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 that usually doesn’t even require hospitalization or even a physicians intervention. Their reaction has been labeled as alarmist – but now facts are emerging from China which may explain their fear and unusual quarantine measures that have baffled people on a global basis. 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 Middle 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 quick – 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 peiod 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)
Epidemiologic determinants for modeling pneumonic plague outbreaksEmerging Infectious Diseases, April, 2004 by Raymond Gani, Steve Leach
Pneumonic 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!
William Cormier
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.
The 37-year-old man died yesterday in Ziketan in Qinghai province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. He was a neighbor of a 32-year-old herdsman, the first person in the town to die from the disease, according to the report. Ten other people, mostly relatives of the initial patient, have been quarantined and aren’t showing symptoms, the report said.
The World Health Organization is monitoring the town because of the potential for human-to-human spread of one of the most deadly infectious diseases. Pneumonic plague is the most serious of three forms of plague and occurs when so-called Yersinia pestis bacteria infect the lungs and cause pneumonia. MUCH MORE
Correction and Update # 2: According to the BBC, China has been monitoring this area for outbreaks of Pneumonic plague:
Outbreak anticipated
Health officials in Qinghai have been concerned about pneumonic plague for some time.
In February, they said they had sent out 55 teams across the province to help monitor and control the disease.
One Chinese media report said this was the third outbreak of the disease in Qinghai within the last 10 years. Excerpt from BBC News
Why have pneumonic plague outbreaks been an area of concern in this area? As the BBC article substantiates, this is a sparsely populated area which is largely populated by Tibetans. As I stated earlier, China has no love for their Tibetan population, and such a sparsely populated area would be an excellent area to run clandestine Bio labs. Furthermore, China may have expected these outbreaks due to several earthquakes that have hit the province, which could have inadvertently released this pathogen into the surrounding area:
6.3 Magnitude Earthquake Rocks China’s Qinghai Province
Beijing (ABC live): A strong earthquake measuring 6.3 in rector Scale was occurred in Qinghai Province in the north-western region of China again.
Beijing (ABC live): A strong earthquake measuring 6.3 in rector Scale was occurred in Qinghai Province in the north-western region of China again.
According to information casualties have been reported so far from area and Coal mines in the region have been evacuated as a precautionary measure.
The epicentre of this tremor was in the Mongolian-Tibetan Autonomous region which is about 716 kilometers west of the provincial capital Xining. MUCH MORE
This does nothing to qualm my fears that the Chinese have been working to make a bio-weapon based on pneumonic plague – in fact, far from it! Bio Labs are often secretly located in remote areas and China could not have anticipated the high level of earthquake activity which, not being a pun, has plagued the area. Furthermore, as I pointed out, the residents of this area are mostly Tibetans – a segment of the “New China” that dislike the fiercely independent Tibetans. Tibet was the home of the Dali Lama and was taken by force in China’s drive to implement their “One China Policy.”
I still believe these outbreaks of pneumonic plague were engineered in Chinese Bio Labs, and although their accidental release due to a barrage seismic activity may have been the culprit for the release of the pathogen – nobody knows if these newest outbreaks are from past earthquakes or or tests of their Bio Labs being conducted on a population that China still refuses to respect their heritage and customs. China has been bitterly criticized for building manufacturing facilities and dams in the area because of its known seismic activity – and were warned before it happened, but China has a mindset of its own, and human life in China always has been cheap if not at times an actual commodity when they executed prisoners to farm their organs for their transplant program for foreigners that had the money for the necessary surgeries.
William Cormier
Another Note: In hindsight, a release of this pathogen because of an earthquake doesn’t make sense, because if it was released during one of the larger quakes, it seems that we should have seen massive deaths at that time. It’s almost a double-edged sword; I also remember that the Chinese wouldn’t let anyone into certain areas – and so far, no explanation has been given for that, so they may have been attempting to contain any release from a clandestine Bio Lab at that time. You almost have to toss a quarter to figure this one out due to the secrecy that surrounded some areas where the quake occurred which the United States stated were areas suspected of doing nuclear and other research that was potentially extremely dangerous.
