The Hunt for Patient Zero

https://www.unz.com/article/the-hunt-for-patient-zero/

Another American Index Case?

In our last episode, Last Man Standing, we wondered if the Covid-19 outbreak might prove advantageous to China. Here we speculate about how–thanks to a bureaucratic decision about a common illness–it may cause America to lose world hegemony.

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Finding the Index Case, Patient Zero, of an epidemic is critical to understanding and curbing further transmission. Dating its first appearance, sequencing its genomes, following the changes in its genetic structure, and finding the root of its genetic family tree help estimate the epidemic’s scale and scope of transmission, find intermediate hosts, understand how spreading took place and curb future transmission by focusing resources to contain it. Since genetic sequencing data can only come from those who are diagnosed, health workers still rely on contact tracing to find people whose infections have gone undetected. Once a patient is diagnosed, their primary contacts must be located and questioned about relevant symptoms and, if any of those contacts themselves fall ill, they trigger a second layer of contact tracing and the workload grows exponentially. Covid-19’s long incubation and asymptomatic transmission can make the search herculean: Indian health officials contacted 2,666 people after the first case was confirmed in Karnataka.

Every public health official on earth knows this yet, despite its WHO obligations, the CDC refuses to identify America’s Patient Zero and attacks those–including the WHO itself–who requests the information. The thesis of this article is that the CDC’s coverup will fail and the consequent revelations will hasten the fall of our First Republic[1].

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In 2012, the Rand Corporation concluded, ‘the only threats capable of destroying America’s way of life are pandemics.’ In 2015, after Ezra Klein spoke with Bill Gates about his algorithmic model showing how a new strain of flu could spread rapidly he wrote, “A pandemic disease is the most predictable catastrophe in the history of the human race, if only because it has happened to the human race so many, many times before.” In 2017, Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed ‘no doubt’ that President Trump would face a viral pandemic during his tenure. In 2019, HHS’ Crimson Contagion pandemic report, marked ‘not to be disclosed,’ found Federal agencies jockeying over who was in charge, states and hospitals struggling to figure out what equipment was stockpiled or available, and cities and states going their own ways on group and school closings. This is truly astonishing, since

• Patient Zero for both the Spanish Flu and Swine Flu (the deadliest[2] pandemics of their centuries), were Americans.
• Our public health system is so ineffectual that we now host endemic diseases like typhus, usually seen only in wartime.
• Our public health system is so ineffectual that our healthy life expectancy at birth is lower than China’s.
• The CDC is remarkably corrupt.
• The CDC has often been slow to detect pandemic outbreaks and incurious about tracing them.
• The CDC classifies discussions of Covid-19 Top Secret.
• The CDC is led by a non-scientist military officer.
• The CDC did nothing when the WHO issued its warning January 3.
• The CDC blocked Covid-19 testing for months after thousands started dying.

The CDC has been dismantling our public health system. In 2018 the White House pushed Congress to eliminate $252 million for disease security programs and reduce health spending by $15 billion by cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS and eliminating the $30 million Complex Crises Fund. The President ordered the National Security Council’s Global Health Security unit shut down and reassigned Adm. Timothy Ziemer and his team. Then-National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Adm. Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert to resign, too, and neither team was replaced. Much of the staff of the CDC’s Global Health section was laid off and cooperating countries were cut from forty-nine to ten, and CDC Director Robert Redfield sought a further $7 billion cut for FY 2021. Last November a bipartisan panel convened by the CSIS concluded, “The United States must either pay now to gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”

A Series of Unfortunate Events.

On June 30, 2019, a pneumonia of unknown cause at Greenspring, a nursing home fifteen minutes from Fort Belvoir[3], VA, killed three and sickened 54.

On July 9th, another pneumonia of unknown cause was reported in Alexandria, VA and all lung images showed the ‘ground glass’ shadow typical of Covid-19. Coincidentally, the CDC chose that date to withdraw the only American epidemiologist embedded with Beijing’s CCDC. The following week a pneumonia epidemic was reported at a nursing home in Burke, VA and the Virginia State Health Bureau banned collective activities and began screening residents in assisted care facilities and requiring enhanced hygiene. In early August the CDC expanded its pneumonia patient detection system and, in an unprecedented civilian intervention in military affairs, shut down the Army’s main military biowarfare lab (and Superfund site), Fort Detrick, MD where, a senior scientist said, the atmosphere was one of “fear and mistrust.”

In late August, the Virginia Department of Health confirmed three more cases of severe lung illness of unknown origin. Between August-October, 2,500 patients reported gastrointestinal symptoms beginning before respiratory symptoms, with fever, elevated heart rate, and elevated white blood cell count–all symptoms typical of Covid-19. Many sought ambulatory care several times before hospitalization and their lung images showed a ‘ground glass’ shadow. Fifty percent needed intubation, many required supplemental oxygen, and some required assisted ventilation. Fifty-three died and the cause of the outbreak remains unexplained[4]. A similar outbreak[5] was occurring simultaneously in Lombardy, Italy.

