Coronavirus isolated from humans

Wuhan Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Incubation Period

The incubation period (time from exposure to the development of symptoms) of the virus is estimated to be between 3 and 29 days based on the following sources:

• The World Health Organization (WHO) reported an incubation period for 2019-nCoV between 2 and 10 days.
• China’s National Health Commission (NHC) had initially estimated an incubation period from 10 to 23 days.
• The United States’ CDC estimates the incubation period for 2019-nCoV to be between 2 and 21 days.
• DXY.cn, a leading Chinese online community for physicians and health care professionals, is reporting an incubation period of “3 to 14 days, up to 27 days”.

The estimated range will be most likely narrowed down as more data becomes available.

Incubation period of up to 29 days?

The incubation period has been found to be as long as 24 days (range: 0-24 days; median: 3.0 days) in a study published on February 9.

The WHO said in a press conference on February 10 that:

• a very long incubation period could reflect a double exposure.
• 24 days represented an outlier observation that must be taken into consideration in the context of the main finding of the study.
• WHO is not considering changing recommendations regarding incubation periods.

More recently, however, a case with an incubation period of 23 days was observed in a JAMA study published on Feb. 23., and another case with an incubation period of 29 days was reported by Hubei Province on Feb. 25

Incubation period of 7.2 days on average

A Chinese study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 30, has found the incubation period to be 7.2 days on average, but it varies greatly among patients. The Chinese team conducting the study said their findings support a 14-day medical observation period for people exposed to the pathogen.

Below is an extract of the study findings:

Among the first 425 patients with confirmed NCIP, the median age was 53 years and 56% were male. The majority of cases (55%) with onset before January 1, 2020, were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as compared with 8.6% of the subsequent cases.

The mean incubation period was 5.2 days (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.1 to 7.0), with the 95th percentile of the distribution at 12.5 days.

In its early stages, the epidemic doubled in size every 7.4 days. With a mean serial interval of 7.5 days (95% CI, 5.3 to 19), the basic reproductive number was estimated to be 2.2 (95% CI, 1.4 to 3.9).

Conclusions On the basis of this information, there is evidence that human-to-human transmission has occurred among close contacts since the middle of December 2019. Considerable efforts to reduce transmission will be required to control outbreaks if similar dynamics apply elsewhere. Measures to prevent or reduce transmission should be implemented in populations at risk.

The importance of knowing the incubation period

Understanding the incubation period is very important for health authorities as it allows them to introduce more effective quarantine systems for people suspected of carrying the virus, as a way of controlling and hopefully preventing the spread of the virus.

Comparison with other viruses

For comparison, the incubation period for the common flu (seasonal influenza) is typically around 2 days. Incubation period for other coronaviruses: SARS 2-7 days; MERS 5 days typically (range 2-14 days).

Summary of findings:

• 2-14 days represents the current official estimated range for the novel coronavirus COVID-19.
• However, a case with an incubation period of 29 days has been reported by Hubei Province local government on Feb. 22
• In addition, a case with an incubation period of 23 days was observed in a JAMA study of 5 cases published on Feb. 21.
• An outlier of a 24 days incubation period had been for the first time observed in a Feb. 9 study. WHO said at the time that this could actually reflect a second exposure rather than a long incubation period, and that it wasn’t going to change its recommendations.
• Period can vary greatly among patients.
• Mean incubation period observed:
  3.0 days (0 – 24 days range, study based on 1,324 cases)
  7.2 days (4.1 – 7.0 days range, based on 425 cases).
• Mean incubation period observed in travelers from Wuhan:
  6.4 days (range from 2.1 to 11.1 days).

Prophecy of ‘great plague’

THE CORONAVIRUS epidemic has killed more than 3,000 people and infected nearly 100,000 worldwide (officialy – but did the 16th-century mystic Nostradamus predict the coronavirus epidemic when he warned of a “great plague” nearly 500 years ago?

The infection has since spread to more than 39 countries outside of China, including 156 people from the UK, fuelling fears for humanity’s safety.

