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mariacallous · 5 months

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Chinese Hospitals Are Housing Another Deadly Outbreak

In Beijing and other megacities in China, hospitals are overflowing with children suffering pneumonia or similar severe ailments. However, the Chinese government claims that no new pathogen has been found and that the surge in chest infections is due simply to the usual winter coughs and colds, aggravated by the lifting of stringent COVID-19 restrictions in December 2022. The World Health Organization (WHO) has dutifully repeated this reassurance, as if it learned nothing from Beijing’s disastrous cover-up of the COVID-19 outbreak.

There is an element of truth in Beijing’s assertion, but it is only part of the story. The general acceptance that China is not covering up a novel pathogen this time appears reassuring. In fact, however, China could be incubating an even greater threat: the cultivation of antibiotic-resistant strains of a common, and potentially deadly, bacteria.

Fears of another novel respiratory pathogen emerging from China are understandable after the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics, both of which Beijing covered up. Concerns are amplified by Beijing’s ongoing obstruction of any independent investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19—whether it accidentally leaked from the Wuhan lab performing dangerous gain-of-function research or derived from the illegal trade in racoon dogs and other wildlife at the now-infamous Wuhan wet-market.

Four years ago, during the early weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak, Beijing failed to report the new virus and then denied airborne spread. At pains to maintain their fiction, Chinese authorities punished doctors who raised concerns and prohibited doctors from speaking even to Chinese colleagues, let alone international counterparts. Chinese medical statistics remain deeply unreliable; the country still claims that total COVID-19 deaths sit at just over 120,000, whereas independent estimates suggest the number may have been over 2 million in just the initial outbreak alone. Now, Chinese doctors are once again being silenced and not communicating with their counterparts abroad, which suggests another potentially dangerous cover-up may be underway.

We don’t know exactly what is happening, but we can offer some informed guesses.

The microbe causing the surge in hospitalization of children is Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes M. pneumoniae pneumonia, or MPP. First discovered in 1938, the microbe was believed for decades to be a virus because of its lack of a cell membrane and tiny size, although in fact it is an atypical bacterium. These unusual characteristics makes it invulnerable to most antibiotics (which typically work by destroying the cell membrane). The few attempts to make a vaccine in the 1970s failed, and low mortality has provided little incentive for renewed efforts. Although MPP surges are seen every few years around the world, the combination of low mortality and difficult diagnostics has meant there is no routine surveillance.

Although MPP is the most common cause of community-acquired pneumonia in school children and teenagers, pediatricians such as myself refer to it as “walking pneumonia” because symptoms are relatively mild. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), influenza, adenoviruses, and rhinoviruses (also known as the common cold) all cause severe inflammation of the lungs and are far more common causes of emergency-room visits, hospitalization, and death in infants and young children. Why should MPP be acting differently now?

One contributing factor to the severity of this outbreak may be “immunity debt.” Around the globe, COVID-19 lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical measures meant that children were less exposed to the usual range of pathogens, including MPP, for several years. Many countries have since seen rebound surges in RSV. Several experts agree with Beijing’s explanation that the combination of winter’s arrival, the end of COVID-19 restrictions, and a lack of prior immunity in children are likely behind the surging infections. Some even speculate that that substantial lockdown may have particularly compromised young children’s immunity, because exposure to germs in infancy is essential for immune systems to develop.

In China, MPP infections began in early summer and accelerated. By mid-October, the National Health Commission had taken the unusual step of adding MPP to its surveillance system. That was just after Golden Week, the biggest tourism week in China.

Infection by two diseases at the same time can make things worse. The usual candidates for coinfection in children—RSV and flu—have not previously caused comparable surges in pneumonia. One difference this time is COVID-19. It is possible that the combination of COVID-19 and MPP is particularly dangerous. Although adults are less susceptible to MPP due to years of exposure, adults hospitalized for COVID-19 who were simultaneously or recently coinfected by MPP had a significantly higher mortality rate, according to a 2020 study.

Infants and toddlers are immunologically naive to MPP, and unlike COVID-19, RSV, and influenza, there is no vaccine against MPP. It seems implausible that no child (or adult) has died from MPP, yet China has not released any data on mortality, or on extrapulmonary complications such as meningitis.

