COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US

[vi-va]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1238269193427906560

https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-further-evidence-virus-originated-us/5706078

It would be useful to read this prior article for background:

China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

By Larry Romanoff, March 04, 2020

***

As readers will recall from the earlier article (above), Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that the new coronavirus could have originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended. Wuhan in China has only one of those types, rendering it in analogy as a kind of “branch” which cannot exist by itself but must have grown from a “tree”.

The Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes, but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored.

Immediately prior to that, the CDC totally shut down the US Military’s main bio-lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, due to an absence of safeguards against pathogen leakages, issuing a complete “cease and desist” order to the military. It was immediately after this event that the ‘e-cigarette’ epidemic arose.



Screenshot from The New York Times August 08, 2019

We also had the Japanese citizens infected in September of 2019, in Hawaii, people who had never been to China, these infections occurring on US soil long before the outbreak in Wuhan but only shortly after the locking down of Fort Detrick.

Then, on Chinese social media, another article appeared, aware of the above but presenting further details. It stated in part that five “foreign” athletes or other personnel visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games (October 18-27, 2019) were hospitalised in Wuhan for an undetermined infection.

The article explains more clearly that the Wuhan version of the virus could have come only from the US because it is what they call a “branch” which could not have been created first because it would have no ‘seed’. It would have to have been a new variety spun off the original ‘trunk’, and that trunk exists only in the US. (1)

There has been much public speculation that the coronavirus had been deliberately transmitted to China but, according to the Chinese article, a less sinister alternative is possible.

If some members of the US team at the World Military Games (18-27 October) had become infected by the virus from an accidental outbreak at Fort Detrick it is possible that, with a long initial incubation period, their symptoms might have been minor, and those individuals could easily have ‘toured’ the city of Wuhan during their stay, infecting potentially thousands of local residents in various locations, many of whom would later travel to the seafood market from which the virus would spread like wildfire (as it did).

That would account also for the practical impossibility of locating the legendary “patient zero” – which in this case has never been found since there would have been many of them.

Next, Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in Washington, said in an article in Science magazine that the first human infection has been confirmed as occurring in November 2019, (not in Wuhan), suggesting the virus originated elsewhere and then spread to the seafood markets. “One group put the origin of the outbreak as early as 18 September 2019.” (2) (3)

China’s New Coronavirus: An Examination of the Facts
Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally.

Description of earliest cases suggests the outbreak began elsewhere.

The article states:

“As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.” (4) (5)

The paper, written by a group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases”, they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link”, says Daniel Lucey . . . (6)

Earlier reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization had said the first patient had onset of symptoms on 8 December 2019 – and those reports simply said “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January. (7)

“Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019 – if not earlier – because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan – and perhaps elsewhere – before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace”, Lucey asserts.

“China must have realized the epidemic did not originate in that Wuhan Huanan seafood market”, Lucey told Science Insider. (8)

Kristian Andersen is an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute who has analyzed sequences of 2019-nCoV to try to clarify its origin. He said the scenario was “entirely plausible” of infected persons bringing the virus into the seafood market from somewhere outside. According to the Science article,

“Andersen posted his analysis of 27 available genomes of 2019-nCoV on 25 January on a virology research website. It suggests they had a “most recent common ancestor” – meaning a common source – as early as 1 October 2019.” (9)

It was interesting that Lucey also noted that MERS was originally believed to have come from a patient in Saudi Arabia in June of 2012, but later and more thorough studies traced it back to an earlier hospital outbreak of unexplained pneumonia in Jordan in April of that year. Lucey said that from stored samples from people who died in Jordan, medical authorities confirmed they had been infected with the MERS virus. (10)

This would provide impetus for caution among the public in accepting the “official standard narrative” that the Western media are always so eager to provide – as they did with SARS, MERS, and ZIKA, all of which ‘official narratives’ were later proven to have been wrong.

In this case, the Western media flooded their pages for months about the COVID-19 virus originating in the Wuhan seafood market, caused by people eating bats and wild animals. All of this has been proven wrong.