Coronavirus infections have been confirmed in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, the US, Australia, Singapore, Macau, Malaysia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, the UAE, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Canada and Nepal among others.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has dubbed the outbreak a global emergency but has not called it a pandemic just yet. 

Some have even bizarrely claimed the 15th-century writer and supposed mystic Nostradamus predicted the outbreak of a “great plague” in the future.

Twitter user Marco Malacara said: “The antichrist leading the White House, locusts, floods, flies, coronavirus. I think this is what Nostradamus was telling us about 465 years ago.”

Another person tweeted in Spanish, which translated reads: “The plague of the 21st century has arrived. A Nostradamus prophecy. We will die very soon. #coronavirus”

Nostradamus’ frightening prophecies and predictions have baffled critics and followers alike for centuries – but did Nostradamus have any prophetic dreams for the year 2019? One psychic expert believes Nostradamus tried to warn the US, the UK and the rest of the world of tragedy.

Michel de Nostradame is arguably the world’s most well-recognised prophet and supposed-mystic who followers claim prophesied the future with eerie accuracy. Although Nostradamus’ cryptic quatrain passages do not contain detailed timestamps and specifics, supporters believe a number of his prophecies are yet to come true. And with the new year finally in full swing, many are wondering what these 16th-century prophecies are and whether they will come true in 2019. Craig Hamilton-Parker, a British psychic and medium who runs Psychics.co.uk, has now revealed Nostradamus predicted a particularly violent year ahead for US President Donald Trump.

According to the psychic expert, Nostradamus warned of an assassination attempt on Mr Trump, armed conflict in the Middle East and renewed relations with his Russian counterpart between 2019 and 2020.

Mr Hamilton-Parker told Express.co.uk: “I feel Trump will have a second term but Nostradamus’s predicted an assassination attempt will be in the second term.

“Nostradamus also predicted a war in the Middle East.

“I feel that we will get the first rumbles of this in 2019 but it will not be full out war.”

The psychic then said Mr Trump will work out some sort of deal or treaty with President Vladimir Putin.

This deal will supposedly mirror President Trump’s pact with North Korea, signed at the June 2018 North Korea–United States summit.

One thing Nostradamus did not predict, however, is the result or the effects of the Brexit vote.

Mr Hamilton-Parker himself foresaw a no-deal hard Brexit in the pipeline which is why he said he was surprised to see Brexit omitted from Nostradamus’s prophecies.

According to the Psychic, who claims to have predicted these events as early as September 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May will try to cling onto power until Britain leaves the European Union.

Trump will have a second term but Nostradamus’s predicted an assassination attempt

Craig Hamilton-Parker, Psychic

But a rapid leadership change in the Conservative Party will see a new face lead the Government.

The psychic said: “What is most strange about the Nostradamus predictions is that they do not appear to have any references to Brexit.

“I foresee a hard Brexit with May in power to the last minute when there will be a leadership challenge.

“There will then be a leadership challenge with David Davis and Boris Johnson as the front runners – Johnson gets the crown.

“We will also see the advent of a new party as I predicted in the Daily Express before. But could I be wrong?

“Why did the western world’s greatest visionary miss this out?

“Maybe Nostradamus did not mention this monumental event for Britain, France and Europe because it will never happen?”

Nostradamus’ detractors, however, are unconvinced by his supposed mystic powers and question whether the French apothecary could genuinely predict the future.

His followers believe Nostradamus correctly predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the rise of Adolf Hitler to power.

But critics claim Nostradamus’ published prophecies are too vague to be considered genuine and require a strong dose of hindsight to draw conclusions.

Brian Dunning, the author of the Skeptoid podcast, said: “Nostradamus’ writings are exploited in a number of fallacious ways.

“Ambiguous and wrong translations, ‘creative’ interpretations, hoax writings, fictional accounts, and the breaking of non-existent codes within his quatrains all contribute to a vast body of work, all of it wrong, and many times the size of everything Nostradamus ever actually wrote.”

