NEWS: Mysterious Disease Kills Nine In China

BUT - in light of the Indonesian cases where Indonesian Health Authorities now have 300 people who had contact with that family under "medical surveillance" and in light of this new information that at least 20 cases of this "mysterious illness" are in Chengdu, I now wonder if the "name list" was produced by the health authorities by asking the sick people who they have had contact with, say, in the past week or two weeks.

Originally posted by blackcrow1800
Has anyone thought that maybe there is a war going on under our noses. What better way to hide a oncoming attack then with birds. Does anyone know the kind of birds and if so what are they migrating pattern if they dont go over the us im beting our government did it.

... there had been no known sustained human to human transmission of the deadly virus, but called for stepping up disease surveillance among poultry and humans worldwide.

"This is more evidence [referring to Indonesian deaths] for us to be concerned about developments in the region," Chan told a news briefing.

"This is perhaps the only time since 1968, which was the last pandemic, that we are getting signs, symptoms and warnings from nature ... More and more birds are dying in different parts of the world -- this is the kind of signals, and early warnings that we are referring to."

We need to be very vigilant and look for early signals or signs of sustained human to human transmission," she said. "We need to advise people from farm to table on what actions they can take or can advise communities to take to reduce that risk."

A US-based Chinese-language news website known as Boxun, or "Abundant News", has riveted the online medical community over the past month with a series of reports from China's Qinghai province about an alleged bird flu cover-up. One report - said to be leaked by a Chinese official - claimed that 121 people were dead from avian influenza, or H5N1.

Originally posted by Valhall
But in light of today's news reports - I opted to share those messages.

A web-based Chinese-language news service called Boxun (Abundant News), which allows correspondents to freely post information on its site, reported on 25 May that 121 people in 18 villages in the sparsely-settled western province of Qinghai have died of bird flu, and more are ill. Some 1300 people, have been isolated, it reports.

The reports come from an online Chinese language news service, Boxun (Abundant News), where correspondents may freely post information. Postings there on May 25 reported 121 people in 18 villages have died of bird flu, with approximately 1300 people having been "isolated."

The media reports are said to have come from nine correspondents in Qinhai, who report that people connected to the cases have been forbidden to talk to outsiders. Boxun cautions that the reports cannot be independently verified, but says it hopes by drawing attention to them they can be further investigated.

The reports say that sick people in the border region between Qinghai and the neighbouring, impoverished province of Gansu had visited the nature reserve where the birds were found. But they also report that there have been large scale outbreaks of unexplained deaths among livestock in the area.

China has never reported any human cases of H5N1. These have so far been reported only in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Scientists believe this may be due to a small genetic variation in the virus that has circulated there among domestic poultry.

China did report 50 outbreaks of H5N1 in domestic poultry right across China in 2004, from Guangdong in the southeast to Tibet in the far west. The sparseness of the reported outbreaks over such a wide region has led some scientists to fear that the virus is present in many more places.

Outbreaks may either not have been reported, or the virus may has circulated undetected due to the widespread vaccination of poultry against H5N1. In the past, the Chinese authorities denied that there were cases of SARS in Beijing when it later transpired there had been.

I googled Boxun and was immediately surprised a second time to find it has a .com URL, rather than a Chinese .cn tag. The third surprise was to see photos from Tiananmen Square on the site, including the famous one of the man standing in front of the tanks.

This was not a site in China. Eventually I learned that Boxun is based in the US, and is apparently run by dissident Chinese.

The questions now are these: How did Boxun get this information? How were people in Qinghai able to gather news of these animal and human deaths, and how were they then able to email or phone their news outside China? Doing so could get them into big trouble with the Public Security Bureau, whose skill with computer communications created the Great Firewall of China in the first place. And indeed, Niman today is reporting a number of arrests in Qinghai.