Britain’s scientists knew coronavirus explosion was coming, but they were slow to raise alarm

Scientists concluded early the virus could be devastating, but for more than two months they did not clearly signal their worsening fears to the government

Boris Johnson, who himself has been sickened by Covid-19, has been criticised for not moving swiftly to organise mass tests and mobilise ventilator supplies


Reuters Published: 10 Apr, 2020

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Photo: AFP 

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It was early spring when British scientists laid out the bald truth to their government. It was “highly likely”, they said, that there was now “sustained transmission” of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom.

If unconstrained and if the virus behaved as in China, up to four-fifths of Britons could be infected and one in a hundred might die, wrote the scientists, members of an official committee set up to model the spread of pandemic flu, on March 2. Their assessment did not spell it out, but that was a prediction of over 500,000 deaths in this nation of nearly 70 million.

Yet the next day, March 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was his cheery self. He joked that he was still shaking hands with everyone, including at a hospital treating coronavirus patients.

“Our country remains extremely well prepared,” Johnson said as Italy reached 79 deaths. “We already have a fantastic NHS,” the national public health service, “fantastic testing systems and fantastic surveillance of the spread of disease.”

Alongside him at the Downing Street press conference was Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser and himself an epidemiologist. Whitty passed on the modelling committee’s broad conclusions, including the prediction of a possible 80 per cent infection rate and the consequent deaths.

But he played them down, saying the number of people who would be infected was probably “a lot lower” and coming up with a total was “largely speculative”.

The upbeat tone of that briefing stood in sharp contrast with the growing unease of many of the government’s scientific advisers behind the scenes. They were already convinced that Britain was on the brink of a disastrous outbreak, a Reuters investigation has found.

Interviews with more than 20 British scientists, key officials and senior sources in Johnson’s Conservative Party, and a study of minutes of advisory committee meetings and public testimony and documents, show how these scientific advisers concluded early the virus could be devastating.

But the interviews and documents also reveal that for more than two months, the scientists whose advice guided Downing Street did not clearly signal their worsening fears to the public or the government. Until March 12, the risk level, set by the government’s top medical advisers on the recommendation of the scientists, remained at “moderate”, suggesting only the possibility of a wider outbreak.

“You know, there’s a small little cadre of people in the middle, who absolutely did realise what was going on, and likely to happen,” said John Edmunds, a professor of infectious disease modelling and a key adviser to the government, known for his work on tracking
Ebola. Edmunds was among those who did call on the government to elevate the warning level earlier.


From the outset, said Edmunds, work by scientists had shown that, with only limited interventions, the virus would trigger an “overwhelming epidemic” in which
Britain’s health service was not going “to get anywhere near being able to cope with it. That was clear from the beginning.”

But he said: “I do think there’s a bit of a worry in terms you don’t want to unnecessarily panic people.”

Johnson, who himself has sickened with the virus, moved more slowly than the leaders of many other prosperous countries to adopt a lockdown. He has been criticised for not moving more swiftly to organise mass tests and mobilise supplies of life-saving equipment and beds. Johnson was hospitalised on April 5 and  moved to intensive care the next day.


It is too soon to judge the ultimate soundness of Britain’s early response. If history concludes that it was lacking, then the criticism levelled at the prime minister may be that, rather than ignoring the advice of his scientific advisers, he failed to question their assumptions.

Interviews and records published so far suggest that the scientific committees that advised Johnson did not study, until mid-March, the option of the kind of stringent lockdown adopted early on in China, where the disease arose in December, and then followed by much of Europe and finally by Britain itself. The scientists’ reasoning: Britons, many of them assumed, simply wouldn’t accept such restrictions.

The British scientists were also mostly convinced – and many still are – that, once the new virus escaped China, quarantine measures would likely not succeed. Minutes of technical committees reviewed by Reuters indicate that almost no attention was paid to preparing a programme of mass testing.

Other minutes and interviews show Britain was following closely a well-laid plan to fight a flu pandemic – not this deadlier disease. The scientists involved, however, deny that the flu focus ultimately made much difference.

Now, as countries debate how to combat the virus, some experts here say, the lesson from the British experience may be that governments and scientists worldwide must increase the transparency of their planning so that their thinking and assumptions are open to challenge.

John Ashton, a clinician and former regional director of Public Health England, the government agency overseeing health care, said the government’s advisers took too narrow a view and hewed to limited assumptions.

They were too “narrowly drawn as scientists from a few institutions”, he said. Their handling of Covid-19, Ashton said, shows the need for a broader approach. “In the future we need a much wider group of independent advisers.”



Michael Cates, who succeeded Stephen Hawking as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, is leading an initiative by the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific body, to bring modellers in from other scientific disciplines to help understand the epidemic.

“Without faulting anyone so far, it’s vital, where there is such a lot at stake, to throw the maximum possible light on the methods, assumptions and data built into our understanding of how this epidemic will develop,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement that the government was delivering “a science-led action plan” to contain the outbreak. “As the public would expect, we regularly test our pandemic plans and what we learned from previous exercises has helped us to rapidly respond to Covid-19.”

A low risk to the public

When news came from China in January of a new infectious disease, Johnson had reason to believe his country was well prepared. It had some of the world’s best scientists and a well-drilled plan to deal with potentially lethal pandemics. Perhaps, some scientists say in hindsight, the plan made them slow to adapt.

For many years, the Cabinet Office – a collection of officials who act as the prime minister’s direct arm to run the government – took the threat of pandemics seriously. Presciently, it rated pandemics as the No 1 threat to the country, ahead of terrorism and financial crashes.

At the centre of planning was a small group of scientists, among them Edmunds. His research group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine runs one of the two computer modelling centres for epidemics that have mostly driven government policy. The other is at nearby Imperial College. Edmunds remembers that early in the outbreak, the data from China were sketchy, in the period “where the Chinese were trying to pretend that this wasn’t transmissible between humans”.

Edmunds and his colleague at Imperial, Neil Ferguson, were part of an alphabet soup of committees that fed advice into the Cabinet Office machinery around the prime minister. Both were founders of the flu pandemic modelling committee, known as SPI-M, that produced the March 2 report warning of more than 500,000 deaths. This committee had met together for nearly 15 years.

Ferguson did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article.

Coronavirus: Decoding Covid-19

Edmunds and Ferguson were also part of NERVTAG, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group. Both too were members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, known as SAGE, that advises the government in times of crisis. SAGE reports directly to Johnson and the government’s main emergency committee, COBRA.

At first, when NERVTAG met on January 13, it studied information from China that there was “no evidence of significant human to human transmission” of the new virus, according to minutes of the meeting. The scientists agreed the risk to the UK population was “very low”.

The evidence soon changed, but this wasn’t reflected in the official threat level. By the end of January, scientists in China began releasing clinical data. Case studies published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, showed 17 per cent of the first 99 coronavirus cases needed critical care. Eleven patients died. Another Chinese study, in the same publication, warned starkly of a global spread and urged: “Preparedness plans and mitigation interventions should be readied for quick deployment globally.”

Edmunds recalled that “from about mid-January onwards, it was absolutely obvious that this was serious, very serious”. Graham Medley, a professor of infectious diseases modelling at the London School and chairman of SPI-M, agreed. He said that the committee was “clear that this was going to be big from the first meeting”. At the end of January, his committee moved into “wartime” mode, he said, reporting directly into SAGE.


Dr Jon Read, a senior lecturer in biostatistics at the University of Lancaster, also a member of SPI-M, said by the end of January it was apparent the virus had “pandemic potential” and that death rates for the elderly were brutal. “From my perspective within the sort of modelling community, everybody’s aware of this, and we’re saying that this is probably going to be pretty bad,” he said.

But the scientists did not articulate their fears forcefully to the government, minutes of committee meetings reveal.

On January 21, scientists on NERVTAG endorsed the elevation of the British risk warning from Covid-19 from “very low” to “low”. SAGE met formally for the first time the following day about the coronavirus threat. So did COBRA, which was chaired by
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who would contract the virus himself in late March. He told reporters after the meeting: “The clinical advice is that the risk to the public remains low.”

In response to questions from Reuters, the government’s Department of Health declined to clarify how the risk levels are defined or what action, if any, they trigger. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “Increasing the risk level in the UK is a belt and braces measure which allows the government to plan for all future eventualities.”

Two days later, China put the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began, into a complete lockdown. Hubei, the surrounding province, would follow. But already, 17 passenger flights had flown directly from Wuhan to Britain since the start of 2020, and 614 flights from the whole of China, according to FlightRadar24, a flight-tracking service. That meant thousands of Chinese, some of them potential carriers, had come to Britain. On April 5, scientific adviser Ferguson said he estimated only one-third of infected people reaching Britain had been detected.

As they watched China impose its lockdown, the British scientists assumed that such drastic actions would never be acceptable in a democracy like the UK. Among those modelling the outbreak, such stringent countermeasures were not, at first, examined.

“We had milder interventions in place,” said Edmunds, because no one thought it would be acceptable politically “to shut the country down”. He added: “We did not model it because it did not seem to be on the agenda. And Imperial (College) did not look at it either.” The NERVTAG committee agreed, noting in its minutes that tough measures in the short-term would be pointless, as they “would only delay the UK outbreak, not prevent it”.

That limited approach mirrored Britain’s long-standing pandemic flu strategy. The Department of Health declined a request from Reuters for a copy of its updated pandemic plan, without providing a reason.

But a copy of the 2011 “UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011”, which a spokesman said was still relevant, stated the “working presumption will be that government will not impose any such restrictions.

The emphasis will instead be on encouraging all those who have symptoms to follow the advice to stay at home and avoid spreading their illness”.

Medical staff during a break in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital

 in London, where British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is 

undergoing treatment. Photo: Reuters

According to one senior Conservative Party politician, who was officially briefed as the crisis unfolded, the close involvement in the response to the coronavirus of the same scientific advisers and civil servants who drew up the flu plan may have created a “cognitive bias”.

“We had in our minds that Covid-19 was a nasty flu and needed to be treated as such,” he said. “The implication was it was a disease that could not be stopped and that it was ultimately not that deadly.”

While Britain was prepared to fight the flu, places in Asia like China, Hong Kong,
Singapore and South Korea had built their pandemic plans with lessons learned from fighting the more lethal Sars outbreak that began in 2002, he said. SARS had a fatality rate of up to 14 per cent. As a result, these countries, he said, were more ready to resort to widespread testing, lockdowns and other draconian measures to keep their citizens from spreading the virus.

Scientists involved in the British response disagree that following the government’s flu plan clouded their thinking or influenced the outbreak’s course. The plan had a “reasonable worst case” scenario as devastating as the worst predictions for Covid-19, they note.

Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the SPI-M committee, said Covid-19 did behave differently than an expected pandemic flu – for example school closures proved to be far less effective in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. But, broadly, “the government has been consistently responsive to changing facts”.

By the end of January, the government’s chief medical adviser, Whitty, was explaining to politicians in private, according to at least two people who spoke to him, that if the virus escaped China, it would in time infect the great majority of people in Britain. It could only be slowed down, not stopped. On January 30, the government raised the threat level to “moderate” from “low”.

The country’s medical officers “consider it prudent for our governments to escalate planning and preparation in case of a more widespread outbreak”, a statement said at the time. Whitty did not respond to questions from Reuters for this article.

A time to prepare

On the evening of January 31, Johnson sat before a fireplace in 10 Downing Street and told the nation, in a televised address: “This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.”

He was talking of finally delivering Brexit, or what he called “this recaptured sovereignty”. Until that moment, Johnson’s premiership had been utterly absorbed by delivering on that challenge.

With Brexit done, Johnson had the chance to focus on other matters the following month, among them the emerging virus threat. But leaving the European Union had a consequence.

Between February 13 and March 30, Britain missed a total of eight conference calls or meetings about the coronavirus between EU heads of state or health ministers – meetings that Britain was still entitled to join. Although Britain did later make an arrangement to attend lower-level meetings of officials, it had missed a deadline to participate in a common purchase scheme for ventilators, to which it was invited.

Ventilators, vitally important to treating the direst cases of Covid-19, have fallen into short supply globally. Johnson’s spokesman blamed an administrative error.

A Downing Street aide said that from around the end of January, Johnson concentrated his attention increasingly on the coronavirus threat, receiving “very frequent” updates at least once per day from mid February, either in person or via a daily dashboard of cases.

In the medical and scientific world, there was growing concern about the threat of the virus to Britain. A report from Exeter University, published on February 12, warned a British outbreak could peak within four months and, without mitigation, infect 45 million people.

That worried Rahuldeb Sarkar, a consultant doctor in respiratory medicine and critical care in the county of Kent, who foresaw that intensive care beds could be swamped. Even if disease transmission was reduced by half, he wrote in a report aimed at clinicians and actuaries in mid-February, a coronavirus outbreak in Britain would “have a chance of overwhelming the system”.

With Whitty stating in a BBC interview on February 13 that a British outbreak was still an “if, not a when”. Richard Horton, a medical doctor and editor of The Lancet, said the government and public health service wasted an opportunity that month to prepare quarantine restriction measures and a programme of mass tests, and procure resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for expanded intensive care.


Calling the lost chance a “national scandal” in a later editorial, he would testify to parliament about a mismatch between “the urgent warning that was coming from the frontline in China” and the “somewhat pedestrian evaluation” of the threat from the scientific advice to the government.

After developing a test for the new virus by January 10, health officials adopted a centralised approach to its deployment, initially assigning a single public laboratory in north London to perform the tests. But, according to later government statements, there was no wider plan envisaged to make use of hundreds of laboratories across the country, both public and private, that could have been recruited.

According to emails and more than a dozen scientists interviewed by Reuters, the government issued no requests to labs for help with staff or testing equipment until the middle of March, when many abruptly received requests to hand over nucleic acid extraction instruments, used in testing. An executive at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford said he could have carried out up to 1,000 tests per day from February. But the call never came.

“You would have thought that they would be bashing down the door,” said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. By April 5, Britain had carried out 195,524 tests, in contrast to at least 918,000 completed a week earlier in Germany.

Nor was there an effective effort to expand the supply of ventilators. The Department of Health said in a statement that the government started talking to manufacturers of ventilators about procuring extra supplies in February. But it was not until March 16, after it was clear supplies could run out, that Johnson launched an appeal to industry to help ramp up production.
Charles Bellm, managing director of Intersurgical, a global supplier of medical ventilation products based outside London, said he has been contacted by more than a dozen governments around the world, including
France, New Zealand and Indonesia. But there had been no contact from the British government. “I find it somewhat surprising, I have spoken to a lot of other governments,” he said.


Countering such criticism, Hancock, the health minister, said the government is on track to deliver about 10,000 more ventilators in the coming weeks. One reason Britain was behind some countries on testing, he said, was the absence of a large diagnostics industry at the outbreak of the epidemic. “We did not have the scale.”

Game over


It was during the school half-term holidays in February that frontline doctor Nicky Longley began to realise that early efforts to contain the disease were likely doomed.


For weeks now, doctors and public health workers had been watching out for people with flu-like symptoms coming in from China. Longley, an infectious diseases consultant at London’s Hospital for Tropical Diseases, was part of a team that staffed a public health service helpline for those with symptoms. The plan, she said, had been to make all effort to catch every case and their contacts. And “to start with, it looked like it was working”.
But then, bad news. First, on Wednesday February 19, came the shock news from Iran of two deaths. Then, on Friday the 21st, came a death in Italy and a bloom of cases in Lombardy and Veneto regions. Britain has close links to both countries. Thousands of Britons were holidaying in
Italy that week.


“I don’t think anybody really foresaw what was happening in Italy,” Longley said. “And I think, the minute everybody saw that, we thought: ‘This is game over now’.”

Why Europe’s hospitals – among world’s best – are struggling with virus
1 Apr 2020

Until then, Longley said, everyone felt “there was a chance to stamp it out” even though most were sceptical it could be done long-term. But after
Iran and Italy, it was obvious containment would not work.


The contact tracing continued for a while. But as the cases in London built up, and the volume of calls to the helpline mushroomed, the priority began to shift to clinical care of the serious cases. “At a certain point you have to make a decision about where you put your efforts as a workforce.”


Edmunds noted that Iran and Italy had hardly reported a case until that point. “And then, all of sudden you had deaths recorded.” There was a rule of thumb that, in an outbreak’s early stages, for each death there were probably 1,000 cases in a community. “And so it was quite clear that there were at least thousands of cases in Italy, possibly tens of thousands of cases in Italy right then.”


Amid the dreadful news from Italy, the scientists at NERVTAG convened by phone on that Friday, February 21. But they decided to recommend keeping the threat level at “moderate”, where it had sat since January 30.


The minutes don’t give a detailed explanation of the decision. Edmunds, who had technical difficulties and could not be heard on the call, emailed afterwards to ask the warning to be elevated to “high”, the minutes revealed. But the warning level remained lower. It’s unclear why.


“I just thought, are we still, we still thinking that it’s mild or something? It definitely isn’t, you know,” said Edmunds.


A spokesman for the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, did not directly respond to Reuters questions about the threat level. Asked whether, with hindsight, the scientists’ approach was the right one, the spokesperson said in a statement that “SAGE and advisers provide advice, while ministers and the government make decisions”.

Herd Immunity

On Sunday, March 1, Ferguson, Edmunds and other advisers spent the day with NHS public health service experts trying to work out how many hospital beds and other key resources would be needed as the outbreak exploded. By now, Italian data was showing that a tenth of all infected patients needed intensive care.

The following day, pandemic modelling committee SPI-M produced its “consensus report” that warned the coronavirus was now transmitting freely in Britain. That Thursday, March 5, the first death in Britain was announced. Italy, which reached 827 deaths by March 11, ordered a national lockdown. Spain and France prepared to follow suit.

Johnson held out against stringent measures, saying he was following the advice of the government’s scientists. He asserted on March 9: “We are doing everything we can to combat this outbreak, based on the very latest scientific and medical advice.”

Indeed, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, had recommended that day, with no dissension recorded in its summary, that Britain reject a China-style lockdown. SAGE decided that “implementing a subset of measures would be ideal”, according to a record of its conclusions. Tougher measures could create a “large second epidemic wave once the measures were lifted”, SAGE said.

On March 12 came a bombshell for the British public. Whitty, the chief medical officer, announced Britain had moved the threat to British citizens from “moderate” to “high”. And he said the country had moved from trying to contain the disease to trying to slow its spread. New cases were not going to be tracked at all.

“It is no longer necessary for us to identify every case,” he said. Only hospital cases would, in future, be tested for the virus. What had been an undisclosed policy was in the open: beyond a certain point, attempts to completely extinguish the virus would stop.

The same day, putting aside his jokey self, Johnson made a speech in Downing Street, flanked by two Union Jacks and evoking the spirit of Winston Churchill’s “darkest hour” address. He warned: “I must level with you, level with the British public – more families, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

For most Britons, it came as a shock. Several of the next day’s newspapers splashed Johnson’s words on their front pages.

Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, who chaired SAGE, said in a BBC interview on March 13 that the plan was to simply control the pace of infection. The government had, for now, rejected what he called “eye-catching measures” like stopping mass gatherings such as football games or closing schools.

The “aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not to suppress it completely”. Most people would get the virus mildly, and this would build up “herd immunity” which, in time, would stop the disease’s progress.

But by now, the country was rebelling. Major institutions decided to close. After players began to get infected, the professional football leagues suspended their games. As Johnson still refused to close schools and ban mass gatherings, the Daily Mirror’s banner headline, summing up a widespread feeling, asked on March 13: “Is It Enough?”

The catalyst for a policy reversal came on March 16 with the publication of a report by Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College team. It predicted that, unconstrained, the virus could kill 510,000 people. Even the government’s “mitigation” approach could lead to 250,000 deaths and intensive care units being overwhelmed at least eight times over.

Imperial’s prediction of over half a million deaths was no different from the report by the government’s own pandemic modelling committee two weeks earlier.

Yet it helped trigger a policy turnaround, both in London and in Washington, culminating seven days later in Johnson announcing a full lockdown of Britain. The report also jarred the US administration into tougher measures to slow the virus’ spread.

Ferguson was now in isolation himself after catching the virus. Testifying by video link to a committee in Parliament, he explained why he and other scientific advisers had shifted from advocating partial social-distancing measures to warning that without a rigorous shutdown, the NHS would be overwhelmed. The reason, he said, lay in data coming out of Italy that showed large numbers of patients required critical care.

“The revision was that, basically, estimates of the proportion of patients requiring invasive ventilation, mechanical ventilation, which is only done in a critical care unit, roughly doubled,” he said.

Edmunds had a different explanation for the policy shift.

What allowed Britain to alter course, said Edmunds, was a lockdown in Italy that “opened up the policy space” coupled with new data. First came a paper by Edmunds’ own London School team that examined intermittent lockdowns, sent to the modelling committee on March 11 and validated by Edinburgh University. Ferguson’s revised Imperial research followed.

Woolhouse, the Edinburgh professor, confirmed the sequence.

Edmunds said these new studies together had demonstrated that if the British government imposed a lengthy period of tougher measures, perhaps relaxed periodically, then the size of the epidemic could be substantially reduced.

Still, without a vaccine or effective treatments, it’s going to be hard to avoid a substantial part of the British population getting infected, said Edmunds. “Until you get to a vaccine, there is no way of getting out of this without certainly tens of thousands of deaths,” he said. “And probably more than that.”

Now subject to intense public scrutiny, the modelling teams at universities across Britain continue to work on different scenarios for how the world can escape the virus’s clutches. According to Medley, the chairman of the SPI-M pandemic modelling committee, no one now doubts, for all the initial reservations, that a lockdown was essential in Britain.

Medley added: “At the moment we don’t know what’s going to happen in six months. All we know is that unless we stop transmission now, the health service will collapse. Yep, that’s the only thing we know for sure.”

---30---

White House faces heightened scrutiny over media reports of coronavirus intelligence in November

Media reports say US intelligence started tracking an illness in China in November
The National Centre for Medical Intelligence denies the existence of a coronavirus-related assessment that month


Robert Delaney


Published: 6:14am, 10 Apr, 2020




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US President Donald Trump arrives at a coronavirus task force news conference at the White House in Washington on Wednesday. Photo: Bloomberg

US media reports that American intelligence officials had started tracking in November a rapidly spreading illness in China – now known as the Covid-19 pandemic – have raised questions about what and when the White House knew about the gathering threat.

CNN and ABC reported on Wednesday that an agency of the US defence department’s intelligence arm began holding meetings about the illness in China more than a month before Beijing notified the World Health Organisation on December 31 of the spreading contagion.

The National Centre for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) tracked details of the apparent epidemic through “analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images,” according to ABC.

The NCMI issued a rare public statement just hours after the ABC and CNN reports, denying the reported time frame.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” NCMI director Colonel R. Shane Day said in a statement.

“In the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct,” Day said. “No such NCMI product exists.”

One source close to the US intelligence community in Washington confirmed to the Post that the November time frame was not accurate.


However, other details of the US media reports comport more closely with the timeline of when US President Donald Trump’s administration might have known about the threat and began to take the matter seriously, an issue that has been frequently questioned during the daily White House coronavirus task force briefings.

This week, The New York Times and Axios reported details of memos, written and circulated through the White House by Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, beginning in late January, when the president was still playing down the coronavirus threat. One of the memos, dated January 29 warned of a “full-blown Covid-19 pandemic”.

The ABC report added that the NCMI meetings drew in the White House’s National Security Council in December and eventually reached US President Donald Trump’s desk sometime in early January. CNN said the alert was raised in a White House daily intelligence briefing on January 3.

The gravity of the outbreak was apparent to other governments in region by that time.

For example, the Post wrote about China’s alert to the WHO on January 1. Airports in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan had begun tightening fever surveillance of arriving passengers by January 3 to prevent what was happening in China from infecting their populations.

A week later, a Chinese team in Shanghai published the gene sequence for Sars-CoV-2 on an open online platform on January 11.

With the exception of Trump’s decision on January 31 to bar entry to the US by foreigners who had recently travelled to China, Trump and other senior members of his administration continued to play down the threat throughout January and February despite evidence that the disease was spreading in several US cities including New York.

Trump denied that he had seen the Navarro memo, saying in a press briefing on Monday that he had learned of them a few days earlier.

Asked on Wednesday about the ABC report, he said: “When I learned about the gravity of it was sometime just prior to closing the country to China.”

“And when we closed up the flights coming in from China and various other elements and then, as you know, we closed up to Europe, so I don’t know exactly, but I’d like to see the information,” he said.

Additional reporting by Mark Magnier

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief. He spent 11 years in China as a language student and correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires and Bloomberg, and continued covering the country as a correspondent and an academic after leaving. His debut novel, The Wounded Muse, draws on actual events that played out in Beijing while he lived there.

Signs that coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan earlier than thought, study finds

Retrospective look at patient samples finds slow build of coronavirus

Nine patients came from six Wuhan districts, further evidence of wider person-to-person infection


Zhuang Pinghui SCMP in Beijing Published: 9 Apr, 2020

Electron microscope image by the US National Institutes of Health reveals the virus that causes Covid-19. Photo: AP

A look back at samples of patients with flu-like symptoms in the central Chinese city of Wuhan has uncovered signs of
coronavirus outbreaks in the wider community in early January – well before the public was even told the pathogen was contagious.
The coronavirus emerged in late December as a mysterious respiratory infection in dozens of patients, many of them linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city.

Local health authorities initially thought the patients were sickened through exposure to a common infection source in the market and ruled out the pathogen as contagious until January 20.

It is still unclear whether the wholesale market was the source of the outbreak or a breeding ground for the virus to spread among more people.

The virus has since swept across the planet and infected 1.4 million people, killing more than 80,000.

The lockdown in Wuhan is officially lifted, but life is still far from normal

Researchers with the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention looked at patient samples from October 6 until January 21 to search for undetected cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
They analysed 640 throat swabs collected from young and adult patients with influenza-like illnesses – all outpatients with a sudden onset of a fever higher than 38 degrees Celsius and a cough or sore throat.

Nine adult samples tested positive for the Sars-CoV-2, the previously unknown coronavirus. One of 40 samples taken from two Wuhan hospitals on January 4 tested positive. There were three positive swabs among samples taken the next week and five the following week.

“Although the weekly sample size was small, it seems that Covid-19 was gradually expanding among the influenza-like illness cases during January,” the researchers, led by Liu Manqing, wrote in a paper published in Nature Microbiology on Tuesday.

“Interestingly, the nine patients with Covid-19 came from six different districts of the Wuhan metropolitan and surrounding areas, which provided additional evidence for community transmission in this region.”

Deadly coronavirus may not have originated in Wuhan seafood market, Chinese scientists say

The city imposed an unprecedented lockdown to curb the spread of the virus on January 23.
The lockdown was lifted on Wednesday but measures are still in place inside the city to prevent further outbreaks.

Wuhan has been monitoring influenza-like illnesses and their causes since 2005 as part of the national influenza surveillance network.

Two hospitals from the network, the Children’s Hospital of Wuhan and Wuhan No 1 Hospital – a major general hospital with more than 2 million outpatient visits per year – were chosen for the study.

The surveillance in Wuhan was suspended in late January because CDC labs and hospitals concentrated instead on handling the overwhelming medical needs created by Covid-19.

Thousands of covert coronavirus cases unreported in central Chinese city of Wuhan, study says

Such retrospective analysis has also been conducted in other parts of China, according to a report by the WHO-China Joint Mission, after a group of Chinese and foreign experts visited China for eight days in February.

In the southern province of Guangdong, from January 1 to 14 only one of more than 15,000 influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infection samples tested positive for the new coronavirus.

In one hospital in Beijing, there were no Covid-19 positive samples among 1,910 collected from January 28, 2019, to February 13, 2020.

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Coronavirus: Nature magazine apologizes for reports linking Covid-19 with China

Scientific journal admits it ‘was an error on our part’ to erroneously link the pathogen with Wuhan and China
‘It would be tragic if stigma, fuelled by the coronavirus, led Asia’s young people to retreat from international campuses,’ it says


Sarah Zheng Published: 9 Apr, 2020 SCMP

Nature magazine said that continuing to associate a virus with a specific place is irresponsible and needs to stop. Photo: AFP

British scientific journal Nature has apologised for associating  Covid-19 with China in its reporting, saying that early coverage of the global health crisis by itself and other media had led to racist attacks on people of Asian descent around the world.

In an article published on Tuesday, the publication said that the World Health Organisation’s announcement on February 11 that the official name for the pneumonia-like virus would be Covid-19 had been an implicit reminder to “those who had erroneously been associating the virus with Wuhan and with China in their news coverage – including Nature”.

“That we did so was an error on our part, for which we take responsibility and apologise,” it said.

“It’s clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs – for example, on their health and livelihoods.”

The article said that while it had been common for viral diseases to be associated with the areas in which outbreaks had occurred – like Middle East respiratory syndrome and the Zika virus, which was named after a Ugandan forest – the WHO had introduced guidelines in 2015 to reduce the negative impact of such labelling on people from those areas.

The impact of a stigmatised virus name would have “worrying implications” for students from China and other countries in Asia, “hurting the diversity of university campuses and diversity of points of view in academia”, it said.

“It would be tragic if stigma, fuelled by the coronavirus, led Asia’s young people to retreat from international campuses, curtailing their own education, reducing their own and others’ opportunities and leaving research worse off – just when the world is relying on it to find a way out,” it said. “Coronavirus stigma must stop – now.”

Beijing has strongly objected to any links between Covid-19 and China, saying that the origin of the coronavirus remains unknown and that establishing where it came from should be left to the scientific community and not be used as a political football.

US President Donald Trump repeatedly used the term “Chinese virus” in relation to the health crisis before dropping it last month after acknowledging there had been a rise in “nasty language” directed at the Asian-American community.

Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bonsolaro, son of the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has said that the coronavirus was China’s fault.

Since the coronavirus outbreak began at the end of last year there has been an increase in reported racist abuse of people of Asian descent around the world, including in one case, three members of an Asian family in Texas, including two children, aged six and two, being stabbed.

“As countries struggle to control the spread of the new coronavirus, a minority of politicians are sticking with the outdated script,” the Nature report said.

“Continuing to associate a virus and the disease it causes with a specific place is irresponsible and needs to stop.”

---30---

The first Opium war left an indelible scar on China.

 The mainland lost Hong Kong and was forced to open up trade to foreigners.

In the 18th century, foreign trade with China was limited to Canton, modern-day Guangzhou. Foreigners were confined to towns outside of Canton, known as the '13 Factories', or Hongs (not really factories). British trade was run by the East India Trading Company; Chinese trade was dominated by the Hongs.

Here is a timeline of what happened:

1820 - Import of opium begins in earnest

China is willing to provide Britain with tea and other luxury goods, but is unwilling to accept anything but silver as payment. The British have to import silver from Europe or Mexico. They run into a trade deficit and seek ways to counter-trade. They find a solution in an Indian narcotic: opium. In the next few years, the amount of opium imported to China increases dramatically. Tensions arise because, in China, opium can only be used as a medicine. It has been banned as a recreational drug for more than 100 years.

April 1839 - Lin Zexu is sent to Canton and 20,000 chests of opium are burnt

Emperor Daoguang sends government official Lin Zexu to Canton. He has already cracked down on the use of opium in Hubei and now focuses on Canton. Lin asks the British to surrender all their opium and sign an agreement to stop trading in the drug. Charles Elliot, the British superintendent of trade, agrees and promises the merchants they will be compensated by the British government. But he has no authority to sign the bond, and he wants the British to be allowed to trade along the eastern coast of China and not be confined to Canton. He threatens to stop trade until a compromise is reached. But some traders who are not dealing in opium sign the deal.

July 1839 - The Kowloon Incident

A crew of American and British sailors arrives in Kowloon in search of provisions. They get drunk on rice wine and kill a man. Lin demands that the sailors be tried in a Chinese court, citing a Swiss law that gave them jurisdiction over all foreigners. Elliot refuses and delays their sentencing, eventually giving them prison terms that were never to be met. Tensions increase.


1839 - The first shots

One British merchant ship that has lost faith in Elliot ignores the ban. Elliot blockades the Pearl River. A second ship tries to run the blockade. British ships chase after it and fire the first shots of what will become the Opium war. The Chinese navy tries to protect the merchant ship, which is not trading in opium, and a battle ensues. The Chinese suffer many losses; the British only one injury. This is the first battle of Chuenpee.


April 1840 - Motion to go to war passed

The British government, after much delay and debate, narrowly passes a motion for war against China. The war is funded by the government and seeks to force China to open up trade along the eastern coast.


Summer 1840 - The occupation of Zhoushan and first talks of Hong Kong's cession

British forces gather off the coast of Macau with Elliot and his cousin, George Elliot, in charge. The British occupy Zhoushan and its principal town Dinghai, fighting almost unopposed. Meanwhile, Lin has fallen from the emperor's favour.


January 1841 - Negotiations

Second battle of Cheunpee happens on January 17. Lin has been replaced with Imperial Commissioner Qishan who is eager to negotiate with the British. Elliot asks for seven million dollars over six years and several inland ports. Qishan agrees to give the British six million over 12 years, but rejects the possibility of inland ports. The British prepare for battle and Qishan reconsiders. They finally agree to the Treaty of Chuanbi which cedes Hong Kong Island and six million dollars to the British. This treaty is rejected by both governments. Fighting resumes along the eastern shore.


Summer 1842 - The Treaty of Nanking

British forces beat the Chinese right up to the Yangtze, and occupy Shanghai. The Chinese suffer many casualties and are forced to surrender. On August 29, the Treaty of Nanking is signed, five ports (Canton, Ziamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai) are opened and Hong Kong is ceded to the British.

---30---

Young American’s first-hand account of second opium war: bloody battles and ‘hospitable’ Chinese 

The journals of George Washington (Farley) Heard, who would go on to become chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, (HSBC) reveal what happened when he found himself caught between Anglo-French forces and Chinese defenders in 1859
Gillian Bickley 19 Apr, 2018 Post Magazine / Books

The Toey-Wan during the Second Battle of Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho River on June 25, 1859, in a lithograph by T.G. Dutton. Picture: courtesy of George W. H. Cautherley

The second opium war, 1856-60. When in 1856, the 1844 US-China Treaty of Wangxia expired, American envoy to China William Reed set about negotiating new terms of trade, permission for diplomatic residence in Beijing and the extension of religious freedom to Christians.

Following the eventual conclusion of these negotiations, in 1859, his successor, American minister John Ward, embarked in Hong Kong aboard the USS Powhatan destined for Beijing, accompanied by the hired steamer Toey-Wan, on a mission to ratify what had become known as the Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin).

George Washington (Farley) Heard. Picture: courtesy of Skinner, Inc.

Among those he took with him was George Washington (Farley) Heard. Ward had met Heard, an American of about 22 years of age, en route to Hong Kong from America and, having taken a liking to the young man, asked him to join the American Legation as an attaché.


Heard had been travelling east to join his uncle’s firm, Augustine Heard and Company, one of the two largest American trading companies in China from the 1840s to the 1870s. He would later manage the com­pany in Canton, and serve as the chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 1870.

At the same time as the American party was setting out from Hong Kong, an Anglo-French naval force began making its way north from Shanghai with newly appointed envoys for embassies in Beijing. But while the Americans – neutrals in the opium wars – were welcome, the British and French were less so.

When, towards the end of June 1859, the British began to remove barricades placed across the Peiho River by the Chinese to arrest their progress towards the capital, they came under attack. The second of three battles for the Taku Forts to take place during the second opium war ensued, an engagement that caused serious loss of British life and vessels, and which the Americans witnessed at close quarters.

Heard provided the following first-hand account of the battle in a journal he kept throughout his time with the legation, and now published by Proverse Hong Kong as Through American Eyes.

The USS Powhatan, circa 1859. Picture: courtesy of Gillian Bickley


USS “Powhatan” off Peiho
27 June 1859
On the 24th June, the “Toey-Wan” having on board Commodore Tattnall, Captain Pearson and a few of the officers of the ship – Mr Ward the Minister and Mr W[ard] his Secretary and the three interpreters, Mr Lurman and myself got under weigh at 8am to endeavour to communicate with the shore and send news of Mr W[ard]’s arrival and demand permission to proceed to Peking, there to ratify the Treaty of Tientsin [Tianjin].

Got over the bar and at 10am we were unfortunate enough, or as it turned out to be, fortunate enough to get hard aground on the mud at the entrance to the Peiho River which extends out at some distance from the shore and is bare at low water. We got on it at low high water and so we were high and dry at low tide.

When in this position the Admiral of the English sent a gunboat “Plover” 86 to our assistance with the exceedingly courteous offer – that if we couldn’t get off, to take the “86” and raise our flag on her and use her entirely as if she was an American ship. Before this, however, the tide had gone down so much it was found impossible to move her and Commodore Tattnall declined the amiable offer of the Admiral thinking he should be able to get off with the next flood.

At 2pm we sent on the barge with the Interpreters and Lieutenant Trenchard to find out whether there was anybody there of sufficient rank to communicate with.

The answer was negative. The party was received at the end of a jetty by about forty men, one of whom was spokesman. He said that there [are] very few men in the forts, no mandarin there even of the sixth rank (white button), that they had received orders from Peking not to allow any vessel to enter the river, and that they should be obliged to fire on anyone endeavouring to pass and break down the barriers.

We managed luckily to get off at about 8.30pm and we anchored outside the English ships, between the “Coromandel” and the junks which contained the English marines and their reserve forces of sailors and troops.

During the night, the first barrier was blown up by the English, who received a shot from the forts.

The barriers appeared to be three in number – the first: Iron stakes of this form connected with heavy chains, which was the one blown up by the English during the night of the 24th; the second barrier was of stakes; and the third, as I learned, was composed of heavy booms and logs chained securely together. Captain Wills swam up to it and found it a hundred and fifty foot wide and very strong. The forts were of this form and arrangement –

A sketch by George Washington (Farley) Heard, circa 1859. 

Picture: Baker Library, Harvard Business School


– seven in all – see over

Another sketch by Heard to illustrate the formation of the 

forts, circa 1859. Picture: Baker Library, Harvard Business School

At daylight the following morning the English began disposing of their forces. – Their ships outside the bar were:–

“Chesapeake” “Highflyer” “Magicienne”, “Fury”, “Assistance”, “Cruiser” and “Hesper”. The gunboats inside were:– “Kestrel” 69, “Janus” 76, “Plover” 86, “Banterer” 79, “Opossum” 94, “Forester” 87, “Lee” 82, “Starling” 93. In addition to these forces were the “Nimrod”, “Cormorant”, two large dispatch boats, and the “Coromandel” (the Admiral’s tender which was afterwards used as the Hospital ship).

The French had their gunboat with sixty-four men on board – the “Nosagari” in cooperation with the English forces.

The “Toey-Wan” remained at the same anchorage she had taken during the night. The gunboats all moved in towards the forts about 8am, with the exception of the “Coromandel” and the “Nosagari”. The Admiral Hope had transferred his flag to the “Plover” 86, and we saw him sitting amidships on a coil of rope going in ahead of everybody else. The gunboats soon got in near the forts, where some of them got aground and the rest anchored near them.

All the eight forts opened their fire at nearly the same time and they all seemed to direct their fire on the Admiral’s ship, which they distinguished by his square blue flag. The execution by the heavy guns of the forts was terrible

The “Coromandel” and “Nosagari” went in about noon and took up their position on the extreme left of the squadron, the “Nosagari” being inside of the “Coromandel”.

No movement was made till 2.30pm on either side, when the “Plover”, followed by the “Kestrel” and “Cormorant”, steamed up by the first barrier to the second and commenced pulling up the stakes. One had already been pulled out and the second one loosened when at 2.40pm the middle fort number three fired a heavy gun at the “Plover”. The fire was returned by the “Cormorant” and the cannonading became general throughout the forces on both sides. The forts discharged their guns almost as rapidly as the English and did great execution. All the eight forts opened their fire at nearly the same time and they all seemed to direct their fire on the Admiral’s ship, which they distinguished by his square blue flag.

The execution by the heavy guns of the forts was terrible. The men were twice swept away from their quarters on board the “Plover” and in less than an hour she only had three men left. The Admiral transferred his flag on board the “Opossum” 94 and she was terribly shot. Six men killed outright and many more severely wounded. He then went on board the “Cormorant”, where he remained till night. He himself was severely wounded in the beginning of the action but like a gallant fellow, as he is, refused to be carried below, but remained on deck among his men. The first shot fired from the forts took the head off the Captain of the “Plover” 86. [Rayson] his name was and a fine young sailor, as I ever saw. He came on board the “Toey-Wan” the day previous, when we were aground, to offer his assistance in the name of the Admiral.

Dark legacy of Britain’s opium wars still felt today amid fight against drug addiction and trafficking

We found we were just out of range of shot where we were at anchor and so we remained there. At about 4pm as we were sitting down to dinner, a young fellow from the Admiral’s ship, the “Plover”, at that time, came on board of the “Toey-Wan”, told us the state of the things, and asked us for the Admiral, to assist in towing up the reserve boats of the English. The tide and wind were both against them, and in rowing they would not have been able to reach the scene of battle for a great while. The boats were lying just astern of us and [we?] were hanging on to the junks.

Commodore Tattnall consulted with Mr Ward, and both concluded to do it, thinking it a course which met with their “unqualified approbation”. The Commodore then ordered us to the junks – I mean the US Legation to go to the junks – saying a steamer about to tow up the English boats into the middle of the fire was not the proper place for Mr Ward when the English and French Ministers were both aboard their respective vessels ten miles off.

As the order was peremptory we were obliged to obey and the barge pulled us on board.

They paddled up to the “Cormorant” on the debris of the boat and found the Admiral lying on the deck and heads, arms and legs lying round in every direction, and the decks streaming with blood

The “Toey-Wan” then towed up the boats of the English and anchored herself between the “Nosagari” and the “Coromandel”, both of whom were firing very rapidly. The “Toey-Wan” remained there three-quarters of an hour and while in that position the Commodore went to pay a visit to the Admiral to offer his sympathy to a wounded brother officer, who was severely wounded and who was suffering a mortifying defeat. He pulled up in the middle of one of the hottest fires that ever came from the forts, and when nearly alongside of the “Cormorant”, the ship on which the Admiral was at the time, a shot struck his boat, knocking the stern sheets out of it, throwing the Commodore and Lieutenant Trenchard out of their seats and killing the coxswain. They paddled up to the “Cormorant” on the debris of the boat and found the Admiral lying on the deck and heads, arms and legs lying round in every direction, and the decks streaming with blood.

While the Commodore was on board, a lieutenant was brought up dead and laid on deck and two men were struck down at a gun. An English boat came alongside at this time and the officer in charge offered to take the Commodore and his barge’s crew back to the “Toey-Wan”. Three of the barge’s crew could not be found in the excitement: they came back to the “Toey-Wan” in the middle of the night, and when asked where they had been they replied that –

“They found themselves in the way and they thought their only way to get out of the way was to go to the guns”.

The Toey-Wan during the Second Battle of Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho River on June 25, 1859, in a lithograph by T.G. Dutton. Picture: courtesy of George W. H. Cautherley


By this time the fire from the forts had slackened considerably and the English determined to bring out all their boats, land a storming party, and endeavour to carry them. For this purpose two gunboats, the “Opossum” and another came out of the fire as did the “Toey-Wan” for the rest of the boats.


Mr Ward determined to remain no longer on the junk but get back to the “Toey-Wan” and go in to danger with her, and of course we (i.e. young Ward, Lurman and me) determined to go too. Mr Ward went to the “Toey-Wan” in the boat of Captain Wills of the “Chesapeake”. The Interpreters remained on the junks. Young W[ard], Lurman and myself all got on the “Opossum” at first, but afterwards went to the “Toey-Wan” in a boat sent for us.


We had about a hundred marines on board the “Toey-Wan”.


As we approached the forts, the firing did not seem to increase, and nearly everybody seemed to think an easy victory would be gained by the stormers.


The boats all collected within the lee of the ships and giving three cheers pulled in to land.

Then it seemed as if a flame burst out all over the eight forts, so rapid was the fire, and such execution it made. We could see the shot strike in and around the boats in every direction, and every shot took effect. Whole rows of poor fellows were mowed down at a time. One boat was cut in two by a shot and many men killed in her and the rest were picked up by the other boats.

The “Nimrod” and the gunboats were firing shot and shell, and rockets to protect the stormers and cover their landing. The red sun was just going down behind the middle fort, as they landed, and it was a wild-looking sight. The whistling of the small balls, the fierce roar of the heavy ones, and the bursting of the shell and rockets made the little “Toey-Wan” tremble all over. A great many shots struck all about the “Toey” but not one hit the boat itself. One shot passed between the awning and the deck between Mr Ward and myself and fell into the water within ten or thirteen feet of her counter and a great many fell between us and the Frenchman, who was anchored on our right.

Then it seemed as if a flame burst out all over the eight forts, so rapid was the fire, and such execution it made [...] One boat was cut in two by a shot and many men killed in her

As we found afterwards the boats of the storming party could not approach near the shore as the water was so shallow, and as soon as the boats touched, a good many of the men jumped out and sank in up [to] their necks in the mud and water, in which position several were drowned before they could extricate themselves. Those who got to the shore wet their powder so none of them could return a shot and the fire from the forts was so fatal that a great many were killed. It is estimated that a hundred men were lost during the landing alone.

When they got to the shore, they found there was a deep ditch, through which they had to wade, waist deep – then a little hard mud, then another ditch filled with mud and water, that could only be passed in swimming, and then there was a third ditch filled with mud and water, and sharp iron spikes and lances. Very few of the men got up to the walls of the forts, which were about twenty-five foot high, and swarming with men, who fired at them with rifles, gingalls [a type of gun], and arrows, which were very long and barbed in such a manner that when the arrow entered the flesh, the head detached itself and remained in the wound.

The few men who succeeded in getting to the walls tried to scale them with ladders but the ladders broke and they found there was no safety but in flight. Captains Commerell of the “Nimrod” and Heath of the “Assistance” told me that when they were at the foot of the walls they had to lie close in under them, and as soon as a head was seen, the Chinese sent a bullet through it – that the Chinese were armed with real Minie Rifles, [and] were large men wearing fur caps. Captain Commerell, who was in the Crimea, says he repeatedly heard the Russian word for “powder” cried within the walls, and a good many of the marines who were in the same position heard the same word used. Several men declare they heard in good English, “Why in the devil don’t you pass that powder up?”

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Whether this latter was the effect of their imagination or not I don’t know, but I am inclined to believe what Captain Commerell says. I think there were other men than Chinamen inside the walls probably some runaway sailors or mercenary Russians. They understood the science of gunnery too well not to have been trained to their guns, and they stood to them well. The Chinese burnt blue lights etc. as soon as it was dark and shot down the men by their lights.

They began to come off from the shore about 10pm and kept coming off all night. Several boats came to the “Toey-Wan”, where the crews were supplied with food and shelter; other boats made fast to her stern and lay there all night.

The “Nimrod” and the “Coromandel” anchored close by us during the night. The firing from the forts continued at intervals all night, and during the day. In the morning we did all we could to assist the English, in getting their wounded off etc., etc. We could see in the morning the Chinese walking about on the beach in front of the forts cutting off the heads of the dead and wounded; others were picking up the swords, guns and pistols etc. that were lying about on the beach.

We came out to ships about 11am, towing out two large launches filled with wounded and bringing out the first news of the battle to the English and French Ministers.

Hart the Commodore’s Coxswain was buried in the evening: and it was a solemn one after the scenes we had passed through.

An engraving of the attack by Anglo-French forces on the Chinese fortifications at the mouth of the Peiho River, on June 24 and 25, 1859. Picture: courtesy of George W. H. Cautherley

USS “Powhatan” off Peiho River 29 June 1859

The Chinese had told us, when we sent our boat on shore [on] the 24th, that the real Peiho River was ten miles farther North. The Commodore determined to send the “Toey-Wan” up there to see if there was a river and endeavour to communicate with the authorities, and leave a letter from Mr Ward to the Governor General of this Province to announce his arrival “dans ces parages” [in this area].

I got leave to accompany the party which consisted of Messrs W.W. Ward, Martin, Aitchison, and Dr Williams and Lieutenant Habersham. It was sort of a Men of Wars cruise “there and back again”.

We left the “Powhatan” at 10.30am and got under weigh at 11.30. It was a beautiful day though rather windy and rough. Our course was North about five knots an hour and we carried on this course five fathoms of water as far as six miles from the “Powhatan”. The flood tides in this part of the Gulf of Pechelee sets to the North outside the bar. [The] Wind was North North West.

A good many large junks were seen about four miles North of the forts at the mouth of the Peiho, and large piles of salt dotted the shore in every direction. The shore was very low and there seemed to be a dike along the shore as we could see in almost every part of it junk masts above the land.

When our party told the Chinese they were from the United States of America, the Chinese asked them where it was, saying they had never heard of that country

The water shoaled very gradually, but as we stood into toward land we got to ten foot water where we anchored to take bearings etc. We were about three to four miles from shore, and could distinctly see a large entrance, the mouth of it crowded with junks’ masts, of which there was a whole forest. In the middle of the entrance there were two islands apparently, one of which was very thickly covered with houses and the other entirely covered by an immense square fort, made of the same material as those at the mouth of the Peiho – mud – junks’ masts all round, hulls down out of sight. –

On the left bank of the entrance as you approach it from the sea, was a large round fort with long wings extending away back out of sight, and seemingly connecting with another square fort also on the left bank. It looked like a very strongly fortified place and a place too of much importance if one may judge from the great number of junks, in and around the entrance. Behind the fort was a very large village containing several Joss houses whose peaked roofs stand above the surrounding houses. There were a number of tall trees resembling poplars near the village.

Country looked fertile and populous – vast number of junks. We were near enough the forts to see men at work on the tops of the bastions with our glasses (binoculars or telescope).

After getting bearings of the forts etc. we stood to the Northward, and found ourselves in a bight of the coast, and at the water’s edge were a number of villages. I counted six of them in sight and near us at the same time. [The] country looked fertile and apparently swarming with population. We anchored in two fathoms about two and a half miles from one of them and sent an armed boat in, with Messrs Merchant, midshipman, Martin, Interpreter, and Ward, Secretary of Legation.

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As they approached the shore the Chinese streamed out of the village; men, women and children running as fast as they could go. Three junks were anchored near shore, and as the boat got near them, their crews jumped out and waded and swam ashore.

The boat soon grounded and as the gentlemen in it couldn’t get the boat in further, got into the water to wade ashore. The crew remained in the boat. As the three got near the shore three-quarters of a mile from their boat, two carriages drawn by four horses each started off full gallop, from the village – and everyone was in full flight. However, two or three men remained and came down to meet the party. They were very large men, two of them almost giants – there were soon about twenty collected round their party and the interpreter found no one of them could read (having different dialects, characters were often used to communicate).

Another man came down from the village who was one of the local authorities. He received the letter for the Governor General and then told the party that [there] were four thousand troops encamped in the vicinity and that a courier had gone off to call for their cavalry and advised them to run for their boat as fast as possible, saying that the villagers were all well disposed enough towards foreigners, but the soldiers were Tartars who recognized no distinction between foreign barbarians. The Chinese all called out to them to run fast – and so they did. Before they could get to their boat the shore seemed alive with cavalry two of whom chased our party in the water till they got up [to] their waists. They got to the boat safely but very much fatigued and pulled back to the “Toey-Wan”.

Two or three men remained and came down to meet the party. They were very large men, two of them almost giants – there were soon about twenty collected round their party and the interpreter found no one of them could read

When our party told the Chinese they were from the United States of America, the Chinese asked them where it was, saying they had never heard of that country.

This part of the country seemed very fertile indeed and there was a great number of inhabitants. A good many junks were seen standing to the Northward, and I saw one under full sail just behind the beach where our party went ashore. We could also [see] many masts over the land. There were not many trees to be seen, but a number of shrubs and bushes.

Returned to the “Powhatan” at 8.30pm.

An engraving of the attack by Anglo-French forces on the 

Chinese fortifications at the mouth of the Peiho River, on

 June 24 and 25, 1859. 

Picture: courtesy of George W. H. Cautherley


USS “Powhatan” Off Peiho River 4 July 1859

The “Glorious Fourth” – as they call it, and no doubt every village, town and city in the United States is ringing and shaking from bells, crackers, guns and cannon today. We are celebrating the day in a quiet manner enough. The American Ensign waves from each mast head, and the spanker gaff, and at noon we fired a salute of twenty-one big guns. This, together with a bottle of champagne at dinner, comprised our celebrations. All the English and French ships at the anchorage hoisted the American flag at the main mast head out of compliment to us and kept it there all day.

The English have been employed all the week in getting their gunboats off and in taking care of their wounded etc., etc. They had six boats ashore and sunk on Sunday morning the 26th. The “Lee” 82, “Plover” 86, “Starling” 93, “Kestrel” 69, “Haughty” 89, and the “Cormorant”.

They have succeeded in saving all but the “Lee”, “Plover” and “Cormorant” which they have destroyed. The forts have been firing on them all the week, and I understand have killed several more men.

The English estimate their loss at 452 – 87 killed, wounded 363 and missing [sic].

On the 2nd July the Chinese sent a junk with a letter from the Taoutai of the village, to announce that the letter given by our party to the men on the beach had been forwarded to the Governor General at Tientsin. The Taoutai sent another junk containing twenty sheep, twenty pigs, sixty ducks and chickens and 2,500 lbs of rice and flour and a great quantity of fruit etc.

The “Glorious Fourth” – as they call it, and no doubt every village, town and city in the United States is ringing and shaking from bells, crackers, guns and cannon today. We are celebrating the day in a quiet manner enough

USS “Powhatan” off Peiho River 7 July 1859

On the 5th July, two white button mandarins (sixth order) came off to the ship with an answer to Mr Ward’s letter, written by the Governor General – and inviting Mr Ward to an interview. Mr Ward has appointed tomorrow as the day and we are going on board the “Toey-Wan” this evening to stand in and so go in tomorrow morning.

The mandarins were shown all over the ship and they were apparently much pleased and astonished at the guns and machinery.

I went on board the “Chesapeake” last night with Lurman, Habersham and Semmes to make a visit and aid young Wish. –

“Fury” sailed on Monday 4th, “Du Chayla” and her tender, and “Assistance” on Tuesday 5th, “Magicienne” [on] Wednesday 6th. Mr Bruce and Rumbold came on board on Monday to see Mr Ward.

10.30pm
I went on board the “Toey-Wan” this afternoon at three with Messrs Wards, Martin, Lurman and Commodore Tattnall and Lieutenants Habersham and Trenchard. Got under weigh at 3.20pm, the “Powhatan” having got up her anchor, and following us into an anchorage nearer shore. Found a good anchorage for her in twenty-seven feet [of] water, and then we stood in towards land. Saw the forts and we anchored in two fathoms [of] water. Several junks were in sight two and a half miles from us, and we sent the boat to them. I went in her with some others. Rough water and we sailed very fast. Heard on board the first junk [that] there were several mandarins on board another one further in.

Went on board of her and found a blue button, crystal and white button mandarin on board with a numerous retinue. We went in the dirty little cabin where they spread several cushions etc. for us to sit on and they squatted down too. Passed round some delicious tea and some very nice little sponge cakes, which were very palatable as we were rather hungry. Then there was another kind of cake made of beans – it looked like brick dust and tasted very much like it too. One of them had a very small bottle filled with some kind of white snuff which he passed over to me. I tried it and found it rather agreeable – it was a powder that might have been composed of camphor and musk. The blue button mandarin had on a tunic, or whatever they call it, of blue navy cloth, very fine texture, and Mr Martin said it was Russian cloth, and that he [Martin] had bought it at Ningpo and cheaper than he could have done in America or Europe.

These Mandarins were as hospitable as possible and all smiles etc. – no allusion was made on either side to the battle of the 25th June

They called the American flag, the “flowery flag”, and said they should know us very well. They are going to send us a boat tomorrow, and they have buoyed the whole channel [plotting a safe path]. I have got a line of soundings from the anchorage of the “Toey-Wan” to the junks. They tell us there is 30 foot of water in shore under the batteries and that there is water communication from this place up to Tientsin. I don’t know the name of the place – but it’s the same place so strongly fortified we saw on the 29th June. We go in tomorrow in full uniform to an interview with the Governor General. The Mandarins told us we must be particularly careful not to go anywhere, where the guides do not take us, as the city is all a mass of ambuscades for the English.

These Mandarins were as hospitable as possible and all smiles etc. – no allusion was made on either side to the battle of the 25th June. Tomorrow I shall have something to write about, I think, but there’s nothing now.

Text © P.roverse Hong Kong 2017. 

Through American Eyes, edited by Gillian Bickley and transcribed by Chris Duggan is published by Proverse Hong Kong

In imperial China, opium was not the only drug of choice – a strange powdered substance was a hit among the elite

From the third to fifth centuries, the psychotropic drug wu shi san or ‘five stone powder’ was a popular for its ability to open ‘the spirit and mind’
Wee Kek Koon Published: 9 Apr, 2020

An engraving of a 19th-century Chinese opium den. Photo: Shutterstock


I am late to the Netflix game but in the weeks of not so splendid isolation, I have plunged down an enthralling rabbit hole from which extrication could be difficult when this is over. As part of my new-found addiction to television, I have been binge-watching Breaking Bad (2008-13), the US series about a cash-strapped, cancer-stricken chemistry teacher with a sideline in “cooking” methamphetamine.


Television and salty snacks aside, I am lucky to have never been addicted to harmful substances such as tobacco, alcohol or drugs. Having said that, I sympathise with the millions around the world who are battling addiction in all its debilitating forms, as well as their loved ones and carers. I know people who suffered devastating losses from addiction, including a relative who lost his life, and the effects on their families were heart-rending.
Opium has often been associated with drug dependence in imperial China. The first and second opium wars between China and Britain in the mid-19th century
gave shape to the Hong Kong we know today. 

The history of opioid use in China goes back at least to the Tang dynasty (618-907), but “poppy tears” was not the only psychotropic substance known to the ancient Chinese.

During the Wei and Jin period (AD220-420), a substance called wu shi san (“five stone powder”) was popular among the elite. Its main ingredients were stalactites, fluorite, quartz, sulphur and halloysite clay or kaolin, which had been pulverised and mixed in specific proportions.

An immediate effect of taking wu shi san was a sudden rise in body temperature, which was mitigated by eating cold foods, taking cold baths or engaging in strenuous physical activities, such as walking long distances, to cool down the body through perspiration. There were records of users going naked in winter or eating snow because they were unbearably hot.

They also experienced an “opening of the spirit and mind”, which some have interpreted to mean hallucinations. And it had an aphrodisiac effect on men.

An early advocate of ingesting wu shi san was He Yan (AD196-249), son-in-law of the famous warlord Cao Cao and brother-in-law of the first emperor of the Wei dynasty. With his erudition, high social status and good looks, He Yan would be considered an “influencer” today.

Perhaps because of this “celebrity” status, the bizarre behaviour of He Yan and those taking the substance was celebrated as fashionable. Groups would take it together, and amuse or shock each other with outrageous conduct before falling into a stupor.

Long-term users exhibited incoherent speech and thought processes. They were also perpetually distracted. Physically, they suffered swellings and painful limbs, and some cases resulted in death. Wu shi sanwent out of fashion by the 5th century.

In 667, the Byzantine empire sent a mission to Emperor Gaozong of the Tang dynasty. Among the gifts they bore was a salve for the emperor’s frequent headaches, which the Chinese called di ye jia. This was theriaca, or theriac, a medical concoction invented by the ancient Greeks, which often contained opium for analgesic effect.

Soon the Chinese discovered the uses and pleasures of the substance derived from the milk of poppy, which centuries later, the British produced and sold in substantial quantities to the Chinese market.

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China has won PR war against US over Covid-19
Both countries are spinning tales full of falsehoods, but what is undeniable is that one side has the disease under control while the other is still waiting, in horror, for it to peak

SCMP Columnist My Take by Alex Lo

Published: 10 Apr, 2020

Wars are won by the side that makes fewer fatal mistakes. As Leo Tolstoy has argued in War and Peace, to the eternal chagrin of armchair strategists and military buffs, even the best-laid military plan goes up in smoke the minute the first shot is fired. All you have left is a cascade of failures, misunderstanding and incompetence leading to ultimate collapse. In other words, the victor wins by default, not by design.

In the propaganda war between China and the United States over the Covid-19 pandemic, China has already won. However, it’s not because it had a better plan, strategy or preparedness, but because the other side has been so extraordinarily incompetent, almost wilfully so.


It certainly does not mean China has a superior political system. What we are seeing, rather, is the systemic failure of the US under the Trump White House at a fundamental institutional level.

Many politicians and pundits have called on China and the US to work together during this unprecedented health crisis. But there is little chance of that. As in any war, both sides have already turned it into a fight for the hearts and minds of their domestic audience and international community. Both are trying to shape the global narrative. Both are spinning tales full of falsehoods.

But what everyone can see is that on the one side, the number of new cases has been declining steadily while the other is well on its way to become the worst-hit of all similarly developed countries, even though it is the richest and most powerful. Results speak for themselves. Blaming China won’t save American lives. It may, however, deflect responsibility.

But, to begin with, both sides were almost deliberately unprepared. Among others, respected researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had warned their respective governments for years that a coming “plague” of global proportion was a matter of time.

Yet, when it hit, Chinese authorities suppressed information about the new disease while Donald Trump downplayed and denied its impact. The latter has fewer excuses, though, when many countries have already been hit. But the real difference is that Beijing eventually mobilised a whole-of-government response while Washington, even now, is still playing catchup.

Trump said on March 13: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” That’s why Beijing has won.

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Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.