The world has stood in awe at the absurd efforts of China attempting to control the spread of "Swine Flu that has proven to be an extremely mild flu; one which usually doesn t require hospitalization or even a physician's intervention. Their reaction has been labeled as alarmist - but now facts are emerging from China which may explain their fear and unusual quarantine measures.
Bloomberg.com has released a story that should worry the entire global community. China has quarantined an entire town because pneumonic plague has broken out, and this is a disease if left untreated - can kill within 24 hours. It s extremely important to note that the pneumonic plague is a relative of the bubonic plague that killed millions in the dark ages - but this plague kills faster than the "Black Plague did, and there is something I find extremely suspicious about this outbreak.
Chinese Town Quarantined as Man Dies From Plague (Update1)By Bloomberg News
The quarantined area is adequately supplied with the necessities and people s lives are "normal, the department said. Ziketan, in the eastern part of Qinghai, has a population of about 10,000, most of whom are Tibetans, according to the information provider Baidu.com.
Pneumonic plague is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing and other contaminated articles, according to the World Health Organization. It is caused by the same bacteria that occurs in bubonic plague the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, the group said. (Emphasis added)
If diagnosed early, bubonic plague can be treated with antibiotics. Pneumonic plague, on the other hand, is one of the most deadly infectious diseases and patients can die 24 hours after infection, according to the WHO. Much More
It s a known fact that the United States, as well as other countries have used their own populations to run clandestine medical tests, and it s well known that the Chinese have no love or respect for their newly acquired Tibetan population. Furthermore, and even more suspicious is how fast the Chinese reacted to a plague that is airborne and can infect a population extremely quickly - which would cause one to believe that they were prepared for the outbreak. It would also explain the unusual quarantine measures the Chinese have taken in regard the so-called Swine Flu - which may have been nothing more than a cover to keep their general population safe from the pneumonic plague which they knew was going to be tested in Ziketan in Qinghai province.
As fast as this disease can travel, how were the Chinese able to diagnose it so swiftly and have ample amounts of antibiotics on hand to control it in a town of 10,000 inhabitants? Why didn t it spread to more than a few inhabitants of the city unless the Chinese were prepared for the outbreak? Personally, I m not even remotely worried about the Swine Flu - but this disease, if it was released upon an unsuspecting country could kill millions before it was controlled. In our era of air travel taking only hours to reach major population areas could be devastating - and if it does spread outside the boundaries of China, we should be very suspicious of its origination and the rapid control that China demonstrated when it recently demonstrated that they lacked in the ability to control SARS and were unable to control it for quite a while even among their own population.
I did some research on this disease, and it has an incubation period of three (3) to seven (7) days, which would lead one to believe that there would be far more cases in Ziketan than were reported. Furthermore, read the below information which suggests this disease is "either as a consequence of an aerosolized release or through importation of the disease. (Emphasis added)
Emerging Infectious Diseases, April, 2004 by Raymond Gani, Steve Leach
Epidemiologic determinants for modeling pneumonic plague outbreaksPneumonic plague poses a potentially increasing risk to humans in plague nonendemic regions either as a consequence of an aerosolized release or through importation of the disease. Pneumonic plague is person-to-person transmissible. We provide a quantitative assessment of transmissibility based on past outbreaks that shows that the average number of secondary cases per primary case ([R.sub.0]) was 1.3 (variance = 3.1), assuming a geometric probability distribution, prior to outbreak control measures. We also show that the latent and infectious periods can be approximated by using lognormal distributions with means (SD) of 4.3 (1.8) and 2.5 (1.2) days. Based on this parameter estimation, we construct a Markov-chain epidemic model to demonstrate the potential impact of delays in implementing outbreak control measures and increasing numbers of index cases on the incidence of cases in simulated outbreaks. LINK
Common sense would indicate that something is highly suspicious about this outbreak of Pneumonic plague in China and their apparent ability to diagnose it so swiftly in a remote region of China unless they were prepared or extremely lucky - and I believe it s the latter!
UPDATE: Coming again from Bloomberg.com, and not a word on CNN s site (Sic), another man has died from the plague:
Plague Kills 2 Men in Remote China; Town Quarantined (Update2)By Jason Gale and Ed Johnson
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) A second man died of pneumonic plague in a remote area of northwestern China as officials quarantined a town to stop the pneumonia-causing disease spreading.
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