Coronavirus: we separate myths from facts and give UPDATES

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China:

Wuhan reports no new coronavirus cases

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Updates from Kurdistan

Road blocks remain in place across the Kurdistan Region to enforce an extended lockdown and traffic suspension under extraordinary measures to halt the spread of coronavirus

Six new coronavirus cases confirmed in Sulaimani: health ministry

Over the past 24 hours, Kurdistan Region health officials have tested 178 people for coronavirus, the health ministry said Friday.

Doctors tested 27 individuals in Erbil, 64 in Sulaimani, and 87 in Duhok. As a result, six new cases have been detected in Sulaimani.

The new cases include five men aged 23, 40, 40, 25, and 70, and one woman aged 24.

Three of those diagnosed are relatives of a cleric who died in Sulaimani after contracting the virus. One of the new cases recently returned from Spain.

There are now 47 confirmed cases in the Kurdistan Region and one death. Thirteen people have made a full recovery while the rest are being kept under medical observation.

Around 1,630 people remain in quarantine.

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PLEASE follow shocking link:

UK Critical Care Nurse Cries at Empty SupemMarket Shelves Due to Coronavirus Panic Buying Stockpiling

https://youtu.be/OJ3dz4K27Gw

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Karbala-Baghdad pilgrims
defy Iraq virus curfew

Most Iraqis are adhering to a week-long, state-ordered lockdown that began on March 17, aimed at containing the spread of the novel coronavirus



But these pilgrims have traveled for tens of kilometers by foot, from Karbala to Baghdad, to visit the shrine of Imam Musa Kazim, one of twelve highly revered imams in Shiite Islam.

Though than 13,000 people worldwide have died after contracting the virus - including 20 Iraqis, as of March 22 - these pilgrims say they are unafraid.

“Don’t dwell on it, because corona is nothing, it’s all gossip. Believe me, Iraq is safe under the watch of God and the father [Imam Ali] of Hassan and Hussein. There are Shiite doctors to cure everything. I swear by [Imam] Musa, the son of Jaafar, there is no corona,” said pilgrim Um Hussain.

Some pilgrims say those infected with the virus will be cured upon visiting the shrine, and call on people from China, Italy and Iran to seek remedy here.

“I ask people in China, Italy, Iran and other high-risk countries to go to the shrine of the Imam. Check them in this square after they’ve left the shrine - if they haven’t recovered, slaughter all of us,” pilgrim Um Abbas said.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/22032020

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UK closed the schools so now all the children roam the streets in large groups or play in the parks, also in large groups

Children have never heard of social distancing and are going out enjoying their extended Easter holidays

The children would have been better off in school where at least there would be some control over them

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Turkey and Coronavirus:

Devout Muslims Will Defeat the “Jewish Plot”

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,501, March 24, 2020

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Turkey appears to be handling the coronavirus crisis relatively well, although its low case numbers reflect the low number of tests being administered. Pious Turkish Muslims are blaming dark anti-Turkish forces and, of course, the Jews for unleashing the virus on the world

Turkey’s fight against coronavirus (COVID-19) is generally accepted to be rational, well-timed, not too badly planned, and fairly effective. At the time when the German case toll was 7,000 (and the Dutch and UK case tolls were at around 2,000 each), Turkey’s was just 98. And when, on March 19, the Italian death toll surpassed China’s at 4,400, the Turkish mortality figure was just three. The government sealed borders—most significantly with Iran—just in time; cancelled all public gatherings and events, including football games; ordered most businesses to be shuttered; and launched an effective awareness campaign to keep Turks at home. About 3,000 Turkish pilgrims on their way home from Mecca were quarantined. The Turkish awareness rate of coronavirus was 100% by mid-March, according to one poll.

But several questions remain unanswered. Why did the Turkish religious authorities allow 21,500 people to travel to Mecca in the first place? Would it not have been safer for them to wait to fulfill their pilgrimage until after the world goes back to normal? And why were only 3,000 pilgrims quarantined? The other 18,500 returnees from Mecca are walking free in Turkey.

The question also arises: was the number of Turkish cases low because of government censorship? No, the “Turkish success” can be much more easily explained. The number of reported Turkish cases was low because the number of tests Turkey conducted was low. As of March 16, Turkey had performed just 2,800 tests (two tested positive out of a population of 83 million). Compare that to South Korea, which has performed 250,000 tests (8,100 tested positive out of a population of 51 million). It’s simple: if you don’t test people, you don’t put cases on the books.

Coronavirus in Turkey, like most things in that country, highlights the black humor in tragedy. As ever, Turkey is fun unless you have to live there.

Professor Ali Erbaş, president of Diyanet, Turkey’s highest religious authority, gave a Friday sermon in which he warned Muslims not to attend crowded events. He delivered this sermon at a mosque containing 5,000 people. A few days later, Diyanet issued a fatwa indefinitely suspending Friday prayers.

