The
coronavirus outbreak that is raging all over China right now has
been making headlines on a daily basis all over the globe, and rightly so.
At this point we don’t know if it will ultimately become a horrifying global
pandemic that will affect tens of millions of people, but what we do know is
that the virus spreads very easily and the number of cases has been
rising at an exponential rate. Meanwhile,
three other plagues have also been marching across Asia, and
most people in the western world don’t even realize that this is
happening. What I am about to share with you in this article is quite
chilling, and the months ahead will be very dark if these plagues continue to
spread.
Long
before we ever heard of this new coronavirus, African Swine Fever was
devastating pork farms from one end of China to the other.
There is no vaccine for “pig ebola”, there is no cure, and once it hits a farm
the only thing that can be done is to kill every single pig so that it won’t
spread anywhere else. But even though draconian measures have been
implemented, it has just kept spreading, and at this point “about two-thirds of China’s swine herd has been lost”…
Video of people fighting over pork at Chinese meat counters will
likely become more common as the fallout from the African swine fever outbreak
in China progresses.
Brett
Stuart, president of the market research and analysis firm Global AgriTrends,
estimates that about two-thirds of China’s swine herd has
been lost to the disease and contrary to official government
reports of recovery, more pigs are dying every day as ASF continues to spread.
Prior
to this crisis, approximately half of all the pigs in the entire world lived in
China, and they would usually slaughter about 700 million a year. But now
pork production has absolutely plummeted, and this is driving pork prices in
China through the roof…
In China
itself, pork prices are at an all-time high at just under $300 per
hundredweight and the country outbids Japan, which is usually the top bidder. Food inflation is soaring and some Chinese people have been unable
to buy pork in six months.
Unfortunately,
this insidious disease has also been devastating farms in many other nations
all over the planet. In particular, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea,
Vietnam and the Philippines have been hit particularly hard.
It
has been estimated that one out of every four pigs in the entire world has already died, and this crisis is far from over.
Fortunately,
African Swine Fever does not affect humans, but this new
coronavirus seems perfectly suited to be transmitted from person to
person. Johns Hopkins has put up a map that is continually updated, and according
to the latest official numbers there are now 14,637 cases and the death toll
has risen to 305. But by the time you read this article those numbers are
likely to be even higher.
Of
course many are extremely skeptical that the official numbers coming out of
China are accurate, and this is something that I have written about repeatedly. There have been multiple reports that
indicate that China has been falsely categorizing the deaths of many of the
victims to keep the death toll down, and it is also suspicious that so many
corpses are being taken “directly to the crematorium”…
Radio Free Asia (RFA) has tweeted a disturbing
video on its Twitter account on Saturday morning detailing how those who died
of coronavirus in Wuhan, the outbreak area in China,
were loaded up on a bus and taken “directly to the crematorium.”
RFA said
(in a translated tweet): “[Latest Situation of Wuhan Fifth Hospital] Some Wuhan
citizens entered Wuhan Fifth Hospital on February 1st and found many patients
who died of pneumonia. The corpses were packed directly to the crematorium.
Paramedics are busy rescuing the dying patient.”
RFA’s
video is in line with our report from Friday that said those who died of the
deadly virus were hauled off to a crematorium in Wuhan by Chinese authorities.
At
this point we don’t know how bad this outbreak will ultimately become, but we
do know that the very first death outside of China has now been confirmed…
The Philippine Department of Health said a 44-year-old Chinese
man from Wuhan was admitted on Jan. 25 after experiencing a fever, cough, and
sore throat. He developed severe pneumonia, and in his last few days, “the
patient was stable and showed signs of improvement, however, the condition of
the patient deteriorated within his last 24 hours resulting in his demise.”
The man’s 38-year-old female companion, also from Wuhan, also
tested positive for the virus and remains in hospital isolation in Manila.
Meanwhile,
there has been a very alarming resurgence of the H5N1 bird flu in China.
According
to the Daily Mail, more than 17,000 chickens have been
culled in an effort to keep this new outbreak from spreading further…
China has reportedly seen an outbreak of a ‘highly pathogenic’
strain of H5N1 bird flu which has already killed 4,500 chickens.
The
outbreak was initially reported at a farm in Shaoyang city in the southern
province of Hunan, south of the epicentre of the Coronavirus in Wuhan.
According to the Reuters report, Chinese authorities have
already culled 17,828 poultry in the wake of the outbreak.
Unlike African
Swine Fever, humans can become infected by the H5N1 bird flu.
And
according to the World Health Organization, the mortality rate for human cases
is approximately 60 percent.
So
let us hope that this current outbreak remains limited to chickens.
Alarmingly,
the H5N1 bird flu has also popped up at a facility in India…
Authorities in an eastern Indian state will start culling
chickens and destroying eggs from Tuesday to contain a bird flu virus of the
H5N1 strain, a government statement said on Monday.
The samples collected from a poultry breeding and research farm
of a veterinary college in Odisha state tested positive, the statement said.
We
haven’t heard much about the H5N1 bird flu in recent years, but this is an
extremely deadly disease, and so we will want to monitor these developments
very carefully.
On top of
everything else, the H1N1 swine flu is starting to spread once again. In
fact, more than 100,000 people in Taiwan “sought medical treatment for flu-like
symptoms at hospitals across the country over the past week” and there
have been 13 confirmed deaths…
At a time when the world is panicking over a 2019-nCoV
coronavirus outbreak, the H1N1 flu virus is actually posing a greater threat in
Taiwan, claiming 13 lives in the country in just one week, according to the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
At a weekly meeting Friday, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang
Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said 116,705 people sought medical treatment for flu-like
symptoms at hospitals across the country over the past week, including 61 more
confirmed flu cases.
Not too
long ago, the H1N1 swine flu caused mass panic all over the globe, and I
personally knew someone that was killed by it.
So
the truth is that all of these outbreaks are very concerning.
And
never before have we seen so many alarming outbreaks occur simultaneously.
Could it be possible that we have entered a period of time when mass pandemics are going to
become “the new normal”?
Hopefully
none of these current outbreaks will end up killing millions of people all over
the globe.
But
we have been warned for a long time about how vulnerable we are, and the
experts assure us that it is just a matter of time before a mass pandemic
brings death to every corner of the planet.