Chinese professor calls CCP 'political zombie,' Xi 'mafia boss' Party professor says Chinese economy will 'completely collapse' if Xi not ousted. By Keoni Everington

Audio has surfaced from a former professor of China's Central Party School in which she described the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a "political zombie" and Chairman Xi Jinping as a "mafia boss" that will drive the country's economy into "complete collapse" if he is not ousted.

On June 3, an audio recording of retired Central Party School professor Cai Xia appeared on YouTube. China Digital Times confirmed the veracity of the recording and translated the transcript into English on June 12.

Although she never mentions him by name, Cai makes it clear from the beginning that the individual she is referring to is Xi. She says that China's political system is broken and must be abandoned because Xi has turned CCP members into his personal minions.

She asserts that the revision of China's constitution at the Plenum Session of the 18th National Congress in 2018 illustrates why the CCP is a "political zombie." She pointed out that not a single party member dared to oppose Xi's motion to remove term limits, adding that it was like "stuffing dogshit down their throats."

Cai describes Xi's control of "the knife handle" (police) and "gun barrel" (military) as his keys to power. She added that the CCP's own major faults — internal corruption, lack of human rights, nonexistent legal protections — paralyze the organization and tighten his grip on power.

The professor points out that Xi has converted CCP members into his own "slaves" and "tools" to be used for his own personal gain. When he finds the CCP useful, he makes use of it; when he no longer has need of a party member, he can label them corrupt and dispose of them, said Cai.

She then claims that Xi has become a "mafia moss" who can punish party members for any perceived infraction. Like zombies, Cai says that party members only march in lockstep and that no one dares challenge Xi.

A key first step to resolving the situation in her opinion would be to replace Xi. However, even though the Central Standing Committee meetings are supposed to be situations in which the majority makes the decisions, Cai laments that Xi prevents any sort of consensus from being built against him.

Cai believes that if Xi is removed from power, "the external environment will start to relax." She said that if China could depose Xi, foreign nations would see that it was "moving in a different direction," and external tensions could be alleviated.

Instead of continuing to implement policies, she called on China to take a step back and stop repressing its citizens. She called on the government to "stop deleting WeChat accounts, stop punishing speech."

Due to deteriorating conditions on the ground, Cai said that many wealthy Chinese have fled the country with their assets. As a result, she said China is now left with "blood-sucking red elitists" and poor working-class people who have no means of escape.

She called for an end to "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," which she described as "nonsense." She pointed out that the tenets of these theories do "not even make sense logically" and that the CCP and Chinese people have become the "laughing stock of the world."

Cai blamed Xi for shattering Chinese society "into scattered sand" and turning the country into a police state that is monitoring its society to "the point of death." She urged Xi to "step down with dignity" to enable the country to "correct past mistakes and set things right."

The professor warned that "if we don't get rid of this person" the political system will go into free fall and the society will disintegrate. She predicted that by the end of this year or by the first half of next year, "the economy will completely collapse."

However, Cai predicted that economic collapse would not be sufficient to lead to an overthrow of Xi "because there is still money to squander." She suggested that once Beijing's coffers finally empty out and domestic conflict reaches a boiling point, Xi may face a reckoning.

Cai closed by predicting that China will undergo another "period of major chaos" with an uncertain ending. She warned that such a chaotic situation could breed "ruthless characters," as seen in previous unstable periods of Chinese history.

The Monuments Debate Is Not the Same for Former Colonies as It Is for Former Empires Former colonies deal with a double burden: the memorialisation of unsavoury historical figures, and the fact that they were imported from elsewhere. by Katie Pickles

The global furore about the meaning and relevance of statues, memorials and place names from a racist, imperial past presents a special challenge to Aotearoa-New Zealand. In this former colonial outpost we are dealing with a double burden: the memorialisation of unsavoury historical figures, and the fact that they were imported from elsewhere.

There is the added irony of this current debate having arrived here from overseas, too. Are we ready to craft our own decolonial exit strategy? Or will we weakly copy what’s taking place at the former imperial centre?

Examining all this drills to the very bedrock of colonial history. It shakes the imperial foundations.