Turks are a brave people, and pious Turks are apparently the bravest of all. Large groups of Muslims protested Diyanet for the suspension of Friday prayers on the logic that prayers would surely protect the pious from any evil, up to and including a silly little virus. Reading the news of the protests, a friend of the author said, “It’s a view we should respect. It’s also a theory worth testing. How about injecting the coronavirus into all these pious folks?”

But the way “better-educated” Turks, including journalists and columnists, interpret the coronavirus crisis is even more entertaining.

One Islamist writer suggested that “now that all bars and alcohol-licensed enterprises are (temporarily) shut maybe we should consider keeping them shut forever due to the risk of coronavirus.”

Another suggested that the “CHP virus”—CHP is the acronym for Turkey’s secular main opposition party—is far more dangerous than coronavirus.

Pro-government media claimed they had found the real conspiracy: the virus was first detected in Turkey on the day a new opposition party, DEVA, was officially inaugurated, which cannot be a coincidence. Any opposition party challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is tantamount to a deadly virus threatening Turkey.

Other Islamists had a more intellectual, global response to the virus: they threw down a gauntlet before science. Tell us, positivists, secularists: where is your cure? Where is the “science” you always put before religion?

Turkish social media is of course a rich source of “scientific” interpretations of the coronavirus crisis, many of them larded with predictable self-aggrandizement, paranoia, and antisemitism:

“Thanks to the power we inherited from our (Ottoman) ancestors we will kill all viruses and infidels.”

“We will defeat the virus as we will defeat the entire world.”

“Jews manufactured and spread the virus to end western civilization.”

“We will annihilate the global masters behind the virus.”

“The virus is only a minor part of a bigger game that targets Turkey.”

“The virus was created to overthrow Erdoğan, leader of the umma.”

“The Islamic army will defeat the infidel virus.”

Viruses change, but Islamist rhetoric does not. Yeniden Refah, a small Islamist party, said: “Though we do not have certain evidence, this virus serves Zionism’s goals of decreasing the number of people and preventing it from increasing, and important research expresses this. Zionism is a five-thousand-year-old bacteria that has caused the suffering of people.”

One collective response that neatly illustrates the Turkish approach to a crisis was a television interview with ordinary citizens in the marketplace in Elaziğ, a province in eastern Turkey. A local broadcaster sent a team to interview the locals after reporters noticed with shock that the streets and main marketplace of Elaziğ were full of people, so much so that the province was even more crowded than it had been before coronavirus. The crew asked passersby, “What about coronavirus? Aren’t you afraid to be in crowded public places?”

Three interviewees expressed confidence that the power of prayer will defeat all viruses. A few claimed that coronavirus does not exist—it is a lie swallowed by a credulous world. Another said, “Allah always protects the believer.” Another contributed this theory: “The entire world is at war with Turkey. This virus is Allah’s curse on them.”

Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist. He regularly writes for the Gatestone Institute and Defense News and is a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is also a founder of the Ankara-based think tank Sigma.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-pap ... BWEbkzEDLM

I need a cup of tea and some chocolate after reading this

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Problems:

China

Western greed means that everything manufactured in China has to be the cheapest

Everything involving plastic is manufactured in China, including plastic bottles and containers for other non-plastic items

Many of our medicines are manufactured in China because the medicine manufactured in India is slightly more expensive

Many of the underpaid workers live in extremely overcrowded conditions which would be banned in Western countries

Is is easy to understand how a virus was able to spread so quickly

All praises to China for acting so bravely to combat the spread of this virus

China did not know what it was dealing with - the rest of the world did

The Spread

By the time the virus started spreading to other countries, the world was becoming aware of the difficulties other countries might have to face

What was the swift response

NONE

For not just weeks but MONTHS people have been allowed to cross international borders

NONE of the world's governments took action to restrict the spread of the virus

In fact by frightening populations into panic buying, where crowds of people push and shove each other in order to buy 50 toilet rolls, i am certain they have increased the spread of the virus as well as the spread of seasonal flu and almost every other germ

Only now has the UK put a stop to panic buying by limiting the number of items a person is allowed to purchase

This has been done to stop people stripping shelves of stock and reselling it on Amazon and eBay

Only now are UK shops limiting the number of shoppers allowed into the shops at any one time

This has put a stop to shoppers crowding close to each other as people are being advised to remain a safe distance from others

In the UK we know that our government is to blame for the spread of the virus

Especially as it has kept most airports open and allowed people to return from areas of high contagion without any form of control even advice to self isolate

The UK has now "Shut the stable door after the horse has bolted" or "Shut the door after allowing the monster in"

Unlike many countries, for the most part people live in small family units and virus control would have been easy but for the government frightening everyone and sending them out on the streets to panic buy

