Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Four legs? good! two legs? we’re not so sure…

… down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

Mission Accomplished!

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

This blog is Obama’s Katrina.

This really is a full service blog.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Yes we did.

Too inconsequential to be sued

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Good luck with your asparagus.

How has Obama failed you today?

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Let there be snark.

This is how realignments happen…

You are here: Home / Archives for Foreign Affairs / Countries / China

China

Regarding the Alleged Hunter Biden Materials: This Is Some of the Most Amateur Looking Garbage I’ve Ever Seen

by | 124 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , ,

Since Tucker Carlson, the host of the White Power Hour of Glower Hour, has been told that UPS has found whatever documents and materials he was bitching were stolen last night have been found and will be delivered, I want to make a couple of quick points about the alleged Hunter Biden materials. These will be in line with my previous remarks, but I wanted to add a few things before Tucker starts peddling doctored documents, misinformation, and agitprop on the air tonight.

Cole texted me to ask if I’d seen the repository of alleged Hunter Biden pictures, videos, and emails posted on a site owned by Guo Wengui. I’ve now gone through the materials and here are my takeaways:

  1. These are some of the most amateur looking materials I’ve ever seen!
  2. Some of the pictures are legitimately of Hunter Biden.
  3. Some of the pictures may be of Hunter Biden.
  4. Some of the pictures are clearly altered/adjusted.
  5. Some of the pictures, specifically the vast majority that purport to show actual or simulated sex acts, could be of anybody. Some of these only show the face of one person so it is unclear who the other person is. A lot of them don’t show anyone’s faces, so there is no way to tell who the pictures are of.
  6. The picture of “Malia Obama’s credit card” is most certainly not of Malia Obama’s credit card.
  7. There are NO pictures depicting sex or simulated sex acts with minors/juveniles.
  8. There are several pictures with blurred out faces of women, including one with a blurred out upper body, that have text box overlays asking “are these underage?” Based on the visual evidence presented, there is no way to know, but if they are then everyone in possession of the unaltered photos is in a lot of trouble.
  9. In all the other pictures showing sex or simulated sex acts, the women are clearly not underage.
  10. The picture of the threesome/simulated threesome, which has a text box overlay asking if the women are Malia Obama and one of Hunter Biden’s daughters, is CLEARLY NOT A PICTURE WITH MALIA OBAMA AND/OR HUNTER BIDEN’S DAUGHTER IN IT!!!!! Frankly, I’m not even sure Hunter Biden is in the picture. Specifically, I’m not sure that the picture is not altered.
  11. The couple of network analysis charts are absolute crap. Also, they’re captioned in Chinese, which doesn’t help as my Chinese is limited to martial arts terms. And menu items.
  12. The few emails posted, like the emails published by The New York Post, are dead images. There’s no metadata, so know way to demonstrate their provenance. This implies to me they’re not legit. The same for the photos, though they all have text books with the alleged date, time, and location of where the pictures were taken. But here too, there’s no way to verify any of that.
  13. I did not watch the videos because based on the photos, I’m sure that a few will be of Hunter and some will be doctored, most likely by deep faking them.

This stuff is just incredibly amateurish. They are clearly not intended to persuade anyone, let alone really convince law enforcement or intelligence personnel to take them seriously. Rather, they’re intended to push misinformation and agitprop out through outlets like Carlson’s show on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and The New York Post so the President and his key surrogates like Rudy Giuliani can refer to them at rallies and during media hits. And Don Jr. can shitpost them on Twitter.

And now a little bit about Guo Wengui. Guo’s back story is that he’s in self imposed exile from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) because he pissed of Xi and Xi wants him back for what would be a political trial. As a result, Guo took his billions and fled to the US where he’s embraced the hardest of the hard right within the GOP, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld. Guo’s thrown his money around to them as well, which is why he’s funding Bannon’s operations and why Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht. They appear to have an initiative they call the New Chinese Federation, which is tied to the Guo backed website that is now posting the alleged Hunter Biden material.

While it is possible that Guo’s story is legit, it is just as likely, and in my professional assessment highly likely, that the story is a cover story*. It’s just too good to be true. Just as the Russians sent a somewhat physically attractive young woman to penetrate the GOP and conservative movement using both gun rights and white Christian religious freedom as the cover story, a cover story that was catnip to the folks at the NRA, other shooting organizations, the National Prayer Breakfast folks (C Street/the Family/the Fellowship), and other white Christian conservative organizations, I think Guo’s cover story is engineered to be equally irresistible.

The Trumpified GOP and conservative movement have over the past four years stopped talking about, as in literally have stopped using the terms China or the PRC and started screaming about the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, and/or the ChiComs. This is language used for the boundary maintenance of GOP/conservative/Trumpworld identity by allowing for easy identification of those who speak the right words (the literal definition of political correctness that came out of the crypto-fascist movement of Father Coughlin).

Guo’s story seems to be created to be equally irresistible to the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld and to capitalize off of this weird Republican, conservative, and Trumpworld reimagining of the PRC. Just as Butina’s cover story of the emergence of a 2nd amendment absolutism movement in Russia, which is implausible if you know anything about Russia, was designed to be irresistible to the GOP and the conservative movement in the US. When you combine the cover story with all the money he has to share, just as Butina managed to have money to share, you’ve got what appears to be a not for cover operation to penetrate the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld.

It is important to remember, that despite the President’s statements, as well as those by former Acting DNI Grennell and current DNI Ratcliffe, as well as other of the President’s surrogates, Xi does want to see the President reelected:

Donald Trump has argued frequently of late that China is rooting for Joe Biden come November’s U.S. presidential election. In Beijing, however, officials have come around to support four more years of Trump.

Interviews with nine current and former Chinese officials point to a shift in sentiment in favor of the sitting president, even though he has spent much of the past four years blaming Beijing for everything from U.S. trade imbalances to Covid-19. The chief reason? A belief that the benefit of the erosion of America’s postwar alliance network would outweigh any damage to China from continued trade disputes and geopolitical instability.

While the officials shared concerns that U.S.-China tensions would rise regardless of who was in the White House, they broke largely into camps of those who emphasized geopolitical gains and those who were concerned about trade ties. Biden, the former vice president, was viewed as a traditional Democrat who would seek to shore up the U.S.’s tattered multilateral relationships and tamp down trade frictions.

“If Biden is elected, I think this could be more dangerous for China, because he will work with allies to target China, whereas Trump is destroying U.S. alliances,” said Zhou Xiaoming, a former Chinese trade negotiator and former deputy representative in Geneva. Four current officials echoed that sentiment, saying many in the Chinese government believed a Trump victory could help Beijing by weakening what they saw as Washington’s greatest asset for checking China’s widening influence.

Having a catspaw – Guo – with an irresistible to Republicans and conservatives cover story and lots of money to spread around on those same Republicans and conservatives pet projects, including smearing VP Biden to weaken his election chances, makes sense. It also explains why Russian agitprop that was seeded in 2014 to dirty up VP Biden, Secretary Kerry, and VP Cheney, is now being pushed by a self exiled ultra-wealthy Chinese national who has ingratiated himself with and is funding Steve Bannon and other key Trumpworld figures.

We are off the map and through the looking glass.

Open thread!

* The link is to a lawsuit by a private US research firm that Guo had hired to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals in the US that Guo believed to be working for the PRC. However, in the lawsuit that US research firm alleges that Guo was actually having them try to dig up dirt on Chinese working for the US government under false allegations that they were working for the PRC. The case was ultimately dismissed.

Regarding the Alleged Hunter Biden Materials: This Is Some of the Most Amateur Looking Garbage I’ve Ever SeenPost + Comments (124)

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong China

by | 150 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Back in 1997, when the UK’s lease on Hong Kong expired, did it seem plausible that China would maintain a “one country, two systems” policy for fifty years? I was not yet a teenager, so I have no idea what the general thinking might have been. But for the last fifteen years or so, it’s been increasingly clear to me that China’s claims about Hong Kong’s independence were laughable. Once President Xi came to power in 2013 amid a wave of neo-Maoism, surely it was obvious that the old pragmatism was dead–and some of the old pragmatists along with it.

So I was saddened, but not at all surprised, to read that Beijing has decided to impose an anti-speech, anti-protest, anti-democracy law on the island under the guise of public safety.

After steadily eroding Hong Kong’s political freedoms, Beijing signaled that the national security law will be a new tool that allows it to directly tackle the political dissent that erupted on Hong Kong’s streets last year. The months-long and sometimes violent protests began last June and fizzled out only over public health concerns related to the coronavirus outbreak.