The Black Lives Matter protests in the US have provided the latest flashpoint for this issue. The echo in Aotearoa-New Zealand has so far involved a restaurant named after infamous Pacific slave trader Bully Hayes, a pub named after Captain Cook and a statue of New Zealand Wars figure Andrew Hamilton in the city that took his name.

As in Australia, the once unquestioned legacy of James Cook has again been challenged: having laid the groundwork for subsequent colonisation, he began the renaming of places – many still in use – and erasure of local knowledge and ownership.

In the UK, what started with the dumping of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol harbour has grown into a “topple the racists” movement, complete with its own interactive map. After slaver Robert Milligan’s statue was removed, London Mayor Sadiq Khan ordered a review of London’s monuments. The Māori Party has made the same call here.

The imperial past is all around us

Defacing and removing statues is nothing new. Erected as markers of power and dominance in the landscape, they represent the ideas and actions of those commemorated.

It’s no surprise, then, that as regimes change, place names are written over and statues are toppled. Fallen monuments to Stalin, Lenin and Saddam Hussein provide dramatic 20th-century evidence of societies breaking from the past.

In Aotearoa-New Zealand, memorials to the most offensive colonial characters are just the tip of the iceberg. This is a place riddled with colonial markers – a nation where British imperial culture was stamped onto the landscape as a fundamental part of settlement.

Some Māori place names were allowed to survive, but often they were supplanted by old-world people and places. British heroes were feted for imperial conquest and domination, often for their roles in subjugating Māori, such as Marmaduke Nixon whose statue stands in Ōtāhuhu, Auckland.

The imperial master was copied, with the likes of Thomas Picton and Edward Eyre (currently being shamed) the rule rather than the exception when it came to naming places. Following in their mould, settlers who emulated imperial values were memorialised most.

But the current agitation is not just a flash in the pan from a woke generation, as Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters implied. The storm has been brewing for the past decade, targeting historical figures whose legacies live on in the present. The Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Africa and Britain and the destruction of Confederate statues in the US were part of widely publicised anti-racist protests.

Removing history or rewriting it?

Arguments for and against removing statues and changing names tap into powerful forces.

On one side are those who assert they are hurtful, irrelevant and fail to represent contemporary diversity.

On the other are those who fear that effectively erasing historical evidence risks history repeating. By separating past from present, they argue, we can accept the behaviour of those cast in stone was and is reprehensible, but it should be seen in the context of its time, not erased because it offends modern sensibilities.

Others view the desecration of memorials as vandalism by those wanting to replace the past with propaganda.

Meanwhile, a heritage lobby preserves statues as art forms but shies away from critical consideration of how they represent the structure of past or present societies.

And, taking the threat personally, a militant and reactionary right wing seeks to protect and defend statues and place names.

Short of nature intervening, as it did when the Canterbury earthquakes toppled a number of colonial-era relics, what is the way forward?

Context is everything

One solution is to acknowledge these statues as an uncomfortable part of history and move them into museums and statue parks. Again, this is nothing new. Defunct Queen Victoria statues have ended up in a Quebec museum, Sydney shopping centre and in Indian storage. In Gisborne, a James Cook statue was relocated.

This allows their legacy to be discussed while simultaneously casting them as history. Statue parks with interpretation and graffiti boards would promote further discussion. This is common, too – Coronation Park in New Delhi, for example.

Revising street and place names is more difficult because transplanted colonial names are everywhere, although the promotion of Māori place names is rapidly gaining momentum already.

But in simply mimicking the removal of some of those explicitly responsible for colonial violence, Aotearoa-New Zealand risks falling in behind what suits elsewhere. The sun may be setting once more on the British Empire, but it’s the old empire leading the charge.

In this part of the world, reconsidering monuments and place names challenges the very foundations of settler societies and the evolution of race relations. The imperial past really is a different country, and we will have to do things differently here.

General Patton's Grandfather Was Also a War Hero—In the Confederacy Fact: General George S. Patton, Sr., was a Virginia Confederate soldier. by Warfare History Network

The famed general of World War II, George S. Patton III, often spoke with pride of the military deeds of his forefathers. From an early age, Patton had been regaled with the exploits of the Pattons and their relatives from the War for Independence to the Civil War. These stories of courage and great deeds, of heroic men and mighty battles, greatly influenced the man who would dash his tanks across France.