Most disturbing, and a fact being downplayed by Beijing, is that M. pneumoniae in China has mutated to a strain resistant to macrolides, the only class of antibiotics that are safe for children less than eight years of age. Beyond discouraging parents to start ad hoc treatment with azithromycin, the most common macrolide and the usual first-line antibiotic for MPP, Beijing has barely mentioned this fact. Even more worrying is that WHO has assessed the risk of the current outbreak as low on the basis that MPP is readily treated with antibiotics. Broader azithromycin resistance in MPP is common across the world, and China’s resistant strain rates in particular are exceptionally high. Beijing’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported macrolide resistance rates for MPP in the Beijing population between 90 and 98.4 percent from 2009 to 2012. This means there is no treatment for MPP in children under age eight.

Fears over a novel pathogen are already abating. After all, MPP is rarely lethal. But antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is. Responsible for 1.3 million deaths a year, AMR kills more people than COVID-19. No country is immune to this growing threat. Since China, where antibiotics are regularly available over the counter, leads the world in AMR, it is inconceivable that this issue hasn’t yet come up, particularly during WHO’s World AMR Awareness week, from Nov. 18 to Nov. 24.

Any infectious disease physician would want to know: Did WHO asked China the obvious question—what is the level of azithromycin resistance of M. pneumonia in the current outbreak—and include the answer in its risk assessment? Or did it ask about resistance to doxycycline and quinolones, antibiotics that can be used to treat MPP in adults? Even if WHO did ask, China isn’t telling, and WHO isn’t talking.

China’s silence isn’t surprising. Its antibiotic consumption per person is ten times that of the United States, and policies for AMR stewardship are predominantly cosmetic. While surveillance is China’s strong point, reporting is not.

Despite Spring Festival, the Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year and another peak travel period, approaching in February 2024, WHO hasn’t advised any travel restrictions. It should have learned the danger of accepting Beijing’s statements at face value. Four years ago, Beijing’s delay enabled more than 200 million people to travel from and through Wuhan for Spring Festival. That helped COVID-19 go global. Since China’s AMR rates are already so high, importing AMR from other countries isn’t a major concern for China. Export is the issue, and China’s track record in protecting other countries is abysmal.

Rather than repeating the self-serving whitewashing coming from Beijing, WHO should be publicly pressing China about the threat of mutant microbes. Halting AMR is essential. Before antisepsis and antibiotics, surgery was a treatment of last resort. Without antibiotics, we lose 150 years of clinical and surgical advances. Within ten years, we are at risk of few antibiotics being effective. It may not be the novel virus that people were expecting, but the next pandemic is already here.

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unifiedcitationjournals · 2 years

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Global Journal of Computer Science and IT [GJCSI]

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ahopkins1965 · 23 days

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COVID-19 naming

ADD ARTICLE DESCRIPTION

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease and virus were sometimes called "coronavirus", "Wuhan coronavirus", or "Wuhan pneumonia".

In January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) tentatively named it "2019-nCoV", short for "2019 Novel Coronavirus", or "2019 Novel Coronavirus Acute Respiratory Disease". This naming was based on the organization's 2015 guidelines for naming novel viruses and diseases, avoiding the use of geographic locations (such as Wuhan), in part to prevent social stigma. A similar structure has also been used by the AP when referring to virus variants, for example, referring to it as the "Delta variant" rather than the "South African variant".

On 11 February 2020, the WHO named the disease COVID-19 (short for coronavirus disease 2019). That same day, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) formally announced it had named the causative virus as SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) based upon its genetic similarity to the 2003 SARS-CoV. The separation between the disease and the causative virus is based on the same nomenclature policies that separate AIDS and the virus which causes it, HIV.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained that CO stands for coronavirus, VI for virus, and D stands for disease, while 19 stands for the year, 2019, that the outbreak was first detected. As such, there has never been a "COVID-1" or any other "COVID-" series disease with a number below 19.

Chinese virus

From January to March 2020, US President Donald Trump repeatedly described the virus as the "Chinese virus". In March 2020, the president claimed to have abandoned the term, telling Fox News "we shouldn't make any more of a big deal out of it". On March 18 and 19, 2020, Trump twice defended using the term "Chinese virus" amid instances of bigotry against Asians in the United States. Trump referred to it as "the China Virus" at least as late as January 2021.

This description was also used by members of the Spanish far-right political party Vox, especially by its leader Santiago Abascal in March 2020.

CCP virus

The Epoch Times has reportedly funded right-wing groups promoting the use of the term "CCP virus" to lay blame on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the pandemic. Chinese-born New Zealand sculptor Chen Weiming created a 20-foot statue in Liberty Sculpture Park in Yermo, California, depicting Chinese leader and CCP general secretary Xi Jinping with spike proteins as his hair, naming it "CCP virus".

