It seems that worries are on the rise over the possibility of a new civil war in the US recently. More discussions on this matter occurred in US media especially after the first anniversary of the Capitol riots. For instance, The New York Times carried an opinion piece on January 6, titled "Are We Really Facing a Second Civil War?" A CNN video on Saturday asked a similar question: "Is America heading to civil war or secession?"
The US has seen increasing polarization in recent years. Historically, in the US, people with diverse political ideas made compromises. This is demonstrated, for example, in the founding of the US and the drafting of the Constitution. The spirit of compromise, however, has vanished and been replaced with confrontation. Complex context lies behind the discussions of a potential civil war and divisions in the US. One, globalization has resulted in a growing gap between rich and poor, and the US government fails to narrow the gap. The COVID-19 epidemic has amplified this problem - the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. Against such a backdrop, the sense of political identity in the US has increased. As complaints from all classes are filling up society, people get emotional more easily. And they are using more and more intense ways to present their political demands, be they liberal or conservative, white or non-white. Moreover, former US president Donald Trump intentionally created divisions during his tenure, leading to the inability of the current administration to recover from Trump's presidency. In short, Trump's push for division, as well as the constant impact of factors like the imbalance of social development and the epidemic, has made confrontation a common phenomenon in US society. US politics is so overwhelmingly dominated by the two major parties that the rise of a third party as an emerging force seems almost impossible. Those who belong to neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party have no chance but to attach themselves to one of the duo, or simply escape from the US political arena. Meanwhile, amid constant conflicts, neither party is able or willing to cooperate for the sake of the people. Political stalemate emerges. The political struggle in the US goes on and on in the form of extreme confrontation, which will lead to internal conflicts. This will have an impact on the US' sustainable development. For now, it can be seen mainly politically and socially. But if it continues to worsen, it may also affect the US economy, its science and technology innovation, education, and thus its international status. Midterm elections will be held in the US this year. The confrontation between the two parties is expected to become fiercer. The US may slide into a quasi state of civil war. What makes an election year a little bit different though is that the individuality of each politician from both sides starts to become increasingly apparent. Take Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a centrist Democrat who has been a loyal supporter of US President Joe Biden in the Senate. Manchin recently turned his back on Biden over many issues, from the Build Back Better package to the president's call for eliminating a longstanding supermajority rule in the Senate known as the "filibuster." According to US media, Manchin is a "coal magnate who represents one of America's reddest states." He has close ties to the coal industry and has made millions of dollars from US coal companies. Many suggest this is the real reason for his opposition of Biden's Build Back Better plan. For individual politicians, they have to weigh which is more important to them, the interest of their party or the interest of their own. In this sense, the confrontation in the US is becoming not only intensified, but also complicated.
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A new HIV variant with higher virulence and more damaging health impacts has been discovered in a study led by the University of Oxford. As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, new mutations in viral genetic sequences can have significant impacts on the virus’s transmissibility and the damage it causes. For many years, there have been concerns that this could arise in the HIV-1 virus, which already affects 38 million people worldwide, and has caused 33 million deaths to date (www.unaids.org). This has now been confirmed with the discovery of a new, highly virulent HIV strain in the Netherlands, in an international collaborative study with key contributions from the Dutch HIV Monitoring Foundation and led by researchers from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute. The results are published today in Science.
Individuals infected with the new “VB variant” (for virulent subtype B) showed significant differences before antiretroviral treatment compared with individuals infected with other HIV variants:
Reassuringly, after starting treatment, individuals with the VB variant had similar immune system recovery and survival to individuals with other HIV variants. However, the researchers stress that because the VB variant causes a more rapid decline in immune system strength, this makes it critical that individuals are diagnosed early and start treatment as soon as possible. Further research to understand the mechanism that causes the VB variant to be more transmissible and damaging to the immune system could reveal new targets for next-generation antiretroviral drugs. The VB variant is characterized by many mutations spread throughout the genome, meaning that a single genetic cause cannot be identified at this stage. Lead author Dr Chris Wymant, from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Medicine, said: ‘Before this study, the genetics of the HIV virus were known to be relevant for virulence, implying that the evolution of a new variant could change its impact on health. Discovery of the VB variant demonstrated this, providing a rare example of the risk posed by viral virulence evolution.’ Senior author Professor Christophe Fraser from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Medicine, added: ‘Our findings emphasise the importance of World Health Organization guidance that individuals at risk of acquiring HIV have access to regular testing to allow early diagnosis, followed by immediate treatment. This limits the amount of time HIV can damage an individual’s immune system and jeopardise their health. It also ensures that HIV is suppressed as quickly as possible, which prevents transmission to other individuals.’ The VB variant was first identified in 17 HIV positive individuals from the BEEHIVE project, an ongoing study which collects samples from across Europe and Uganda. Since 15 of these people came from the Netherlands, the researchers then analysed data from a cohort of over 6,700 HIV positive individuals in the Netherlands. This identified an additional 92 individuals with the variant, from all regions of the Netherlands, bringing the total to 109. By analysing the patterns of genetic variation among the samples, the researchers estimate that the VB variant first arose during the late 1980s and 1990s in the Netherlands. It spread more quickly than other HIV variants during the 2000s, but its spread has been declining since around 2010. The research team believe that the VB variant arose in spite of widespread treatment in the Netherlands, not because of it, since effective treatment can suppress transmission. The individuals with the VB variant showed typical characteristics for people living with HIV in the Netherlands, including age, sex, and suspected mode of transmission. This indicates that the increased transmissibility of the VB variant is due to a property of the virus itself, rather than a characteristic of people with the virus. Huddled under blankets and thermal shields, dozens of elderly patients shivered on gurneys outside a hospital serving one of Hong Kong's poorest communities -- a grim tableau for the city as its health system buckles under an Omicron-fuelled coronavirus wave. "We call this the fever zone," a nurse in full-body protective gear told AFP, declining to be named. "Don't get too close." Hong Kong is in the throes of its worst coronavirus outbreak, and record new daily infections have pushed hospitals in the finance hub to the breaking point. On Monday, Caritas Medical Centre in Sham Shui Po district started setting up isolation tents outside its facilities -- initially limiting one Covid patient per tent. But by nightfall Wednesday, entire families were crammed into the tents, while about 50 others languished in the February chill on hospital beds wheeled outside. "Some of my colleagues say we are now in battlefield mode," said David Chan, an emergency room nurse at Caritas who is also the acting president of Hong Kong's Hospital Authority Employees Alliance. "We are worried that the patients' conditions will worsen later this week," he told AFP, calling the situation "very undesirable". One of Chan's big concerns was the forecast for wet weather. Later that evening, rain began to fall.
Unvaccinated elderly Like mainland China, Hong Kong has adhered to a zero-Covid strategy, which has largely kept the virus out but left the business hub cut off from the world. Until the most recent outbreak, all patients were treated in dedicated Covid isolation wards, and close contacts were sent to a quarantine camp. But the extremely contagious Omicron virus variant has left authorities scrambling and exposed shortcomings in plans to deal with a major outbreak. On Wednesday, the daily caseload hit a record 4,285 confirmed infections with a further 7,000 preliminary positives in the densely packed city of 7.5 million. Before the latest wave, Hong Kong had recorded just over 12,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Health experts say the daily case numbers could rise to 28,000 by March. Especially vulnerable are Hong Kong's vaccine-hesitant elderly. Despite ample supplies, only 43% of those aged 70-79 and 26% of over-80s opted to get jabbed. Last week, the government said people with mild cases could isolate at home but by Wednesday, there were still 12,000 people waiting to be hospitalised. 'No plan' At Caritas, the wave of patients has left staff "exhausted, stressed out and helpless", Chan said. "It's so painful that we have been working non-stop but we still cannot take care of every patient properly," he told AFP, adding that the current crisis outpaced what they faced at the beginning of the pandemic. "Back then, we did not know the virus well and we were short of equipment," he said. "Two years on, we expected the Hospital Authority to have better plans -- but there turned out to be none." City leader Carrie Lam ruled out a hard, China-style lockdown on Tuesday. But the following day, Beijing-controlled newspapers carried an order from President Xi Jinping telling Hong Kong authorities to take "all necessary measures" to control the outbreak. Yet it remains unclear whether Hong Kong could ever make it back to zero Covid cases, given the rapidly increasing number of infections in the territory. 'Sandcastles in a tsunami' The government has opened temporary Covid clinics and plans to build a makeshift mega-hospital. It also plans to requisition 3,000 unoccupied public housing apartments and is looking into whether hotels can house some cases. But whether those measures will come in time remains to be seen. In the Caritas parking area past the "fever zone", a worried mother cradled her two-year-old -- trying to keep the toddler comfortable as they waited in the 15 degree Celsius chill. "I kept calling the (government Covid) hotlines but none of them connected," the woman, who provided just her surname Chau, told AFP, adding that her daughter was running a high fever. When they arrived two hours prior, nurses instructed her to get tested -- which could take hours as she joined some 120 people waiting outside Caritas. "They have no wards for you, so you have no choice but to go home," Chau said. Healthcare professionals have long warned that Hong Kong's public hospitals were underfunded and unprepared for a coronavirus surge. Even during previous flu outbreaks, hospitals had "buckled", said Siddharth Sridhar -- a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong -- in a tweet Wednesday. "Now, with a disease that is more transmissible/severe than flu, and requires exposed staff to quarantine, HK's hospitals are sandcastles in a tsunami." Ominous developments in Canada, where the Canadian government under prime minister Justin Trudeau has now invoked a never before used Emergencies Act (written in 1988) under the pretext of a crisis, so as to try to smash ongoing protests directed at that very same government.
