Just Another Article About the Coronavirus!

I am sure that many of you are beginning to feel like I do in regards to the Coronavirus Pandemic. I am certainly not a scientist, a doctor or a high-level researcher; and I also cannot claim that I know exactly what is going on with this issue. However, I can certainly say without any hesitation, that there a lot of strange things surrounding this epidemic that do not make sense. I have been watching as governments around the world have been shutting down large scale events and restricting movement. Air travel, cruise lines, and other mass transportation are being severely limited to include travel bans to and from certain countries. It seems that many of our own states have declared a state of emergency followed closely behind by President of the United States declaring a national state of emergency. Many schools and Universities have extended spring break and have moved to online education only. It seems quite unfathomable that the National Basketball League and the National Hockey League have also cancelled or postponed their current seasons. Mass hysteria has erupted across the nation as stores shelves are being emptied of toilet paper, cleaning supplies and essential food items for the preparation of a possible restriction scenario here in the United States. I worked directly with patients and I have noticed about a decline of kept appointments by almost one-third. Whether the Coronavirus is a severe disease that is truly spreading fast, or not, the population of the world has gotten in quite a frenzy and state of panic over this epidemic.

I am in no way trying to diminish the severity of the Coronavirus; however, it seems that the numbers of actual deaths, in relation to the number of people on this planet, does not necessarily match the effort and money that is being pumped into this issue. I understand that many other similar illnesses such as the common flu, have killed many more people than the Coronavirus has, and we are not pumping money or assigning task forces to battle those other similar illnesses. The Coronavirus is being managed at the highest levels of our government, and I understand that many other countries are also trying to manage this issue at high levels as well. The original amount of money released by the United States government was a little over 8 Billion Dollars, and now that the Stafford Act has been initiated, there can be as much as 42 Billion Dollars of disaster money available for this effort. I would imagine that the state governments will also continue to declare a state of emergency in order to be eligible to receive some of this federal money. I am happy that we are taking the Coronavirus serious, however, I also wonder if we are over reacting? Perhaps I am not privy to information about how lethal this virus really is, or to what extent it may cause deaths across our globe. I also am beginning to wonder if there is another agenda imbedded in this effort. I imagine that there are going to be many great changes in our lives as a result of this pandemic – just like all the great changes that happened after large scale incidents and events in our past.

Does anyone remember the Boston Marathon bombing that happened back in 2013? In short, a couple of men were shown on video to have placed and detonated improvised bombs at the finish line, killing several people and wounding a large number of others. NBC News has a synopsis and pictures of this incident at this link. The reason I bring up this event, is to demonstrate how easy it is to convince citizens that they need to be restricted to their homes, in order for police agencies to perform a man hunt for two assailants. Several large cities were completely locked down for several days – basically martial law was enacted and no one seemed to have a problem with this. After all, there were bombers on the loose! Once again, I am not minimizing this incident in any way; what I am pointing out is how easily we give up our civil liberties in order for police to search for just a couple of people. We do not seem to mind giving up our rights to free movement when there is a great threat, or even a perceived threat, to our lives. Similar restrictions and lock downs have happened following many of our large-scale incidents. Now we have a threat called Coronavirus, an illness that has bee reported to be lethal to the population; an illness that has demonstrated the ability to infect a population fairly quickly. I will imagine that this virus will again prompt people to feel good about their civil liberties being taken away, as long as our governments are hard at work keeping it away from endangering us.

All the stories and research that I can dig up about the Coronavirus leads me to believe that this is similar to the flu with a more robust infectious lung component. It seems that many of those who have been identified with this condition seem to recover well, although we have had our fair share of deaths related to this virus. In my readings and research, I have also noted that strains of the Coronavirus have been around for quite some time, and that we also have vaccines available. I ran into a famer the other day that said she has been vaccinated for Coronavirus for a lot of years due to her work with cattle. This little fact made me wonder about the current Coronavirus issue – is this just a different or more potent strain? Do we already have a vaccine available for this current strain of Coronavirus?

I also stumbled across an article about a “fictional” book that was written in 1996. The book is titled “The Eyes of Darkness” and is written by Dean Koontz. What is interesting about this book is that parts of this book seem to be discussing the current Coronavirus issue that we are experiencing now – so was this book a prophecy or prediction? Or was it just a lucky guess? I am including the following parts of the book that I believe is talking about the Coronavirus – it seems to be eerily familiar and similar. I found this book to be very interesting.

“”To understand that,” Dombey said, “you have to go back twenty months. It was around then that a Chinese scientist named Li Chen defected to the United States, carrying a diskette record of China’s most important and dangerous: new biological weapon in a decade. They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400′ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made microorganisms created at that research center.

“Wuhan-400 is a perfect weapon. It afflicts only human beings. No other living creature can carry it. And like syphilis, Wuhan-400 can’t survive outside a living human body for longer than a minute, which means it can’t permanently contaminate objects or entire places the way anthrax and other virulent microorganisms can. And when the host expires, the Wuhan-400 within him perishes a short while later, as soon as the temperature of the corpse drops below eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Do you see the advantage of all this?”

Tina was too busy with Danny to think about what Carl Dombey had said, but Elliot knew what the scientist meant. “If I understand you, the Chinese could use Wuhan-400 to wipe out a city or a country, and then there wouldn’t be any need for them to conduct a tricky and expensive decontamination before they moved in and took over the conquered territory.”

“Exactly,” Dombey said. “And Wuhan-400 has other, equally important advantages over most biological agents. For one thing, you can become an infectious carrier only four hours after coming into contact with the virus. That’s an incredibly short incubation period. Once infected, no one lives more than twenty-four hours. Most die in twelve. It’s worse than the Ebola virus in Africa—infinitely worse. Wuhan-400′s kill-rate is one hundred percent. No one is supposed to survive. The Chinese tested it on God knows how many political prisoners. They were never able to find an antibody or an antibiotic that was effective against it. The virus migrates to the brain stem, and there it begins secreting a toxin that literally eats away brain tissue like battery acid dissolving cheesecloth. It destroys the part of the brain that controls all of the body’s automatic functions. The victim simply ceases to have a pulse, functioning organs, or any urge to breathe.””

Of course, I do not have any evidence of anything that I have been discussing so far in this article, I am just trying to share my feelings about how all these puzzle pieces might fit together. I understand that our higher-level leadership will have much greater information regarding the situation, than any common citizen might have, so we may never truly know all the aspects of this epidemic we have found ourselves involved in. I have been in high level leadership positions, where I found myself in possession of sensitive information, that could not be shared with my subordinates. I also understand that the complete truth is not necessarily something that can be shared while trying to maintain order among a large amount of people. Certainly, knowing everything possible about this situation would be nice, however, I doubt it would change my everyday life very much.