Category Archives: Insurgency

Obama Admin Ok’d China Huge Investments in US, Security Threats

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In recent months, perhaps years, we have witnessed how China is a major threat to our national security. What we don’t know is the depth and width of that threat matrix but the Trump administration is for sure addressing the issues as fast as they can.

China says US orders it to close its consulate in Houston ... source

The theft by the Chinese Communist Party of intellectual property appears to have no limit and hence the cost cannot be determined either. Below are just a few items of interest that prove the points above.

  1. (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday indicted two Chinese nationals over their role in what the agency called a decade-long cyber espionage campaign that targeted defense contractors, COVID researchers and hundreds of other victims worldwide. U.S. authorities said Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi stole terabytes of weapons designs, drug information, software source code, and personal data from targets that included dissidents and Chinese opposition figures. They were contractors for the Chinese government, rather than full-fledged spies, U.S. officials said. An unnamed “UK artificial intelligence and cancer research firm” was on the list of 25 victims released by the US Department of Justice
  2. The United States ordered the Chinese government and diplomatic staff to shutter the Chinese consulate located in Houston and to leave the country in 72 hours. In a Tweet by Senator Marco Rubio:“# The Chinese Consulate in Houston is a massive spy center, forcing it to close is long overdue,” he said, describing it as a “central node” of the Chinese Communist Party’s spy operations. .“It had to happen,” he tweeted. (locals called the fire department to report a fire at that location, but upon arrival found they could not enter sovereign land and it was merely Chinese personnel burning documents) A firetruck is positioned outside the Chinese Consulate Wednesday, July 22, 2020, in Houston. Authorities responded to reports of a fire at the consulate. Witnesses said that people were burning paper in what appeared to be trash cans, according to police. China says the U.S. has ordered it to close its consulate in Houston in what it called a provocation that violates international law. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) source

    Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a news conference Wednesday that “the unilateral closure of China’s consulate general in Houston within a short period of time is an unprecedented escalation of its recent actions against China.”

    He warned of firm countermeasures if the U.S. does not reverse itself. Besides its embassy in Beijing, the U.S. has five consulates in mainland China, according to its website. They are in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan and Shenyang.

  3.  In 2015, Chinese company acquired a Texas oil fields in $1.3 billion deal where Yantai Xinchao acquire oil assets in the western Texas Permian Basin that are currently owned by Tall City Exploration and Plymouth Petroleum. The deal is part of a larger transaction between Yantai Xinchao and a second Chinese firm. The purchase, which includes oil fields in the state’s Howard and Borden counties, has already been approved by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, the filing said.
  4. China (CNOOC) has increasingly been looking to the Americas for raw materials it needs to sustain the boom. As private investment dwindled with the global financial crisis, the cash-flush Chinese went on a regional shopping spree. Noted in 2018: — Goldman Sachs (GS) said it would create a $5 billion fund with China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, to invest in US companies.
    — Qualcomm (QCOM) signed $12 billion in non-binding deals to supply semiconductors to Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.
    —Sinopec (SHI), China’s state-owned oil and gas company, said it would explore an investment of up to $43 billion in Alaska’s energy sector.
    — China Energy Investment Corp., which is also state-owned, signed a non-binding agreement with the state of West Virginia to invest nearly $84 billion in shale gas and chemical manufacturing projects.
    — Boeing (BA) announced that it would sell about $37 billion worth of planes to a government holding company that buys jets for state-owned carriers such as Air China and China Southern Airlines.
  5. Perhaps worst of all is Nike and Apple.               Why? Slave labor known as Uighars. Per the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in part:The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority1 citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps.2 The estimated figure is conservative and the actual figure is likely to be far higher. In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories,3 undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours,4 are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances.5 Numerous sources, including government documents, show that transferred workers are assigned minders and have limited freedom of movement.6

    (gotta wonder where former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is now right?) –>Since 2017, more than a million Uyghurs and members of other Turkic Muslim minorities have disappeared into a vast network of ‘re-education camps’ in the far west region of Xinjiang,11 in what some experts call a systematic, government-led program of cultural genocide.12 Inside the camps, detainees are subjected to political indoctrination, forced to renounce their religion and culture and, in some instances, reportedly subjected to torture.13 In the name of combating ‘religious extremism’,14 Chinese authorities have been actively remoulding the Muslim population in the image of China’s Han ethnic majority.

