Photo Credit: The Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences released yesterday the first close-up images of the Wuhan Coronavirus.
Sixteen days ago I decided to write a blog post: 2020 Day 9: New Strain of Coronavirus found in Wuhan, China. Eight days ago I felt called to dive into the details of the Wuhan Coronavirus in a second blog post: 2020 Day 17: Wuhan Coronavirus infections in Thailand and Japan. I’m now beginning to wonder if these two blog posts will be understood more clearly through a universe surfing viewpoint that does not require time to move in only one direction, and instead allows for anyone to quantum feel possible futures. Quantum feeling is different than prediction. Prediction assumes a classical arrow of time in one direction and looks for cause-and-effect relationship to justify a predicted outcome. Quantum feeling assumes a bi-directional arrow of time and allows future events to “cause” events that precede it, in our normal classical way of measuring time. Quantum feeling starts with an unexpected event – such as me deciding to blog about a new strain of coronavirus – and then imagines different futures that would be connected to that unexpected event when looking backwards in time from the future. Quantum feeling is a key step in universe surfing because it shows you a window to your possible futures in a way that expected events, such as habits, cannot.
In the last week, the following events have happened:
- Five days ago (Jan. 20), the first case of “Novel Coronavirus” was reported in the Republic of Korea (WHO news: Novel Coronavirus – Republic of Korea). This case involved a 35-year-old female who resides in Wuhan and who did not report visiting any wet markets (such as Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market from where environmental samples have tested positive for the virus).
- Four days ago (Jan. 21), the CDC confirmed the first U.S. case of the Wuhan Coronavirus in a male traveler from Wuhan who resides in Seattle, Washington.
- Three days ago (Jan. 22), researchers published an article with genomic evidence of cross-species transmission from snake to human.
- Two days ago (Jan. 23), the CDC raised its travel alert for the coronavirus outbreak to Level 3, Avoid Nonessential Travel. The CDC is still calling it an ‘outbreak’ versus an epidemic or pandemic. Guan Yi, a virology professor at the University of Hong Kong, director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and member of team that first identified SARS, believes that the scale of infection will eventually be 10 times higher than SARS. After visiting Wuhan, he said
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“I’ve experienced so much and I never felt scared. Most of them are controllable. But this time I’m afraid.”
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- Yesterday (Jan. 24), the CDC confirmed the second U.S. case in a female traveler from Wuhan (Jan. 13) who resides in Chicago, Illinois. Over 1200 confirmed cases and at least 41 deaths in mainland China have been tied to the Wuhan Coronavirus. Factcheck reports that social media posts are spreading a bogus Coronavirus conspiracy theory that the virus was made in a lab and purposely released in order to make money selling a vaccine that has already been developed. Researchers reported in a preprint that basic reproduction number of the Wuhan coronavirus infection (R_0) is 3.6-4.0, which indicates that to keep the number of infections from increasing, 72-75% of the transmissions must be prevented by control measures. The first cases (3 in France) of the virus were confirmed in Europe. Cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed now in Mainland China (1287), France (3), Hong Kong (5), Japan, Macau (2), Nepal, Australia (1), Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan (3), Thailand, the United States (2) and Vietnam. In an interesting universe merging, Saudi Arabia denied reports of a case of Wuhan Coronavirus and instead reported that a male Indian nurse tested posted for MERS, which is caused by a different coronavirus with a similar genetic sequence. The number of google search results for “wuhan coronavirus” increased from 14.6M yesterday evening to 17.9M this morning and 20.4M this evening. For reference, MERS has 62.7M google results and SARS has 86.3M.
- Today (Jan. 25) is the first day of the Lunar New Year – the year of the Rat, the first year of the 12-year cycle of animals. 15 cities in Hubei province are on lockdown with public and commercial transportation in and out of the cities suspended. Shanghai reported its first coronavirus death. Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced an emergency, closed schools for two weeks, and cancelled a four-day carnival and fireworks show.
Quantum sensing can also appear as a déjà vu feeling. Laurie Garrett, a reporter for CNN, reported yesterday that when she read reports of patients exhibiting symptoms of pneumonia as early as December 12, 2019, she had a “chilling sense of déjà vu”. Seventeen years ago she reported on the SARS virus pandemic that caused illness in at least 8000 people across 37 countries and was associated with at least 774 deaths, including 299 in Hong Kong.
Quantum sensing can also appear as fear. Guan Yi’s quote above (“but this time I’m afraid”) is not encouraging.
Universe interference can be seen when events happen that appear to come from a different universe. For instance, Dr. Liang Wudong fell ill last week and died from an Wuhan coronavirus infection. He had been the head of the ear, nose and throat department at one of Wuhan’s top hospitals, Hubei Xinhua Hospital. He was “at the front line” fighting against the coronavirus. However, he also retired last year and there’s a universe where he was not involved in fighting the coronavirus. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting was perhaps affected by this universe when someone wrote “It isn’t clear if Dr. Liang had been involved in the treatment of other patients.” Or maybe they were just trying to calm the stock market and make sure that the party continues. I’m feeling now a universe where the stock market is negatively affected by the Wuhan coronavirus.
Photo Credit: IVDC, China CDC
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