Political writer George Orwell, who died Jan. 21, 1950

The idea was first introduced on the national stage by President Obama in October of 2016 right before the presidential election. He insisted that somebody needed to step in and “curate” our information in the “Wild, Wild West” internet environment.

Nobody had been clamoring for any such thing. 

So the challenge for those who came up with this bright idea– in my opinion in an effort to control news and information– was to convince the public to accept something very un-American: their information being shaped and censored by others.

Watch Attkisson’s Tedx talk: Astroturf and Manipulation of Media Messages

This feat was accomplished in concert with the anti-fake news effort, started in September 2016 through a nonprofit called First Draft. (First Draft was funded by Google, owned by Alphabet, run by Eric Schmidt, a major Hillary Clinton funder and supporter.) The anti-fake news effort was also an effort by special interests to step in and control news and internet information. 

In a relatively short period of time, they had us. Curate our information, we cried. Block “untrue” news reports and blogs! Fact check political ads and certain politicians! Remove selected social media accounts! We invited special interests and political players to control our information under the guise of knowing what’s best for us.

No longer can we bear or do we deserve to hear various views and interpretations of facts. The curators decide which views are right and true They universally declare the others to be debunked or discredited. 

Never mind that the appointed curators are advancing their own views or special interests. No matter that the corporations employing the fact checks are looking out for their owners or corporate interests; or currying favor with government regulators— sometimes even doing the government’s bidding. 

From a pure factual standpoint, government, news outlets, social media and other corporations are hardly parties that should be trusted to oversee “curation” efforts. History is littered with examples of them being wrong, conflicted or providing false information. 

One of the best most recent examples is the now disproven accusation that Donald Trump was working with Russia President Vladimir Putin. The wild conspiracy claims dominated the news for more than two years. The curators told us there was hard evidence. It would all be revealed soon! These views and reports were distributed, unfettered. What was censored and criticized as “debunked” by the curators? Social media, news reports and commentary that correctly questioned the conspiracies and pointed to malfeasance by the intelligence community. In the end, of course, the curators were wrong; the “debunked” skeptics were correct.

A more recent example is the effort by curators to label, as debunked, reporting by Politico and others on Ukraine interference in the 2016 U.S. election. It turns out there are far more supportable facts and admissions in the public record on Ukrainian interference than on Russia interference.

What’s more, those who have correctly pointed to Ukraine’s alleged role in 2016 have almost universally acknowledged there was Russia tampering, as well– that both are true. But the curators have falsely framed the facts, claiming that “conspiracy theorists” say Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign. In this way, the curators aren’t just curating, they are tampering with the facts. Altering reality. And why wouldn’t they? We have invited them to feel free.

And a third example is the stranglehold on information the vaccine industry and their advocates  have on information about vaccine side effects and links to autism. I recently reported on a sworn affidavit signed by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a world renowned pro-vaccine pediatric neurologist who served as the government’s expert witness in vaccine autism cases. He was, at the time, defending vaccine companies on behalf of the U.S. government.

But in the affidavit, Dr. Zimmerman said that after initially believing vaccines are not linked to autism, he became aware of advances in science revealing that vaccines do cause autism in rare cases, after all. He goes on to testify that government lawyers from the Department of Justice hid this fact from families and the court, and misrepresented his opinion in cases fought by parents of vaccine-injured autistic children.

Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, the pro-vaccine govt. expert who says vaccines can cause autism, after all, in “exceptional” cases.

People are free to dismiss Dr. Zimmerman’s findings, of course, but the fact that he signed the affidavit it is not in dispute and the information should not be censored. However, Facebook’s “science fact checkers” have improperly flagged this reporting as untrue. Either these science experts are proxies for the vaccine industry or are sorely uninformed. Either way, they are not qualified to determine fact vs. fiction on your social media feed. All the while, misleading, incomplete and false information about vaccine safety is routinely promoted as “true.”

Facebook “independent fact-checker” wrongly flag a true news report

Read Dr. Zimmerman’s full affidavit here

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  We should remember that the government incorrectly determined security guard Richard Jewell was responsible for the Atlanta Olympic bombing. (He was actually a hero who helped move people away from a suspicious backpack before it exploded.)

  
  


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  The FBI falsified the polygraph of a Chinese scientist to make it look like he was a spy.

  
  


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  Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper falsely testified to Congress that there was no mass surveillance on millions of Americans.

  
  


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  Social media videos were used out of context to defame a Catholic high school student as if he had aggressively confronted a Native American.