One of Nostradamus’ most shocking predictions is that of the death of King Henry II of France.

The French monarch died on July 10, 1559, just four years after Nostradamus prophecies his death in his 1555 magnum opus Les Propheties.

Nostradamus is also believed to have correctly predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666 when he wrote of London “burning up in the fire of ’66”.

The French mystic is also said to have foretold the 1789 French revolution when he wrote: “Songs, chants, and demands will come from the enslaved.

“Held captive by the nobility in their prisons. At a later date, brainless idiots will take these as divine utterances.”

Some conspiracists also claim Nostradamus predicted the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s reign over Europe.

Nostradamus wrote: “From the depths of the West of Europe, A young child will be born of poor people,

“He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop; His fame will increase towards the realm of the East.”

Nostradamus is also credited with correctly predicting the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963.

Nostradamus wrote: “The ancient task will be completed, From on high, evil will fall on the great man.

“A dead innocent will be accused of the deed, The guilty on will remain in the mist.”

President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, when he was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Another cryptic passage attributed to Nostradamus is said to have forewarned of the devastating US nuclear attack on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1954.

The quatrain in question reads: “Near the gates and within two cities, there will be scourges like of which was never seen.

“Famine within plague, people put out by steel, crying to the great immortal God for relief.”

Should you believe Nostradamus’ predictions?

Peter Lemesurier, a linguist and author of 10 books on Nostradamus, has argued Nostradamus’ quatrains were not mystic in origin.

Instead, the Nostradamus expert argued the French apothecary believed history constantly repeats itself and future vents would mirror those of the past.

In his book Nostradamus, Bibliomancer: The Man, The Myth, The Truth, he wrote: “No quatrain, as far as I am aware, has ever been used in advance to predict in terms any event that was not probably in the offing anyway.”

And according to Brian Dunning, science writer and head of the Skeptoid podcast, people who interpret messages from Nostradamus’ quatrains do the writer a great disservice.

Mr Dunning said on episode 66 of his science podcast there is no evidence to support the claim the 15th century apothecary had any mystic powers.

Instead, he said there is more evidence to suggest it takes a great deal of hindsight to connect Nostradamus’ prophecies to actual world events.

He said: “Michel de Nostredame was truly one of the brilliant lights of his day, but to subscribe to false stories and urban legends is to disrespect who the man actually was.

“Appreciate his contributions to medicine and Renaissance literature, and don’t trivialise his good works in favour of a pretended history of paranormal magical powers.”

Nostradamus’ supposedly mystic powers were also questioned by evangelical preacher pastor Paul Begley from West Lafayette in Indiana, US.

The Christian preacher argued try prophecy and predictions of the future can only come from the Bible and God himself.

The preacher said: “Nostradamus’ prophecies are open to interpretation because he wrote in four stanza riddles.

“You know, look, he predicted the London Fire, he predicted the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust, he predicted the JFK assassination, he predicted World War Two – man, I could of the top of my head a bunch of them.

“But he also missed a bunch. His accuracy is around 70 percent, so no, I do not call them prophecies.

“Prophecies are 100 percent accurate. Predictions can vary ok?

“But it is fascinating to look at and people always want to know what it says and it’s ok because sometimes, some of those predictions do match Bible prophecy.

“Not always, but some of them do and so we take look at it because of folks who are curious. People are curious.”

Source : EXPRESS

Today, humanity is confronted with an ugly paradox in that the world’s foremost peacekeepers are nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. One bad move on the geopolitical chessboard, however, could trigger a global catastrophe.

On July 25, 1945, in the waning moments of World War II, then US President Harry S. Truman jotted the following words in his diary, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.” But not terrible enough to employ them, it seems.

Just weeks later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese industrial cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, indiscriminately killing some 200,000 civilians in, literally, a flash. Many others died in the years that followed from radiation poisoning and other associated illnesses. If there is a special place in hell for those who would expose the planet to such horrific weapons, Truman must certainly be there.