The following month the Deputy Director of the CIA participated in a pandemic tabletop exercise, Event 201, that modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic and, after years of reducing headcount, the CDC began hiring quarantine managers:

In January, after private briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic, five senators avoided significant losses by selling major stock holdings and 219 CEOs, the largest cohort ever, retired at the top of the stock market.

On January 3 ILINet[6] was functioning normally when the WHO alerted the CDC to Covid-19. When Beijing uploaded its genetic sequence a week later the CDC forbade its sentinels, including UW’s Dr. Helen Chu[7], to test for it. A New York Times reader commented[8] that such information suppression is common with the CDC, “I presume her lab continues to conduct the tests for research but is barred from sharing the results with public health authorities. I used to be the principal investigator on an IRB-approved, non-clinical brain imaging study for research many years ago. We decided that in the rare case we detected an abnormality in a participant’s brain, we would strongly suggest that they consult a clinician. Similarly, perhaps your lab could inform a participant testing positive for the virus in your study to seek medical attention immediately.” Two months later Dr. Chu ignored the CDC’s injunction and immediately discovered Covid-19 fatalities in Seattle. The CDC still obstructs and discourages testing.

DETROIT – A NURSE was found dead from coronavirus after her employer reportedly refused to test her because she wasn’t showing symptoms. Lisa Ewald, 53, worked as a nurse at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit for more than 20 years but died last week after being exposed to the deadly virus. Ewald said she believed she was exposed to the coronavirus by a patient around March 24 while working in the emergency room. Neighbor Alexis Fernandez said Ewald immediately tried to get herself tested, but was told by her employer she couldn’t until she showed symptoms. According to her family, the nurse was refused a test twice.

WASHINGTON — A coroner in Indiana wanted to know if the coronavirus had killed a man in early March, but said that her health department denied a test. Paramedics in New York City say that many patients who died at home were never tested for the coronavirus, even if they showed telltale signs of infection. In Virginia, a funeral director prepared the remains of three people after health workers cautioned her that they each had tested positive for the coronavirus. But only one of the three had the virus noted on the death certificate. Across the United States, even as coronavirus deaths are being recorded in terrifying numbers—many hundreds each day—the true death toll is likely much higher. New York Times, April 7, 2020.

Hunting for Patient Zero

Chinese research shows that the virus was introduced into their country from elsewhere, Japanese and Taiwanese studies point to the US as its likely source, and Russian and Czech authorities share their suspicions.[9] Kristian Andersen, a Scripps Institute evolutionary biologist, said it is ‘entirely plausible’ that infected persons brought the virus into the seafood market from somewhere outside and dated their ‘most recent common ancestor’ as early as 1 October 2019, when US athletes participated in the 2019 Military World games in Wuhan. Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University, said the first infection has been confirmed as occurring in November 2019, (not in Wuhan), suggesting the virus originated elsewhere. “One group put the origin of the outbreak as early as 18 September 2019. China must have realized the epidemic did not originate in that Wuhan Huanan seafood market.” Lucey also noted that MERS was originally believed to have come from a patient in Saudi Arabia in June of 2012 but later, more thorough studies traced it to an earlier hospital outbreak of unexplained pneumonia in Jordan in April of that year and Western media’s origin stories about SARS, MERS, and ZIKA have all later proven wrong.

Circumstantial Evidence

• The Director of the CDC is a career military officer and a non-scientist.
• The CDC blocked Covid-19 testing for months and still obstructs it.
• The CDC discusses Covid-19 in a top secret, secure facility because, staffers said, “It has something to do with China.”
• Only under persistent Congressional questioning did the CDC Director reluctantly reveal the existence of earlier cases that had been diagnosed as influenza.
• The CDC Director flatly refuses to discuss Patient Zero.
• Western media show no interest in investigating Patient Zero.
• Western media dismiss questions about Patient Zero as ‘political’ despite the fact that they are scientific.
• Powerful US Government officials acted on foreknowledge of the epidemic
• The media have been attacking the World Health Organization for months.
• President Trump has threatened to de-fund the WHO.

