Underworld

Edward Snowden on the Joe Rogan Podcast

Vic Bishop, Staff Writer
Waking Times

Since 2013 the real government whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has been in political asylum in Russia, where he continues to write books and tell his story of how as an employee of the NSA he discovered that the government was breaking the law in constructing a massive surveillance state. Today, the surveillance is such a ubiquitous par of our lives, that people have come to see it as a normal part of everyday life, and hardly any politician bothers to work against it. It’s here to stay, sadly.

Recently, Snowden published a book entitled Permanent Record, which was immediately attacked by the US government, prompting them to sue Snowden for all of the profits related to the book. The government does not want you to hear his message. Ironically, though, Permanent Record became an instant bestseller, and Snowden’s popularity has only increased in recent years.

In a newly released podcast by Joe Rogan, Snowden calls in from Russia, talking about his understanding of how corruption from within has led the permanent establishment of the massive and highly profitable surveillance state which has filled the coffers of defense contractors and corrupt politicians. Snowden discusses the fact that all three branches of the U.S government are corrupt and that for admirable government employees who witness government agencies breaking the law have no available channels to blow the whistle and get the truth out to the American people.

Interestingly, in the podcast Snowden also talks about his experience on 9/11 when he was working for a small business out of a house on Fort Meade near the DC metro area. He describes how the base, which is home to a vast portion of the U.S. Military’s intelligence apparatus, was immediately dispatched and the base cleared as soon as the events of the day began to unfold.

Snowden points out how strange this was, considering that all of the personnel on the base would have been more than willing to take the risk of being attacked in order to fulfill the duty they has all signed up for, that of protecting the American people. Snowden’s point here is that the intelligence agencies were essentially taken off-line at the most critical moment in the entire history of their existence.

So, why did the directors of these agencies send all of these resources home on 9/11?

Snowden continues…

“It says so much about the bureaucratic character of how the government works. The people who rise to the top of these governments. It’s about risk management for them. It’s about never being criticized for something…
Everybody wants to believe in conspiracy theories because it helps life make sense. It helps us believe that somebody is in control… that somebody is calling the shots, that these things all happen for a reason. There are real conspiracies… but when you look back at the 9/11 report and when you look back at the history of what actually happened, what we can prove. Not on what we can speculate on, but what are at least are the commonly agreed facts… it’s very clear to me, as someone who worked in the intelligence community… that these attacks could have been prevented.” ~Edward Snowden

He goes on to explain that the government’s excuse for not preventing the attacks was essentially due to the fact that the various intelligence agencies were unable to effectively share information, coordinate investigations, and work together. Snowden is implying that 9/11 was essentially allowed to happen so that the mass surveillance state, which is insanely profitable to certain people, could be created. And it has since been created.

Considering that the Patriot Act soon followed 9/11, and in the nearly two decades since, the massive warfare and surveillance state continues to balloon and spread its reach into American citizen’s lives and around the globe, Snowden’s assessment seems rather accurate.

The full interview is almost 3 hours long, and is posted in full here:

Underworld

A brief history of “improving” people and the human breed

On January 18, 1940, in the castle of Grafeneck in southern Germany, the Nazis began to kill people with mental disorders, hereditary and incurable diseases, and disabled people for the sake of “cleansing”, “improving” the German people and out of “mercy”. The crimes of the Nazis are considered the height of the atrocities, but the ideas that motivated them appeared long before the Third Reich – and did not disappear after its fall.

Since time immemorial, people have noticed that children are more or less like parents. And if so, this pattern can be used. Even Plato in the dialogue “State” proposed, as we would say now, a demographic program that governs who can have children with whom. In his opinion, worthy men should have several partners. At the beginning of the XVII century, the Spanish doctor Luis Mercado wrote a treatise “On hereditary diseases,” where he advised to look for a spouse who is as different as possible from you: then the father’s seed compensates for the flaws of the mother’s seed, and vice versa. But almost another 300 years passed before people became obsessed with heredity.

In the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin declared that life was subject to natural selection. Organisms have different traits – some traits help to survive and continue the genus, therefore they persist, while others disappear. Darwin had a younger cousin, Francis Galton, and this idea struck him.

As Carl Zimmer writes in his book, She has her Mother Laughs, Galton tried his best to graduate from Cambridge University with honors. He hired tutors, went to retake and even asked the teacher to postpone the final exam for a year, but he did not succeed. Then Galton realized that, unlike his friends, he was mediocrity. And those, as it seemed to him, inherited their talents and intelligence from their parents. Therefore, outstanding people can – and must! – breed using artificial selection.

