https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/world/middleeast/coronavirus-iran.html Religious pilgrims, migrant workers, businessmen, soldiers and clerics all flow constantly across Iran’s frontiers, often crossing into countries with few border controls, weak and ineffective governments and fragile health systems. Now, as it struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Iran is also emerging as the second focal point after China for the spread of the disease. Cases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates — even one in Canada — have all been traced to Iran, sending tremors of fear rippling out from Kabul to Beirut. The Middle East is in many ways the perfect place to spawn a pandemic, experts say, with the constant circulation of both Muslim pilgrims and itinerant workers who might carry the virus. Iran’s economy has been strangled by sanctions, its people have lost trust in their government and its leaders are isolated from much of the world, providing little clarity about the extent of the epidemic. Civil wars or years of unrest have shattered the health systems of several neighboring countries, like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. And most of the region is governed largely by authoritarians with poor track records at providing public transparency, accountability and health services. “It is a recipe for a massive viral outbreak,” said Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the former founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on H.I.V./AIDS. Millions of Muslim pilgrims travel each year from around the region to visit Shiite holy sites in Iran and Iraq. In January alone, 30,000 people returned to Afghanistan from Iran, and hundreds of others continue to make the pilgrimage to Qom, the site of the outbreak, every week, Afghan officials say. Iraq closed its border with Iran on Saturday, but millions cross it every year. So scores of infected people could potentially have brought the virus to Iraq, depending on how long it has been present in Iran. And as of midday on Monday in Najaf, flights to and from Iran were still taking off and landing. Governors of Iraqi provinces bordering Iran were taking the potential for contagion seriously and at least two were personally inspecting the border crossings to ensure that they were being policed and that Iranians were barred from crossing into Iraq. Qutaybah al-Jubouri, the head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Health Affairs Committee, called the coronavirus “a plague” and said his committee was demanding a far more complete closure of all “land, sea and air” borders with Iran “until the disease is completely controlled.” Iran’s health ministry sent a letter to the governor of Qom on Thursday and asked Shiite religious leaders to limit the number of pilgrims at the Shrine to Fatima Masumeh and other religious sites in the city, but as of early Tuesday, throngs of people still gathered around the shrine, touching it and taking part in communal prayers. Iran is in many ways a case study in the risks of the disease spreading. The country reported its first case of the coronavirus less than a week ago, in Qom. On Monday health officials reported that four people had died there in the last day, bringing the total to 12. At least 61 others had been infected in Iran, the officials said, with new cases being reported in Isfahan, Hamedan and other cities, as well as in Qom. Now the slow drip of news about the spread of the virus is compounding Tehran’s already acute credibility problems, less than two months after officials were forced to admit lying about their knowledge of the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet by air defense systems. Many Iranians on Monday were openly skeptical about the official accounts of the spread of the virus. A member of Parliament representing Qom claimed on Monday that at least 50 people had already died there, including 34 in quarantine, and that the first case had been reported more than two weeks before officials acknowledged any infections. “Every day 10 people are dying in Qom,” the lawmaker, Ahmad Amiri Farahani, asserted in a speech to Parliament, demanding a quarantine on his city. Health ministry officials vehemently disputed his claims. “I will resign if the numbers are even half or a quarter of this,” said Ahmad Harirchi, adviser to the health minister. ...
Wait until it hits the homeless encampments lib cities have created.
Wait until it hits the poor no real health care labor the wing nut cities have created. Those (generally) Hispanics that do your service jobs too don’t go running to the hospital at the first sign of a cough, but they touch your food and clean your office.
Try editing that into English.
Sounds like covid19 is a biological weapon against enemy of allied power countries like China and Iran
Sounds like you have been fed a bunch of stupid propaganda
No. There are many theories which say that this could be a bio weapon. Why did it never happened before? Such a virus can only be genetically engineered and not through mutation or evolution.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/irans-deputy-health-minister-tests-positive-coronavirus
Iranian official who claimed Iran didn't have a significant problem.... ... is now infected with NCV
https://twitter.com/hectorology/status/1224618528440901633?s=19
Fuckin pissed when I heard they were going to stop serving fruit bat, pangolin, and civet cat in the cafes
The hubs of worldwide traffic are clearly China, Europe, USA, India. Let's close all of them to avoid spreading the virus. Oh I forgot, this only applies to those backward Iranians.
I'm not sure calling them backwards is helpful. It's just a reality that Iran is not equipped to deal with this virus, yet it has an epidemic, and that's going to affect us all in the end. S. Korea and Italy are not doing well with it despite being much better equipped than Iran. I don't see this being contained, it'll just keep spreading into more and more ill prepared countries, and that's the ball game. If it's widespread in the third world it's coming to America, unless we completely shut our borders to everyone, which we can't, really. We can laugh and point and blame but in the end we are all going to suffer the consequences.
"pelosi" your post makes no sense!