China says zero-Covid policy will protect it against Omicron variant

One of China’s top pandemic advisers has said Beijing’s strict Covid-zero strategy would prevent the new Omicron variant posing a serious threat, vindicating the tough policy at a time when the rest of the world has been trying to ease restrictions.

The comments, reported in Chinese media, came as authorities published a study by local academics warning that any attempt by China to deviate from the elimination strategy by following western herd immunity models would be “disastrous”.

“China’s current rapid response . . . strategy can cope with various types of Covid variants,” Zhang Wenhong, an infectious disease expert and director of the Huashan Hospital’s department of infectious diseases in Shanghai, said on Weibo: “I don’t think it will have a big impact on China at the moment.”

Beijing has adopted a tough Covid-zero strategy that involves subjecting vast numbers of people to compulsory government quarantine, with wide definitions of those considered a close contact.

While effective at preventing deaths, it has left the nation isolated from the rest of the world. Most other countries in the region that had also pursued elimination strategies are moving towards an acceptance of the disease as endemic.

But Zhang said the strategy had won China a “strategic opportunity” as the arrival of the new variant forced other countries to begin reimposing restrictions.

Zhong Nanshan, another top Chinese pandemic expert, said authorities would need to pay attention to visitor arrivals from Africa, but did not suggest any further government measures to tackle the new variant.

“How harmful it is, how fast it will spread, whether it will make the disease more serious . . . it is too early to draw a conclusion,” Zhong said at the weekend, according to Chinese media reports.

In the study, Chinese mathematicians warned that moving away from China’s strict Covid-zero approach to one similar to the US could lead to as many as 637,155 new cases daily, which would have a “devastating impact on the medical system of China and cause a great disaster within the nation”.

“The estimates revealed the real possibility of a colossal outbreak which would almost certainly induce an unaffordable burden to the medical system,” the authors wrote.

The warning was contained in a study by Yuan Zhang, Chong You, Xin Gai and Xiaohua Zhou published on November 24 by China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Our findings have raised a clear warning that, for the time being, we are not ready to embrace ‘open-up’ strategies resting solely on the hypothesis of herd immunity induced by vaccination advocated by certain western countries,” the authors said.

But they said they did not account for any difference in effectiveness of the vaccines between those offered in the west and China.

China’s population has mostly been inoculated with more traditional “inactivated” vaccines made by the state-owned Sinopharm and domestic pharmaceutical company, Sinovac Biotech. Some experts say there are doubts as to whether these more traditional type of vaccines offer as long-lasting protection as those based on newer mRNA technology.

Zhong said that about 76.8 per cent of the nation’s population was vaccinated, with 80 per cent targeted by year end.

Sinovac, which has developed and delivered millions of its shots worldwide, said it was working to obtain samples of the new variant to test the effectiveness of its shot against the strain. China is also developing its own homegrown mRNA shots.

Oil reserves released by Biden expected to primarily go to China, India

President Biden’s move to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is expected to supply Chinese and Indian oil needs as gas demands have led to global shortages, reports said Tuesday.

The White House said the Department of Energy will release 50 million barrels of oil held in U.S. reserves — 18 million of which have already been congressionally approved for sale.

TOP REPUBLICAN ON ENERGY COMMITTEE SAYS TOO LITTLE TOO LATE AFTER BIDEN TAPS OIL RESERVE

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on the economy during an event at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building on November 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the S (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images / Getty Images)

China and India have been actively purchasing U.S. sour crude oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, first reported Bloomberg

Sour crude oil contains high levels of sulfur, which reportedly makes it more expensive to process and traditionally turns buyers away. 

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But U.S.-produced sour crude oil appeals to foreign buyers because of its relatively affordable price tag, the publication said.

The White House’s Tuesday announcement means the U.S. will seek to accelerate sales abroad in an attempt to counter spiking prices at the gas pump. 

BIDEN TO RELEASE 50M BARRELS OF OIL FROM STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE AMID GAS PRICE SPIKE

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on the economy during an event at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building on November 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the S (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images / Getty Images)

The additional 32 million barrels will be intended for U.S. consumers to alleviate increased demand.

Earlier this month OPEC+, led by nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia, refused to increase production to meet rising demands.

Gas shortages have led to rising inflation and gas prices at the pump not seen in seven years. 

“The President has been working with countries across the world to address the lack of supply as the world exits the pandemic,” the White House said in a statement.  