    The ‘re-education’ campaign appears to be entering a new phase, as government officials now claim that all ‘trainees’ have ‘graduated’.15 There is mounting evidence that many Uyghurs are now being forced to work in factories within Xinjiang.16 This report reveals that Chinese factories outside Xinjiang are also sourcing Uyghur workers under a revived, exploitative government-led labour transfer scheme.17 Some factories appear to be using Uyghur workers sent directly from ‘re-education camps’.

    The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using Uyghur labour transferred from Xinjiang since 2017. Those factories claim to be part of the supply chain of 83 well-known global brands.18 Between 2017 and 2019, we estimate that at least 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang and assigned to factories through labour transfer programs under a central government policy known as ‘Xinjiang Aid’ (援疆).19

They Really Mean No Marxism No Peace

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Today looks just like 1966. The founders of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale wrote a 10 point plan that is being played out across the nation today.

Chris King's First Amendment Page: KingCast explains Huey ... Huey Newtoncranes are flying: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the ... Bobby Seale

Frankly, the FBI Director, Christopher Wray should call back the former agents, mobilize a team and run a counter-intelligence surge for domestic gang/terror sweeps.

Three Key Things PBS Black Panther Documentary Left Out ...

For those that may not remember, here is the old plan.

What We Want Now!

  1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
  2. We want full employment for our people.
  3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed communities.
  4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
  5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
  6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
  7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
  8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
  9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
  10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

What We Believe:

  1. We believe that Black People will not be free until we are able to determine our own destiny.
  2. We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American business men will not give full employment, the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
  3. We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as redistribution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities: the Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered 6,000,000 Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50,000,000 Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
  4. We believe that if the White landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make a decent housing for its people.
  5. We believe in an educational system that will give our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
  6. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
  7. We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
  8. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
  9. We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peers. A peer is a persons from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical, and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of “the average reasoning man” of the Black community.
  10. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such a form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accused. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, and their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards of their future security.

In recent days, a rather scandalous matter hit the headlines dealing with the Smithsonian Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture shaming Whiteness. The museum has many donors including Oprah Winfrey, one of the largest donors of more than $20 million. Beyond the reverse racism of ‘whiteness’, the museum does have some access to

The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change

showing the work and mission to be all positive. However, per the FBI Vault:

The Black Panther Party (BPP) is a black extremist organization founded in Oakland, California in 1966. It advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government. In 1969, the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office opened an investigative file on the BPP to track its militant activities, income, and expenses. The files are here.

 

Meet the Law Firm(s) Representing Black Lives Matter

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It is important as a primer not to conflate ANTIFA with Black Lives Matter, although there is certainly video evidence that ANTIFA has allied with BLM in many situations. By the way, for your pleasure, here is the author of  The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Mr. Mark Bray.

ANTIFA does however receive grants from Soros and likely Tom Steyer.

 

Anyway, so the objective here is to concentrate on Black Lives Matter as the movement has become much more aggressive and radical.

George Floyd and Black Lives Matter Protests: Live Updates - The ... source NYT’s

Meet the National Lawyers Guild.

According to historian Harvey Klehr, the NLG was allied with the Communist Party; in the 1930s a significant number of NLG founders had been members or fellow travelers of the Communist Party USA,[14] including Riemer and Joseph Brodsky of the CP’s International Labor Defense auxiliary.[10] During the McCarthy era, the NLG was accused by Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. as well as the House Un-American Activities Committee of being a Communist front organization.[15]

In 1937, Allan R. Rosenberg joined the NLG and remained a member as a late as 1956 during his second appearance before HUAC.[16]

Page scan of sequence 227

And that same radical platform is here today.

