Secrecy of COVID

Tyrone Taliafero April 21st, 2020

The novel virus that has created a world wide pandemic, and has taken the lives of over 171,000 people as of now. My name is Leo Xin and I live in northern Beijing.

There has been great speculation and conspiracy theories regarding the origin of this disease. It has been told by the government that scientists have been working very hard to study the disease and how it reacts, but they are not relaying the information.

If you are not familiar with the virus and its performance, I will explain it to you from what I have studied on my own. COVID-19 has been proven to be genetically similar to SARS-coronavirus 2002. Coronavirus is an RNA virus, this means it is a nucleotide of genetic instructions packed in a protein shell. This can only be seen by scientists on a microscopic level. Viruses like such, used these instructions to multiply themselves once they have entered a cell. Corona virus has been named the largest RNA virus because it is 30,000 nucleotides long. Because the virus is so large it is capable of fighting off the hosts’ immune system and able to reproduce more virus infected cells.

Corona in latin means crown. Given its name, the coronavirus is covered in a spikey crown described as proteins. When a person sneezes or coughs the virus is spread by these drops. The virus enters through the nose and mouth, travels down the throat passage and sticks to the airway and lungs. The virus then attacks your cells and begins to create more virus infected cells.

Because of this transmission we are forced to wear masks. I say forced because if we do not wear masks we will be stopped on the streets. Standard mask must be changed every 2 days to remain effective. I am afraid for my family because supply is running very low. Today I went to the local market for the 3rd time this week in hopes to get more masks. The cashier told me the only mask he had left was an electric one. I was unable to purchase it because it was very expensive and I am not in work.

Checkpoints have been placed at every 300 meters to have our temperatures checked.

There are a lot of people in my community who are skeptical of the virus's origin. I’ve heard many conspiracies and horror stories. Some people are even afraid of their pets and throwing them out on the streets to suffer. I mean it is natural for viruses to mutate; it is a part of their natural life cycle. Genetic codes change all of the time. When a virus multiplies, sometimes the instructions in the virus make mistakes and these changes carry on to the replicated virus cells. In order for the infection to spread from animals to humans, the virus would have had to mutate dramatically. Many scientists believe that COVID-19 originated in a horseshoe bat, it is unlikely that humans transmitted the virus from bats. Therefore, the virus would have had to have been passed to a host and mutated significantly and then later transmitted to humans. Similar to SARs- COV, that was transmitted from bats to another host (palms civet), which inevitably infected humans.

The government has limited our communication to the outside world. Many posts and blogs reaching out for help online, have been removed by the government. There is a known scientist who tried to warn the citizens of this infectious disease. He was imprisoned for this. It was then announced that he passed away from the virus. I find it way too coincidental. My wife and I are afraid of the power of the government. We have

personally witnessed the health police aka communist, enforce quarantine using violence.

Many people are suffering without any treatment. We do not have running water so we have to run out to get it, but because we are limited on how many times we can leave our home in a week, we have to go without. We are lacking supplies and our essentials are running low.

I am sending this message out in hopes that it will reach someone who can help my community. We just want our voices heard, and we want the truth about the disease. The government is not informing us on treatment plans in place and we have no idea how long we will be able to continue in isolation.