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In a globally coordinated effort China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom will also tap their reserves to try and bring down gas prices. 

“The president stands ready to take additional action, if needed, and is prepared to use his full authorities working in coordination with the rest of the world to maintain adequate supply as we exit the pandemic,” the administration added.

What has China been up to across the globe

Be it selecting up border scuffles, or redrawing intercontinental borders, or imposing trade bans or attempting to re-teach its minorities or spreading pretend information on Covid-19 China has carried out it all, continues to do it all. In this new sequence, we seem at what all China has been up to due to the fact the past time you read through about it.

Ever due to the fact the new Biden administration took over the United states of america, some may well come to feel the foot has been taken off the fuel pedal with regards to intercontinental strain on China’s dealing with and transparency of the Covid-19 virus. But, with the emergence of AUKUS and the strengthening of the QUAD, some may say that the pressures are currently being applied in other places. China has been redefining its inside economy by performing on its topmost business people and occupation creators. Its realty sector, also, is quickly to see a slump. Although we wait around to see how this impacts the long run economies of scale in China, allow us seem at the prime tales surrounding the Pink Dragon’s excesses.

Phony information propaganda on social media:

A examine has identified that Twitter accounts connected majorly to China were found out spreading misinformation about the origins of Covid-19, these types of as lies that the virus came from a cargo of Maine lobsters to Wuhan. Oxford researcher Marcel Schliebs, who is a Political Details Scientist and DPhil prospect at the OII (Oxford World-wide-web Institute) to start with noticed the misinformation campaign when he noticed a tweet from Zha Liyou, the Chinese consul general in Kolkata, India in November 2019.

The tweet by Liyou claimed: “Important suspect of Covid via chilly chain determined: A MU298 of Nov. 11, 2019 carrying food items from Maine, US to Huanan Seafood Industry, Wuhan, Hubei by using Shanghai. During the next handful of months, lots of staff about moving this batch of seafood bought infected.” This tweet has since been deleted by the user.

Basing his experiments on disinformation, propaganda, and divisive political information material in the U.K. on-line facts ecosystem at the Oxford Online Institute, he linked the tweet to hundreds of Twitter accounts, some actual and some bogus, all of them spreading professional-China misinformation.

Social media targeted facts scientists opine that it was a concerted work by China to market faux information at the price of blaming other entities for the origination and distribute of the virus. We at India Nowadays experienced carried out a thorough tale on the identical

It is rather substantially the exact playbook that China follows on its personal social media platforms like Weibo, where outdated films and images of the Galwan valley clashes among Indian and Chinese soldiers continue to keep receiving regurgitated as new kinds to participate in PsyOps.

The narrative from the PLA aspect is to maintain circulating these posts in order to play brain game titles amongst Indian and Chinese social media consumers. The over publish was viral on Weibo October 9th, studying that Indian troopers and the PLA had a new faceoff in which the Indian facet suffered heavy accidents and for this reason they were being made a decision to be sent back by the PLA troops out of benevolence and righteousness form the Chinese facet. A easy evaluation reveled that these were being not new but previous photos, and it was a definitive attempt to create a PsyOps narrative. Psyops can be most effective described by military services operations ordinarily aimed at influencing the enemy’s state of head via noncombative usually means (these as distribution of leaflets or pretend news propagation).

Malaysia is refusing to budge to Chinese excesses in the South China Sea:

Malaysia is determined not to get provoked or stop its advancement of a fuel field in the South China sea. It is establishing a enormous Kasawari fuel area believed to include a few trillion cubic feet of fuel resources. This in spite of a report by a US believe tank (Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative) which has termed the interference of China as a “daily harassment” of the functions by intruding Chinese boats.

In June this yr, Malaysia had to scramble its fighter jets when it detected shut to 20 armed service transport jets belonging to China, traveling near to Malaysian air space devoid of prior notification. It is stated that Malaysia has deployed naval vessels to protect its functions and seems to have received aid from other navies as properly.
Some gurus believe that that it is a skinny line for Malaysia to not cross more than as China has been Malaysia’s prime trader given that 2016, pumping in US$4.41 billion in 2020. China has also been Malaysia’s largest investing lover due to the fact 2009 and accounted for 18.6 per cent of complete trade last year.