The Emergency Act was designed to cover four types of emergencies, public welfare emergencies, public order emergencies, international emergencies and war emergencies, none of which currently exist in Canada. However, powers under the Emergencies Act allow Trudeau’s government to ban travel, force movement of people, prevent movement of people, and force private companies to do what the government directs. Not surprisingly, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has come out saying that the invocation of this Emergencies Act is a “threat” to Canada’s democracy and civil liberties. Most shockingly, an Order under the Emergencies Act, revealed by Canada’s deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, now allows Canadian banks and financial institutions to freeze both personal and corporate bank accounts in Canada. As of Monday 14 February, Canadian banks and other financial service providers are able “to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order”, and will be free of liability in doing so. The Order also allows the Canadian government to share information with private banks about bank account holders. The powers also allow the Canadian government to monitor crypto transactions of Canadians. So if you are in Canada, and thought that your bank account deposits and savings were safe and private, think again, as your bank accounts and your savings are now subject to being frozen or suspended. Can it happen to your country? While it is always important to keep some of your assets outside the banking system, ring-fenced from financial repression, banking sector bail-ins and negative interest rates, those in Canada now have another reason – to stop your funds from being literally frozen. This is also a taste of what central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will look like in the not too distant future, where governments can switch off access to account based CBDCs if citizens are ‘not playing ball'. Saving and investing in physical precious metals allows you to have full ownership of gold and silver bars and coins that if you store at home or store with a non-bank third party vaulting provider, are completely outside the banking system and safe from government and central bank interference. If you think this is a Canadian problem, think again, as both Trudeau and Freeland are very much involved with the elite operated World Economic Forum (WEF) which is angling for a ‘Great Reset’ and a world of surveillance and control. Trudeau is a WEF Young Global Leader and frequent WEF speaker, and Freeland is even one of the board of trustees of the WEF. If protests about civil liberties in Canada can lead to these tyrannical powers being introduced, this can also happen elsewhere, as to quote the WEF’s Klaus Schwab "we penetrate the cabinets” of governments around the world. Be aware, as maybe in your country, the Covid restrictions will be eased soon, there will be more threats on the horizon. Another pandemic, internet hacking or the financial system collapse can or will be the next step. Be prepared and take good care of yourself. Early hydroxychloroquine but not chloroquine use reduces ICUadmission in COVID-19 patients10/2/2022 Of the $35 billion that the world’s 74 lowest-income nations will owe in debt service payments this year, about 37% — or $13.1 billion — is owed to Chinese entities, according to the World Bank. A similar amount, $13.4 billion, is owed to the private sector. Official bilateral debt to countries other than China accounts for only $8.6 billion, World Bank President David Malpass said Wednesday during an event hosted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Malpass said the Paris Club — the group of 22 mostly Western creditors — was once the main holder of lower-income countries’ debt. This allowed the group to reach deals on debt relief, creating solutions for nations that had trouble making payments on their loans.
However, reaching deals with major creditors outside the club, such as China and the private sector, is a more complex process, requiring each major creditor and bond-holder to enter into an agreement separately. The shifting nature of who has owned debt in the past decade effectively means no global system exists for dealing with a debt crisis. “The Paris Club portion of the debt that’s coming due — even for the IDA countries — is small, and so that poses a challenge for the world,” Malpass said, using an acronym for the International Development Association, the World Bank’s fund for the lowest-income nations. The $35 billion estimate for 2022 is a 45% increase over the total debt payments ultimately owed in 2020, according to the bank. “Many more countries are in a situation where their debt is unsustainable,” Malpass said. Often, these nations took on debt before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and now there is “just not going to be enough money for them to pay the debt service.” Additionally, more central banks have taken on de facto debt through swap lines, adding to countries’ burdens, he noted. The $35 billion that governments owe and have guaranteed during 2022 dwarfs the $24 billion that donors pledged in December for the most recent round of IDA funding, which is meant to last three years. Malpass said that Chinese-owned debt suffers from a lack of transparency around the loans, including nondisclosure agreements attached to lending packages. This makes the deals hard to track. Moreover, Beijing-controlled creditors have continued to take “full payments” during the pandemic, Malpass said, despite an effort to freeze such transfers with the world economy in turmoil. China’s most important holiday — the Spring Festival — falls between January 31 and February 6 this year and might appear a bit different than usual. Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s festival is unlikely to prompt the world’s largest human migration (millions of people travel thousands of miles across China to their homes during the Lunar New Year), unlike years past. In fact, this holiday’s travel rush is likely to be the least busy of the past seven years, with an estimated 280 million railway passenger trips. Locals who want to travel home will confront multiple challenges, including targeted pandemic prevention and control efforts aimed at securing the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. As such, the Spring Festival certainly won’t be as lively this year. But will the economy suffer from it?
In the past, locals used to pay in-person visits to relatives and friends, bringing them presents to celebrate Spring Festival. However, China’s COVID-free plan is reshaping this tradition. Since local governments and businesses have encouraged residents to stay home to minimize a virus spread and keep supply chains stable, the country’s travel economy is likely to get dampened. But this could allow other industries to flourish. Shoppers might spend less money on presents and have more money for self-rewards. Therefore, personal care and luxury are likely to benefit from this trend. Meanwhile, the stay-at-home economy will see a boost, further fuelling livestreams, e-commerce sites, and takeaway options for people reducing time outside their homes. So, if Maisons want to celebrate positive Spring Festival sales, their marketing activities should reflect those trends by doubling down on digital and personal goods. Yet, the brands that give back to the community during this challenging time through initiatives that comfort families who cannot reunite are sure to fare very well in China this year. Preliminary research from Israel suggests that a fourth COVID-19 mRNA vaccine booster shot may be ineffective against breakthrough infection from the Omicron variant. The authors of a study that looked at the effectiveness of a fourth Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shot against Omicron said they were releasing data early on Monday to keep the public up to date with the latest developments in vaccine research. “Despite a significant increase in antibodies after the fourth vaccine, this protection is only partially effective against the Omicron strain, which is relatively resistant to the vaccine,” Dr. Gili Regev-Yochay, the lead researcher on the study, told reporters Monday (January 17, 2022). The study included 154 health care workers at Sheba Medical Center who received their fourth Pfizer shot. Another 120 workers received a fourth dose of the Moderna vaccine, and a control group of 6,000 workers were not given a fourth booster shot of either vaccine.
Regev-Yochay said that a third shot resulted in "much higher antibodies, neutralization and the antibodies were not just higher in quantity but also in quality" than the second shot — but the fourth shot did not produce similar results. "These are very preliminary results. This is before any publication, but we're giving it out since we understand the urgency of the public to get any information possible about the fourth dose," Regev-Yochay explained. "We have a follow-up of the Pfizer vaccine for two weeks now, and we have a follow-up of the Moderna vaccine just for one week at this time point. And what we see is that the Pfizer vaccine, after two weeks, you see an enhancement or increase in the number of antibodies and neutralizing antibodies — a pretty nice increase. It's even a little bit higher than what we had after the third dose," she said. "Yet, this is probably not enough for the Omicron." Regev-Yochay added that slightly fewer infections were observed among those who got the fourth vaccine shot compared to the control group, which may indicate there's a small benefit to letting the people most vulnerable to COVID-19 get a fourth booster. "I think that the decision to allow the fourth vaccine to vulnerable populations is probably correct," she said. "It may give a little bit of benefit, but probably not enough to support the decision to give it to all of the population, I would say." International bodies are warning governments and public health authorities against requiring a fourth vaccine shot. At a press briefing last week, the European Medicines Agency said there was no need for a second booster, even warning that repeated vaccine doses could actually weaken people's immune systems. Boosters “can be done once, or maybe twice, but it’s not something that we can think should be repeated constantly,” Marco Cavaleri, the EMA head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy, said, according to Bloomberg. “We need to think about how we can transition from the current pandemic setting to a more endemic setting,” Cavaleri added. The EMA advised countries to leave more time between booster programs and to tie them to the cold season on each hemisphere. The World Health Organization has also warned that repeated booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines are "not a sustainable global strategy," raising concerns about the supply of vaccine doses. “With near- and medium-term supply of the available vaccines, the need for equity in access to vaccines across countries to achieve global public health goals, programmatic considerations including vaccine demand, and evolution of the virus, a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable,” the WHO said last week. The French government defended President Emmanuel Macron, Wednesday, for his use of coarse language in a stepped-up campaign against France's unvaccinated, after his words drew condemnation from the opposition and mixed reactions from voters. Macron said he wanted to "piss off" unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting jabbed. He was speaking in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper in which he also called unvaccinated people irresponsible and unworthy of being considered citizens.
"A president cannot say such things," Christian Jacob, chair of the conservative Les Republicans party, told parliament as it discussed a bill to make it mandatory for people to show proof of vaccination to enter many enclosed public spaces. But spokesman Gabriel Attal said that, amid a "supersonic" rise in COVID cases, the government stood by Macron's comments. "Who is pissing off who today?" Attal said, quoting health workers struggling to cope or businesses hurt by the pandemic. "It's those who refuse the vaccine." People who got the jab are "exasperated" with the unvaccinated, Prime Minister Jean Castex said. With a presidential election due in April in which he is expected to run, Macron may have calculated that enough people are now vaccinated ― and upset with remaining anti-vaxxers ― for his comment to go down well with voters. In a country where more than 124,000 people have died of COVID-19, his words resonated with some. "He's right," said 89-year-old Paris pensioner Jean, who has had his COVID-19 booster and a flu shot too. "Those who are against the vaccine should understand the dangers, and they should get vaccinated." But others agreed with lawmaker Jacob that Macron's use of the slang term "emmerder" ― from "merde" (shit) ― was unacceptable. "That shows an aggressive side, it's a bad word, it's not very clever of him," said 25-year old sales representative Maya Belhassen. "That's not a good comment from a president," added newspaper seller Pascal Delord. Targeting the sceptics France has historically had more vaccine sceptics than many of its neighbors, and pandemic restrictions have triggered many street protests, but nearly 90 percent of those aged 12 and above have now been inoculated, one of the continent's highest COVID-19 vaccination rates. People have for several months had to show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to enter venues such as cinemas and cafes and use trains. But with Delta and Omicron variant infections surging, the government decided to drop the test option in the new bill. The opposition forced several suspensions of the parliamentary debate on the vaccine pass after the interview was published late Tuesday. "I'm in favor of the vaccine pass but I cannot back a text whose objective is to 'piss off' the French," Jacob told parliament. "Is that your objective, yes or no?" A government source said they were not worried about the adoption of the text, despite the heated parliamentary debate, which resumed Wednesday afternoon, and after hundreds of amendments. The initial plan was for the new legislation to enter into force Jan.15. One day or two of delay would not change much, the source said. After the lower house of parliament eventually votes on it, the bill will go the senate for approval. Armed riot police in southern China have paraded four alleged violators of Covid-19 rules through the streets, state media reported on Wednesday (Dec 29), leading to criticism of the government's heavy-handed approach. China banned such public shaming of criminal suspects in 2010 after decades of campaigning by human rights activists, but the practice has resurfaced as local governments struggle to enforce the national zero-Covid policy.
Four masked suspects in hazmat suits - carrying placards displaying their photos and names - were paraded on Tuesday in front of a large crowd in Guangxi region's Jingxi city, state-run Guangxi News said. Photos of the event showed each suspect held by two police officers - wearing face shields, masks and hazmat suits - and surrounded by a circle of police in riot gear, some holding guns. The four were accused of transporting illegal migrants while China's borders remain largely closed due to the pandemic, the newspaper said. Jingxi is near the Chinese border with Vietnam. The public shaming was part of disciplinary measures announced by the local government in August to punish those breaking health rules. Guangxi News said the parade provided a "real-life warning" to the public and "deterred border-related crimes". But it also led to a backlash, with official outlets and social media users criticising the heavy-handed approach. Although Jingxi is "under tremendous pressure" to prevent imported coronavirus cases, "the measure seriously violates the spirit of the rule of law and cannot be allowed to happen again", Communist Party-affiliated Beijing News said on Wednesday. Other suspects accused of illicit smuggling and human trafficking have also been paraded in recent months, according to reports on the Jingxi government website. Videos of a similar parade in November showed a crowd of people watching two prisoners being held while a local official read out their crimes on a microphone. They were then seen marching through the streets in their hazmat suits, flanked by police in riot gear. And in August, dozens of armed police were seen marching a suspect through the streets to a children's playground. Going by the Greek alphabet, the next names should have been "Nu" and "Xi" but the WHO skipped them and went on to call the latest coronavirus variant "Omicron". But why? Was it to avoid similarities with Chinese President Xi Jinping's name? Before the World Health Organization named Omicron as a variant "of concern" on Friday, the last identified variant was the Mu variant, named after the 12th out of 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. Nu and Xi, the 13th and 14th letters, were next in line. But in a statement to Associated Press on Saturday, the WHO said: "'Nu' is too easily confounded with 'new', and 'Xi' was not used because it is a common last name." It said its "best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups".
The naming of the virus has been controversial in the past, with former US president Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly referring to the coronavirus as the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" despite protests from Beijing that the name would "stigmatize" the country and contribute to anti-Asian sentiment. On Saturday, Trump's son Donald Trump Jnr tweeted: "As far as I'm concerned the original [name] will always be the Xi variant." Republican Senator Ted Cruz also suggested in a tweet that Omicron's name showed that the WHO was "scared of the Chinese Communist Party". The WHO has faced various accusations that it gave in to pressure from China over the coronavirus, which was first reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December, 2019. Controversies ranged from whether the WHO pushed China enough to provide data, to the exclusion of Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a breakaway province, from key meetings related to pandemic control. The health body announced its adoption of the Greek alphabet system to describe variants of coronavirus strains in May this year, saying these labels were simple and easy to say and remember. It also noted that associating variants with places was "stigmatizing and discriminatory". In China, a number of Chinese characters which would be pronounced as "Xi" in different tones are used as surnames. According to data from the Ministry of Public Security in February, the Chinese president's surname is the 296th most common family name in the country. Two other surnames that would also be read as "Xi" but read in different tones were more common, ranking 169 and 228 out of the top 300 surnames in China. Dutch authorities scrambled on Saturday to see if 61 passengers from South Africa who tested positive for Covid-19 have the new Omicron strain, as the shutters came down around the world to contain the new variant. Germany became the second European country after Belgium to find a suspected case of the highly infectious new variant, which has sparked fears of a major setback in the global effort to end the coronavirus pandemic. Alarm grew after the World Health Organization said the new type, originally known as B.1.1.529 and subsequently renamed Omicron, was a “variant of concern” and more transmissible than the dominant Delta strain. Australia and Thailand joined the United States, Brazil, Canada and a host of other countries around the world restricting travel from southern Africa where the strain was first discovered. Anxious travellers thronged Johannesburg international airport, desperate to squeeze onto the last flights to countries that had imposed sudden travel bans. Many had cut back holidays and rushed back from South African safaris and vineyards. “It’s ridiculous, we will always be having new variants,” British tourist David Good told AFP, passports in hand. “South Africa found it but it’s probably all over the world already.” “I think we got the last two seats,” said Briton Toby Reid, 24, who had been watching the sunrise on Cape Town’s Table Mountain with his girlfriend when the ban was announced.
The main countries targeted by the shutdown include South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini (Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. But in a sign of the how difficult it is to contain the virus, the Netherlands found that almost one in ten — 61 out of 539 — people who had arrived on Friday from South Africa were positive for Covid-19. The infected people, who flew in on two KLM flights from Johannesburg, were being kept quarantined in a hotel near Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s biggest international air hubs. “The positive test results will be examined as soon as possible to determine whether this concerns the new worrisome variant,” the Dutch Health Authority said in a statement. Europe is already struggling with a coronavirus surge that has forced several countries including the Netherlands to tighten restrictions, and a new variant threatens to worsen the situation. A German regional official said on Saturday that health authorities have identified the first suspected case in the country, in a person who returned from South Africa. “The Omicron variant has with strong likelihood already arrived in Germany,” tweeted Kai Klose, social affairs minister in the western state of Hesse. Belgium on Friday became the first country on the continent to identify a case, a young woman who had returned from Egypt via Turkey on Nov 11. Scientists are now racing to determine the threat posed by the heavily mutated strain, and whether the current coronavirus vaccines should be adjusted. Markets and oil prices around the world plunged on Friday as news of the latest setback in the fight against the pandemic sank in. US President Joe Biden said countries should donate more Covid vaccines and give up intellectual property protections to manufacture more doses worldwide to stem the spread of the virus. “The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations,” he said. The WHO said it could take several weeks to understand the variant and cautioned against imposing travel curbs while scientific evidence was still scant. South Africa’s health ministry called the global rush to impose travel bans “draconian” and the foreign ministry said it was “akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker”. But with memories still fresh of the way global air travel helped the spread of Covid after it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, countries clamped down on the new variant. Australia became the latest to act, banning all flights from nine southern African countries. Thailand restricted flights from eight countries, as did the United States, Brazil, Canada and Saudi Arabia. EU officials agreed in an emergency meeting to urge all 27 nations in the bloc to restrict travel from southern Africa, with many members having already done so. The new strain was already having an effect, though. Next week’s World Trade Organization ministerial conference, the global trade body’s biggest gathering in four years, was called off at the last minute on Friday due to concerns about the new variant. Vaccine manufacturers have however held out hope that they can modify current vaccines to target the Omicron variant. Germany’s BioNTech and US drugmaker Pfizer said they expect data “in two weeks at the latest” to show if their jab can be adjusted. Moderna said it will develop a booster specific to the new variant. From human rights to coronavirus and now tennis star Peng Shuai, preparations for February's Beijing Olympics have been overshadowed by several controversies. China's ruling Communist Party is however determined to frame the Winter Games as a chance for the country to showcase its prowess and help the world unite in the face of the pandemic. The International Olympic Committee has lauded Beijing for making history in becoming the first host of a Summer Games, in 2008, and now a Winter one. With just over 70 days to go, what are these issues hanging over the Olympics:
Tibet, Hong Kong
Human rights campaigners and exiles have accused Beijing of religious repression and massively curtailing rights in Tibet. Activists unfurled a Tibetan flag at the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony in Greece. Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says it "peacefully liberated" the rugged plateau in 1951 and brought infrastructure and education to the previously underdeveloped region. But many exiled Tibetans accuse the Beijing government of religious repression, torture and eroding their culture ― part of broader fears for human rights in China. There has also been international concern about a clampdown in Hong Kong, which China is remoulding in its own authoritarian image after huge and often violent democracy protests in the city two years ago. Coronavirus The coronavirus has loomed large over the build-up to the Beijing Olympics, which take place just six months after the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Summer Games. China has managed to restrict domestic infections to small clusters through aggressive lockdowns and mass testing, but Beijing organizers have admitted that protecting the Games from the coronavirus is their "biggest challenge". The Winter Olympics will be held in a "closed loop" ― a strict bubble insulating athletes from the outside world for the whole Games. Only people living in China will be allowed to attend as spectators. The estimated 2,900 athletes must be fully vaccinated or face 21 days in quarantine upon arrival. They, along with media and others in the bubble, will also be tested daily. Asked about Chen’s case, China’s National Health Commission said it stood by comments made by Liang Wannian, the leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China investigation who led the interview with the Hubei Xinhua Hospital doctors. Liang told a news conference in February of this year that the earliest Covid case showed symptoms on Dec 8 and was “not connected” to the Huanan market.
Errors and Inconsistencies In their report, the WHO experts concluded that the virus most likely spread to people from an animal spillover, but they could not confirm that the Huanan market was the source. By contrast, they said that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely". In May, two months after the report by the WHO and China was published, 18 prominent scientists, including Worobey, responded with a letter in Science complaining that the WHO team had given the lab-leak theory short shrift. Far more research was required, they argued, to determine whether one explanation was more likely than the other. An expert on the origins of influenza and HIV, Worobey has tried to piece together the early days of the Covid pandemic. Reading a May 2020 study of early cases written by local doctors and health officials in Wuhan, he was puzzled to see a description that seemed like Chen: a 41-year-old man with no contact with the Huanan market. But the study’s authors dated his symptoms to Dec 16, not Dec 8. Then Worobey found what appeared to be a second, independent source for the later date: Chen himself. “I got a fever on the 16th, during the day,” a man identified as Chen said in a March 2020 video interview with The Paper, a publication based in Shanghai. The video indicates that Chen is a 41-year-old who worked in a company’s finance office and never went to the Huanan market. Official reports said that he lived in the Wuchang district in Wuhan, miles from the market. The New York Times was not able to independently confirm the identity of the man in the video. Along with his fever on Dec 16, Chen said he felt a tightness in his chest and went to the hospital that day. “Even without any strenuous exercise, with just a tiny bit of effort, like the way I’m speaking with you now, I’d feel short of breath,” he said. Worobey said that the medical records shown in the video might hold clues to how the WHO-China report wound up with the wrong date. One page described surgery Chen needed to have teeth removed. Another was a Dec 9 prescription for antibiotics referring to a fever from the day before — possibly the day of the dental surgery. On the video, Chen speculated that he might have gotten Covid “when I went to the hospital” — possibly a reference to his earlier dental surgery. Murky Links In Worobey’s revised chronology, the earliest case is not Chen but the seafood vendor, a woman named Wei Guixian, who developed symptoms around Dec 11. (Wei said in the same video published by The Paper that her serious symptoms began Dec 11, and she told The Wall Street Journal that she began feeling sick on Dec 10. The WHO-China report listed a Dec 11 case linked to the market.) Worobey found that hospitals reported more than a dozen likely cases before Dec 30, the day Wuhan authorities alerted doctors to be on the lookout for ties to the market. He determined that Wuhan Central Hospital and Hubei Xinhua Hospital each recognised seven cases of unexplained pneumonia before Dec 30 that would be confirmed as Covid-19. At each hospital, four out of seven cases were linked to the market. By focusing on just these cases, Worobey argued, he could rule out the possibility that ascertainment bias skewed the results in favour of the market. Still, other scientists said it’s far from certain that the pandemic began at the market. “He has done an excellent job of reconstructing what he can from the available data, and it’s as reasonable a hypothesis as any,” said Dr Ian Lipkin, a virus expert at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. “But I don’t think we’re ever going to know what’s going on, because it’s two years ago and it’s still murky.” Alina Chan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the most vocal proponents of investigating a lab leak, said that only new details about earlier cases — going back to November — would help scientists trace the origin. “The main issue this points out,” she said, “is that there’s a lack of access to data, and there are errors in the WHO-China report.” A scientist who has pored over public accounts of early Covid-19 cases in China says that an influential World Health Organization inquiry had likely got the early chronology of the pandemic wrong. The new analysis suggests that the first known patient sickened with the coronavirus was a vendor in a large Wuhan animal market, not an accountant who lived many kilometres away from it.
