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Coronavirus Back Story – Why Barbados is NOT Banning Travel from Affected Areas

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Barbados, W.I

Dear Sir/Madam

There was an article in your newspaper of 3 .February 2020 entitled: “Barbados not rushing to ban travellers from China.” The same message was also aired on radio. Mention was made about the statistical likelihood of an outbreak locally being under two percent. There was even mention of the fact that since 1967 there was no real impact on Barbados of the outbreak of contagious diseases. According to the aired news the local authorities were following the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. As the holder of a doctorate in microbiology and some one who has done post doctoral studies in the discipline, I have a few questions, which I want answered in the public interest.

According to the Center for Disease control and Prevention (CDC). the virus has an incubation period of two weeks. Infected person maybe asymptomatic during the two-week period. It was for this reason the USA instituted a ban on persons who had been exposed for less than two weeks entering its domain. The reason given for doing so was the logistics involved in screening for potential carriers. Let me explain.

Let us assume there is an asymptomatic carrier who has entered the Barbadian domain and is interacting with the locals. After realizing that there is an active carrier in Barbados, it is incumbent on the authorities to track down and screen all persons who have interacted with the carrier. If the carrier has interacted with one hundred persons, each person has to be screened. This only allows for interaction of the carrier with one hundred persons. Allowance also has to be made for the interaction of each member of the one-hundred with other people. As can be envisaged, the number of persons required to screen, dramatically increases to such an extent, that the screening process breaks down. It is for this reason that countries have introduced a ban on persons who come from infected areas. In the case illustrated above where would Barbados get the required trained persons to actively carry out screening?

There has been mention of the fact that Barbados is following the WHO guidelines. Is this the same WHO that was shown to be totally incompetent its handling of Ebola? What about the Haitian cholera outbreak? The latter was under the aegis of the United Nation of which WHO is a part. The best scientists in the field do not work for WHO; they are found in research institutions. The WHO like all other United Nations bodies are constrained by political realities of member states who push political objectives ahead of what the correct scientific should be. As far as I can make out, there seems to be a pecuniary method behind Barbados’s stance on this matter: namely an effort not to affect the tourist industry.

 

Sincerely

 

Robert D. Lucas, PH.D.

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734 responses to “Coronavirus Back Story – Why Barbados is NOT Banning Travel from Affected Areas”

  1. akenatenI Avatar
    akenatenI

    @ sillywoman.

    • Prof. Jakob Segal : says that structural analysis using genome mapping proves that HIV is more similar to Visna than to any other retrovirus. The portion (about 3%) of the HIV genome which does not correspond structurally to Visna corresponds exactly to part of the HTLV-I genome.
    This similarity, says Segal, cannot be explained by a natural process of evolution and mutation. It can only have resulted from an artificial combination of the two viruses.

    Prof. Segal quotes from a document presented by a Pentagon official named Donald MacArthur on June 9, 1969, to a Congressional committee, in which $10 million is requested to develop, over the next 5 to 10 years, a new, contagious micro- organism which would destroy the human immune system.

    On June 9, 1969, Dr. D. M. MacArthur, then Deputy Director of Research and Technology for the Dept. of Defense, told the House Subcommittee on Appropriations:

    “Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly, and eminent biologists believe that within a period of 5 to 10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired…a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease…A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million.”

    • It was there, in the P4 (high-security) laboratory at Fort Detrick( in Maryland, USA), according to Segal, where the AIDS virus was actually created, between the fall of 1977 and spring of 1978. Six months is precisely the time it would have taken, using the techniques available then, to create the AIDS virus from Visna and HTLV-I.

    • Segal claims that the new virus was then tested on convicts who volunteered for the experiment in return for their release from prison. Failing to show any early symptoms of disease, the prisoners were released after six months. Some were homosexual, and went to New York, where the disease was first attested in 1979.

  2. akenatenI Avatar
    akenatenI

    Prof. Segal (AIDS-Erreger aus dem Gen-Labor? [AIDS-Virus from the Gene Laboratory?], Kuno Kruse, ed., Berlin: Simon & Leutner, 1987.

  3. Piece the Legend Avatar
    Piece the Legend

    @ Akenatenl

    Your instruction and pertinent research is appreciated by those of us who DO NOT SLEEP AND WATCH THE ENEMY WHO SEEKS, MUCH MORE NOW, to kill us

    But, given that you have studied the attendant Disinformation Canpaigns that follow these biological warfare excursions YOU WILL AGREE THAT ITS SOUNDS BETTER TO BLAME THE NEGROES FOR SYPHILIS?, HIV, EBOLA and now Pangolian Coronavirus…

  4. Mariposa Avatar
    Mariposa

    Piece

    The comment was made by Caswell in Parliament at the 39th seating the video is on U tube
    I also posted the video here on BU so others can see and hear Caswell comments from his own mouth
    As a matter of fact the video is the complete meeting nothing edited
    Maybe u can scroll back to find it before David remove it

  5. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    But the “biological warfare” also puts them at risk, doesn’t it? These viruses and bacteria are no respecter of persons.

    These minute organisms don’t need any artificial stimuli to mutate and so new viruses and bacteria are not at all surprising to me. It is about survival. We all adapt to survive. Larger organisms do it more slowly.

    But we all do it or we die out. It is the nature of things.

    Though I do note that it has always been popular to blame diseases on the Africans I also know that bush meat eating is likely to facilitate the emergence of new infectious diseases among humans.

  6. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    One would expect Caswell to have better information than most of us and so his comments should not be dismissed.

    We shall soon see but I am still not panicked. Seems like the authorities are doing as much as they can. I have never seen one situation in which panic made it better, only worse. And you people are obviously prone to panic. Better they keep it quiet and deal with it.

    Sooooo…for me life goes on with reasonable precautions. Of course, one could always kill one’s self to avoid catching the virus.

  7. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @Piece the Legend February 9, 2020 6:50 AM “YOU WILL AGREE THAT ITS SOUNDS BETTER TO BLAME THE NEGROES FOR Pangolian Coronavirus…”

    Nobody is blaming black people for the pangolian virus. Why do you insist is saying so? Does it make you feel like more man to set up a straw man and lick it down?

  8. akenatenI Avatar
    akenatenI

    @ sillywoman.

    https://youtu.be/6ISm0sXrbvE

  9. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    I pointed out to akenatenI that he is quoting a virulently racist, virulently sexist white American right wing fake news site.

    Why do you have a problem with a black woman from a small country pointing out the errors of the “boys of BU” or the errors of virulently racist, virulently sexist white American right wing fake news site?

  10. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    Wunna fellas gotta exercise much better judgement man.

  11. Mariposa Avatar
    Mariposa

    Now that govt has made the decision to not allow the cruise ship with sick passengers to Berth because of gastrointestinal illness
    It now makes for wonder( even more) why would govt go to lengths of allowing the Chinese to enter Barbados
    Could it be a case of Money talks and all else does not meet the thresholds
    Doesn’t good governance requires a tall order of deep respect for the overall social environment which includes health of the people
    It therefore boggles the mind why govt would prefer to put their people at high risk and subject its people to fear heightened by news articles in the midst of the deadly Corona Virus

  12. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @ akenatenI February 9, 2020 6:31 AM ” It was there, in the P4 (high-security) laboratory at Fort Detrick( in Maryland, USA), according to Segal, where the AIDS virus was actually created, between the fall of 1977 and spring of 1978. Six months is precisely the time it would have taken, using the techniques available then, to create the AIDS virus from Visna and HTLV-I. Segal claims that the new virus was then tested on convicts who volunteered for the experiment in return for their release from prison. Failing to show any early symptoms of disease, the prisoners were released after six months. Some were homosexual, and went to New York, where the disease was first attested in 1979.”

