… who takes the blame?
One cannot just completely blame the United States and other social media punches on the effect of flu plethora originating from China in the last 102 years. The effect on world population and economy has been described by many sources as crushing, decimating, demolishing, eradicating, exterminating, extinguishing, finishing off, wiping out, obliterating, slaughtering etc.
Recently, as the world grapples with the human and economic devastation being wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, Donald Trump, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and other elected officials have called Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and one White House official reportedly called it the “Kung Flu”. The Republican senator Tom Cotton hinted (without evidence) that the virus could be a bioweapon created by the CCP.
Just like some many sources have been accusing China of being aware of Covid-19 since 17th of November last year and kept quiet, let us not forget in a haste that the 2002–2003 epidemic outbreak genetically traced to a colony of cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in China’s Yunnan province in November 2002 in the Guangdong province of southern China where the first case was reported that same month was equally hidden by Chinese authority from WHO. The patient, a farmer from Shunde, Foshan, Guangdong, was treated in the First People’s Hospital of Foshan. The patient died soon after, and no definite diagnosis was made on his cause of death. Despite taking some action to control it, Chinese government officials did not inform the World Health Organization of the outbreak until February 2003. This lack of openness caused delays in efforts to control the epidemic, resulting in criticism of the People’s Republic of China from the international community. China officially apologized for early slowness in dealing with the SARS epidemic
According to www.history.com › news, while it’s unlikely that the “Spanish Flu of 1918” which is estimated to have killed between 50 and 100 million people, originated in Spain, scientists are still unsure of its source. France, China and Britain have all been suggested as the potential birthplace of the virus, as has the United States, where the first known case was reported at a military base in Kansas on March 11, 1918.
ASIAN-FLU-OF-1956
The “Asian Flu” which is estimated to have caused between 1.5 to 2 million deaths worldwide and 116,000 in the United States originated in China in early 1956 lasting until 1958. It originated from a mutation in wild ducks combining with a pre-existing human strain. The virus was first identified in Guizhou.
The Hong Kong Flu (1968–1969) originated in China in July 1968 and lasted until 1969–70. The 1968 flu pandemic resulted in an estimated one million to four million deaths with about 100,000 deaths in the United States.
In 1977, a strain of H1N1 known as Russian flu appeared. The Russian Flu began in May 1977, when influenza A/H1N1 viruses isolated in northern China spread rapidly. Russian Flu (H1N1) is believed to have caused about 700,000 deaths.
SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) – virus identified in 2003 was first infected humans in the Guangdong province of southern China in 2002. SARS infected a little more than 8,000 people, and killed 774 people.
Beginning in October 2016 China began to experience a 5th epidemic of H7N9, the largest since the first epidemic in 2013. The cumulative total of laboratory-confirmed cases since the first epidemic is 1,223 and as of September 8, 2017, the World Health Organization and CDC reported a total number of 281 deaths for the fifth epidemic.
The earliest infection before us today, Covid-19 with crushing capacity of over 85000 deaths as at 12 : 30, April 9. The first case occurred on 17 November 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, and has since spread globally, resulting in the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic.
Report from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/global-coronavirus-cases has exceeded 1.5million as Spain reports 683 coronavirus deaths in one day. Total number of deaths in Spain surpasses 15,000 as at of publication and 5,756 new cases reported over the past 24 hours. Spain reported 683 daily coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, a lower number of fatalities compared to the previous two days. For the second straight day, the US recorded nearly 2,000 fatalities, while in Britain the daily death toll hit a record 938 in one day. There are now some 1.5 million confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world. More than 88,500 people have died and nearly 330,000 have recovered. As the global community counts their loss on the case at hand the big question here is what other Virus is the world expecting from China? When will it be? And for how long will the world suffer from pandemics from China?
Be it as it may, we as a people should pray that Covid -19 will not replicate the destruction of 1918. The 1918 pandemic was a horrific disconnect between reassurances and reality which destroyed the credibility of those in authority. People felt they had no one to turn to. No one to rely on. No one to trust. A letter from a physician at one U.S. Army camp in the 1918 pandemic said:
“It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes. It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or twenty men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day. Pneumonia means in about all cases death. We have lost an outrageous number of Nurses and Drs. It takes special trains to carry away the dead. For several days there were no coffins and the bodies piled up something fierce.
The total mortality of the 1918–1919 pandemic is estimated to be between 50 and 100 million people, constituting approximately 3–6% of the world’s population. As many as 25 million may have been killed in the first 25 weeks; in contrast, HIV/AIDS has killed 25 million in its first 25 years.”
… more details soon in our April Edition hard cover
