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Friday, August 13, 2021

China Teaches The US To Treat Other Countries Equally; Elephant dads' dedicate lives to protecting needy giants

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 Many people like China's spokesman, Zhao Lijian, for his explicit remarks. We think Qin Gang is a pro version of Zhao Lijian. As the new ambassador to the US, Mister Qin Gang is not a wolf warrior. Instead, he is a Kongfu Panda, lovely and strong. We hope his mission to the US will be a turning point in the relationship between the two superpowers.

Elephant dads' dedicate lives to protecting needy giants


https://youtu.be/4MIqfQv7miM

` For more: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-08-12...

` Today marks the 10th World Elephant Day, a special occasion to raise public awareness about the protection of the much loved giants. In southwest China's Yunnan Province, a group of dedicated men are trying their best to help the endangered animals. CGTN has the story about so-called "elephant dads." #Elephant #Animal


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Thursday, August 12, 2021

Virus probe needs more early samples, countries: scientists



`
A recent US CDC report found COVID-19 antibodies in blood samples as early as Dec 13, 2019. With more & more evidence surfacing about the coronavirus' origins in places outside China before Wuhan detected it, the world is remapping the history of the COVID-19 pandemic. Infographic:GT

 

Infographic: Feng Qinyin and Wu Tiantong/Global Times

More data and retrospective studies of COVID-19 traces in 2019 or even earlier should be studied to get a clearer picture of its mysterious origins, scientists from multiple countries urged, as evidence in countries such as the US and Italy pile up to suggest that the coronavirus already slid into multiple countries since the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

` The latest revelation comes from a paper published in The Lancet by a group of researchers from universities in countries including Italy and US, indicating that they found evidence that the coronavirus was circulating in Lombardy in late June-late August 2019, months earlier than previous scientific findings that the virus was circulating in the South European country as early as November 2019.

` The paper investigated 156 out of 435 samples, isolated RNA from throat swabs and urine, then put them on Sanger sequencing, a method for determining the nucleotide sequence of DNA, and detected mutations to estimate the time of emergence of the virus.

` The paper, however, doesn't tell the origins of the coronavirus, Sayaka Miura, an associated professor at Temple University's department of biology, who also co-authored the paper, told the Global Times on Wednesday. Yet she pointed out that "the finding of the virus in Italy in summer 2019 means that the virus was already spreading at least in Italy much earlier than the outbreak in China."

` She admitted they need more data from 2019, and more retrospective studies from many different countries will help better understand the early history of the coronavirus spread.

` The paper has not been peer-reviewed.

` Earlier timeline, more sites

` When asked about whether the new study of the Italian researchers will further contribute to the next-phase origins-tracing work, a foreign expert close to the WHO origins study team who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Global Times that everything is useful but scientists need to remain cautious on the findings of the report to make sure the results are solid.

` A study of more than 24,000 samples taken for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research program in the US between January 2 and March 18, 2020 suggest that seven people in five states - Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - may have been infected well before the country's first confirmed cases were reported in January 21, 2020.

` For the next stage in seeking coronavirus origins, the WHO need to draw a clear plan to investigate countries which reported cases earlier than the Wuhan outbreak, Zeng Guang, former chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times. "They need to collect samples of the patients who had pneumonia from 2018 to 2019, or even earlier," Zeng said.

` Some Twitter users recently took to the platform to share their experience in December 2019 or even earlier with cases "very similar" to COVID-19, reported the Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday.

` The Global Times found that a Twitter user in Littlehampton in the US shared his experience of illness back in 2019, which he suspected was COVID-19. A torrent of users echoed. "Kate Wilton" a possible UK Twitter user posted on Tuesday that she was infected by a "flu like illness and horrid chest infections in November 2019…lost my sense of taste and smell."

` Michael Melham, the mayor of Belleville, New Jersey told Fox News in May 2020 that he became symptomatic after he returned in November 2019 from a conference in Atlantic City, two months before the first confirmed US case was recorded in Washington state.

` He said multiple people from the conference have contacted him and said they, too, were experiencing extreme flu-like symptoms. At the time, there were no tests for COVID-19 but Melham said whatever he had hit him hard and made him feel "like a heroin addict going through withdrawal."

` Miura told the Global Times that according to their earlier study of the coronavirus, they believe that the likely most recent common ancestor of the virus was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China.

` Liang Wannian, who led the Chinese team during the World Health Organization's joint origins investigation in China, also suggested that the UN agency conduct the next stage of its study in countries where transmission of the virus had been identified as happening before it was recognized in Wuhan.

Will Uncle Sam be able to continue deceiving the world in terms of investigation into COVID-19 origins? Will Uncle Sam be able to continue deceiving the world in terms of investigation into COVID-19 origins?

` Politicization clouds scientific probe

` Yet the road to the origins tracing was always hobbled by political pressure from certain countries, with the US being the most active. Washington has been sparing no efforts in chiding China for the coronavirus origins, despite the fact that Beijing hosted WHO for coronavirus origins probe.

` Its latest attempt was made by Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, who released a controversial report on August 2 that accused China of deliberately covering up what was happening inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) throughout 2019.

` The report was slammed by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson a day later as "based on the concocted lies and distorted facts without providing any evidence, is not credible or scientific."

` "We urge the US to respect facts and science and focus on fighting COVID-19 and saving lives, instead of engaging in political manipulation under the pretext of the epidemic and shifting the blame to others," said the spokesperson.

