Asia Times reports:

Deserted streets, eerily quiet shopping malls and empty buses. For most people, this evokes images of quarantined Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

But, in fact, this is Beijing, home to the ruling Communist Party elite, the Great Hall of the People and the iconic yet infamous Tiananmen Square.

“It is a ghost city, hardly any people out and very few vehicles. Six buses passed me today and, with the exception of the drivers, they were all empty. During a visit to the supermarket, I was the only customer,” a former colleague told Asia Times at the weekend, echoing similar reports.

By the numbers, Beijing is 1,055 kilometers, or 655 miles, away from Wuhan. Yet there have been more than 300 confirmed cases of the virus while two people have died.

Overall, the death toll in China has jumped to more than 900 with at least 40,0000 people infected by the 2019-nCoV disease.

Comparisons have naturally been made with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong between 2002 and 2003 with its flu-like symptoms. [Continue reading…]