Not only did the virus not originate at the seafood market, it did not originate in Wuhan at all, and it has now been proven that it did not originate in China but was brought to China from another country. Part of the proof of this assertion is that the genome varieties of the virus in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere.

It would seem the only possibility for origination would be the US because only that country has the “tree trunk” of all the varieties. And it may therefore be true that the original source of the COVID-19 virus was the US military bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick. This would not be a surprise, given that the CDC completely shut down Fort Detrick, but also because, as I related in an earlier article, between 2005 and 2012 the US had experienced 1,059 events where pathogens had been either stolen or escaped from American bio-labs during the prior ten years.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CjGWaaDSKTyjWRMyQyGXUA

(2) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6477/492.full

(3) Science; Jon Cohen; Jan. 26, 2020
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally

(4) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

(5) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

(6) http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011109036

(7) http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011509040

(8) https://sciencespeaksblog.org/2020/...-2019-ncov-qa-6-an-evidence-based-hypothesis/

(9) http://virological.org/t/clock-and-tmrca-based-on-27-genomes/347

(10) http://applications.emro.who.int/emhj/v19/Supp1/EMHJ_2013_19_Supp1_S12_S18.pdf

Featured image is from Health.mil

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Global Research, 2020

 

[maverick1977]

I live 30 miles from Fort Detrick MD

 

[Ultima Thule]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1238269193427906560

https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-further-evidence-virus-originated-us/5706078

It would be useful to read this prior article for background:

China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

By Larry Romanoff, March 04, 2020

***

As readers will recall from the earlier article (above), Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that the new coronavirus could have originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended. Wuhan in China has only one of those types, rendering it in analogy as a kind of “branch” which cannot exist by itself but must have grown from a “tree”.

The Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes, but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored.

Immediately prior to that, the CDC totally shut down the US Military’s main bio-lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, due to an absence of safeguards against pathogen leakages, issuing a complete “cease and desist” order to the military. It was immediately after this event that the ‘e-cigarette’ epidemic arose.



Screenshot from The New York Times August 08, 2019

We also had the Japanese citizens infected in September of 2019, in Hawaii, people who had never been to China, these infections occurring on US soil long before the outbreak in Wuhan but only shortly after the locking down of Fort Detrick.

Then, on Chinese social media, another article appeared, aware of the above but presenting further details. It stated in part that five “foreign” athletes or other personnel visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games (October 18-27, 2019) were hospitalised in Wuhan for an undetermined infection.

The article explains more clearly that the Wuhan version of the virus could have come only from the US because it is what they call a “branch” which could not have been created first because it would have no ‘seed’. It would have to have been a new variety spun off the original ‘trunk’, and that trunk exists only in the US. (1)

There has been much public speculation that the coronavirus had been deliberately transmitted to China but, according to the Chinese article, a less sinister alternative is possible.

If some members of the US team at the World Military Games (18-27 October) had become infected by the virus from an accidental outbreak at Fort Detrick it is possible that, with a long initial incubation period, their symptoms might have been minor, and those individuals could easily have ‘toured’ the city of Wuhan during their stay, infecting potentially thousands of local residents in various locations, many of whom would later travel to the seafood market from which the virus would spread like wildfire (as it did).

That would account also for the practical impossibility of locating the legendary “patient zero” – which in this case has never been found since there would have been many of them.

Next, Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in Washington, said in an article in Science magazine that the first human infection has been confirmed as occurring in November 2019, (not in Wuhan), suggesting the virus originated elsewhere and then spread to the seafood markets. “One group put the origin of the outbreak as early as 18 September 2019.” (2) (3)

China’s New Coronavirus: An Examination of the Facts
Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally.

Description of earliest cases suggests the outbreak began elsewhere.

The article states:

“As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.” (4) (5)

The paper, written by a group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases”, they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link”, says Daniel Lucey . . . (6)

Earlier reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization had said the first patient had onset of symptoms on 8 December 2019 – and those reports simply said “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January. (7)

“Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019 – if not earlier – because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan – and perhaps elsewhere – before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace”, Lucey asserts.

