The illness is causing "unusual symptoms" such as inflammation in the lungs and a high fever. No cough or other flu-like symptoms are present, yet schools are "overwhelmed with sick children."
Now, I'm being a little dramatic with that gif up there, so don't label me as some sort of crazy; I honestly do think that China locking down the population in the strict way that they did until earlier this year has a lot to do with this. If you keep people away from these natural viruses, their defenses will decrease, leading to random, very normal outbreaks like this which China has seen quite occasionally since reopening society.
But one thing in this article does sort of jump off the page.
The alert was issued late on Tuesday via ProMed - a large, publicly available global surveillance system that monitors infectious diseases.
It was a ProMed notification back in December 2019 that brought a mystery virus, later given the name of Covid, to the attention of many doctors and scientists, including officials at the World Health Organization.
Yup, the same people who warned us about Covid in 2019 😬
Here's ProMed's report in part:
With the outbreak of pneumonia in China, children's hospitals in Beijing, Liaoning and other places were overwhelmed with sick children, and schools and classes were on the verge of suspension. Parents questioned whether the authorities were covering up the epidemic.
In the early morning, Beijing Children's Hospital was still overcrowded with parents and children whose children had pneumonia and came to seek treatment …
Since China stopped adhering to the "zero" policy at the beginning of the year [2023], epidemics such as influenza, mycoplasma, and bronchopneumonia have broken out from time to time.
What really got me was this though:
