China covered up early warnings about Coronavirus effects
Macleans spoke about the Chinese government's apparent concealment of the early warnings about the Coronavirus outbreak, even going so far as to suppress those who tried to issue warnings:
Responsibility is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party government has been avoiding since the initial outbreak in Wuhan. Most notably, Dr. Li Wenliang raised concerns about the virus in December and was in turn detained by Chinese authorities and forced to sign a confession of making “false comments” and disturbing “the social order.” The virus would eventually take his life in February.If there's anything this large scale outbreak can teach us, it's how dishonesty from political sources like these can lead to serious disasters, and now, we're all paying a heavy price from what that failure to be responsible has led to.
While Bernie Sanders might be forgiven for naively blurting out that “now is the time to be working with China,” the Chinese government has offered little evidence to suggest that closer cooperation would lead to a solution. Conversely, Beijing’s mishandling and negligence has directly enabled the spread of this pandemic.
China’s primary motivation throughout has been to avoid any responsibility or accountability by deflecting blame and suppressing criticism since day one. So effective has the Chinese campaign been that even foreign governments (including here in Canada) have remained largely silent about China’s role. The instinct of any totalitarian state like China is to cover up anything that might require them to take responsibility.
During the initial coronavirus outbreak, authorities in Wuhan stated that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Yet, as first noted in a January study in The Lancet, more than a third of patients had no connections to the Wuhan food market, and people started to become ill weeks before the government would admit.
But the obfuscation goes deeper. Instead of informing its own people and the world, about the threat early on, the Chinese government contributed directly to the global pandemic we face today through politically motivated manipulation and active disinformation. By lying about the virus’s initial spread, including by not acknowledging human-to-human transmission when it was quite clearly happening, and by prioritizing political stability over human health, China’s actions directly led to the massive spread of the virus.
Labels: China, Moonbattery, political corruption