That’s why, Malaysia mainly resorts to diplomatic usually means to counter China’s risk in South China sea. Malaysia has continually resorted to filing their reservations with the UNCLOS (UN Conference on the Legislation of the Seas).
Just lately, the Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah opined that he expected a lot more Chinese vessels to enter the country’s waters right up until the work to create the fuel fields continued. He also explained Malaysia’s present-day connection with China was “very difficult to quantify but is considerably better now”, despite what happened in the South China Sea.

It is described that China was also deploying its study vessels to perform unlawful seabed surveys in Malaysian waters and these vessels would ordinarily be accompanied by a huge contingent of maritime militia boats and a more compact amount of Chinese coastguard vessels. The richness of the Kasawari fields have really upped the stakes in the South China sea.

China is taking away “domes” from mosques in China in order to “Sinicize” them:

The Dongguan Excellent Mosque in Xining, China, photographed in 2018 experienced brilliant inexperienced domes and minarets exhibiting the loaded lifestyle of Islam in the place. The mosque has been around for virtually 700 many years. The mosque is also well known for obtaining Buddhist symbols in just and exterior the domes.

Now, China is eliminating the domes and minarets from almost all the mosques throughout the state. Reviews indicate that Chinese authorities sense that the domes are evidence and reminders of international spiritual affect and the exact are currently being taken down to take out overtly Islamic architecture from these structures. This will permit the “Sinicization” of historically Muslim ethnic teams allegedly done to assist them convert into a ordinarily Chinese race.

This has been likely on because 2016. Xi Jinping’s campaign to Sinicize its Islamic group is out of China’s issues amid increasing Islamophobia. He has frequently commented that ethnic teams in China should set Chinese tradition in advance of ethnic differences. This has now started out supplying final results.

Hui Muslims — who quantity about 10.5 million, a lot less than 1{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of China’s populace — have altered by getting to be culturally and linguistically Chinese. They also know to practice religion by burning incense at religious ceremonies, which is a main Chinese religious practice. They have even produced their version of Islam obtainable to Confucians and Daoists.

But specialists suggest this alone is not enough. Beijing has a a great deal narrower knowing of what getting “Chinese” indicates, adhering to Communist Bash values, talking only Mandarin Chinese, and rejecting all foreign affect, opine gurus examining this scenario.

The important issue with domes and minarets is that they resemble the “Saudi and Arabic” affect. In other areas of China, Sinicization has permitted the point out to justify the confiscation of mosque belongings, the imprisonment of imams and the closure of religious institutions above the last two years.

The US-Taiwan-China conundrum:

Early October noticed extreme activity more than the Taiwanese ADIZ (Air protection identification zone) through which hundreds of Chinese aircrafts ended up witnessed producing incursions into the zone. This was deemed as a warning to Taiwan on the eve of their nationwide day.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen warned there would be “catastrophic” repercussions for peace and democracy in Asia if the island had been to tumble to China. Taiwan’s ministry of Nationwide Defense produced stats that confirmed an outstanding selection of air incursions all through the thirty day period of Oct. The incursions throughout Oct provided 34 Chinese J-16 fighters and 12 nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, which all flew in an space in the vicinity of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.

Taiwan’s leading China coverage-earning overall body, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), accused China of critically detrimental the status quo of peace and balance in the Taiwan Strait. “We need the Beijing authorities instantly prevent its non-peaceful and irresponsible provocative actions,” MAC spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng mentioned in a assertion.

Now, in an interview presented to CNN a number of times in the past, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen confirmed the existence of US troops on the Island of Taiwan. This has even further riled up the Chinese authorities and will additional escalate China’s military and political pressure on the island.

President Tsai also extra that Taiwan has a vast assortment of cooperation with the US aiming at rising its defence ability. This has promptly provoked a response from China as a foreign ministry spokesperson produced the next statement: “We firmly oppose any kind of official exchanges and military contacts involving the United States and Taiwan, oppose US interference in China’s inner affairs, and attempts to provoke and stir up difficulty,”

The down below animation exhibits that above 800 PLA plane have entered Taiwan’s ADIZ considering the fact that September 2020 and extra than 40{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of these are unarmed aircraft, used for gathering details & patrolling underwater submarines.

Authorities continue to alert that China is getting ever more concerned more than Taiwan shifting toward a formal declaration of independence and that they will go to wonderful lengths to warn President Tsai versus taking actions in that way.

