Bloomberg News
Coronavirus cases in the Chinese province at the center of the outbreak surged by 45% to nearly 50,000, after authorities added a new group of patients diagnosed by a different method, raising questions over the true scale of a crisis that appeared in recent days to be coming under control.
The change will raise the number of those infected globally by a third to almost 60,000, dashing hope that the epidemic was showing signs of easing.
In a statement on Thursday morning, the Hubei national health commission said it would now start including cases confirmed by “clinical diagnosis,” which refers to using CT imaging scans to diagnose patients, alongside those confirmed by the previous method of nucleic acid testing kits.
Previously, many patients with pneumonia-like symptoms found via CT scans could not be diagnosed as positive without an additional nucleic acid test.
The abrupt spike reversed the declining growth trend of previous days. U.S. stock futures retreated along with the offshore yuan, and the yen gained.
“The capacity to do the laboratory testing is limited in some way, and we have heard anecdotally that they’ve had to use CT scans to diagnose probable or suspected cases without testing.” said Raina MacIntyre, professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales. “So I think it’s a more complete way of counting the cases.”
The change in method will renew concern over the adequacy and reliability of the tests currently used to identify stricken patients globally, and raise questions over the true scale of the outbreak that has now affected over 40,000 and killed over 1,000 people. The spike in number -- and the implication that thousands of cases had previously not been disclosed by Hubei province -- will likely intensify public anger against the government’s handling of the crisis.
In Hubei province’s Wuhan city, where the outbreak originated, people with symptoms like fever and coughing wait for hours in line to get tested. But those who test negative were usually turned away from hospital, although tests were known to throw up false negatives.
“A patient may be found as negative for the first or second test, and then found to be positive the third time,” said Jonathan Yu, a doctor at a university hospital in Wuhan, in an interview last month. “It is like fishing in a pond: You did not catch a fish once, but that does not mean the pond does not have fish.”
The issue has cropped up outside China as well. On Wednesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that test kits shipped to labs across the country and around the world last week have had problems detecting the virus.
The answer offered to every disaster is always more centralization, even if centralization was part of the problem from the beginning. The coronavirus pandemic event will be no different.
As was hinted at during Event 201, a coronavirus pandemic exercise run by Johns Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum only three months before a REAL coronavirus outbreak took place in China, the goal will be to use the event to create a central economic authority to distribute resources to “counter the virus”. You see, the elites never let a good crisis go to waste.
But this plan requires complicity and apathy among the public. It requires our consent in order to work. For if we continue to undermine and resist it the globalists will never feel safe and secure. Like a cancer, they will eventually have to be cut out and removed if the system is to ever be truly fixed.
The pandemic might be an opportunity for the elites, but it is also a learning experience for the rest of us, and it might even bring some clarity to issues that have been hotly debated for several years. But what are some of these lessons?
Lesson #1: The Prepper Movement Was Right All Along
Over the past decade I have seen some extremely odd responses to the prepper movement, including a lot of aggression and hostility not to mention numerous hit pieces and hatchet jobs in the media. What is it about individuals being prepared for a potential crisis that sends so many snowflakes into a meltdown? Why do they care?
If you think that survivalism is all “conspiracy” and “doom and gloom” then why not ignore it like you ignore everything else? If preppers were wrong, then nothing happens, and all we did is spend some of our money on supplies that we will use anyway over time. No harm no foul. Yet, the mainstream acts as if the preparedness mindset is a criminal action that damages the rest of society.
Of course, as we can see from the coronavirus event in China, preppers were right all along. Almost every single potential problem we have warned about and written about over the years is now plaguing the Chinese citizenry, and most of these problems could have been solved by prepared citizenry.
Over 600 million people in China are now under lockdown; essentially martial law. Supply lines are dwindling in some areas, food is limited, medical treatment is nonexistent for many. The people in quarantine are completely dependent on the government for their survival and that same government has been systematically dragging people out of their homes and forcing them into makeshift “hospitals” (prisons) where they are almost certain to become infected. If ever there was a scenario where prepping was called for, this is it.
Lesson #2: Supply Lines Will Be Damaged Or Restricted
As noted above, preparedness is the first step to solving most problems, because most crisis events tend to result in similar consequences. In China, food and other goods are being rationed and supply lines in some areas are shut down completely. The only option is to have what you need BEFORE a breakdown occurs.
In the US, retailers are dependent on highly coordinated “just in time” freight networks that supply only what a store needs for normal shopping traffic for the week. In the wake of a calamity, stores will empty in a matter of a couple days. If freight lines are slowed down or cut off because travel is restricted due to viral outbreak, then what you have in your home is basically all you will have until the restrictions are lifted. After studying the history of plagues and pandemics, I would conclude that the average viral event will last at least 1 year, sometimes longer. The Spanish Flu of 1918 did not burn out in the US for two years.
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