Moscow, March 25: A woman watches a live address to the nation from Russian President Vladimir Putin about the coronavirus pandemic.

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

Russia and China have launched what experts say are disinformation campaigns against the West, seeking to change the global narrative about where the coronavirus pandemic originated, and which countries are leading the fight against it.

The subplot to the stories Moscow and Beijing are selling is one of Western societies in decline, with authoritarian systems proving themselves superior to democratic ones in managing the crisis.

A report prepared earlier this month for the European Union pointed the finger at both Russia and China for their roles in feeding an infodemic of untrustworthy information about COVID-19.

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State-sponsored disinformation is different from some of the simpler hoaxes being spread online including a lot of bad, or unproven, advice about how to avoid or treat the virus in that it is being spread to advance geopolitical aims.

As of Friday, the European External Action Service, an arm of the EU tasked with combating propaganda, had compiled a list of 162 examples of coronavirus-related disinformation, which it traced to pro-Kremlin media outlets or social-media accounts.

One report on a pro-Kremlin website said those with money had unleashed secret germ warfare on the rest of the world. Another claimed that the pandemic had forced the closing of the metro in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Lviv does not have a metro.

For Russia, the effort to sow chaos is seen as an extension of the hybrid war an undeclared conflict fought in the military, economic and information spheres that it has been waging against the West since 2014, when Moscows annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine made it the target of crippling economic sanctions imposed by Canada, the United States and the European Union. Victory for Moscow means breaking Western solidarity, and bringing the sanctions to an end, while keeping Crimea.

Analysts say Beijings aims are even loftier, with an eye to replacing Washington as the preeminent global power the capital other countries look to for leadership.

Russia would like to see the EU divided, and to pick off some of the countries like Italy, turning them from pro-U.S. to pro-Kremlin, said Agnieszka Legucka, a senior research fellow on Russia at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Russia is also transferring Chinese disinformation and propaganda that Western democracies are not able to help and save their people, that only strong countries like Russia and China are able to manage the coronavirus.

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Wuhan, March 10: A screen at a near-empty shopping centre broadcasts Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the epicentre of China's COVID-19 epidemic.

Thomas Peter/Reuters

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, has amplified conspiracy theories on Twitter that the virus was introduced to Wuhan by the U.S. military.

Twitter

A key piece of disinformation spread by both China and Russia and then repeated by friendly governments such as Irans is a baseless accusation that the coronavirus, which originated in December in a seafood and live animal market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, was instead a U.S. military bioweapon gone awry.

In Chinas favoured telling of that story, COVID-19 was actually brought to Wuhan by infected U.S. military personnel who attended the Military World Games in October. That version was given prominence by Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, who retweeted an article published by a Montreal-based website known for propagating conspiracy theories and pro-Russian disinformation.

It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! Mr. Zhao wrote in another tweet.

Russian media have pushed out a similar tale with a local twist. REN TV, a channel controlled by Kremlin-friendly businesspeople, carried its own evidence-free report blaming the U.S. government for coronavirus, but switched the point of origin to the U.S.-funded Lugar Research Center in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, a country where Washington and Moscow have spent decades wrestling for influence.

This is propaganda. What can we do? Paata Imnadze, the director of Lugar, told Coda Story, a news website based in the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi. The Lugar lab has actually led the Georgian governments response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the EU report on Russian-sponsored coronavirus disinformation unfounded allegations which in the current situation are probably the result of an anti-Russian obsession.

Tehran, March 22: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addresses Iranians in a televised speech.

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP

The unfounded allegations about the U.S. military creating COVID-19 have also been pushed along by Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said it was one of the reasons his country could not accept an American offer of help dealing with the crisis.

Youre accused of having created coronavirus. I dont know how true it is. But when theres such an allegation, can a wise man trust you? read a posting on his English-language Twitter account.

Bill Bishop, an expert on Chinese media, said Beijing was equally keen to muddy the waters about the origins of COVID-19, both for domestic political purposes, and to protect the countrys international reputation.

At home, the Communist Party regime had successfully via social-media networks that are tightly controlled by state censors persuaded many Chinese to blame a foreign enemy for the outbreak, rather than their own government.

The fact that an official foreign ministry spokesman helped spread the same disinformation on Twitter (a platform that is blocked inside China), suggests that the effort to push out an alternative narrative about the origins of COVID-19 was directed from the very top.

Zhao Lijian would not be doing this if he didnt believe that he had approval to do this stuff, said Mr. Bishop, who edits the Sinocism e-newsletter, which is popular with China-focused academics. And if you look at how the system works people who censor all the time are not censoring this.

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U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently called COVID-19 a 'Chinese virus' despite advice that this inflames anti-Asian racism.

Twitter

The Chinese effort to rewrite the viruss origin story were partly defensive. Mr. Zhaos inflammatory tweets came two days after U.S. President Donald Trump first retweeted a post referring to COVID-19 as the China Virus. Mr. Trump has since made a point, on Twitter and during televised news conferences, of referring to the disease as the Chinese virus.

Mr. Trump promised this week to stop using such language after a rise in racist attacks targeting Asian-Americans but he made it clear that he believed he was only fighting his corner in a propaganda war. I dont regret it, but they accused us of having done it through our soldiers, they said our soldiers did it on purpose, what kind of a thing is that? he told Fox News on Tuesday.

But a day after Mr. Trump made his promise to stop using the racially charged term, G-7 foreign ministers were unable to agree on a joint statement on the coronavirus outbreak because of a U.S. insistence on including the term Wuhan virus.

Mr. Trump has himself been accused of spreading unproven and unsafe medical ideas by using his press conferences to talk about potential coronavirus remedies that have not yet been tested. However, experts say that his remarks have generally fallen into the category of bad advice, rather than a state-sponsored propaganda campaign.

Belgrade, March 21: Crew members wave Chinese and Serbian flags after medical experts from China arrived with supplies to help the Balkan nation fight the coronavirus.

Marko Djurica/Reuters

Beyond blurring the origin story, Russian and Chinese outlets as well as social-media accounts that reliably parrot them have also sought to give the impression that Moscow and Beijing are leading the world both in terms of managing the pandemic, and in lending a helping hand to others.

China, the country that was hit first and, initially, hardest, is now keen to show that it has the virus under control, with cities such as Beijing and even Wuhan returning to normal as the rates of deaths and new infections slow.

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The Kremlin, meanwhile, had until this week resisted the lockdown measures adopted by many other countries, pointing to its relatively low infection rate, and the fact that only one death in Russia has been officially attributed to coronavirus. That narrative has changed only in the past few days, as the number of infections has shot up, causing President Vladimir Putin to order a one-week work stoppage next week to contain the spread of the virus.

Mr. Putin also indefinitely postponed an April 22 referendum on constitutional changes, which, if the measures pass, would give him the ability to remain in power until 2036.

Maria Snegovaya, a post-doctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on Russia and Eastern Europe, said the public should be skeptical about both Chinas and Russias versions of the story.

Definitely, we should not trust the data that comes from authoritarian regimes. This is somewhat true about China, and particularly true about Russia, she said, pointing to how the Soviet Union initially denied there had been nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, and how Mr. Putins own government lied for days about the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in 2001.

Tied into the idea that China and Russia are handling their own coronavirus problems better than the West are their showy donations of medical aid to crisis-stricken Italy and Spain, which have seen the worlds deadliest outbreaks to date.

The way this is portrayed in pro-Russian media is, See, the EU is so weak and the U.S. is unreliable. Only Russia and China are coming to help them, said Ms. Snegovaya. Its a typical [Russian security services] disinformation campaign. Its very convenient that the West is weakened at this moment, so you try to undermine it further.

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But after days of headlines about Russia and China helping where Brussels could not, Italys La Stampa newspaper reported Thursday that 80 per cent of the medical help delivered by Russia, which included disinfection equipment, was useless. Spains Health Ministry, meanwhile, found that test kits donated by China werent sensitive enough to detect most coronavirus cases, and decided to return them.

Sources: GOVERNMENT WEBSITES, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AND JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

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For China and Russia, coronavirus hoaxes are another strain of disinformation warfare - The Globe and Mail

By Janice Dunnahoo

Special to the Daily Record

I know by now everyone is getting weary of hearing the word pandemic. It is scary and yes, we are living in a time and place we have never navigated in our lifetimes, but historically, this is not that unusual. I have written about the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic a couple of years ago, but in doing research I found a bit more, which I would like to share here, just to prove that times do change in some ways, but in others they do not.

Lets start with some Roswell Daily Record articles from the year 1918.

The first one is dated October 25, 1918

Notice To The Public

Whereas the present epidemic of Spanish influenza requires rigid regulations to control and abate it.

Therefore, be it resolved by the Board of Health of the City of Roswell.

1. That all places of business in the City of Roswell, except drugstores, hotels and restaurants, and auto filling stations and garages, be closed during all hours of the day except from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, except Saturdays, when they should close at 7:30 PM, and all persons are urged to stay off the streets except when attending to necessary business.

2. Physicians must require patients with colds and running temperature, which in their opinion are incipient influenza cases, to remain at home as long as danger threatens.

3. All persons suffering from this disease are required to remain at home for three days after they cease to run temperature.

4. All physicians are required to report at the home of the City Physician during the morning hours for all additional cases of this disease.

These orders to take effect Monday, October 21, 1918.

Board of Health of the City of Roswell,

By W.C. Buchly, secretary

Another Roswell Daily Record article is dated October 25, 1918.

Warning To The Public

All persons are hereby warned not to congregate upon the streets or in stores or other public places at any time. All people are forbidden to congregate at night upon the streets or in other places after six oclock, and people having business to transact in stores or other places open to the public are hereby requested and directed to go into such places of business, immediately attend to the matter in hand, and at once return to their homes.

By order of the Board of Health of the City of Roswell, this October 12, 1918.

By W.C. Buchly, Secretary

A proclamation was published in the Roswell Daily Record, Oct. 26, 1918 by Governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, who was the third governor of New Mexico after it became a state in 1912.

A PROCLAMATION

By The Governor Of The State Of New Mexico

Notwithstanding the continued publication of precautionary advices touching the control of the epidemic of Spanish Influenza in the State of New Mexico, it is apparent daily increase, warrants the exercise of utmost diligence on the part of all our people in the observance of rules and regulations promulgated by competent health authorities designed to curb its progress.

In the absence of an organized system for compulsory health conditions reports in the State, reliance as to such conditions must be had upon the news columns of the public press and other less effective media. The volume of information thus accumulated relative to the epidemic intensity, universal spread and high percentage of fatality of this disease should alarm every citizen to combative repressive action.

While several municipalities in the State have published and are enforcing repressive regulations very effectively, not state wide suggestion has yet gone forth.

NOW THEREFORE, I, W.E. LINDSEY, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO, in the interest of the public health welfare and the war work of the people of this state do urgently request the discontinuance of all pending court sessions in the State; the adjournment of the public schools, the isolation or quarantine of all collegiate Institutions; penal and charitable institutions; the discontinuance of all church and other public assembly; the avoidance of unnecessary burial attendance and services; the prevention of the group assemblage of children in homes.

I further urgently request that all the people give strict observance to instructions relative to prevention of infection and the proper care and treatment of those attacked.

I respectfully but urgently call upon on the police authorities of the state to actively aid in the enforcement of all health laws and regulations and to urge the observance of the requests enumerated in this proclamation as well as the observance of all other proper and necessary precautionary and remedial measures.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of New Mexico to be affixed. I one at the City of Santa Fe, this the 17th day of October, 1918 A.D., 1918.

