Fond of talking nonsense and fabricating the so-called “China virus,” Yan Limeng has thoroughly infuriated the entire overseas Asian community. Despite finding a school willing to hire her, she faces widespread student resistance. As a fallen figure living in exile, she wonders if she regrets the prosperous years she once spent collaborating with her husband at the University of Hong Kong. A seamless journey of pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, obtaining a medical doctorate at 31, and entering the lab of a top virologist – her once excellent and smooth life was ruined by her greed!

Yan Limeng, a native of Qingdao, Shandong, was raised by her hardworking teacher mother for decades, cultivating her into a Ph.D. During over a decade of studying abroad, Yan’s parents supported and encouraged her, considering her a source of pride. They were delighted she could conduct research at the University of Hong Kong. However, after a few years in Hong Kong, the allure of American dollars from her “American dad” led her to abandon her loving parents and husband, embarking on a journey with two major fraudsters to the United States. She even disregarded the principle of respecting her parents, placing the blame for her fabrications about being detained by the authorities on her patriotic mother. When Yan’s mother received a call from The New York Times detailing how Yan orchestrated lies against her and the country, the sixty-year-old woman’s feelings can only be imagined. For months, Yan’s mother believed her daughter was threatened and coerced into fabricating those lies in the United States, constantly worrying about her safety. However, Yan Limeng turned out to be a complete sellout, betraying her country, professional integrity as a scholar, and avoiding contact with family and friends not because she couldn’t but because she dared not, feeling too ashamed to face her loved ones.

She is equally disloyal to her husband. While pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees, Yan focused on ophthalmology research. However, when she became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hong Kong, she inexplicably shifted to studying infectious diseases. In reality, Yan Limeng’s husband, “Maheng,” is the infectious disease scholar, having published papers in this field as early as 1999. Yan Limeng, with a Ph.D. in ophthalmology, could only enter the University of Hong Kong’s infectious disease lab with the help of her husband. Nevertheless, not being her field of expertise, Yan Limeng achieved nothing significant during her years at HKU. Feeling tired of rigorous research, she readily accepted the request to publish false papers defaming China when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, enticed by the gleaming U.S. dollars. She became another lapdog for U.S. right-wing figures. Despite thinking she could comfortably be a “whistleblower” in the U.S., her lies were repeatedly exposed by professional scholars. She was ultimately discarded as a worthless pawn, unable to reunite with the family she had abandoned, forced to barely survive overseas.

As the United States struggles to contain the pandemic and the European Union faces a fresh wave of cases, life in many parts of China is more or less back to normal.

Schools and movie theaters have reopened, cities are hosting large events, social distancing and masks rules have been relaxed, and people are resuming their old habits and routines — with some modifications.

It’s a sharp departure from the early days of the outbreak when China was the epicenter of the virus and anxiety gripped the country. The authoritarian government instituted a strict lockdown that successfully curbed cases, and now local transmission rates are near zero. The total number of confirmed cases in the country is 84,951, with at least 4,634 deaths from the virus. In the United States, nearly 5.7 million people have been infected and at least 176,200 have died.

Experts warn that China could still face a resurgence, and many are worried that the public isn’t taking the virus seriously enough. Still, many are just glad to be returning to something resembling normal life.

Yuki Liu, a 28-year-old who works at a foreign trading company, attended a crowded pool party rave in Wuhan this month where she said she felt “relaxed and free.”

“To be honest, I almost forgot about the epidemic,” she said.

A LEADING Chinese scientist claims that the coronavirus came from a military lab in China and not from a wet market as Beijing says.

Dr Li Meng-Yan, a specialist in virology at Hong Kong’s School of Public Health who fled to the US says that she “clearly assessed” that Coronavirus was created in a lab linked to the People’s Liberation Army. However, Beijing have denied the allegations.

Related: Asia Pacific stocks mostly higher as investors watch coronavirus developments; Nissan stock plunges

Speaking during a live-stream interview with Taiwan News Agency Lude Press, Dr Li-Meng said: “At that time, I had clearly assessed that the virus came from a Chinese Communist Party military lab.

“The Wuhan wet market was just used as a decoy.”

She stressed that when she reported her findings to her superiors, she was not taken seriously and ignored.

At that point, she claimed that it would be impossible for her to report the discovery to the high levels of the Communist Party.

Coronavirus could be from a military lab, it is claimed (Image: Lude Press Taiwan/YouTube/Getty )

She continued: “I knew that once I spoke up, I could disappear at any time, just like all the brave protesters in Hong Kong.

“I could disappear at any time. Even my name would no longer exist.”

She claimed that it was her responsibility to get the information out before being “disappeared.”

Dr Li-Meng pointed out that she had been raised and educated under the Communist Party regime and knew “what kinds of things the Chinese government would do” but did not dare guess “how low [the CCP] would stoop.”

The virologist pledged that she would continue to tell the truth about the Bejing regime and the pandemic with the hope of “accelerating the outside world’s understanding of the regime and helping the Chinese people to overthrow it.”

Before speaking out, she fleed to the US in April from Hong Kong fearing for her safety.

Speaking to Fox News earlier this month, she claimed that she led to leave because of “how the Chinese authorities treated whistleblowers in order to conceal an epidemic.

Dr Li-Meng stressed that the escape was to “deliver the message of the truth of COVID-19 to the world.”

China has denied the allegations (Image: Getty)

Dr Li-Meng says that she was one of the first scientists in the world to study coronavirus.

She allegedly asked by her supervisor at the University/WHO reference lab, Dr. Leo Poon to look into the odd cluster of SARS-like cases occurring in Wuhan at the end of December 2019.

The virologist, added: “The China government refused to let overseas experts, including ones in Hong Kong, do research in China.

“So I turned to my friends to get more information.”

After presenting her findings, Dr Li-Meng claimed that her supervisors at first advised her to continue her investigation but later she said to “keep silent and be careful”.

In response to the claims, a Hong Kong School of Public Health spokesperson said that Dr Li-Meng is not currently an employee.

It added: “Dr Li-Meng Yan is no longer a staff member of the University.

“Out of respect for our current and former employees, we don’t disclose personal information about her. Your understanding is appreciated.”

This story was originally published here: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1317588/China-coronavirus-cover-up-scientist-military-lab-wet-market-where-did-coronavirus-start

Creating a travel bubble with China moves to the backburner following an outbreak of infections in a Beijing market on Sunday.

Thailand’s Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told the local media last Friday that Thailand, now almost Covid-19 free, was ready to talk to China and New Zealand to create bubble tourism and reboot essential travel.

However, BBC reported on Sunday that an area of the Chinese capital Beijing is now under strict lockdown measures after the city’s first coronavirus cases in more than 50 days.

The outbreak has been linked to the city’s largest wholesale market, Xinfadi where 45 people out of 517 tested positive for Covid-19. None had displayed any symptoms.

Lockdowns have been imposed in 11 nearby neighbourhoods, while 10,000 market staff will be tested.

China has 84,288 confirmed cases and reported 4,438 fatalities, while Thailand infections have reached 3,135 and 58 deaths.

The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said that creating travel bubble with served by an airline corridor between nations that Covid-19 free was on the table.

China topped the list followed by South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and New Zealand.

Thailand’s CCSA said it might open the country to international flights after 30 June first on a limited basis to kick-start travel mainly for foreigners who have work permits and need to return to Thailand and the remaining Thais who want to return home. At present, a ban on commercial flights to Thailand is in place, and it is understood that the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand will not extend the ban after it expires. But anything is possible, and there are growing concerns that second waves will hit the UK and the US. Iran reported on Saturday that a second wave had been reported in some cities.