“China must have realized the epidemic did not originate in that Wuhan Huanan seafood market”, Lucey told Science Insider. (8)

Kristian Andersen is an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute who has analyzed sequences of 2019-nCoV to try to clarify its origin. He said the scenario was “entirely plausible” of infected persons bringing the virus into the seafood market from somewhere outside. According to the Science article,

“Andersen posted his analysis of 27 available genomes of 2019-nCoV on 25 January on a virology research website. It suggests they had a “most recent common ancestor” – meaning a common source – as early as 1 October 2019.” (9)

It was interesting that Lucey also noted that MERS was originally believed to have come from a patient in Saudi Arabia in June of 2012, but later and more thorough studies traced it back to an earlier hospital outbreak of unexplained pneumonia in Jordan in April of that year. Lucey said that from stored samples from people who died in Jordan, medical authorities confirmed they had been infected with the MERS virus. (10)

This would provide impetus for caution among the public in accepting the “official standard narrative” that the Western media are always so eager to provide – as they did with SARS, MERS, and ZIKA, all of which ‘official narratives’ were later proven to have been wrong.

In this case, the Western media flooded their pages for months about the COVID-19 virus originating in the Wuhan seafood market, caused by people eating bats and wild animals. All of this has been proven wrong.

Not only did the virus not originate at the seafood market, it did not originate in Wuhan at all, and it has now been proven that it did not originate in China but was brought to China from another country. Part of the proof of this assertion is that the genome varieties of the virus in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere.

It would seem the only possibility for origination would be the US because only that country has the “tree trunk” of all the varieties. And it may therefore be true that the original source of the COVID-19 virus was the US military bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick. This would not be a surprise, given that the CDC completely shut down Fort Detrick, but also because, as I related in an earlier article, between 2005 and 2012 the US had experienced 1,059 events where pathogens had been either stolen or escaped from American bio-labs during the prior ten years.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CjGWaaDSKTyjWRMyQyGXUA

(2) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6477/492.full

(3) Science; Jon Cohen; Jan. 26, 2020
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally

(4) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

(5) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

(6) http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011109036

(7) http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011509040

(8) https://sciencespeaksblog.org/2020/...-2019-ncov-qa-6-an-evidence-based-hypothesis/

(9) http://virological.org/t/clock-and-tmrca-based-on-27-genomes/347

(10) http://applications.emro.who.int/emhj/v19/Supp1/EMHJ_2013_19_Supp1_S12_S18.pdf

Featured image is from Health.mil

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Global Research, 2020

so China is not testing live animal imports, you guys believing in conspiracy theories not a valid proofs

 

[zhxy]

The problem is easy to understand. The West has been following anti-China propaganda policy for many years. American political circles do not miss the rare opportunity to humiliate China when the Covid-19 outbreak occurs. The first is Trump celebrating with Covid-19 destroying the Chinese economy, followed by Western media creating the story of "conspiracy theory" when Covid-19 is a Chinese-made biological weapon. . A similar problem has arisen in Russia and Iran, both of which hate the United States, so their media blamed the US, claiming that the United States created Covid-19.

Covid-19 have become biological weapons due to the false propaganda policy of the national media systems hating each other.

 

[Mrc]

Although less likely but theory of biological attack cannot be ruled out

We don't have all the facts yet

 

[dbc]

So this proof of the US origin of COVID19 comes from a retired management consultant now teaching in Shanghai?

Lijian Zhao needs to find a credible expert on virus someone with expertise in epidemiology not a management consultant that is hoping to preserve his Chinese nest egg.

do better Mr Zhao, do better.


Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research

 

[gambit]

Yeah...This is the same source that say 9/11 was in 'inside job'.

 

[TexasJohn]

What about the recent bird flu outbreak in China. Is that the fault of the US too? Is that the latest line of BS coming from your dear leader Xi?
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...outbreak-deadly-bird-flu-among-chickens-hunan

China reports outbreak of deadly bird flu among chickens in Hunan province, close to coronavirus epicentre of Wuhan

• Bird flu outbreak in Hunan province, which lies on the southern border of Hubei province, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak
• Bird flu is much deadlier than either Sars or the coronavirus, but as of yet no human cases have been reported in this outbreak

Cissy Zhou
Published: 2:29am, 2 Feb, 2020



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107.2k
The deadly coronavirus infection had claimed 300 lives in China as of Sunday. So far, no deaths have been reported outside the country. The virus has sickened more than 14,000 in China and about 140 overseas so far.



