Suzanne Abou Said Daou

The interactive map Baltahji's Tracker, created by cyber security expert Ghassan Baltahji, who has been following developments in the spread of new Corona virus infection or what has been agreed to be called COVID_19 from the start and around the world in a scientific and documented manner, basing his data on official figures, has resulted in cooperation with our website, "Elissar News", by adopting his maps in many of  our articles, to reach the top ranks in the search engine "Google" yesterday and today, and ahead of the interactive map created by a team of experts from the prestigious "John Hopkins University", taking into account that this ranking is constantly changing according to the interactions and views by Google's readers, and this map has reached the top ten most searched maps around the world and the first rank in Lebanon, because of  being easy to use on mobile i.e. mobile friendly compared to other interactive maps, and the ability to search easily and in many details in more than a thousand regions around the world, even the streets’ names and the number of cases and  for anyone.

Baltahji

“Noting that this interactive map and the accompanying table are done by individual efforts, relying on data submitted by official sources and as these reach us from different countries”, as Baltdhji told “Elissar News”, and he added: "So the data changes constantly and I try to keep up with every source, according to what the countries issue at a certain time, as well as countries that follow a random time, for example, China and South Korea issue their reports at eight in the morning in their times, that is in the early morning hours in Lebanon, while Europe issues the data earlier than the timing of data submitted by Arab countries by about two hours i.e. between ten and 12 am Beirut time, while several countries follow a random timing, including Lebanon. "

Individual Effort

Balatahji pointed that: "This is an individual effort, and it is non profitable, cases I’ve been following since the early Coronavirus spread, and despite the availability of unofficial information from sources inside Lebanon, and in many regions of the world, I do not provide any of them and rely only on information announced by official and reliable sources”, He noted that, “According to my follow-up, this infection is spreading quickly, and the real numbers are much larger than the official sources announce, and this is really alarming”.

Cooperation With Elissar News

He added: "I had the opportunity to cooperate with your honorable site, which has led to a follow-up by many, the number of views of the interactive Baltahji’s Tracker has reached 54,718 views until now, and when I update and add additions, it stops for a short while and get bombarded from around the world by people contacting me via social media sites, to ask for updates on a certain situation in a certain country”, he pointed out:“ This effort takes a lot of my time, and I’m not looking for recognition or appreciation in return, but I feel that I have a moral and human obligation, and I do this for my own good and the good of many people and followers, especially since this effort paid off on the Google search engine today and yesterday, that the interactive map got ahead prestigious maps such as the map created by a large team of  John Hopkins University, while in the case of (Elissar News) ahead, and in line with famous sites such as NY times and BBC, for example, the maps that we mentioned in certain articles on the (Elissar News) website was in the 4^th rank following  two maps for NY Times and a map for BBC, and ranked first in Lebanon on Google search engine” .

Spread Of Infection In Lebanon

Regarding the spread of infection in Lebanon, Balatahji said: "Unfortunately, the signs are not positive. There are many cases where symptoms do not appear, and adequate quarantine has not been implemented in many suspected cases, while marine, land and air outlets have not been restricted to the movement of travelers from infected regions as in other countries, which indicates many cases will be discovered sooner or later, and in my opinion within a week at the latest, for the virus follows an exponential growth rate, that is, the number of cases detected will be doubled, and within a short period, and even if these figures are not officially admitted, for example, if you discover 5 cases, then the number will likely be 5 times 5, that is, 25 and even more, hopefully it won’t become even more than that”, he noted that “as we have seen in South Korea, Italy, France, etc., the numbers increased suddenly, and sadly, this is what we expect will happen in Lebanon”.

Attacking The Media

And he hinted that, "The official references especially in Lebanon, despite the many media appearances, attacked the media and accused them of provoking panic, to retreat after that, which we expected, this matter was repeated in Italy, as the authorities and the people dealt with the disease as a regular flu, the numbers in Italy have dramatically risen, the number of cases now is 12,462 with 827 deaths exceeding those of South Korea (7,869 cases Deaths 66), and second only to China (now with 80,796 cases and deaths 3,169 ) in the number of cases and number of deaths, as it happened in Iran (Cases 10,075 - Deaths 429), as the authorities overlooked the various warnings from activists, the infection spread on a large scale and not only that, but also exported to neighboring countries, especially Lebanon (number of cases until now 68, deaths 3), knowing that official numbers are less by far from those reported officially, and were confirmed by unofficial sources, another example, the case in China, it followed a severe blackout from the beginning and still is, with the arrest of activists and journalists and accusations of treason etc…, china managed to manipulate number of cases, deaths and new occurrences, for its part, the United States followed the strategy of recklessness by not conducting adequate tests, despite the distribution of more than 3 million kits, according to a source from the White House, while South Korea is estimated to perform on a daily basis tests exceeding 10,000 for coronavirus, so is South Korea's capacity greater than the capacity of USA to undergo tests? and following people and media pressure, more laboratory tests were performed to reveal more and more number of infections later, there were modest positive cases in USA in the beginning, and within minutes, and as you mentioned in an article in Elissar News, the number of cases doubled in an unprecedented way, so far, the number of cases in USA reached 1,364 while the number yesterday was 1016, and 31 deaths and today 38, and this is what we feared to happen in Lebanon and what is most likely to happen as many experts in health and statistics agree with us, noting that the Total worldwide official numbers are at this very moment 129,590 cases and 4,749 death toll”.

Situation In Lebanon Is Gloomy!

The final situation according to Baltahji “follows the individual restrictions applied by each country and the health services effectiveness and transparency, as well as the political and economic situation, in the case of Lebanon, all the situation is gloomy”!