Coronavirus in China

Copied and pasted from
Jim Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence
February 10, 2020

CORONAVIRUS INFECTIONS AND DEATHS MAY BE TEN TIMES WORSE THAN WE KNOW
By Jim Rickards

Is anything worse than the spread of the infectious coronavirus as we now understand it? Yes. Our current understanding is based on official statistics from various government sources. What if those statistics are wrong and the extent of the disease is far worse than we realize? That worse case scenario is the topic of THIS ARTICLE. The official statistics show 34,963 cases as of Saturday, February 8. However, there is good reason to believe the actual situation is far worse.

This article shows that the Chinese website Tencent, (similar to Facebook or Twitter as a large social media platform), published figures that suggest the actual number of cases is closer to 155,000 and the number of deaths is about 25,000. If those figures are accurate, then the infection rate is five times the official figure and the number of deaths is 40 times the official figure. Those Tencent figures also reveal a death rate of 16%, which is eight times the official death rate of 2%.

Who’s right, Tencent or the Chinese government? A number of factors go into answering this question. Anecdotal evidence suggests that dead bodies are literally lying in the streets in Wuhan, the city most affected by the virus. Those bodies were being whisked away in non-refrigerated trucks and there is a reported shortage of body bags. Dead bodies are being cremated without autopsies or blood samples, so many coronavirus victims are not being identified as such.

Wuhan is also the site of China’s biological warfare laboratory, and there is some suggestion that the coronavirus may have escaped from the government labs.

China has a long history of official lies on everything from entering the WTO in 2001 to joining the IMF’s currency basket (the SDR) in 2016, so they may be lying about the coronavirus also. And, while Tencent has taken down its coronavirus estimates (China’s internet is heavily censored), those figures came from somewhere, which raises an inference that they are correct.

It’s too soon to gauge the extent and impact of the coronavirus on individual victims or the world economy. If the Tencent figures are correct, this pandemic has much further and much longer to run.

I take Andology’s information with a grain of salt… but his projections are catastrophic…

The predictive tool can be downloaded from here (MS Excel).

Edit: Real information out of Shenzhen, Guangdong province in China… from Chinese scientists…

Those regimes are famous for missleading information policy- if they say 1000 than you can be sure that the real number is 10000 (whatever the issue is). The only positive thing is, that there is much money to make with Kangaroo and Maori short.

The Chinese Bat Virus

aka the Wuhan Virus — aka the coronavirus — aka COVID-19

There are two prevailing theories about the source of the original human infection with this virus:

(1) A meat-and-live-animal market in Wuhan, where live snakes and bats (along with other live species) were sold for human consumption. According to this theory, the virus jumped to humans from either the snakes or the bats. Snakes were implicated first. Then bats were blamed.

(2) A Chinese government biological weapons laboratory in Wuhan, where this virus was being investigated and weaponized. According to this theory, the virus escaped from the lab, and the Chinese government subsequently cast blame on the food-and-live-animal market, in order to conceal the accidental release from the government lab.



Labeling the Chinese Bat Virus with the
politically-correct name “COVID-19”

The World Health Organization wants to conceal the origin of the Chinese Bat Virus by giving it a sanitized, clinical name – COVID-19.

From WIKIPEDIA

The World Health Organization on 11 February 2020 announced that “COVID-19” will be the official name of the disease. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “co” stands for “corona”, “vi” for “virus” and “d” for “disease”, while “19” was for the year, as the outbreak was first identified on December 31. Tedros said the name had been chosen to avoid references to a specific geographical location, animal species or group of people in line with international recommendations for naming aimed at preventing stigmatisation.

To hell with that!

Political correctness is the last thing the world needs at this point. Instead, the world needs total transparency, and worldwide cooperation in combating this epidemic – before it becomes a pandemic.

This thing originated in China. It was concealed and covered up by the Chi-com regime – until they could no longer maintain the cover-up. It has killed more than 1,000 Chinese, and sickened tens of thousands. And it has escaped into the rest of the world, largely due to the failure of the Chi-com regime to contain it, when they first detected it more than two months ago.

We can lay this catastrophe directly at the feet of Chi-com Dictator Xi Jinping.


Those are the facts, and facts are stubborn things. The World Health Organization should stop worrying about who gets “stigmatized” by the facts.

If Xi Jinping is “stigmatized” for failing to acknowledge and contain this epidemic, so be it.

