All the Chinese viruses from the Spanish flu to the Wuhan coronavirus

This is the Wuhan virus and it did come from China. 

Trying to be politically correct is more misleading and probably the cause of more disinformation and self-delusion than any other. Political correctness applied to the scientific process is particularly destructive and gives us the burgeoning levels of fake science. Results are determined before the investigations have begun. For the WHO it is servility to Chinese interests which has prevented the Wuhan coronavirus from being named the Wuhan virus.

It now seems highly probable that even the Spanish flu of 1918 originated from China.

National Geographic:

 The deadly “Spanish flu” claimed more lives than World War I, which ended the same year the pandemic struck. Now, new research is placing the flu’s emergence in a forgotten episode of World War I: the shipment of Chinese laborers across Canada in sealed train cars.

Historian Mark Humphries of Canada’s Memorial University of Newfoundland says that newly unearthed records confirm that one of the side stories of the war—the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines on World War I’s Western Front—may have been the source of the pandemic. …..

…. The 1918 flu pandemic struck in three waves across the globe, starting in the spring of that year, and is tied to a strain of H1N1 influenza ancestral to ones still virulent today.

There is little doubt that the current pandemic originated from Wuhan though, every so often, some journalist or “scientist” who is part of the China lobby will cast doubt on that. 

RealClearScience:

The Asian Flu in 1956 killed between one and four million people worldwide. SARS in 2002 infected 8,098 and killed 774 in seventeen counties. H7N9 emerged ten years later to strike at least 1,223 people and kill four out of every ten of them. Now, the milder, yet more infectious COVID-19 has sickened more than 70,000 across the globe, resulting in 1,771 deaths.
All of these outbreaks originated in China, but why? Why is China such a hotspot for novel diseases?

“It’s not a big mystery why this is happening… lots of concentrated population, with intimate contact with lots of species of animals that are potential reservoirs, and they don’t have great hygiene required. It’s a recipe for spitting out these kinds of viruses,” Dr. Steven Novella recently opined on an episode of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.

South Central China is a noted “mixing vessel” for viruses, Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, told PBS in 2016. There’s lots of livestock farming, particularly poultry and pigs, with limited sanitation and lax oversight. Farmers often bring their livestock to “wet markets” where they can come into contact with all sorts of exotic animals. The various birds, mammals, and reptiles host viruses that can jump species and rapidly mutate, even potentially infecting humans. Experts are pretty sure this is precisely what happened with the current COVID-19 coronavirus, which is why, on January 30th, China issued a temporary ban on the trade of wild animals. ………

….. China is also notorious for its misinformation, secrecy, and censorship, which raises the chances that new diseases will fester and spread. Back in early January, Chinese government officials told the public that the new infection’s spread had been effectively halted. This was not true. At the same time, the authoritarian regime bullied health experts who attempted to sound alarm. The young doctor Li Wenliang attempted to warn others about the new coronavirus. He was ‘rewarded’ with a threatening reprimand by police. Li subsequently caught COVID-19 and succumbed to the disease the first week of February.

It may be called the Covid-19 virus but it is the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic


 

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