case in the US, but 16 people have been put under observation after having been identified as coming into contact with that person. Sanjay Gupta reviews the process of the disease, and also explains that the NIH is already working on a vaccine. That will take quite a bit of time, and the potential for mutation is high enough to wonder whether epidemiologists can keep up with it enough to get one specific vaccine to stop this particular coronavirus.

At least 17 people are dead in China and more than 600 confirmed infected as coronavirus continues to spread throughout Asia and the world. Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the outbreak began, is under partial lockdown. @drsanjayguptareportshttps://t.co/I56QCAViJ9 pic.twitter.com/qy9Az2mzSh

— New Day (@NewDay) January 23, 2020

For the US, the best offense is a good defense. Now that the alert has gone out, inspections and controls at transportation centers will be the main focus, although we won’t shut them down entirely. We got a few lessons from SARS and even Ebola; now it’s time to see how well we learned them.

Food GONE from Stores in Wuhan as Quarantine Begins; Price Gouging and Robberies Rampant

People in Wuhan, China, awoke today to news the city has been Quarantined over the outbreak of Coronavirus; no one allowed in or out of the city, and many of the eleven million citizens immediately panicked; heading to stores to buy food . . .  clearing store shelves within an hour.  There is now reportedly "NO FOOD" to be bought anywhere in the city.

Worse, people are reporting the prices charged rose to "5 to 8 times higher than normal price" and many people found themselves being ROBBED of their food as they traveled home!

No city in China has been Quarantined since at least the year 1949, and no one expected this Quarantine to take place in Wuhan.   

When residents awoke today and heard the city was cut off, they PANICKED and tried to go buy food.  FIGHTS are breaking out all over Wuhan as hungry people desperately try to buy food:

An Internal Government memo indicating that the RATE OF INFECTION of people in the city was fourteen percent (14%) translated into about 1,551,200 cases of Infection, and the MORTALITY RATE was four percent (4%), translating into 62,048 DEAD from the disease, changed the reality.

Chinese Army troops boarded trains last night in the city, and shut down the entire transportation system:

Buses, trains, ferries, and planes are all shut down.

Police road blocks sprang-up on EVERY major roadway, preventing anyone from driving in to the city -- and preventing everyone from leaving.  Even foreign tourists cannot leave!

China's National Health Commission released information Thursday showing the disease has already spread to VERY MANY more places inside China:

Beijing,  Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Shaanxi Province, and Fujian Province to name just a few.

Worse, the government has just announced that ADDITIONAL CITIES WILL BE FULLY OR PARTIALLY QUARANTINED:

Huanggang (7 million people, starting at midnight) Partial lockdown

Ezhou (1 million people, limited to suspension of railway services)

The Sign Below in Ma City, a town near Wuhan, announces to residents the Virus has been found there too.  It warns people NOT TO TRAVEL or Join anyone else to celebrate the Lunar New Year, but instead to just stay home.

In a DISASTROUS revelation, there have been confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in patients with no travel history to Wuhan, China's National Health Commission revealed today.

This reinforces the belief by many that this outbreak, is NOT a natural incident, but more likely related to a new, Level Four Bio Lab Built by China beginning in 2015, and made operational in January, 2018.  Where did they build it?   WUHAN!

The Wuhan Virology Lab is just two miles or so from the Fish Market where the outbreak allegedly began:

Prior to the beginning of lab operations, Doctors and other experts from around the world expressed fears the equipment and procedures being set up at the facility, "would not prevent escape of dangerous pathogens."  Those warnings were ignored, and the lab was made active anyway.

NOTICE GIVEN TO WUHAN JUST MINUTES AGO:  “5pm to 9pm today, everyone must stay inside; as the infected patients are being transferred to specialized hospitals. The Chinese Air Force will begin to spread disinfectant powder over Wuhan today.

 The Wuhan Virus is now being called WARS (Wuhan Acute Respiratory Syndrome) as it is closely related to SARS.

Beijing, China just canceled all their new year activities.

LINES OF DESPERATELY ILL PEOPLE OUTSIDE EVERY HOSPITAL IN WUHAN, CHINA, TRYING TO GET HELP:

For people in the USA, One confirmed case is already in Seattle, WA, and a new REPORTED CASE is in Brooklyn, NY. . . . When a biological Quarantine is enacted, Health Authorities cannot lift that Quarantine until TWO FULL INCUBATION PERIODS have elapsed.   There are still varying reports about the actual incubation period of THIS virus; some say four days, others say two weeks.