China’s disinformation campaign about Wuhan Coronavirus puts America at fault and in danger
Since December 2019, the world has been closely following the outbreak of the Wuhan Coronavirus. Though, for a time, it was largely understood that the outbreak did originate in Wuhan, China where the first known case was found, China is now pointing the finger at America, and blaming us for the outbreak. Though this assertion is ludicrous, the Chinese government is going above and beyond to spread their propaganda, not only to their citizens, but to the world to cover up the truth behind the virus.
China now blames the U.S. for the origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus
Early this month, a Wuhan Coronavirus conspiracy began to swirl around the internet, putting the U.S. at fault for the spread of the virus.
On March 7, Lin Songtian, China’s ambassador to South Africa, tweeted:
On March 12, People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, posted a video of Robert Redfield, the director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), appearing to admit that American citizens previously diagnosed with Influenza were tested positive for Wuhan Coronavirus postmortem.
Chinese official, Lijian Zhao, shared the video to Twitter, using it to blame the U.S. Army for bringing the Coronavirus to Wuhan, not the other way around.
This video clip came from the House Oversight and Reform Committee Hearing on Coronavirus Response on March 11, which sought to further understand Wuhan Coronavirus testing in the United States. Though this clip does not prove any timeline wherein people were dying and being misdiagnosed before the initial outbreak of Coronavirus in Wuhan, Zhao is using it as propaganda to blame the U.S.
According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, Zhao also claimed that Redfield had been apprehended and arrested. This, of course, was false. So, what other claims of Zhao’s are false?
What we know
Media in China is state-run and censored. Citizens are often barred from receiving negative information about the Chinese government or spreading negative information about the Chinese government. In other words, the Chinese government can lie to its citizens, and the world, as was done in the early 2000s in the case of the SARS outbreak.
This media structure allowed for the Chinese government to initially downplay Wuhan Coronavirus’s threat, and even lied about its origin. Reporting done by Vox, based on a study done by The Lancet, indicates that the first Wuhan Coronavirus case was found two weeks prior to what Chinese officials told the rest of the world, and that the initial spread of the virus likely occurred in October — far sooner than what we’ve been led to believe.
We also know that Chinese health officials claimed that many of the earlier patients diagnosed with Wuhan Coronavirus were mainly business people with ties to the Huanan Seafood Market. However, Vox’s and The Lancet’s reporting shows that the “… first case of 2019-nCoV wasn’t even linked to the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market at the center of the outbreak.”
This new research should raise many concerns about the Chinese government’s handling of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak. Though it appears that much of our own media is buying into the propaganda and the lies.
U.S. Leftist media is applauding China, putting Americans at risk and removing responsibility from China
In January, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), armed with the facts presented by The Lancet’s study, repeatedly told the American public that China had been slow to respond to the virus, and lied about its origin. Of course, this all took place amidst the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
Since, the media here in our country has been quick to encourage the American people to ignore Cotton, and at one point, felt so confident in China’s statements that the American people were told Covid-19 was not a threat to us.
Though Cotton is speaking out against China, equipped with these facts presented by The Lancet, major news organizations such as CNN, New York Times and The Hill, to name a few, are calling Cotton a conspiracy theorist. But, if China has lied about how the virus originated, and we still don’t have an exact point of origin within Wuhan, how do we know he’s lying? Of course, identity politics are largely at play.
On February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) held a press conference, where the once named, ‘Wuhan Coronavirus’ was given the name ‘Covid-19,’ because, “Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatising. It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks.”
China is the second largest funder of the World Health Organization.
This name change legitimizes China’s assertion that the Wuhan Coronavirus did not originate in Wuhan, China. This sentiment was furthered by Fox News, which stated, “calling COVID-19 the ‘Wuhan virus’ or ‘Chinese coronavirus’ keeps pressure on the Chinese government and forces it to be held accountable by the rest of the world for its initial response to the global crisis, which was widely regarded as abysmal.”
Many who, like Cotton and those at Fox News, still rightly believe that China is to blame for this pandemic, are often referred to as “right wing” by most of the media, which is, as we know, a way to de-legitimize Republicans. However, the media and the Left may want to rethink their politics in the coming weeks, as China proves just how cruel it can be.
China now threatens to withhold life-saving medicine from America
As reported by Fox News on March 13, Xinhua, China’s state-run media agency, “ … bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in the city of Wuhan and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into “the mighty sea of Coronavirus.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told Fox News that the U.S. is heavily dependent on China for the production of drugs and other goods, including our technology. If China decides to withhold drugs from the U.S. a lot of people, not just those suffering from the Wuhan Coronavirus, could be in big trouble.
As Fox News further reported, China is painting itself as a “hero,” for its response to the outbreak of the virus; however, our studies have shown us otherwise. If the media and the Left do not begin to drop their identity politics, hold China accountable for the outbreak and face the facts, America could be in danger.