W.E.LINDSEY,

ATTESTED: Antonio Lucero

Following is a segment Dr. Elvis Fleming wrote on the epidemic:

The flu epidemic of 1918-19

The annual flu season always seems to elicit discussions about the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918-19, in which deaths attributed to the disease are estimated at some 20 million.

More than 500,000 Americans died during the epidemic, which is more than the deaths in both world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. The flu was no respecter of people. No matter whatones station in life, place of residence, or any other factor, no one was assured of eluding the dreaded disease.

More than 1,000 New Mexicans perished in the flu epidemic, according to an article in the Valencia County News-Bulletin published on Nov. 25, 1998, by Richard Melzer and Oswald Baca. The writers observed, Much of the epidemic remains a mystery to this very day. Not even its name, The Spanish Flu, is understood because the epidemic did not originate in Spain or any other Spanish community. Evidence points to its origin in March 1918 at an Army camp in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread in two terrible waves around the world.

Some people felt sure the epidemic was caused by germ warfare launched by the Germans during the final stages of World War I, according to Melzer and Baca. The leading evangelist of the times, Billy Sunday, proclaimed that the epidemic was the wrath of God against a sinful generation.

Vital statistics for the city of Roswell show that 92 people died of influenza, influenza pneumonia and pneumonia between Oct. 12, 1918, and March 10, 1919. The deaths were spread out over the six-month period, with 52 coming in October, 15 in November, 16 in December, seven in January and only one each in February and March. These numbers show, as Professor Melzer puts it, that the epidemic hit with incredible force in the last days of the First World War, showing no mercy to a world already ravaged by four years of violence and death.

Most of the Roswell deaths took place at home, but 36 percent of them were at St. Marys Hospital. Eight patients of Dr. C.M. Yater died at his sanitarium at 310 North Richardson Ave. Yaters ad in the city directory stated: Medical and Surgical; special facilities for the care of confinement cases, including a perfectly equipped confinement room. All on the ground floor.

Strangely, the ad also claims, No contagious diseases admitted.

Thirteen other doctors also lost patients, the largest number being the 21 patients of Dr. W.C. Buchley. Dr. J.B. Keister lost 12; Dr. Eugene M. Fisher lost 10; and Dr. W.W. Phillips and Dr. Yater lost eight each. Dr. W.E. Goodsell and Dr. J.E. Crawford each had seven patients deaths; while Dr. David H. Galloway lost six; Dr. C.T. McClane lost four; Dr. W.T. Joyner lost three; and Dr. J.J. Walker lost two. Dr. C.L. Parsons, Dr. Charles F. Beeson and city physician and health officer Dr. R.L. Bradley each lost one patient.

A local doctor who was also mayor of Roswell at the time also succumbed to this flu. A note from his obituary dated October 14, 1918 reads as follows:

Dr. C.F. Montgomery, the mayor of the city and also one of Roswells finest types of manhood passed away today. In his passing the city and the state loses one of its most capable and conscientious workers as well as a perfect gentleman.

The demographics of the victims show that 54 percent were male, two thirds were Anglo and one third were Mexican. No other ethnic groups are listed. None of the victims were more than 70 years old, and only five were between 57 and 70. All the others were under 50. Most of them were in their late 20s and early 30s. The age categories were as follows: 36-50, 11 deaths; 16-25, 17 deaths; 6-15, 10 deaths; 0-6, 11 deaths. Eight of those under six were infants. (Totals do not add up to 92 deaths because some of the information is not available on some of the victims.)

The occupations most frequently listed for the victims were housewife, 10; rancher, five; farmer, two; bookkeeper, two; New Mexico Military Institute cadets, five; and other students, two. Several other occupations were listed once, including a doctor and a teacher.

In an interview in February 1975, Colonel E.L. Lusk, one-time high school principal at New Mexico Military Institute, remembered that the commandant, Captain H.P. Saunders Jr., took it first. Lusk came down with it about three days later and was sick for a week. The hospital was full, so many of the cadets who were ill with the flu could not be admitted.

Some of the faculty took cadets into their homes to nurse them back to health. About the time Lusk got over his affliction, Capt. R.G. Breland, the English instructor, took it. Luskbrought Breland to his house where Mrs. Lusk attended him for about a week. Then Mrs. Lusk took down with it herself.

Thus, World War I ended in Roswell and the United States.

To paraphrase Melzer and Baca: The epidemic took the lives of innocent people who lived thousands of miles from any battlefield of the war, but they had no protection from an enemy so minuscule that they could not see it even with the most powerful microscope of the time.

Following is a remedy of the day, I thought it would be fun to include. Dont try this at home:

Cough medicine

The following is a recipe for cough medicine that will give relief when all others fail; 1/2 pint flax seed, two quarts water, juice of six lemons, one pound honey, 1/2 pound sugar, 1/2 pint good whiskey. Boil the water and the flaxseed together for a few minutes, strain and add lemon juice, honey and sugar. Boil this mixture a few minutes until well mixed. When it is cool add the whiskey, which is to preserve it. Half of this recipe makes two large bottles full.

Janice Dunnahoo is chief archivist at the Historical Society for Southeast New Mexico Archives. She can be reached at 575-622-1176 or at jdunna@hotmail.com.

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Historically Speaking: The flu epidemic we've been here before - Roswell Daily Record

Neither were the physicians at first of any service, ignorant as they were of the proper way to treat it, but they died themselves the most thickly, as they visited the sick most often; nor did any human art succeed any better. Supplications in the temples, divinations, and so forth were found equally futile, till the overwhelming nature of the disaster at last put a stop to them altogether.

Such concludes the introduction to the Plague of Athens from Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. The historian, an Athenian general who lived through the events he described, captures the horror of life in an epidemic, and in isolation. The plague arrived with the Spartan invasion, but it mostly hit the civilian populations of the area in and around Athens, and so the plague brought by invaders became an unintentional ally in the fight. Estimates of deaths from the five-year period that the disease ravaged Athens sit between 75,000 to 100,000, or nearly a quarter of the city-states population at the time.

The specific disease that hit Athens during the siege remains a subject of medical debate. What is known is that the disease originated in Ethiopia, and then it spread through the Mediterranean. Its persistence and lethality are unusual features, even among the ancient world, with candidates including both the plague and smallpox.

For an epidemic to become an epidemic it has to remain deadly while traveling with humans, rather than just killing them outright. It takes a particular kind of connected world, and a particular kind of violence in that connection, to make such a disease stick around and fester, a wound in the body politic.

History is rich with the plagues that followed war. The movement of people and armies and the whole long trail of food and supplies that entails can serve as a vector for diseases that, left to their own locality and without interconnection, might simply have become a local tragedy. Disease spreads through the people doing the fighting, and it spreads among the civilians displaced.

It takes a particular kind of connected world, and a particular kind of violence in that connection, to make such a disease stick around and fester, a wound in the body politic.

When in Revelations John describes the biblical apocalypse as preceded by war, famine, pestilence, and death, he is merely casting the realities of armed conflict into, well, biblical proportions.

Germ theory is too modern a phenomenon to have been reliably incorporated into the strategies of ancient besieging forces, but disease has long been an incidental weapon of war. The most historically famous example is the Mongolian siege of the Genoese-settled city of Caffa on the Black Sea.

As the Mongols retreated in the face of an assault by a relieving force, a contemporary account recorded that the Mongols used their siege weapons to hurl diseased corpses over the city walls, spreading black death.

What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea, wrote the Italian notary Gabriele de Mussi, likely based on eyewitness accounts. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the [Mongolian] army.

Mussis account of the end of the Siege of Caffa has long been cited as both an early incidence of deliberate biological warfare and a clue as to the route through which the black death made it to Europe, though both claims are contested. Regardless, the nature of a siege is to combine deprivation with density, and for the besiegers to trust that, on a long enough timeline, the people trapped inside, even if supplied by the sea, will succumb to the pressure.

Sieges, with defenders surrounded by hostile armed forces intending to wait them out, still happen in the modern world, much as they seem a fixture of a past era. These sieges, like those in antiquity, come with the diseases of deprivation, and the diseases that pass through populations thrown into violent conflict.

What is structurally different about sieges in modernity is that humans now have a scientific understanding of disease itself, and at least according to the conventions and treaties signed by nations, a humanitarian obligation to treat it. It was easy to see, in 2017 and 2018, an international condemnation of the siege tactics used by Bashar al Assad in Syria, tactics that brought deliberate suffering on civilian populations as a means of consolidating military rule.

It is somewhat harder, in the face of the international COVID-19 pandemic, to see where siege conditions are enforced to siege-like ends by means other than bullets and bombs.

International sanctions regimes, designed to allow primarily the United States to withhold access to the dollar as an international reserve currency from nations it views as acting against American interests, enable a sort of invisible siege. Enforcing second-order sanctions, whereby companies risk losing access to the US dollar if they also engage in business with the targeted country, serves as a way to effectively sever the targeted country from the vast majority of the international market.

By design, these sanctions inflict suffering primarily on civilians within the targeted country. As a coercive tool, the logic is that deliberately depriving the people in a country will make those same deprived people pressure their leaders. The ultimate end state is that, either from pressure below or to relieve suffering, the leaders of a sanctioned state change behavior more in line with US interest.

In a pandemic, these sanctions exacerbate deprivation into full-on crisis. While humanitarian goods nominally are allowed through sanctions, many banks refuse to process those transactions, afraid that doing so would expose them to penalties under second-order sanctions. The Geneva Conventions explicitly permit safe passage for food and medical supplies to physically besieged populations, but those rules do not apply to economic sanctions. While not formally cut off from aid, a global refusal to sell medical supplies under penalty of second-order sanctions can cause deprivation, much the same as an army camped outside the gates did in antiquity.

As reported by the New York Times on March 21st, Secretary of State Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell have made the case for exactly this ancient military application of disease and siege to the President.

Irans leaders have been harder hit by the coronavirus than almost any other country, and they have been hiding their infection from colleagues, according to intelligence reports heightening distrust and divisions in the government, reports the Times. Trump administration officials who advocate aggressive action have used those reports to press the case for escalating American military action against Iran.

What is happening in Iran is just one example of a multitude of economic sieges across the globe, maintained in the face of a truly international pandemic. To treat this crisis as wholly a public health event without acknowledging the context in which it takes place is to ignore the interrelated histories of war and disease. It is to treat the afflictions, as the ancient Athenians did, as a supernatural occurrence beyond anyones control.

To keep the siege in place is to look at the way it ravages thousands across the globe, and to turn away. It is a cold declaration on the side of cruelty. It is to say, simply, that epidemics are war by other means.

Kelsey D. Atherton is a defense technology journalist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His reporting has appeared in Popular Science, C4ISRNET, and The New York Times.

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The Plague and the Long War - Inkstick

As we sit within the confines of our homes, lockdown is making us yearn for the gift of time travel. What wed give to go back just by a few months before our fears and anxieties regarding coronavirus manifested themselves. Well, the folks of Orania have managed it because theyre living outside of the 21st century.

The whites-only Afrikaner enclave in the Northern Cape acts as its own entity. Turning its back on South Africas democratic project as apartheid came to an end, the clutch of citizens who still live in the town an estimated 2 000 to 3 000 still pay homage to the system that was labelled a crime against humanity.

But where, exactly, do they stand on the current coronavirus crisis? Are they following the rule of the land which engulfs and dwarfs their humble landscape, or do they simply follow their own advice? Well, in contrast to certain other policies in Orania, its not actually that black and white.