  
  


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  Rape allegations in a landmark Rolling Stone article turned out to be untrue.

  
  


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  Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winner Janet Cooke had falsified her sourcing.

  
  


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  New York Times award winning reporter Jayson Blair plagiarized and faked his stories.

  
  


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  Corporations have been wrong or misled us on information about cigarettes and cancer, food safety, the dangers of Ford Explorers equipped with Firestone tires, x-rays, asbestos, medicine and vaccines pulled off the market for safety reasons and countless other topics.

  
  


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  Charities such as the Red Cross have been found guilty of misusing funds and providing false information.

  
  


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  Facebook has gotten caught misleading consumers and advertisers.

  
  


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  Social media company insiders have blown the whistle on biased and dishonest practices at their firms.

  
  

Just as concerning– government, corporate, media and other curators sometimes fact check as “incorrect” matters that are simply matters of opinion.

Watch Attkisson’s TedX talk: How Real is Fake News?

These are the people we are trusting to be arbiters of what information we should be allowed to see and believe.

Without alternate information that some of these powerful interests initially claimed to be wrong or “debunked,” the facts might never have been discovered.

Sometimes, the reality about serious issues of public importance starts with a single whistleblower, a patient’s story, or a conversation on the internet. When curators have the power to make it where we cannot find this information, the truth risks staying hidden. We would live a controlled, Orwellian existence, knowing only precisely what they wish for us to know, thinking only that which they say is the right way to think, with contrary information dropped down the memory hole like it never even existed.

My own view is that, in general, information that is not deemed to be illegal should be accessible. Social media already has all kinds of tools to allow users to filter out objectionable posts, if they wish to use them. If people want a vested interest to “fact check” for them, they should be able to opt into that service. But the rest of us should be left alone.

The magic of the internet is that it puts information in the hands of most anyone rather than just the powerful. Allowing that information to be controlled, manipulated, filtered, improperly discredited or erased is a slippery slope fraught with peril…. and very Orwellian, indeed.

*  *  *

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson’s work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Greenwald has denied the charges, citing a Brazilian Federal Police investigation that concluded he committed no crimes - and in fact highlighted his "careful and distant posture regarding the execution" of the alleged hacks.

"Less than two months ago, the Federal Police, examining all the same evidence cited by the Public Ministry, stated explicitly that not only have I never committed any crime but that I exercised extreme caution as a journalist never even to get close to any participation," said Greenwald, adding "Even the Federal Police under Minister Moro’s command said what is clear to any rational person: I did nothing more than do my job as a journalist — ethically and within the law."

Regarding the criminal charges brought by the Bolsonaro government: it’s a grave and obvious attack on a free press, brought by a far-right judge.


We’re going to defend a free press, not be intimidated by authorities abusing their power. The reporting will continue. pic.twitter.com/kd9b8Kggx3

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 21, 2020

Operation Car Wash

The political scandal at the heart of Greenwald's corruption charge is Operation Car Wash - which led to the prosecution of major Brazilian construction firms and politicians.

Among its most controversial convictions was that of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose imprisonment on corruption charges removed him from contention in the 2018 presidential elections, despite leading in the polls. Instead, Bolsonaro won the office and quickly appointed Moro, the judge who convicted Lula, as his justice minister. After the Secret Brazil Archive reporting, the Brazilian Supreme Court released Lula on the basis of a procedural argument, a stinging rebuke of Moro’s work. -The Intercept

The Intercept's reporting relied on a trove of leaked materials which revealed scheming by prosecutors to ensure that Bolsonaro's opposition (the Lula Workers' Party) did not win the election. Prosecutors were also profiting from the scandal.

The Brazilian federal prosecutor who filed the criminal complaint, Wellington Divino Marques de Oliveira, who works in Moro’s Justice Ministry but has prosecutorial independence, wrote in the complaint that Greenwald had “directly assisted, encouraged and guided the criminal group, DURING the criminal practice, acting as guarantor of the group, obtaining financial advantage with the conduct described here.”

Bolsonaro has himself previously suggested that he would like to deport Greenwald and threatened to imprison the journalist for his work. At the time, The Intercept condemned the threat in a statement and reiterated that Greenwald and The Intercept’s other reporters enjoy free-press protections under the Brazilian constitution. -The Intercept

 Greenwald's charges have drawn rebuke from across the spectrum.

The free press is never more important than when it exposes wrongdoing by the powerful.


That is why President Bolsonaro is threatening Glenn Greenwald for the "crime" of doing journalism.


