We Need To Call It the 'Chinese Virus': If China Acted 3 Weeks Earlier, Cases Could Have Dropped 95%, Study Says
As establishment reporters fall over themselves to condemn President Donald Trump for describing the coronavirus as a “Chinese virus,” actual journalists are seeking to uncover the truth about the origins of the illness — and their information reveals why blame should be placed squarely on the Chinese government.
The president has been harshly criticized by many on the left in recent days for describing the coronavirus, or COVID-19, as a virus from China, with some saying “Chinese virus” is “racist” and creates a stigma against Chinese Americans.
Asked about it during a news briefing Tuesday, Trump responded, “China was putting out information, which was false, that our military gave this to them. That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said I have to call it where it came from. It did come from China. So I think it’s a very accurate term.
“I didn’t appreciate the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them. Our military did not give it to anybody.”
Seeing as the infection originated in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, that description from Trump would seem to be quite accurate.
Trump is making sure people know the contagion is a foreign-born issue brought to America’s shores rather than created by the U.S. military as some form of bioweapon, as China wants the world to believe.
That bizarre conspiracy theory has been largely ignored by establishment media outlets, which seem content on carrying whatever for the Chinese government.
The talking heads would rather decry Trump’s terminology as racially insensitive than show a sliver of journalistic integrity by calling China out for its outright lies about the virus.
More important than China’s attempts to deflect blame about the spread of the coronavirus is the communist government’s attempt to conceal it from the world.
Axios has published a detailed and comprehensive timeline of deliberate attempts from Chinese officials to hide the truth about the coronavirus and what was occurring in the country in the early stage of the health epidemic.
A study has indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.
A timeline of the early days of China’s outbreak and cover-up:https://t.co/6cBOZKrHzA
— Axios (@axios) March 18, 2020
Axios, citing a Southampton University study, reported that “if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.”
After patients in Wuhan began feeling ill on or around Dec. 10, it took about two weeks for health officials and doctors to identify that something was seriously wrong.
On Dec. 27, Wuhan officials were briefed that a mystery illness was diagnosed as a novel coronavirus. Officials in China reacted by attempting to bury any information about the highly contagious virus.
Axios noted that by Dec. 30, health experts in China attempted to share information about the illness online via the Chinese messaging and social media app WeChat but were reprimanded:
“Ai Fen, a top director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts information on WeChat about the new virus. She was reprimanded for doing so and told not to spread information about it.
“Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang also shares information on WeChat about the new SARS-like virus. He is called in for questioning shortly afterward.”
Furthermore, on Jan. 1, officials in Wuhan questioned eight doctors for posting about the coronavirus on WeChat, Axios reported.
The same day, an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered any labs that had determined COVID-19 was similar to SARS to destroy samples of the disease.
It was not until Jan. 22-24 that the Chinese government took action by locking down travel and enacting social distancing.
By then, it was too late.
The coronavirus pandemic is now worldwide and, as of Thursday, has killed more people in Italy than it has in China, with a worldwide death toll nearing 10,000.
That is, if you choose to believe numbers being reported about the coronavirus by the Chinese government.
The pandemic is not the Chinese virus simply because it originated in the heart of the communist country. COVID-19 is a Chinese virus because China let the illness incubate and then spread through deliberate attempts to mislead the international health community.
The communist government deserves the blame for not only deliberately failing to act but also punishing those who attempted to sound the alarm.
Rep. Michael McCaul, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, described China’s actions “one of the worst cover-ups in human history.”
“We want the truth to come out about this. I do worry — for two months they tried to cover it up, which made this situation worse,” the Texas Republican told Axios.
China lied, people died.
Now the country owns the name of the disease it attempted to hide from the world.
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