We know that they are observing social distancing, and theyve been taking quarantine measures since the middle of March. Local sewing groups have stitched together masks that people are being asked to wear during the coronavirus crisis. They may have self-isolated from South Africa since the early 1990s, but theyre leaving nothing to chance in the face of a global pandemic.

Not many people leave Orania, and even fewer visit. Their base in the Northern Cape is one of the most remote in the land. But, playing it safe is very much the mantra here. They have even manufactured some of their own hand sanitizers, treating the gravity of the situation with the respect it deserves.

They have published their own set of hygiene guidelines, very similar to those issued by the South African government. An emergency command centre made up of the town board provides regular updates on their preparedness to deal with coronavirus, and how the situation outside of their compound is developing. Gawie Snyman, Ronald Bain, Harry Theron and Frans de Klerk are named as the information-givers.

Those who have shut themselves away on ideological grounds, fearing an outside threat, perhaps never thought the biggest battle of their lives would be related to germ warfare. The communities within communities such as elderly care facilities also receive visits from singers and performers to lift their spirits during times of isolation.

Virtual braais and radio-streamed concerts make up for the lack of open-air activities on offer to the inhabitants of Orania. It hasnt been all fun and games, though. The idyllic image this settlement likes to portray against the backdrop of its controversial origins suffered a slight wobble last week.

A statement shared on the towns official Facebook page stated that one resident of Orania was showing symptoms of coronavirus. Its claimed that they were privately tested while receiving medical treatment. The test came back negative. But the fear factor of COVID-19 remains in place.

An image showing a warehouse full of toilet paper unapologetically boasts about having one of South Africas most treasured commodoties by the pallet-full. Indeed, this desperation to prove something to the rest of the country runs deep.

A local community group posted this message on their social media channels over the weekend Kim Jong-Un would be proud of this purposeful propaganda:

The SAPS came to visit in Orania yesterday to check that everything is in order. Thanks to Oranians discipline, they found nothing that upset them. After the visit, Colonel Jooste said: Thank you to the residents of Hopetown and Orania for your obedience. It goes bad in other towns and cities in the country. I love you all and I dont want you to die.

Work continues in the town: Binmen are seen wearing full hazmat suits and masks, whereas families are now learning how to cope with homeschooling. Pieter Krige, a community leader in this enclave, posts a photo of his two children beavering away at their studies.

It still remains anyones guess as to when normal life resumes both within the gates of Orania and beyond despite our tentative end-of-lockdown date of Thursday 16 April.

Social distancing has always been Oranias thing but they are now faced with keeping themselves apart from each other, without having a say in the matter. Its not business as usual here, nor is it anywhere in the world. And thats perhaps a source of great humility for this unique, often-maligned town.

As much as Orania has tried to isolate itself, the world is too big of a place to stay shut-off from. Society isnt exactly something you can opt in or out of. The looming threat of coronavirus casts a shadow over this region, and although it may only strengthen their resolve to hunker down and keep themselves in exile, one fact is inescapable: The enemy is not, and never will be, your fellow South African.

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Coronavirus: How Orania has been affected by the disease - The South African

MILLIONS were unwitting Guinea Pigs in biological weapon trials between 1940 and 1979 in which germs were released into the air, according to bombshell reports.

In 2002, amid the SARS outbreak, top-secret documents released revealed that the Ministry of Defence turned large parts of Britain in laboratories during WW2 up to 1979.

The government report revealed for the first time that the British Government conducted trials on its own people releasing toxic chemicals and micro-organisms into the air.

The Guardain reported: Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told.

While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments.

The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any inquisitive inquirer the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution.

The tests, carried out by government scientists at Porton Down, were designed to help the MoD assess Britains vulnerability if the Russians were to have released clouds of deadly germs over the country.

In most cases, the trials did not use biological weapons but alternatives which scientists believed would mimic germ warfare and which the MoD claimed were harmless.

But families in certain areas of the country who have children with birth defects are demanding a public inquiry.

One chapter of the report, The Fluorescent Particle Trials, reveals how between 1955 and 1963 planes flew from north-east England to the tip of Cornwall along the south and west coasts, dropping huge amounts of zinc cadmium sulphide on the population.

The chemical drifted miles inland, its fluorescence allowing the spread to be monitored. In another trial using zinc cadmium sulphide, a generator was towed along a road near Frome in Somerset where it spewed the chemical for an hour.

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REVEALED: Millions of Brits were in SECRET germ war tests between 1940 and 1979 - Politicalite

History tells us that bio-agents were restrictively used in both the World Wars (WWs). However, since then, biological warfare (BW) has largely been avoided and though a few attempts were made by some non-State actors during the 1970s-80s, by and large BW has been kept in abeyance. But of late, covert and clandestine research and development by various countries and the production of bio-agents during the post-WW-II era have brought it closer to, if not at par with its close cousins nuclear and chemical weapons. Known by different pseudonyms such as the poor mans atom bomb or germ warfare, BW is broadly defined as, The use of biological toxins or infectious agents like bacteria, virus and fungi, with the intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. These are primarily meant to cause mass casualties, infect a large number of people, natural resources and above all, spread panic among the rival armed forces. Devastating agents like Bacillus Anthracis, Botulism and Variola are used to spread epidemics like anthrax, cholera, plague and smallpox.

Mustard gas, a primitive bio-agent, was used during the WW-I, leading to a global outrage, which culminated in an unratified treaty banning bioweapons in 1925. Similarly, during WW-II, the Japanese allegedly used bioagents against Chinese prisoners, while the Russians did the same with the Germans. Thereafter, no major use of bio-agents was reported, except for the Sarin gas attack in 1995 by the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo in a Tokyo subway. A few treaties banning the use of BWs were initiated but did not make any headway as some countries refused to sign on the dotted line. The result is that a number of countries, to be precise 16, including major powers like Canada, Cuba, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea are reportedly maintaining and expanding their BW inventory. As per Steven Block, a bio-physicist, the US and Russia are reportedly keeping frozen stocks of smallpox along with conventional bio-agents like anthrax and typhus.

China, under its advanced bioweapons programme, launched a few years ago, is not only trying to gain parity with the US and Russia but is aggressively working towards engineering new virus spores. One may call it a coincidence but the sudden outbreak of Coronavirus, perhaps the most potent and devastating in recent times, from Wuhan, China in December 2019, has given credence to these claims.

This pandemic has already spread to 85 countries and claimed 3,400 lives with over 1,00,000 confirmed cases that are growing by the day. India, too, has seen 30 cases and this has led to the cancellation of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Brussels for an India-European Union summit.

In the meantime, US Republican Senator Bob Cotton has asserted that the Coronavirus originated from a high-security laboratory in Wuhan. This claim further substantiates global fears against Chinese designs as the country is also said to be working on gene-editing technology a targetted bio-weapon that was successfully tested in 2018.

To coin new terminology, the geo-biological scenario is becoming alarming and of late, virus, outbreaks have become rampant. First, it was the Ebola in Kenya followed by the Zika virus attack in Nigeria in October 2019 and then came the Nipah virus in Asia, particularly Kerala. Going by the suspicions over the origin of the Coronavirus, we cannot rule out that other countries are also engineering new bioweapons, the likes of which have never been seen before.

Going by the suspicions over the origin of the Coronavirus, we cannot rule out that other countries are also engineering new bioweapons, the likes of which have never been seen before

This pandemic has already spread to 85 countries and claimed 3,400 lives with over 1,00,000 confirmed cases that are growing by the day. India, too, has seen 30 cases and this has led to the cancellation of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Brussels for an India-European Union summit. (MR, Inputs: Agencies).

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Is biological warfare raising its ugly head? - citytoday

I WILL be quite candid with you here and confess that I wont be of much use to you if you are looking for someone to panic. I dont say this in any self-laudatory way. Its a failing on my part. Slow on the uptake, dyou see? Slow to react.

At the football, for example, something happens on the pitch and all the other spectators around me stand up and shout angrily at the transgressor, be it an opposing player or the referee. But I remain seated, not sure what all the fuss is about.

Then I think, Id better stand up with all the other chaps and shout something, so I get to my feet just as everyone else is sitting down, so that when the player or referee looks over at the source of the abuse, all they see is me standing and shouting in their direction, And youve got a big nose!, or whatever are the worst terms of abuse I can dredge up from the nastiest depths of my mainly lily-white soul.

Given that CV, Im afraid Im not going to be much use in the coronavirus crisis. Like most decent ratepayers, Ive been bewildered by the run, if that is the word I am looking for, on toilet paper. Is that the most important thing in peoples lives?

Surely, it wasnt that long ago that there was no such thing? True, everybody died of diseases, but at least they were happy. What was the old rhyme? In days of old/When knights were bold/And paper wasnt invented/They somethinged their something upon the grass/And went away contented.

People are panic-buying. There are videos on YouTube of fist-fights, sometimes involving old ladies, in the loo roll aisle. At the time of going to press, the virus hasnt yet reached my corner of the Empire, but even at my local Co-op, the loo-rolls had been largely emptied (only own brand ones for the leather-bottomed remaining).

The tatties were also severely depleted, though even I would own that, without these, life would be intolerable. I would not, however, punch an old lady for the last Maris Piper. Id use the Vulcan death grip.

No dignity, dyou see? Thats the problem with a lot of you Earthlings. On paper, youre fine. Take away your paper, and you become demented.

Of course, you could always use newspapers, which many folk boast of not buying any more. Thatll learn em! The retro revival is already under way, and this should give it a boost. Only this week, the influential Daily Star newspaper provided cut out and keep sections of emergency loo roll.

A couple of things are worrying me, however. Although Ive two rolls in at the moment, what happens when these run out? If I buy another pack, itll look like Im panic buying. That said, in the Co-op the other day, I noticed I was the only who didnt have loo roll in their basket so perhaps they thought there was something wrong with me (Certainly, his bottom looks peculiar).

In Australia, a mother of 16 no kidding was lambasted by other shoppers for panic-buying multiple loo rolls when it was just her usual shop.

The other thing is, I have a permanent cough, which I think is caused by mould in the bedroom (beginning to regret planting it now), so everyone will think Ive got the virus and point, shouting: Unclean! Unclean!

And then there are your friends. Are you sure theyre not evil carriers? I think we all know folk who happily donate their lurgie as if it were a gift. Hi, thanks for coming. Weve both got the lurgie. Heres some food weve prepared for you.

Youll have to be careful with folk, I fear. Its as much for their own good as yours. Remember, where the lurgie is concerned, its always better to receive than to give. Consideration, thats the thing. Ergo, were all doomed.

Waste of space programme

THERES always been something a bit Titfield Thunderbolt about Britain having a space programme. Im a connoisseur of 1950s and 1960s classic space audio dramas dont judge me and even our fictional efforts seem a little parochial and understated.

I say, is that one of these Martian johnnies behind that rock? I wonder if he has any pipe tobacco?

Americans: theyre the folk to be going into ooter space. Brash, self-confident, outward-going, able to shoot off a tentacle at 100 yards. Even the Russians should go, to provide a little evil.

I dont know if youre familiar with the human race. If you are, you just know theyre going to make a bags of ooter space, squabbling, profiteering, misgendering the aliens and leaving litter all over the shop.

At the time of going to press, Prime Minister Bertie Johnson is being urged to make good on his rash promise of a British space strategy. But, for my money, we should stay well out of it. It cant be right that were thinking about sending spacecraft into yonder cosmos when our roads are full of potholes.

Poops my pet peev

IM not a pets person as the phenomenon plays to two of my deepest phobias: commitment and poop. But even Im starting to weaken, particularly where golden retrievers are concerned.