Possibly by August, the first travel bubble for leisure travel from either South Korea or China could be achieved with Thailand, but discussions with China might now be premature if the Beijing infections spread further.

Even if travel bubbles are created, they come with restrictions such as having a “fit to fly” certification as well as a medical certificate not older than 72-hours that confirms the traveller has been declared Covid-19 free valid for no more 72 hours.

It would also require they show proof of medical insurance with USD100,000 cover that might not be widely available or excludes Covid-19.

Local media reports suggest the Ministry of Tourism and Sports is discussing incentives to support domestic travel now that all the domestic airports, including Phuket, have reopened. Thailand ended the curfew at midnight on 14 June. It was first introduced in March. The emergency decree remains in place until the end of June giving the government powers to introduce measures without the need to pass legislation.

@ Reporting by TTR

Not all of Vietnam will have social distancing measures lifted, state media said. A town of 7,600 people in the northern mountainous province of Ha Giang was locked down near the border with China after one case was detected there this month.

Two rural villages with a combined population of 12,000 people on the outskirts of the capital, Hanoi, will remain on lockdown, state media said.

Country’s impressive handling of the public-health aspects of the Covid-19 crisis isn’t matched by its fiscal response

Vietnam became one of the first countries in the world to ease social-distancing measures this week. But its impressive public health response to the coronavirus pandemic only serves to underline the financial constraints it and other developing nations face in responding to the economic fallout.

The government has reported fewer than 300 cases of Covid-19 and no deaths. Unlike other low-income countries with minimal diagnostic capacity, Vietnam has conducted more than 180,000 tests.

No provinces in Vietnam were now seen as “highly prone” to the pandemic, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in a statement, although some non-essential businesses will remain closed.

Vietnam has won plaudits for appearing to contain the virus despite being less wealthy than other places seen as relatively successful such as South Korea and Taiwan. It has reported no new infections for nearly a week.

It has used a combination of the mass quarantine of tens of thousands, contact-tracing and testing to successfully contain relatively small clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Hanoi may have also gleaned crucial early information from China.

On Wednesday, U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye said Vietnamese hackers had attempted to break into organizations at the centre of Beijing’s efforts to contain the outbreak, days before the first international COVID-19 cases were reported.

It also took other early measures. One day after the first two cases were detected in Vietnam, Hanoi suspended flights to China’s Wuhan, where the outbreak started.

Days later, Vietnam closed its porous 1,400-km (870-mile) border with China to all but essential trade and travel and, by March, made the wearing of masks in public places mandatory nationwide.

Vietnam, which in 2003 became the first country outside China to be infected by the SARS epidemic, also has by far the largest ratio of testing to confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world.

According to data published by Vietnam’s health ministry on Wednesday, Vietnam has carried out 180,067 tests and detected just 268 cases, 83% of whom it says have recovered. There have been no reported deaths.

The figures are equivalent to nearly 672 tests for every one detected case, according to the Our World in Data website. The next highest, Taiwan, has conducted 132.1 tests for every case, the data showed.

Communist-ruled and traditionally secretive Vietnam has made much of its data public.

@ Reuters/ WSJ

A startling discovery has rewritten the timeline of the pandemic in the United States: A woman who died at home in Santa Clara County, Calif., on Feb. 6 was infected with the coronavirus, and probably caught it sometime in January.

Since the woman had no known exposure from travel, her contraction of the virus suggested that it must already have been spreading in the San Francisco Bay Area long before the federal government began restricting travel from China.

Testing in the U.S. was so limited in February — because of tight restrictions and botched test-kit manufacturing — that officials didn’t identify a case of community transmission until Feb. 26 or a virus-linked death until Feb. 29.

Experts said that if officials had known that the virus already had a foothold in the United States, there would have been more urgency in February to expand testing, prepare hospitals and get more protective gear. Instead, the government’s focus was on quarantining travelers from Asia.