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Two new studies suggest the coronavirus did not originate in China

  • Numerous theories exist all around the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which results in COVID-19, but none has but been confirmed.
  • Elements of the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are so unusual that it has offered rise to conspiracy theories that the virus should have been formulated in a lab.
  • Researchers have now identified in bats dwelling in caves in Laos strains of viruses so related to SARS-CoV-2 that they feel they could infect individuals.
  • This discovery could establish the organic origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and that immediate bat-to-human transmission of the virus is a attainable lead to of the pandemic.

Given that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that brings about COVID-19, was to start with detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, there have been worldwide endeavours to figure out its origins.

As the pandemic was assumed to originate in Wuhan, quite a few endeavours have targeted on China, with the assumption that, as the virus was very first detected there, it almost certainly begun there.

Now, two papers beneath assessment by the journal Mother nature and printed as preprints are casting some question on these assumptions and reveal that in buy to uncover the origins of the virus, scientists may perhaps have to search farther afield.

Keep educated with are living updates on the latest COVID-19 outbreak and stop by our coronavirus hub for extra advice on avoidance and treatment.

Just one of the factors SARS-CoV-2 is so infectious is a region on its spike protein that presents it its capacity to bind to a receptor current on the surface area of lots of human cells known as ACE2.

In a paper submitted to Mother nature, researchers from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, and from Laos have now reported locating viruses with receptor binding domains extremely related to these uncovered on SARS-CoV-2 in cave bats in North Laos.

The researchers took blood, saliva, anal feces, and urine samples from 645 bats from 46 diverse species located in limestone caves in North Laos, which is near to the Southwest China border.

They learned 3 independent virus strains in 3 different species of Rhinolophus bat, usually acknowledged as horseshoe bat. RNA sequencing discovered that these viruses ended up above 95{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} similar to SARS-CoV-2, and one, the closest virus to SARS-CoV-2 located so far, was 96.8{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} identical.

More experiments confirmed that the receptor binding area of the viruses had a high affinity for human ACE2 receptors. This was similar to the affinity of SARS-CoV-2 strains that scientists found at the beginning of the pandemic, suggesting these viruses could infect humans immediately.

Last 12 months, experts detected a similar virus in Yunnan, in Southwest China. It was 96.1{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} very similar to SARS-CoV-2, which means the current paper describes the closest virus detected still.

Prof. Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney, Australia, who has analyzed the emergence and distribute of SARS-CoV-2 but was not included in this study, explained to Clinical Information Right now the paper was “really considerable.”

“In my viewpoint, these viruses won’t just be found in bats and pangolins. Ecology is not like that. I suspect that they will also be located in other mammalian species but have not nonetheless been sampled,” Prof. Holmes said.

“Some of these Laotian viruses are incredibly near to SARS-CoV-2 in the essential receptor binding domain (part of the spike protein) of the virus. This indicates that the purposeful main of the virus exists in nature, so there is no want to believe that the virus was somehow made or adapted in a lab.”

– Prof. Edward Holmes

Further question was forged on the assumption that the virus liable for the COVID-19 pandemic originated in Wuhan with an additional preprint submitted to Mother nature.

A examine by a group from the Chinese Academy of Health care Sciences and Peking Union Professional medical College in Beijing has instructed that SARS-CoV-2-related viruses are “extremely rare” in bats in China, just after having nose and anal swabs from more than 13,000 bats amongst 2016 and 2021 at 703 areas throughout the region.

The paper also showed that SARS-CoV-2 was undetectable in samples taken from Wuhan Huanan Current market, 40 times following the closure of the market, which was owing to fears that the original infection occasion had happened there.

Authors conclude that additional investigation ought to be completed south and southwest of China to identify no matter if the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated there.

A person of the causes it has been so difficult to create wherever the coronavirus originated is viral genomes that change by a procedure termed recombination, rather than just as a result of mutations. Viral recombination occurs when two distinctive strains infect the exact same host mobile.

As they replicate in the very same mobile, they can interact, and the virus progeny they deliver can have some genes from the two moms and dads. This can make it tough to work out the lineage of that virus.

“Recombination seems to be vital for how these viruses evolve total,” Spyros Lytras, an evolutionary virologist from the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, told MNT.

“So, effectively we are expressing these viruses switch bits of their genome all the time, and the new viruses from Laos really emphasize that. Even while [these viruses] are found in the exact location, the same cave fundamentally, they all have different bits of their genome that have different combinations of recombinant sections.”

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