There is a report in a Taiwanese newspaper that Tencent (the umbrella corporation that owns Blizzard) accidentally posted actual Coronavirus numbers for a few hours Saturday.

Tencent is managing the official info distribution for the Corona Virus situation. IF this report is accurate and IF the numbers posted were not a data glitch, then TENCENT is likely keeping two sets of numbers, one for the CCP and one for the plebs. This is of concern because the numbers posted were:
INFECTED 154,023
SUSPECTED 79,808
CURED 269
DEAD 24,589 which makes for an interesting contrast to the official figure yesterday of  around 300.
It's unclear to me if the dead are a subset of infected in this tally, that data point, of course, having a significant effect of the actual mortality rate.
Note that as per Zero Hedge, these numbers jive closely with the predictions of UK epidemiologists from 10 days ago.


Note too that even if one dismisses this out of hand because Zero Hedge in in the source list, the official death toll screencapped above as I type this has jumped by about 60 percent since yesterday when it was just north of 300. However, the 5 digit number jives disturbingly with  other reports from Hubei Province.

********************************************

UPDATE:

Coronachan is a BitChute channel that is aggregating videos regarding  the Coronavirus, many of which have been banned or have vanished.  The BitChuter in question seems to be an interested layperson and is unsure of the provenance of some of the videos, but is up-front about that and is asking for info in that regard. The channel links to sources in the video descriptions when available.

The channel could have perhaps chosen a less edgy avatar.

^{Gallows Humor Artist is Unknown}

In other news, it looks like Bat-Soup Belle of Balefulness is vacationing in the Wisconsin Dells.

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1 154023+79808=233831 v. 24589.
That's a mortality rate of 10.5%.  The Spanish Flu was 2.5%.
If correct that means a planetary extinction event. I'm going to the liquor store to disinfect myself from the inside out.

Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Wed Feb 5 14:16:13 2020 (ug1Mc)

2 The reports that have been coming out of China, with cities basically completely shut down, nobody on the streets, people being physically barred into their homes, etc lend a certain credence to the scarier numbers, those measures are way out of line for what the official numbers present as not really that big a deal.
On the other hand, if this really is a pandemic with a mortality rate of 10.5%, and China is lying to everyone to hide that, that's almost literally inconceivable, even for China.  If there end up being tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths, or God forbid, millions, outside of China, because China didn't get out the warning and let the rest of the world take appropriate actions, it will basically destroy China as a member of the world community.
On the plus side, you would think they must know that, and if it really was that bad, even if they weren't admitting it publicly they'd be back-channeling and we'd see a lot more precautions being taken around the world.

Posted by: David at Wed Feb 5 16:34:48 2020 (A/T0R)

3 Well the official mortality rate right now seems to be bouncing between 2.2% and 2.3% so we're already in the 1918 ballpark.

However, The Black Death killed 30-60% of Europe (mortality was probably much higher as not everyone contracted it)  so even a 10% mortality is not an extinction event. It's just really really bad.

One thing we DO know about this bug is that it has the Chinese government terrified. They probably don't care about being pariahs for some years as much as they care about holding on to power and maintaining order. If the rest of the world is brought low too then the CCP may assume that their world position in the aftermath might be fairly tenable.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Feb 5 16:58:39 2020 (5iiQK)

4 I dunno, when Spanish Flu hit in 1918, it didn't hurt Bolsheviks' ability to retain power and maintain order. Heck they probably killed more people than the flu, just because it's in the nature of socialists/communists/fashists. In short, I don't see a threat to the CCP rule in China. They may be just acting randomly like any large bureaucracy that faces a serious crisis after decades of stagnation and degeneracy.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Feb 5 19:08:35 2020 (LZ7Bg)

5

They may be just acting randomly like any large bureaucracy that faces a serious crisis after decades of stagnation and degeneracy.

Yes, however, this could be like Chernobyl, if it breaks the confidince. The CCP's support may well be more brittle than imagined and a preference cascade could tip it over the edge, I'm not saying that's overwhelmingly likely, just possible.

