Via 47News.jp: The men confirmed Zhejiang China, the bird flu infection. The Google translation and then a comment:
According to the Shinkashaden of Shanghai PTI on the 28th, the 27th, health authorities in Zhejiang Province, China, it was confirmed that 57-year-old man of the ministry is infected avian influenza virus (H7N9 type) anew.
The man is being treated in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, but the condition that heavy breathing and weaken. I had a pet chicken at home of man.
Infected individuals the virus became 141 people, including one of Taiwan. 45 of whom have died.
I've spent much of the day looking for more details about this case, as well as about the Jordanian couple in Abu Dhabi who are in intensive care with MERS. And this is the best I can come up: Some intrepid Japanese journalist has learned that the 57-year-old man had a pet chicken. The Jordanians are Abu Dhabi residents, not tourists.
And that's about it.
The Gulf nations (and especially Saudi Arabia) have received deserved criticism for the scanty information they provide about MERS cases. No doubt it's tough for 11th-century regimes to find themselves in the 21st century, but they have the financial and political clout to silence their local media and to cast meaningful dirty looks at agencies like WHO, leaving the rest of the world ignorant of the real state of affairs.
China, meanwhile, has basked in praise for its transparency about H7N9, after taking a deserved beating over its suppression of the SARS outbreak ten years ago.
"Translucency" might be a better term. We have glimpses of new H7N9 cases, like the current one. But once announced, such cases vanish from the Chinese media until they die or recover, or turn up in scholarly journal articles—and there, at least, the Chinese have been very articulate.
For example, why not explain the who-what-when-where-why of the Jordanian couple, and of the Zhejiang man? Why no follow-up reports to put their cases in context? Why not follow up on earlier cases, like the Shaoxing H7N9 case just a month ago (not to mention the poor guy in Lille, France whose MERS has kept him in hospital since last spring?).
Sometimes the answer is: No one cares about old cases. At other times the answer is: The government will jail us or shut us down if we write more than the minimum about these cases, old or new.
Most of the visitors to this site consider themselves citizens of democratic countries where freedom of the press is taken for granted. But even the most sincerely democratic countries must deal with governments whose exports, whether oil or cheap clothes, make them politically invulnerable.
So to escape voters' outrage over today's price of gas or the cost of must-buy Christmas schlock, our governments fail to demand the truth from hot-zone countries like China and Saudi Arabia.
And if H7N9 and MERS actually break out, with any luck it will happen when the next government is in power. And when did the next government ever do anything for the present one?