Are they the best dogs or what? Theyre all over YouTube, playing lovingly with budgies, rabbits and cats, ostensibly smiling and having a bright and intelligent look in their eyes.

In fact, an odd revelation from YouTube is that all animals, from the wicked (lions, birds of prey etc) downwards love to be cuddled. Its what happens when a source of food is sorted. Only when thats done can creatures relax, cuddle, philosophise and create art. Deprived of ready-supplied supermarket food, humankind would soon resort to killing budgies and even golden retriever if it filled a hole.

Everything in the world will get better when meat is produced in laboratories. Nothing will need slaughtered again. Every creature will be able to breathe freely. The lion will cuddle the budgie.

From my perspective, however, as much scientific endeavour should be directed towards eliminating poop. For, without poop, the world would be a better place.

Chant be bad

ITS intriguing to think of playing footer tournaments without crowds. These days, the crowd is accorded as much importance as the players in winning games, which is technically a miscalculation.

There are people now who stand with their backs to the pitch as they exhort via megaphone the other fellows (its nearly all men in these ultras sections) to chant tunes that are largely a variation of My favourite team, cha-cha-cha!

In Scotland, when a team goes out of a European competition in the traditional manner, the interviewer asks the foreign manager: Aye, never mind the result, whit aboot a the singing, eh?

The funny thing is, people post videos on YouTube of fans singing and no one around the poster is doing so. Its the same whenever I go to a match. No one near me ever sings, possibly out of deference to my dignity.

Whether its on YouTube, television or reality-style life, the singing is always elsewhere. Im beginning to think its pre-recorded. Meanwhile, Im sure the players will be glad of the chance to concentrate on the game without all that distracting racket.

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Rab McNeil: Stocks wiped out as germ warfare sees panic buyers rolling in the aisles - HeraldScotland

New Delhi: Is the novel coronavirus a biological weapon? Did it originate in China and escaped from a Wuhan laboratory or is it an American one inflicted on Wuhan? As there is much uncertainty regarding the transmissibility and virulence of this severe socio-political crisis, a spate of conspiracy theories is undermining the efforts to contain the pandemic.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, directing the Global Health Governance Roundtable, has written an exhaustive article titled, 'US -Chinese Distrust Is Inviting Dangerous Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories And Undermining Efforts to Contain the Epidemic', published in Foreign Affairs.

In Huangs article, it is emphasised that rumours thrive on fear and uncertainty, and the outbreak of COVID-19, as the disease has been named, offers plenty of both. It was observed that as soon as the pathogen surfaced, social media was abuzz with suggestions that the virus was a biological weaponeither a Chinese one that had escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan or an American one inflicted on Wuhan. While such rumours are not credible, given that neither the United States nor China has incentive to develop biological weapons, they are difficult to dispel, because military officials on both sides still view with suspicion each others motives in building biosecurity programs, wrote Huang.

And the lack of trust between the two nationsas evidenced by Chinas initial refusal to allow US disease experts to visit Wuhanis undermining efforts to contain the viruss global spread, said the author in the article.

The India connection

Huang has pointed out in the article that there is also an unpublished paper authored by Indian scientists that suggested the viruss protein sequence included elements of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The authors withdrew the paper but the proposed linkage caught the attention of websites such as Zero Hedge, and they claimed that the novel coronavirus was weaponized by Chinese scientists. Speaking on Fox News, Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, suggested that it could not be ruled out that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan that is used to handle the most dangerous pathogens, said the article.

In China, social media is full of conjecture that the virus was engineered by the United States as an agent of biological warfare. One widely shared conspiracy theory suggests that American soldiers participating in the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan deliberately shed the virus at the Hunan Seafood Market, wrote the author. A retired People's Liberation Army general called for building a permanent biodefence force in China.

This trouble of rumours is not new in China. The author recalled that during the 2002-3 SARS epidemic, a Russian scientist claimed that the virus was a mixture of measles and mumps that could be made only in the lab. Many Chinese seized on this notion and speculated that SARS was a genetic weapon developed by the United States to target them alone.

The article in Foreign Affairs said the official China Youth Daily linked a National Institutes of Health-sponsored genetic study in China to the US genetic warfare programme. In the United States, meanwhile, a China expert suggested that the virus was linked to Chinas biowarfare program. Yet SARS was by no means a genetic weapon. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the 166 reported SARS patients in the United States in 2003, 58 percent were white and 32 percent were Asian, said the article by Huang.

Bio battle

The author read chapters from history to figure out how likely is either the United States or China developing deadly biological weapons for use.

It has been published in the article in Foreign Affairs that during World War II, the United States developed biological weapons but never used them. Biological agents had certain liabilities for battlefield use: they didnt take effect right away, they could infect ones own forces, they were sensitive to environmental and meteorological conditions, and they could conceivably contaminate an area for longer than intended. Nonetheless, the United States continued to stockpile and develop biological weapons into the post-war era.

In 1969, the United States got rid of its offensive biological warfare programme and played a crucial role in successfully negotiating an international treaty known as the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The treaty prohibits the development, production, and stockpiling of biological agents and related delivery systems intended for hostile use. In explaining the US decision, President Richard Nixon commented in 1970 that 'well never use the damn germs, so what good is biological warfare as a deterrent? If somebody uses germs on us, well nuke em', wrote the author.

He added that compared with the United States, China came late to the game. China had been on the receiving end of germ warfare, on the part of the Imperial Japanese Armys bio-warfare Unit 731 during World War II, and proceeded to write, As a result, China felt an imperative to build research facilities devoted to defensive biological warfare. In August 1951, Premier Zhou Enlai set up the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) to conduct research on biodefense against 'wartime special weapons'.

Since China did not possess nuclear weapons until the mid-1960s, it may indeed have explored developing biological weapons as a weapon of last resort or a strategic deterrent similar to nuclear weapons. But by 1982, China had acquired a largely invulnerable retaliatory nuclear arsenal. Two years later, China acceded to the BWC. The timing indicates that China, like the United States, found nuclear weapons to be the more credible and effective deterrent, said the author.

There was a shift in China towards economic development and funding for biodefence research facilities dwindled. They began developing products for civilian rather than military purposes. The Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) became something of an analog to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and developed a pan-anti-malaria drug called compound benflumentol and registered patents in more than 50 countries. During the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak, AMMS collaborated with Chinese pharmaceutical companies to develop two drugs [20] for treating the deadly disease, said the author, giving a challenge to conspiracy theories.

Mutual mistrust

China and the United States are both parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), yet they look upon each other with suspicion. Many people in China also perceive the United States as a potential biological warfare threat. Going by the past US government reports, allegations have been made that China continued to possess an offensive biological warfare capability based on technology developed prior to its accession to the BWC.

There have been various accusations, which the author said have not been substantiated by open-source evidence. In 2007, Chinese military researchers published an article accusing the United States of using new technologies to develop novel biological weapons agents and claiming that it was extremely likely that anthrax spores in the 2001 attacks on Democratic senators offices came from US military labs. Such suspicions might explain why the Chinese government later tightened regulations on foreigners using human genetic material and made it more difficult to pass the material abroad, wrote Huang.

Mutual distrust has been the legacy of big powers. During World War II, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom all developed biological weapons because they thought Hitlers Germany would develop them (it didnt), said the author.

In the context of frigid bilateral relations, a naturally occurring disease outbreak caused by an unknown pathogen can be easily framed as a bioweapons attack, said the author and quoted the historian Alfred Crosby who noted that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was suspected to have been started by German agents. His article mentioned that in 2004, the Indian government accused promiscuous Pakistanis of conducting Islamic jihad terrorism by deliberately spreading HIV in Kashmir. When H5N1 (bird flu) became a major concern worldwide in 2008, Indonesias then-health minister, Siti Supari, accused the United States of using virus samples to develop biological weapons and suspended the operation of a US navy medical research unit in Jakarta

Global cost

At a time of deteriorating relations between the United States and China, misperceptions of a hostile origin of COVID-19 have undermined global efforts to tackle the pathogens spread. That is a big concern.

The author pointed out that For weeks, China ignored offers of help from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He has quoted a blog post published on a website affiliated with Jiefang Daily (the official newspaper of the Shanghai Committee of the Communist Party of China). Some US CDC experts might be on a military mission to spy on Chinas virologic research capacity, it says. Interestingly, the author pointed out that two US experts finally joined the World Health Organizations delegation to China in February, but the delegations field visit did not include the Wuhan Institute of Virologyindeed, Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, was initially not even on the groups itinerary.

The author has discredited the conspiracy theories saying in the article that the claim that the novel coronavirus is a biological weapon is not only harmful but also scientifically unsupported. Scientists have pointed out that mutations [31] in the virus are completely consistent with natural evolution. According to The Lancet [32], scientists from multiple countries have overwhelmingly concluded that the novel coronavirus originated in wildlife, he wrote.

The author said that the conspiracy theories have poisoned the atmosphere for US- Chinese collaboration in addressing the outbreak, which might otherwise have presented an opportunity to reset the soured relationship.

In order to dispel misperceptions and minimalize the damage to future relations, the two countries should consider expanding their military-to-military exchanges, such that they might visit each others sites for conducting government-sponsored biodefense work. And the United States should explore channels for helping China improve its laboratory biosafety. The beginning of either measure is dialogue, Huang signed off in the article published on March 5.

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Exasperating Farrago of Distortions! Coronavirus and the Pandemic of Conspiracy Theories - News18

On Friday, a good friend of mine sent me some viral information, purportedly from Stanford University about how to self-diagnose COVID-19, prevent it and kill it. I was suspicious immediately.

First, it was rife with comma abuse, awkward phrasing and spelling mistakes and it made really outrageous claims.

Serious excellent advice by Japanese doctors treating COVID-19 cases, it declared. Now, thats some seriously terrible phraseology.

The post claims that if you drink water every 15 minutes, the virus will go down through your throat and into the stomach. Once there, your stomach acid will kill all the virus. If you dont drink enough water regularly, the virus can enter your windpipe and then the lungs. Thats very dangerous.

If it were that simple, would there be a pandemic now killing thousands of people, closing down professional sporting events, emptying schools, turning bustling cities into ghost towns and affecting the entire worlds economy?

A quick Google search showed that the Info from Stanford University was fake.

Misinformation about COVID-19 is potentially dangerous as it can give people a false sense of security or it might entice them to spend their money on false cures that at best do nothing good and at worst do damage.

A medical worker checks the temperature of a visitor at the city hall in Kiev on Friday.SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP via Getty Images

It seems that as fast as the coronavirus spreads, so too does misinformation.

Fake news is rampant in the U.S. as its been coming straight from the top.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been commander-in-chief of coronavirus misinformation to the American public for weeks until Friday. Thats when he declared it a national emergency.

As one of my newsroom colleagues quipped: Trump finally understood the gravity of the situation after he learned that the Masters had been suspended.

The amount of misleading, made up and outright lies being spread like germ warfare by Trump has been astonishing and disturbing.

On Feb. 28, for instance, Trump said that coronavirus will disappear like a miracle while speaking at a media conference for his coronavirus task force. The following week he told reporters that the coronavirus will go away. He also speculated that warm weather would kill the virus and stop its spread. Experts have debunked all of those claims, saying that while some illnesses like the seasonal flu do decline in warmer weather, there is no evidence COVID-19 will diminish in the spring or summer.

Again on Feb. 28, during one of his rambling speeches to his base in South Carolina, Trump likened the Democrats criticism of his administrations response to the coronavirus to their attempts to impeach him, saying this is their new hoax.During that speech he also downplayed the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu.