Of all the courageous men spoken of, none stood taller in the eyes of the young Patton than his dead grandfather, Confederate Colonel George S. Patton I. This was the man the younger Patton regarded romantically as a noble fighter, who had displayed great bravery and honor in battle and had met his end at the head of his troops. So who was this unheralded soldier of the Civil War that Patton knew only through stories, but who helped to inspire him to become one of the great generals of World War II?

George Smith Patton was born in Fredericksburg, Va., on September 26, 1833, to Peggy and John Patton. The Pattons had 12 children, but only nine lived to adulthood—eight sons and one daughter. Peggy Patton was of the Virginia plantation society and John, a states’ rights advocate and pro slavery, was a lawyer, politician, and slave owner. The Pattons were loyal Virginians and proud of their Southern aristocratic culture. When John Patton died in 1858, his spirited, strong-willed wife became the matriarch of the family and continued to raise their children in the manner to which they were accustomed.

The Late Blooming Patton Excelled as He Matured

John Patton realized early on that to maintain the Southern way of life he and his wife held so dear would eventually lead to secession and hostilities. He therefore prepared his sons for the future conflict by sending them to military colleges. George Patton, like three of his brothers, attended the Virginia Military Institute. At age 16 Patton entered VMI, where for the first two years he was academically in the middle of his class but was a leader in demerits. Maturing in his last year, Patton graduated in 1852 second out of a class of 24. He excelled in Latin, English, French, chemistry, and artillery tactics.

At VMI Patton impressed his classmates with his mild-mannered but responsible personality and genial wit. Upon graduation, the tall, slim, handsome young man with long brown hair was ready to make his way in the world. In the summer after graduation, Patton met 17-year-old Susan Thornton Glassell of Alabama, who was visiting friends in Virginia. A relationship blossomed and by the fall they were engaged. For the next two years Patton taught in Richmond while studying law. Although he found teaching difficult and eventually quit, he did better at his law studies and was admitted to the Richmond bar in 1855. In November of that year he and Susan were married. On their wedding night the couple headed for Charleston, Kanawha County, Va. (now West Virginia), where Patton had been offered a partnership in a small law firm.

At Charleston, a town of some 2,000 located in the Kanawha River Valley, Patton set up a successful law practice and became involved in local affairs. The deeply religious Pattons were well liked by the citizens of Charleston, and soon after they arrived Patton was affectionately given the nickname of “Frenchy” for the goatee he sported. On September 30, 1856, the Pattons had their first of four children, a son they christened George William Patton. Eleven years later George William had his middle name changed to that of his father, Smith. George Smith Patton, Jr., would later become the father of General George S. Patton of World War II fame. Also in 1856 George organized and became captain of a militia company called the Kanawha Minutemen, to which he devoted much of his time.

War on the Doorstep

Although Kanawha County held the fewest slaves of any county in Virginia—and of these most were domestic servants—George followed his father’s beliefs and soon became a passionate supporter of secession. After John Brown’s invasion of Harper’s Ferry in the fall of 1859, Patton’s militia company changed its name to the Kanawha Riflemen and stepped up its drilling. Patton, feeling that war was just around the corner, devoted himself increasingly to his militia company at the expense of his law practice. With the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, what Patton believed was coming and had prepared for finally arrived—the country was at war. When Virginia seceded from the Union, the Kanawha Riflemen became Company H of the 22nd Virginia Infantry Regiment.

Besides George, six other Patton boys would go off to fight for the Confederacy. John Mercer (1826-1898) would become the commander of the 21st Virginia, but had to resign in August 1862 owing to poor health. Isaac William (1826-1890), who had moved to New Orleans before the war, would lead a Louisiana regiment and be captured at Vicksburg. George’s closest brother, William Tazewell (1835-1863), would lead the 7th Virginia and be killed at Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge. Hugh Mercer (1841-1905) became an officer in his brother’s 7th Virginia, while teenage brother James French (1843-1882) became an officer with George in the 22nd Virginia. The last Patton to serve was William Macfarland (1845-1905) who, as a cadet at VMI, would take part in the battle of New Market. The only brother not to serve was the oldest, Robert (1824-1876), an alcoholic former naval officer.

