Tag: popular

Is COVID-19 a Bio attack? And Who is Dr. Shi Zhengli?

This post has hyperlinked references. You must click and read them to fully understand. This post will be updated accordingly with new information.

TL;DR

Today is 4/9/2020 11:30 in eastern time in the US, as I am writing this. I don’t think I have to describe it to you, what has been happening right now to this world, especially in the US.

As of right now according to this Bing COVID-19 Tracker there are 1,600,427 cases worldwide with 95699 deaths and in the US alone there are 468,703 cases with 16,679 deaths. So it is pretty darn terrible!

One of the most on going pressing questions that are making rounds on the internet, is whether this COVID-19 aka Coronavirus is a bioattack? Now China blames the US and the US blames China. But even it was a bio-attack hypothetically, everyone knows by now this is worse than suicide bombing because it not only can destroy your enemy, it can destroy your own people, economy, reputation, it can cripple the entire human civilization.

So today I have decided to delve deeper into this question to find an answer. Because I am tired and fed up with reading only conspiracy theories as an answer to this query (whether COVID-19 is a bioattack or not).

Take for example this question on Quora, Is it possible that the recent China coronavirus outbreak is a bio-attack? has 100+ answers and still counting. I can already save you some time categorizing the tone of those answers: denial of such claim (that whether it is a bioattack) with/without any factual basis, conspiracy theories and hidden gems with some key reference.

One of the Anonymous answers is this in the hyperlink touches most of the basis of conspiracy theories which other answers include. So I don’t wish to repeat them. But what is interesting is that a hypothetical timeline starts forming in front of your eyes. Obviously, that also fuels more speculations, but I will add the facts into that timeline also.

The above anonymous answer claims that China took inspiration of a possible bioweapon-attack from already existing novels, movies, and even public speeches. Chinese can also claim the same BTW that the US did it.

But out of all the piles of horse shit, one answer that caught my eyes is this one, which does not talk about any conspiracy theories but builds a very logical hypothesis on already existing facts. This answer also brought my attention to Wuhan Lab’s Chinese Virologist Dr. Shi Zhengli‘s research activities which I am going to elaborate about in a bit.

How China’s “Bat Woman” Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus

But first, let’s look at the fact and fiction timeline:

Fiction: The Eyes of Darkness – a fictional novel released in 1981 talks about this virus named Wuhan-400. Even though the symptoms are different, the city’s name Wuhan is there as that anonymous answer pointed out.

Fact: Between 2002-2004 SARS CoV outbreak happened in China.

Fact: Wuhan Institute of Virology started its operation since 2005. Ever since then Dr. Shi and her team have been investigating bat originated SARs virus and continued to have published papers till now.

Fiction: Sylvia Browne’s prediction about a pneumonia-like virus in the year 2020 in her book named Prophecy published in 2008. You must have seen or heard about this book by now many times. I myself bought a copy from Amazon to check out that page. But while most of her predictions are just some made up bat shit, this one perhaps was purely coincidental. It is still pretty vague though, considering China already had SARs virus outbreak back in 2003 and a few other viruses broke before or during the time of this book’s publication. It is not hard to make this up. It can be common sense or a mere gut feeling.

Fiction: The movie Contagion(2011). Read the plot or watch it.

Fact/Warning: Bill Gates’ warning about a potential epi/pandemic back in 2015.

2019: COVID-19 started from Wuhan China and the virus was quickly identified and named after COVID-19 or Coronavirus because of Dr. Shi and her team’s research work. And why not? She has been working hard to identify/test SARs virus in bats.

So seeing all these you can decide whether you wanna conclude if something smells fishy, although some experts have already concluded that Coronavirus is completely naturally mutated. Actually, every other year there are some types of viruses spreading like Swine Flu, Ebola, .etc. But because none of those became global pandemic it did not catch our attention like the current COVID-19. It is true that viruses mutate all the time.

So, thanks to Dr. Shi Zhengli and many virologists like her around the world who have been working hard in such research which we never thought could be important. Because of people like her, we might have got to know what has been happening to us sooner.

But wait, as I have mentioned before one of the Quora answers pointed out that, Dr. Shi also conducted researches where the possible mixing of HIV with SARs CoV was mentioned (take a look at the following paper):

Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) proteins of different bat species confer variable susceptibility to SARS-CoV

The above paper was published in 2010. Even before in 2008, she published the following paper where this concept is mentioned.

Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin

And take a look at these posts:

HIV & Ebola-Like Mutations Suggest Coronavirus Leaked From a Lab

Coronavirus far more likely than Sars to bond to human cells due to HIV-like mutation, scientists say

Coronavirus ‘is like a combination of SARS and AIDS’, doctors say

There is a difference between an intentional bio-attack or one “mad” scientist’s lab experiment gone bad (read leaked). However, it is not clear how can a level -4 Virology  Lab like the one in Wuhan have experimental leaks.

As one of the Quora answers (mentioned above) concluded, “I would say it is unlikely a bio-weapon, but possibly some mad scientists’ crazy dream coming true – helping bat virus directly attack human being”.

I don’t know if we will ever get to the bottom of this, or we would ever know who was the patient zero or how s/he got the virus. There are many conflicting views about the patient zero. You will also find many fake YouTube videos that claim to be filmed in Wuhan Seafood Market where allegedly the virus started, but it is filmed elsewhere. Bats still remain the food delicacy in many parts of the world.

