Difference between revisions of "Atheism and the coronavirus pandemic"

This is what allowed the virus to spread across the globe. Because the Chinese Communist Party was pretending that there was little to be concerned about, Wuhan was a porous purveyor of the virus. The government only instituted a lockdown in Wuhan on January 23—seven weeks after the virus first appeared. As events in Italy, the United States, Spain, and France have shown, quite a lot can happen in a week, much less seven. By then, mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted that more than 5 million people had already left Wuhan.^[7]

SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, was thought to have originated in masked palm civets, tree-dwelling mammals native to parts of Asia. The trigger point for the current coronavirus remains unclear, but China has linked the outbreak to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, which despite its name also appeared to be selling live cats and dogs, wild chickens, snakes and marmots.^[24]

But the options in China can be a bit more exotic. Vendors in small city markets often sell wild animals including rodents, yak, snakes and even porcupines, and experts say that makes them far more dangerous. The meat could contain deadly pathogens like the coronavirus.

Highlighting those fears, Chinese officials announced on Sunday that the trading of wild animals would be temporarily suspended in hopes that would help contain the outbreak.^[25]

Scientists say that the suggestion, based on a genetic analysis, seems plausible — but caution that the researchers’ work is yet to be published in full. “This is an extremely interesting observation. Although we need to see more details, it does make sense as there are now some other data emerging that pangolins carry viruses that are closely related to 2019-nCoV,” says Edward Holmes, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Sydney, Australia...

Pangolins are protected animals, but illegal trafficking is widespread, and some species are critically endangered. They are sold, controversially, for their meat and scales, and for use in traditional Chinese medicine, in which parts of the animal are used to treat ailments such as skin diseases, menstrual disorders and arthritis. Chinese law states that people selling pangolins can be punished by 10 years or more in prison.^[26]

The hypothesis that the 2019-nCoV jumped from an animal at the market is strongly supported by a new publication in the Journal of Medical Virology. The scientists conducted an analysis and compared the genetic sequences of 2019-nCoV and all other known coronaviruses.

The study of the genetic code of 2019-nCoV reveals that the new virus is most closely related to two bat SARS-like coronavirus samples from China, initially suggesting that, like SARS and MERS, the bat might also be the origin of 2019-nCoV. The authors further found that the viral RNA coding sequence of 2019-nCoV spike protein, which forms the “crown” of the virus particle that recognizes the receptor on a host cell, indicates that the bat virus might have mutated before infecting people.

But when the researchers performed a more detailed bioinformatics analysis of the sequence of 2019-nCoV, it suggests that this coronavirus might come from snakes.

The researchers used an analysis of the protein codes favored by the new coronavirus and compared it to the protein codes from coronaviruses found in different animal hosts, like birds, snakes, marmots, hedgehogs, manis, bats and humans. Surprisingly, they found that the protein codes in the 2019-nCoV are most similar to those used in snakes.

Snakes often hunt for bats in wild. Reports indicate that snakes were sold in the local seafood market in Wuhan, raising the possibility that the 2019-nCoV might have jumped from the host species – bats – to snakes and then to humans at the beginning of this coronavirus outbreak. However, how the virus could adapt to both the cold-blooded and warm-blooded hosts remains a mystery.^[27]

They were hoping to get an appointment with a specialist, a chance for access to the best health care in the country. Scalpers hawked medical visits for a fee, ignoring repeated crackdowns by the government.

A Beijing resident in line was trying to get his father in to see a neurologist. A senior lawmaker from Liaoning, a northeastern province, needed a second opinion on her daughter’s blood disorder.

Mao Ning, who was helping her friend get an appointment with a dermatologist, arrived at 4 a.m. She was in the middle of the line.

“There’s no choice — everyone comes to Beijing,” Ms. Mao, 40, said. “I think this is an unscientific approach and is not in keeping with our national conditions. We shouldn’t have people do this, right? There should be a reasonable system.”

The long lines, a standard feature of hospital visits in China, are a symptom of a health care system in crisis....

The country does not have a functioning primary care system, the first line of defense for illness and injury. China has one general practitioner for every 6,666 people, compared with the international standard of one for every 1,500 to 2,000 people, according to the World Health Organization. ^[36]

According to Xinhua News, the Chinese regime’s main newspaper, China’s most popular social media WeChat published a notice on Jan. 25 announcing new regulations and punishments for “those who spread rumors about the new form of pneumonia.”

“A variety of unsubstantiated comments posted to the internet constantly stir up public panic,” the notice read, “All those who spread fake news and thus disturb social order will face up to three years in prison, detention, or disciplinary action. Those who have caused serious consequences will be given 3-year to 7-year prison terms.”

The notice also claimed that WeChat is now working with a “rumor defying agency” to refute and delete any rumors appearing on WeChat. Accounts of those users found spreading rumors may be suspended.

A leaked document from Cyberspace Administration of China also stated that starting on Jan. 26, all social media groups are forbidden to publish any news about Wuhan pneumonia that are not from official sources. The police will arrest all those who spread unconfirmed news.

Freelance writer Jiang Lijun revealed on Twitter on Jan. 26 that his WeChat account was permanently closed because he called on top officials of Wuhan City and Hubei Province to apologize for their actions and step down, and posted several articles about Wuhan pneumonia.