` The US politicization of the virus origins probe sharply contrasts with scientists' rigorous attitude. Jonathan Stoye, head of the division of virology at Britain's Francis Crick Institute, told the Global Times that "At this stage, the key issue is to establish how it started if only to try to avoid any further pandemics of zoonotic origin. This is not a trivial task as illustrated by the difficulty in understanding the origins of other pandemics such as AIDS and the first SARS outbreak."

` He noted that at this stage, accusations are particularly unhelpful, and "merely compound the difficulties in carrying out a successful investigation."

` "This process [virus origins probe] must be collaborative and fully transparent. Perhaps this is a little naive, but I truly believe we must set aside any political or cultural differences in order to understand this question for the benefit of the entire population of the world," said Stoye.

`Research personnel work inside the bio-level 4 lab at the USAMRIID at Fort Detrick on September 26, 2002.

Photo: AFP Research personnel work inside the bio-level 4 lab at the USAMRIID at Fort Detrick on September 26, 2002. Photo: AFP

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Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Eight ‘No.1’ titles the US deserves

 

Illustration: Liu Rui/GTbr />

 The final day of the Tokyo Olympic Games saw the US secure three gold medals. With this, it passed China to come to the top of the medal table.

` I can sense how much the US media were waiting to see whether Team USA could top Final Medal Account. When China was leading the medal table with the most gold medals, US media outlets tended to count total medals to place America at "No.1."

` I just want to say, the fact that the US has won the most gold medals is acceptable to most Chinese. It is an anticipated result. For Chinese, it would have been very abnormal if America failed to top the gold medal tally.

` As a matter of fact, many Americans are more concerned with the "No.1 position" than their Chinese counterparts. This is also an important psychological reason why the US in recent years has continuously suppressed China's rise with the fear of being surpassed by China.

` The US now ranks first in the world in terms of GDP, military expenditure and financial strength. No powers can shake the US "No.1 position" in the near future. The loss of this top position is more likely to be caused by the US' own mistakes. For instance, the US has the highest percentage of GDP spent on healthcare, and it is supposed to have the best anti-pandemic performance of the world. Regrettably, the US is witnessing the highest levels of COVID-19 infections and death tolls -far ahead of other countries and regions. What's more ridiculous is this: Some US media outlets have racked their brains to make the US "No.1" in anti-pandemic ranking.

` Such obsession with "No.1" goes against facts and human ethics. If the US really cares about the "No.1" position, I suggest it mind more about the following eight "No.1" titles it deserves.

` The world's No.1 failed country in the COVID-19 fight. Over one and a half years, more than 35.8 million people have been infected and more than 617,000 have died from the virus in the US. As American physician and epidemiologist William Foege said in October 2020, "It is a slaughter." Indeed, the COVID-19 death toll in the US is higher than the sum of all soldiers died in the WWI, the WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.

` The world's No.1 country that passes the political buck to others. Former US president Donald Trump once passed the buck to the Democratic Party, while President Joe Biden has now blamed the Republican Party for the US' anti-epidemic failure. The US government has also passed the blame to the WHO, China, the COVID-19 vaccine, and even top US scientist Dr Anthony Fauci. Even with so many deaths, no US politician has ever stood up to apologize. no US politician has resigned. No one will hold themselves accountable.

` The world's No.1 country in spreading the COVID-19. Since April 2020 to March 2021, the US government did not take any effective exit control measures and a total of some 23 million people went abroad. The US has an inescapable responsibility for the global spread of the pandemic.

` The world's No.1 politically divided country. In fact, bipartisan disputes have been everywhere on almost all anti-epidemic issues among the US departments and media: nucleic acid testing, wearing facial masks, social distancing, home quarantine, vaccination, medical strategic reserve allocation, and emergency relief fund and so on.

` The world's No.1 country in terms of over-issuing currency. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the US has chosen to save the stock market instead of people's lives. The US Federal Reserve has adopted unconventional monetary measures.

` The world's No.1 turbulent country during the COVID-19 pandemic. The epidemic has intensified racial tensions in the US, and George Floyd's death is just the tip of the iceberg: Discrimination and hate crimes against black, Asian, and Latin American people have significantly increased; Gun sales in the country jumped 64 percent in 2020; Mass shootings have taken place more often. In 2021, there was even a riot and violent attack against the Capitol. This is very rare in US history since the founding of the country.

` The world's No.1 country in spreading disinformation. What's really going on with the Fort Detrick closure? What are the real results of the vaping-related lung disease? Can the more than 200 US military biological laboratories located around the world be subject to international investigations? The US government has never faced up and responded to these questions. Instead, Donald Trump's tweets had become the biggest source of disinformation about the COVID-19.

` The world's No.1 country in practicing "origins-tracing terrorism." Biden has requested US intelligence agencies to take charge of the investigation of the novel coronavirus origins. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have made a series of irresponsible statements on the virus origins tracing. All of these have created international strife for no reason. They have worsened the already deteriorating China-US relations and fueled the strategic competition between the two countries. This has also harmed the global fight against the pandemic.

` "Crowning" the US with these "No.1" titles is in no way intended to start a war of words with the US media. It is rather a reminder to Washington of their responsibilities. If the US really wants to be a real "No.1" in the world and remain a respectable country, then self-reflection, national unity, and international cooperation are the true paths to the top championship spot.

` By Wang Wen - The author is professor and executive dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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