Astonishingly, during a press conference last week in Atlanta about COVID-19, Trump said that he didnt know people died of the flu. According to Trump biographer Gwenda Blair, his grandfather died of the flu in 1918. How can someone reach the age of 73, never mind the most powerful office in the world, and not know such widely understood facts?

U.S. President Donald Trump stands with members of his coronavirus task force as he declares the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency in Washington on Friday.JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS

Others are trying to profit off of the misinformation.

On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James was forced to order radio host Alex Jones to immediately cease and desist selling and marketing products as a treatment or cure for the coronavirus.

Alex Jones through his website http://www.InfoWarsStores.com has been marketing and selling toothpaste, dietary supplements, creams, and several other products as treatments to prevent and cure the coronavirus. Jones fraudulently claims that these products are a stopgate against the virus and that the United States government has said his Superblue Toothpaste kills the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range.

Mr. Jones public platform has not only given him a microphone to shout inflammatory rhetoric, but his latest mistruths are incredibly dangerous and pose a serious threat to the public, James added.

Other things are putting the populace at risk too. People who are hoarding bottles of hand sanitizer, face masks and other personal protective items are bad enough. Those who then go online to sell the products for grotesque profits feeding on the fears of vulnerable people are truly disgraceful.

So, here are some facts: There is no cure for COVID-19. A vaccine has not been created yet and wont be for some time. If someone claims to have a cure and it costs money, dont believe them. They are charlatans trying to enrich themselves on your fear.

This is how you can avoid catching the virus: wash your hands frequently; dont touch your face; avoid crowds; try to keep a social distance from people if you must be in a crowd; dont travel overseas unless its absolutely necessary; if you sneeze or cough, do so into the crook of your elbow or into a tissue and then throw it away in a bag-lined garbage pail.

If you fear that you may have the virus, it is recommended by health authorities that you do NOT go to the emergency department or even your doctors office as you could spread the disease.

If you have the symptoms of COVID-19 fever, cough, difficulty breathing Alberta Health recommends you call HealthLink at 811. Your symptoms will be assessed and triaged and, in the Calgary or Edmonton areas, if they think you need to be tested you will be directed to an assessment centre. In other parts of the province, someone may come to your home to do a swabbing. You may have to wait a bit on the line as call volumes are high.

Reach out to your elderly neighbours, give them your cellphone number if they dont already have it, and let them know that you are available to help them.

Dont spread the virus and, just as importantly, dont spread misinformation about the virus. Some vulnerable persons life could depend on it.

Licia Corbella is a Postmedia columnist in Calgary. lcorbella@postmedia.com

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Corbella: Don't spread the virus or fake news - Calgary Sun

Sam Venable Published 6:00 a.m. ET March 11, 2020

The risk of developing severe illness from the new coronavirus, COVID-19, is low for most people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDCrecommends taking simple steps to avoid catching or spreading respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. These include covering your cough or sneeze, disinfecting commonly used surfaces, and thoroughly washing or sanitizing your hands. Call your doctor and stay home if you are sick. Get more information atCDC.gov/coronavirus.

Knox News is making this coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers, including nonsubscribers, to help people stay safe.

I come to you today in my role as executive director of the PGA (Prudish Germaphobes of America).

With full copycat malice aforethought, I shamelessly hijack the tune of a jukebox hit by Connie Francis: Whos Sorry Now?

Whos washing now? Please take a bow!

Whose hands are sterile before eating chow?

Whos clean anew, like morning dew?

Just like I was when chided by you.

Yet I do commend; youve joined the trend.

Youre staying spotless somehow.

With soap and spray, you dont delay.

Im glad that youre washing now.

Sam Venable, KNS columnist.(Photo: NEWS SENTINEL FILE)

OK, enough nonsense. I dont mean to make light of the coronavirus outbreak rapidly circling the globe.

Unlike a certain resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. or the first tee at Mar-a-Lago, as the case may more accurately be my hunch says weve only just begun to feel the full wrath of this pestilence.

Gulp. Heaven help us. Literally.

But just as theres nobody more obnoxious than a born-again nonsmoker (been there, done that, too), rest assured we reformed dirtbags preach the same insufferable brand of told-you-so.

Not unwashed dirtbags like Pig-Pen, the cartoon character. I speak more on the microbial level.

For perhaps the first three decades of my existence, I gave little thought to the intricacies of germ warfare.

A dropped morsel of food? The five-second rule applies.

Throat parched on a mountain hike, hunt or fishing trip? Any cold, babbling stream should be clean enough.

That kind of germ warfare.

Then I got disease religion. It was the pathogenic equivalent of Sauls conversion on the road to Damascus.

Except Saul was a quick study.

It took not one, but two, emergency hospitalizations the second in isolation until the particular cootie could be identified for me to see the light.

Ever since, theres never been such a hand-washing, Purell-squirting, water-carrying, cough-and-sneeze avoiding, paper towel door-opening zealot than yours truly. Back when I was a full-time staffer at the News Sentinel, colleagues often teased about my clean-freak coffee pot practices.

Will devotion to disinfectants protect against the coronavirus? Who knows?

News about this disease changes by the hour. Questions and conspiracy theories abound. Vaccine research continues 24/7. Maybe it wont be as bad as predicted. Or maybe were in line for a sure-nuff pandemic.

At least I aint going down without a suds-and-scrubbing fight.

Sam Venables column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.

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We clean freaks will stand and scrub together | Sam Venable - Knoxville News Sentinel

Humanity's greatest predator: A laboratory recreation of the H1N1 virus that killed untold millions in 1918.

Image: BSIP / Universal Images Group via Getty

The coronavirus is nothing next to the supremely deadly flu virus of 1918, at least not yet. But when you delve into the history of that epidemic, the main comparison with today becomes clear. It's in our "it can't happen here" attitude.

In 1918, modern medicine had made the world seem clean and safe. Scientists had discovered and defeated the bacterial pathogens behind many of history's biggest killers. We hadn't figured out what influenza was, exactly, but it was a known quantity, a seasonal annoyance, really deadly only to the elderly. Doctors weren't required to report it. There hadn't been a global flu outbreak in 25 years, not since the Russian flu of 1891. There was a war on, but the U.S. was congratulating itself on how disease-free its military camps were.

That mindset persisted even after what we now know as the H1N1 flu virus made itself known, likely starting in the U.S. Though its first wave, in the spring, was fast-moving, this flu's effects were relatively mild. Summer stopped it in its tracks.

There was no warning whatsoever that it would come roaring back in the fall, having mutated like an X-men villain into a terrifying killer of the young and healthy. It was a supervirus that seemed nothing like the flu, one that might, within hours of infection, make you collapse in the street, your lungs filling with fluids, gasping for air as your face turned purple and you slowly, literally, drowned.

Fluid on the floor: One of the few 1918 photos to show the victims, here in a makeshift volunteer Red Cross overflow hospital in Oakland.

Image: Underwood Archives / Getty Images

This is the true and still largely unknown story of the flu pandemic of 1918-19, the world's deadliest medical holocaust to date. Unknown? Well, if you're reasonably well up on your history, you probably recall a few facts.

First, that it happened, which is a step up from the 20th century, when it wasn't even taught in college. ("I took a course in virology," says New York Times science reporter and microbiology major Gina Kolata in her book Flu, "but the 1918 flu was never mentioned.") Second, that it struck at the end of World War I and was spread in part by troop movements. And third, that it killed between 50 and 100 million people or more than the combat death toll of World War I and World War II combined in little over a year.

But you probably don't know the difference between its three waves. Or that the "Spanish flu" name that clings to the pandemic is fake news; it's far more likely to have started in Kansas. Or that it killed more thirtysomethings than sixtysomethings. And while it is true that medical science and practice has advanced significantly since then, it is absolutely terrifying to discover that even though we have nailed down its DNA, we still can't figure out how, where or why that virus mutated.

The defining feature of 1918 flu history is how little we truly know and how powerless we would be, even now, to stop a successfully mutated virus like that one from killing millions. Here's what we most need to remember right now.

U.S. newspapers belatedly begin to report on the flu in November 1918 with a positive post-racial spin.

Image: Fototeca Gilardi / Getty Images

Remember this next time you hear a talking head on cable news bloviating about how the disease caused by the new coronavirus, or, officially, COVID-19, came from bat soup in China: We've had over a century to try to figure out where and how the 1918 flu started, and we're still arguing about it. But theories that it began in Vietnam or China in 1915 or 1916 lost ground in recent years to a theory that it began in...the very middle of America.

A January 1918 doctor's report to the government from Haskell County, Kansas, stands as the first testament to any unusual flu activity in the world that year. Remember, this reporting wasn't required, so it had to be a big deal. Haskell had many migratory birds and hog farms; we now know that bird and human viruses like to meet and mutate inside the cells of pigs. And Haskell men visited nearby Camp Funston, which reported the first of 24 U.S. Army outbreaks in March 1918. The doughboys then took the virus to Europe.

One place we can be sure the virus didn't come from is Spain. So why did countries around the world immediately start calling it "Spainish Flu" or "The Spanish Lady?" For the simple reason that Spain was neutral in World War I. It had no reason to censor its press, whereas newspapers in the U.S. and Europe were prevented by their governments from printing anything that might lower morale for the war effort.

That, publishers thought, included flu outbreaks. Even when U.S. newspapers started paying attention to the epidemic by listing numbers of new cases, they often put a positive or admonishing spin on their stories. "Worry is useless," advised the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Talk of cheerful things instead." One columnist in another paper took to task "nervous and excited people who think every pain is a symptom of the flu."

So irresponsible rumors crept into the gaps left by official reports, as they always do. When the deadly fall wave of mutated flu began in Boston, wild (and false) stories spread that it was a germ warfare attack by Germany. Or that agents of the Kaiser had somehow embedded the sickness in aspirin tablets, made by German company Bayer. Which was, ironically, about the only thing people could take at the time to reduce fever.

And what did Spain get for sounding the alarm and reporting accurately? It got saddled with the supposed origin and the very name of the disease for a century or more. No good deed goes unpunished.

U.S. president Woodrow Wilson arrives in Paris for peace talks, 1919. He may already have flu in this photo.

Image: HULTON archive / Getty Images

In April 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson came down with the flu during its third and final wave which was deadlier than any outbreak in history except the wave that had preceded it. Wilson survived, but exhibited signs of neurological damage from the sickness and was never the same again. Unknown to anyone at the time, the flu had set Europe on course for World War II.

That's because Wilson got sick in the middle of the Versailles peace conference that officially ended World War I. Now, Wilson may have been an avowed racist, but at least he went to France planning to forge a global peace that didn't involve France trying to bankrupt Germany. Without Wilson as an effective presence, that's exactly what happened. The Versailles treaty was ridiculously punitive and, well, hello, Hitler.

Ironically, Wilson had set the wheels of his own destruction in motion. He had been responsible for many of the previous year's troop movements that spread the flu in the first place. He agreed with his generals that "the shipment of troops must not be stopped for any reason." His surgeon general said "the present generation" had been "spoiled" by excellent medical care, and shouldn't rush to their doctors with "mild cases" of flu.

Wilson was far from the only luminary to have a life-threatening flu encounter. Kaiser Wilhelm II celebrated news of the "Flanders fever," as the Germans called it, because it attacked French troops first. But flu easily crossed trench lines, and the kaiser fell sick before he was forced to abdicate. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, whose government censored flu reports, got so sick that he had to wear a respirator. This news, too, was censored.