The historic tragedy is not without some dark irony. Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity spearheaded the development of atomic weapons, was worried that Adolf Hitler would acquire the deadly know-how before the West. This prompted him in 1939 to write a letter to Truman’s predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, advising him to expedite research into nuclear fission. American scientists, working in the secret Manhattan Project, succeeded beyond Einstein’s wildest dreams.

The famous physicist, appalled by the devastation visited upon the two Japanese cities, expressed regret over his fateful decision to warn the Americans.

“Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he said, “I would have never lifted a finger.”

Since then, the world has been forced to live with the knowledge that all life on earth could be quickly extinguished in the event of some mishap or conflict. Yet this knowledge has not stopped most governments from coveting nuclear weapons because they understand this technology is their best life insurance policy, so to speak.

Indeed, only the simple-minded could have failed to take away lessons with regards to the West’s top hits list. A brief glance at the candidates designated for US-led regime change – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and Syria as the most obvious – demonstrated an obvious fact: only unarmed countries need to worry about foreign actors determining their ‘democratic’ future.

In marked contrast to those weaker countries that ‘suffer what they must’, members of the nuclear club (US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, while it is generally recognized that Israel possesses nuclear weapons although it does not officially acknowledge them) can rest easy in the belief that they are safe from outside attack.

Lately, however, that self-confidence has been greatly shaken by a spate of dramatic events that have given the entire world pause. The most recent wake-up call came this month with a series of aerial dogfights between Pakistan and India – two countries that possess over 100 nuclear warheads apiece. The incident demonstrated exactly how fast things can spiral out of control, especially when third-party actors i.e. terrorists are involved in the equation.

On February 14, the Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed carried out a suicide attack on an Indian military convoy in the Pulwama District that killed over 40 soldiers. Less than two weeks later, New Delhi – accusing Islamabad of going soft on terrorism (sound familiar?) – retaliated by hitting a “terrorist camp” in a Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. Tensions mounted the following day as the Pakistani military carried out airstrikes along the Line of Control (LoC), shooting down two Indian aircraft that crossed into its territory and capturing one pilot, who has since been released.

It is impossible to read such reports without recalling that both Pakistan and India possess nuclear weapons. This places the enemy combatants in a curious position in that they must practice extreme restraint so as to avoid a ‘worse-case scenario’, and we all know what that is. Whether or not the two regional rivals can continue to keep cool heads remains to be seen.

Another recent incident involving nuclear powers came as a tragic accident, although no less disconcerting. In September, four Israeli F-16 fighter jets launched a reckless attack on Latakia, Syria that resulted in the downing of a Russian military aircraft, which was accidentally hit by Syrian ground fire. The incident resulted in the death of 15 Russian crew members, as well as heightened global tensions.

The Russian Ministry of Defense accused Israel of deliberately using the Russian aircraft to attract fire in that the Israeli aircraft failed to either change their approach to the intended targets or give Moscow enough time to move the Il-20 to safety.

Although tensions eventually calmed down between Moscow and Tel Aviv, the incident provided a grim reminder that the world is becoming chaotic to the point where accidents between nuclear powers are increasingly likely.

By far, the most disturbing development on the global stage, however, is the spectacle of Washington unilaterally withdrawing from arms control treaties – specifically the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Needless to say, these moves will rekindle the global arms race – a positive development for defense contractors, no doubt, but an unmitigated disaster for everyone else.  

Most worrisome is that the US is trashing these landmark treaties at the very same time it has built a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, while actively building up its military footprint smack on Russia’s border. Moscow, naturally, has responded in kind, with Vladimir Putin having recently unveiled an array of weapon systems that will make US-led NATO think twice about making any aggressive moves against Russia.

Judging by such American antics, one almost gets the impression that it believes a nuclear war is somehow a winnable venture. And there are grounds to believe that is the case. According to a 2017 report, for example, a panel of Pentagon officials have called on the president to consider a “tailored nuclear option for limited use.”

Source : RT NEWS