The H5N1 avian flu virus, often called bird flu, causes severe respiratory disease in birds and is contagious to humans. The virus was first detected in 1996 in geese in China and is especially deadly for poultry.


It is possible, but difficult, to transmit bird flu from person to person, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Philippines reports first coronavirus death outside China after travel ban
2 Feb 2020

According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, “Most human infections with avian influenza viruses … have occurred after prolonged and close contact with infected birds.

 

[dbc]

Yeah...This is the same source that say 9/11 was in 'inside job'.

I knew the name sounded familiar.

What about the recent bird flu outbreak in China. Is that the fault of the US too? Is that the latest line of BS coming from your dear leader Xi?
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...outbreak-deadly-bird-flu-among-chickens-hunan

China reports outbreak of deadly bird flu among chickens in Hunan province, close to coronavirus epicentre of Wuhan

• Bird flu outbreak in Hunan province, which lies on the southern border of Hubei province, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak
• Bird flu is much deadlier than either Sars or the coronavirus, but as of yet no human cases have been reported in this outbreak

First swine, then people and now Chickens! I hope they don’t invent the cow flu.

 

[TexasJohn]

Can you guys also explain the African swine flu outbreak in Dec that messed up you pork supply during the Lunar New year?? No- there is something basically wrong with how you handle food. Period.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/business/china-pigs-african-swine-fever.html

China Responds Slowly, and a Pig Disease Becomes a Lethal Epidemic
The bungled effort to contain African swine fever could result in higher Chinese food costs for years and shows the limits of Beijing’s top-down approach to problems.

Buyers and sellers at a pork wholesale market in Beijing.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
By Keith Bradsher and Ailin Tang

• Dec. 17, 2019

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

WULONGQIAO, China — A devastating disease spreading from China has wiped out roughly one-quarter of the world’s pigs, reshaping farming and hitting the diets and pocketbooks of consumers around the globe.

China’s unsuccessful efforts to stop the disease may have hastened the spread — creating problems that could bedevil Beijing and global agriculture for years to come.

To halt African swine fever, as the disease is called, the authorities must persuade farmers to kill infected pigs and dispose of them properly. But in China, officials have been frugal to the point of stingy, requiring farmers to jump through hoops to seek compensation from often cash-poor local governments.

As a result, Chinese officials are not reaching farmers like Peng Weita. When one of his pigs suddenly died three months ago from swine fever, he said, he quickly slaughtered his other four dozen before they could fall sick as well. But he buried them and took a big loss rather than reporting the deaths to the government for compensation.

shows the limits of China’s emphasis on government-driven, top-down solutions to major problems, sometimes at the expense of the practical. It has also laid bare the struggle of a country of 1.4 billion people to feed itself.

• Thanks for reading The Times.

Subscribe to The Times

China has long viewed food security as tantamount to national security. It had become essentially self-reliant in pork as well as in rice and wheat thanks to subsidies and aggressive farmland management. The swine fever epidemic will test that commitment to its increasingly affluent people, who more often expect meat at the dinner table.


The pig disease — a highly contagious and untreatable outbreak that is not fatal to humans but can be spread by us — has now extended swiftly out of China. It has moved across nine other Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, which is the world’s fifth-largest pork producer and has lost much of its herd this autumn. Before reaching China, the disease had been slowly infecting occasional farms in Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Powered by pork, China’s overall food prices last month were one-fifth higher than they were a year ago, after seven years of little change. Large purchases of pork by China are driving up live hog prices in the United States, Europe and around the globe, pushing up costs for everything from German sausages to Vietnamese pork meatballs.


