It's no secret that China did everything in their power to cover up the Wuhan coronavirus. They were more concerned with how their image looked to the rest of the world instead of focusing on saving millions of lives around the globe. But what we're seeing from China is nothing new. In fact, how they have handled this crisis plays directly into their MO and their general handling of international catastrophes.
"To most in the United States, reactions to a crisis like this seems grotesque, really unimaginable. But to Mandarin speakers who have followed China carefully and have for a long time, these were highly familiar moves," Fox News' Tucker Carlson explained. "The first reflux of the Chinese government is always to lie in order to hide failure and avoid embarrassment."
Carlson listed off a couple of scenarios where China lied, including the SARS outbreak in 2003 and a train derailment in 2011. Instead of admitting that two trains collided and caused passenger cars to derail, the Chinese government used backhoes to bury the train cars, even though it appeared there were people still inside. Officials originally said a lightning strike caused the crash. Eventually, the government admitted the crash took place because of shoddy construction on the bridge where the trains collided. And the topper? State-owned media were told to ignore what happened unless there were positive spins to the story.
"This was the template for China's official response to the Wuhan virus. From the early days of the outbreak, Chinese diplomats around the world insisted there was no chance whatsoever the virus had come from a lab. They sometimes insisted this even when no one had asked them, as if they were reading from a script," Carlson explained. "It soon became obvious what was going on. English language academic journals had raised – for years – questions about the safety standards in Wuhan bioresearch labs."
Chinese officials themselves admitted that they were working with "extremely dangerous pathogens" before the pandemic began.
The most amazing thing, however, is that there is "almost unanimous agreement in the intelligence-gathering agencies that the virus currently destroying much of the world, emerged from a lab in Wuhan."
As Carlson pointed out, there are very few instances where the intelligence community is almost unanimous on things. And this is the one thing that the intel community is in agreement on.
What's worse is members of the CIA, NSA and other government agencies have briefed outlets like The New York Times about the belief that this is how the Wuhan coronavirus started. Instead, the NYT decided not to pursue that story. Convenient, right?
On top of that, China has continually pumped out propaganda, like denying the fact that the coronavirus started in Wuhan. Even to this day, the Chinese – who are in China – are referring to this as the "Wuhan virus" (because, you know, it started in the city of Wuhan).
"Our news outlets, meanwhile, almost always call it 'COVID-19.' That term does not translate to Chinese," Carlson explained. "'COVID-19' is the name devised by the World Health Organization back in January, under influence from Chinese leaders who are anxious to deflect responsibility for it. Once they succeeded in removing any hint of origin from the name of the virus, the Chinese government launched a campaign to tar anyone who mentioned Wuhan as a dangerous racist."
Members of the media have continually parrotted Chinese talking points, including that calling the coronavirus the "Wuhan virus" or the "Wuhan coronavirus" is racist. Of course, CNN, MSNBC and other leftist news outlets declared President Donald Trump's use of the term as "racist" and "xenophobic," despite the fact that other viruses have been named based on where they originated from.
According to a source with the American government, "Bejing has instructed diplomats in their consulate in San Francisco to work with American state and local officials, and members of Congress, to push back against anyone who gets too far out on blaming China for this."
That explains why we've seen various Democrats come out and say placing blame on China is racist, xenophobic and unfair. It's also why they have somehow turned this around to blame President Trump.
The fact of the matter is this: the disease started in Wuhan. Wuhan is in China. Chinese officials lied about what took place. They were focused on protecting their country's image (even though it wasn't all that stellar to begin with) instead of protecting lives around the world. Taiwan did everything in their power to blow the whistle on what was taking place. They alerted the World Health Organization back in December and the warning fell on deaf ears. Not only did the WHO fail to alert the world but they pushed Chinese propaganda.
When Trump halted flights from China as a means of mitigating the Wuhan coronavirus, he was called racist and xenophobic. That decision has turned out to be one of the single most important decisions that was made in this crisis. Dr. Fauci has even said that decision had a huge impact on limiting the number of Americans who were exposed to this virus.
Our politicians and media have a responsibility to hold China and the WHO for their actions (or lack thereof). They could have singlehandedly stopped this from becoming a pandemic but what did they do? Lied. Covered up information. Went on a PR campaign.
Watch this whole thing: pic.twitter.com/xp17mSUQG4
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) April 18, 2020
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