The National Lawyers Guild DC Chapter is involved in progressive, radical, and left-wing struggles, causes, and movements right here in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Legal observers and mass defense attorneys have assisted the Black Lives Matter movement, the Occupy DC protests, environmentalists opposed to area fracking and oil pipelines, immigrant rights activists, anti-war demonstrations, labor unionists and workers. The Chapter testified on behalf of marijuana legalization in D.C. and has launched a major investigation into mistreatment of prisoners at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison.

Guild attorneys, legal workers, law students, and other members continue to collaborate in sharing experience and expertise in the form of working groups, study groups, and social groups. Chapter events like happy hours and the annual Disorientation workshop for law students at area law schools, provide an environment where progressive, radical, and left-wing attorneys can network, share experience, and pass on wisdom.

Guild members are defending activists, representing immigrants facing deportation, testifying in federal and state legislatures against civil liberties cutbacks. They are using their experience and professional skills to help build the 21st Century grassroots movements that are and will be necessary to protect civil liberties and to defend democracy now and in the future.

There are chapters across the country. When San Francisco elects Chesa Boudin to District Attorney when he is a member of the NLG, you must determine if the DA in your area is as well. You see, they have events where Chesa Boudin is a keynote speaker:

Progressive Law Day is a free day-long conference, organized and led by law student members of the National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, and open to legal workers, lawyers, activists, and anyone interested in learning about radical lawyering and legal work.

Radical is right, in fact it is referenced on several of their associated websites.

blair-anderson-lo-ferguson-oct NLG Legal Observer Blair Anderson at #FergusonOctober. (Photo: Cece McGuire)

The Mass Defense Committee (MDC) is a network of lawyers, legal workers and law students providing legal support for political activists, protesters and movements for social change.

MDC members in chapters across the country provide trainings, assistance in setting up temporary legal offices and legal support structures, and materials for supporting activists engaged in mass protests.

Mass Defense Support

The National Lawyers Guild can provide the following legal help to progressive organizations:

  • “Know your rights” trainings/workshops;
  • Meetings with, and advice to, organizers about protest actions, and legal consequences;
  • Legal Observers® at protests and other actions;
  • Help with setting up and running jail and bail support programs;
  • Legal representation in case of protest arrests.

Did you notice the item of legal observers? Well, the NLG does dispatch several observers to protests to not only advise but to capture video in or out of context at protest or demonstration events.

After training          _DSC1446  you can request observers….

Need to request Legal Observers?

Please email the Mass Defense Committee at [email protected]

Then there is the ubiquitous debate, rather attack on ICE.

WRITE LETTERS TO DETAINED FOLX VIA NEW ONLINE FORM — #FlattenICE Tuesdays

May 12, 2020

In addition to calling and tweeting at ICE to demand the release of individuals in detention, for which you can use this FlattenICE toolkit (bit.ly/flattenICE), you now can write letters — no stamps or envelopes needed — with this Google Form!

While acting to #FlattenICE, use this great sustainable call-ins graphic (thanks to Havannah and Hien from APSC, also on p. 8 of the FlattenICE toolkit) and remember to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.

Perhaps you are beginning to understand this all now right? Hold on there is yet another law firm you should know about.

But first we need to once again introduce Soros in the mix, of course. A nefarious division of his work is the Center for Popular Democracy. Got it? Okay, read on.

Trump demands Gov. Jay Inslee, Mayor Jenny Durkans 'take back' Seattle USAToday

There is this law firm known as Law for Black Lives. Law for Black Lives is a national community of radical lawyers and legal workers committed to transforming the law and building the power of organizing to defend, protect and advance Black Liberation across the globe. Now you know why the protests went world-wide, they are coordinated.

The Executive Director is Marbre Stahly-Butts.

