Free Republic

Health authorities in Beijing said they haven’t been able to trace the source of the Chinese capital’s first local Omicron infection but indicated it might have arrived by international mail.Beijing announced the Omicron case on Saturday after the patient developed a low-grade fever on Friday and took a voluntary test that came back positive for Covid-19. Authorities sealed off the patient’s residential compound and office building, and launched contact-tracing efforts. Tests for more than 16,500 people identified as potentially being exposed to the patient came back negative, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the city’s municipal Center for Disease Control and...

After lurching from deadline to deadline, China Evergrande Group (3333.HK) is again on the brink of default, with pessimistic comments from the property developer raising expectations of direct state involvement and a managed debt restructuring. Having made three 11th-hour coupon payments in the past two months, Evergrande will again face the end of a 30-day grace period on Monday, with dues this time at $82.5 million. But a statement late on Friday saying creditors had demanded $260 million and that it could not guarantee enough funds for coupon repayment prompted authorities to summon its chairman - and wiped an eighth...

When reports about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began circulating earlier this year and questions were being raised about how the illness it causes, COVID-19, compared to the flu, it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case. Based on the CDC numbers though, I should have seen many, many more. In 2018, over 46,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Over 36,500 died in traffic accidents. Nearly 40,000 died...

A riot erupted on March 27 on a bridge connecting China’s Jiangxi Province and the virus epicenter of Hubei, where provincial authorities had lifted lockdown measures days earlier. Footage of the incident shows residents from Hubei shouting and stomping on police cars, overturning multiple vehicles after Jiangxi police blocked them at the checkpoint on the bridge. “Go Hubei, go Hubei!” Locals shouted, according to videos posted on social media. One video filmed from a distance showed that throngs of people had filled almost the entire length of the bridge. At least five officers from the Jiangxi side were injured, according...

The US now has more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any other country with at least 82,404 positive tests. According to the latest figures collated by Johns Hopkins University, the US overtook China (81,782 cases) and Italy (80,589). The grim milestone came as President Donald Trump predicted the nation would get back to work "pretty quickly", after 3.3 million layoffs. More than 1,100 people with Covid-19 have died in the US.

A few decades ago, the conventional wisdom was that trade with China will democratize and soften the communist regime. The coronavirus pandemic has killed that myth, except perhaps among the malignant American media. NBC News reporters like Kelly O’Donnell grow incensed about Sean Spicer asking a question as a credentialed member of the media. If you call this Chinese virus a Chinese virus, the malignant American media remain fully attached to the pre-Corona world where anyone cares. The truth is that this virus originated in China. Worse, decisions by the Chinese communist regime after the virus appeared accelerated the problem....