ProMed has issued an updated comment on this with:
https://promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=8713277
>Source: Stephan Gibson <
stephan.gibson@gmail.com> [edited]
>Regarding Undiagnosed pneumonia - China: (BJ, LN) children, reported epidemic, RFI (20231121.871326), this is **consistent with reports of ongoing nationwide _Mycoplasma_ pneumonia in both western and Chinese news sources**, going on for at least 2 months now. My personal experience is also consistent with those reports: numerous friends with illness, primarily coughing and lethargy, but at least one with a high fever as the 1st symptom. Azithromycin and doxycycline are effective in at least the few cases I know of. **In my mind, this presentation is consistent with _Mycoplasma_.**
The original “mysterious” symptom that concerned contributors on ProMed, along with accusations of government coverup, all came from [an uncorroborated report from FTV](
https://www.ftvnews.com.tw/news/detail/2023B21I19M1), a Taiwanese tabloid site. What's worse is that it seems like FTV was quoting "reports" from [New Tang Dynasty](
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Tang_ ... Television) (look at the screenshots in that article), a Falun Gong affiliated anti-CCP, pro-Trump, pro-QAnon, anti-vaccine propaganda network.
There are literally no other original source of report of this outbreak being anything unusual.
It seems like FLG just scored a huge victory with their misinformation campaign in these past 48 hours.
**Edit:** FWIW I follow these kind of things pretty closely, as I [wrote this post back on January 2020](
https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comm ... ic_impact/) (and apparently that post made a lot of people a lot of money lol). As I followed this story and did a bit more due diligence, I was both relieved at it being most likely a non-story and annoyed at the possibility that the whole thing was a victory for misinformation wielding propagandist.
Obviously there is a non-zero chance that a Taiwanese political tabloid just single handedly warned us of the next global pandemic, but for now I'm cautiously optimistic.