Marbre Stahly-Butts is a former Soros Justice Fellow and now Policy Advocate at the Center for Popular Democracy. Her Soros Justice work focused on developing police reforms from the bottom up by organizing and working with families affected by aggressive policing practices in New York City. Stahly-Butts also works extensively on police and criminal justice reform with partners across the country. While in law school, Stahly-Butts focused on the intersection of criminal justice and civil rights, and gained legal experience with the Bronx Defenders, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the Prison Policy Initiative. Before law school Stahly-Butts worked in Zimbabwe organizing communities impacted by violence, and taught at Nelson Mandela’s alma mater in South Africa. Stahly-Butts is a city council designee to the Board appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

***

Law for Black Lives and the Center for Constitutional Rights hosted a webinar on April 16th focused on the use of militarization, criminalization and surveillance during times of crisis. While many of us work tirelessly to support our families and communities, the Government is laying the groundwork to turn this health crisis into a criminalization crisis. We have already seen the DOJ request additional detainment powers, Congress funnel almost a billion dollars to local law enforcement agencies and cities across the country to use police to enforce stay at home orders. Join us for  a discussion about the current response. Panelists will provide insight about past abuses of power- from Katrina to 9/11. Together we will explore how lawyers and organizers have mobilized to mitigate the harms of criminalization and the way forward in this moment. If you missed the webinar, check out the recording below!

The rest is up to you to connect more of what you find. Perhaps since the United States fought wars to defeat communism, it may be prudent to demand the IRS terminate the non-profit status of the National Lawyers Guild as just a start and counter-measure.

Meanwhile of course, while Black Lives do Matter, the same goes for any life in America. One has to consider if the BLM movement is at the expense to all other races or classes and threat to civil society? Just take a long look at Seattle, Oakland or New York to answer that question. Maybe even the University of Miami Law School can shed some light on the subject. They teach a course.

In Spring of 2018, the School of Law will be convening an interdisciplinary course called “Race, Class, and Power: University Course on the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.”

The course will engage the multiple lenses through which the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and racial justice in the United States might be explored, including policing and criminal justice, comparative inquiry regarding race and identity, theories of social movements, education reform, cognitive psychology, healthcare and medicine, education and child welfare, incarceration and public health, literature and artistic expression, law and legal reform, environmental justice, and more.

Dear General Mattis and the other Flag Officers

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General Mattis, your op-ed in the Atlantic was repugnant. Let’s review what you purposely overlooked, shall we?

photo

 

Know your Terrain

It’s the leader’s job to interpret and translate the terrain and operating environment. Know whether you are the bear or the alligator. Leaders must understand their organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and ideal operating terrain before stepping into the fight. There is no “unfair” when dealing with an uncontrollable variable like terrain. Read more here from Sun Tzu on terrain.

You see during the Covid-19 lockdown, America was in fear. The fear doubled and confidence has been shattered with rioting, death, arson and looting. General, you did not offer a solution. But we are learning all the dynamics of the changing terrain in America and it is ugly.

All Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Our rights as citizens are to be protected and the elite members of our Praetorian Guard are designated as politicians at all levels, law enforcement and the branches of the military. So to you Generals and Admirals, to the politicians and law enforcement, who is protecting selected voices from censorship? What about illegal searches and surveillance where we are to be secure in our person, papers and effects? What about our ability to fully protect ourselves from home invasions or burning a building or business where the upper floors are actually apartments? We have gangs operating all over the nation, we have subversive groups doing the same. We have an insurgency upon the country and they are domestic enemies to the general welfare of America. What is your solution if not law and order?

Ungoverned Spaces

You are well aware of places like Idlib, Syria, the Sahel, Libya, Donbass, Ukraine, even the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. General, in America there are thousands of points of ungoverned spaces including public schools, streets in San Francisco, the courthouse steps in Portland, Oregon or the college campus at Berkeley. In recent days, ungoverned spaces included cities and streets across the nation where police are told to take a light touch all while mayors have released violent criminals from prison and what would be felony arrests are considered misdemeanors, letting go the criminal within hours with a mere $120 ticket. General, have you considered this chaos? Are you applying strategic thinking to frontier justice where decent Americans will be forced into vigilante justice? Syrians were forced into that just as Libyans are. We have to fend for ourselves, you omitted that part. So, to you Flag officers, have you a solution war plan to solve this in America?