Unnamed baseball players wearing masks while perfectly healthy, 1918.

Image: George Rinhart / Corbis via Getty Images

It's the one defining feature when you look back through 1918 archives: Everyone, it seems, wore masks. There are pictures of public officials wearing masks, barbers wearing masks, men who didn't wear masks being barred by an officious bus conductor. There are local laws about wearing masks in public, determining the exact thickness of gauze, or cheesecloth, that your mask had to be.

But then as now, the mask craze didn't do much to slow the spread of the virus. Then as now, there was little point in uninfected people wearing them. Then as now, mask use should have been confined to those who were actually sick, and to medical workers.

What might have helped? Obviously, a greater emphasis on hand hygiene. More and faster reporting of flu locations, and a more robust government response. Cutting down on those troop movements as much as possible, and on large gatherings such as the infamous Liberty Bond rally in Philadelphia that infected thousands at once. Within 72 hours, every hospital bed in the city was filled.

But humans will be humans, and they will gather together. How were authorities supposed to stop them from celebrating the end of World War I in the streets that November? What public health campaign could prevent entire villages around the world from coming out to celebrate the joyful return of their soldier boys, dooming themselves in the process? This, perhaps, is why the 1918 flu was rarely taught in schools: It had a grim inevitability to it, one that showcased how powerless we are to prevent catastrophe coming at us from all angles.

It is in these stories that we can glimpse the seeds of inevitable future pandemics. No modern medical system can withstand an influx of flu victims on the scale of 1918. If hospitals get overwhelmed, that's a force multiplier for all kinds of casualties. And unless you ban every conference and concert, or shut down every movie theater, successful viruses will do what successful viruses will do: spread faster than you can stop them.

The best we can do is not be as complacent as the people of 1918 and choose leadership that offers reality-based responses.

Read more:

Coronavirus and what we can learn from the 1918 flu's hidden history - Mashable

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TOMI Environmental Solutions, Inc.: Innovating for a safer world

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STERAMIST IS MOBILIZED TO AID IN THE CONTROL SARS-CoV-2 IN DAEGU-KYUNGBUK PROVINCE, SOUTH KOREA - Yahoo Finance

India and the world is effectively in an emergency mode. Due to COVID-19, flight services are disrupted, businesses have landed themselves in slow mode and public assembly is increasingly getting prohibited. Shopping malls and cinema halls have been asked to down shutters in many states.

With COVID-19 tolls overshooting SARS and spreading to over a hundred nations in a matter of three months, the world is now faced with a grim situation. Over 1,61,000 cases have been detected around the globe, and the death toll at about 6,000. As yet, there is no known cure or vaccine to treat the disease.

Even rich and powerful countries such as the USA, which have proved inefficient in the face of this particular crisis, have declared national emergency. Mainland Europe is reportedly worst affected. India, thankfully, has not yet seen the disease go out of control. It may not be because the healthcare system is robust and has not let the disease spread in the country; it could just be sheer luck. On the other hand, we Indians may have been spared the full brunt of the virus because of our filthy living conditions, which may have helped create a better immune system. Also, some claim, the rising temperatures due to onset of summer in the subcontinent may help keep cases of COVID-19 relatively under control. The most worrying factor about spread of the pandemic in India is the insensitivity of people who return to the country from the coronavirus affected places such as Italy. In Kerala, one set of travellers who returned from Italy went around spreading the infection among their kith and kin. Their irresponsible behaviour has led to rise in the number of people infected by the virus in the southern state. Although COVID-19 has not claimed many lives in India, it is no reason to drop guard. It roughly has a 3% mortality rate, according to reports. In this case, the asymptomatic infected person becomes a carrier and can thereby infect others without detection, posing a huge threat to a society such as India. In the context of COVID-19, India is presently considered to be at Stage-2, as described by World Health Organization. That means, infections could now be locally transmitted after getting introduced from other geographical locations. Stage-3 would imply community transmissions, in which case the infection crisis would affect larger geographical areas. With a massive and close-living population, the spread would become truly pandemic if social isolation goes unheeded in India.

At a time when the disease has already dragged the world into economic turmoil, Indians will have to act extremely carefully in the larger interests of the country. The state alone cannot be held responsible for preventing the outbreak of a pandemic. People are equally responsible and need to behave responsibly to avert a crisis. It is understandable that there is much fear about the disease and no one wants to contract it.

Another equally important measure in the fight against the infection is preventing scare mongering. Several instances of rumors spreading panic among people have been reported. In countries such as Italy, even national leaders have led to the spread of perceptions that immigrants were responsible for the spread of the disease. Such actions will have deeper consequences on the world in the days to come. It will lead to cornering of the marginalised and possibly lead to further deterioration of their conditions. Every single individual action will matter in how the disease is contained. In a globalised world, it is next to impossible for any nation to be excluded from the impacts of a pandemic. The only way out is having a sensitised and sensible population where people behave responsibly in the interest of both themselves and the society. It is important that persons suspected of the disease keep their social interactions to bare minimum. If and when family or friends travel and come from infected areas, they should quarantine themselves for the requisite amount of time while waiting to be tested by appropriate health authorities. Refraining from socializing and maintaining distance from family and friends goes without saying. These are not matters that are entirely in the control of the state. It is important particularly in countries such as India, where the healthcare infrastructure is not strong and wide enough to contain an outbreak on a larger scale. It is doubtful whether India could keep an outbreak of the dimensions that China has witnessed if it was faced with such a misfortune. While saying this, one must take note of the conspiracy theory about coronavirus spreading from Wuhan, which pointed to a germ warfare experiment gone wrong. Luckily, India is incapable of such high level research and development. This may remind many of the heated debates that took place during the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty in 2009. Every sensible Indian was concerned at that time about possible nuclear accidents and whether we, as a nation, were prepared to face a calamity of that level while at the same time controlling the atmospheric damage. General conclusion of informed people at the time was that India was totally unprepared and would create a global catastrophe if faced with a situation similar to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.

Even if the country were to be well-equipped to handle a pandemic, it will be helpless if pitted against careless behaviour of its citizenry.

Read more:

COVID-19 and Us OrissaPOST - Wink Report

Herbal healing has been around for centuries and even in today's high-tech society, it has an important role in keeping us disease-free and healthy. A study published in the Journal of Functional Foods says that elderberry extract is an effective way to block viruses from entering, or even attaching to, healthy cells. Researchers applied a serum made from elderberries directly onto cells before, during, and even after they had been infected with the influenza virus.

"We found that the serum had a direct antiviral effect against the flu virus," said lead researcher Dr. Golnoosh Torabian. Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, MD., author of "From Fatigued to Fantastic," tells Newsmax that he is "concerned" about the possible spread of the coronavirus and says, according to research by the National Institutes of Health, elderberry extract is also effective in inhibiting this particular novel virus.

"The form I would recommend is called Virapro," he says. "It not only contains elderberry, but also zinc, vitamins C and D, and retinol, which are critical for immunity."

Dr. Ellen Kamhi, Ph.D., author of "The Natural Medicine Chest," says it's important to shore up our immune systems whenever there is a threat of a viral invasion.

"The best approach is to do all you can do to help support the immune system since it controls our ability to fend off illness, whether it be a deadly disease, or even the common cold," she tells Newsmax. Eat a healthy diet and reduce stress, while enlisting herbs as part of your anti-germ warfare, she says. "Besides elderberry, technically called Sambucus nigra, which has been proven not only to prevent the flu but to reduce its symptoms, there is an arsenal of herbs to help you stay well."

Astragalus. One study by the National Cancer Institute demonstrated astragalus' ability to strengthen the body's immune response, especially against viral infections.

Echinacea. This well-respected and researched herb is an immune stimulant that increases the activity of white blood cells.

Garlic. Garlic has been used for centuries as food and as medicine, according to Healthline. It enhances the immune system by boosting the disease-fighting response of white blood cells thanks to its sulfur compounds. Studies show that garlic not only reduces the length and symptoms of illness, it can also prevent you from getting sick in the first place. One study showed that the group who took garlic regularly had a 63% lower risk of getting a cold, and their colds were 70% shorter. Garlic supplements, such as Aged Garlic Extract or AGE, retain the medicinal benefits of raw or cooked garlic against colds and flu.

Oil of Oregano. Chock-full of disease-fighting vitamins and minerals, this herbal blend contains many active chemicals that provide beneficial support to our bodies, says Kamhi. "It is exceptional in its ability to destroy several different kinds of microorganisms including bacteria, fungus, virus and parasites," she says.

Rosemary. This herb has been used as an anti-infective agent since ancient times. Kamhi reveals that it was burned in hospitals and sick rooms to purify the air and fight infections. "It was also used in courts to keep the judge and jurors from contracting plagues and fevers that the prisoner's brought up from the dungeons," she says.

2020 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved.

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Herbs That Fight Viruses - Newsmax

So far Ive only written about human systems and the unintended consequences that arise from them. But the natural world is complex also. We are just beginning to understand the interconnections of living and non-living things. Environmental ecosystems can also be pushed in one direction or another by human intervention and other activities. That means plenty of second-order effects.

Ecosystems are often complex beyond our ability to appreciate them, but on the surface, they can seem simple. Maybe this is why there have been so many attempts to alter ecosystems by adding to them or subtracting from them. The impact of those additions or subtractions can tough to know in advance, but the impact can be estimated and controlled. Beyond intentionally changing an ecosystem, there are also all of the non-human changes that occur.

Theres a blurry line between invasive or introduced species and native or indigenous species. To be counted as invasive or introduced, there needs to be human intervention a distinction without a difference if the result ends up the same. Species move around the world on their own all the time (wind, sea, on or in the bodies of their hosts). Then there are gray areas, such as species that navigate to new environments by floating on plastic in the ocean. They can hitch a ride on floating material that is only there because of human activity, but it wasnt humans who brought the species to any specific place.

While it might seem odd today to intentionally introduce and spread species from other parts of the world, in the 1800s, this interventionist attitude was common in acclimatization societies.

From a Lecture on Acclimatisation in Australia: The societies were about the acclimatization or art of introducing the Mammalia, birds, fishes, and insects into countries to which they are foreign, utilizing them in places where they were formerly unknown, and in such congenial localities as may conduce to their being reared and propagated with success thus reducing our scientific knowledge to useful and practical purposes.

Two factors encouraged this work. First, there were food shocks felt around the world, including for example the effects of the potato blight in Ireland. One idea supporting species introduction was to lower the risk of dependence on only local foods.

The other factor encouraged or at least that didnt stop these societies is the lack of understanding of the risks they were creating. It was apparently rare in these societies to debate the impact species introduction might have on local ecosystems and how to introduce species in a controlled manner.

Here are ways that ecosystems change by the addition or subtraction of just one species.

Intentional introduction for food. Rabbits in Australia. Feral pigs in the Americas.

Introduced as a food source in the 1800s, rabbits have caused ecological damage by multiplying so quickly that the food they ate depleted plant life and led to soil erosion. Rabbits in Australia are an example of just how fast things can change when a small number of fast reproducing, fast-moving, versatile animals are introduced into a suitable environment.

Rabbits can bread only in Spring and Summer in Europe, but year-round in much of Australia. They were a good candidate to cause environmental scaling effects in Australia. And they did. Rabbits are the fastest reproducing mammal in the world.

Multiple efforts to eradicate or control them, from germ warfare to a fence spanning the western part of Australia, have been unsuccessful.

