The Coronavirus, not the beer
- Thread starter Runnin
- Start date
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.
The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue. The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help.
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” said Bao-Ping Zhu, a Chinese American who served in that role, which was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2007 and 2011. “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.”
Zhu and the other sources said the American expert, Dr. Linda Quick, was a trainer of Chinese field epidemiologists who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases. As an American CDC employee, they said, Quick was in an ideal position to be the eyes and ears on the ground for the United States and other countries on the coronavirus outbreak, and might have alerted them to the growing threat weeks earlier.
No other foreign disease experts were embedded to lead the program after Quick left in July, according to the sources. Zhu said an embedded expert can often get word of outbreaks early, after forming close relationships with Chinese counterparts.
Zhu and the other sources said Quick could have provided real-time information to U.S. and other officials around the world during the first weeks of the outbreak, when they said the Chinese government tamped down on the release of information and provided erroneous assessments.
Quick left amid a bitter U.S. trade dispute with China when she learned her federally funded post, officially known as resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, would be discontinued as of September, the sources said. The U.S. CDC said it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31.
The CDC would not make Quick, who still works for the agency, available for comment.
Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the CDC, said that if the U.S. resident adviser had still been in China, “it is possible that we would know more today about how this coronavirus is spreading and what works best to stop it.”
Dr. George Conway, a medical epidemiologist who knows Quick and had served as resident advisor between 2012 and 2015, said funding for the position had been tenuous for years because of a perennial debate among U.S health officials over whether China should be paying for funding its own training program.
Yet since the training program was launched in 2001, the sources familiar with it say, it has not only strengthened the ranks of Chinese epidemiologists in the field, but also fostered collegial relationships between public health officials in the two countries.
“We go there as credentialed diplomats and return home as close colleagues and often as friends,” Conway said.
In 2007, Dr. Robert Fontaine, a CDC epidemiologist and one of the longest serving U.S. officials in the adviser’s position, received China’s highest honor for outstanding contributions to public health due to his contribution as a foreigner in helping to detect and investigate clusters of pneumonia of unknown cause.
But since last year, Frieden and others said, growing tensions between the Trump administration and China’s leadership have apparently damaged the collaboration.
“The message from the administration was, ‘Don’t work with China, they’re our rival,’” Frieden said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...na-months-before-virus-outbreak-idUSKBN21910S
laidership
The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue. The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help.
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” said Bao-Ping Zhu, a Chinese American who served in that role, which was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2007 and 2011. “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.”
Zhu and the other sources said the American expert, Dr. Linda Quick, was a trainer of Chinese field epidemiologists who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases. As an American CDC employee, they said, Quick was in an ideal position to be the eyes and ears on the ground for the United States and other countries on the coronavirus outbreak, and might have alerted them to the growing threat weeks earlier.
No other foreign disease experts were embedded to lead the program after Quick left in July, according to the sources. Zhu said an embedded expert can often get word of outbreaks early, after forming close relationships with Chinese counterparts.
Zhu and the other sources said Quick could have provided real-time information to U.S. and other officials around the world during the first weeks of the outbreak, when they said the Chinese government tamped down on the release of information and provided erroneous assessments.
Quick left amid a bitter U.S. trade dispute with China when she learned her federally funded post, officially known as resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, would be discontinued as of September, the sources said. The U.S. CDC said it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31.
The CDC would not make Quick, who still works for the agency, available for comment.
Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the CDC, said that if the U.S. resident adviser had still been in China, “it is possible that we would know more today about how this coronavirus is spreading and what works best to stop it.”
Dr. George Conway, a medical epidemiologist who knows Quick and had served as resident advisor between 2012 and 2015, said funding for the position had been tenuous for years because of a perennial debate among U.S health officials over whether China should be paying for funding its own training program.
Yet since the training program was launched in 2001, the sources familiar with it say, it has not only strengthened the ranks of Chinese epidemiologists in the field, but also fostered collegial relationships between public health officials in the two countries.
“We go there as credentialed diplomats and return home as close colleagues and often as friends,” Conway said.
In 2007, Dr. Robert Fontaine, a CDC epidemiologist and one of the longest serving U.S. officials in the adviser’s position, received China’s highest honor for outstanding contributions to public health due to his contribution as a foreigner in helping to detect and investigate clusters of pneumonia of unknown cause.
But since last year, Frieden and others said, growing tensions between the Trump administration and China’s leadership have apparently damaged the collaboration.
“The message from the administration was, ‘Don’t work with China, they’re our rival,’” Frieden said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...na-months-before-virus-outbreak-idUSKBN21910S
laidership
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nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
I'm guessing everyone who has been in contact with him the last few days will self-quarantine. Quorum?
He was just at the podium during the presser saying this is a 100% lie.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
he broke the lunacy Richter scale today...something to be proud of
Runnin
Well-known member
I wonder, with anybody but Trump in the WH wouldn't there have been more cooperation, volunteer help and information sharing between China and the U.S. when the outbreak started? Did Trump publicly or otherwise offer help? He absolutely should have, for the goodwill factor alone, but also for information about the virus. Trump's childishness and petty games put the govt in a difficult position when it needs international assistance.
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Runnin
Well-known member
https://deadline.com/2020/03/coronavirus-harvey-weinstein-positive-test-prision-1202889800/
Should prisoners get ventilators if they need them?
Should prisoners get ventilators if they need them?
57Brave
Well-known member
yes
Denying them would pretty much be the definition of cruel and unusual.
Runnin
Well-known member
I should have clarified my question. Assuming there aren't enough ventilators to go around, should prisoners expect to get them?
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Yuanyuan Zhu was walking to her gym in San Francisco on March 9, thinking the workout could be her last for a while, when she noticed that a man was shouting at her. He was yelling an expletive about China. Then a bus passed, she recalled, and he screamed after it, “Run them over.”
She tried to keep her distance, but when the light changed, she was stuck waiting with him at the crosswalk. She could feel him staring at her. And then, suddenly, she felt it: his saliva hitting her face and her favorite sweater.
In shock, Ms. Zhu, who is 26 and moved to the United States from China five years ago, hurried the rest of the way to the gym. She found a corner where no one could see her, and she cried quietly.
As the coronavirus upends American life, Chinese-Americans face a double threat. Not only are they grappling like everyone else with how to avoid the virus itself, they are also contending with growing racism in the form of verbal and physical attacks. Other Asians-Americans — with families from Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and other places — are facing threats, too, lumped together with Chinese-Americans by a bigotry that does not know the difference.
In interviews over the past week, nearly two dozen Asian-Americans across the country said they were afraid — to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside. Many described being yelled at in public — a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by Muslim-Americans after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But unlike 2001, when President George W. Bush urged tolerance of Muslim-Americans, this time President Trump is using language that Asian-Americans say is inciting racist attacks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Sad. We can do better.
"The enemy of America is not our Muslim friends." George W Bush, a week after 9/11
She tried to keep her distance, but when the light changed, she was stuck waiting with him at the crosswalk. She could feel him staring at her. And then, suddenly, she felt it: his saliva hitting her face and her favorite sweater.
In shock, Ms. Zhu, who is 26 and moved to the United States from China five years ago, hurried the rest of the way to the gym. She found a corner where no one could see her, and she cried quietly.
As the coronavirus upends American life, Chinese-Americans face a double threat. Not only are they grappling like everyone else with how to avoid the virus itself, they are also contending with growing racism in the form of verbal and physical attacks. Other Asians-Americans — with families from Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and other places — are facing threats, too, lumped together with Chinese-Americans by a bigotry that does not know the difference.
In interviews over the past week, nearly two dozen Asian-Americans across the country said they were afraid — to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside. Many described being yelled at in public — a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by Muslim-Americans after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But unlike 2001, when President George W. Bush urged tolerance of Muslim-Americans, this time President Trump is using language that Asian-Americans say is inciting racist attacks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Sad. We can do better.
"The enemy of America is not our Muslim friends." George W Bush, a week after 9/11
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
A relatively optimistic take from a Nobel winning scientist.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
There are quite a few things they are in agreement on. Why not pass those and come back to the stuff they disagree on later.
I dont get it either. The worst time for both sides to posture for political points. This is including the trump administration.
57Brave
Well-known member
There will be a controversial pecking order that no one will approve.
Of course prisoners included