If the Chi-com regime is “stigmatized” for weaponizing a deadly disease, so be it.

If the people of Wuhan are “stigmatized” for eating snakes and bats, so be it.

End of rant.

Here are some facts for the World Health Organization to consider —

WHO would have guessed???.. pun intended…

WHO accused of ‘delaying’ response to coronavirus outbreak to appease China
FEBRUARY 16, 2020

As the number of coronavirus deaths spike, the World Health Organizations has been accused of “delaying” its response for a sinister reason.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been accused of “delaying” its response to the coronavirus outbreak in an attempt to appease China.

By the time the UN agency declared a global health emergency on January 30, the virus had already spread well beyond China.

The WHO says it first heard reports of a previously-unknown virus in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, on December 31 last year.

It’s estimated to have started in early December, but local Chinese officials sought to play down the virus so as not to attract the ire of the Chinese Communist Party.

Public health experts suspect that before the meeting on January 23, China tried to downplay the virus and urged the agency not to designate it a “public health emergency of international concern”, according to The Times. The WHO has denied influence claims.

Dr John Ashton, one of the UK’s leading public health specialists, said the WHO “failed to declare a global public health emergency in a timely way”.
It comes as the number of deaths from the coronavirus has skyrocketed to 1527, with over 67,000 infections worldwide.

66,492 of those cases are based in mainland China, with 338 in Japan, 72 in Singapore, 56 in Hong Kong and 15 in Australia.

The agency argues it didn’t declare a global emergency earlier because there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China.

China is a key strategic partner of the WHO and its financial backing is important to the agency’s future — particularly after the US, its top donor, last week said it wants to cut its contribution by 53 per cent.

The WHO has also faced scrutiny for its praise of China, having hailed the country’s “extraordinary” effort to tackle the epidemic.

Economist Defence Editor Shashank Joshi tweeted a photo of the coronavirus panel at the Munich Security Conference, saying the WHO’s representative was “absolutely” gushing over China.

One adviser to the WHO told The Times: “(The agency) has great difficulty in being openly critical of a member state as its only real power is persuasion.

“I suspect praising China for their response was the best way to keep the Chinese on board.

Meanwhile, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist infected with the coronavirus has died in France, the first fatality in Europe and the fourth outside mainland China.

The Chinese man died at the Bichat hospital in Paris of a lung infection due to the flu-like virus, authorities said on Saturday.

“We have to get our health system ready to face a possible pandemic propagation of the virus, and therefore the spreading of the virus across France,” Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said.

British mathematical epidemiology expert Robin Thompson said that with nearly 50 cases in Europe, a death was not surprising.

“The most important thing to point out, however, is that there still hasn’t been sustained person-to-person transmission in Europe,” he said.

In China some cities remain in lockdown, streets are deserted, employees are nervous, and travel bans and quarantine orders are in place around the country.

Those returning to Beijing from the New Year holiday have been ordered to undergo a 14-day self-quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus.

Many factories are yet to re-open, disrupting supply chains for everyone from smartphone makers to car manufacturers.

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was impossible to tell where the epidemic will spread.

“We are concerned by the continued increase in the number of cases in China,” Tedros told the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

“We are concerned by the lack of urgency in funding the response from the international community.

“Most of all, we are concerned about the potential havoc this virus could wreak in countries with weaker health systems.”

The biggest cluster outside China has been on cruise ship the Diamond Princess, quarantined off Japan’s Yokohama.

Out of about 3700 passengers and crew on board, 285 people have tested positive and been sent to hospital.

The US said on Saturday it plans to send an aircraft to pick up American passengers and take them back home where they face another two weeks of isolation “out of an abundance of caution”.

An 83-year-old American woman from the Westerdam cruise ship, which finally docked in Cambodia on Thursday, tested positive for the coronavirus on landing in Malaysia, health authorities there said on Saturday.

US President Donald Trump thanked “beautiful” Cambodia for taking the castaway cruise ship in a rare message to a nation that has often been at odds with Washington.

In Hong Kong, which has seen months of anti-Beijing protests, hundreds marched on Saturday to demand full closure of the border with mainland China and to oppose plans to turn some buildings into quarantine hubs.

The sickness, now officially labelled Covid-19, has killed around two per cent of those infected. Cases have spread faster than other respiratory virus this century.

