Tipsheet

This Atlantic Piece on China Reminds Us Why They're the Worst

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  December 06, 2022 2:45 PM

As Townhall has highlighted, the Atlantic truly has put out some of the worst pieces, with greatest hits from back in August attacking the rosary and downplaying violence from pro-abortion extremists, and a ridiculous piece on mask mandates from earlier in the year that went through several headline changes. More recently, in light of the protests in China over "zero COVID," the leftist outlet is at it again. 

Last Thursday, the site published an article by Zoya Qureshi, who is the site's assistant editor no less, titled "How Many COVID Deaths Will Chinese Protesters Accept?" The subheadline claims that "Strict zero-COVID policies have kept disease from spreading, but at enormous social cost. How far should they be rolled back?"

Yes, how dare the Chinese people cry out for freedom under an oppressive regime that is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is responsible for having unleashed the virus on the world to begin with.

Here is how Qureshi begins her piece:

Anti-lockdown protests erupted across China following a deadly apartment fire in Xinjiang last week. The country’s zero-COVID policy may have been to blame, as first responders were apparently restricted from accessing the scene. Heavy-handed quarantines and endless testing are causing many harms, including food shortages and widespread unemployment. But they’re also keeping China’s COVID death toll very, very low: A study out in May from Nature Medicine, led by Shanghai researchers, estimated that without these strict measures in place, a massive wave of new Omicron infections could overwhelm critical-care units and leave 1.55 million people dead. As protesters call on the government to loosen up, how do they make sense of this potential trade-off?

It's worth emphasizing that anything to do with China and the CCP is unfortunately not to be trusted. The study mentioned above is also to do with a specific variant that originated in South Africa. Other headlines about China's death tolls point out how questions are to be raised.

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For any point Qureshi may have, she has the question wrong, and likely should be asking it the other way around, instead of putting it on people who have had enough of strict lockdowns under one of the world's most oppressive regimes for years now. Qureshi's piece mostly relies on "Global public-health experts and China scholars," but without any shred of acknowledgement of how the CCP operates. 

Other than a mention of the deadly apartment fire, there's no mention of what the Chinese people have been subject to with strict policies keeping them confined in their homes and left to starve. And, when it comes to the fire, Qureshi goes through great lengths to point out it "may have been to blame" because the first responders were "apparently restricted."

Her piece reads as if it were coming out of the United States or another similar country, which is most certainly not the case.

In her closing paragraph, Qureshi even admits that the policy she appears to be defending won't work:

Whatever the costs, the protesters are convinced that the zero-COVID policy is unsustainable. Public-health experts agree. “The government should address these concerns, because without jobs, people cannot pay for food and medications,” [Xi Chen, a health-policy professor at the Yale School of Public Health] said. In the end, China will need to navigate reopening while attempting to mitigate loss, [Albert Ko, an infectious-disease epidemiologist and physician at the Yale School of Public Health] told me. “This should have been done much earlier.”

The Atlantic tweeting out the article was ultimately noticed by The List for such an awful take. 

The tweet in question had close to 150 replies calling the outlet out, and 49 of the 65 retweets were quoted retweets similarly taking issue.

Qureshi and The Atlantic are hardly the only despicable takes from the media on the Chinese protests and "zero-COVID." Far from it, as highlighted last week. Nevertheless, Qureshi may still be the most ignorant and tone-deaf one out of the bunch.