In 1883, Galton invented the catchy word “eugenics” for his teaching, which is composed of two Greek roots: “good” and “genus.” True, this did not help to gain popularity in his homeland, the UK. But eugenic ideas took root in the United States.

Kallikak Family History

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, many thought that the country’s future was at stake because of the spread of dementia. Among those who tried to find the reason was Henry Goddard, a psychologist and teacher, who worked in a special school. Goddard believed that intelligence is inherited, like growth or eye color, and that a nation is simply degenerating. To check the guess, he began to study the pedigrees of the students and soon found confirmation.

Goddard’s assistant collected information about fifty of the relatives of one student and found out that two branches of descendants came from his distant ancestor. Allegedly, during the War of Independence, he slept with a weak-minded girl, and when he returned from the front, he married a decent woman. Both had children. Among the offspring of the first were idiots and criminals, and from the second became doctors and lawyers. Based on the results of this study, Goddard published the book The Kallikak Family, which made him famous.

Even before the release of The Kallikak Family, some US states passed laws to force the sterilization of criminals and the demented. The doctor, William McKim, Zimmer writes, generally suggested “silent, painless killing.” Having gained popularity, Goddard began to lobby for such laws in the future. The authorities also, on his advice, began to check the intelligence of immigrants and soldiers. The results were depressing: it seemed that blacks and visitors from southern and eastern Europe were almost completely moronic. In 1924, Congress passed a law restricting entry into the country.

In fact, Goddard’s assistant messed up a lot of things. There was no common ancestor, and in the “bad” branch there were plenty of completely normal people, literate and with work. Deviations in development, which nevertheless occurred among the relatives of that student of the special school, could often be explained by poor nutrition and other companions of poverty. As for intelligence tests, many of the questions did not require sharpness of mind, but specific knowledge. Finally, we still do not fully understand what intelligence is, and even more so how to measure it.

Since the 1920s, eugenics has been increasingly criticized in the United States, and in the 1930s it was no longer considered a science. But not in Germany.

Gene cultivators

In Germany, the Kallikak Family first appeared back in 1914. As Karl Zimmer points out in his book, Adolf Hitler read it ten years later while he was in prison. Hitler came to power in January 1933, and already in July a law was passed in Germany to prevent the birth of offsprings with hereditary diseases. Among other things, the list included schizophrenia, hereditary blindness and deafness, Huntington’s chorea, cleft lip.

The law allowed to sterilize sick people so that they did not produce the same offspring. The decision was made by a judge and two doctors. Dementia was detected using tests similar to those used in America. After a year and a half, another new law obliged the Germans to provide health certificates before marriage.

In the book The Nazi Doctors, Robert Jay Lifton writes that doctors in the Third Reich explained their mission in such a way: they must ensure that people realize their full racial potential, not just treat patients, but cultivate genes, maintain blood purity and preach the laws of nature .

Killing was considered the most merciful therapy for the incurable and insane, so sterilization was only the first step. Then the Nazis began to kill “defective” children in hospitals, then – adults. Basically, they dealt with patients in psychiatric hospitals, some of which were converted to centers for euthanasia.

One such hospital was located in the castle Grafenek. Converted, it was opened from January to December 1940, after which the program had to be curtailed due to the indignation of the Germans. But the killings did not stop. On the contrary, the Nazis destroyed more and more people: the sick, criminals, homosexuals, Jews, Gypsies and other non-Aryans – they simply did it secretly and mainly in the occupied territories.

The extermination of people was stopped only by Soviet and Allied forces at the end of World War II. But they did not defeat eugenic ideas.

Edited children

“Undoubtedly, we must remember the Holocaust and not allow history to repeat itself. But we feel that we have a moral duty to promote“ good births ”, that is, to set literally eugenic goals. Indeed, if parents are encouraged to provide their children with the best conditions (good nutrition, education, treatment, an atmosphere of love in the house, etc.), why not encourage them to have good genes in their children? ” – Sarah Goering writes in an article on eugenics for the Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy.

Eugenists and Nazis talked about genes, but did not know what it was. No one knew. In the 1940s, scientists only assumed that hereditary information was recorded in DNA, but its structure and the transmission of characters from parents to offsprings were a mystery. In heredity, much remains unclear. Nevertheless, the purpose of many genes and the malfunctions that DNA breaks cause are already known. There are tools that allow you to change genes. They are far from perfect, but this does not stop scientists.