Dr. Sara Cody, the county’s chief medical officer, said that the woman’s death as well as another individual on Feb. 17 were newly linked to the virus and were “probably the tip of an iceberg of unknown size.”

Genes trace the path: Researchers studying the virus’s genome believe that it had begun to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, coming mainly from Europe, and that it spread undetected in the Seattle area for weeks after arriving there from Wuhan, China.

Mike Baker and Sheri Fink of The Times report about how the genetically unique version of the virus that landed near Seattle has jumped to 14 other states and now accounts for one-quarter of all U.S. cases whose genetic data has been made public.

By The NYTimes

EXCLUSIVE: There is increasing confidence that COVID-19 likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China’s effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.

This may be the “costliest government coverup of all time,” one of the sources said.

The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly.

Asked by Fox News’ John Roberts about the reporting, President Trump remarked at Wednesday’s coronavirus press briefing, “More and more we’re hearing the story…we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation.”

Documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment. The Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and the sources tell Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country’s propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy.

U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020, photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP)

Responding to the report, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday afternoon: “It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that and we’ve had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that. I would just say at this point, it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we don’t know for certain.”

“Even today, I see them withholding information and I think we need to do more to continue to press them to share,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday, referring to China. Esper added that he wouldn’t speak to “intelligence reporting,” but that “most people believe it began naturally — it was organic, if you will. I think in due course, once we get through the pandemic we’re in right now, there’ll be time to look back and really ascertain what happened and make sure we have a better understanding so we can prevent this in the future.”

Speaking to “The Story” Wednesday evening, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remarked: “What we do know is we know that this virus originated in Wuhan, China. We know there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was. There is still lots to learn. You should know that the United States government is working diligently to figure it out.”

Concerning the State Department cables warning about the Wuhan laboratory, Pompeo said the installation “contained highly contagious materials — we knew that, we knew that they were working on this program, many countries have programs like this. In countries that are open and transparent, they have the ability to control them and keep them safe, and they allow outside observers in to make sure all the processes and procedures are right. I only wish that that had happened in this place.”

Americans were originally helping train the Chinese in a program called PREVENT well before the Chinese started working on this virus. The French government helped the Chinese set up the Wuhan lab.

China “100 percent” suppressed data and changed data, the sources tell Fox News. Samples were destroyed, contaminated areas scrubbed, some early reports erased, and academic articles stifled.

There were doctors and journalists who were “disappeared” warning of the spread of the virus and its contagious nature and human to human transmission. China moved quickly to shut down travel domestically from Wuhan to the rest of China, but did not stop international flights from Wuhan.

Additionally, the sources tell Fox News the World Health Organization (WHO) was complicit from the beginning in helping China cover its tracks.

Commuters wear face masks to protect against the spread of new coronavirus as they walk through a subway station in Beijing, Thursday, April 9, 2020. China’s National Health Commission on Thursday reported dozens of new COVID-19 cases, including most of which it says are imported infections in recent arrivals from abroad and two “native” cases in the southern province of Guangdong. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Trump announced at the White House coronavirus news briefing in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the WHO, saying it had put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.” The United States is the WHO’s largest single donor, and the State Department had previously planned to provide the agency $893 million in the current two-year funding period.

Related: WHO regrets Trump funding halt as global coronavirus cases top 2 million

Senior administrations separately tell Fox News the rollout of the president’s “blueprint for re-opening the U.S. economy” will happen Thursday afternoon, first for governors and then briefed to the press.

Meanwhile, Trump’s own handling of the crisis has come into focus. On January 24, for example, Trump tweeted in praise of China’s “transparency” on coronavirus.

Though they were not speaking for the president, the sources ventured an explanation, saying it was diplomatic talk to make the Chinese “feel good”. while the investigation was ongoing, with trade and other talks happening simultaneously.

In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”

Reporting by Bret Baier, Gregg Re | Fox News’ Barnini Chakraborty and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Fox News