Kazakhstan: new virus?

[Brightonian]

'Unknown pneumonia' outbreak more deadly than COVID-19, say Chinese. Oh jolly good.

[Bird on a Fire]

Meh. I'm not sure what the Chinese regime gets out of lying about this, but it's pretty clear what's going on:

In a statement on Friday, the Kazakhstan health ministry acknowledged the presence of "viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology," but denied that the outbreak was new or unknown.

"In response to these reports, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan officially declares that this information does not correspond to reality," the statement read.

It added the "unspecified" pneumonia classification followed World Health Organization guidelines "for the registration of pneumonia when the coronavirus infection is diagnosed clinically or epidemiologically but is not confirmed by laboratory testing."

[Woodchopper]

Meh. I'm not sure what the Chinese regime gets out of lying about this, but it's pretty clear what's going on:

In a statement on Friday, the Kazakhstan health ministry acknowledged the presence of "viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology," but denied that the outbreak was new or unknown.

"In response to these reports, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan officially declares that this information does not correspond to reality," the statement read.

It added the "unspecified" pneumonia classification followed World Health Organization guidelines "for the registration of pneumonia when the coronavirus infection is diagnosed clinically or epidemiologically but is not confirmed by laboratory testing."

Report here that it was an error in translation from Kazakh to Chinese: https://twitter.com/williamyang120/stat ... 33920?s=21

Possibly a case for Hanlon's razor.

[Bird on a Fire]

Phew! Is my first reaction.

It also seems a bit hasty to put out an announcement like that without checking the translation...