The new tactic marks an escalation in Beijing’s crackdown in the former British colony and the clearest indication that it views Hong Kong as a restive region to be brought to heel after last year’s protests.

[…]

“The social unrest last year showed that the Hong Kong government was unable to handle passing [national security legislation] on its own,” said Ng, a Beijing loyalist who has for years pushed for a similar law. “Hong Kong’s status will be sacrificed with or without this law if society is unstable due to the protesters’ violence.”

Zhang Yesui, the spokesman for the NPC session, said in comments to Chinese media that Hong Kong is an “inseparable” part of China and that national security is the cornerstone of stability in the country.

(Editor’s note: much–most?–of the violence during last year’s protests was by the police.)

I don’t have much to add.

Afernoonish open thread!

Meanwhile, in <s>Hong Kong</s> ChinaPost + Comments (150)

Weaponizing Bullshit, Chattering Classes Edition

by | 84 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

A couple of weeks ago (a gazillion years in COVID time, I know), former intellectual Niall Ferguson published a piece in the Sunday Times, asserting that the Chinese government had allowed travel from Hubei province for international destinations after banning such trips to destinations within China, adding,

As far as I can tell from the available records, however, regular direct flights from Wuhan continued to run to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco throughout January and in some cases into February.

I’m not going to bother linking to the column itself–Murdoch clicks, and it’s behind a paywall;  I’ll connect this instead to the blog post from which I got the quote and information above, written by Daniel A. Bell, dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University, and a professor at Tsinghua U. (sometimes called China’s MIT, though I suspect the nicknaming may go the other direction soon).  As in, not a dummy, based in China, and with some expert ability to navigate knowledge in that setting. (H/t James Fallows for the link to the post, btw.)

Bell was, he wrote, “surprised by the allegation,” especially given the speed with which Ferguson’s assertion was picked up in the US and Canada by ready-to-otherize-China folks. So he asked Ferguson if he was sure. Ferguson replied:

 “I can assure you I wouldn’t write a sentence like that if I had not researched it rather thoroughly.” To support his claim, he sent me several pieces of evidence.

Weaponizing Bullshit, Fancy Pants Edition

The evidence was, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn, bullshit–links to articles that did not support the incendiary claim in Ferguson’s article.

Ferguson also sent Bell flight records that the former historian of 19th century British banking believed confirmed that 31 flights had in fact left Wuhan for Europe after the domestic travel ban kicked in on January 23.

Did those records actually show that? Here’s Bell:

 I checked all the flights listed on the spreadsheet Professor Ferguson sent me. It turns out that none of the flights that supposedly left from Wuhan after 11:26 am on Jan. 23rd actually left from Wuhan. The flights listed as red on Ferguson’s spreadsheet were cancelled. The six listed as black left from Guangzhou and in normal times would do a stopover in Wuhan on the way to SFO but the stopover was cancelled. The app shows the actual flight paths of those flights as direct from Guangzhou, bypassing Wuhan.

Bell goes on, with all the receipts that show that Ferguson, most kindly, simply did not understand the records he was using.

Bell sent his results to Ferguson, by the way. With this result:

Ferguson continues to support his allegation even after I pointed out that the evidence he provided does not support it. That’s worrisome. Conspiracy theorizing of this sort deflects attention from what actually went wrong. And it fuels the demonization of the Chinese political system at the same time we need collaboration between China and the rest of the world to deal with an urgent global pandemic.

In this latest effusion, the consequences of those career choices are on display: what is either a lazy mistake or the willingness to trade in too-good-to-check conspiracy theories (leavened with a measure of anti-Chinese bigotry, perhaps) produced a column based on an elementary error in reading a slightly technical source, combined with a willful misreading of a couple of news stories.

This is what passes for the cream of conservative intellectual life these days.

TL:DR Niall Ferguson–and the prominence given to him by credulous editors–is one of the reasons we can’t have nice things. There are others who are more consequential, more harmful in their reckless disregard of evidence, and the obligation not to spew bullshit.

Mistakes are one thing–I’ve made plenty and will make more. It’s the contempt for the idea of even trying to get it right, to allow reality to confound your desired narrative that makes the contemporary radical right such an existential threat.

Fuck it. I’m tired. Whacking those who are wrong on the internet is an endless task–by design: the whole enterprise of illiberal authoritarianism turns on wearing out the opposition, as much as overtly crushing it.  But still–this is the kind of chickenshit up with which no civilized society should have to put.

