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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China [archive.org]

Residential lockdowns of varying strictness — from checkpoints at building entrances to hard limits on going outdoors — now cover at least 760 million people in China, or more than half the country's population, according to a New York Times analysis of government announcements in provinces and major cities. Many of these people live far from the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first reported and which the government sealed off last month [nytimes.com].

44 Americans On The Diamond Princess Cruise Ship Diagnosed With Coronavirus [npr.org]

Another 70 cases of the coronavirus infection have been confirmed aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, currently quarantined in Japan, according to Japanese health officials.

This brings the total number of cases aboard the vessel as of Sunday to 355, the largest confirmed cluster outside mainland China. People with confirmed infections have been taken to hospitals in Japan.

Tokyo Olympics organizers says there is no 'Plan B' for 2020 summer games amid coronavirus fears [businessinsider.com]

Tokyo Olympic organizers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said there is no 'Plan B' for the upcoming summer games despite growing fears that the coronavirus could impact the event, which are set to begin in July, the Associated Press reported [apnews.com].

Speaking at a press conference Friday, the organizers took 11 questions, all of which were related to the virus, athletes and fans coming in from China, and the continuation of the planned events.

"Certainly the advice we've received externally from the WHO [World Health Organization] is that there's no case for any contingency plans or canceling the games or moving the games," IOC inspection team head John Coates said during the news conference, CBS Sports reported [cbssports.com].

Coates also claimed he is "100% confident" that the Olympic games will continue as scheduled.

The White House doesn't trust China's coronavirus numbers — here's why [cnbc.com]

The White House said this week it does "not have high confidence in the information coming out of China [cnbc.com]" regarding the count of coronavirus cases, a senior administration official told CNBC. Meanwhile, China has reportedly been reluctant to accept help [nytimes.com] from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has reportedly suppressed information about the outbreak from scientists that it deems alarming.

U.S. officials' mistrust of China goes as far back as the 1950s, when national authorities set unrealistic production quotas [cia.gov] that led local officials to inflate data. Mishaps with the 2003 outbreak of SARS, which sickened 8,098 people and killed about 800 over nine months, and discrepancies in reporting of economic data over the past two decades has only hardened the U.S. government's belief that China cannot be trusted, experts say. White House advisor Peter Navarro has even called China a "disease incubator."

See also: ACE2 Expression in Kidney and Testis May Cause Kidney and Testis Damage After 2019-nCoV Infection [medrxiv.org]
The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus [archive.org] (scrubbed or hoax preprint on ResearchGate)

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