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I am not talking about whether China might or might not have been forthright or who is more or less honest. That is not terribly productive in itself, and I am mostly concerned about facts we know or which are missing. What I am saying is that if there was a cover-up, it does not appear to had any functional consequences. Therefore there was no reason to not to heed the warnings. Or conversely, stating that folks were taken by surprise due to China hiding the infection is ridiculous, given the massive lockdown on the 23rd of January and the inaction of e.g. the US between then and March. If they hid something, and the something does not change our knowledge on the infection, why would it matter? It would then all be a discussion about who is bad and who is not, and not about whether the information is reliable and useful. And that is a very dangerous stance, because you are essentially saying we should throw out all the data from China as they are all wrong. Luckily (or sadly) by now we also have data in other countries that a very similar picture, pretty much invalidating that assumption. And here is the other thing, we are science oriented forum, so data is king. If we look at that dispassionately we (so far) do not find strong evidence of any meaningful manipulation (aside the points I mentioned before, which are not really hidden). So I am asking, what is the benefit of just assuming things with evidence, other than becoming more vulnerable to manipulation and spin? There is already the narrative that the one pushing the responsibility to WHO and China rather than acknowledging failures in own responses. Because from the latter we can learn and improve, but the former will keep us in blissful ignorance (until the next outbreak hits). Let me be clear, there are two major narratives, mostly pushed by the US at this point. One is that the inability of China (or willingness) to report on the original clusters of pneumonia up to the end of December has cost the world time to react. The issue with that is even after that only few countries started to implement measures whereas the US and others have done little until March. And there are emerging reports that intelligence services have notified folks of these clusters of infections almost as soon as the Chinese CDC, and drew their own conclusions (but apparently not resulting in any reactions from the administration) And even in March before the lockdown, folks were not asked at airports regarding their travels. So that does not line up. Associated with that is that folks could have closed borders earlier. The issue with that one, is I believe that either in the US or Canada more infections were coming from Europe than from China.Which is why the big world-wide waves started actually way later than anticipated (as China was shutting down). The second is that China is hiding some big secret, which, for some reasons, does not change epidemiological data in any relevant way. So not only it is not clear what is missing, it also fails to show any impact (at least on the scientific side of things). But again, it does not impact folks to learn about the virus, nor to implement meaningful measures, as you insinuated earlier (how can it if it does not change the meaning or interpretation of the published data?). If one does not take responsibility to ones own failures (in China's case free distribution and discussion of information, in the US' case acting on actually available information and in many other countries learning from timely and effective responses in other countries), these issues will crop up again. And there is not guarantee that the next one will not have an origin in, say, North America.

Don't do that. If you've learned something, it was a net gain. We are all ignorant of one thing or another, yet we still post. ( yes, we have no shame )

So, a quick look gives me the following for deaths/cases: Italy: 22,170 / 168,941 = 13% Spain: 19,315 / 184,948 = 10% China: 4,632 / 50,333 = 9% Germany: 4,051 / 137,698 = 2.9% Korea: 230 / 10,635 = 0.2% So, if the differences were due to covering up the figures then Germany and South Korea are far worse offenders. The truth is, there are a great many factors that contribute to the differences between countries. Some that spring to mind immediately: Age and health of the population Social structure (in Italy families of 3 or more generations often live in close proximity) How much testing is done (this reduces the case fatality rate by increasing the number of cases detected) How early action is taken How stringent the measures are (just asking people to stay home, actively tracing all contacts, quarantining all suspected contacts, etc) How well the population obeys the rules What are the definitions of "case" and "death": only those confirmed with a test? number of people tested vs number of tests done? all those with symptoms? only deaths in hospital? Quality of data collection (in Italy, many areas have, apparently, been too busy to fill in paperwork) Honesty of governments/media I'm sure there are many other factors as well. I don't think we will know the answers to a lot of the questions about this virus for many years.

I think evidence is clear that children are carriers ( but often under tested) what is unclear is whether they are spreaders. Data is lacking here.

Thanks for your reply ^^. Your link answer my questions.

Same story but there's an feature where you can click and drag to look around the inside of the detector. Seriously impressive. https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrino-evidence-could-explain-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-20200415/

I don't think there has necessarily been any political meddling. They are working with the data that they have, but I also think that this is where the issue potentially lies, since I don't believe there has been significant testing done in children to know what risk they actually pose to other people. I completely agree with you on your points about school closures - the long term economic effects would be disastrous. In addition to your points I would also comment that universities, which are already struggling with the loss of international student money, would surely go bust if they also lost an entire graduating year of domestic students.

lol, nice to see not too far off from what the real researchers are thinking. Obviously phagocytes exist so perhaps other cells can use the same method to engulf them when needed. Possibly they have some means to 'infect' a cell themselves too.

There was a paper circulating a little while ago that caught my attention, published in Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2223-y To be honest, I am pretty baffled that it was published in Nature. The top leads identified in their screening assay are known as pan-assay interference compounds (PAINs). IOW, they are nuisance compounds and generally not something you would pursue in a drug design campaign. In fact, the seminal paper that discusses PAINs is a Nature paper (https://www.nature.com/news/chemistry-chemical-con-artists-foil-drug-discovery-1.15991), which makes this even more confusing. I can't imagine anyone with a med chem background would have reviewed this, as the red flags should have been very obvious. In any med chem journal, this paper would have been rejected since you have to screen for PAINs as part of their submission guidelines. I'm worried that this signals a general lowering of the bar when it comes to these sorts of publications, which will only make things more difficult in the long run. Derek Lowe has written some good blog posts on the matter: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/10/more-on-screening-for-coronavirus-therapies

Sure. The rock looks like ordinary quartzite the thing to the right of th quartzite looks like a dried walnut. Just out of curiosity have you been eating random wild mushrooms?

Exactly. Children are likely asymptomatic carriers and generally live with folks that are older...

Suggest you spare us your hateful bias.

The 'economy' is not just a money making mechanism for the wealthy, Phi. It is the means by which most of us feed, clothe, house ourselves and our families; it's how we survive. I have no problem with the economy 'going for a sh*t' as long as it saves lives. But if it 'goes for a sh*t' for too long, people start losing their life for reasons other than the pandemic. That is the balance that has to be struck; dying by starvation is just as bad as dying by Covid-19. I believe that is what Danijel Gorupec meant.

I think you'd better take a good look around, Dim, and not how you imagine things. You might not like what you see.

Is this a threat? I have also other things to do than answering questions. My post is not even half a day on this forum and I have already got threats. In the time of Giordano Bruno you would have probably burned me. I will answer all the questions one by one.