I'm also not saying it would necessarily be a good thing. Despite the odious nature of the regime, given China's tendency to devolve into warlord phases between dynasties a party implosion could be a much less benign thing than the evolution of the U.S.S.R. into the R.F.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Feb 5 19:32:30 2020 (5iiQK)

6 BM:  the percentage matters for who dies.  A 10% mortality rate in east Asia cripples the world economy.  A 10% mortality rate in EUrope/US brings it to its knees as the other 90% stay home.
A 10% death rate is enough to stop the motor of the world in the modern East and West.  And if it stops, the free-food-and-money from North to South stops.  Then the death toll is in nine figures.
PZ:  retain power? Maybe.  Order?  I'd a PolSci prof back in the 1980's say that he and his Boy Scout troop could have taken power in Moscow in 1918.  We know Sidney Reilly was within days of it but for the stupidity of the SR's.

Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Wed Feb 5 19:39:19 2020 (ug1Mc)

7 The screenshot was probably just fake.  You can change any page to say anything with a couple of minutes in the Chrome dev tools.



That said, the official numbers are almost certainly fake as well.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Feb 5 20:08:56 2020 (PiXy!)

8 I actually wonder if you can use either the Black Death or Spanish flu as a good comparison, given the different context that they happened in increased their impact (See Nutrition - Level of Intake, Middle Ages; World War 1.).  The Coronavirus, at the very least in the PRC, is occurring in populations who are largely not suffering from malnutrition or the exigencies of war, but are suffering from active meddling by their government and slipshod medical care...Oh wait...

As an example that small indicators can be more telling than large ones, Sky News posted a video over a week ago about how villages in the PRC were isolating themselves from the outside world (Some were literally walling themselves off, with brick walls.), without and probably in spite of government injunctions.  That kind of behavior would not happen in the West unless the very structures of society and government were about to finish their collapse.  That it is happening in the PRC right now is very telling.

Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Feb 5 20:49:10 2020 (LMsTt)

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...er...Caucuses.

They've completely botched the Iowa Caucuses.
Several of my legions of...six or seven readers work in IT and have had experience with applicable app issues.

So.
Here are the facts as I understand them.
The Democrats decided to simplify the chaos that is this caucus thing by using a smartphone app.

A Phone application: you know, one of those esoteric bits of technology that is basically unknown to the general populace that is never used for secure online sales and such in everyday...oh wait.

To that end, the Democrats hired a company called SHADOW to manage the app that counted the votes.

There was a technical problem and as I post this nobody knows who won or lost, aside from the three or four candidates who have claimed victory in the absence of any numbers.

How does this happen?

What incompetence was necessary for this to happen?

I just...
Gurus of technical support just, explain this...
Please.

Note that even assuming nefarious intent with the goal of botching the caucuses does not absolve the participants of failure due to an unprofessional lack of subtlety.

Again; they named the company that ran the AP that lost the votes...SHADOW which is a company partially owned by a firm named A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.which in turn is run by former Clinton staffers and funded by a big Pete Buttigieg backer supporter.

A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. is literally an Umbrella Corporation that owns several companies that...seem to...exist...but have indeterminate specialties other than to be oriented towards left wing politics and...

Wait...

Why would you name your company that makes voting software and has to have trust and transparency as its highest priorities...SHADOW (in all caps)? 

And , A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. what the actual hell?

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...(Aythya americana) is a diving duck that is native to the United States and Canada, it is most commonly found  in or near reservoirs, lakes, playa wetlands, freshwater river deltas, coastal marshes, estuaries, bays, and (in northern Illinois), small apartments. It is an omnivorous species, eating both plant (pondweeds, wild rice, wild celery, wigeon grass, doritos, bulrushes, muskgrass and shoal grass) and animal matter (in the form of gastropods, mollusks, insects, their larvae, pepperoni and other meats mostly from ruminants), occasionally they consume these simultaneously in the form of a Chicago Pizza.   The redhead is 37 cm (15 in) long with an 84 cm (33 in) wingspan though their height can occasionally exceed six feet, in which case they tend to be non-migratory. One of these rarer examples of this branch of the Anatidae family spent several years supporting himself as a disc jockey and now graces us with tunes from around the world.

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...and did not initially pursue it because, honestly if its only claim to fame is that it's a fan-service show its probably not worth my time.The plot does not inspire confidence..a troupe of (brothel critics?) in a D&D/LOTR esque fantasy-world go around doing reviews of various brothels staffed by numerous fantasy races like elves and mermaids and slimes and..sundry.

 Then I heard the show was quite good, with it actually being described as funny and one of the better shows of the season.. So, I went to Funimation and, to my surprise...

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We had two depressing plague posts back to back, involving 3 different viruses. This is unhygienic, depressing, and not in keeping with the format of what is among its many other formats, still an anime blog.

I should probably watch some anime.
And review it.
In the meantime, here are some AMVs.