I call on Brazil to end its authoritarian attack on press freedom and the rule of law. https://t.co/NfcVnxT50F

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 22, 2020

Glenn Greenwald has called me a "deceitful" mouthpiece of the national security state and I assure you I've rarely had a nice thing to say about him. But this is an outrageous assault on press freedom that should alarm every American. https://t.co/7LUKHAtPud

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) January 21, 2020

Grossed out by all the "resistance" accounts cheering the Greenwald charges. If you're reveling in the persecution of a journalist for exposing abuse and corruption, you're aligning yourself with fascism. It doesn't matter how many anti-Trump hashtags you put in your Twitter bio.

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) January 21, 2020

Important context for arrest of ⁦@ggreenwald⁩ — Brazilian President Bolsonaro has been threatening Greenwald for a long time because of his aggressive and excellent journalism https://t.co/lmuvs3v2dA

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 21, 2020

I'm sympathetic to the idea that solidarity can be extended to people you may disagree with or even dislike. But I think it really trivializes what Glenn and his family are up against in Brazil to qualify or hedge on your well-wishes, especially at a time like this.

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) January 21, 2020

Bob Prince, who alongside Greg Jensen helps oversee the world’s biggest hedge fund at Bridgewater Associates as its other Co-CIO, said "the boom-bust economic cycle is over."

Speaking to Bloomberg TV in Davos, Prince suggested that the tightening of central banks all around the world "wasn’t intended to cause the downturn, wasn’t intended to cause what it did" - and yet that's precisely what the shrinking of the Fed's balance sheet did hence the record expansion over the past four months - and shockingly said that "the lessons were learned from that and I think it was really a marker that we’ve probably seen the end of the boom-bust cycle."

Prince was referring not only to the boom-bust cycle created by central banks, which first ease then tighten, resulting in bubbles and eventually crashes, as described in "Every Fed Tightening Cycle Creates A Crisis"...

... but also to the broader cycle of economic expansion and contraction that repeats itself. And as a result of central bank intervention since the financial crisis and monetary easing, that cycle has effectively been disrupted and has helped fuel the longest-running bull market in stocks. That has also led the hedge fund industry to struggle to match gains of passive funds tracking indexes, since virtually no downturns are now possible with central banks intervening every time there is even a modest downturn, something which BofA first pointed out in December 2017 when it wrote that "In Every Market Shock Since 2013 Central Banks Have Stepped In To Protect Markets."

It now appears that this last piece of tinfoil "conspiracy theory" has become "fact", validated by one of the most respected stewards of other people's money.

Or, in other words, "stocks prices have reached what looks like a permanently rising plateau."

Could Bridgewater merely be talking its book? Certainly: the world's biggest hedge funds suffered its first annual loss since 2000 in its most prominent Pure Alpha II last year, largely as a result of hedging, or short trades. The fund lost 0.5%, only the fourth annual decline since starting in 1991. As such, perhaps Prince's observation is just a warning that Bridgewater will no longer actually "hedge" and will go all in on the long side.

That may also explain why Prince said that performance this year has been so far good for the firm. It certainly explains why just yesterday, his boss Ray Dalio, rehashes his warning from Jan 2018 - just before the market cracked - when he urged investors not to miss out an opportunity to benefit from strong markets. "Cash is trash,” he said in a CNBC interview in Davos on Tuesday. “There’s still a lot of money in cash."

As a reminder, in 2018 cash ended up being the best performing assets. And with Bridgewater now claiming that "this time is totally different", will 2020 be another painful repeat of 2018?

In a letter CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger sent to Congress today, the CFPB asked to amend the Ability to Repay/Qualified Mortgage rule (ATR/QM rule) in order to remove DTI as a qualifying factor in mortgage underwriting.

This rule was created in response to the financial crisis of a decade ago as a way to prevent lending money to borrowers who might not be able to afford the loan.

The move by Kraninger is by request of a group of lenders and industry groups, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Quicken Loans, Caliber Home Loans, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and others.

The finance leaders want to remove the 43 percent DTI requirement on both prime and near-prime loans.

Specifically, current rules includes things like verification of income, credit history and DTI, among others. The only portion the CFPB is asking to amend is the DTI requirement.

Apparently Fannie Mae is not subject to the requirement so the lenders cry about fairness.

Hey, why not? More importantly, why stop there? Besides, if one claims no income, there is no income to verify. It's all nice and clean.

