SIGNS OF PLAGUE- Biblical Proportions: ‘This time I’m scared’: experts fear too late for China virus lockdown
The Blood plague: The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs—and they will turn to blood.’ Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels[a] of wood and stone.”
Source Yahoo News: China’s bid to contain a deadly new virus by placing cities of millions under quarantine is an unprecedented undertaking but it is unlikely to stop the disease spreading, experts warn.
The contagious virus has already reached elsewhere in China and abroad, and even an authoritarian government has only a small timeframe in which trapped residents will submit to such a lockdown, they say.
“I think we have passed the golden period of control and prevention,” said Guan Yi, an expert on viruses at Hong Kong University.
China began its campaign on Thursday, cutting off all transport links out of Wuhan, a city of 11 million people where the coronavirus linked to SARS emerged late last year.
A cascading number of nearby cities has since been added to the travel blacklist, corralling more than 40 million people in a bid to stop those with the disease travelling and infecting others elsewhere.
However, with the death toll at 26 and infections being detected as far away as the United States, there are fears the exercise is too little too late.
Yi, who returned from Wuhan just before the lockdown, pointed out huge numbers of people would have already left ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which began Friday.
They could have been incubating the virus “on their way out of Wuhan”, he said.
Symptoms could take several days to emerge — effectively seeding a health time-bomb across the country and abroad.
– Escape plans –
Meanwhile, new gaps in the security web in Wuhan and its surroundings will likely emerge over coming days, even as China deploys its formidable security forces.
They are manning road blocks that have been set up, while train and plane services have been suspended.
“Especially people with money and connections, they’re going to make a run for it… and they’ll probably be successful,” Zi Yang, a senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told AFP.
The Plagues of Egypt