Patton first tasted combat on July 17, 1861, only 20 miles down the Kanawha River from Charleston, at a place called Scary Creek. Recently commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army, Patton commanded some nine hundred men who were part of a force under Brig. Gen. Henry A. Wise that was attempting to stop a Union push up the Kanawha Valley. The Federals were part of Maj. Gen. George McClellan’s assault into western Virginia from Ohio. Late into the battle, while trying to rally retreating troops in the center of the Confederate line, Patton was struck by a minie ball in the right shoulder, shattering the bone in the upper arm and throwing him from his horse.

Patton Refuses Amputation at Gun Point

He was carried to the rear where he was told that his arm needed to be amputated. Patton adamantly refused and pulled out his pistol to emphasize his point. He kept his arm, but never regained full use of it. Although the Confederates had won the battle, they were later forced to retreat from the Kanawha Valley. Unable to be moved because of his wound, Patton was left behind and captured. A few weeks later he was paroled and went home to recuperate.

After spending eight months at home impatiently waiting to get back into the war, Patton finally received word that he had been exchanged. Although he had only partial use of his right arm and could not raise it above his head, he returned to the 22nd Virginia as its commander. On May 10, 1862, Patton saw action again when he led the 22nd Virginia in an attack against a Union regiment at Giles Court House, Va., during Brig. Gen. Henry Heth’s campaign against Union forces trying to cut railroad lines in southwestern Virginia. The Confederates were victorious, but Patton again was wounded, shot in the belly.

Patton was laid against a nearby tree and, fearing that he was dying, he began writing a farewell note to his wife. General Wharton, his brigade commander, rode up and asked him how he was. George answered that he believed the wound was fatal. According to Patton’s son, George William, “Gen. Wharton dismounted and asked if he could examine the wound. He stuck his unwashed finger into it and exclaimed, ‘What is this?’ as his finger hit something hard. He then fished around and pulled out a ten dollar gold piece. The bullet struck this and had driven it into his flesh, and glanced off.” The bullet had struck a $10 gold piece that his wife had put into a money belt she had made and given him just before he left to rejoin his regiment. (In another version of this incident, it is General Heth, not Wharton, who finds the gold coin.)

Saved by a $10 Gold Piece

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of his wife, his life had been saved; however, although the wound was not serious, he developed blood poisoning and had to return to his family, now living in Richmond, to recuperate. While at Richmond, he learned that he had not been properly exchanged in March. For honor and to avoid being executed if captured again, Patton was forced to remain out of the war until he could be properly exchanged.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity but was only a few months, Patton was finally exchanged. He rejoined the 22nd Virginia at Lewisburg, Va. His regiment was now part of the First Brigade, under Brig. Gen. John Echols, in the Army of Southwest Virginia. Because Echols suffered from heart disease and was frequently absent, Patton regularly took over command of the brigade. In the fall Patton’s regiment took part in the campaign to chase the Federal forces out of the Kanawha Valley and retake Charleston, which the Confederates had lost the year before. The drive was successful, but less than a month later the Confederates were driven back to Lewisburg, where they set up camp for the winter.

In the spring of 1863 the Army of Southwest Virginia began operations with a raid into the Union-controlled mountainous region of northwest Virginia (now West Virginia). The purpose of the raid was to impede the New State Movement in the region (the creation of a new state in western Virginia loyal to the Union which, of course, eventually succeeded); the destruction of the rail lines of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and other Union property; and to forage for food, clothing, and other badly needed supplies. Patton and his regiment were part of Brig. Gen. John Imboden’s force, one prong of the two-prong raid. Leaving camp at Shenandoah Mountain on April 20, Imboden’s raiders roamed slowly through the region capturing wagon loads of supplies, livestock, and horses before returning to the Shenandoah Valley. Patton, proud of how his regiment had performed, noted that 40 of his men marched the entire 400 miles barefooted.

A Full Display of Patton’s Talent in Battle

In August, Union Maj. Gen. William Averell, a friend of George’s before the war, led 3,000 men against Lewisburg. On the 26th, at Dry Creek, Averell’s cavalry force collided with the First Brigade under Patton. After two days of hard fighting, Averell was beaten back. The victory at Dry Creek showed Patton’s ability to command troops in battle to the fullest.

Averell, however, was to get his revenge against Patton in November, when he confronted him at a place called Droop Mountain and where Averell’s force of 5,000 cavalry defeated Patton’s 1,700 men. Patton was forced to retreat, allowing Averell to occupy Lewisburg for a few days before the threat of a counterattack forced the Union cavalrymen to leave. At the time of the battle, Patton’s family was living in Lewisburg. His son William vividly recalled seeing the defeated troops passing through Lewisburg and later wrote: “Late in the night my father came by with the last of the rearguard and stopped to tell us goodbye and give my mother a letter for General Averell asking him to see that we were not bothered.” The next morning Susan took the letter to Averell who, honoring the request from his old friend, posted a guard at the Patton home.

Patton’s finest hour came the following year at the Battle of New Market. Patton’s regiment was part of a small army hastily assembled under Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge to counter a Union thrust under Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel up the Shenandoah Valley toward Staunton. (Because the Shenandoah River runs south to north, the Union thrust up the valley was actually going in a north to south direction.) The Confederates, being vastly outnumbered, had to call upon 247 cadets from VMI as reinforcements. One of the cadets who immortalized the VMI Corps of Cadets that day was Patton’s youngest brother, William Mercer Patton.

The two sides clashed on the Valley Turnpike at New Market on May 15, 1864. In the ensuing battle the Confederates made a heroic stand against superior Union forces and won the day. During the latter stage of the battle, Patton, who for all practical purposes was commanding the First Brigade for the ailing Echols, was defending the right against Union cavalry attempting to outflank the Confederate line. When the cavalry broke through the left of his line, Patton quickly wheeled his 22nd Virginia and the 23rd Virginia of Lt. Col. Clarence Derrick to either side of the gap, catching the Union cavalrymen in a deadly crossfire. With the help of several pieces of artillery, the Confederates decimated the Union horsemen, forcing many to surrender and the rest to retreat in panic.

Promoted to Brigadier General

According to historian William C. Davis, “The principal architects of the triumph [at New Market] were Patton’s 22d Virginia, to a lesser extent Derrick’s 23d Virginia, and Breckinridge with his magnificent guns. Patton’s and Derrick’s men, spread thin, successfully withstood that most terrifying of assaults to an infantryman, a mounted charge. More than that, they threw it into disarray, turning it into a rout.” New Market proved without a doubt that Patton was an outstanding and resourceful leader. A week later, when his poor health forced Echols to give up his command permanently, Patton was given command of the brigade—a promotion he rightly deserved. Patton was also recommended for a promotion to brigadier general.

Soon after the battle at New Market, Breckinridge’s army was rushed east to help Robert E. Lee stem Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s advance on Richmond. Patton’s brigade joined Lee’s forces at the crossroads hamlet of Cold Harbor, only eight miles from the Confederate capital, on June 2. Hastily building defense works through the night, Patton and his men were barely ready when at 4:30 am Grant launched a full-scale attack against the entrenched Confederates. Grant was repulsed, losing nearly 7,000 men in half an hour. One Confederate general said, “It was not war, it was murder.”

“It Was Not War, It Was Murder.”

Immediately after the battle Patton’s brigade headed back to the Shenandoah Valley to join Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s army. The Union forces were again advancing south, and Early had been tasked with countering this new threat. After pushing the Federals out of the valley, Early continued on through Maryland to the outskirts of Washington. Patton’s brigade was one of the first Confederate units to reach the city on July 11. Finding the city’s defenses heavily reinforced the next morning, Early called off an assault on the city and that night headed back to the Shenandoah Valley.

In response to Early’s incursion into Maryland and the threat to Washington, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan was ordered to deal with Early and lay waste to the Shenandoah Valley. The two sides clashed on September 19 at Winchester, Va., in the Third Battle of Winchester. Greatly outnumbered, the Confederates could not stand up to the Union’s lightning attack and were defeated. Early lost one-third of his army and Patton’s brigade lost half its men. But that was not all that Patton’s brigade lost that day; it lost its commander as well.

A Second Refusal for Amputation and the Loss of a Great General

Around 2 pm, as the Confederates were being pushed back, Patton was making a stand on the left of the line against a determined attack by Sheridan’s cavalry. It was then that he was wounded. Robert H. Patton, in his book on the Patton family, described the event: “He was standing in his stirrups on a Winchester street when an artillery shell exploded nearby and sent an iron fragment into his right hip. He’d been trying to rally his men, who were in full retreat before onrushing Yankee cavalry….” He was taken to a nearby house and later captured. Amputation of his right leg was recommended, but as he had done after Scary Creek, he refused. Within a few days gangrene set in and he ran a fever. On September 25, 1864, he died of his wound. (Claims have been made that at the time of Patton’s death a commission as a brigadier general was en route to him. According to Terry Lowery, a 22nd Virginia historian, there is only sketchy evidence to support this and no solid documentation has been found. However, Patton had been recommended for the promotion on several occasions.)

Patton’s wife Susan, reading about her husband’s wounding in the newspapers, hurried to Winchester; sadly, by the time she arrived, he had passed away and been buried. Rather than move her husband’s body to one of the family plots in Richmond or Fredericksburg, she left it interred at Winchester. Some 10 years later Patton’s younger brother, William Tazewell, who was killed at Gettysburg, was moved to Winchester, and he and George were reburied in a simple grave.

The year after the war ended Susan and her four children joined her brother in California. In 1870 Susan married George’s close friend and first cousin George Hugh Smith, who like George had served the Confederacy, commanding two Virginia regiments. Smith adopted the Patton children and lovingly brought them up as his own. In 1883 Susan died after suffering from cancer for several years. Patton’s oldest son, George S. Patton II , attended VMI like his father but did not pursue a military career. He did, however, keep the memory of his father’s military service alive through the stories he told his son, General George S. Patton III.

Was the Coronavirus Outbreak an Intelligence Failure? The U.S. intelligence community has for many years considered the possible threat of disease among the potential risks to national stability and security. by Erik J. Dahl

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to unfold, it’s clear that having better information sooner, and acting more quickly on what was known, could have slowed the spread of the outbreak and saved more people’s lives.

There may be finger-pointing about who should have done better – and President Donald Trump has already begun laying blame. But as a former naval intelligence officer who teaches and studies the U.S. intelligence community, I believe it’s useful to look at the whole process of how information about diseases gets collected and processed, by the U.S. government but also by many other organizations around the world.

The role of traditional US intelligence agencies

The U.S. intelligence community has for many years considered the possible threat of disease among the potential risks to national stability and security.

For instance, then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress in January 2019 that a large-scale outbreak “could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”

The traditional national-security intelligence agencies, like the CIA and the National Security Agency, can be useful in tracking pandemics once they are identified, using human informants and other sensitive intelligence sources to determine where an outbreak developed and what other nations have done in response.

But the main burden for pandemic detection within the intelligence community falls on little-known agencies, like the National Center for Medical Intelligence. It is a part of the Department of Defense that tracks emerging diseases, bioterrorist threats and the medical capabilities of other countries.

US domestic medical intelligence gathering

Beyond the intelligence community, the U.S. has a complex system of civilian medical and public-health information collection, coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC manages some 100 different health surveillance systems, including collecting data from local and state health officials on particularly important diseases such as anthrax, cholera and Ebola, through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The CDC also gathers information from medical facilities and public health departments on potentially dangerous health symptoms before they have been diagnosed by medical experts, in the National Syndromic Surveillance Program.

International medical surveillance systems

The World Health Organization sits atop an even more complex network of international health and disease surveillance systems. For example, its Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network attempts to identify outbreaks in developing countries. But the WHO does not have its own medical intelligence system; its role is to encourage and support its member nations to develop their own capabilities for detecting and reporting disease outbreaks.

Other international medical surveillance programs gather information from news media, internet sites, and other sources in an effort to identify and warn about disease outbreaks. These efforts include the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases and HealthMap. Many of these programs make their information available for free to public health departments, medical professionals, and others including the media.

How well did they do?

Initial indications are that the U.S. intelligence community did well in reporting on the virus once news of the outbreak in China became widely known by early January. Whether it could have done more before that time, and why the Trump administration did not act more decisively early on, will have to wait for a future national coronavirus commission to help us sort out.

Some news accounts indicate U.S. intelligence agencies may have detected a new disease in China as early as November – even before Chinese authorities recognized the problem. These reports have been denied by U.S. officials, but it is clear that by mid-January, the U.S. intelligence community had begun briefing the president on the outbreak.

The CDC was handicapped by having eliminated the position of a U.S. epidemiologist embedded in China’s public-health system just months before the coronavirus outbreak began.

As a result, the CDC could only get information from Chinese authorities, who covered up the severity of the crisis until it was too late to prevent its spread internationally. Chinese police even reprimanded a doctor who warned of the outbreak. He later died of the virus.

Critics have pointed fingers at the World Health Organization for not having raised the alarm soon enough. The WHO has agreed to an independent international investigation into whether the organization responded properly to the outbreak.

But the WHO has been warning for years about the possibility of a new pandemic. In 2018, for instance, the group published a list of disease threats, including one called Disease X, which “represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”

The fundamental problem appears to lie in the fact that the WHO depends on countries to detect and report serious disease outbreaks – rather than having its own set of global health monitors keeping their eye on potential outbreaks.

What should be done?

Early indications are that the U.S. national intelligence community should consider steps such as boosting the visibility and importance of the National Center for Medical Intelligence. Just as the National Counterterrorism Center was created after the 9/11 attacks to provide a single place where all terrorism-related intelligence would be handled, the U.S. may need to create a true national intelligence center focused on infectious disease, biological terrorism and other health issues.

The most important actions, however, are likely to be at the international level. Experts have suggested providing the World Health Organization with significantly greater authority to enforce individual nation reporting requirements, such as by revising the International Health Regulations – the international treaty that describes what WHO member states must do – to give the WHO inspection powers similar to that of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Others have suggested developing a global early warning system for infectious diseases and other health threats that would integrate the global hodge-podge of disease surveillance systems that currently exists, and provide a worldwide system similar to those already in place to warn about earthquakes and tsunamis.

So far, though, the pandemic has failed to inspire the sort of coordinated international effort that is needed to effectively meet a truly global problem. The ability of any one nation – even the U.S. – to identify and respond to a global crisis remains limited, and ultimately it will require political action on the part of nation states and the international community to enable the world to learn from this global failure of intelligence and warning, and come together effectively to combat the next pandemic.

Archaeological Record Reveals Epidemics and Responses Throughout History Bioarchaeologists analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times. by Charlotte Roberts, Gabriel D. Wrobel and Michael Westaway

The previous pandemics to which people often compare COVID-19 – the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death bubonic plague (1342-1353), the Justinian plague (541-542) – don’t seem that long ago to archaeologists. We’re used to thinking about people who lived many centuries or even millennia ago. Evidence found directly on skeletons shows that infectious diseases have been with us since our beginnings as a species.

Bioarchaeologists like us analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times.

How did aspects of early people’s social behavior allow diseases to flourish? How did people try to care for the sick? How did individuals and entire societies modify behaviors to protect themselves and others?

Knowing these things might help scientists understand why COVID-19 has wreaked such global devastation and what needs to be put in place before the next pandemic.

Clues about illnesses long ago

How can bioarchaeologists possibly know these things, especially for early cultures that left no written record? Even in literate societies, poorer and marginalized segments were rarely written about.

In most archaeological settings, all that remains of our ancestors is the skeleton.

For some infectious diseases, like syphilis, tuberculosis and leprosy, the location, characteristics and distribution of marks on a skeleton’s bones can serve as distinctive “pathognomonic” indicators of the infection.

Most skeletal signs of disease are non-specific, though, meaning bioarchaeologists today can tell an individual was sick, but not with what disease. Some diseases never affect the skeleton at all, including plague and viral infections like HIV and COVID-19. And diseases that kill quickly don’t have enough time to leave a mark on victims’ bones.

To uncover evidence of specific diseases beyond obvious bone changes, bioarchaeologists use a variety of methods, often with the help of other specialists, like geneticists or parasitologists. For instance, analyzing soil collected in a grave from around a person’s pelvis can reveal the remains of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworms and round worms. Genetic analyses can also identify the DNA of infectious pathogens still clinging to ancient bones and teeth.

