See also: COVID-19

SARS-CoV-2

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), colloquially known as the coronavirus and previously known by the provisional name 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus. It causes the respiratory illness known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Quotes

• I think the president has made the right decisions for the right reasons. I think against the advice of many people, he closed the borders. And I think when the history of this is written, that’s going to have saved a lot of lives. I think that given the uncertainty that surrounded this and the possibility that it was so contagious that it would swamp our healthcare system, he supported the appropriate moves for a limited period of time
  • William Barr, as quoted in AG Barr calls coronavirus restrictions 'draconian,' says they should be reevaluated next month (April 9, 2020) by Nicholas Wu, The Star Press

• And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
  And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
  And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”
  • Kitty O’Meara, In The Time of Pandemic, The Daily Round, (16 March 2020)

• A pandemic has been declared, but not for the 24,600 who die every day from unnecessary starvation, and not for 3,000 children who die every day from preventable malaria, and not for the 10,000 people who die every day because they are denied publicly-funded healthcare, and not for the hundreds of Venezuelans and Iranians who die every day because America's blockade denies them life-saving medicines, and not for the hundreds of mostly children bombed or starved to death every day in Yemen, in a war supplied and kept going, profitably, by America and Britain. Before you panic, consider them.
  • John Pilger, quoted in Here is what legendary journalist John Pilger said about coronavirus outbreak Pilger decries inattention to hunger, malaria and American wars and blockades, The Week, (12 March 2020)

• Three weeks ago, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee privately warned dozens of donors about the harrowing impact the coronavirus would have on the United States, while keeping the general public in the dark. In a secret recording obtained by NPR, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr is heard giving attendees of a club luncheon a much different message than most federal government officials, especially President Trump, were giving the public at the time... Sen. Burr sold off up to $1.56 million in stock on February 13th, as he was reassuring the public about coronavirus preparedness.
  • Secret Recording Exposes Intelligence Chairman Warning Donors About Coronavirus 3 Weeks Ago, By Peter Wade, Rolling Stone , (19 March 2020)

• There’s one thing that I can tell you about this... It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history... It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.... There will be, I’m sure, times that communities... have a transmission rate where they say, let’s close schools for two weeks, everybody stay home.
  • Sen. Richard Burr Quoted in Secret Recording Exposes Intelligence Chairman Warning Donors About Coronavirus 3 Weeks Ago, By Peter Wade, Rolling Stone , (19 March 2020)

• There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down on denial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19... Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life.
  • George Monbiot, Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation, The Guardian, (25 March 2020)

• The Coronavirus is serious enough but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's ever happened in human history... the corona virus is a horrible... can have terrifying consequences but there will be recovery, while the others won't be recovered... If we don't deal with them we're done.
  • Noam Chomsky: Coronavirus - What is at stake? | Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) (28 Mar 2020)

• When the UN security council and the G7 group sought to agree a global response to the coronavirus pandemic, the efforts stumbled on the US insistence on describing the threat as distinctively Chinese... the focus on labelling the virus Chinese and blaming China pursued by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, helped ensure there would be no meaningful collective response from the world’s most powerful nations...
  For some US allies, the fixation on words at a time when the international order was arguably facing its greatest challenge since the second world war encapsulated the glaring absence of US leadership. And that absence was illustrated just as vividly by news coverage of planes full of medical supplies from China arriving in Italy, at a time when the US was quietly flying in half a million Italian-made diagnostic swabs for use in its own under-equipped health system and Donald Trump was on the phone to the South Korean president pressing him to send test kits.
  • Julian Borger in US awol from world stage as China tries on global leadership for size, The Guardian, March 29, 2020

See also

• Disease X

External links