The Spread of Lies

There are so many lies I can no longer keep up

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My Advise

Stay away from other people as much as possible and avoid crowds

Limit the number of close contacts you have

On returning home immediately wash your hands and your mobile phones, remove your outer clothing and hang it up to air

Do not touch your money or keys again

Anything with a hard surface you bring into your home is capable of harbouring germs so I suggest wiping the items before using them

Cardboard is unlikely to hold any germs or risk of passing germs on

If you have a limited supply of food and know of a CLEAN takeaway, pizza or kebab shop I suggest you use them

If you are known to the people who run such shops, you may ask them if they can supply you with fresh vegetables such as lettuces, tomatoes, potatoes and onions at the same time as your kebab

Make extra sure that all the hard surfaces in your home are kept clean

Remember to check on your neighbours, especially the elderly

If you find anyone in need of help contact local help groups who will supply food and telephone support for those in isolation

Stay well - stay happy - free Kurdistan

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Putin in a hazmat suit

Putin gets bonus trust points for nailing the hazmat suit appearance first



Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to a coronavirus hospital wearing a full hazmat suit may not be as flashy as some of his many photo ops, but it will earn him more trust than a hundred bare-chested pictures.

When Vladimir Putin announced he was off to check a Moscow hospital treating coronavirus victims, those around him would have imagined a standard photo op – shake a doctor’s hand, thank a nurse, then back to the office, pronto.

Foot on the pedal please, driver – there’s a killer virus back there!

There would have been a few groans of 'here we go' when he told them he wanted to wear one of those protection suits.

How would the optics look if he turned up dressed like supermodel Naomi Campbell on her Instagram post, wearing pink rubber gloves and looking like she was about to clear a troublesome wasp’s nest from her garden?

It’s what all those who have chuckled at Putin’s numerous other photo ops may have expected. But he was serious this time, donning the full yellow kit complete with respirator, heavy duty boots and gloves as he talked with hospital staff and toured the wards to chat with victims of the global pandemic.



And while over the years we’ve been treated to the sight of Putin horse-riding, grappling with the national judo team, playing badminton, football and ten-pin bowling, diving in a submersible to the bottom of the Black Sea, soaring the skies in a gyrocopter alongside migrating cranes and tranquilising a tiger in a Siberian nature reserve, this was something a little different.

While I’m not saying it will never happen, I find it hard to imagine British PM Boris Johnson or US President Donald Trump volunteering in the middle of this mess to adopt a hazmat suit, tour a high-risk hospital, and visit patients infected with the deadly coronavirus – some of whom, almost inevitably, will die.

Boris did drop in on a Kettering hospital dealing with some Covid-19 patients in late February, but the effect of the danger he may or may not have faced was somewhat diminished by the fact that the only precaution he took was to roll up his shirt sleeves and tuck his tie between his buttons.

He simply looked more dishevelled than usual.

Also on rt.com What will the post-coronavirus world look like when we venture from self-isolation?

But Putin going full hazmat shows just how wide the gap is between the leadership styles of these three heads of state – all totally aware of what comprises good optics.

Some are suggesting the reason people are ignoring Johnson’s appeals to stay at home is that he doesn’t command the respect essential to ensuring people follow his orders without question.

There could well be something in that, because while BoJo is blessed with many qualities, natural gravitas is not one of them.

Meanwhile, President Trump seems to have sidelined his public health expert, Anthony Fauci, NFI’ing him to his West Wing press conferences because of their disagreements over the pandemic playbook.

Trump has recently chosen to appear solo, giving his lofty opinion on the diverse issues of the worldwide health crisis to a slack-jawed press corps. The idea of a spat between president and scientist is not helping the USA at all.

A genuine display of leadership has come from Italy, where a collection of mayors from various towns across the country recorded a series of videos berating their fellow Italians, threatening student parties with police and flamethrowers and pleading with women to forego inviting the hairdresser around for a wash and dry, asking “who’s going to see you” if you can’t even go out.

People are looking for leaders they can believe in. Over-the-top bravado, nothing-to-see-here reassurances or panicked telling-off are not helping build trust.

You can laugh all you want at Putin's bare-chested antics and fishing trips with his defence minister – a lot of Russians do, even the less opposition-minded ones. But when push came to shove, he put on a hazmat suit. It's a sensible thing to do, not only in protecting the ageing head of state from genuine danger, but also in sending the message: 'I’m prepared to get my hands dirty trying to sort out this mess. But I'll not risk my life to show off, and neither should you.'

It’s a show every leader should put on – and likely will, at some point. But Putin got there first.

When the Covid-19 death toll starts to rise in Russia, which it will, and tough measures are needed to reduce its spread among the 146 million people who live there, then quick, decisive action will be essential.