The Chinese Bat Virus

1,770 deaths worldwide

70,000 confirmed cases in China


From Jim Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence
posted this morning - Monday, February 17, 2020

CORONAVIRUS CURVE GOES VERTICAL. WALL STREET COMPLACENCY EVAPORATES

Markets have been following the spread of the coronavirus (CoVid-19) closely for good reason. The Chinese economy, second largest in the world, is shutting down in stages. In affected areas, streets are empty, stores are closed, planes and trains are not running. Over 60 million people are “locked-down,” which means they are confined to their homes and can only leave once every three days to buy groceries (if they can find any due to hoarding).

The effects go far beyond China because of global supply chains. If Chinese factories are closed, they are not buying components from South Korea, Japan and Germany. Likewise, if Chinese factories are closed, they cannot supply finished goods to U.S. buyers. The result is that factories and sales are also slowing in developed economies.

Still, markets are taking a measured view. Some epidemic models showed the disease would peak in April 2020 and tail off quickly from there. The other assumption was that any dip in the Chinese economy would be made up later in the year so that the total impact would be minimal when viewed on an annual basis. All of those assumptions were blown-up in a matter of minutes in the late evening of Wednesday, February 12.

As described in THIS ARTICLE, 14,840 new infections were reported in a single update, moving the total from 45,000 to about 60,000 cases. This did not mean that 14,840 people were infected in one day. It meant that China suddenly became more transparent and decided to include existing cases using more valid diagnostic criteria. But, the change did move the official statistics closer to the amount shown in a leak on Tencent (that showed about 150,000 infections) and a Lancet (a preeminent medical journal) model-based inputs that also estimated about 150,000 cases.

The bottom line is that the disease is worse than Wall Street believed, the economic damage is greater, and it will take longer to get the disease under control. Stock prices fell after the news was reported. As more bad news dribbles out, that stock price adjustment has further to fall.

1 Like

WHO would have guessed???.. pun intended…

PBOC pledged to unveil more stimulus measure I guess it should weaken their currency considerably. Market pundits say the effect won’t be long-lasting but I doubt. Some brokers like Hotforex offer USDCNY CFDs currently pretty good opportunity to make money with relatively safe bet.

I imagine this guy is posting this at considerable risk to himself. Thanks for sharing.

Holy cow we still have a long way to go! :cold_sweat:

I think the situation with Coronavirus in China will have a serious imopact on countrie’s development

February 24 – current numbers

The China they DON’T want you to SEE!.. Not for the squeamish…

Check out this YouTube Channel, these guys live in China and tell you what is really going on in mainland China… and what the CCP is doing inside Coronavirus Central.

Fact is sicker than Fiction…

On a lighter note …



cartoon - 41

How stupid and reckless are Australia’s Universities to give $7500 “grants” to Chinese Students so they skip around the travel bans trying to prevent the spread of the CoronaVirus into Australia.

Money over everything these days… Exposing Australian Citizens to the contagion… Morons…

The Chinese Bat Virus — let’s call it what it is

Is it any wonder that this disease started in China?





Chinese bat virus - 2



Chinese bat virus - 6



Chinese bat virus - 3





The latest numbers

1 Like

where the hell is Batman When you need him ?
Poor creatures ….

Of course it will, many analysts already say that it will effect the trading and economic growth in severe way for sure, there is even no doubt. The coronavirus outbreak will have a short-term effect on the world economy, but there is a risk of a longer lasting effect, which could have a tangible impact on the economies of all countries in the world, especially China and related countries. The rush of the coronavirus in China and its spread throughout the world has led to increased panic in the world’s commodity and financial markets. As a result, prices for certain commodities, in particular oil and iron ore, lost 10 to 15% over the week, while Chinese stock indices lost 7 to 12%. The main reason for such dynamics was strengthening of negative expectations of China’s economy slowdown.

Whether this new "this time it’s different…" turns out to be a real threat or it just fades away like the others have, it has certainly given those pushing the Indices forever higher an excuse to allow them to have a very much needed period of "correction"so we an all go short for a few days ? before they start "Repo-ing " it again :wink:

At the latest I heard - we had 19 cases - but I expect it will rise to fulfil the Bloomberg forecast - and the sea level rises to wash away the dead polar bears !

You understand, as this event can be considered quite complex and strong, the display in the market will be anyway, because there are still shares of Chinese companies, competition with the dollar, etc. I think the best thing we can do in this case is to observe the situation and act according to what else is going to happen. Now the analysis should be very careful.