Covid Timeline Wiki Project: February 2, 2020
Help me remember what happened today, four years ago. Please add any info/corrections in the comments.
NYT TOP 3 HEADLINES
First Tainted, then Set Free By the Senate - Trump’s Victory Lap from Trial to the Trail
Once Hawking Big-Ticket Ideas, Democrats Refocus on the Ticket
China Kept World in Dark as Outbreak Rippled - Old Habits Delayed Fight to Halt Virus
NYT FRONT PAGE PHOTO
Online, the virus article was updated on February 7th, and the photo was changed.
The caption says “It was unclear whether he [the dead masked man] had contracted the coronavirus”
NYT OPINION SECTION (it was a Sunday)
16 articles, one on the virus
Coronavirus and the Panic Epidemic
by Ian Johnson, a writer based in Beijing.
Considering the underlying distrust, it’s hard for the government to say what many epidemiologists are saying: This outbreak is serious but not catastrophic. Because if the state leveled with the people, it would also have to admit that there is no need for this degree of social control. Some 259 people were reported to have died as of Saturday evening, in a country of nearly 1.4 billion, and there is no indication that we are at the start of a Hollywood disaster-style movie.
CDC NON-PUBLIC REPORT
nCoV Response Update Feb 2, 2020 (from 2022 FOIA dump)
NOTE: This is the first mention I have found to the switch from defining a case as “a patient with serious symptoms requiring treatment” (which is how doctors had always defined a “case”) to “a person with a positive test result regardless of symptoms.”
This is the switch that made the panic possible.
If we want to understand what happened, we have to find out who decided to make this switch and why.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
Situation Report -13: Data as reported by 2 February 2020
NOTE: The Virus has already spread everywhere. If there’s asymptomatic spread, then containment is at this point out of the question.
NOTE: “technical risk communication and social media teams” working to “track and respond to myths and rumors” = the emergence of the global Covid censorship/pandemic industrial complex
NOTE: This is the first use of “infodemic” in relation to the outbreak that I have found.
BIOWARFARE RESEARCHERS/VACCINE DEVELOPERS
[As reported by US Right To Know, based on FOIAed emails]
Jeremy Farrar (UK), Anthony Fauci (US), Christian Drosten (Germany), Eddie Holmes (AUS), Francis Collins (US) and colleagues have been exchanging emails regarding origin of virus all night on Feb 1, 2020, leading into the morning of Feb 2.
4:48am
Farrar says he’ll “be in contact with WHO today” and had “already contacted them last night.”
He wants the WHO to get in front of the origins issue and turn it into a “neutral question” about understanding the “evolutionary origins of 2019-nCoV”
8:30am
Ron Fouchier writes:
“… An accusation that nCoV-2019 might have been engineered and released into the environment by humans (accidental or intentional) would need to be supported by strong data, beyond a reasonable doubt. It is good that this possibility was discussed in detail with a team of experts. However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.”
8:40am
Farrar says his “view is completely neutral on this”
9:38am
Rambaut is “also agnostic on this”
10:27am
Francis Collins: “Though the arguments from Ron Fouchier and Christian Drosten are presented with more forcefulness than necessary, I am coming around to the view that a natural origin is more likely.”
11:28am
Farrar flags a ZeroHedge article [now archived] raising possiblity of virus=bioweapon
1:57pm
ZeroHedge is suspended on Twitter (purportedly due to doxxing of Chinese scientist)
3:30pm
Fauci says “like all of us, I do not know how this evolved”
5:45
Farrar contacts WHO and says it is “Critical that responsible, respected scientists and agencies get ahead of the science and narrative of this”