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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCoronavirus: Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier (possibly August)
BBC
09 June 2020
An apparent surge in traffic outside Wuhan hospitals from August 2019 may suggest the coronavirus hit the area earlier than reported, a study says.
Excerpt:
The traffic spike coincided with a rise in online searches for information on symptoms like "cough" and "diarrhoea".
China said the study was "ridiculous" and based on "superficial" information.
...snip...
Satellite data from the same time in 2019 showed 285 vehicles in the same place, an increase of 67%.
A surge in online searches for words associated with the symptoms of coronavirus on the Chinese search engine Baidu seemed to emerge at the same time.
"This is all about a growing body of information pointing to something taking place in Wuhan at the time," Dr Brownstein told ABC.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-52975934
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)pulled a bunch of our epidemiologists out of China before that. And Republicans in congress did not stop him. DHS had done pandemic modeling since the SARS-1 epidemic, beginning in 2005, and the Republican administration stopped that.
In 2017 and 2018, Congress refused 20% and $900M cuts to the CDC budget respectively.
But in 2018 they drastically cut the CDC's efforts to prevent global disease outbreak in 39 of 49 countries. They also got rid of a pandemic expert who proposed a comprehensive bio defense plan to lessen the impact of a pandemic.
In 2019 the Trump administration relaxed rules on infection controls in nursing homes. This in spite of a report that 500M Americans could die in the next pandemic. They end a program that serves as an early warning and trains experts in other countries to discover and stop deadly outbreaks.
Reportedly, in November our intelligence services start tracking the coronavirus outbreak in China.
We know Trump refused all requests for action. Republicans in congress also refused the actions they could have taken. If the Republicans wanted a pandemic, what else would they have done? Over 111,000 dead in our country alone so far.
ProfessorGAC
(65,168 posts)And still do not believe China's case or death numbers.
4,634 dead? Yeah, sure.
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)I'm with you on this, Professor.
Why did they wait so long to make the information public? Or, am I mistaken? I am a voracious reader / researcher, and this is the first I've seen of this information.
soothsayer
(38,601 posts)Especially the internet searches.
Just more reason we should have known something was up, sooner. And probably did.