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I wonder, could "SARS" be a Chinese BIO weapon experiment that "got out of the bottle?" Just a thought.......

Thanks for posting this.

Thanks! Marked for later..

Thank you so much for your reports. I'll have to look at a map of China to figure out where the places you mention are located.

Are you committed to staying there, or might you leave the country until this is under control?

Thank you and stay safe.

Thanks, Ma Li, this is interesting. Also worrisome. There just could be a huge tragedy developing in China -- a tragedy that could be mitigated if the government didn't control information so tightly. Whatever harm comes to the Chinese economy due to the SARS scare, it'll be far worse in every way if they fail to deal with the threat forthrightly, and a pandemic develops. The Chinese government should be encouraging the involvement of international organizations in monitoring and fighting the spread of SARS in the country.

Please be careful, friend, and be well.

I chat almost daily with a young lady in Wenzhou in the Zhejiang providence and she is concerned(which is understandable) about her well being. She doesn't go in to details but I can tell from our conversations she has concern.

I try and give her a picture of what is going on and she seems fairly well informed about the situation.

She has restricted her movements on her own for her own protection.

She is a little apprehensive now because she just returned from Guangzhou(?) providence about 7 days ago from a business trip she cut short because of the situation.

Thanks for your report and I'll watch for any new developments you may have.

Providence = province

ping

Thanks, good information.

Thank you for the report.

Are you concerned about the authorities taking action because of your internet conversations about SARS?

I hope you get out okay.

Thanks very much for your report. Please be very cautious about posting here if there is any way the authorities can trace it back to you. Jim Robinson can be trusted absolutely, but the Chinese may have other means of tracing--I'm not enough of a technician to know if this is possible or not. And you are dealing with highly classified information, from their point of view.

I've been pointing out on other threads that population statistics, death rates, and other demographic information are state secrets in Communist countries. Also, as your post suggests, the leadership only knows what is reported up the chain of command, and that is unlikely to be accurate.

Your story about hygiene reminds me of a time when our car broke down in rural Austria back in 1975. A farm woman kindly took us in, fed us dinner, and gave us a place to sleep. Her living quarters were over the cow barn, and I couldn't help noticing that she brought the food to the table barefoot, and still had cow manure smeared up to her knees. So China is simply typical of a rural society, and probably more advanced than some.

Thanks for the FReeplance reporting, Ma Li. It's nice to know what's happening on the ground there. You're definitely right about the levels of sanitation over there; I remember people spitting on the floor in the middle of resteraunts and small children defecating in the streets.

I also have zero faith in the rural Chinese medical system to handle SARS. For those of you that don't know, most travel in China city to city is by train. Those trains are packed like sardines and travel for hours or days. Should an infected person hop on a train and pass it on to the others, you could see outbreaks at each of the train's stops, many of which are isolated and helpless.

It's even worse than airplanes, because the trains are constantly stopping, and the sanitation on board is awful. The bathroom is a hole in the bottom of the train you squat over while the train is moving. There is no way they can quarantine entire cities without cutting the rail transit, and those rails keep the country connected. Even their military depends on the railways to move troops and equipment.

Thank you for this excellent article.

MY LYING $10.00 CALUCATOR

As per your request, I do not shout anymore.

Yes I make up everything which I post with my little $10.00 calculator.

I am sure that the CDC, WHO or the Government is beyond such things. I list below what I made up with my calculator.

It has been reported, and it seems reasonable to me, that there are 50,000 deaths each year in the USA due to Influenza (Pneumonia). If this is the case then this follows by mathematics:

1. I assume that the world’s population is 6.0 billion (probably 6.4 billion, but just increase these numbers by 6.67% if you like).
2. If the world’s population is 6.0 billion, and if the USA has a population of 280 million, than the world has a population 21.429 times larger than the USA.
3. If the 50,000 figure for the USA is correct then:
4. Daily Cases And Deaths USA (Assuming a 5% mortality rate):

Daily: Cases – 2739.720 and Deaths – 136.986
Period 30 Days: Cases – 82,191.600 and Deaths – 2,739.720
Annual: Cases – 999,997.800 and Deaths – 49,999.90 (Rounding Again)

5. Daily Cases And Deaths World ( Assuming a 5% mortality rate). Probably need to increase these numbers by a factor of at least by 2 to 5 since the rest of the world has almost no health system:

Daily: Cases – 58,709.460 and Deaths – 2,935.473
Period 30 Days: Cases 246,574.800 and Deaths - 88,064.190
Annual: Cases – 21,428,952.900 and Deaths – 1,071,477.742

6. If as you suggest that the death rate is 0.01% and not the 5% which I choose as representative, then of course the number of deaths remains the same but the number of cases increases by a factor of 500. Therefore, these would be the numbers which my $10.00 calculator reveals for the Cases for the USA and the World:

Daily Cases: USA – 1,369.860.000 World – 29, 354,730.000
Period 30 Days: USA – 41,095,800.000 World – 123,287,400.000
Annual: USA 499,998.900 World – 10,714.476,450.000

7. There is one unfortunate result if I accept your number of a 0.01% death rate. On an annual basis it would exceed the USA and World population by a factor of 1.785. That’s 78.5% more than the entire population of the USA and the World. Since I have not gotten SARS or Pneumonia recently, a lot of people are in “Deep Do-Do” if you are correct. In fact they can look forward to getting sick with this “stuff” a number of times, if my calculator is correct.

8. My suggestion to you all is to see how long you all can hold you breath.

9. Cheer-e-oh, you all.

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