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Death of a Thousand Cuts

It appears that China has chosen to play offense this time and its weapons may prove decisive. Most American medical laboratories employ Chinese researchers, some of whom smuggled hospital tissue samples to China during the period under discussion. This explains the FBI’s medical panic[10] last Fall, the CDC’s secrecy, and the Chinese Government’s brazen demand that the US reveal Patient Zero. If China has biological samples of American Covid-19 from 2019, then its demand is just the opening shot in a war of perceptions. Uncharacteristically, Chinese diplomats have ensured that a global audience is paying attention by repeating its challenge in major languages:

Next, to garner publicity for an analysis that could have been performed on a desktop, China chose Tianhe, the world’s first petaflop computer, to compare lung images attributed to vaping and to Covid-19. Using AI-assisted analysis whose algorithm’s accuracy is over 99 percent, Tianhe-1 found a high probability of Covid-19 in the CAT image of a patient who became severely ill between July and August in North Carolina. The features included white patches encroaching on the lower parts of both lungs, a phenomenon raising the eyebrows of some radiologists at the early stage of the outbreak because it was rarely seen in other types of pneumonia. Said the AI-generated report, “The image shows features of Covid-19, and a comprehensive diagnosis is recommended in combination with epidemiological information and other clinical characteristics.” The patient was one of five who presented at the WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina at about the same time, with acute lung injuries, according to information on the CDC website. Dr Kevin Davidson, who led a medical team that examined the patients at WakeMed, defended the original diagnosis but, said a Wuhan doctor, “The disagreement between Tianhe and WakeMed could be resolved by a laboratory test for the new coronavirus in the patient’s samples. If the samples are no longer available, an antibody test can be performed instead.” Pigs will fly…

Truth and Consequences

There are more rounds to be fought but, if China wins, will be sweet revenge for America’s many biological attacks since 1951[11], including Harvard’s theft of thousands of biological samples in the 1990s, and recent epidemics of mysterious origins. With ninety percent of its workforce already back in operation, if China does wins, where will the world be in twelve months if

• Covid-19, like Swine Flu and Spanish Flu, began in the United States?
• Covid-19 began at a notoriously unsafe military biowarfare facility?
• The US Government and media covered it up?
• The US blamed an innocent nation?
• The US scapegoated the WHO?
• The US mishandled its own outbreak disastrously?
• The US coverup precipitated another financial crisis?
• China again rescued the world from the American recession?

For politicians seeking to deflect attention from their own shortcomings and curry favor with the new superpower, blaming America may prove irresistible.

Postscript: That HHS and the CDC might be involved in villainy is not news. In the 1980s Linus Pauling described the criminal lengths to which HHS went to discredit years of promising research on Vitamin C’s effects on the longevity of thousands of cancer patients.

Notes

[1] To understand how and why republics fall, read The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940, by William L. Shirer.

[2] Patient Zero for the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ was traced to Kansas City. Patient Zero for H1N1 officially occurred in San Diego in April, 2009, but three unrelated clusters during March suggest that transmission began earlier.

[3] The US Military Games team trained at Fort Belvoir before competing in Wuhan.

[4] The CDC does not actually count and then report the number of people who contract influenza or pneumonia during the flu season, “Because influenza surveillance does not capture all cases of flu that occur in the U.S., CDC provides these estimated ranges to better reflect the larger burden of influenza. These estimates are calculated based on CDC’s weekly influenza surveillance data and are preliminary.” The numbers are statistical estimates only.

[5] Doctor Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Pharmacology Institute in Milan, became a superstar in China. In an interview that went viral, Remuzzi talks about his explosive findings in conversations with general practitioners in Lombardy. “Do you know what happened? Certain family doctors, who have the best antennas in the territory, at least the most able and attentive ones, have told me recently that they were seeing grave cases of pneumonia, which we had never seen in other years. These pneumonia cases had nothing to do with typical flu pneumonia, they were interstitial pneumonias, they had to do CT, radiography [to diagnose it], and this was seen in October, November, December. So this virus has been circulating a long time.” That was indeed in parallel with or even before the first coronavirus cases in Wuhan in mid-November. It’s been already scientifically established that the virus strains in Wuhan and in Lombardy are different. Which came first, and where from, remains a matter of incendiary debate.

[6] The US Outpatient Influenza-Like-Illness Surveillance Network of three-thousand sentinel health care providers who report the weekly percentage of outpatient ILI visits to the CDC. China’s network, modeled on the CDC’s, has 70,000 sentinels.

[7] Washington state epidemiologist Scott Lindquist recalled, “What they said on that phone call very clearly was cease and desist to Helen Chu. Stop testing.” https://reason.com/2020/03/11/how-government-red-tape-stymied-testing-and-made-the-coronavirus-epidemic-worse/

[8] Comment from Why The US Wasn’t Ready for the Coronavirus. NYT 03/11/2020.

[9] March 29. Tass, “In order to unambiguously answer the question about the origin, where the first case emerged, major research needs to be carried out. So, Washington’s accusing tone in comments against China occasions utter bewilderment. As for ‘US trace’ in the COVID-19 outbreak, we don’t have this data yet. However, for a long time we have been watching with concern the US military and biological activity carried out in direct proximity with our borders. In other words, there are indeed questions for the US.”

[10] Including the arrest of Charles M. Lieber, Chair of Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and leader of a Chinese research group using nanotechnology to identify viruses.

[11] See The Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China. Sir Joseph Needham, Lead Author