128737896
submission
hackingbear writes:
After testing blood from 500 residents for antibodies to the COVID-19 virus in the town of Gangelt which is a hot spot of the pandemic in Germany, scientists at a nearby university say they have determined that 14% have been infected and are therefore “immune.” Some of those people would have had no symptoms at all. They found that 2% of residents were actively infected by the coronavirus and a total of 14% had antibodies, indicating a prior infection. From the result of their blood survey, the German team estimated the death rate in the municipality at 0.37% overall, a figure significantly lower than what’s shown on a dashboard maintained by Johns Hopkins, where the death rate in Germany among reported cases is 2%. In contrast, the 2019-2020 seasonal flu has infected up to 17% of US population and killed ~0.1% of those infected. Since first emerged in late December, or purportedly as early as late November, the COVID-19 has infected over 1.6 million people and killed over 100,000.
128653076
submission
hackingbear writes:
According to an ABC report, as far back as late November U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting. The US military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) compiled a November intelligence report in which "analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources of the NCMI's report told ABC News. The report was then briefed "multiple times" to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's Joint Staff and the White House. NCMI denied the existence of the report later Wednesday, saying that "no such NCMI product exists." China has been criticized for hiding the virus outbreak in January. However, Chinese doctors, including Dr. Li Wenliang which was the earliest whistle blower, didn't detect the outbreak until late December.
128530116
submission
hackingbear writes:
Berlin's police chief Barbara Slowik apparently told Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper, that a shipment of 200,000 3M face masks was rerouted to the United States. Andreas Geisel, a Berlin interior senator, also confirmed that the masks were "confiscated." German broadcaster RBB stated that the shipment was diverted by American authorities. “We consider this an act of modern piracy. This is not how you deal with transatlantic partners,” Geisel said. "Even in times of global crisis there should be no wild west methods. I am urging the [German] federal government to demand the U.S.A. respect international rules,” the senator wrote in a statement. In related development on medical supplies, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday it would be a "mistake" for the U.S. to limit exports of medical supplies to Canada in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic after Minnesota manufacturing giant 3M said it has received a request from the Trump administration to stop exporting N95 respirators to Canada and Latin America as demand grows in the U.S. Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his state, which has been especially hard-hit, had looked to China for ventilator supplies and had obtained 1,000 from the Chinese government with the help of billionaires Joseph and Clara Tsai and Alibaba founder Jack Ma, despite the on-going trade war against China launched by the U.S.
128140446
submission
hackingbear writes:
Italian researchers are looking at whether a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 may be a signal that the new coronavirus might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought. Adriano Decarli, an epidemiologist and medical statistics professor at the University of Milan, said there had been a “significant” increase in the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia and flu in the areas of Milan and Lodi between October and December last year, while Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, noted some family doctors in Lombardy had reported unusual cases of pneumonia late last year that now looked potentially suspicious. Base on what we know about how infectious the virus is and the ratio of patients showing no symptoms compared with those that get sick, skeptics dismissed this theory without more evidences that. “It is inconceivable that we would not have had a pretty major epidemic in Europe much earlier if these cases had in fact been COVID-19,” said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia. In comparison, scientists thought that the H1N1 strain responsible for the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic first evolved in September 2008 and circulated amongst humans for several months, before being formally recognized and identified as a novel strain of influenza in March 2009. Decarli said once his research was concluded, local health authorities might decide to request authorization to exhume bodies of people with suspect symptoms.
127573446
submission
hackingbear writes:
In an interview with NPR, Giuseppe Remuzzi, Professor of Nephrology and Director of the Department of Immunology and Clinical Transplantation of the Ospedali Riuniti di Bergamo, Italy, claimed that coronavirus cases might have appeared in Italy as early as last November. "That they remember having seen very strange pneumonias, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even in November. It means that the virus was circulating at least in Lombardy before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China," Remuzzi said. It was impossible to combat something you didn't know existed, the doctor added. Under pressure of populism on both sides, officials from US and China are in war of words over origin of coronavirus, with Trump calling it 'Chinese Virus'.
