re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

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@AFP
#BREAKING Third case of coronavirus confirmed in France, says official

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I've been watching some Ken Burns docs about Jefferson, The Congress, etc... Listening to them speak what to them was plain english sounds like great poetry now. It's exhausting to talk that way but dammit their command of the english language was far superior to the even educated people's today.

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Chen Min was healthy when she and her husband boarded a train from Hankou station in Wuhan at the end of December, headed for a trip to the southern coastal city of Xiamen. When the 65-year-old developed a persistent cough and fever a week later, she assumed it was just a common cold.

But the cold didn’t get better, and the fever didn’t break. So she visited Wuhan Tongji Hospital again and again until she was isolated in the infectious diseases unit on Jan. 15. She was dead within six hours.

Although Chen had all the symptoms of the coronavirus that is spreading across China and beyond, she is not counted on the official list of those who have died as a result of the infection. Her death certificate, which her family showed to The Washington Post, reads “severe pneumonia.”

But hospital staff told her stepson, Kyle Hui, that they strongly suspected she had “that” kind of pneumonia. At the crematorium, where the workers were in hazmat suits, Chen’s body was immediately incinerated without a proper farewell, and the vehicle it arrived in was disinfected.

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Tellingly, the family has received no bill from the hospital — consistent with the authorities’ pledge to cover the costs of all those infected with the mysterious virus, which started in a food market where wild and exotic animals were being sold for consumption.

Chen had never been to the market, Hui said, but she did go to the nearby station to catch the train to Xiamen.

She was never given a test to categorically confirm whether it was the virus. Nor was her daughter-in-law, who cared for Chen and now has low-grade symptoms. Her husband and elder son have not been tested, either. Now Hui, having returned to Shanghai, has quarantined himself from his wife and son, lest he also be infected.

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