    You know that the HIV was first detected retrospectively from samples from a British sailor [white if that makes any difference to you] who died in the United Kingdom 1959 right?

    At that time some of the people of whom you speak were not even born. The world did not begin yesterday you know.

  13. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @akenatenI February 9, 2020 6:31 AM “Prof. Jakob Segal”

    Prof Segal, may he rest in peace, was a Russian scientist, and very likely a KGB agent. At the height of the cold war what would you expect him to say, except anti-American nonsense? And you know that I am no big fan of Americans, nor Russians, nor other white imperialists.

  14. akenatenI Avatar
    akenatenI

    @ sillywoman.

    Please show us the article / paper that you are quoting . That paper is scientific fraud.
    Please comment on the video below.
    I don’t think it make sense debating sillywoman/ clown.

    https://youtu.be/qVvxKy_eDe4

  15. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @akenatenI February 9, 2020 6:31 AM “Failing to show any early symptoms of disease, the prisoners were released after six months. Some were homosexual, and went to New York, where the disease was first attested in 1979.”

    You seem a bit hung up on the homosexual prisoners. But no doubt the majority of any prison population is hetero sexual. YOUNG, MALE, HETEROSEXUAL. So tell me something, didn’t any of your mythical prisoners, those who were young heterosexual males pass the infection on to their wives, girlfriends and children?

    Or do you believe that your mythical young hetero sexual male prisoners embraced a vow of lifelong abstinence?

    Do you know any young, heterosexual males who have EVER embraced lifelong abstinence?

    And if you mythical men were not abstinent can you explain why HIV/AIDS did not explode among young women and newborns, but instead exploded among homosexual males?

    Tek ya time answering.

  16. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @Piece the Legend February 9, 2020 6:50 AM “Your instruction and pertinent research is appreciated by those of us who DO NOT SLEEP AND WATCH THE ENEMY WHO SEEKS, MUCH MORE NOW, to kill us”

    Old age, and lifestyle diseases, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, etc. will “get you” long before ‘the enemy” gets you. Those same lifestyle diseases are also getting the enemy at the same or a higher rate.

  17. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @Donna February 9, 2020 8:44 AM “Of course, one could always kill one’s self to avoid catching the virus.”

    Lolll!!!

    Best comment so far.

  18. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ akenatenI February 9, 2020 9:32 AM
    “I don’t think it make sense debating sillywoman/ clown.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Be careful with that simple “silly woman” called Simon(e) whose solution to violence in the society is the castration of young boys.

  19. TheOgazerts Avatar
    TheOgazerts

    The government is between a rock and a hard place.

    We placed all our eggs in one basket (tourism) and our leaders have to make every effort not to disrupt that industry..

    They must be cautious and not act in haste as the wrong move could introduce even more hardship than what we are now experiencing..

    And yet at the same time there is the fear that being too cautious could also be a disaster. if the corona virus makes it way here. Unhappy is the head that wears the crown.

    Many of the countries who act boldly, have streams of income other than tourism. When you have just one stream, you have to protect it the best way you can.

    At the present time, it appears that the administration has made the right call. Let’s hope that they mange the situation well.

  20. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @TheOgazerts February 9, 2020 10:01 AM. “Unhappy is the head that wears the crown.”

    Sorry Donna.

    Theo just beat you for the best comment award.

  21. Mariposa Avatar
    Mariposa

    No one knows if the govt has made the right call
    The govt has refused to release any data information on any results as to the those placed in quarantine
    The govt has not move forward in telling when if these people would be released and what housing or necessary places of housing they would have outside of being thrown back into the usual environment amongst the populace
    The govt has not stated whether or if those quarantined had flu like symptoms
    Overall the govt has been placing fancy free and loose with the populace giving no information yet allowing people to live in fear

  22. akenatenI Avatar
    akenatenI

    @sillywoman.
    Sillywoman is a pathological liar.

    How scientists discovered false evidence on the world’s “first Aids victim”
    US experts have destroyed claims that the death in 1959 of a British printer was caused by HIV
    Steve Connor @SteveAConnor, Independent, UK.

    David Carr’s medical condition was a mystery throughout his five-month stay at Manchester’s Royal Infirmary. He remained a mystery long after his death on 31 August 1959.

    The 25-year-old apprentice printer was in reasonably good general health until he developed breathlessness, night sweats, tiredness and loss of weight in December 1958. From then on, his health deteriorated radically and dramatically……

    David Carr remained a medical enigma until the early 1980s when it dawned on the three doctors that their patient had symptoms similar to those beginning to appear in medical literature due to a mysterious new illness: Aids.
    They pointed out that the man – who was not then named – had been in the Navy between 1955 and 1957 when they supposed he had travelled abroad. “He was not married and we know nothing of his sexual orientation,” the doctors wrote. The implication was that the man could have been homosexual and might have picked up the Aids virus whilst overseas. Aids researchers took a keen interest in the case and this encouraged Dr Williams to locate the tissue samples he took in 1959 from the corpse……

    Dr Williams said he located the tissue samples taken from Mr Carr in 1987. Unfortunately, there was no test for HIV at the time that was sophisticated enough to use in such dried-out material. (The HIV antibody test was designed to work primarily on blood serum).

    Then, towards the end of the 1980s, scientists had developed a new technique for amplifying minute quantities of DNA – the genetic blueprint – from all manner of tissue fragments. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test had revolutionised forensic science and was now about to be employed on the mortal remains of David Carr.
    Dr Williams sent some samples to Gerald Corbitt, in the hospital’s virology unit. Together with his research assistant, Andrew Bailey, Dr Corbitt applied the PCR test to the tissue and had a positive result: they found that HIV had infiltrated the DNA….
    Mr Bailey and Dr Williams, he quickly submitted the results of the research to the Lancet, which published them as a short letter on 7 July, 1990. The resulting international publicity was huge. The three researchers, along with Dr Stretton and Dr Leonard, were feted on both sides of the Atlantic. The New York Times proclaimed: “Puzzle of sailor’s death solved after 31 years: the answer is Aids…..

    Professor Ho contacted the Manchester researchers in 1992 to learn more about the man, who had subsequently been named in the Sunday Express.

    Professor Ho asked for samples to perform PCR tests himself.
    Professor Ho’s lab, however, was a specialist Aids centre and was accustomed to performing difficult PCR tests and rapid genetic sequencing. Soon after being sent processed DNA from kidney tissue – which had been left over from the 1990 experiment – Professsor Ho was able to isolate the entire sequence of HIV “with ease”.

    He did this in 1993 and now had the complete virus, from one end of its genetic code to the other. He also found that this genetic sequence was identical to the partial sequence of Corbitt and Bailey – scientific confirmation that it was the same virus isolated earlier by the two Manchester virologists.
    The sequence, however, began to puzzle Professor Ho following a discussion he had with Gerald Myers, director of the HIV Sequence Database at the US’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, and a world authority on the genetics of the virus. “Gerry told us his concerns about the possibility that it was a contaminant. All the calculations and analyses Gerry did suggested that it could be a contaminant . . .

    News > UK
    How scientists discovered false evidence on the world’s “first Aids victim”
    US experts have destroyed claims that the death in 1959 of a British printer was caused by HIV
    Steve Connor @SteveAConnor
    Friday 24 March 1995 01:02
    David Carr’s medical condition was a mystery throughout his five-month stay at Manchester’s Royal Infirmary. He remained a mystery long after his death on 31 August 1959.

    The 25-year-old apprentice printer was in reasonably good general health until he developed breathlessness, night sweats, tiredness and loss of weight in December 1958. From then on, his health deteriorated radically and dramatically.

    Scaly brownish lesions had appeared on his skin. He developed a fever and a painful anal ulcer appeared in February 1959, followed by another ulcer between his nostril and upper lip. “He was wasted, febrile and ill,” his doctors wrote.

    Download the new Independent Premium app
    Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

    Download now
    Mr Carr was admitted to the Royal Infirmary on 8 April but nothing the doctors did seemed to help him. The breathlessness and wasting became severe and he died officially of pneumonia caused by Pneumocystis carinii, an “opportunistic” infection that takes advantage of a weakened immune system, and cytomegalic inclusion disease, a viral infection causing the cells of the lungs to become enlarged and damaged.

    The case of David Carr was so unusual that the two doctors and the hospital pathologist studying him decided to describe it to the medical community by writing a detailed description in the Lancet. It was published on 29 October 1960.

    Trevor Stretton, medical registrar, John Leonard, senior registrar, and George Williams, the pathologist who carried out the autopsy on Mr Carr, had no idea what was responsible for their patient’s fatal fall into ill- health. Judging by the complete lack of response to their Lancet paper, neither did anyone else.

    David Carr remained a medical enigma until the early 1980s when it dawned on the three doctors that their patient had symptoms similar to those beginning to appear in medical literature due to a mysterious new illness: Aids. In 1983 they wrote to the Lancet posing the question: Did our patient have Aids?

    They pointed out that the man – who was not then named – had been in the Navy between 1955 and 1957 when they supposed he had travelled abroad. “He was not married and we know nothing of his sexual orientation,” the doctors wrote. The implication was that the man could have been homosexual and might have picked up the Aids virus whilst overseas. Aids researchers took a keen interest in the case and this encouraged Dr Williams to locate the tissue samples he took in 1959 from the corpse. Although it was standard practice to store such samples, the unusual nature of death led Dr Williams to take more tissue pieces than usual.

    He sliced small portions of tissues from just about every organ in Mr Carr’s body. Dr Williams said he preserved more than 40 samples and embedded them in paraffin blocks.

    Each set of tissues was given a unique number which could be used to cross-reference the samples with the post-mortem examination records of each case in question. Dr Williams said that there are “thousands” of stored tissue samples in the pathology department of Manchester University. “When I was looking for the tissues for this patient, I came across blocks from patients just after the last war,” he said.

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    Dr Williams said he located the tissue samples taken from Mr Carr in 1987. Unfortunately, there was no test for HIV at the time that was sophisticated enough to use in such dried-out material. (The HIV antibody test was designed to work primarily on blood serum).

    Then, towards the end of the 1980s, scientists had developed a new technique for amplifying minute quantities of DNA – the genetic blueprint – from all manner of tissue fragments. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test had revolutionised forensic science and was now about to be employed on the mortal remains of David Carr.

    Dr Williams sent some samples to Gerald Corbitt, in the hospital’s virology unit. Together with his research assistant, Andrew Bailey, Dr Corbitt applied the PCR test to the tissue and had a positive result: they found that HIV had infiltrated the DNA.

    Dr Corbitt, however, wanted to be absolutely sure that this was not a “false positive” result. He was well aware that the PCR test was so sensitive that it could quite easily amplify any stray molecules of HIV that may contaminate the samples, so he asked Dr Williams to send him some more tissue, but this time in a proper “blind” trial.

    Dr Williams therefore sent Dr Corbitt 12 tissue samples in separate tubes. Six came from David Carr and six from a man of a similar age who had died in a traffic accident in the same year. Neither Dr Corbitt nor Mr Bailey knew which sample came from which patient because only Dr Williams had access to the code describing what each tube contained. Dr Williams said he kept the code in a locked drawer and no one but himself had seen it. “When I say no one, I mean no one,” he told the Independent.

    The blind experiment went ahead. Mr Bailey, who did much of the bench work, performed the PCR test on each of the 12 tissue samples. He and Dr Corbitt went to extraordinary lengths to avoid contamination because they knew how sensitive the PCR test can be.

    The work was done in a laboratory where, as far as they know, researchers had never handled HIV. As an added precaution, half a dozen different rooms where used for each stage of the experiment and the scientists wore disposable gloves, gowns and hats while working with the samples in an air-filtered hood.

    They had even asked Dr Williams to slice sections off the stored tissue blocks using different laboratory knives. Dr Williams said he also washed the knives in alcohol to make absolutely sure there was no cross-contamination.

    Mr Bailey repeated the PCR experiment twice and got the same results each time: four of the tissues were positive for HIV, eight were negative. It was left to Dr Corbitt to phone over the results to Dr Williams, who had the code to hand.

    Dr Corbitt read the results through “one by one” and was told that the four positives all came from David Carr. Kidney, bone marrow, spleen and throat tissue all had HIV present. Tissue from Carr’s brain and liver were negative, as were all the tissue samples from the “negative control”.

    The results surprised Dr Corbitt because they were better than he ever expected. “An occasional false positive wouldn’t come as any great surprise, so to get the correlation of the sort we got did surprise me,” he said.

    With Mr Bailey and Dr Williams, he quickly submitted the results of the research to the Lancet, which published them as a short letter on 7 July, 1990. The resulting international publicity was huge. The three researchers, along with Dr Stretton and Dr Leonard, were feted on both sides of the Atlantic. The New York Times proclaimed: “Puzzle of sailor’s death solved after 31 years: the answer is Aids.”

    Dr Williams remembers well the day when the news story broke. He was on a fishing holiday in Scotland, driving across lonely moorland at about 7.45am listening to Radio 4’s Today programme. He heard the late Brian Redhead talking about a young pathologist in Manchester who had performed an autopsy in 1959. “It was almost as if someone was speaking to me,” Dr Williams recalls.

    News of the “1959 sailor” -people had not realised then that David Carr, as a national servicemen, was not a professional seaman – once again stirred intense interest in the United States. In particular, it intrigued a committee of scientists set up to investigate allegations in Rolling Stone magazine that Aids could have come about as a result of mass polio vaccination campaigns in the Belgian Congo between 1957 and 1960.

    In March 1992, Rolling Stone had published an article written by the journalist Tom Curtis suggesting that the Aids virus might have been transmitted inadvertently from monkeys to humans because monkey cells were used to make the polio vaccine and it was understood that the simian immunodeficiency virus – SIV – was the most probable ancestor of HIV.