One for our new Canadian viewers.


Because this isn't YouTube...we can repeat one from a few years ago.


Caravan Palace is always welcome


Another re-run because...reasons.


Finally, I here tell that we're all Russian bots here so...

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There's nothing particularly unexpected in the news of the Coronavirus except for this that Instapundit found this morning. A story indicating that the bug's transmission rate outside China is expected to closely follow that inside China (hardly news) is getting deleted.

Perhaps it's the wording.

 Coronavirus infections predicted to grow exponentially; first death outside China; outbreak becomes political.

That WaPo link was good as of 10:50 AM, but several of the links on this ">screenshot are not.

Note that the John Hopkins tracking page does not match the aforementioned headline as of this post.

In other news, Ebola is having something of a resurgence in the Congo.

Fortunately, humanity is resilient, and can find something positive even in this mess.

OK...perhaps it's not that fortunate, but this exists.

^{Corona-Chan and Ebola-Chan:Viral Gal-lows humor is by dp6523}

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While China's Hubei Provence has been in the news with this Coronavirus, Hunan Provence has been hit with what is being described as a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 birdflu in Hunan Provence.

Over 17,000 chickens have been killed trying to get a handle on this secondary mess, about which the news is mixed.

The virus does not infect humans easily, and spread from person to person appears to be unusual," the WHO said. "There is no evidence that the disease can be spread to people through properly prepared and thoroughly cooked food." The mortality rate in humans is 60%, the WHO added.

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To say that this show has been unenthusiastically received is a rather large understatement.

Much of this lack of positive buzz can be laid squarely at the feet of  the show's immediate Predecessor Star Trek: Discovery.

Despite incredibly talented actors and superb production values, STD's writing and general asshattery seems to have poisoned the well for many fans with its strange combination of sanctimony, stupidity, and frequent contempt for the fans and its source material. 

Learning from it's showrunner's missteps, CBS-All Access has pinned it's hopes on a new series that is being presented as a sequel to the Star Trek shows of the 90's, built around a geriatric but plucky Admiral Picard.

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Last night, I finally got my twitch, Discord, and Steam accounts to sync up in both Epic, and New Moon.

No big feat that, however, in keeping with established theories regarding the Dunning-Kruger Effect; this morning, thus emboldened by this junior varsity facsimile of "productivity", I resolved to sync and tether the Kyocera Smartphone and my iMac.

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Lost in the confusion over coverage of all the other things that are happening, are a whole bunch of Americans in misery and significant peril.

The territory of Puerto Rico has suffered multiple earthquakes of increasing intensity over the last few weeks and  this has wrought havoc upon the island which was already suffering a slow recovery from .

First some background. As many of you may remember the recovery from the monstrous Hurricane, Maria, (which razed the island 3 years ago was agonizingly slow).The previous governor was ousted last year when it was revealed that vast quantities of federal aid for the rebuilding had, in fact, been delivered (despite his claims to the contrary) and was sitting in warehouses, not quite accounted for on the Puerto Rican end. There were also allegations of more general corruption. For instance, last year there was a brief outcry when the H.U.D. under secretary Carson withheld aid on the grounds that it had given the governor money and materials to replace 20,000 roofs and after two  years of prodding the governor announced that they'd have the first 180 houses roofed "soon".  Thus things stood until the middle of last year when Governor  Ricardo Antonio Rosselló Nevares  was caught on a hot-mic making unflattering and misogynistic comments about his Secretary of Justice and the Mayor of San Juan, as well as comments that were described as homophobic. In stark contrast to the mere misappropriation of aid to the poor and keeping 20,00 families without power, and roofless for two years in a nation plagued by mosquito-borne illness, being un-woke is quite unforgivable in the eyes of the New Progressive Party and he was forced to resign. There was then some confusion regarding the line of succession as the next in line (the Secretary of State) was serving in an "acting" capacity and had not been confirmed by the territorial senate...which resulted in months of court battles while nothing was done about 20,000 families without roofs a few hundred miles south of the Tropic of Cancer.

Finally, Wanda Vasquez, the Secretary of Justice was appointed by the courts to be governor. The newly appointed Governor then got to work arranging to do jack all with the federal aid which sat in warehouses, just in larger quantities until the recent spate of earthquakes hit. The recovery from which has barely begun.

Which brings us to this.

In which the good citizens of Puerto Rico have built a guillotine outside the governors offices.

