The worrying news coming out of China, and specifically out of Wuhan province, has been downplayed, even with the news that the first recorded human-to-human infection in Europe took place in Germany, and the first Beijing resident succumbed to the virus.

The speed with which this infection has spread across the globe though, and it’s ability to be infectious while the host is asyptomatic, showing no symptoms, is one of the most worrying aspects of this pandemic, and be informed, it IS a pandemic, though how far and how devastating its consequences are, or become, depends a lot on how states and countries deal with how infectious it is, and how best to spot the variability in symptoms.

So far various countries around the world have been slow to respond properly to this crisis, especially because the Chinese state media and politicians all tried to hush-up their incompetence and indifference, which has now turned to silent panic.

The strain on many smaller country’s medical services which may be barely adequate already, could make the spread of this global pandemic much worse than it would be if handled properly.

Isn’t it weird? The country that spreads Communist ideological plague, now has a new biological plague on its hands, and a responsibility to minimise the spread of this ghastly, and deadly variant of pneumonia.

The numbers don’t look good, if we DON’T develop a working vaccine within a very short time indeed, then we may be looking at over a hundred million deaths worldwide. Most of those deaths will be in China, but potential extra-territorial, over-seas deaths in the tens of millions, is a terrifying prospect for the rest of the globe.

The Chinese state has been caught out lying about the scale of the problem, from the start, by Chinese people themselves, on social media, now the ordinary people can only get information out about the true scale of events by using VPN technology, and that at great risk to themselves.

The Chinese police have been arresting everyone who wants to talk about the situation, unless they’ve been approved by the CCP, the party. They’re even arresting Doctors for talking about the crisis on social media.

The Chinese state has shut down internet connections, sealed people into their apartments, arrested thousands, and sealed off entire cities, except they can’t, they’re really struggling, mostly because they’re corrupt and incompetent.

In Wuhan, where the ‘bat-soup problem’ started, FIVE MILLION people have managed to take flights out to other parts of China, and an unkown number of them have journeyed on to the world outside.

Not previously revealed is the fact that, right next to the seafood market blamed as the epicentre of the outbreak, is a medical research facility, where they create multiple strains of coronavirus, ostensibly for research into medicines and vaccines.

Many millions of Chinese have fled their homeland, for other countries, and, obviously, a significant percentage of them are/may be carrying the novel coronavirus, which has already started to mutate.

The symptoms have become variable, they may include coughing and fever, or may include vomiting and diarrhoea, there are also “super-carriers”, who show no symptoms at all, but just act as transmitters of this potential 21st century plague.

If the situation is under control, as Chinese state media insists it is, why are they building more new hospitals for thousands of beds, at record speed?

Why also are they creating make-shift “quarantine” centres out of empty schools and sports stadiums?

Incidentally, all schools in China have been shut, indefinitely..

This virus has been named “novel” for several reasons, the most salient of which is it’s unknown abilities, the extent of which we may not know until it is far too late for far too many millions of humans alive right now.

This may pass almost unnoticed by some, but it doesn’t seem very likely to do so, it seems much more likely to cast a sickly and dark shadow over this decade at least, if not the century to which it is the prelude.

This is a horrible mis-match of a people living in almost medieval conditions, with a totalitarian state obsessed with high-tech control, with power, and with creating an image of harmony and achievement, regardless of the reality on the ground.

On the ground, the Chinese police are having to try and control a terrified and worried population who are being variously; barricaded into their own apartments by frightened neighbours and local police, beaten to death on the street by fellow citizens after being accused of spreading the virus by going unmasked, starved to death in their apartments due to fear of contracting the virus.. the list goes on, the looting, arson, and vendetta murders are also ongoing.

Wuhan city looks like a ghost town, very few people venture out, there are dead bodies in the streets, and goodness knows how many dead residents are lying in apartment blocks, in Wuhan, and all over China, the Wuhan city police are reluctant to leave their stations, no wonder.

Russia has sealed thousands of miles of border between them and China and banned all travel from China into Russia.

China itself must be quarantined, until we can be sure that the plague has run its course, peaked, and is dying out.

Our worst fear, in the world outside China, is that the numbers of infected in the west and elsewhere, get out of hand, and/or that the virus mutates again, which it seems to maybe have the propensity to do.

I would say we have to bet on the worst-case scenario, just because it looks as though it may well happen.