Bioarchaeologists can also estimate age at death based on how developed a youngster’s teeth and bones are, or how much an adult’s skeleton has degenerated over its lifespan. Then demographers help us draw age profiles for populations that died in epidemics. Most infectious diseases disproportionately affect those with the weakest immune systems, usually the very young and very old.

For instance, the Black Death was indiscriminate; 14th-century burial pits contain the typical age distributions found in cemeteries we know were not for Black Death victims. In contrast, the 1918 flu pandemic was unusual in that it hit hardest those with the most robust immune systems, that is, healthy young adults. COVID-19 today is also leaving a recognizable profile of those most likely to die from the disease, targeting older and vulnerable people and particular ethnic groups.

We can find out what infections were around in the past through our ancestors’ remains, but what does this tell us about the bigger picture of the origin and evolution of infections? Archaeological clues can help researchers reconstruct aspects of socioeconomic organization, environment and technology. And we can study how variations in these risk factors caused diseases to vary across time, in different areas of the world and even among people living in the same societies.

How infectious disease got its first foothold

Human biology affects culture in complex ways. Culture influences biology, too, although it can be hard for our bodies to keep up with rapid cultural changes. For example, in the 20th century, highly processed fast food replaced a more balanced and healthy diet for many. Because the human body evolved and was designed for a different world, this dietary switch resulted in a rise in diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

From a paleoepidemiological perspective, the most significant event in our species’ history was the adoption of farming. Agriculture arose independently in several places around the world beginning around 12,000 years ago.

Prior to this change, people lived as hunter-gatherers, with dogs as their only animal companions. They were very active and had a well balanced, varied diet that was high in protein and fiber and low in calories and fat. These small groups experienced parasites, bacterial infections and injuries while hunting wild animals and occasionally fighting with one another. They also had to deal with dental problems, including extreme wear, plaque and periodontal disease.

One thing hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry much about, however, was virulent infectious diseases that could move quickly from person to person throughout a large geographic region. Pathogens like the influenza virus were not able to effectively spread or even be maintained by small, mobile, and socially isolated populations.

The advent of agriculture resulted in larger, sedentary populations of people living in close proximity. New diseases could flourish in this new environment. The transition to agriculture was characterized by high childhood mortality, in which approximately 30% or more of children died before the age of 5.

And for the first time in an evolutionary history spanning millions of years, different species of mammals and birds became intimate neighbors. Once people began to live with newly domesticated animals, they were brought into the life cycle of a new group of diseases – called zoonoses – that previously had been limited to wild animals but could now jump into human beings.

Add to all this the stresses of poor sanitation and a deficient diet, as well as increased connections between distant communities through migration and trade especially between urban communities, and epidemics of infectious disease were able to take hold for the first time.

Globalization of disease

Later events in human history also resulted in major epidemiological transitions related to disease.

For more than 10,000 years, the people of Europe, the Middle East and Asia evolved along with particular zoonoses in their local environments. The animals people were in contact with varied from place to place. As people lived alongside particular animal species over long periods of time, a symbiosis could develop – as well as immune resistance to local zoonoses.

At the beginning of modern history, people from European empires also began traveling across the globe, taking with them a suite of “Old World” diseases that were devastating for groups who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Indigenous populations in Australia, the Pacific and the Americas had no biological familiarity with these new pathogens. Without immunity, one epidemic after another ravaged these groups. Mortality estimates range between 60-90%.

The study of disease in skeletons, mummies and other remains of past people has played a critical role in reconstructing the origin and evolution of pandemics, but this work also provides evidence of compassion and care, including medical interventions such as trepanation, dentistry, amputation and prostheses, herbal remedies and surgical instruments.

Other evidence shows that people have often done their best to protect others, as well as themselves, from disease. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam, which made a self-sacrificing decision to isolate itself to prevent further spread of a plague from London in 1665.

In other eras, people with tuberculosis were placed in sanatoria, people with leprosy were admitted to specialized hospitals or segregated on islands or into remote areas, and urban dwellers fled cities when plagues came.

As the world faces yet another pandemic, the archaeological and historical record are reminders that people have lived with infectious disease for millennia. Pathogens have helped shape civilization, and humans have been resilient in the face of such crises.