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Beef and lamb prices have risen as families worldwide seek alternatives, so much so that overall meat prices in international commodity markets have increased nearly 20 percent in the past year. Brazil is now ramping up beef and chicken production to meet demand, partly by burning forests in the Amazon to clear land for agriculture.

partial trade deal with the United States last month, in part to resume imports of American food. Pig prices have climbed so high that one livestock company, Guangxi Yangxiang, printed red banners to recruit potential farmers that read, “Raise 10 sows and drive a BMW next year.”

Stopping the epidemic was always going to be tough. Small farms, often packed together in crowded agricultural areas, produce nearly half of China’s pigs. To stop diseases from spreading, Chinese officials have to reach millions of traditional small farmers.

China’s leadership has focused on remaking farming to stop the spread. With generous subsidies, Beijing has ordered governments and businesses to build industrial-scale farms with safeguards like quarantine areas for new arrivals and incinerators for diseased pigs.


That solution could help long-term, but China’s immediate response may have made the spread worse.

When the swine fever began to spread 16 months ago, the Ministry of Agriculture told the country’s local governments to cull all pigs in herds if there was even one sick animal, and to compensate the farmers. The ministry authorized local governments to pay up to $115 for the largest pigs, a cap later raised to $170. Before the epidemic, however, many pigs sold for $250 or more apiece, particularly breeding sows, according to government data. With the epidemic, the price has soared to $600 or more.

To get that partial reimbursement, many farmers had to deal with tightfisted local officials. The ministry said it would reimburse local governments only for between 40 percent and 80 percent of their costs. Local governments also had to provide proof, often including laboratory tests, that pigs died of African swine fever and not some other ailment.




Image

Su Dezhi, a 34-year-old butcher in Guo Village, said that he had gone from selling two pigs a day worth of pork to half a pig.Credit...Keith Bradsher/The New York Times
As a result, culling has been slow. Official data show only 1.2 million pigs, or less than 0.3 percent of the country’s herds, have been culled. It is not clear where the rest of the country’s vanished herds went, but food experts say many were likely butchered and turned into food. That would worsen the spread, because the disease can lurk in meat for months.

Australia has found that almost half of the sausages and other pork products carried by recently arriving passengers or the mail were contaminated, said Mark Schipp, the president of the 182-nation World Organization for Animal Health in Paris and Australia’s chief veterinarian.

In Wulongqiao, a quiet village in the low, pine-studded hills of northern Hunan Province, a number of farmers said they did not bother with seeking compensation, citing the low payout.

Where many pigs went is a mystery. Mr. Peng, the farmer, said that when he slaughtered his pigs, he had panicked and buried them in secrecy, and so had no record of what became of them. He filed for the loss under his commercial insurance, which covered only a tenth of the value of the pigs, he said.


Chinese officials have tried to be reassuring. In April, July and October, officials said they had brought the disease under control, only to see signs of further spread. Each new statement was provided by a less senior official than the one before. Most recently, the agriculture ministry said that it only hoped production at the end of next year would be four-fifths of normal levels — still a shortfall equal to the entire pork production of the United States, the world’s second-largest pork-producing nation.

For now, dying pigs and rising pork prices are changing diets and cooking practices across China.

Su Dezhi, a pork butcher at an open-air market about 20 miles from Mr. Chen’s farm, said that he used to buy and carve up two pigs a day for sale. Now he can only sell half a pig a day. The wholesale price per pound for him to buy pigs has more than tripled.

“I can barely cover my costs,” he said, a large cleaver in his hand as he stood behind a table with only a few bloody slabs of pork.

Image

Chen Zhixiang, 36, is among the very few pig farmers in Wulongqiao who have not lost any pigs.Credit...Courtesy of Chen Zhixiang
Yet many in China seem reluctant to eat anything else. Across an aisle from Mr. Su stood several large cages full of chickens and ducks. But the poultry vendor, She Xinbao, said that his sales had only increased from about 30 birds a day to 33 or 34, partly because poultry prices have also risen.

Those who have pigs have enjoyed the surging prices. Chen Zhixiang, a 36-year-old pig farmer with a black dragon tattoo on his right forearm, is among the very few pig farmers in Wulongqiao who have not lost any pigs. He said he had cooked meals for his pigs from raw corn this year rather than buy feed that might be contaminated.

Pigs have become so rare in his part of Hunan Province that when he drives to a village these days to sell an animal or two, he draws a crowd.

“People gathered around the truck to stare at them,” he said. “It’s like they were seeing a panda.”

 

[vi-va]

Yeah...This is the same source that say 9/11 was in 'inside job'.

You can find hundreds, if not thousands of evidence that 9/11 is inside job on internet. There are many scientist can prove it.

 

[dbc]

You can find hundreds, if not thousands of evidence that 9/11 is inside job on internet. There are many scientist can prove it.

you couldn’t find a scientist so you picked a management consultant? Really?

 

[vi-va]

you couldn’t find a scientist so you picked a management consultant? Really?

you can search 9/11 on youtube if not banned. There are proof, too many. You don't need a ph degree to understand. Junior or high school physics should be ok. Just do it and see the facts.

 

[Beast]

so China is not testing live animal imports, you guys believing in conspiracy theories not a valid proofs

Another denial. How do u explain the genome sequence? You think China can make it up? The report are well published for all scientist to study. Some of the conclusion is even from western biologist and scientist. Care to share your in depth knowledge since u sounds like some PhD.

Can you guys also explain the African swine flu outbreak in Dec that messed up you pork supply during the Lunar New year?? No- there is something basically wrong with how you handle food. Period.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/business/china-pigs-african-swine-fever.html

China Responds Slowly, and a Pig Disease Becomes a Lethal Epidemic
The bungled effort to contain African swine fever could result in higher Chinese food costs for years and shows the limits of Beijing’s top-down approach to problems.

Buyers and sellers at a pork wholesale market in Beijing.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
By Keith Bradsher and Ailin Tang

• Dec. 17, 2019

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WULONGQIAO, China — A devastating disease spreading from China has wiped out roughly one-quarter of the world’s pigs, reshaping farming and hitting the diets and pocketbooks of consumers around the globe.

China’s unsuccessful efforts to stop the disease may have hastened the spread — creating problems that could bedevil Beijing and global agriculture for years to come.

To halt African swine fever, as the disease is called, the authorities must persuade farmers to kill infected pigs and dispose of them properly. But in China, officials have been frugal to the point of stingy, requiring farmers to jump through hoops to seek compensation from often cash-poor local governments.

As a result, Chinese officials are not reaching farmers like Peng Weita. When one of his pigs suddenly died three months ago from swine fever, he said, he quickly slaughtered his other four dozen before they could fall sick as well. But he buried them and took a big loss rather than reporting the deaths to the government for compensation.

shows the limits of China’s emphasis on government-driven, top-down solutions to major problems, sometimes at the expense of the practical. It has also laid bare the struggle of a country of 1.4 billion people to feed itself.

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China has long viewed food security as tantamount to national security. It had become essentially self-reliant in pork as well as in rice and wheat thanks to subsidies and aggressive farmland management. The swine fever epidemic will test that commitment to its increasingly affluent people, who more often expect meat at the dinner table.


The pig disease — a highly contagious and untreatable outbreak that is not fatal to humans but can be spread by us — has now extended swiftly out of China. It has moved across nine other Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, which is the world’s fifth-largest pork producer and has lost much of its herd this autumn. Before reaching China, the disease had been slowly infecting occasional farms in Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Powered by pork, China’s overall food prices last month were one-fifth higher than they were a year ago, after seven years of little change. Large purchases of pork by China are driving up live hog prices in the United States, Europe and around the globe, pushing up costs for everything from German sausages to Vietnamese pork meatballs.


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Beef and lamb prices have risen as families worldwide seek alternatives, so much so that overall meat prices in international commodity markets have increased nearly 20 percent in the past year. Brazil is now ramping up beef and chicken production to meet demand, partly by burning forests in the Amazon to clear land for agriculture.

partial trade deal with the United States last month, in part to resume imports of American food. Pig prices have climbed so high that one livestock company, Guangxi Yangxiang, printed red banners to recruit potential farmers that read, “Raise 10 sows and drive a BMW next year.”

Stopping the epidemic was always going to be tough. Small farms, often packed together in crowded agricultural areas, produce nearly half of China’s pigs. To stop diseases from spreading, Chinese officials have to reach millions of traditional small farmers.