^{"So yeah...The boogaloo can happen where you least expect it"}

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Dev, over at Short Fat Otaku lived in Wuhan for a while and has film he took there as well as some thoughts on the matter, 

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Log Horizon, a low budget anime which was cancelled six years ago, had a dumb as rocks premise, diffident animation, and some of of the best characters, concepts and plots of the last decade. It has been renewed for a third season and will air in October. The first two seasons are still on Crunchyroll, so you've got 9 months to catch up.

Countdown begins now. ^{(Hat tip: Executive Foistmeister)}

Niche Gamer is crawling out of the hole they got themselves in after one of their founders was caught plaigerizing, rather spectacularly. Niche-Iban seems to be their remaining writers attempt to start fresh. 

Don, on the other hand, is quoting with full attribution.

Fillyjonk got some good news.

Ubu is blogging again.

Sara Hoyt got a fairly impressive upgrade to her blog design.

J. Greely needs an intervention.

This exists:

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Ben Kavanaugh, An English-teacher from Ireland goes to buy groceries in Wuhan.

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To our Chinese friends and those on their calendar, we here at Brickmuppet Blog hope your first full day of the year of the Iron Rat is hangover free.

^{Art by Crystal Herb who works through Eight Studio.}

May the coming year bring you hippyness happiness...

^{Art by Catxuan, who is also on bilibili, Hueban, and can be supported at Art Station.}

Health...

^{Art by Gomzi,}

and...uhhh...kittens?

Art by Shigaraki, who can be supported via Booth.

...and finally, may all of your affairs in the coming year be in ship-shape.

^{Art by Kakkou Choishi}

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Not Content with the cornucopia of counter-constitutional gun laws they are passing or the more that 115 laws to rape our electoral system, Democrats have decided that the root cause of all their woes is the first amendment and so have given us Virginia HB1627

  Threats and harassment of certain officials and property; venue. Provides that certain crimes relating to threats and harassment may be prosecuted in the City of Richmond if the victim is the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia. In addition, threats to damage property may be prosecuted in the City of Richmond if the property is owned by the Commonwealth and located in the Capitol District. 

§ 18.2-152.7:1. Harassment by computer; penalty.

If any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass any person, shall use a computer or computer network to communicate obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or threaten any illegal or immoral act, he shall be is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. A violation of this section may be prosecuted in the jurisdiction in which the communication was made or received or in the City of Richmond if the person subjected to the act is one of the following officials or employees of the Commonwealth: the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia

No making fun of the Politburo !

Dank memes are outlawed! That means any mention of blackface is right out!

Oh. Right.

And that little strike through of "shall be" replacing it with "is" is present in several of these bills. I'm not a lawyer, but it worries me.

Now, having removed our ability to defend ourselves or criticize elected officials in a meaningful way, the Democrats are finally able to deal with the greatest threat  facing the Commonwealth and its citizens subjects.

Balloons!

No really, 2,500 dollar fine and 10 hours of community service for releasing Balloons.

Kids, your birthday parties will suck from now on.

While this fiasco ranges from the horrifying to the ridiculous, it does provide some object lessons:

1: To those in what are still free states, today's Democrats are stark raving cuckoo for cocoa puffs. And once you get them it's like bedbugs.

2: For those of us trapped between the Patomac and 36° 30′ north, we now know what dread haunts the progressive's nightmares.

They've let slip what it is they most fear....

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With regard to what we mentioned day before yesterday regarding the situation in Wuhan PRC and Captain Tripps this new Coronavirus, it's hard for us outside the loop to know what is hype, misinformation, miscommunication, mistranslation, a combination of all four, or rock solid investigative reporting.

What we can be reasonably confident of is that the Chinese Communist Party, being a totalitarian state, is going to try to cover-up or minimize the situation to the maximum extent possible and even rather beyond credulity.

Thus, seeing that Chinese Premier Xi Jinping has declared that the situation is "grave"  is cause for some concern. This is as close to a declaration of emergency as we're ever likely to see from the politburo. I've got a degree in Asian history and while certainly no China hand, I've done several papers on Chinese politics, and the fact that Xi Jinping is admitting even this much is a genuinely terrifying thing. The CCP considers its people to be grease for the machinery of their state.

But this situation actually seems to have them scared.

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A wedding in The Philippines  gets some spectacular fireworks thanks to a sudden eruption the Taal volcano.

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Wait.
I dropped a bit.
This is not a parody. It's actually the U.S. Space Force logo.
Cool!

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