Based on an essay by Shigeharu Aoyama, this article argues that the greatest problem of the Wuhan fever crisis is that no credible international investigation team can enter Wuhan, the source of the outbreak.
It examines the unusually wide incubation period of the new virus, China’s influence over the WHO, the risk of virus weaponization, and the failures of television reporting, while emphasizing the importance of national crisis management.

March 13, 2020
The greatest problem of this Wuhan fever crisis is that no credible international investigation team can enter Wuhan, the source of the new virus.
The following is from an essay by Shigeharu Aoyama, a member of the House of Councillors, writer, visiting professor at Kindai University, and lecturer at the University of Tokyo Free Research Seminar, published in the monthly magazine Hanada, which should be read not only by the Japanese people but by people all over the world.
Beyond the Wuhan fever crisis.
I have long warned, however powerless I may be, of the terror of infectious diseases.
For this unworthy self, national crisis management against modern threats, including infectious diseases and terrorism, has been one of my main occupations since before I entered the Diet.
For nearly twenty-two years, I have continued to ring a small alarm bell.
And at last, this day has come.
However, the end of the world has not come.
The greatest problem of this Wuhan fever crisis is that no credible international investigation team can enter Wuhan, the source of the new virus.
Even if an investigation team from the WHO, the World Health Organization, over which China has strengthened its control, enters, there is concern that, on the contrary, manipulated information will be issued.
For that reason, the true nature of the virus cannot be known.
For some reason, the Wuhan fever virus possesses abilities that can even be called bizarre.
For example, its incubation period ranges from zero to at least more than twenty days.
According to a theory by some Chinese researchers, one patient’s incubation period extended to twenty-four days.
The range is abnormally wide.
Nothing definitive can yet be said.
But as things stand, this is the situation.
The incubation period of the influenza virus is one to three days.
That of norovirus is one to two days.
That of viruses causing infectious gastroenteritis is one to three days.
Rotavirus also has an incubation period of one to three days.
They are broadly similar.
In contrast, coronaviruses such as SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, have a range.
These are viruses whose basic nature is that they do not spread through airborne infection, but cause fatal respiratory symptoms.
SARS has an incubation period of two to ten days.
MERS has one of two days to two weeks.
However, the incubation period of the coronavirus that causes Wuhan fever is even more strikingly wide.
This is only a matter of thinking in terms of a provisional simulation.
But it also appears as if the range of the incubation period had been extremely extended based on the coronaviruses of SARS and MERS.
If one were to weaponize a virus, one would surely want to change the ordinary incubation period greatly.
Why?
If one wants to kill soldiers immediately on the battlefield or deprive them of combat capability, the incubation period should be zero.
Conversely, if one wants to bury some region or country, or inflict damage and confusion, without it even appearing to be war, one makes the incubation period as long as possible.
If symptoms do not appear for around a month, the infected person moves around without being aware of infection.
He then becomes a super-spreader, that is, a patient who infects many people alone.
By the time symptoms appear, the infection may already have spread in a way that seems like a multiplication of rats.
Even if the virus is weakly virulent and the fatality rate is low, how great would the damage to society and the nation be?
If the devilish success had been achieved of building into the virus a switch that changes it from weakly virulent to strongly virulent, it would directly lead to the destruction of a society or a nation.
Those who continue to emphasize on television that the fatality rate is low may be excluding from the beginning, with no basis at all, the risk that the virus has been weaponized.
Or perhaps they unconsciously think that it will not infect them, and place only themselves in a safe zone.
Rather than going into the field on their own feet and devoting themselves to others, what they truly prioritize in their hearts is being able to appear on television.
If so, this is the kind of behavior that results.
This is a digression.
However, it is a necessary digression when considering the current state of television reporting on the Wuhan fever crisis.
This essay continues.