127381228
submission
hackingbear writes:
International travelers landing in Beijing will be quarantined for 14 days in a central isolation facility at their own expense, authorities in the Chinese capital announced on Sunday. As local cases in China dropped to single digit, the country reported 16 new imported cases of the coronavirus, five of them in Beijing, taking the total to 111, the National Health Commission said.
127285876
submission
hackingbear writes:
With the deadly virus now present in 100 countries, companies are unable to match demand for the masks needed by health workers. That’s led governments to jockey for supplies, including the U.S., which is stockpiling, and Germany and South Korea, which banned exports of masks altogether. The U.S. has only 1% of masks it projects needing. Public health officials are warning that restrictive trade measures tied to medical supplies could worsen the shortfall and risk making poorer nations more vulnerable to the coronavirus’ spread. China, which produces half of the world's masks, will not ban export, despite of its own shortages. Chinese commerce official Li Xingqian suggests Beijing will not limit exports of the protective equipment. Supplies from China are expected to grow substantially as its manufacturers and supply chain restarted after the worst of the virus outbreak was passed in the country.
126555338
submission
hackingbear writes:
Chinese security company Qihoo 360 has taken the security world something by surprise, with published claims that it has exposed an eleven-year campaign by “CIA hacking group (APT-C-39),” which, it says, targeted a range of Chinese industries, including aviation, oil and gas and tech, as well as several government agencies. “It is worth noting,” the report says, “that the attacked information technology sectors of civil aviation by the CIA are not only in China, but also involves hundreds of commercial airlines [in other] nation states.” Qihoo 360 analyzed the (wiki)leaked material of Vault 7 and associated with the team’s researches, it discovered a series of targeted attacks against Chinese entities. What’s more interesting is that the company has elected to do this now in the public domain. We can now likely expect further Chinese exposure of alleged U.S. exploits, the potential for individuals to be identified, and a further shift of this cyber tit-for-tat into the public domain. Last month, Washington Post reported that CIA secretly brought Crypto AG and embedded backdoors in its products to eavesdrop around the world.
126477954
submission
hackingbear writes:
According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, Chinese hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients a few weeks ago now have empty beds. Trials of experimental drugs are having difficulty enrolling enough eligible patients. And the number of new cases reported each day has plummeted from thousands per day to 125 cases on March 2. The report is unequivocal. “China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic,” it says. “This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real.” The WHO team traveled to several cities including Wuhan, the hardest hit city. They visited hospitals, laboratories, companies, wet markets selling live animals, train stations, and local government offices. “Everywhere you went, anyone you spoke to, there was a sense of responsibility and collective action, and there’s war footing to get things done,” Aylward says. The question now is whether the world can take lessons from China’s apparent success—and whether other countries can imitate the massive lockdowns and electronic surveillance measures imposed by an "authoritarian" government (an assertion which real Chinese may not necessarily agree with from their daily experiences.)
125673436
submission
hackingbear writes:
Thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts have launched a coordinated effort to spread misinformation and alarm about coronavirus, disrupting global efforts to fight the epidemic, officials at the Department of States have said. Some accounts have falsely claimed the US is waging “economic war on China” and that the virus is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA. “Russia’s intent is to sow discord and undermine US institutions and alliances from within, including through covert and coercive malign influence campaigns,” said Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia. On the other hand, some American media outlets and politicians have also circulated conspiracy theories on this virus including that it originated from a chinese virology lab or it was a biological weapon of China's military.
125616946
submission
hackingbear writes:
A group of 27 prominent public health scientists from outside China, who have studied SARS-CoV-2 “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife” just like many other viruses that have recently emerged in humans, is pushing back against a steady stream of stories and even a scientific paper suggesting a laboratory in Wuhan, China, may be the origin of the outbreak of COVID-19. “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumors and misinformation around its origins,” the scientists, from nine countries, write in a statement published online by The Lancet. Many posts on social media have singled out the Wuhan Institute of Virology for intense scrutiny because it has a laboratory at the highest security level—biosafety level 4—and its researchers study coronaviruses from bats; speculations have included the possibility that the virus was bioengineered in the lab or that a lab worker was infected while handling a bat. Researchers from the institute have insisted there is no link between the outbreak and their laboratory. Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance and a cosignatory of the statement, has collaborated with researchers at the Wuhan institute who study bat coronaviruses. “We’re in the midst of the social media misinformation age, and these rumors and conspiracy theories have real consequences, including threats of violence that have occurred to our colleagues in China.”