There is no room for argument in combating this virus. So Putin has asserted his authority and banked credibility with this virus hospital visit. He’ll need both later on when asking the population to comply without question with his public health warnings and restrictions on their movement.

And that, whether you like the president or not, is a good leader look.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/483982-putin-c ... al-hazmat/

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This scientist suggested
a drug to treat Covid-19

A Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic

Amid a pandemic panic over the coronavirus, evidence for a possibly effective treatment has been denounced as ‘fake news’ – even when offered by a renowned scientist with decades of experience.

Take Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist with undeniable expertise, even if some of his views are about as eccentric as his appearance. Though he may look like he just stepped out of an Alexandre Dumas novel, the director of the Mediterranean University Hospital Institute in Marseille cited not one but three different studies from China showing that the anti-malaria drug called chloroquine has been effective in treating Covid-19 patients.

#chloroquine Pr Didier Raoult : «C'est quand les patients ont des formes modérées, moyennes, ou qui commencent à s'aggraver, qu'il faut les traiter. A ce moment là on contrôle les virus qui se multiplient. Quand ils sont rentrés en réanimation, le problème ce n'est plus le virus» pic.twitter.com/WolGe2o05z
— Alex (@AlexLeroy90) March 25, 2020

That did not stop Le Monde, France’s biggest newspaper, of declaring his February 25 video as “partially false.” Raoult’s 'sin' was to argue that the common anti-malaria drug used widely for decades resulted in “dramatic improvements” among those afflicted by the virus.

As a result of Le Monde’s fact-check, anyone attempting to share Dr. Raoult’s videos on Facebook gets a banner saying the information therein was “partially false” as “determined by independent fact-checkers.”

The main argument put forward by those critical of the drug is that more testing is required before it can be officially approved as treatment for the coronavirus. As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts it, “There are no currently available data from Randomized Clinical Trials…to inform clinical guidance on the use, dosing, or duration of hydroxychloroquine” treatments for Covid-19.

Which is fair enough, but last time I checked, there was a pandemic going on, with billions of people locked in their homes and all business grinding to a halt across the globe, over apocalyptic predictions of hospitals brimming with corpses due to this coronavirus.

Should any kind of treatment – especially a drug that has been used safely for decades to treat something else, with side effects meticulously documented – be so cavalierly rejected, under the circumstances? Do “experts” really think the world has the luxury of waiting for months or even years for their controlled lab studies?

As for the fact-checkers, shouldn’t they have applied the same rigor to the models used to scare everyone into hoarding toilet paper and setting off a depression orders of magnitude worse than anything the world has ever seen?

To ask these questions is to answer them, yet no one seems to bother. Nor is this sort of selective blindness endemic to France; across the Atlantic, the mainstream media raised their voices in unison against chloroquine after US President Donald Trump brought it up as a possible treatment – apparently referring to Dr. Raoult’s work.

They went so far as to widely circulate a deliberately misleading story about an Arizona couple that ate fish tank cleaner – chloroquine phosphate, clearly labeled not for human consumption – as somehow Trump’s fault. Some of them quietly amended it to specify the difference, but long after the original story – implying they took the actual medication praised by the president – literally went viral and poisoned the minds of millions.

Worse yet, as a result of this media blitz, the governor of Nevada actually banned using chloroquine to treat Covid-19 patients this week, saying there was “no consensus among experts or Nevada doctors” that the anti-malaria drug can treat coronavirus sufferers.

There were no angry editorials denouncing Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, for letting people die or the coronavirus rather than have them treated with a drug endorsed by the Republican president and the media’s favorite hate object.

One would think the world paralyzed with fear of the invisible death would pounce on every possible solution, no matter how unlikely it seems. That’s what we’re shown in Hollywood disaster movies, after all. Yet when such a solution presents itself, it is dismissed and denounced as “not proven”!

We’re supposed to blindly trust apocalyptic models produced by panic-mongering political hacks, but ignore the man who says the drug brought him back from the brink of death, even though his story can be easily verified and theirs cannot.

“Preferring opinions to facts is a disease,” Dr. Raoult told the French magazine Marianne last week. Just so.

I don’t know if hydroxychloroquine works on Covid-19. Dr. Raoult seems to believe so, and he’s not alone. In the absence of better solutions – and locking billions of people in their homes indefinitely is not one – don’t we owe humanity to at least try?

What do we have to lose?

In the three months or so since the coronavirus first appeared in China, there has been a lot of conflicting, confusing and outright false information about it. One thing that has consistently proven true, however, is that the biggest obstacle in effectively battling its spread and treating the afflicted has been the obtuse insistence of the political and medical establishment on blindly following their rules.

If the virus is truly threatening to kill millions, as they say, they would not value procedures over saving lives. Nevertheless, they persist. It makes one wonder why.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/484102-raoult- ... treatment/

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