Pigs were introduced into the Americas multiple times. First by Columbus, who brought eight pigs on his voyage to Cuba in 1493. Then by Hernando de Soto who brought 13 pigs to Florida in 1539. Apparently, by 1542 that pig herd grew to 700, not including those that escaped. Hernando Cortez brought pigs to New Mexico in 1600. Sir Walter Raleigh brought pigs to Jamestown in 1607. Pigs were even introduced from Europe as late as the 1930s. In some locations, the wild pigs are a nuisance with repeated attempts to eradicate or control their populations. So far, control has not worked. Feral pig populations can expand quickly, even with efforts at control. Generalist eaters suited for many different environments and too big for most predators, they are mostly considered a nuisance today.

Intentional introduction to combat another species. Cane toads in Australia.

Cane toads are native to Latin America but were introduced to Australia to combat a beetle that ate sugar cane roots. The Australian sugar cane plantations were themselves a new experiment. And the cane toads never did eat many of those beetles.

Native species in Australia, unaware that cane toads are also poisonous, die trying to eat them. Predators seem to be learning though. Some birds learned to attack the toads underbelly and avoid the poison glands on its back, while some snakes with smaller jaws (which dont enable them to eat the large cane toad) succeeded in reproducing and passing on that trait.

Efforts at cane toad control include training potential predators like water monitors, quolls, and bluetongue lizards to avoid the cane toads by administering manageable amounts of toad, which convinces the would-be predators to stay away.

There was broad approval in the 1930s of the plan to introduce this species to Australia.

Intentional introduction as art. Starlings in the US.

Its not every day that we can blame the Bard of Avon and his fans for an unintended consequence. But Eugene Schieffelin hoped to introduce into North America every bird mentioned by Shakespeare. He imported starlings from England and released them in Manhattan in 1890 and 1891. Starlings soon started to drive native birds out of their habitats, ate massive amounts of crops, and spread disease. By the 1940s, starlings had reached California. They now number in the hundreds of millions.

If youre wondering, Shakespeare only mentioned starlings in Henry IV Part I. A list of all the other birds is here.

Accidental introduction. The brown tree snake in Guam and other islands in the South Pacific.

The brown tree snake, native to Australia and parts of Southeast Asia, was accidentally introduced into Guam. The theories are that the snakes hitched a ride on ships or aircraft landing gear after WWII. Guam was an easy location for the snakes to colonize quickly since the island didnt have natural predators for them. What followed was the local or total extinction of many bird species, including the Guam Flycatcher.

Guam, as a transportation hub, became the staging ground for the brown tree snakes entrance to many other environments that suited it. The attempt to kill off the brown tree snake population starting in 2010 (60 years after its introduction) was to drop mice stuffed with Tylenol (poisonous to the snakes) in trees where the snakes would eat them. This kill techniques design seems well targeted at brown tree snakes (well, well see). As one of the few snakes that will also scavenge for food (and will, therefore, eat the poisoned dead mice), the program has a chance. I cant find much detail related to how well the program has reduced the brown tree snake population. Well see.

Intentional reintroduction of native species that went extinct. Beavers in UK.

Beavers went extinct in UK in the 1600s. A few years ago they were reintroduced into Scotland and England for reasons including flood control and beavers encouragement of greater species diversity in places they inhabit. When beavers were reintroduced, people revolted. But these releases have apparently been controlled and studied in the small scale and it looks like the reintroduction has (so far) been beneficial. Again, well see.

The estimate is that there are 50,000 introduced species in the US (out of 750,000 species present here). The examples above are just a handful of the more noticeable ones.

Years ago someone told me a story about a big media company. They had to rip up part of the floor in one of their offices to make repairs and discovered a tangled mass of communications cables snaking underneath. What did they do? Replace and reconnect the cables? No. When they saw that tangled mass, they touched nothing down there and carefully replaced the floorboards. Who knows where each cable led and what content it carried? Better just to leave things as they were.

In a complicated system, unless you understand how your change makes things better, better just to leave things as is.

And if you want to read about a system falling apart in something as predictable as a pocket watch, see Mark Twain.

Previously published on Unintendedconsequenc.es.

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Don't Touch Anything: The Unintended Consequences of Environmental Ecosystems - The Good Men Project

The CDC has recently issued a warning about the potential threat of the coronavirus, stating the spread of the deadly virus in the USA is inevitable. In the February 27, 2020, edition of The Winchester Star appeared an editorial which noted that as the COVID-19 virus is dangerous and that inasmuch as its spread to the USA is inevitable, we should be worried about the potential consequences.

I am very much afraid that for many of The Stars readers this message will be met with scorn and simply dismissed as liberal tripe. That is because many of The Stars readers take their advice, pandemics-wise, not from the CDC or the media, but from their favorite snake oil salesman, Rush Limbaugh. On February 24, 2020, he said the virus is no more concerning then the common cold and that the media is over-hyping the potential danger and weaponizing the outbreak against Trump. He also maintains that the outbreak is a result of a Chinese government germ warfare research program gone awry. (He failed to say why the Chinese would want to give everyone a bad case of the sniffles! Perhaps they bought up stock in Kleenex.)

For those of you who do not find his absurd rhetoric appalling, listen up! Perhaps you could persuade him to test his thesis that the virus is no more dangerous than a common cold by getting him to travel to China. He could then expose himself to the virus to prove it is no more dangerous than the common cold. This selfless action would go a long ways toward establishing his credentials as an epidemiologist of note and a true humanitarian. I would contact him myself to make this suggestion, but alas we are not on the best of terms.

See the article here:

Letter to the editor: Don't get your coronavirus information from Rush - The Winchester Star

Have you gone off eating at your favorite Chinese restaurant yet? Are you sufficiently terrified of the Corona virus to have switched from Mexican beer to Coors? Maybe you shouldnt touch your screen while reading this column. Im writing it sitting in a Chinese buffet in the largely Asian San Gabriel Valley.

In the rightwing blogosphere, the word is out that Corona virus is really just a false flag conspiracy. The point of the conspiracy is to conceal the truththat the Donalds tariffs and trade-stalling policies are causing the Chinese economy to crash. Trumpanzees climbing every antenna tower in the Wall St. jungle want us to know that the Donalds policies are working, and worldwide scientists and economists are faking a pandemic risk to conceal the truth of the Donalds success.

Are you sufficiently terrified of the Corona virus to have switched from Mexican beer to Coors? Maybe you shouldnt touch your screen while reading this column.

Im skeptical. But the concept certainly sponsors other thoughts of conspiracies and ideas for plans with way more actual public benefit. The Donald is famously a germophobe. His love of McDonalds food is based as much in its imagined sterile character, always wrapped up, as in its grease content. The Donald apparently has never been told that each burger is actually assembled by human hands before being wrapped in sterile paper.

So heres my plan. Lets get someone to infect the Donald with Corona virus. First, since symbolism is so much more important than substance to the Republican base, how wonderful would it be for the Mexico-bashing wannabee king to be struck down by a virus named using the Spanish word for crown? It would surely be the crowning achievement of his presidency.

And this plan involves no complex planning or resources to pull off, no Jason Bourne super soldier training or Tom Cruise wire gags. Just reliance on the everyday conduct of those who know that their natural superiority exempts them from such things as law and science. Any White House visitor, but preferably one going to an Oval Office meeting, could deliver an unplanned, unexpected sneeze full of virus spores.

A member of the press could drop a used tissue into a wastebasket near an HVAC vent. The trick here would be to infect a member of Fox News, or Breitbart, or any other alt-white journalistic establishment. So when the Donald issues an executive order barring the liberal media from the White House as a health safety measure, but allowing the alt-white media to continue worshipping him, it will be one of his own acolytes earning the credit for the infection.

Will Billious Barr then prosecute the offending alt-white journalist for treason for attempting (and perhaps succeeding) to assassinate the president? If the Donald succumbs to the virus, Judge Pirro and Judge Napolitano can fill Fox with debates about whether U.S. law can punish deicide. Would the John Roberts Supreme Court hold deicide to be a protected exercise of sincerely held religious belief?

No one really needs to enlist either the liberal media or the alt-white pundits in any plot to give the Donald the Corona virus. The banality of politics is that it is very much like everyday life in its details. Any infected Secret Service agent, any office secretary, or White House janitor can spread the virus around the halls at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Completely by accident.

Sneeze once, then use your desk phone to call personnel to tell them youre going home, and the replacement worker who picks up the same phone to announce that theyre in place becomes a disease vector.

How about the guys who deliver copy paper to the White House loading dock, or fresh food to the White House kitchen? Will Barons private tutor or playmates hand off one virus spore or a billion? The Donalds Karl Rove, Stephen Miller could bring the virus back with him from his recent honeymoon.

The easiest protection against the Corona virus is to keep it out of the country. If we can build a wall to keep out big, burly beaners, then surely were up to building a wall to block itsy bitsy junk smaller than cells?! All we really need is to take a few $Billion more from the Pentagon (maybe from their germ warfare planners?) and transfer it to the corporate donor construction companies who are already getting the wall building contracts.

But this week, the Donald announced that hes going to admit 50% more foreign workers for seasonal employment this year than last year, to fill positions as golf course laborers and resort housekeepers. It seems that too many American workers either dont want the jobs at all, or at least demand that they actually receive pay for doing the work. So well bring in foreign workers, trusting in their promises that they have had no exposure to any foreign viruses.

What about all those ISIS and al Qaeda cell terrorists that weve been told lurk around the border, mingling with would-be immigrants? Why wont they infect the seasonal laborers to get Corona virus into the U.S.? There are a few clear answers in White House thinking: First, all those terrorists are infiltrating the gangs of immigrants at the border. So theyll never get mixed up with seasonal workers recruited further inland; Second, theyre all religious fundamentalists, therefore, as dumb about science as Southern Baptists, and incapable of planning an attack using diseases instead of bombs; Third, youre supposed to have stopped thinking about them, now that our press releases have moved past putting little brown children in cages.

One of the things that we dont need for sure is any more silly globalist cooperation with other nations. The Donald has closed down Americas pandemic planning and research operation that coordinated with foreign governments. It was part of the National Security Council deep state operations. Had to drain that deep state swamp.

We dont want any damn foreign diseases in our grate nation, any more than we want foreign workers (except seasonal ones). So as part of Making America Grate Again, we have reduced cooperation with foreign government disease researchers, just as we are reducing cooperation between British and American intelligence operations. Dr. Spock can no longer talk to Dr. Who, just like James Bond and Felix Leiter can no longer work together.

The Corona virus outbreak became public in December of last year. So the Donalds administration planners have known about it for a while. With that knowledge, the Donalds next federal budget proposal, released in February, calls for spending reductions for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Those organizations do science, and we all know how Republicans feel about science.

And while well be cutting back on CDC research, the Donald also proposes cutting back on Medicare and Medicaid, to ensure that people who get the virus wont get the treatment.

During his Wednesday afternoon press conference, the Donald told us that hes appointing Mike Pence to run our Corona virus effort. Grate. Mike Pence, christian scientist, who, along with Mike Pomposo, wants to bring about Armageddon! Could Corona virus be the Pestilence the bible promises us? How can we give it grater effect?

As a show of his munificence, the Donald announced that he will allow U.S. citizens who caught the virus overseas to be allowed to return to their own home country where they are citizens. But they will have to remain in quarantine. Since they are mostly white and wealthy enough to travel, their quarantines will be of a different sort from the cages holding brown children. But still, hes only letting them come back home as a show of his kindness. Not because they have any legal rights that he has to recognize.