At the end of 2018, biologist He Jiankui announced the birth of twins with a corrected gene, which determines whether HIV infection will occur. Other scientists generally did not approve of the experiment (suffice it to say that both girls did not have the correct gene edited inaccurately and not in all cells), and later a Chinese court sentenced him to three years in prison.

In the summer of 2019, Russian Denis Rebrikov was going to do the same, only with the gene, because of which the child is born deaf. Allegedly, he even persuaded one pair, but when the hype arose, they refused. In addition to such an experiment, you still need to get permission from the Ministry of Health, and after the story with He Jiankui, it will not be easy to do.

Inevitable eugenics

Nevertheless, technology already allows us to control or at least decipher the hereditary information, and in the future will become more accurate and cheaper. Therefore, experts in bioethics talk about a new eugenics – liberal. It is called so because it concerns the well-being of individuals, and not of society and the state as a whole. It is based on the personal freedom of choice of parents in accordance with their values and ideas about a better life. That is, the laws do not indicate what is good and what is bad, and do not oblige the couple to do anything at all.

At first glance, there is nothing wrong with such eugenics, but difficult questions arise. Here are some of them.

Parents are obliged to change the genes of the child for the sake of it’s future, or just can do it, or can they leave everything as it is?

Is it possible to change the genes of an embryo if it is, in principle, impossible to obtain his consent?

What is permissible: to prevent disease or also improve symptoms? Where is the line between healing and improvement? Is everything that seems to be an improvement really such? For example, are the smartest people the happiest?

Let the state not dictate what is good and what is bad, but in culture, there are still persistent prejudices. If parents are allowed to choose, will they ask for a tall white heterosexual boy, because he will have more chances to succeed in life? In other words, accessible genome editing can reinforce racism, sexism, homophobia and other prejudices.

Gene technology is more complicated and more expensive than polio vaccination, so for a long time it will be available only to the elite. Suddenly, social and economic inequality will take root in human biology?

Will we not change so much over time that we cease to be human?

Most of these questions seem speculative. In the end, while only two children with edited DNA were born, and even then no one saw them, and before the mass use of such technologies there are decades, if not centuries. But it is worth considering how many children were not born due to the fact that a genetic test revealed pathology during pregnancy. In the case of some abnormalities, for example, the absence of one of the two sex chromosomes that causes Shereshevsky-Turner syndrome, future parents almost always choose an abortion.

It is difficult to say which solution is correct in such a situation. Karl Zimmer in his book talks about several lawsuits about the “unauthorized birth” from children who believe that their parents showed negligence, ignoring the test results and allowing the pregnancy to continue. But can people with severe pathologies, whose parents did not begin to check the fetus, take legal action? This is no longer a speculative question.

Antenatal diagnostics and genetic engineering expand the choice, but at the same time make it impossible not to choose at all. Everyone is forced to decide what is “good birth” and what is not — we all inevitably become eugenists.

TASS

Underworld

Opioid Crisis — A Result of Poverty, Availability and Pain

Dr. Mercola, Guest
Waking Times

In recent years, the devastating effects of wanton opioid use have become unmistakable, with opioid overdoses killing 47,600 Americans in 2017 alone. As of June 2017, opioids became the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50, and President Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency that year in October.

I’ve written many previous articles detailing the background of how the U.S. ended up here. While the opioid crisis was largely manufactured by drug companies hell-bent on maximizing profits, leading to exaggerated and even fraudulent claims about the drugs’ safety profile, the increased availability of opioids isn’t the sole cause.

A Perfect Storm of Poverty, Trauma, Availability and Pain

As noted in a January 2020 article in The Atlantic, “researchers … say opioid addiction looks like the result of a perfect storm of poverty, trauma, availability and pain.”

Commenting on some of the research cited in that article, David Powell, senior economist at Rand, told The Atlantic that to produce the most lethal drug epidemic America has ever seen “you need a huge rise in opioid access, in a way that misuse is easy, but you also need demand to misuse the product.”

Poverty and pain, both physical and emotional, fuel misuse. If economic stress or physical pain (or both) is a factor in your own situation, please be mindful that seeking escape through opioid use can easily lead to a lethal overdose. The risk of death is magnified fivefold if you’re also using benzodiazepine-containing drugs.