    The theory that a polio vaccine was the route for SIV to enter the human population was intriguing yet the only evidence to support it was circumstantial. In December 1993, Rolling Stone had to print a “clarification” of its earlier story at the behest of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, which had made the Congo vaccine, and the scientist responsible for developing it, Hilary Koprowski. The central reason for the apologetic statement was that the committee of scientists had taken the case of the Manchester seaman into account in its review of Rolling Stone’s theory. The scientists -appointed by the Wistar Institute – said in their report: “[The Manchester man] had returned to England by the first half of 1957, before the Congo trial was begun. Therefore, it can be stated with almost complete certainty, that the large polio vaccine trial begun in 1957 in Congo was not the origin of Aids.” A Wistar Institute press statement in October 1992 re- iterated the importance of the 1959 case: “The most conclusive evidence refuting the origin of Aids theory involves the earliest documented case of HIV-1 infection – a merchant marine [sic] who was symptomatic in 1958 and died of Aids in 1959 in Manchester, England. “While this man travelled abroad to northern Africa beginning in Continues on page 3

    From page 2

    1955, he had returned to England by the first half of 1957, before the Congo trial was begun.”

    However, it was the tenacity of one member of this committee – David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Centre in New York City and professor of medicine and microbiology at New York University School of Medicine – that has now cast grave doubts over the scientific validity of the case of the Manchester sailor.

    Professor Ho contacted the Manchester researchers in 1992 to learn more about the man, who had subsequently been named in the Sunday Express.

    Professor Ho asked for samples to perform PCR tests himself. Manchester University’s Gerald Corbitt said that after the Lancet letter of 1990 he and Andrew Bailey had tried to sequence the genetic code of HIV but had only limited success.

    They had managed to get a partial DNA sequence – enough to know it was HIV-1 and not the other major type of Aids virus, HIV-2 – but had recognised their limitations. “To be perfectly truthful, we are a hospital diagnostic laboratory and we were beginning to get out of our depth,” Dr Corbitt said.

    Professor Ho’s lab, however, was a specialist Aids centre and was accustomed to performing difficult PCR tests and rapid genetic sequencing. Soon after being sent processed DNA from kidney tissue – which had been left over from the 1990 experiment – Professsor Ho was able to isolate the entire sequence of HIV “with ease”.

    He did this in 1993 and now had the complete virus, from one end of its genetic code to the other. He also found that this genetic sequence was identical to the partial sequence of Corbitt and Bailey – scientific confirmation that it was the same virus isolated earlier by the two Manchester virologists.

    The sequence, however, began to puzzle Professor Ho following a discussion he had with Gerald Myers, director of the HIV Sequence Database at the US’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, and a world authority on the genetics of the virus. “Gerry told us his concerns about the possibility that it was a contaminant. All the calculations and analyses Gerry did suggested that it could be a contaminant . . . [The virus] did not make any sense based on everything he has known about them,” Professor Ho said.

    Dr Myers was well aware from nearly a decade’s work on the Aids virus that it is one of the fastest evolving life-forms. Its speed of change is dramatic. He estimated the strains of HIV circulating in the world alter their DNA sequence by about 1 per cent per year. This would mean the “1959 virus” – which presumably must have infected Carr years earlier – should have differed from 1990 strains by 30 per cent or more.

    The essential problem Dr Myers had identified is that the virus supposedly dating back to 1959 was to all intents and purposes identical to strains of HIV circulating in North America and Europe in 1990. “You couldn’t distinguish it from a 1990 virus,” Professor Ho said. Dr Myers dismissed the 1959 virus as an “aberration”.

    In summary, he concluded that the initial sample of genetic material from kidney tissue sent from Manchester was genuinely infected with HIV but that this virus was disturbingly similar to 1990 strains. He faxed a note to Dr Corbitt in January 1994 saying how he was “greatly troubled” by the sequence. Professor Ho was so concerned that he decided to ask the Manchester researchers for the actual tissue samples themselves, rather than processed DNA supposedly derived from them, to see for himself whether they contained HIV. After several months delay, in February 1994, he received a set of nine tissue batches from Dr Williams and Dr Corbitt.

    THE SMOKING GUN:
    After an exhaustive series of tests using the most sensitive PCR tests available, however, he failed to find any evidence of HIV infection in any of the tissues, including kidney, throat, liver, heart, bone marrow, brain and pancreas.

    News > UK
    How scientists discovered false evidence on the world’s “first Aids victim”
    US experts have destroyed claims that the death in 1959 of a British printer was caused by HIV
    Steve Connor @SteveAConnor
    Friday 24 March 1995 01:02
    David Carr’s medical condition was a mystery throughout his five-month stay at Manchester’s Royal Infirmary. He remained a mystery long after his death on 31 August 1959.

    The 25-year-old apprentice printer was in reasonably good general health until he developed breathlessness, night sweats, tiredness and loss of weight in December 1958. From then on, his health deteriorated radically and dramatically.

    Scaly brownish lesions had appeared on his skin. He developed a fever and a painful anal ulcer appeared in February 1959, followed by another ulcer between his nostril and upper lip. “He was wasted, febrile and ill,” his doctors wrote.

    Download the new Independent Premium app
    Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

    Download now
    Mr Carr was admitted to the Royal Infirmary on 8 April but nothing the doctors did seemed to help him. The breathlessness and wasting became severe and he died officially of pneumonia caused by Pneumocystis carinii, an “opportunistic” infection that takes advantage of a weakened immune system, and cytomegalic inclusion disease, a viral infection causing the cells of the lungs to become enlarged and damaged.

    The case of David Carr was so unusual that the two doctors and the hospital pathologist studying him decided to describe it to the medical community by writing a detailed description in the Lancet. It was published on 29 October 1960.

    Trevor Stretton, medical registrar, John Leonard, senior registrar, and George Williams, the pathologist who carried out the autopsy on Mr Carr, had no idea what was responsible for their patient’s fatal fall into ill- health. Judging by the complete lack of response to their Lancet paper, neither did anyone else.

    David Carr remained a medical enigma until the early 1980s when it dawned on the three doctors that their patient had symptoms similar to those beginning to appear in medical literature due to a mysterious new illness: Aids. In 1983 they wrote to the Lancet posing the question: Did our patient have Aids?

    They pointed out that the man – who was not then named – had been in the Navy between 1955 and 1957 when they supposed he had travelled abroad. “He was not married and we know nothing of his sexual orientation,” the doctors wrote. The implication was that the man could have been homosexual and might have picked up the Aids virus whilst overseas. Aids researchers took a keen interest in the case and this encouraged Dr Williams to locate the tissue samples he took in 1959 from the corpse. Although it was standard practice to store such samples, the unusual nature of death led Dr Williams to take more tissue pieces than usual.

    He sliced small portions of tissues from just about every organ in Mr Carr’s body. Dr Williams said he preserved more than 40 samples and embedded them in paraffin blocks.

    Each set of tissues was given a unique number which could be used to cross-reference the samples with the post-mortem examination records of each case in question. Dr Williams said that there are “thousands” of stored tissue samples in the pathology department of Manchester University. “When I was looking for the tissues for this patient, I came across blocks from patients just after the last war,” he said.

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    Dr Williams said he located the tissue samples taken from Mr Carr in 1987. Unfortunately, there was no test for HIV at the time that was sophisticated enough to use in such dried-out material. (The HIV antibody test was designed to work primarily on blood serum).

    Then, towards the end of the 1980s, scientists had developed a new technique for amplifying minute quantities of DNA – the genetic blueprint – from all manner of tissue fragments. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test had revolutionised forensic science and was now about to be employed on the mortal remains of David Carr.

    Dr Williams sent some samples to Gerald Corbitt, in the hospital’s virology unit. Together with his research assistant, Andrew Bailey, Dr Corbitt applied the PCR test to the tissue and had a positive result: they found that HIV had infiltrated the DNA.