China’s leadership has focused on remaking farming to stop the spread. With generous subsidies, Beijing has ordered governments and businesses to build industrial-scale farms with safeguards like quarantine areas for new arrivals and incinerators for diseased pigs.


That solution could help long-term, but China’s immediate response may have made the spread worse.

When the swine fever began to spread 16 months ago, the Ministry of Agriculture told the country’s local governments to cull all pigs in herds if there was even one sick animal, and to compensate the farmers. The ministry authorized local governments to pay up to $115 for the largest pigs, a cap later raised to $170. Before the epidemic, however, many pigs sold for $250 or more apiece, particularly breeding sows, according to government data. With the epidemic, the price has soared to $600 or more.

To get that partial reimbursement, many farmers had to deal with tightfisted local officials. The ministry said it would reimburse local governments only for between 40 percent and 80 percent of their costs. Local governments also had to provide proof, often including laboratory tests, that pigs died of African swine fever and not some other ailment.




Image

Su Dezhi, a 34-year-old butcher in Guo Village, said that he had gone from selling two pigs a day worth of pork to half a pig.Credit...Keith Bradsher/The New York Times
As a result, culling has been slow. Official data show only 1.2 million pigs, or less than 0.3 percent of the country’s herds, have been culled. It is not clear where the rest of the country’s vanished herds went, but food experts say many were likely butchered and turned into food. That would worsen the spread, because the disease can lurk in meat for months.

Australia has found that almost half of the sausages and other pork products carried by recently arriving passengers or the mail were contaminated, said Mark Schipp, the president of the 182-nation World Organization for Animal Health in Paris and Australia’s chief veterinarian.

In Wulongqiao, a quiet village in the low, pine-studded hills of northern Hunan Province, a number of farmers said they did not bother with seeking compensation, citing the low payout.

Where many pigs went is a mystery. Mr. Peng, the farmer, said that when he slaughtered his pigs, he had panicked and buried them in secrecy, and so had no record of what became of them. He filed for the loss under his commercial insurance, which covered only a tenth of the value of the pigs, he said.


Chinese officials have tried to be reassuring. In April, July and October, officials said they had brought the disease under control, only to see signs of further spread. Each new statement was provided by a less senior official than the one before. Most recently, the agriculture ministry said that it only hoped production at the end of next year would be four-fifths of normal levels — still a shortfall equal to the entire pork production of the United States, the world’s second-largest pork-producing nation.

For now, dying pigs and rising pork prices are changing diets and cooking practices across China.

Su Dezhi, a pork butcher at an open-air market about 20 miles from Mr. Chen’s farm, said that he used to buy and carve up two pigs a day for sale. Now he can only sell half a pig a day. The wholesale price per pound for him to buy pigs has more than tripled.

“I can barely cover my costs,” he said, a large cleaver in his hand as he stood behind a table with only a few bloody slabs of pork.

Image

Chen Zhixiang, 36, is among the very few pig farmers in Wulongqiao who have not lost any pigs.Credit...Courtesy of Chen Zhixiang
Yet many in China seem reluctant to eat anything else. Across an aisle from Mr. Su stood several large cages full of chickens and ducks. But the poultry vendor, She Xinbao, said that his sales had only increased from about 30 birds a day to 33 or 34, partly because poultry prices have also risen.

Those who have pigs have enjoyed the surging prices. Chen Zhixiang, a 36-year-old pig farmer with a black dragon tattoo on his right forearm, is among the very few pig farmers in Wulongqiao who have not lost any pigs. He said he had cooked meals for his pigs from raw corn this year rather than buy feed that might be contaminated.

Pigs have become so rare in his part of Hunan Province that when he drives to a village these days to sell an animal or two, he draws a crowd.

“People gathered around the truck to stare at them,” he said. “It’s like they were seeing a panda.”

From Africa all the way to China? Sound deliberate by some... Nothing to do with how we handle food.

 

[TexasJohn]

It's the name of the swine flu strain! you're killing me smalls! you want to blame Africa now?