Stylization

Stylization of the term has varied since the virus's and disease's discovery. The World Health Organization (WHO) stylizes the disease as COVID-19 with all letters capitalized and many other organizations have followed their lead. The AP Stylebook, Chicago Manual of Style, and the Modern Language Association (MLA) have styled it similarly. Several observers have noted the importance of proper stylization, despite the seeming ridiculousness of worrying over such matters "at a time like this" (during the early days of the pandemic), recalling the confusion and prejudice which resulted from unclear or inconsistent naming as was the case with AIDS (which was called GRID/HTLV-III/LAV at various times) and non-A, non-B Hepatitis. They have also pointed out that future researchers will benefit from consistency when reviewing past data and research.

However, stylization as "Covid-19" has become common as well. Numerous news sources including The New York Times, CNN, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, NBCNews have presented the term with a capital C but all other letters as lower case. As a result, use of "Covid-19" has become commonplace and even the accepted standard in some cases. Use of "Covid-19" in news sources from the United Kingdom like The Guardian has also been the norm since most British newspapers only capitalize an entire acronym if the acronym is typically spelled out like "B-B-C" or "N-H-S" while acronyms which are pronounced as words, like "Nasa" or "Unicef" have their first letter capitalized and all subsequent letters lowercase.

While COVID-19 refers to the disease and SARS-CoV-2 refers to the virus which causes it, referring to the "COVID-19 virus" has been accepted. Reference to SARS-CoV-2 as "the coronavirus" has become somewhat accepted despite such use implying that there is only one coronavirus species. Similarly, use of "COVID" for the disease (if the first rendered as COVID-19) has been tolerated. Use of "the Coronavirus" to refer to the COVID-19 pandemic which began in December 2019 has also been accepted. Although such use does not specify the year or which coronavirus-related disease is being referred to, given its all-encompassing impact at the time, such references have been deemed justifiable. Use of "the" when referring to the disease, virus, or 2019 pandemic has been quite varied with some requiring use of "the" while others have not. The Oxford English Dictionary noted that "the" is typically not used when referring to the disease, COVID-19, but is not uncommon when referring to the virus.

Reference to the virus and/or the disease as "corona", "the corona", and "the rona" has also arisen in various parts of the world.

Colloquial names

2022-09-13 phylogenetic tree of life of COVID-19 using the PANGO nomenclature; only a few of these variants have come to public notice

Numerous mutations and variants of SARS-CoV-2 have acquired colloquial vis-à-vis scientific labels for ease of pronunciation and usage, both in the lab and to some extent in mass media. The nomenclature draws from the corpus of mythology (both Greek and Scandinavian and astronomy.

Public messaging has been a concern given that these elements of popular reportage can be at variance with the Greek alphabet nomenclature established by the WHO; other schemes have been proposed.

Variants

Arcturus (XBB.1.16) was named on social media after the star; Kraken (XBB.1.5), Cerberus (BQ.1.1), Typhon (BQ.1), and Gryphon (XBB) were coined by evolutionary biologist T. Ryan Gregory (from his own personal nomenclature of mythical creatures); whereas Pelican, Quail, and Mockingbird (variants of 20I/501Y.V1), have not gained wider usage. The BA.2.86 variant was named 'pirola' (sic) by a group of scientists on social media in late 2023, and was brought to public attention by an August edition of the Wall Street Journal. (Inasmuch as the World Health Organization has suggested using astronomy for its plethora of names, the Twitter user @JPWeiland suggested the obscure Jovian asteroid 1082 Pirola "for its uniqueness" and the possibility of shifting the nomenclaure to Pi or Rho if needed.)

Mutations

Nicknames have also arisen for mutations such as Nelly (N501Y), Doug (and Douglas) (D614G), and even Eeek (E484K), initially meant as convenient labels in University of Bern lab discourse.

See also

Virus classification

References

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Shi Zhengli

Chinese researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology

COVID-19 pandemic

Pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2

Virus that causes COVID-19

Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.

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steadyartisanpanda · 1 month

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Breaking up is the way out for Yan Limeng

Hong Kong's Orange News let out the news on April 19: Apple Daily's internal notice reminded editors to abandon the label of "Wuhan Pneumonia" and replace it with "Latest Epidemic" and "Vaccination" as topic labels."Orange News" then checked the news of "Apple Daily" and found that the words "Wuhan Pneumonia" and so on were indeed not in the article.