124028826
submission
hackingbear writes:
Bytedance, which owns the popular TikTok video-sharing app and the news app Jinri Toutiao, said given the efforts to reduce the risks of big gatherings amid the Wuhan coronavirus breakout, it had secured a 630 million yuan ($91.25 million) deal to let fans watch Lost in Russia for free on its apps. The week-long Lunar New Year holiday usually sees audiences flock to cinemas with distributors taking advantage of the crowds to launch films but the premieres of at least seven movies, including Lost in Russia, postponed as China has stepped efforts to contain the coronavirus, which has killed 81 people and infected more than 2700, with public transport suspended in at least 10 cities and public gatherings discouraged across the country. However, movie theaters and studios in China protest against this arrange to stream movie online for free.
122172648
submission
hackingbear writes:
TikTok released its first transparency report yesterday, showing which countries have submitted requests for content removal as well as access to user data. China is notably absent from the report—the video sharing app, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, claims it did not receive a single takedown request from Communist Party of China in the first half of 2019. TikTok’s report shows that US law enforcement agencies have been working with TikTok to gain access to user data and take down content that violates US laws. In the past year, TikTok received 79 requests for user data from US law enforcement agencies, along with six requests for content takedowns. The company complied with 86 percent of the user data requests, and restricted or blocked seven accounts related to the content takedown requests. “TikTok is committed to assisting law enforcement in appropriate circumstances while at the same time respecting the privacy and rights of our users,” Eric Ebenstein, TikTok’s head of public policy, wrote in a blog post. India lead the list with 107 requests submitted for user data and 11 requests for content takedowns.
121994796
submission
hackingbear writes:
China's biggest rocket, the Long March 5, returned to flight Friday in a dazzling nighttime launch for the Chinese space program, recovering from its second test flight failure in 2017. The Long March 5 Y3 rocket lifted off at 8:45 p.m. Beijing Time carrying the experimental 8-tonne Shijian 20 communications satellite into a geosynchronous orbit. The Long March 5 is an essential booster for China's space ambitions. The heavy-lift booster will be the one to launch China's space station modules into orbit, as well as a Mars lander in 2020 and the Chang'e 5 moon sample-return mission. The Shijian-20 ("Practice-20") is China's heaviest and most advanced satellite to date and is designed to be a high-throughput communications satellite "capable of delivering 1 Tbps bandwidth. Shijian-20 is also expected to test a laser communications payload for future missions, as well as new ion thrusters for propulsion. China spent about 0.06% of its GDP on its space program, while the U.S. spent roughly 0.23%.
121873786
submission
hackingbear writes:
The Intercept reported that Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg used prison labor in Oklahoma to make campaign calls through New Jersey-based call center company ProCom. The prisoners were required to end their calls by disclosing that the calls were paid for by the Bloomberg campaign. They did not disclose, however, that they were calling from behind bars. A ProCom co-founder said his company pays the Oklahoma minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, which then pays the incarcerated people working in the call centers. The Department of Corrections website lists the maximum monthly wage for the incarcerated at $20 dollars a month, but another policy document says there is a maximum pay of $27.09 per month. The practice of prison labor is not unique to the U.S. Just two days ago, it was widely reported that a 6-year-old in UK found a message from an unknown person on a Chinese made Christmas card claiming to be victim of forced prison labor and pleading help from journalist Peter Humphrey who had published the story which has since been denied by the card's vendor and the prison named. Humphrey himself was jailed by China and made a televised confession after he was hired by GlaxoSmithKline to to probe a sex tape of the whistleblower and other issues shortly before the British pharmaceutical company itself became the target of a corruption investigation by the Chinese government. Last year, US inmates staged a nation-wide prison labor strike over "modern slavery." “We didn’t know about this and we never would have allowed it if we had,” said Bloomberg spokesperson Julie Wood. “We don’t believe in this practice and we’ve now ended our relationship with the subcontractor in question.”
