How badly did China respond to the possibility the coronavirus plaguing the globe leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
The evidence must indeed be damning. At first, Chinese officials took the teenaged “them-too” approach, pointing to the biodefense facility at Fort Detrick after Biden finally called for a probe of the pandemic origins.
However, the distraction must not be working. So, an escalation is needed!
A leading Chinese media figure is now calling for China to prepare for nuclear war with the U.S.
Hu Xijin, the editor of the Chinese state-run newspaper the Global Times, considers enhancing China’s nuclear program as being vital to the country’s “strategic deterrence” against the United States….The increasingly confrontational rhetoric and military maneuvers coming out of the two countries have raised concerns about a potential war.”We must be prepared for an intense showdown between China and the U.S.,” Hu wrote in a Thursday op-ed for the Global Times. “The number of China’s nuclear warheads must reach the quantity that makes U.S. elites shiver should they entertain the idea of engaging in a military confrontation with China.”NHu advocated for “rapidly” increasing the number of commissioned nuclear warheads, DF-41s, an intercontinental ballistic missile, and strategic missiles that have “long-range” capabilities.
Hu’s op-ed was a doozy. I think his “opinion” reflects the propaganda that Chinese officials want in the media.
“Given the intensifying US strategic containment of China, I would like to remind once again that we have many urgent tasks, but one of the most important is to keep rapidly increasing the number of nuclear warheads and strategic missiles like the Dongfeng 41 with extremely long-range and high survival capabilities,” Hu wrote in a post translated by Chinese human rights activist Jennifer Zeng. “This is the cornerstone of China’s strategic resilience against the United States.”…Our nuclear missiles must be so numerous that the US elite will tremble at the thought of military confrontation with China at that time,” Hu continued. “On such a basis, we can calmly and actively manage our differences with the US and avoid all kinds of gunfire. As US hostility toward China continues to burn, we need to use our strength and the unbearable risks they would face if they took the risk to force them to remain calm.”
Meanwhile, a 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu is the first human case of infection with a rare strain of bird flu known as H10N3.
The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, was hospitalized on April 18 and diagnosed with H10N3 on May 28, the health commission said. It did not give details of how the man was infected.He is now stable and ready to be discharged. Investigations of his close contacts found no other cases, the NHC said. No other cases of human infection with H10N3 have been reported globally, it added.
The Chinese Communist Party is downplaying the significance of this case.
“This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission,” the statement from the Chinese Communist Party’s National Health Commission said. “The risk of large-scale transmission is low.” The NHC also added that the virus strain is a less severe strain of the virus in poultry.
A hard look at the data reveals this strain is likely to be a minor public health issue.
The strain is “not a very common virus”, said Filip Claes, regional laboratory coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases at the regional office for Asia and the Pacific.Only around 160 isolates of the virus were reported in the 40 years to 2018, mostly in wild birds or waterfowl in Asia and some limited parts of North America, and none had been detected in chickens so far, he added.Analysing the genetic data of the virus will be necessary to determine whether it resembles older viruses or if it is a novel mix of different viruses, Claes said.There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017.
However, this is China. So, if the “strain” contains many novel genetic materials from bats and pangolins, we may have to reevaluate the hazard level.
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