Trump To Send Coronavirus Victims To Alabama

President Donald Trump has decided to move Coronavirus victims from the Diamond Princess cruise ship to the FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston.

Last Saturday, 22 February 2020, Elleen Kane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, announced the plans to quarantine the evacuees which have been planned for transport this week.

Located on the site of the former Army training base Ft. McClellan, the CDP has a full training hospital on site which is

“The Noble Training Facility at the CDP is the only hospital facility in the United States dedicated solely to training hospital and healthcare professionals in disaster preparedness and response. The facility includes classrooms, exercise and simulation areas, an emergency operations center, emergency department, clinical ward, and an isolation ward for ‘patients’ with highly infectious diseases.”

The CDP is the nation’s only such training center, and has numerous trainings, for several classifications of personnel, including licensed Medical/Healthcare Professionals, system administrators, First Responders, Law Enforcement, Fire Fighters, and more.

Coronavirus is the novel type now being called Covid19, which is highly contagious, and airborne. The virus, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths worldwide, and continues to spread globally, is proving not only difficult to eradicate, but unpredictable, as well.

First thought to have emerged from the so-called “wet markets” in which live animals are slaughtered alongside prepared foods, in Wuhan, in Hubei Province, China, the virus is classified as a “zoonotic,” meaning it can spread from animals to humans.

Most images found in news stories show people wearing simple dust masks in the mistaken belief that the mask will help prevent them from inhaling the airborne pathogen. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The microscopic virion so small, it can easily pass through the pores of such masks. In fact, the N-95 respirator, which is used to prevent inhaling other airborne contagions like tuberculosis, is ineffective. That’s why its common to see folks in “space suits” treating patients.

At first blush, theories about the virus circulated on Social Media which blamed bats as the cause of the outbreak, and images and video of a woman eating “bat soup” (literally, eating a bat in a bowl of broth), were discovered to be a travelog writer and were not made in China. Then, based upon disinformation, rumors began circulating that bats were not the cause of the virus.

However, epidemiologists and other scientists became involved, and began to research the disease, and learned that indeed, coronavirus Covid19 had migrated from bats, and possibly through snakes, and or the pangolin, a critically endangered scaly species which is also sold and eaten in China, and body parts which are used as an ingredient in traditional medicine in parts of Asia – particularly China – and Africa.

Sometimes called a “scaly anteater” because the animal eats ants, the pangolin has a tongue as long as its body, poor vision, an excellent sense of smell and hearing, and curls up in a ball, exposing only its hard scales to potential predators as a defensive measure. They are the only scaly mammals in the world.

The pangolin, which is “native to Asia and Africa, are the world’s only mammals with true scales made of keratin, and despite international trade bans, pangolin meat and scales still fetch high prices on the black market. Demand is especially high in China and Vietnam, where pangolin parts are used in medicine and served as a culinary delicacy.” They are called “the most trafficked mammal in the world.”

Pangolin scales for use in traditional Chinese medicine.

Pangolins being eaten as bush meat.

In Hai Phong, a Vietnamese port city, on August 4, 2013, Tuoi Tre News reported authorities there seized over 800 pangolins weighing nearly 7 U.S. tons, all which were alive in a 40-foot cargo ship originating from Indonesia. The customs declarations were falsified and declared as “fish, fish bones and fish stomach” by the importer, which was Long Thanh Trading, Investment and Development Company, headquartered in northern Quang Ninh province’s Mong Cai town.

Pangolin curled up in self defense

In response to the Covid19 outbreak, China has ceased all export of animals, and made permanent laws banning the sale and consumption of wildlife to “safeguard public health and ecological security.”

At this point, exactly how Covid19 migrated from bats to humans is unclear, and the mention of a possible vector through the pangolin is hyperbole, because there’s no supporting evidence to substantiate the claim. In fact, Scientists working to save the endangered species are concerned that Chinese researchers who asserted pangolins as a possible vector of Covid19 may be increasing public fear and harming conservation efforts.

A man holds a pangolin at a wild animal rescue center in Cuc Phuong, outside Hanoi, Vietnam September 12, 2016.

What is clear, however, is that there is no doubt that Covid19 originated from bats. In January 2019 researchers published their findings on bats as the original source of Covid19, which is published on the U.S. National Library of Medicine website, and available free of charge. Virologists, health care researchers who study viruses, have long known about the coronavirus+bats=diseased humans equation. In December 2015, research was published which even then tied bats to coronavirus which caused SARS, and MERS, which passed from bats to dromedary camels in the Middle East.

In the interim, Alabama officials became fearful because they were caught unprepared, and in conjunction with the NIMBY principle, contacted President Donald Trump, who in turn, announced that he had changed his mind, and was not going to unload the modern-day boat people onto Alabama.

Anniston city officials went so far as to call a special City Council meeting on Sunday and approved a resolution seeking the assistance of the City Attorney and City Manager to legally prohibit individuals with coronavirus from being quarantined at FEMA’s CDP there.

Governor Kay Ivey later issued a press release Saturday morning which stated that Trump’s announcement was made “inadvertently and perhaps prematurely,” and that the CDP in Anniston would only be a “back-up” site.

In the mean time, don’t eat bat soup.