    Dr Corbitt, however, wanted to be absolutely sure that this was not a “false positive” result. He was well aware that the PCR test was so sensitive that it could quite easily amplify any stray molecules of HIV that may contaminate the samples, so he asked Dr Williams to send him some more tissue, but this time in a proper “blind” trial.

    Dr Williams therefore sent Dr Corbitt 12 tissue samples in separate tubes. Six came from David Carr and six from a man of a similar age who had died in a traffic accident in the same year. Neither Dr Corbitt nor Mr Bailey knew which sample came from which patient because only Dr Williams had access to the code describing what each tube contained. Dr Williams said he kept the code in a locked drawer and no one but himself had seen it. “When I say no one, I mean no one,” he told the Independent.

    The blind experiment went ahead. Mr Bailey, who did much of the bench work, performed the PCR test on each of the 12 tissue samples. He and Dr Corbitt went to extraordinary lengths to avoid contamination because they knew how sensitive the PCR test can be.

    The work was done in a laboratory where, as far as they know, researchers had never handled HIV. As an added precaution, half a dozen different rooms where used for each stage of the experiment and the scientists wore disposable gloves, gowns and hats while working with the samples in an air-filtered hood.

    They had even asked Dr Williams to slice sections off the stored tissue blocks using different laboratory knives. Dr Williams said he also washed the knives in alcohol to make absolutely sure there was no cross-contamination.

    Mr Bailey repeated the PCR experiment twice and got the same results each time: four of the tissues were positive for HIV, eight were negative. It was left to Dr Corbitt to phone over the results to Dr Williams, who had the code to hand.

    Dr Corbitt read the results through “one by one” and was told that the four positives all came from David Carr. Kidney, bone marrow, spleen and throat tissue all had HIV present. Tissue from Carr’s brain and liver were negative, as were all the tissue samples from the “negative control”.

    The results surprised Dr Corbitt because they were better than he ever expected. “An occasional false positive wouldn’t come as any great surprise, so to get the correlation of the sort we got did surprise me,” he said.

    With Mr Bailey and Dr Williams, he quickly submitted the results of the research to the Lancet, which published them as a short letter on 7 July, 1990. The resulting international publicity was huge. The three researchers, along with Dr Stretton and Dr Leonard, were feted on both sides of the Atlantic. The New York Times proclaimed: “Puzzle of sailor’s death solved after 31 years: the answer is Aids.”

    Dr Williams remembers well the day when the news story broke. He was on a fishing holiday in Scotland, driving across lonely moorland at about 7.45am listening to Radio 4’s Today programme. He heard the late Brian Redhead talking about a young pathologist in Manchester who had performed an autopsy in 1959. “It was almost as if someone was speaking to me,” Dr Williams recalls.

    News of the “1959 sailor” -people had not realised then that David Carr, as a national servicemen, was not a professional seaman – once again stirred intense interest in the United States. In particular, it intrigued a committee of scientists set up to investigate allegations in Rolling Stone magazine that Aids could have come about as a result of mass polio vaccination campaigns in the Belgian Congo between 1957 and 1960.

    In March 1992, Rolling Stone had published an article written by the journalist Tom Curtis suggesting that the Aids virus might have been transmitted inadvertently from monkeys to humans because monkey cells were used to make the polio vaccine and it was understood that the simian immunodeficiency virus – SIV – was the most probable ancestor of HIV.

    The theory that a polio vaccine was the route for SIV to enter the human population was intriguing yet the only evidence to support it was circumstantial. In December 1993, Rolling Stone had to print a “clarification” of its earlier story at the behest of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, which had made the Congo vaccine, and the scientist responsible for developing it, Hilary Koprowski. The central reason for the apologetic statement was that the committee of scientists had taken the case of the Manchester seaman into account in its review of Rolling Stone’s theory. The scientists -appointed by the Wistar Institute – said in their report: “[The Manchester man] had returned to England by the first half of 1957, before the Congo trial was begun. Therefore, it can be stated with almost complete certainty, that the large polio vaccine trial begun in 1957 in Congo was not the origin of Aids.” A Wistar Institute press statement in October 1992 re- iterated the importance of the 1959 case: “The most conclusive evidence refuting the origin of Aids theory involves the earliest documented case of HIV-1 infection – a merchant marine [sic] who was symptomatic in 1958 and died of Aids in 1959 in Manchester, England. “While this man travelled abroad to northern Africa beginning in Continues on page 3

    From page 2

    1955, he had returned to England by the first half of 1957, before the Congo trial was begun.”

    However, it was the tenacity of one member of this committee – David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Centre in New York City and professor of medicine and microbiology at New York University School of Medicine – that has now cast grave doubts over the scientific validity of the case of the Manchester sailor.

    Professor Ho contacted the Manchester researchers in 1992 to learn more about the man, who had subsequently been named in the Sunday Express.

    Professor Ho asked for samples to perform PCR tests himself. Manchester University’s Gerald Corbitt said that after the Lancet letter of 1990 he and Andrew Bailey had tried to sequence the genetic code of HIV but had only limited success.

    They had managed to get a partial DNA sequence – enough to know it was HIV-1 and not the other major type of Aids virus, HIV-2 – but had recognised their limitations. “To be perfectly truthful, we are a hospital diagnostic laboratory and we were beginning to get out of our depth,” Dr Corbitt said.

    Professor Ho’s lab, however, was a specialist Aids centre and was accustomed to performing difficult PCR tests and rapid genetic sequencing. Soon after being sent processed DNA from kidney tissue – which had been left over from the 1990 experiment – Professsor Ho was able to isolate the entire sequence of HIV “with ease”.

    He did this in 1993 and now had the complete virus, from one end of its genetic code to the other. He also found that this genetic sequence was identical to the partial sequence of Corbitt and Bailey – scientific confirmation that it was the same virus isolated earlier by the two Manchester virologists.

    The sequence, however, began to puzzle Professor Ho following a discussion he had with Gerald Myers, director of the HIV Sequence Database at the US’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, and a world authority on the genetics of the virus. “Gerry told us his concerns about the possibility that it was a contaminant. All the calculations and analyses Gerry did suggested that it could be a contaminant . . . [The virus] did not make any sense based on everything he has known about them,” Professor Ho said.

    Dr Myers was well aware from nearly a decade’s work on the Aids virus that it is one of the fastest evolving life-forms. Its speed of change is dramatic. He estimated the strains of HIV circulating in the world alter their DNA sequence by about 1 per cent per year. This would mean the “1959 virus” – which presumably must have infected Carr years earlier – should have differed from 1990 strains by 30 per cent or more.

    The essential problem Dr Myers had identified is that the virus supposedly dating back to 1959 was to all intents and purposes identical to strains of HIV circulating in North America and Europe in 1990. “You couldn’t distinguish it from a 1990 virus,” Professor Ho said. Dr Myers dismissed the 1959 virus as an “aberration”.

    Further evidence suggested that if this was a 1990 contaminant, it was no ordinary contaminant. For a start, Professor Ho had identified “quasi- species” of HIV in the initial samples sent from Manchester. This means the virus he had detected was present as swarms of slightly different forms, indicating it was a genuine HIV infection with multiple copies of actively replicating virus. It could not be a one-off contamination.

    Secondly, any accidental PCR contamination would be unlikely to result in an entire virus ending up in experimental material. Professor Ho was able to sequence the complete virus, which could only mean one of two things: either a complete clone of HIV had somehow got into the tissue sample or the tissue was genuinely infected with the virus.