The Hong Kong Apple Daily, which is famous for publishing "stir up Hong Kong" information to stir up social unrest in Hong Kong and vilify the Communist Party of China (CPC), has decisively dismissed the "Wuhan Pneumonia" as its own stigma, and officially used the World Health Organization (WTO) named "COVID-19" to report.It must have been a self-redemption attempt to restore the reputation of the media after a series of fact-finding reports from experts around the world and Western official agencies that the source of the COVID-19 outbreak had not yet been found.

Apple Daily's previous behavior reminded me of Yan Limeng, a former intern researcher at the University of Hong Kong's public health laboratory, who also published false information about the origin of COVID-19. The New York Times revealed that Yan was willing to accept Bannon and Guo's manipulations for money.Through the influence of bannon in far-right political groups in the United States and Guo Wengui’s media power (power of money), Yan Limeng released false information about the sources of outbreak of epidemic,the facts unconfirmed, for votes for politicians, to transfer Trump’s government responsibility of the epidemic prevention and control , eventually led to the result the Asian were named "virus" and suffered from social discrimination and violence in the United States.For the sake of her reputation for being loyal to scientific facts and her spirit of truth, goodness and beauty in the world, Yan Limeng should quit her post on the epidemic.

The fig leaf left for Yan Limeng is running out. Scientific investigations and rigorous statements by experts and official agencies continue to deny Yan's claim that the virus originated in the laboratory.When Ms. Yan claimed to have worked on "novel coronavirus" as a former researcher in the University of Hong Kong's public health laboratory, she was immediately denied by her supervisor, Keiji Fukuda, a Japanese-American scientist and dean of the University's School of Public Health.Ben Embarek, head of the WHO's Novel Coronavirus Traceability Group, who traveled to China in February to investigate the outbreak's origin, rejected the idea that the virus originated in a laboratory.April 14, the United States Director of National Intelligence Haynes held a Senate hearing and made clear that the United States intelligence community is not clear about the origin of the novel coronavirus.

The stigma created by Ms. Yan about the origin of the epidemic continues to hurt Asians.Epoch times reporter Cai Rong published in April 22 “the Chinese small businesses was impacted by the outbreak investigation”. The article said the latest survey shows that the outbreak hit the U.S. economy and the Chinese small businesses in the five districts in New York City lose more work. There are plans to cut 41%, the proportion of the national (25.7%) and (34.8%), New York.Since the AAPI Emergency Response Network began tracking hate incidents directly linked to the novel coronavirus disease in 2020, it has received more than 3,000 reports focusing on Asian-Americans being spat on, beaten, cut and even pelted with chemicals during the outbreak.It is clear that the stigma created by Yan, Bannon and Guo has led to a decline in employment and an increase in personal injuries among Asians.

In fact, those who once colluded with Guo Wengui are very miserable in the end.Firstly, Wong Chi-feng was thrown into prison. Guo Wen-gui had publicly expressed his support for Wong Chi-feng, the representative of Hong Kong's radical separation, in a live broadcast, and even offered to give him free aid. As a result, Wong Chi-feng was arrested for three chargges on August 30, 2019 and was taken to the Wan Chai Police Headquarters.Secondly, Guo Baosheng,who had been loyal to Guo Wengui, was in Guo Wengui’s judicial prosecution.Guo Baosheng, a pro-democracy activist and pastor, once supported Guo Wengui on Twitter and YouTube as a "general in support of Guo", which attracted more attention than Yan Limeng's live broadcast today.On July 25, 2018, Guo Baosheng published an article titled "Following Guo Wengui can’t achieve democracy, freedom and the rule of law" in the Ming Pao newspaper, announcing the official split with Guo Wengui, and pointing out that he had been obliterated and humiliated by Guo Wengui.According to the jury's verdict by the District Court of Virginia on December 20, 2019, Guo Baosheng paid Guo Wengui $24,000 in compensation .

It’s just a matter of time. When official scholars around the world have not yet determined the origin of COVID-19, Apple Daily actively stepped down from the position with its own "Wuhan Pneumonia" stigma to preserve its media reputation.Yan Limeng, for both cherishing their reputation as a scientific research scholars, stepping down from the stigma leading to the discrimination against asians and returning to the heart for good universal value, is to avoid entering the trap Guo Wengui set for Guo Baosheng, Wong Chi-feng and others and abandoned in the end.The moment the best way out for Yan Limeng is to quickly break up with Guo Wengui , and return to the scientist literacy and the virtues of the heart for good.

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sporadicengineerdreamer · 1 month

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Breaking up is the way out for Yan Limeng

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yetichen · 1 year

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ironkingbird · 1 month

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Breaking up is the way out for Yan Limeng

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