Now we have troops in Korea coming down with Corona virus. We dont know yet whether the grate orange munificence will allow them to return home. Soldiers are generally young, powerless, and as Phil Ochs wrote, so eager to go and die upon a foreign shore. Recent polls show too many troopers turning against the orange messiah. Maybe its best to leave them to ride out the disease in Korea or where ever.

It would be the height of patriotism for one of those returning citizens, or a soldier infected overseas, if invited to the White House or a campaign event as a campaign exploitation event, to sneeze the Corona virus on the Donald, or even just a Secret Service agent in the Donalds close personal protection detail.

Tom Hall

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What If Donald Got the Bug? - LA Progressive

The Baltimore Convention Center is set to host the annual Clean Buildings Expo (CBE), March 17 and 18. After a successful launch in 2019, the trade show for the commercial cleaning industry is set to deliver impactful education and showcase new products all for the enrichment and betterment of facility cleaning managers, executive housekeepers and environmental services executives, as well as building service contractors.

"We'll have even more educational conference sessions in year two of Clean Buildings Expo," says Amy Brown, director of education and events at Trade Press Media Group (the parent company of Facility Cleaning Decisions magazine and CleanLink.com). "Our expanded offerings include new tracks, along with pertinent and well-known leaders of the industry sharing their expertise."

CBE's dedicated 2020 tracks are: Cleaning Operations; Staffing and Management; and Trends and Technologies. The education conference portion of CBE includes almost 30 complimentary sessions within the three tracks. Speakers are carefully curated by CleanLink.com and ISSA, the co-owners of Clean Buildings Expo, providing attendees the opportunity to gain invaluable insight into the industry.

A bonus, attendees sitting in on education sessions can also earn continuing education units (CEUs) for every session they participate in at CBE. A sampling of session topics include: ADA Compliance in Restrooms; Creating Leaders Through Succession Planning; Germ Warfare A Focus On Influenza, Norovirus And Emerging Viral Diseases; and Where Did The Workers Go?

"I attended the inaugural Clean Buildings Expo along with two of my custodial supervisors with an eye to exposing them to the breadth of the industry," says Keith Webb, EFP, executive director of plant services at Newport News Public Schools, Newport News, Virginia. "I am a member of the Healthy Schools Campaign's Green Cleaning Steering Committee and an ISSA member, so I have become well acquainted with the state of our industry. I brought aspiring leaders from my school division because I knew they would benefit from this event. I was not disappointed. The variety and relevance of the breakout sessions was broad enough to 'leave them wanting more'. My supervisors were able to meet several of the breakout speakers over meals, as well as network with other industry leaders who do what they do. All this and a trade show, too!"

Following a morning of robust education, Clean Buildings Expo attendees will head down to the trade show expo hall, which will once again be bustling with activity, innovation and much more. Attendees can meet with manufacturers and leading suppliers of floor and carpet cleaning equipment, chemicals, restroom supplies, emerging technologies and green cleaning products during the two exhibit days. CleanLink.com and ISSA are projecting an even larger show floor than the inaugural event in 2019.

Show goers will want to stick around all day so they don't miss the unparalleled networking opportunities available at the opening night networking party. Here, Clean Buildings Expo attendees can mingle with fellow facility cleaning managers, BSCs, education speakers, manufacturers and facility executives from the co-located National Facilities Management and Technology (NFMT) event.

Entry into all facets of CBE remain free at the March event. To cap it off, registration also includes access into the aforementioned NFMT show floor and its more than 100 conference education sessions. For additional attendee information, including registration details and the full conference schedule, go to http://www.cleanbuildingsexpo.com.

POSTED ON: 2/12/2020

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Clean Buildings Expo To Offer Expanded Education Sessions - CleanLink

Sue Miller Youngs 1965 definitive history of the Town of Amherst says that the town was indirectly named for British North American Commander-in-Chief Lord Jeffery Amherst. Indirectly, because when the town was incorporated in 1818, she surmises the early town fathers were likely thinking of Amherst, Mass., which was named after the British soldier and politician.

For many years, Amherst's hospitality was served up at a motor lodge named the Lord Amherst Hotel at Main and Kensington.

Its not likely that those town fathers knew of the generals implicit statements in favor of giving smallpox-infected blankets to enemy indigenous people, and thereby engaging in genocidal germ warfare.

In her 306-page A History of the Town of Amherst, Young writes that Lord Amherst was reputed to be grave, formal, and cold, and continues, It is ironic that his name became the name of a town that is pleased to be characterized by friendliness, suburban informality, and warm hospitality.

But grave and cold is barely the tip of the iceberg.

You can read the letters written in then-General Amhersts own hand during the French and Indian War, as collected by UMASS Amherst Professor Dr. Peter dErrico on his website.

In one letter, Amherst writes, Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.

In approving of one colonels plan to leave disease-laden blankets for the Native Americans to use, Amherst writes, "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets." In the same letter, he also suggests allowing dogs to chase down and kill them, ordering his men "to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race."

Amhersts motives were to kill as many indigenous people by whatever means necessary; to put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being, he wrote, the underlining to their very being.

In other Amherst communities around North America, there have been movements to remove Lord Amhersts name that have been met with varying degrees of success.

One man who worked in Amherst, Mass., says his petition for a name change didnt get very far.

"The town did respond and they said they are not willing to change the name of the town point-blank because of the cost of changing everything," William Bowen told Masslive.com. "I didn't get much response back from the Legislature."

In 2017, Amherst, Nova Scotias town council voted to keep its name but leave the door open for future discussion. That was also the thought of the mayor of Amherstburg, Ont., near Windsor.

There have been changes as well. Amherst College changed their sports nickname from the Lord Jeffs to the Mammoths. In Montreal, the mayor said Amherst was a stain on the citys history as he ordered the 2017 change of Rue Amherst to a name with roots in indigenous culture.

Continued here:

Lord Jeffery Amherst, the town namesake who attempted a Native American genocide - Buffalo News

DC Comics Legion of Substitute Heroes is a fan-favorite super team, being a spin-off of the better-known Legion of Super-Heroes, DCs premiere superhero team of the 31st century. The Substitutes consist of would-be heroes that didnt make the cut in the main Legions superhero auditions but still wanted to help others. As such, they formed their own team, vowing to perform substitute superhero services when the main Legion couldnt spare the time.

The Legion of Substitute Heroes spoke to many fans who felt slighted by the mainstream cool kids like the Legion of Super-Heroes. The team also inspired some endearing characters with offbeat powers but few had a weirder name or power set than Drura Sehpt, aka Infectious Lass. Known for having the dubious power to make people sick, Infectious Lass seemed doomed to be a pariah, even among other superhero rejects.

Related: Which Marvel Superhero Has The Most Valuable Blood?

Yet, surprisingly, the girl who had literally every illness in the universe proved quite popular with men. In one continuity, she even went on to marry Jacques Foccart, the second Invisible Kid, and the President of Earth. Theyre probably one of the more unusual couples in the DC Universe, but perhaps a closer look at Infectious Lass can reveal why guys want to reach out to the girl with all the diseases.

Infectious Lass first appeared in Superboy Vol. 1 #201. An alien from the planet Somahtur, Infectious Lass people have bodies that house colonies of bacteria that they themselves have become immune to. Believing she could use this quality to become a superhero, Dura designed a costume (complete with a mask and cape that looks like dripping mucus) and auditioned for the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Although Infectious Lass powers could potentially be a huge asset (just imagine how ineffective a team of supervillains could be if they all suddenly came down with stomach flu), she often had a hard time aiming her diseases or turning them off. As a result, she often accidentally made her teammates sick as shown when she made Legionnaire Star Boy horribly ill during her audition. To top it off, some of Infectious Lass otherworldly illnesses were just plain weird and did bizarre things to other people like the time she accidentally hit Color Kid with a gender-switching virus.

Despite this, Infectious Lass soon gained membership in The Legion of Substitute Heroes who thought she deserved a chance to prove herself. Her friendly, somewhat nerdy personality made her an endearing recruit, but the nature of her powers did make her very insecure in some stories. In one hilarious story, she attempts to seduce Ambush Bug with her feminine wiles but proves completely inept, even telling him how she makes people sick while trying to make small talk. In another story, she bemoans the fact that Ill never know the tender touch of a man, prompting one of her teammates to suggest she change her name.

As time went on, however, Infectious Lass grew more attractive in both looks and personality. Perhaps artists and writers found the dichotomy of a kind-hearted woman in a lethal body weirdly titillating, but Infectious Lass began to be drawn in a more seductive matter. Where her earlier appearances emphasized her gross, phlegm-like costume, during the 1990s, Drura was frequently depicted posing in bedsheets and lingerie. Moreover, she was clearly sleeping with Legion of Super-Heroes member Invisible Kid indicating that she had finally achieved some control over her powers (in the past her merest touch usually sent men into convulsions).

Related:Batmans Son is Joining DC's Legion of Super-Heroes, Too

Infectious Lass also finally gained membership in the official Legion of Superheroes. While this was initially seen as a way of simply filling the ranks after the main members all left the team, Drura still managed to serve with distinction infecting only those she chose to. Moreover, she ended up marrying the Invisible Kid and when he became Earth President wound up becoming First Lady and living in the London Presidential Palace. Drura even became one of her husbands advisors, showing how she had grown in confidence since her early appearances.

Unfortunately, during the Zero Hour storyline, Infectious Lass was wiped from the timeline. She later showed up in a rebooted universe, once again trying out for the Legion of Superheroes. It wasnt a complete backslide, however, as Drura was shown to still have better control over her germ warfare abilities. In Legion #37, Infectious Lass is actually accepted into Legion Academy and is even considered one of their most promising cadets. Once again clad in her mask and costume, Infectious Lass is nonetheless still showcased as an attractive young woman more exotic alien than a gross sick girl.

And while Druras relationship with the Earth President appears to have been retconned out of existence, her popularity with men has apparently not waned. In Tales of the Unexpected #4, another rebooted version of Infectious Lass showed up in the past fighting a group of powerful overlords known as the Architects. Again wearing her classic mucus-like costume, Infectious Lass retained her cheerful attitude and managed to attract the swashbuckling pirate Captain Fear who confessed Drura left him lovesick.

For a character initially designed as a joke for the Legion of Super-Heroes, Infectious Lass has acquired a remarkably devoted following. Although the Legion has probably gone through more reboots than any other superhero team in the DC Multiverse, making her current status (or even existence) questionable, theres an excellent chance this fan-favorite character will show up again complete with some new admirers!

Next: How Morbius Saved Spider-Man With His Poisoned Blood

The Final Death of DEADPOOL Revealed By Marvel Comics

Michael Jung is a mild-mannered freelance writer-for-hire, actor, and professional storyteller with a keen interest in pop culture, education, nonprofit organizations, and unusual side hustles. His work has been featured in Screen Rant, ASU Now, Sell Books Fast, Study.com, and Free Arts among others. A graduate of Arizona State University with a PhD in 20th Century American Literature, Michael has written novels, short stories, stage plays, screenplays, and how-to manuals.

Michaels background in storytelling draws him to find the most fascinating aspects of any topic and transform them into a narrative that informs and entertains the reader. Thanks to a life spent immersed in comic books and movies, Michael is always ready to infuse his articles with offbeat bits of trivia for an extra layer of fun. In his spare time, you can find him entertaining kids as Spider-Man or Darth Vader at birthday parties or scaring the heck out of them at haunted houses.

Visit Michael Jungs website for information on how to hire him, follow him on Twitter Michael50834213, or contact him directly: michael(at)michaeljungwriter(dot)com.

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DC Hero's Most Disgusting Power Was Popular With The President - Screen Rant