    The former is most unlikely, he said, because few laboratories use HIV clones (and Dr Corbitt’s lab is not one of them) and in any case all sequences of such clones are known, and the sequence he determined was not from any known HIV clone in the world.

    This left the New York scientists with an uncomfortable conclusion. “Given what we’ve done now in the past few months we would think the initial sequence was incorrect or there’s been a sample mix-up … We even discussed wild ideas that someone intentionally provided us with a sample that just came from a contemporary Aids patient,” Professor Ho said.

    In summary, he concluded that the initial sample of genetic material from kidney tissue sent from Manchester was genuinely infected with HIV but that this virus was disturbingly similar to 1990 strains. He faxed a note to Dr Corbitt in January 1994 saying how he was “greatly troubled” by the sequence. Professor Ho was so concerned that he decided to ask the Manchester researchers for the actual tissue samples themselves, rather than processed DNA supposedly derived from them, to see for himself whether they contained HIV. After several months delay, in February 1994, he received a set of nine tissue batches from Dr Williams and Dr Corbitt. Each was embedded in their original paraffin blocks.

    After an exhaustive series of tests using the most sensitive PCR tests available, however, he failed to find any evidence of HIV infection in any of the tissues, including kidney, throat, liver, heart, bone marrow, brain and pancreas.

    As a final check, Professor Ho employed a sophisticated DNA test to see whether this set of tissues all came from the same person – they did. However, when he compared them against the DNA sent to him earlier, he was shocked to discover that this HIV-positive tissue was from another person. Furthermore, the size of fragments of a gene the scientists used as another check on their PCR technology indicated the two sets of samples from Manchester were from tissues of significantly different ages.

    The HIV-positive tissue generated large gene fragments, a clear indication it was recent tissue, whereas the second batch of HIV-negative tissue produced small fragments, showing the DNA had degraded, as it does in older tissue. Everything pointed to the positive batch coming from a 1990 Aids patient.

    The 1990 Lancet research had therefore failed the ultimate scientific test of its validity: replication by other scientists. It will now have to be retracted. The tissues of David Carr appear after all to have been HIV negative and his fatal illness the result of another, unexplained cause.

    Scientific Fraud.

  23. akenatenI Avatar
    akenatenI

    Sillywoman, I exposed your lying bedwench ass.

  24. Mariposa Avatar
    Mariposa

    The worst information there be is closed mouth information
    It harbours resentment against those who keep the information to themselves
    It breeds suspicious thoughts and emotions
    It gives people an opportunity to form conclusions and spread rumors
    All of the above mentioned fits like hand and glove on to this govt
    Senator Caswell recently gave his version of what he was told about the Virus and govt truthfulness while delvering his comments on the virus in Parliament and as of yet an official denial or confirmation by govt officials has not be released a glaring example of when govt breed and pursue a closed mouth environment of critical issues on health

  25. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    TheO is correct. There must be balance or more harm can be caused.

    That is part of what I meant when I said one could always kill one’s self to prevent one’s self from catching the virus.

    If we shut down prematurely some of us we will surely die from starvation. Money still has to be made.

    Unhappy IS the head that wears the crown. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

  26. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ Silly WomanFebruary 9, 2020 8:45 AM

    @Piece the Legend February 9, 2020 6:50 AM “YOU WILL AGREE THAT ITS SOUNDS BETTER TO BLAME THE NEGROES FOR Pangolian Coronavirus…”
    Nobody is blaming black people for the pangolian virus. Why do you insist is saying so? Does it make you feel like more man to set up a straw man and lick it down?
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    How about rephrasing that statement to read:

    Nobody is blaming ‘Africa’ for the pangolin virus; ‘YET’?

    The much endangered African pangolin animal is a ‘much’ sought after culinary delicacy and ranks very high on the Chinese medicinal totem pole of exotic and mystical ingredients.

    Isn’t the “African” swine fever virus blamed for the decimation of the Chinese pig industry and which has spread to other parts of S.E. Asia?

    What’s next on the menu out of Africa to carry Mother Nature’s own retaliatory weapons of mass destruction?
    The prized possession of the tusks of murdered elephants out of Africa?

    Maybe this current virus would put an end to the transcontinental trade facilitating the willful destruction of your Yahweh’s creatures he saved in Noah’s ark by eliminating the perpetrators; Chinese or other wise.

  27. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @akenatenI “It will now have to be retracted. ”

    Has it been retracted? And if not why not?

    @akenatenI February 9, 2020 10:24 AM

    Sillywoman, I exposed your lying bedwench ass.

    I don’t know what is a bed wench. I am a respected and respectable senior citizen. Yes. Like most ensible people, I do sleep in a bed, bough with my owm money.

    Be off do.

    And remember to use condoms when ya lickin’ ’bout yaself.

    Have fun.

  28. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ akenatenI February 9, 2020 10:24 AM
    “Sillywoman, I exposed your lying bedwench ass.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    It’s NOT the first time her ‘lying’ bed-wetting jenny has been exposed.

    Only recent she (who wants to be a He) was found out to be a liar when it comes to her financial history.

    A millionaire in her multi-tasking hardworking youth able to have in excess of $46,000 in the early 1970’s languishing in a bank account but these days cannot even find more than $5.00 to pay her ‘ZR’ men for services rendered.

    But what can we expect from a simpleton who has done and seen everything under the Sun but whose only solution for violence is the castration of pubescent males.

    If only Yahweh (who she believed made the universe in less than 6 days about 10,000 solar years ago) had followed her wise counsel there would have been no Cain to provide violently murdering off spring like the same simple Simon(e).

  29. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @Mariposa February 9, 2020 10:27 AM “It gives people an opportunity to form conclusions and spread rumors”

    Mariposa we know that it takes nothing for you to spread rumours. I hope that at least your political masters are paying you well.

    If Mariposa is asked the sum of 1+1 it would not be past her to form the conclusion =3

  30. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    Miller you vex becausin’ I refuse to join your flaccid self in your cold garret in London, even though you insist on calling it a penthouse?

    Lolll!!!

    Going out now to catch some sun. Want to join me?

  31. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @Silly Woman February 9, 2020 11:17 AM

    We hope the same Sun disinfects your lying donkey or strike you down like Saul on his way to Damascus.

    Why not accept the invitation from Mr. Whitehill and pay him a visit?

    You might just end up being another Sarah, the wife of the nonagenarian Abraham, after being visited by a stork in your 70’s.

  32. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Miller,

    What’s up with you? Simple Simon needs no help from me but i thought you would consider it more if it came from an impartial observer.

    Simple Simon said she spent her money educating her children and building her house. Also, she said she took care of her parents. One cannot spend money and have it too. She saved for a purpose and fulfilled that purpose.

    Furthermore, I don’t know why you would take seriously her castration suggestion, if she made it. What i take her to mean is that men are generally more aggressive than women and are also less nurturing or more likely to abandon or neglect their children. Both of these things cannot be refuted. One therefore has to be aware of these traits and take particular pains to counteract them. They serve a purpose but can get out of hand in circumstances where they are not necessary. I am sure the aggression was priceless and the detachment from offspring necessary to allow men to perform their role in primitive society. But society has changed. And so have the roles of men AND women.

    I let my son work out his natural aggression in video games now that I have already drilled it into him that violence should be used only for self-defence and as the last resort. I also empowered him with martial arts. Last week he learned how to break someone’s arm. At sixteen after many years of classes he has quiet confidence and no need to prove his maleness with silly fighting. It is enough that he knows his capabilities. He is also already attached to his children who are yet to be conceived.

    When I was in my peri-menopause stage I found myself becoming abnormally angry with my young son for behaviour that was really quite normal for one his age. I used to go from 0-100 in a second.when he clumsily spilled something when i knew full well that it was normal to be clumsy at that age. One night when I felt the rage rising I said to myself.”This is not normal!” The next day i took myself off to the doctor who informed me that I was in peri-menopause. She told me to mark my calendar to be aware of my cycle and to take Evening Primrose Oil. I did neither. Being aware of the problem was sufficient for me. Whenever I felt the anger rising my awareness kicked in and tamped it back down.

    Hormones play an essential role but can also be problematic in certain circumstances. It is so with most things

    PS. Men also seem to have a higher sex drive. This also was useful in days gone by. Not necessary now. My son also has that under control. He turns down girls who keep telling him he’s sexy.

    It can be done.

  33. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    By the way, does Simple Simon really believe that Yahweh made the earth in six days? I doubt.

    Just the suggestion that you should be separated from your “crown jewels” seems to have rendered your brain incapacitated. You men do make me laugh!

  34. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @Miller February 9, 2020 11:59 AM “We hope the same Sun disinfects your lying donkey or strike you down like Saul on his way to Damascus.”

    i walked 2 1/2 miles. Nah the sun din’ strike me down. Me and the sun, we love each other.

    I came home and had some cou-cou and flying fish with sweet potato and spinach/tomato salad. i grew the okras, tomatoes, sweet potato and spinach myself.

    Feeling wonderful.

  35. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    Donna I have only ever advocated for men to spend more time with their children, because it is the young men who are complaining of the lack f love from their daddies.

    I had a great daddy and he stuck around until I was in my 50’s.

    it is a wonderful thing to have a great daddy.

  36. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Silly Woman,

    I read you loud and clear. My father was also there for me. He had his flaws as men and women do but I always knew he loved me and was there for me.

    I don’t know where these people get the idea that you are a man hater or think that women are blameless and men all useless or problematic.

    I don’t get that at all!

  37. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ Silly Woman February 9, 2020 2:08 PM
    “I had a great daddy and he stuck around until I was in my 50’s.
    it is a wonderful thing to have a great daddy.”
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Good for you!
    And a similar claim can be made by ‘average’ man of woman.
    So what’s the problem with society that is caused by this lack of paternal love?
    Isn’t your god a male figure?

    Crime has always been rampant among young men. That’s why prisons were built and police forces established.

    What you should be more concerned about is the lack of love demonstrated by churchgoers and the ineffectiveness of the Church to spread the love of Jesus among the young men and women.

    BTW, did you know that the ‘creator’ of your Anglican church was a philandering serial killer who executed a few of his wives and never spent a day in jail?

    Maybe that King of female slaughter is in concubine heaven sitting next to King Solomon.

  38. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Henry the Eighth did NOT create the Anglican Church. It was already there. He just switched his allegiance and made it the church of the state. But the church was full of imperfect people then as it is now. We grow and we learn. And it is precisely that that makes me love it.

  39. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ Donna February 9, 2020 1:39 PM
    “Simple Simon said she spent her money educating her children and building her house. Also, she said she took care of her parents. One cannot spend money and have it too. She saved for a purpose and fulfilled that purpose.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    And she did it all by herself without a ‘sperm-donation’ man by her side!

    So did many other women (and a few good men) who did their level best to raise children while looking after their elderly relatives in true Christian style.

    That’s what Love is about.

    You forgot one thing about Ms Superwoman.
    She has also worked (for extended periods of time) and visited every metropolitan city on God’s blue planet.

  40. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ Donna February 9, 2020 3:17 PM
    “Henry the Eighth did NOT create the Anglican Church. It was already there. He just switched his allegiance and made it the church of the state. But the church was full of imperfect people then as it is now. We grow and we learn. And it is precisely that that makes me love it ”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=

    Sorry to use the ‘Word’ “created’.

    He reformed the English Holy Catholic Church to his own demands so he can get a ‘religiously acceptable’ divorce from a woman who did not produce a male heir.

    We must admit that the real Anglican (English) Church has come a long way compared to its mother in Rome.

    Even members of the LQBTQ community can now be preachers and even get married in the same place of modern-day love.

    It’s a pity the Anglican Church has to sell off so much of its real estate to keep its head above ground to avoid saying ‘Amen’ leaving only its African offspring to shout Hallelujah!

  41. Baje Avatar
    Baje

    North Korea’s Secret Coronavirus Crisis is Crazy Scary

    SEOUL–North Korea’s not saying a word about deaths or illnesses from the coronavirus, but the disease reportedly has spread across the border from China and is taking a toll in a country with a dismal health care system and scant resources for fighting off the deadly bug.

    From Lobsters and Steak to Coronavirus: One Couple’s Surreal Cruise Nightmare

    One sure sign of the regime’s fears is that it failed to stage a parade in central Pyongyang on Saturday, the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the country’s armed forces. Last year, Kim Jong Un himself presided over the procession that displayed the North’s latest missiles and other fearsome hardware along with goose-stepping soldiers in serried ranks.

    This year, nothing about the nation’s nuclear warheads, much less the “new strategic weapon” that Kim has vowed to unveil. Rodong Sinmum, the newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party, merely cited the armed forces’ supposed success combating “severe and dangerous difficulties”—and said nothing at all about the parade.

    But reports have filtered out about Kim’s subjects falling prey to coronavirus despite the country’s decision to seal its 880-mile border with China, most of it along the Yalu River into the Yellow Sea to the west, and its 11-mile border with Russia where the Tumen River flows into the Pacific.

    Among the first to report fatalities in North Korea, the Seoul-based website Daily NK said five people had died in the critical northwestern city of Sinuiju, on the Yalu River across road and rail bridges from Dandong, which is the largest Chinese city in the region and a key point for commerce with North Korea despite sanctions.

    Daily NK, which relies on sources inside North Korea that send reports via Chinese mobile phone networks to contacts in China, said authorities had “ordered public health officials in Sinuiju to quickly dispose of the bodies and keep the deaths secret from the public.”

    The victims had crossed the porous Yalu River border despite orders to cut off traffic from China as the disease radiated from the industrial city of Wuhan where the virus originated in December. As of Sunday, more than 700 people had died inside China.

    One of the first patients in North Korea reportedly was hospitalized in Sinuiju “with symptoms similar to a cold and was given fever reducers and antibiotics,” said Daily NK, but the patient died as the fever rose. Two more patients died two days later in another hospital in Sinuiju and another two in a nearby town.

    North Korea’s worries about an epidemic are all the more intense because of its shortage of basic medicine and equipment. As cases mount, authorities are working feverishly to contain a disease that, if unchecked, could undermine Kim’s grip over his 25 million people, most of whom live in poverty worsened by hunger.

    “Because health conditions and health care in North Korea are so bad,” said Bruce Bennett, long-time analyst at the Rand Corporation, “they cannot allow the replication process to develop without severe intervention”—that is, they have to take drastic steps to keep the virus from spreading fast.

    The country has just streamlined a headquarters to coordinate operations, Rodong Sinmun reported, marshaling 30,000 workers to combat the epidemic.

    The Coronavirus Whistleblower Died a Martyr for Free Speech in China

    Besides blocking international traffic, the North’s Korean Central News Agency reported the headquarters had ordered tests for everyone entering the capital city of Pyongyang by road and for anyone who had traveled outside the country. Foreigners working in Pyongyang, including those with diplomatic missions or non-governmental organizations, were banned temporarily from venturing outside for shopping.

    Even so, with hospitals and clinics largely bereft of needed supplies other than those serving the elite in the capital and elsewhere, a certain desperation was evident in the state media. Rodong Sinmun warned that “the fate” of the country was at stake, according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency.

    “North Korea lacks a vaccine or medical abilities,” said Bennett,”so they have to act by preventing the disease from coming into North Korea.” The point is to “rapidly contain any leakage—exactly what they are trying to do by preventing people-to-people contacts.”

    That’s virtually impossible, however, as long as people move illicitly across the border, carrying on low-level commerce in the need to survive a decrepit system. JoongAng Ilbo, a leading South Korean newspaper, cited anonymous source saying that a woman had been diagnosed in the capital and that all those with whom she had had contact had been quarantined.

    Unlike in China, North Korea officially has denied any cases while attempting to get people to cooperate in stopping the spread of the disease. JoongAng Ilbo quoted a North Korean health official, Song In-bom, as having called on North Korean TV for “civil awareness” and unity in dealing with the disease while assuring his audience there had so far been no cases.

    “I believe absolutely nothing of what I’m hearing from Pyongyang,” said Evans Revere, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specializes in North Korean issues.

    “It simply defies credibility that a country with a grossly inadequate public health infrastructure and a malnourished population, a country that depends on China for some 90 percent of its trade, and a country that had until recently opened itself up to a major influx of Chinese tourists in order to earn foreign exchange has avoided having a lot of victims,” said Revere. “The total closure of the border and other measures Pyongyang has taken reflect a real sense of emergency in the North about the threat.”

    In fact, he went on, “I can’t help but think it may also reflect panic if the number of patients is growing.”

    Indeed, “the coronavirus arguably poses a unique threat to North Korea,” wrote Victor Cha and Marie DuMond of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in an article in Beyond Parallel, which is published by CSIS.

    “The regime’s relative isolation from the international community hinders the widespread penetration of many diseases from abroad,” they wrote, but “the porous nature of the border with China and frequent travel is a clear vector for the virus’ transmission.” Thus, “If there are reports of the virus inside of North Korea, we should expect that the virus would spread rapidly given the state’s inability to contain a pandemic.”

    By now, it may be too late for North Korea to stamp out all signs of the disease.

    “Several suspected coronavirus infections have occurred in North Korea even though it shut all its borders,” said Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s biggest-selling newspaper, citing anonymous sources. “The infections most likely spread through porous parts of the border with China that see plenty of smuggling and other clandestine traffic,” said the paper, reporting suspected cases among those “engaged in smuggling between the North and China.”

    “Bottom line,” said Steve Tharp, who’s been analyzing North Korean affairs as both an army officer and civilian expert for many years here, “the coronavirus has tightened up sanctions enforcement more than any other measure over the years because the North Koreans are actually self-enforcing the sanctions, against their will, through the tight closing of their borders in order to save the regime from being wiped out by this human pandemic coming.”

    North Korean leaders, said Tharp, “understand very well that this pandemic would rip through their population and be much more dangerous in North Korea than other places because of their inadequate medical infrastructure and the low resistance disease of the general population after so many years of surviving under near-starvation conditions.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/north-korea-secret-coronavirus-crisis-182030954.html

  42. Baje Avatar
    Baje

    UK facing ‘major outbreak’ of coronavirus as disease spreads, expert warns

    Experts have warned the UK is facing a “major outbreak” of coronavirus in the coming weeks as it continues to spread across the globe.

    Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the outbreak is likely to become a pandemic, adding he was becoming “increasingly alarmed” about the rate of infection.

    The death toll in China from the coronavirus has risen to 811, surpassing SARS fatalities in the 2002-2003 outbreak.

    Outside China there are 288 cases in 24 countries, with one death, according to the World Health Organisation.

    Professor Piot, who co-discovered ebola and the presence of Aids in Africa, warned that coronavirus is more dangerous than ebola.

    “It’s a greater threat because of the mode of transmission. The potential for spread is much, much higher,” he told The Times.

    “If the number of people who get infected is huge, then that will also kill a number of people.”

    On Sunday the last plane carrying British citizens evacuated from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan landed in Oxfordshire.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/uk-facing-major-outbreak-coronavirus-091522292.html

  43. Silly Woman Avatar
    Silly Woman

    @Miller February 9, 2020 3:21 PM “She has also worked (for extended periods of time) and visited every metropolitan city on God’s blue planet.”

    Not every one. Why you dona stop telling lies on me?

    Only about 23 or 24, somewhere ’round there. I’ve forgotten the actual number, and i’ve discarded so many, many passports.

  44. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    About 200 British and foreign nationals were repatriated from Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, on Sunday
    The number of people infected by the coronavirus in the UK has doubled to eight – after four more patients tested positive for the virus.
    It comes as the government issued new powers in England to keep people in quarantine to stop the virus spreading.

    In order to do this the Department of Health has described the coronavirus as a “serious and imminent threat” to public health.
    The overall risk level to the UK remains “moderate”.

    There have been more than 40,000 cases of the virus globally, mostly in China. The total number of deaths in China is now 908.(Quote)

  45. Mariposa Avatar
    Mariposa

    Yet as the news report tells the truth from other countries barbados govt continues to.keep its citizens in the dark
    It is more than three weeks news broke that people were placed in quarantine some where in barbados
    Outside Caswell open revelations in Parliament stating that these people were at Paragon govt officials has remained closed mouth as to what test results has indicated for the reason these people having to be quarantined
    Also no information has been given as whether these people has been released
    What a dam shame

  46. David Avatar
    David

    Where was the news released?

    We have to stick with the official position.

    Which is: no cases of coronavirus is being treated in Barbados.

  47. Dame Bajans Avatar
    Dame Bajans

    David, at present there does not appear to be testing for the virus in Bim. In yesterday’s Nation, Dr. Walter Alleyne said that testing would begin soon. So, if there are indeed people in quarantine because of symptoms, we cant say there is no virus when people have not yet been tested.

  48. robert lucas Avatar
    robert lucas

    Contrary to the impression given, the test kits are not yet in the island. The test kits most likely will utilize enzyme linked immuno assay (ELISA) or a modification using monoclonal antibodies. Straight forward test with the kit.

  49. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    A GP practice in Brighton has been temporarily closed after a staff member tested positive for the coronavirus.
    Patients at the city’s County Oak medical centre have been advised to contact the NHS 111 phone service if they have concerns.
    Eight people in the UK have now been infected by the coronavirus.
    The Department of Health has called the virus a “serious and imminent threat” to public health, but the overall risk to the population is “moderate”.
    However, the risk to individuals is low, the department said.
    There have been more than 40,000 cases of the virus globally, mostly in China. The total number of deaths in China is now 908.(Quote)

  50. Mariposa Avatar
    Mariposa

    If govt officials were honest and straightforward with the people from the start
    There would be no need for speculation or second guessing or as Caswell mouthings alluded in Parliament
    This govt need to use so called protective measures to protect the economy will end in tears

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