Domestic Tranquility

While the intent of the Framers intended to quell uprisings and rebellions between states, domestic tranquility is fleeting. When civil society is challenged and criminal behavior goes unpunished, established justice is broken. Peaceful demonstrations are events where the demonstrators put forth their grievances. That is a wonderful and endorsed right. When riots, theft, looting, arson, shootings or otherwise physical harm comes to person or property, law and order is fractured. Placing the National Guard at designated locations is to augment law enforcement. If that fails, a higher more assertive remedy is called for including the consideration of the Insurrection Act. There is not a respectable American that wants conditions to reach that point and that includes President Trump. But just like military personnel in the realm of war-gaming operations, all consideration must be on the desk and they are. In the case of the civilian population, leaders and law enforcement too must consider all options for the protection of public safety.

So General Mattis, you are quoted as saying ‘ If you cannot create harmony, even vicious harmony on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across service lines, across coalition and national lines and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete‘.

That harmony you speak of is lost in America, we are divided. So, General sir…just go home, take the other Flag officers with you.

We are gonna be ‘polite and professional’ in spite of it all, but we are gonna be the guards of our own terrain, personally and professionally and politely.

 

The Reason for the WH and Dr. Birx Chilling New Probability Report

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Primer: We all seem to guess this except for Jim Acosta/CNN and the others at MSNBC. Media continues to blame the Trump White House for the slow response to address COVID-19, while Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci explained what they did not know very early on. Now we know.

Now some real questions and new policy towards China must be considered. We can start with the $1.8 T in U.S. debt that China holds. The next is challenging American telecommunications companies to squelch China’s advances of 5G. Then there is the next phase of the U.S. trade agreement with China. Add in the mission to stop China’s power agenda across the globe as it is clear, China is fine with killing people and economies across the world.

China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.

The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.

The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said. The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.

Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.

Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.

Coronavirus: Doctor at hospital in China's Hubei province ... source

“The medical community made — interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”

China is not the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.

“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.

“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”

The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

Map of sampling sites in the Hubei Province of China. Red ... source

 

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak containment strategies in China based on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) appear to be effective. Quantitative research is still needed however to assess the efficacy of different candidate NPIs and their timings to guide ongoing and future responses to epidemics of this emerging disease across the World. Methods: We built a travel network-based susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed (SEIR) model to simulate the outbreak across cities in mainland China. We used epidemiological parameters estimated for the early stage of outbreak in Wuhan to parameterise the transmission before NPIs were implemented. To quantify the relative effect of various NPIs, daily changes of delay from illness onset to the first reported case in each county were used as a proxy for the improvement of case identification and isolation across the outbreak. Historical and near-real time human movement data, obtained from Baidu location-based service, were used to derive the intensity of travel restrictions and contact reductions across China. The model and outputs were validated using daily reported case numbers, with a series of sensitivity analyses conducted. Results: We estimated that there were a total of 114,325 COVID-19 cases (interquartile range [IQR] 76,776 – 164,576) in mainland China as of February 29, 2020, and these were highly correlated (p<0.001, R2=0.86) with reported incidence. Without NPIs, the number of COVID-19 cases would likely have shown a 67-fold increase (IQR: 44 – 94), with the effectiveness of different interventions varying. The early detection and isolation of cases was estimated to prevent more infections than travel restrictions and contact reductions, but integrated NPIs would achieve the strongest and most rapid effect. If NPIs could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier in China, cases could have been reduced by 66%, 86%, and 95%, respectively, together with significantly reducing the number of affected areas. However, if NPIs were conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks later, the number of cases could have shown a 3-fold, 7-fold, and 18-fold increase across China, respectively. Results also suggest that the social distancing intervention should be continued for the next few months in China to prevent case numbers increasing again after travel restrictions were lifted on February 17, 2020. Conclusion: The NPIs deployed in China appear to be effectively containing the COVID-19 outbreak, but the efficacy of the different interventions varied, with the early case detection and contact reduction being the most effective. Moreover, deploying the NPIs early is also important to prevent further spread. Early and integrated NPI strategies should be prepared, adopted and adjusted to minimize health, social and economic impacts in affected regions around the World.