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Wednesday, August 17

Dr Wong's fan club, rejoice!

This just in!

The sentences shown in boldface are from a native-Chinese speaker outside the USA who reviewed the original transcript of the Dr. Wong/Wang interview. The source (including the person who acted as go-between for the letters) is reliable:

[...] Did the interviewer and "Dr" Wang really say filovirus when referring to the disease in pigs? Yes. Also, please see my response in [boldface] in the email below.

There is much confusion over use of the word "virus" in the context of talking about bubonic plague, which is a bacteria. Yet throughout the two English translations available, the interviewer and Dr. Wang refer to plague as a "virus." I don't think so. The original context said the A3231, plague, and pig filovirus were three different virus and bacteria.

Ebola was translated as i-bo-la. That's it. It says that SZ77++A3231 virus is a type of ebola. When asked to describe, the doctor said that it's not appropriate to explain. It says that what happened in that location was not due to pig filovirus, it was a kind of ebola. The reason that the government wanted to say that it's pig filovirus was due to the politics -- they didn't want to admit that they had ebola. Pig filovirus may be passed on to human body, but the damage wouldn't be like the one from ebola. And filovirus won't spread among pigs that fast.

Could I impose on the friend once more to ask for a review of the original text again, just to be certain that the translation of the Mandarin word for "virus" is correct? In the interview, Dr. Wang used "virus" for the incident. He did mention that the death in the city might be caused by the virus (ebola) plus bacteria (plague). The combination made the symptom or the illness worse.

Also, if Wang and interviewer actually said "filovirus," rather than "virus," when referring to bubonic plague that would be very important to know. Dr. Wang didn't said pig filovirus was plague.

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