Ever since medical researchers identified the new coronavirus, local authorities have been working to dispel rumors and make arrests. As a result, residents of Wuhan were uninformed about the disease and didn’t institute preventative measures until the whole city was put into lockdown.

When the new WeChat regulation was announced, Chinese netizens became outraged. One person wrote, “The officials’ information blockade is precisely the reason that caused Wuhan pneumonia to spread quickly. How shameless you are to continue silencing whistleblowers.”^[41]

The migrant worker had left Hubei province last year to freelance as a welder in southern China. His family members stayed in their village in Qichun county less than two hours’ drive from Wuhan, the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 210 people and infected more than 9,700.

Gao sensed something dangerous was coming. He had breached China’s firewall to follow online news of the coronavirus as it emerged this month. He immediately began messaging his parents and siblings, including his brother, who drove a taxi between their village and Wuhan every day.

“Stock up on food, masks, disinfectant and medicine. Wash your hands. Don’t go to Wuhan!” he told them. They laughed. No one even knew of the virus in their hometown, they said, and nobody was wearing a mask. Gao, 33, sent a pack of surgical masks to his brother anyway. He felt helpless and enraged.

Gao was arrested Wednesday after tweeting that President Xi Jinping should resign over the government’s handling of the virus. The tweet about Xi disappeared, but another one he’d written earlier, as authorities announced new penalties for “spreading rumors” about the virus outbreak, remained: “Bring it on. This is a confrontation between a government that neglects life and a people who are saving themselves. Truth is our greatest weapon for our own salvation.”

Gao’s predictions have come to pass as the coronavirus spans continents and leaves China’s already overburdened medical system straining under a health emergency that has steadily accelerated. The communist leadership is entangled in its greatest medical and political crises in years, even as it attempts to assure other nations that all is under control.^[43]

In early April 2020, Chinese authorities in the southern city of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, which has China’s largest African community, began a campaign to forcibly test Africans for the coronavirus, and ordered them to self-isolate or to quarantine in designated hotels. Landlords then evicted African residents, forcing many to sleep on the street, and hotels, shops, and restaurants refused African customers. Other foreign groups have generally not been subjected to similar treatment.

“Chinese authorities claim ‘zero tolerance’ for discrimination, but what they are doing to Africans in Guangzhou is a textbook case of just that,” said Yaqiu Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Beijing should immediately investigate and hold accountable all officials and others responsible for discriminatory treatment.”

On April 12, Guangdong authorities announced that all foreigners in the province must accept “Covid-19 prevention and containment measures” including “testing, sampling and quarantine.” In practice, the authorities just targeted Africans for forced testing and quarantine. They visited homes of African residents, testing them on the spot or instructing them to take a test at a hospital. Some were ordered to self-isolate at home with surveillance cameras or alarms installed outside of their apartments.^[44]

The discrimination and maltreatment the African nationals have suffered are the direct result of the rising pressure from the imported cases of COVID-19 faced by the authorities of Guangzhou. On March 28, China officially imposed an entry ban on all foreign nationals with visas or residence permits in an attempt to curb the rising number of imported cases after the country managed to control the domestic infection. As a part of these measures, Chinese airlines are only allowed to operate one route per week to any specific country, primarily to bring back overseas Chinese who wish to return.

As the imported cases became the biggest challenge to China’s battle against COVID-19, foreign nationals who arrived in China before March 28 quickly became the center of attention. In particular, the central government put great pressure on all local cities to minimize the number of imported cases. Guangzhou, the home to Asia’s largest African migrant population, suddenly became the front line of China’s renewed battle with COVID-19.^[45]

There’s more: some 35 percent want to confine any Briton who returns from a foreign country, vaccinated or not, to a ten-day home quarantine—permanently, Covid or no Covid. A full 46 percent would require a vaccine passport in order to travel abroad—permanently, Covid or no Covid. So young people today would still be flashing that QR code on whatever passes for smartphones in 2095, though they might have trouble displaying the device to a flight attendant while bracing on their walkers. Likewise, the 36 percent who want to be required to check in at pubs and restaurants with a National Health Service contact-tracing app forever. A goodly 34 percent want social distancing in “theatres, pubs and sports grounds,” regardless of any risk of Covid, forever. A truly astonishing 26 percent of Britons would summarily close all casinos and nightclubs forever. Are these just a bunch of fogies who don’t go clubbing anyway? No. In the 16-to-24 age bracket, the proportion of Brits who want to convert Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London’s Soho into a community lending library, even after Covid is a distant memory, soars to a staggering 40 percent.

Far from yearning for their historic liberties as “free-born Englishmen,” eight out of ten of the British, according to a Southbank/Kingston University survey, were “anxious” about lifting any of their benevolent government’s copious pandemic restrictions...

But the most enduring damage to the home of Magna Carta may be political. The transformation of the United Kingdom is permanent. Its citizens can never again characterize lockdowns and other previously unthinkable government edicts, such as “you’re forbidden to leave the country,” as unprecedented. The state has established precedents galore. The public is already being softened up for the return of repressive measures in some form this autumn, even if only to control a surge of flu.

It’s official: British civil liberties are provisional. They can be rescinded at a moment’s notice on the government’s whim. They are privileges, not rights. The anything-but-inalienable “rights” to free expression, to protest, to assembly, to association, to worship, to travel, to work: all require permission slips.^[53]