Open thread.

Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters, 1799.

Weaponizing Bullshit, Chattering Classes EditionPost + Comments (84)

COVID-19 & National Security Part IV: Do Not Turn Challenges Into Threats and Competitors Into Enemies During a Crisis!

by | 65 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , ,

The Daily Beast has reported that the Trump administration has decided to escalate the rhetoric with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow at a rapid pace in the U.S., the White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” and creating a global pandemic, according to two U.S. officials and a government cable obtained by The Daily Beast.

The cable, sent to State Department officials Friday, lays out in detail the circumstances on the ground in China, including data on coronavirus cases and deaths, the local business environment and transportation restrictions. But it also issues guidelines for how U.S. officials should answer questions on, or speak about, the coronavirus and the White House’s response in relation to China.

The talking points appear to have originated in the National Security Council. One section of the cable reads “NSC Top Lines: [People’s Republic of China] Propaganda and Disinformation on the Wuhan Virus Pandemic.”

“Chinese Communist Party officials in Wuhan and Beijing had a special responsibility to inform the Chinese people and the world of the threat, since they were the first to learn of it,” the cable reads. “Instead, the… government hid news of the virus from its own people for weeks, while suppressing information and punishing doctors and journalists who raised the alarm. The Party cared more about its reputation than its own people’s suffering.”

I cannot tell you how GALACTICALLY FUCKING STUPID THIS IS!!!! Even if you set aside the whole “is this something we really need to be focusing on right now as we are confronting a pandemic” that has been mismanaged by the Federal government since January 2020*, just from a Psychological Operations (PSYOP) or Information Operations (IO) perspective this is just absolutely, mindnumbingly dumb! Despite the PRC’s internal and external mistakes at the beginning of the outbreak, mistakes that were made because the PRC is an authoritarian state and society and it is led by authoritarians who fear the free flow of information, especially bad information on their ability to maintain power and control, it is too late for the US to shape the information domain by establishing information dominance before moving on to diplomatic and humanitarian efforts.

As with every other aspect of the President’s and his administration’s response to SARS-CoV2/COVID-19, it failed to do anything to set the information space to establish the conditions for informational control pertaining to SARS-CoV2/COVID-19. As a result, and despite the PRC’s early communication and information stumbles, derived from authoritarian paranoia about maintaining control, the PRC quickly got its information operations back in order, set the information space, and used that to facilitate its diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in regard to the pandemic response. This is why we had stories last week that as the President and his administration dithered and careened wildly and fell farther and farther behind, the PRC now had a handle on the outbreak within China and was sending doctors, nurses, and medical supplies and material as humanitarian aid to Italy and other states. And that the PRC’s utlra-wealthy, with the backing of Xi’s government, were going to do the same thing to help America dig itself out the hole that the President and his administration keep digging us deeper into, as well as to Asian-Pacific states that needed assistance that the US would normally be, but is not providing.

The announcement of these efforts by the PRC directly, or indirectly through China’s ultra-wealthy, were intended to set the information space as if it was a theater of operations in order to establish information dominance and establish information control of the operating environment. Just as the President and his administration have wasted over two months since being alerted by the US Intelligence Community that the PRC wasn’t being forthcoming, that things were worse than were being reported by the PRC in its official communications with the World Health Organizations (WHO) and other states like the US, it failed to quickly move to establish information control. Again, just from a PSYOP or IO perspective, this would have meant immediately going public that things were worse than being reported, that the US was on it, that the Defense Production Act was being invoked and orders issued tasking US domestic manufacturers to immediately switch to producing personal protective equipment (PPE: gowns, masks, gloves, face shields), ventilators, increase pharmaceutical production to get ahead of possible shortages, and tasking domestic laboratories and university health science research centers to make tests using the data provided by the PRC through the WHO. And that the US would be available to provide some of these to states in need because the US is the only state that can do global strategic lift and logistics because we have an expeditionary military designed to be proactive to meet all challenges and threats. None of this was done. And once Xi felt that he had his domestic situation under control he immediately moved to fill the vacuum left by focusing on America first and keeping America great. Neither of which are actually working so well for actual Americans. As a result, Xi moved to occupy this information space by offering humanitarian assistance, which furthers his diplomatic efforts through the Belt and Road Initiative. Xi and the PRC now hold the information equivalent of the ridge of Little Round Top and the administration’s attempt to take control of the information space regarding SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 is the Information Operations equivalent of Pickett’s Charge.

But it is even worse than just wasting time and resources trying to reclaim information control over SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 when other more important efforts are needed to respond to the pandemic. What these geniuses on the National Security Staff on the National Security Council and others within the administration, including the President, who think this is a good fight to pick seem to have forgotten is THAT ALL OF THE PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT – GLOVES, MASKS, FACE SHIELDS, GOWNS – AND THE PRECURSORS FOR ALMOST ALL OF OUR PHARMACEUTICALS COME FROM THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA!!!!! And that If you piss Xi off right now, he can destroy us just by shutting off the supply chain!

Not one bit of this futile, stupid effort will do A DAMN THING TO HELP A SINGLE AMERICAN OR ANYONE ELSE ANYWHERE ELSE SURVIVE THE SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 PANDEMIC OR THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE THAT IS A RESULT!!!!!

MORONS!

Open thread!

* I’m going to try to get to this monumental clusterfuck of an intelligence failure by the President tomorrow.

COVID-19 & National Security Part IV: Do Not Turn Challenges Into Threats and Competitors Into Enemies During a Crisis!Post + Comments (65)

The Really Important Fact About Erik Prince That Everyone’s Coverage Keeps Missing: His Frontier Services Group is Funded By the People’s Republic of China

by | 109 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

The really important fact about Erik Prince that is not mentioned in The New York Times reporting that he has been using retired US and British spies, presumably human intelligence offers (HUMINTers), to teach James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas employees to be more effective is not that Prince founded and used to run Blackwater, nor that he’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoss’s brother, nor that he’s very close with the President and others in the administration and the reelection campaign. The really important fact is that Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group, the company of military contractors that he runs, is owned by DVN  Holdings, which would ultimately make Prince its chairman. DVN Holdings is owned by Hong Kong investor Johnson Ko Chun and the Chinese International Trust Investment Corporation (Citic), which is a People’s Republic of China (PRC) owned investment fund. Johnson Ko Chun is also on the board of directors of Cambridge Analytica’s spin off Emerdata Ltd along with Rebekah Mercer, her sister Jennifer, as well as former senior officials from Cambridge Analytica. Emerdata is also still tied to the former Cambridge Analytica’s parent firm SCL Group.

The important fact that everyone keeps missing is that Erik Prince’s operations are funded by the People’s Republic of China. He is now their asset. If he is involved with O’Keefe’s merry band of political ratfuckers, then he is only involved so long as Xi and the PRC want him to be. The same goes for Emerdata. And anything else that Prince involves himself with. Despite having a long history of looting his own companies and skimming from his investors and backers, such as the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates, Prince’s financial backing from the PRC state owned Chinese International Trust Investment Corporation means that he works for the PRC and does so only as long as he advances their interests.

Xi and the PRC conduct their influence operations – from weaponizing diplomatic, information, economic, financial, intelligence, and legal power – as a form of 21st Century warfare very differently than Putin and the Russians do. Xi’s and the PRC are subtle and precise, where Putin and the Russians are brutish and imprecise. The role of Prince’s Frontier Service’s Group in advancing Xi’s One Belt, One Road initiative, which is definitely NOT in the United State’s strategic interests, is evidence of who is in charge in this relationship. Xi and the PRC call the shots. And while they might give Prince a lot of rope to conduct business in his usual dodgy manner, it should never forget that they are the hands on the end of that rope. If Prince is paying former intelligence officers to train Project Veritas employees who will then interfere in domestic politics in the US, then he is doing it because it suits not just his or his sister’s or the President’s purposes. He is doing it because it suits Xi’s and the PRC’s purposes. Who his paymasters are and how they exert control over their assets is the really important piece of information that everyone reporting on Prince’s connection to Project Veritas and commenting on the reporting is missing.

Open thread.

 

The Really Important Fact About Erik Prince That Everyone’s Coverage Keeps Missing: His Frontier Services Group is Funded By the People’s Republic of ChinaPost + Comments (109)

What I Am Watching About The New Coronavirus

by | 42 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

There’s a lot being written about COVID-19, the new coronavirus, maybe too much in my opinion. There’s a lot that can be said about China’s political reaction to the virus, although even there we are at the beginning of things, and there’s a lot we don’t know.

I read a short and well-written article last night in Science magazine. It got me thinking about what I’m looking for in news about the virus. The mathematics of disease transmission are similar to the mathematics of chemical kinetics, which was part of my life as a chemist. That’s where my questions originate.

There is no evidence that the virus was generated as part of a biological warfare program. Its DNA has been sequenced, and there would be clues there if that were the case. It most likely originated in bats, as has been true for other coronaviruses, and was transmitted through another animal in a live-animal market. Tom Cotton lies; but we knew that.

We know very little of the parameters that are necessary to predict how widely the virus will spread or how dangerous it will be. Epidemiologists are collecting data, but the parameters depend on statistics that we need more of or time-consuming laboratory work that may be hard to carry out while treating sick people is the first priority.

  • How many cases are there? Some cases have been carefully diagnosed with appropriate laboratory tests. The reported number shot up during the past week when China loosened the criteria for reporting. Some people may be infected without symptoms or may have minimal sniffles and may not be counted. This website from Johns Hopkins gives confirmed cases, deaths, and recoveries.
  • How contagious is the virus? This is represented by R0, the measure of how many people one person with the virus infects. We don’t know whether the virus is contagious before people show symptoms. We don’t know how long the incubation period is. R0 is derived from observations, so it is likely to change as more information comes in. I have seen a wide range of estimates for R0.
  • What happens to the virus as the seasons change? Some common cold viruses, including coronaviruses, become less infective as the weather warms in spring. But not all coronaviruses, and we just don’t know about this one.

Every day, there is more information available, but I doubt there will be a reliable R0 for some time. Each case can provide a bit of data – I particularly hope that good records are being kept on that cruise ship in Japan.

James Palmer is a good Twitter follow on the subject for the big picture. He’s lived in China.

What I Am Watching About The New CoronavirusPost + Comments (42)

Today’s Coronavirus Update

by | 31 Comments

This post is in: ,

This is like cancelling Christmas, if Thanksgiving and maybe Amity Island‘s Independence Day were also celebrated at the end of December. (Despite the obvious snark potential for Westerners, remember that the astrological symbol for the new Year of the Rat does not have the same negative connotations in Asia.) Good news is, the relevant authorities are taking this with all due seriousness. Bad news — seems to be pretty damned serious.

It’s reached the stage where the NYTimes is running live updates:

The authorities greatly expanded a travel lockdown in central China on Thursday, essentially penning in more than 22 million residents in an effort to contain a deadly virus that is overwhelming hospitals and fueling fears of a pandemic.

The new limits — abruptly decreed ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, China’s busiest travel season — were an extraordinary step that underscored the ruling Communist Party’s deepening fears about the outbreak of a little understood coronavirus.

Chinese health officials reported on Friday that there had been 26 deaths from and 830 cases of the coronavirus, a sharp increase.

The official death toll increased by more than a half-dozen in 24 hours, while the number of confirmed cases jumped by more than 200.

On Thursday morning, the authorities imposed a travel lockdown in Wuhan, the industrial city of 11 million at the epicenter of the outbreak. Airlines canceled hundreds of flights to Wuhan, leaving thousands of people stranded. Later in the day, officials said they would also halt public transportation in the nearby cities of Huanggang, Ezhou, Zhijiang and Chibi, which are together home to more than nine million residents. And by Friday, restrictions had extended to Xiantao, Qianjiang and Enshi, three other cities that include large rural populations.

[Only] Two deaths have been confirmed outside the virus epicenter.

One patient died in the province of Hebei — more than 600 miles north of Wuhan — after contracting the coronavirus, the provincial authorities announced on Thursday. Another death was confirmed in Heilongjiang, a province near the border with Russia more than 1,500 miles from Wuhan.

The disease had also been diagnosed in patients in Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.

In Wuhan, where the outbreak began, anxiety and anger prevailed as worried residents crowded into hospitals and teams of medical workers in hazmat suits sought to identify the infected…

As a corollary, it’s becoming harder to pick up anything useful from a basic google or twitter search — there’s too many random individuals forwarding guesses, half-truths & conspiracy theories. From the first dozen mentions I saw, I figured the ‘special hospital construction’ story was fear-mongering, but the People’s Daily seems to be a legit news source:

show full post on front page

Today’s Coronavirus UpdatePost + Comments (31)