In what should be seen as an unsurprising development, the Chinese Communist Party and its public health apparatus are not being transparent about the situation unfolding in China as a new surge of COVID cases worries world leaders. Of course China isn't being forthcoming about what strains are appearing or how many cases are popping up — China has been trying to skirt blame and stymie research into COVID since it hid critical information about the virus at the beginning of the pandemic.
Despite attempts by Democrats and other leaders who seemingly took their cues from the CCP early in the pandemic to shield the communist country from scrutiny over COVID-19, it has become clear that China knew more about the virus' origins than they've said. Still, once it became impossible to deny the possibility that COVID came from a Chinese lab in Wuhan, there was little to no accountability for China's thuggish government. As a result, China sees no reason to be transparent now because they've been able to get away with...we don't even know how much.
Enter The Associated Press, with some pearl-clutching about how China "may not be sharing data now on any signs of evolving strains that could spark fresh outbreaks elsewhere." You don't say.
Taiwan, which remains under the gun of China's escalating aggression, emphasized that the rest of the world has "a very limited grasp" on information in or from China, and what the world does know is "not very accurate."
What China has said is that their recent surge in cases "is being driven by versions of the omicron variant" and has set up a "surveillance system" that the CCP says will "identify any potentially worrisome new versions of the virus," according to AP. Well, maybe if China hadn't lied about the first COVID strain that spread through the country and then jumped to become a global pandemic the world would trust their new variant surveillance system. Also, why wasn't there one before?
The chief epidemiologist at China's Center for Disease Control — an organization that clearly failed otherwise there wouldn't have been a global outbreak of COVID — claimed this week that "China has always reported the virus straints it has found in a timely way," but that's also a lie. "We keep nothing secret," the CCP's public health official claimed, quite unbelievably. "All work is shared with the world." Except for when it isn't.
Of course, the generally useless World Health Organization's Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus is still playing the know-nothing game and calling on China to share "more information on the severity of the outbreak" in order to "make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground." Ghebreyesus, of course, should know by now that China isn't going to tell the WHO what it's seeing and dealing with. He's been played by (or conspired with) China before to give the CCP cover for its role in COVID's spread, and it seems he's feigning ignorance and giving China the benefit of the doubt again this time.
As AP's report noted, "China has been accused of masking the virus situation in the country before," and a previous AP investigation "found that the government sat on the release of genetic information about the virus for more than a week after decoding it, frustrating WHO officials."
As Katie reported on Wednesday, the Biden administration announced new testing requirements for individuals traveling to the U.S. from China — despite the fact that Biden smeared then-President Trump as a racist and xenophobe for placing restrictions on travel from China at the beginning of the pandemic.
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