But until I find any further update on this issue, it seems like a leaked experiment (unintentional or not) which perhaps infected a human and/or a bat directly and naturally kept mutating till now, that’s why scientists who claim that Coronavirus came out through the natural process of sequencing are right as well. Although Dr. Shi herself completely denied such allegations of experimental leaks, her or the Wuhan’s lab’s involvement in this virus spread. She thinks this is nature’s punishment to mankind for having unhealthy habits.

We are not sure if Dr. Shi is a psychopath (since a lot of gifted people especially scientists can be), neither we know if someone else used her published papers as some recipe book of mass-distraction to teach mankind a lesson, or was it purely coincidentally spread from bat/wild animals-human direct contact which has similarities with HIV virus too and RaTG13. But until further updates let’s trust scientists’ claims that Coronavirus started spreading naturally.

Update: Read the following article which was published on April 14, 2020:

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-raised-alarms-about-safety-issues-in-wuhan-lab-report-2020-4?amp=

Check out this video and you decide the conclusion:

Life Hack Topic: Mindfulness

 

What is mindfulness? It is a state of being aware or conscious at the present moment. Why am I talking about this today? Because mindfulness is very important in our daily lives to be happy and successful. I attended a career development session last year and mindfulness was taught for about a few weeks with a lot of emphasis before moving on to resume writing and the job-hunting process.

Imagine you are attending a lecture or listening to your boss for some important instructions, but your mind is drifting away somewhere else. Or you made some serious mistakes because you were not paying attention. Just one small mistake one day can make you pay a big price. So it is extremely important to concentrate better, to be mindful, to be awake at the present moment (however you want me to describe). One of the keys to success is effective listening and we need to be mindful in order to listen better.

Some spiritual coaches talk about consciousness and they use a lot of fancy words and claim they can help people become more aware of themselves. In all essence, they are talking about mindfulness. 

Why is it hard for a lot of us to be mindful? If you notice carefully, when we are not mindful, we are either thinking about some past events or some imaginary future events. We think about the past because-either we want to re-live some happy moments or we wish we could have changed certain things of the past. We contemplate the future because we are either planning something or we are suspecting something good or bad might happen. Now we cannot change anything in the past nor do we have any control over the future. So why spoil the present moment for things which are not in our control? The worst part is, when we are stressed, we tend to be less mindful.

How do you become mindful? I am sharing with you a very simple trick. Whenever you find yourself lacking focus, just breathe in and breathe out, bring your concentration to your breathing exercise for a few moments. Let all other thoughts pass. Activate your senses while you are doing it. Try not to think of anything else. Just concentrate on your existence. Do this simple trick everyday everywhere. It will be hard at first, you will find yourself going in and out of your awareness. But don’t give up, keep practicing. You can spend some quiet time every day doing this mindfulness meditation. Prayers do help a lot as well if you have any particular faith. But you should always be doing this, whenever you are finding yourself not paying enough attention.

The Quickest Way To Make a Lame Decision

I have written lengthy posts about Life Hack Tips: When you should NOT make a big decision and Life Hack Tips: HOW To Make Good Decisions.

But those are for serious life changing scenarios. How do you make small decisions on a daily basis? The kind of decisions which perhaps do not change the outcome of your life but you still end up spending quite a bit of time pondering over them, such as- what you are going to wear for an occasion, what movie are you going to watch and what you are going to eat for the dinner? Something really unimportant yet important.

You might be shaking your head-“why is this even a blog post?” But trust me I see people being indecisive and fighting over small things to come up with a quick decision.

Okay, now I hate to make lengthy posts especially when it is something insignificant. This is how I take a lame decision, “drum roll” please:

fruitmachine

I go to this website: “Fruit Machine” and I write my options and run the fruit-machine for three times, whichever comes the most is usually my choice. People also use the method of flipping a coin. Whatever works for you. The main goal is to know what you “really” want. You don’t always have to follow what the result is. For example, I was trying to make a choice between what to eat for lunch- Indian or Mexican food? Indian food came twice but I figured out I was actually leaning more towards Mexican Food that day. Pretty Lame right!? But it saved me time to decide where I want to go for lunch.

What the SHORT STORIES are missing in blogs

Not just in blogs but anywhere, storytelling is an art. Not many people are good at it-particularly at short story telling.

I have read a lot of stories in blogs from a lot of aspiring authors. Number one thing that I miss is called the “content”.  At one time I was reading a story after following a link, the author is probably trying to imply that he has great vocabulary.  He pretty much used uncommon words wherever he could. Majority of the readers would need the help of a dictionary for every word that he used-thus feeling lost in finding the meaning of the words but not being able to see the whole story itself.

Another time, I found a very smooth kind of writing style. In fact, the words had such a nice zen like flow that I forgot I was reading a story, I thought it was poetry. When I reached the bottom, I found out actually there was no story line and in fact the author went off-topic.

When we write novels, I think details are important. But when we write “short stories” we should be able to give a high level perspective-the larger picture of the plot without driving readers away in opposite directions.

And please, no one reads long posts and posts which are too difficult to read. This is a fact. Keep it simple with an easy flow, while building up the content of your story gradually, so that it hooks the readers from the beginning till the end.

Thanks.