Editor’s Note: The timeline will be updated as information becomes available, and events occur.
BACKGROUND: In the 1970’s, amidst a national famine in which millions died, the Chinese Communist government allowed and encouraged private farming in 1978, and 10 years later legalized the private industrialization of wildlife farming, in which wildlife animals were farmed, and sold in so-called “wet markets,” where live animals were sold, slaughtered, and butchered alongside other foods.
This recent outbreak of coronavirus of SARS-CoV2 (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome), a coronavirus which causes the disease known as COVID-19, appears to have originated in a particular live-animal wet market in the Hubei province city of Wuhan, China, which population is estimated between 8.9 to 11 million – and by some estimates, the 6th most populous city in China. Of the first 41 people infected with the virus, 27 had gone to the Huanan live market in Wuhan. It has remained unclear exactly how, or why, the virus appeared to emerge at that facility, which marked its initial global appearance, and subsequent human infection.
Significant conjecture has arisen in the scientific community about the virus’s emergence, and while most all researchers and investigators have concluded that it was vector-borne, some hypotheses have suggested that the novel coronavirus may have infected humans through the spiny anteater known as pangolins, while others have suggested that it may have first emerged from bats, and was then transmitted to the pangolins, and humans. Later, speculative conjecture from unreliable conspiratorial sources, suggested that the virus had been manipulated by human intervention, and either accidentally escaped the laboratory, or was deliberately planted. There is little-to-no evidence to support such a far-fetched idea.
Vox produced a brief video of the scenario surrounding the emergence of the novel coronavirus on March 6. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54)
This illustration reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the COVID-19 coronavirus. Note the spikes that adorn the outer surface of the virus, which impart the look of a corona surrounding the virion, when viewed electron microscopically. Image credit: CDC.
One particularly fascinating aspect of so-called “wet markets” where farm-raised wildlife is sold, and often slaughtered, is that the exceeding majority of Chinese nationals do not eat wildlife, and rather, it is the well-to-do and wealthy – who are an extremely small minority of the 1.389 billion-plus Chinese population – which consume such fare.
“Animal husbandry” is the term given to describe the agricultural practice of tending to, caring for, raising, breeding, and rearing animals, particularly and especially livestock, meaning domesticated animals typically raised for human use, either as use for production of dairy, meat, fiber, clothing, etc. Typically again, those animals are hogs, cattle, goat, sheep, poultry and fowl, including animals used for labor such as donkeys, mules, horses, oxen, etc. While there are examples of farm-raised wildlife in Western nations such as with alligators, mink, etc., such animals are infrequently or rarely used for human consumption, but in China, that practice is allowed, and even encouraged.
While China has made great strides in acknowledging that animal health is important for the animals intrinsically, and in relationship to humans’ interaction with them as well, there remain many more significant advancements to be made, because the health of animals and humans are inextricably intertwined. Specifically, laws, regulations, and governmental agencies, standards and practices in veterinarian medicine, and in animal husbandry and health should be more jointly unified, widespread, and enforced.
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2017
January
10 – Dr. Anthony Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, delivered the keynote address at a Harvard Global Health Institute conference in conjunction with the peer-reviewed healthcare journal Health Affairs, held at Georgetown University entitled “Pandemic Preparedness for the Next Administration” which “focused on priorities for the next U.S. presidential administration and potential agenda items for pandemic preparedness.”
(https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/news/pandemic-preparedness-priorities-next-administration)
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2017
July
20 – Tom Bossert, who had been appointed to the position of Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, attended the Aspen Security forum in Colorado, and said in part that, “At this point, we need to look clear eyed at the fact that we may have a devastating pandemic influenza or an intentional anthrax attack,” and began initiating the nation’s first-ever national bio-defense strategy. (https://www.aspeninstitute.org/longform/ideas-the-magazine-of-the-aspen-institute-summer-2020/finding-security-in-a-new-world/) -and- (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-biodefense/white-house-developing-comprehensive-biosecurity-strategy-official-idUSKBN1A52HZ) -and- (https://www.defensedaily.com/white-house-initiates-comprehensive-biodefense-strategy-official-says/homeland-security/)
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2018
April
White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured White House Homeland Security Advisor, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams were replaced. Mr. Bossert, with the assistance of retired Admiral Tim Ziemer, who had in the Obama administration, managed and administered the President’s Malaria Initiative throughout the African continent, had been in the process of establishing the first-ever national bio-defense strategy for the United States. At the Aspen Security Forum, in Colorado on July 20, 2017, Mr. Bossert had said in part, that, “At this point, we need to look clear eyed at the fact that we may have a devastating pandemic influenza or an intentional anthrax attack.”
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-homeland-security-adviser-resigns-amid-continued-turnover-in-trump-administration/2018/04/10/15db518a-3ccb-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html) -and- (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-biodefense/white-house-developing-comprehensive-biosecurity-strategy-official-idUSKBN1A52HZ)
May
POTUS ordered the National Security Council’s entire Global Health Security unit shut down, and called for Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biothreats Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer to be reassigned, and dissolved his team inside the agency.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/)
7 – POTUS called for cutting $252 million of unused funds remaining from the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, far exceeding the combined total cases reported in about 20 previous outbreaks since the 1970s.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/)
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2019
November
In a secret intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), based upon analysis of wire and computer intercepts, and satellite images, concerns that an out-of-control disease sweeping through China’s Wuhan region could pose a serious threat to U.S. Armed Forces in Asia, that Read the rest of this entry »
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