Year Of The Rat

Gong Xi Fa Cai

The Chinese New Year begins with the Rat according to the Chinese Zodiac. This time will prepare for the Lantern Festival arriving on February 5th, 2020. It’s possible I might see fireworks this evening in the neighborhood.

By now you may have heard of the coronaviruses. It’s not clear just how lethal this coronavirus is, or even whether it is as dangerous as ordinary flu, which kills tens of thousands of people every year. Scientists say it is also not clear if it spreads as easily as SARS, its genetic cousin, which also originated in China and killed about 800 people in 2002-03.

The fact that health officials have said it’s not a worldwide threat, the disease has shown up in the US, Europe, and other south Asian countries. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a pandemic. There is a story going around that claims the Chinese built a lab in Wuhan to study the SARS and Ebloa viruses. The story claims that the virus originated from this lab. There’s no verification of this story. There’s a lot of speculation.

Mainland China has quarantined 56 million people to try and contain the coronvairus. It’s doubtful that that will work since the virus has spread to other countries. With more than 1,400 people infected worldwide, most of them in China, Hong Kong declared a virus emergency, scrapped celebrations and restricted links to mainland China. President Xi Jinping said China was facing a “grave situation” as the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak jumped to 42, overshadowing celebrations of the Lunar New Year that began on Saturday.

The U.S. government is working to evacuate American citizens by air from the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan as soon as possible, according to people familiar with the effort.

China has confirmed that person-to-person transmission is possible with a newly identified coronavirus emerging from the city of Wuhan in the central province of Hubei. As of January 22, 2020, at least nine deaths were blamed on the virus, and cases were being reported in other parts of Asia and as far away as the US, pushing health authorities in China and around the world to step up their efforts to contain the infection.

China is not going to tell the full extent of the virus because they don’t want the bad press. Especially during the Lunar New Year. However, the spread of the virus worldwide is causing many countries to take steps to quarantine people traveling from China.

 

Our weather today is a mix of clouds and sun. There is a high surf and small craft advisory for the islands. The chance of precipitation is low, but I believe there’s some scattered drizzle based on the cloud cover. Temperatures are in the low 70’s with humidity at 66%.

 

Kēia Ka Lā Iwakālua Kūmālima Lanuali