The Hidden Influence of Poverty and Trauma

Several investigations seeking to gain insight into the causes fueling the opioid epidemic have been conducted in recent years. The findings reveal common trends where emotional, physical and societal factors have conspired to bring us to the point where we are today.

Among them is a 2019 study in the Medical Care Research Review journal, which looked at the effects of state-level economic conditions — unemployment rates, median house prices, median household income, insurance coverage and average hours of weekly work — on drug overdose deaths between 1999 and 2014. According to the authors:

“Drug overdose deaths significantly declined with higher house prices … by nearly 0.17 deaths per 100,000 (~4%) with a $10,000 increase in median house price. House price effects were more pronounced and only significant among males, non-Hispanic Whites, and individuals younger 45 years.
Other economic indicators had insignificant effects. Our findings suggest that economic downturns that substantially reduce house prices such as the Great Recession can increase opioid-related deaths, suggesting that efforts to control access to such drugs should especially intensify during these periods.”

Similarly, an earlier investigation, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy in 2017, connected economic recessions and unemployment with rises in illegal drug use among adults.

Twenty-eight studies published between 1990 and 2015 were included in the review, 17 of which found that the psychological distress associated with economic recessions and unemployment was a significant factor. According to the authors:

“The current evidence is in line with the hypothesis that drug use increases in times of recession because unemployment increases psychological distress which increases drug use. During times of recession, psychological support for those who lost their job and are vulnerable to drug use (relapse) is likely to be important.”

Abuse-related trauma is also linked to unemployment and financial stress, and that too can increase your risk of drug use and addiction. As noted in The Atlantic, when the coal mining industry in northeastern Pennsylvania collapsed, leaving many locals without job prospects, alcohol use increased, as did child abuse. Many of these traumatized children, in turn, sought relief from the turmoil and ended up becoming addicted to opioids.

Free Trade Effects Implicated in Opioid Crisis

Another 2019 study published in Population Health reviewed the links between free trade and deaths from opioid use between 1999 and 2015, finding that “Job loss due to international trade is positively associated with opioid overdose mortality at the county level,” and that this association was most significant in areas where fentanyl was present in the heroin supply.

Overall, for each 1,000 people who lost their jobs due to international trade — commonly due to factory shutdowns — there was a 2.7% increase in opioid-related deaths. Where fentanyl was available, that percentage rose to 11.3%. The study “contributes to debates in the social sciences concerning the negative consequences of free trade,” the authors note, adding:

“Scholars have long focused on the positive effect of international trade on the overall economy, while also noting that it causes layoffs and bankruptcy for some groups.
Recent influential work by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson demonstrates that these negative impacts of trade are actually highly localized, with layoffs, unemployment, and lower wages concentrated in specific labor markets.
This study furthers our understanding of the local consequences of international trade by looking beyond wages and employment levels to the potential impact on opioid-related overdose death.”

Opioid Makers Have Had a Direct Impact

The National Bureau of Economic Research has also contributed to the discussion with the working paper “Origins of the Opioid Crisis and Its Enduring Impacts,” issued November 2019.

In it, they highlight “the role of the 1996 introduction and marketing of OxyContin as a potential leading cause of the opioid crisis,” showing that in states where triplicate prescription programs were implemented, OxyContin distribution rates were half that of states that did not have such programs.

“Triplicate prescription programs” refers to a drug-monitoring program requiring doctors to use a special prescription pad whenever they prescribed controlled substances. One of the copies of each prescription written had to be submitted to a state monitoring agency.

Since it involved additional work, many doctors avoided prescribing drugs requiring the use of triplicates, and as a consequence, Purdue (the maker of OxyContin), did not market its opioid as aggressively in those states.

The fact that triplicate prescription states had lower rates of lethal overdoses led the authors to conclude “that the introduction and marketing of OxyContin explain a substantial share of overdose deaths over the last two decades.”

According to this paper, death rates from opioid overdoses could have been reduced by 44% between 1996 and 2017 had triplicate prescriptions been implemented in nontriplicate states.

Importantly, the relationship between triplicate prescription programs and opioid overdose deaths held true even when economic conditions were taken into account, which shows that poverty alone did not contribute to the opioid crisis — aggressive marketing to doctors and the ease with which patients could get the drugs were an inescapable part of the problem.

Pain as a Source of Addiction

Naturally, physical pain is also a driving force behind the opioid epidemic, especially the inappropriate treatment of back pain with opioids and dentists’ habit of prescribing narcotics after wisdom tooth extractions.