NINJA (no income, no job, no asset) loans worked out so well the last time we tried them, it's clearly time for a repeat performance.

"Your mission is delicate," Aoun told the cabinet in a statement. "It is necessary to work to tackle the economic situation, restore the confidence of the international community in Lebanese institutions and reassure the Lebanese about their future," Aoun said.

Caretaker PM Diab, formerly the education minister and importantly the candidate put forward by Hezbollah, has unveiled a plan for a new election law meant to promote national unity and placate key demands of protesters after demonstrations have raged for months, at times bringing daily life in the major cities, especially Beirut, to a standstill. This also as a liquidity crisis has resulted in strict capital controls imposed on banks, which has also lately seen account holders limited to withdrawing a mere $200 a week.

It's now been over two months since commercial banks have enacted severe controls preventing large money transfers abroad and restricting clients' access to their deposits. Throughout the nationwide protests, which at their height saw one million people hit the streets (a whopping some 20% of the entire population), both national and commercial banks have been routinely targeted for destruction and vandalism. 

The new government includes Minister of Defense Zeina ‘Akkar, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nassif Hatti, Minister of Finance Ghazi Wazneh and Minister of Interior Mohammad Fahmi.

Lebanon’s precarious financial situation has many investors pricing in a sovereign default. A $1.2 billion Eurobond that matures in March saw a record slump last week, fueled by reports local lenders have been selling the instruments to avoid participating in a central bank-initiated voluntary debt swap.

The Lebanese pound has plunged on the black market to some 2,500 against the U.S. dollar since the protests began on Oct. 17, while the central bank has stuck to the official rate of 1,507. Hours before the government was announced, Lebanon’s money changers announced that they would sell dollars at no more than 2,000 starting Thursday in an effort to ease the burden of price gains on consumers. — Bloomberg

PM Diab acknowledged the tumultuous events gripping the small Middle East nation in initial remarks Wednesday: “I salute the uprising that pushed us towards this path. Lebanon won an this government expresses the aspirations of the protesters over the area and country. We will work to fulfill your demands,” he said.

“The scenes that we saw during the past few days were painful and what is important now is to maintain stability and support the Lebanese Army and security forces,” Diab continued. “We have the capabilities to continue. We have our wealth. We will protect it and defend our right to it by all means,” he added.

Diab indicated just after taking the helm that he intends as his first trip abroad a visit to Gulf states which previously provided vital financial aid. 

However, the prospect for Gulf aid could be sensitive, given the new government is for the first time controlled exclusively by Hezbollah (which notably has the backing of Iran), while Lebanese political parties that typically enjoy Western backing have stayed on the sidelines. All of this also means protests are set to continue, and possibly grow more fierce, as promised by a number of activists. 

Schiff's report was sent to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) last week that summarizes "a trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani," Politico reported. 

Watch Schiff make up more fake dialogue


It was bad enough he made up the President's phone call in the House, now he's fabricating what the president of Ukraine said (no pressure) in the Senate


Democrats have no case, so they just make schiff up pic.twitter.com/R2nNJrCiZt

— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) January 22, 2020

The report claims in a text message conversation between Giuliani and Parnas, Parnas said: "trying to get us mr Z." The remainder of the letter was redacted. 

Politico added, "But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: 'mr Z answers my brother.' That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky, not Zelensky."

A Republican aide told Politico that Schiff's assumption that "mr Z" is Zelensky is ludicrous.

"The most charitable view of the situation is that [Schiff's] staff committed the equivalent of Congressional malpractice by not looking more than an inch deep to determine the facts before foisting this erroneous information on his colleagues and the American public," said one senior GOP aide.

"But given the selective redactions and contextual clues, it seems as though Chairman Schiff sought to portray an innocuous meeting with Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky as an insidious one with the President of Ukraine simply because both of their surnames start with the letter Z," the GOP aide added. 

"Mischaracterized"? Yeah right... It's Schiff. He's a liar. Schiff may have mischaracterized Parnas evidence, documents show https://t.co/KaCjfdVbMp via @politico

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) January 22, 2020

Sleazeball Schiff busted AGAIN! This dude simply cannot tell the truth. He’s allergic to facts. Don’t trust a word out of his lying mouth. https://t.co/S6XLdX54kK

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) January 22, 2020

Schiff has issued false information in Trump-related investigations before. 

It was reported in September 2019 that Schiff fabricated the account of a July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, to analogize the interaction to a scene from a mafia drama.

And last month, Schiff said during a Fox News interview that he wasn't willing to admit wrong in his defense of the FBI's FISA process: "I'm certainly willing to admit that the inspector general found serious abuses of FISA that I was unaware of."

Trump responded by saying, "Schiff's correcting the record memo has turned out to be totally wrong (based on the I.G. Report)! A very big lie. @MariaBartiromo And @DevinNunes has turned out to be completely right. Congratulations to Devin. The Fake News Media should apologize to all!" 

Schiff’s correcting the record memo has turned out to be totally wrong (based on the I.G. Report)! A very big lie. @MariaBartiromo And @DevinNunes has turned out to be completely right. Congratulations to Devin. The Fake News Media should apologize to all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2019

The global economic slowdown that began last year is really picking up pace here in early 2020, and global financial markets are perfectly primed for a meltdown of epic proportions.  Unfortunately, most people simply do not understand how badly the global economy has been deteriorating.  For example, global auto sales have now fallen for two years in a row, and even CNN is admitting that the global auto industry has been in a “recession” for some time…

The global auto industry plunged deeper into recession in 2019, with sales dropping more than 4% as carmakers struggled to find buyers in China and India. The pain is likely to continue this year.

The number of vehicles sold across major global markets dipped to 90.3 million last year, according to analysts at LMC Automotive. That’s down from 94.4 million in 2018, and well below the record 95.2 million cars sold in 2017.

Here in the United States, people keep trying to tell us that the economy is in good shape, but last year auto sales fell here too…

Nonseasonally adjusted passenger car sales in the U.S. for 2019 declined 10.9% to 4.7 million units, versus 5.3 million units in 2018, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis.

Sales of trucks, minivans and SUVs for the year totaled 12.2 million units, up 2.8% from the 2018 figure of 11.9 million units.

The overall nonseasonally adjusted U.S. vehicle sales for the period fell 1.4% to 17.0 million units, versus 17.2 million units a year ago.

Very few analysts are expecting these trends to turn around in 2020.

And considering how important the auto industry is to the global economy as a whole, that has very serious implications for all of us…

Recession comes with big ramifications for the global economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, the car industry accounts for 5.7% of economic output and 8% of goods exports. It is the second largest consumer of steel and aluminum.

Meanwhile, we are experiencing a very deep transportation recession in the United States as well.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

Shipment volume in the US by truck, rail, air, and barge plunged 7.9% in December 2019 compared to a year earlier, according to the Cass Freight Index for Shipments. It was the 13th month in a row of year-over-year declines, and the steepest year-over-year decline since November 2009, during the Financial Crisis

How in the world can the U.S. economy possibly be in “good shape” with absolutely horrific numbers like that?

When the amount of goods being shipped around the country by truck, rail and air is steadily falling, that is a crystal clear indication that economic conditions are slowing down.

And one of the biggest reasons why a transportation recession is upon us is because it looks like we are in a “manufacturing recession” too.

In fact, the manufacturing numbers for December were simply abysmal…

US manufacturing took a turn from lousy to worse in December, according to the Manufacturing ISM Report On Business, released today, with employment, new orders and new export orders, production, backlog of orders, and inventories all contracting.

The overall Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) dropped 0.9 percentage points from November to 47.2% in December 2019, the fifth month in a row of contraction, and the fastest contraction since June 2009.

Overall, 2019 was the worst year for U.S. industrial production since 2015.

Across the Atlantic, things are even worse in Europe.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

The manufacturing downturn across Europe deepened in the last month of 2019 according to the latest survey data released on Thursday.

IHS Markit Eurozone Manufacturing PMI lost momentum last month, printing at 46.3, down from 46.9 in November, if modestly above the 45.9 expected. The PMI averaged 46.4 in 4Q, a seven-year low.

When will global authorities finally admit that we have a real problem on our hands?

How much worse do the numbers have to get?

This month, the Baltic Dry Index has been plunging dramatically.  For those that don’t know, the Baltic Dry Index is a key indicator of where global trade is heading, and on Monday it plummeted to a nine-month low…

The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index hit a nine-month low on Monday, dragged down by falling rates of capesize and panamax segments as world trade continues to slump.

The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks rates for capesize, panamax and supramax vessels that ferry dry bulk commodities across the world, dropped 25 points, or 3.3%, to 729 (according to Refinitiv data), the lowest level since April 2019

This is not what a healthy global economy looks like.

Of course many of those in positions of authority will continue to insist that everything is just fine for as long as possible.

In fact, back in 2008 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke kept telling us that a recession wasn’t going to happen even after the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression had already started.

Just like back then, all of the hard economic numbers that we have are all saying the same thing.

Both the U.S. economy and the global economy as a whole have been slowing down for quite a while, and it looks like big trouble is ahead of us.

That means that now is not the time to be spending lots of money, making big financial commitments or going into debt.

Those that are wise will be positioning themselves to survive the coming economic storm, but unfortunately most people are paying no heed to the warning signs.

Just like last time around, most people have tremendous faith in the system, and so they will be absolutely blindsided by the crisis that is coming.

In the end, multitudes will be expecting the government to bail them out somehow, but considering the fact that we are already 23 trillion dollars in debt that simply is not going to be possible.

#ConferenciaMatutina el Presidente Andrés Manuel @lopezobrador_ afirmó que se identificaron dos casos de coronavirus en México. Uno de ellos está en observación en Tamaulipas, del que es probable que se descarte que sea coronavirus de Wuhan. pic.twitter.com/XAz26MXA4J

AMLO assured the public that the Mexican government is closely monitoring the situation.

* * *

China's National Health Commission has revised the total of coronavirus cases higher for at least the second time on Wednesday: there are now 473 confirmed patients infected in China alone, though the death toll remained at 9, Reuters reports.

Internationally, the total number of cases has climbed to 481, according to a running count by the SCMP:

As the virus spreads throughout the mainland, health officials in Hong Kong have confirmed that the first case of coronavirus has been detected in the Special Autonomous Region. According to the SCMP, the male patient arrived in Hong Kong on a high-speed train on Tuesday from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak. He was discovered to have a fever when he arrived at a rail station in West Kowloon, and has now tested positive or the virus three times, the first two at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Jordan.

Local television footage showed the still-unnamed patient being taken from Queen Elizabeth to Princess Margaret Hospital, where the Hospital Authority Infectious Disease Center is located. Several health care workers wearing full protective gear could be seen pushing the patient on a stretcher.

Hong Kong's public rail company, MTR Corp, confirmed that it had been notified by the Department of Health that the patient took a high-speed rail train G5607 from the Shenzhen North station to West Kowloon Station. Officials are now taking steps to disinfect the train.

The virus has also reportedly made it to Macau, which also confirmed its first case on Wednesday, according to the SCMP. Alarmingly, considering that Macau is one of the most popular destinations for the hundreds of millions of vacationers from the mainland looking to travel for the Chinese New Year Holiday this week, Macau's patient zero made it through health screenings for the virus, even though she had been showing symptoms including a cough and soar throat for about a week.

The virus has already spread to Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai, as well as to the US, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, Japan and beyond.

Earlier, we reported that China had launched a nation-wide screening effort to detect any remaining cases of the virus, suggesting that there could be many more cases yet to be uncovered. Screeners are looking for symptoms including fever, cough and difficulty breathing, all pneumonia-like symptoms. In addition to the autonomous regions, the virus has been confirmed in at least 13 Chinese provinces.

Beijing has also launched extensive operations to coat whole cities in disinfectant, as the video below shows:

Disinfection in the city of Shanghai due to the outbreak of a new #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/a3UDnghFkI

— Raccoon Brother (@RaccoonBrother) January 22, 2020

President Trump said earlier during an interview with CNBC's Joe Kernen that the situation in the US is "totally under control" after the first case was identified in Washington state, the CDC announced yesterday.

Asked about criticisms that China wasn't completely transparent about the virus, and initially tried to conceal the fact that it could spread from human to human, Trump said he had a good relationship with President Xi and expected that he could trust the Chinese government.

“We have it totally under control,” President Trump says after the CDC confirmed the first U.S. case of the coronavirus that has sickened hundreds of people in China. #Davos2020 https://t.co/QYmMpUcbFP pic.twitter.com/iuaQ1DikPB

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 22, 2020

Chinese officials have warned that the virus has been evolving and mutating as it has traveled. The map below is the NYT's most up-to-date accounting of confirmed cases, though at this point it's already woefully out-of-date.

The WHO is meeting on Wednesday to decide whether the outbreak warrants the most serious categorization for global pandemics.

Meanwhile, some experts are warning that on Wednesday the virus has taken a "step closer to full-blown epidemic."

Media reports have been warning people in China and around the world about steps they can take to avoid being infected. Basic steps include frequently washing hands, avoid touching ones eyes, mouth or nose with unwashed hands, clean and disinfect objects, and covering one's mouth and nose during a sneeze, per CNN.