The report, published on Thursday in the prestigious journal Science, will revive, although certainly not settle, the debate over whether the pandemic started with a spill over from wildlife sold at the market, a leak from a Wuhan virology laboratory, or some other way. The search for the origins of the greatest public health catastrophe in a century has fuelled geopolitical battles, with few new facts emerging in recent months to resolve the question. The scientist, Michael Worobey, an expert in tracing the evolution of viruses at the University of Arizona, came upon timeline discrepancies by combing through what had already been made public in medical journals, as well as video interviews in a Chinese news outlet with people believed to have the first two documented infections. Worobey argues that the vendor’s ties to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as well as a new analysis of the earliest hospitalised patients’ connections to the market, strongly suggest that the pandemic began there. “In this city of 11 million people, half of the early cases are linked to a place that’s the size of a soccer field,” Worobey said. “It becomes very difficult to explain that pattern if the outbreak didn’t start at the market.” Several experts, including one of the pandemic investigators chosen by the WHO, said Worobey’s detective work was sound and that the first known case of Covid was most likely a seafood vendor. But some of them also said the evidence was still insufficient to decisively settle the larger question of how the pandemic began. They suggested that the virus probably infected a “patient zero” sometime before the vendor’s case and then reached critical mass to spread widely at the market. Studies of changes in the virus’s genome — including one done by Worobey himself — have suggested that the first infection happened in roughly mid-November 2019, weeks before the vendor got sick. “I don’t disagree with the analysis,” said Jesse Bloom, a virus expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “But I don’t agree that any of the data are strong enough or complete enough to say anything very confidently, other than that the Huanan Seafood Market was clearly a superspreading event.” Bloom also noted that this was not the first time the WHO report, done in collaboration with Chinese researchers, was found to contain mistakes, including errors involving early patients’ potential links to the market. “It’s just kind of mind-boggling that in all of these cases, there keep being inconsistencies about when this happened,” he said. ’The Mistake Lies There’ Toward the end of December 2019, doctors at several Wuhan hospitals noticed mysterious cases of pneumonia arising in people who worked at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a dank and poorly ventilated space where seafood, poultry, meat and wild animals were sold. On Dec 30, public health officials told hospitals to report any new cases linked to the market. Fearing a replay of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which emerged from Chinese animal markets in 2002, Chinese officials ordered the Huanan market closed, and Wuhan police officers shut it down on Jan 1, 2020. Despite those measures, new cases multiplied through Wuhan. Wuhan authorities said on Jan 11, 2020, that cases had begun on Dec 8. In February, they identified the earliest patient as a Wuhan resident with the surname Chen, who fell sick on Dec 8 and had no link to the market. Chinese officials and some outside experts suspected that the initially high percentage of cases linked to the market might have been a statistical fluke known as ascertainment bias. They reasoned that the Dec 30 call from officials to report market-linked illnesses may have led doctors to overlook other cases with no such ties. “At the beginning, we presumed that the seafood market may have the novel coronavirus,” Gao Fu, director of China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in May 2020, according to China Global Television Network. “But it now turns out that the market is one of the victims.” By the spring of 2020, senior members of the Trump administration were promoting another scenario for the origin of the pandemic: that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has a campus roughly 8 miles away from the Huanan market, across the Yangtze River. In January of this year, researchers chosen by the WHO visited China and interviewed an accountant who had reportedly developed symptoms on Dec 8. Their influential March 2021 report described him as the first known case. But Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist at EcoHealth Alliance who was part of the WHO team, said that he was convinced by Worobey’s analysis that they had been wrong. “That December the 8th date was a mistake,” Daszak said. The WHO team never asked the accountant the date his symptoms began, he said. Instead, they were given the Dec 8 date by doctors from Hubei Xinhua Hospital, who handled other early cases but did not care for Chen. “So the mistake lies there,” Daszak said. For the WHO experts, Daszak said, the interview was a dead end: The accountant had no apparent links to an animal market, lab or a mass gathering. He told them he liked spending time on the internet and jogging, and he did not travel much. “He was as vanilla as you could get,” Daszak said. Had the team identified the seafood vendor as the first known case, Daszak said, it would have more aggressively pursued questions like what stall she worked in and where her products came from. While the doctors at Hubei Xinhua Hospital said the onset of the accountant’s illness had been Dec 8, a senior doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital, where Chen was treated, had told a Chinese news outlet that he developed symptoms around Dec 16. Asked about Chen’s case, China’s National Health Commission said it stood by comments made by Liang Wannian, the leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China investigation who led the interview with the Hubei Xinhua Hospital doctors. Liang told a news conference in February of this year that the earliest Covid case showed symptoms on Dec 8 and was “not connected” to the Huanan market. |
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