(While American family doctors prescribe an estimated 15% of all immediate-release opioids — the type most likely to be abused — dentists are not far behind, being responsible for 12% of prescriptions, according to a 2011 paper in the Journal of the American Dental Association.)

Statistics suggest 8 in 10 American adults will be affected by back pain at some point in their life, and low-back pain is one of the most common reasons for an opioid prescription. This despite the fact that there’s no evidence supporting their use for this kind of pain. On the contrary, non-opioid treatment for back pain has been shown to be more effective.

Research published in 2018 found opioids (including morphine, Vicodin, oxycodone and fentanyl) fail to control moderate to severe pain any better than over-the-counter (OTC) drugs such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen and naproxen, yet most insurance companies still favor opioids when it comes to reimbursement, which makes them culpable for sustaining the opioid crisis, even as doctors and patients try to navigate away from them.

As noted by Dave Chase, author of “The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call: Health Care Is Stealing the American Dream. Here’s How to Take It Back,” in an article for Stat:

“Our entire health care system is built on a vast web of incentives that push patients down the wrong paths. And in most cases it’s the entities that manage the money — insurance carriers — that benefit from doing so …
An estimated 700,000 people are likely to die from opioid overdoses between 2015 and 2025, making it absolutely essential to understand the connections between insurance carriers, health plans, employers, the public, and the opioid crisis.
We will never get out of this mess unless we stop addiction before it starts … the opioid crisis isn’t an anomaly. It’s a side effect of our health care system.”

According to the American College of Physicians’ guidelines, heat, massage, acupuncture or chiropractic adjustments should be used as first-line treatments for back pain. Other key treatments for back pain include exercise, multidisciplinary rehabilitation, mindfulness-based stress reduction, tai chi, yoga, relaxation, biofeedback, low-level laser therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

When drugs are desired, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) or muscle relaxants should be used. Opioids “should only be considered if other treatments are unsuccessful and when the potential benefits outweigh the risks for an individual patient,” according to the American College of Physicians’ guideline.

Struggling With Opioid Addiction? Please Seek Help

It’s vitally important to realize that opioids are extremely addictive drugs that are not meant for long-term use for nonfatal conditions. Chemically, opioids are similar to heroin, so if you wouldn’t consider using heroin for a toothache or backache, seriously reconsider taking an opioid to relieve these types of pain.

If you’ve been on an opioid for more than two months, or if you find yourself taking a higher dosage, or taking the drug more often, you may already be addicted. Resources where you can find help include the following. You can also learn more in “How to Wean Off Opioids.”

Nondrug Pain Relief

The good news is that many types of pain can be treated entirely without drugs. Recommendations by Harvard Medical School and the British National Health Service include the following. You can find more detailed information about most of these techniques in “13 Mind-Body Techniques That Can Help Ease Pain and Depression.”

Gentle exercise	Physical therapy or occupational therapy
Hypnotherapy	Distracting yourself with an enjoyable activity
Maintaining a regular sleep schedule	Mind-body techniques such as controlled breathing, meditation, guided imagery and mindfulness practice that encourage relaxation. One of my personal favorites is the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
Yoga and tai chi	Practicing gratitude and positive thinking
Hot or cold packs	Biofeedback
Music therapy	Therapeutic massage

In “Billionaire Opioid Executive Stands to Make Millions More on Patent for Addiction Treatment,” I discuss several additional approaches — including helpful supplements and dietary changes — that can be used separately or in combination with the strategies listed above to control both acute and chronic pain.

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Underworld

China is hiding information about the unknown virus and more patients are becoming sick

According to experts, hiding an outbreak of an unknown deadly disease can have serious effects on its control in neighboring China.

Global public health experts call on the Chinese authorities to guarantee transparency about the mysterious outbreak of viral pneumonia.

As of December 2019, 59 people were already infected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, with only 27 cases known at the beginning of January 2020. On January 5, 7 of the 59 cases were identified as “severe patients”.

On January 9, Chinese authorities say they have identified a possible cause of the unknown viral pneumonia, a new type of coronavirus (MERS-CoV). However, they do not provide any information on the possible spread of the disease.

Authorities also did not specify exactly the number of patients currently being treated for the new respiratory disease. According to official data released on January 5, 2020, 59 people are being treated for a mysterious airway disease and 7 people are in critical condition.

**On January 8, 2020, a special scan of passengers arriving from Wuhan, China is carried out at the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand.**

Meanwhile, a senior Wuhan official unexpectedly resigned from his post, while authorities in Hong Kong and Taiwan are taking extra precautions to prevent the disease from spreading.

According to the Hong Kong Hospital Administration, there are already five patients in Hong Kong with symptoms of new pneumonia with respiratory infection. All five were infected soon in Wuhan.

On January 11, 2020, The Straits Times reported that the first case of a mysterious virus was registered in Singapore after the patient returned from Wuhan.

The onset of the epidemic has prompted Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan to step up screening for newcomers and patients with symptoms of pneumonia.

Why are they hiding the start of the epidemic?

The Chinese authorities have not reported an outbreak of so-called “viral pneumonia”, and online rumors have linked the virus to severe acute respiratory syndrome ( SARS ), which killed more than 8,000 people in 2003 and killed 774 people.

A statement from the Wuhan City Health Commission on January 3, 2020 said the cause of the pneumonia was unclear. On 5 January, the Commission announced that it had ruled out SARS, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and avian influenza as a cause of the epidemic and is still working to identify the virus.

Although such cases are reported in Hong Kong and Singapore, Chinese officials say there is no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

Until January 5, officials did not announce the date of the first case that was discovered and linked to the Wuhan fire. It happens on December 12, 2019. Wuhan Central Hospital, which treats some of the patients, declined comment, though Chinese and foreign media have been pushing hard to contact the medics.

On 3/01/2020, in an email to Laurie Garrett, a health analyst and Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote:

“The problem with China’s current epidemic and response is that the Wuhan and Beijing authorities have provided very little information.”

On January 1, Chinese police detained eight people for “the spread of pneumonia outbreak rumors on the Internet“.

On January 5, the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily reported that security officials at Jingintan Hospital had expelled their journalist. All the doctors and nurses at the hospital the reporter saw were wearing protective suits, wearing face masks and safety goggles.

The journalist testified that new patients were admitted to the hospital in the afternoon, the same day. The hospital consists of two buildings, and the publication’s official noted that patients infected with the virus were isolated in them.

The message says:

“Patients undergoing treatment in the North Building are in serious condition. When their health improves, they will be moved to the south building. “

Laurie Gareth commented on:

“China seems more interested in maintaining control than complying with international health regulations.”

In 2005, the World Health Assembly adopted legally binding international health rules that required immediate notification to the WHO of any outbreak. China has signed this agreement.

Taiwanese pulmonologist Kuo Xu-Ta, who was the director of the SARS Center at McKay Hospital in Taipei, during a SARS epidemic in 2003, told Epoch Times:

“The epidemic information should be published immediately! The more the government tries to hide it, the worse it will be to fight the disease. “

The first death – on January 11, 2020, the media reported the first fatal case following a new illness. This is a 61-year-old man who was admitted to the hospital in very poor condition. He had advanced pneumonia with shortness of breath as well as liver problems. It was found that the man often visited a seafood market, from which most of the infected initially arrived.

The man died a week ago from a sudden cardiac arrest.

Sean Lin, a microbiologist who worked at the U.S. Army’s Department of Viral Diseases, said the Chinese authorities may already know or suspect the source of the virus.

On January 3, he told the media:

“It’s not just two, three days … It’s probably been more than a month.”

According to Lin, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control is level because of its infectious disease monitoring program. He believes that if patient samples have been tested in laboratories, the information available now may not be as limited as that reported in official statements.

Lynn thinks the delay in providing information about the new infection is because there are many mutations of the virus that take time to determine or “the authorities have more information but are hiding it .”

He adds:

“The public was not allowed to learn more about this situation.”

He said the Chinese authorities should allow the media to monitor local hospitals and patients, conduct studies and inform the public about preventive measures.

Lynn shares:

“The problem with China is that the government has a very bad reputation in public health.”

**Masked migrant workers leave Guangzhou for fear of becoming infected. Guangdong Province, China, May 2, 2003**

Hiding official information reminds everyone of the 2003 SAR outbreak and causes panic in China and neighboring regions. In 2002-2003, Chinese authorities covered the SARS epidemic for several weeks, but deaths and rumors forced them to tell the truth.

The Chinese did not warn the WHO or neighboring jurisdictions, which allowed (one) patient to “escape” to Hong Kong. The spread of the virus has led to 774 deaths in 37 countries.

Laurie Garrett was in Hong Kong and China during the 2003 epidemic, and then visited hospitals and memorials in Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong, where health care workers struggled and died from the disease.

She says: