Kudos to the Washington Post for this headline: China’s coronavirus propaganda campaign is putting lives at risk.
Not the same with some of their colleagues and some Democrats who are flocking to communist China’s new propaganda:
.@RichardEngel: "This is a virus that came from the territory of China but came from bats. This is a bat virus, not a China virus. It doesn't speak Chinese. It doesn't target Chinese people. It targets human beings who happen to touch their eyes, nose or mouth." pic.twitter.com/ljQeT7UQam
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 18, 2020
This is insane puppetry for the CPC.
One reporter (in a now-deleted and later reposted Tweet, below mine) said the insinuation that China was accusing the United States military of anything lacked any evidence.
Addition: Trump implies for the second time that “China virus” framing is pushback for scurrilous rumors out of China that virus was spread by U.S. military (there’s zero evidence that U.S. military had any role whatsoever, btw).
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) March 18, 2020
“zero evidence”https://t.co/74jgxit7tH https://t.co/ddme4JiWG7
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) March 18, 2020
Zero evidence?
Here’s the New York Times: China Spins Tale That the U.S. Army Started the Coronavirus Epidemic
Oh, and here is the Spokesperson and Deputy Director General for communist China’s Information Department and Foreign Ministry who literally typed out the accusation with his hands and hit “send Tweet” on his official, verified Twitter account:
2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 12, 2020
And here is China’s state-run paper flirting with the idea of withholding antibiotics from the United States as punishment for daring to note their blame in this pandemic, writing if they stopped shipping medicines “the United States would sink into the hell of a novel coronavirus epidemic.” From Marc Theissen: “This virus should be forever linked to the regime that facilitated its spread.”
Sen. John Cornyn: "China is to blame because the culture where people eat bats & snakes & dogs & things like that, these viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people and that's why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, like MERS, the Swine Flu." pic.twitter.com/N4TIlGFqAL
— The Hill (@thehill) March 18, 2020
.@KellyannePolls is asked about the rumor that a White House Official called Coronavirus, ‘Kung Flu’:
“I’m not dealing in hypotheticals… Tell us all who it is.”pic.twitter.com/XH9qILW4al
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 18, 2020
Both of these are outright Chinese propaganda. pic.twitter.com/sQEb82wgX1
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 18, 2020
The president is turning to racist rhetoric to distract from his failures to take the coronavirus seriously early on, make tests widely available, and adequately prepare the country for a period of crisis.
Don't fall for it. Don't let your friends and family fall for it.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 18, 2020
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks discussing comment China’s abhorrent actions that led to this pandemics explosion. Here are some:
Communist China had records of the virus destroyed in the early days. They bullied the World Health Organization (again) into helping them downplay the severity of the outbreak:
This, from January, is worth remembering. H/T @EliLake https://t.co/JGoRHFdzCf
— Brit Hume (@brithume) March 18, 2020
Communist China targeted and arrested doctors trying to warn the public:
In the middle of the night, officials from the health authority in the central city of Wuhan summoned Dr. Li, demanding to know why he had shared the information. Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.”
[…]
The government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.
A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms in early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city, based on two dozen interviews with Wuhan residents, doctors and officials, on government statements and on Chinese media reports, points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive.
In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn’t broadly curb the wildlife trade.
Li and seven other whistleblowers were arrested for spreading rumors. Only last week, as the coronavirus outbreak kept 50 million Chinese people on lockdown and accelerated around the world, did authorities concede that Li and the others should not have been censured.
“It’s not so important to me if I’m vindicated or not,” Li, 34, said in an interview from a quarantine room with Chinese publication Caixin. “What’s more important is that everyone knows the truth.”
Dr. Wenliang was vindicated before his death from the virus in Wuhan last month. He died a hero.
The next day, hospital leaders told Ai that Wuhan’s health commission had forbidden frontline medical workers from saying anything about the virus in a bid to avoid panic.
Ai said she was also censured by a hospital official, who accused her of “spreading rumors,” the Post reported. She was ordered to not speak about it even to her husband and to inform her staff members that they were not permitted to publicly disclose any information about the illness.
[…]
“How could I refrain from discussions with my medical colleagues knowing that a new and significant virus had emerged? I followed my intuition as a doctor so what mistakes did I make?” Ai wondered.
I relayed to you earlier (see here and here) how China used its power to bully the WHO into excluding Taiwan from international emergency meetings about the virus:
… On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) is convening an emergency committee of experts to assess whether the coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, constitutes an international crisis. But one of the countries affected, Taiwan, will not be represented.
[…]
But Taiwan is no longer able to attend the World Health Assembly, WHO’s annual policy meeting. China has prevented Taiwan from attending since 2016, after President Tsai Ing-wen was elected for the first time. Since her election, Beijing has stepped up its existing military and economic pressure on Taiwan, viewing Tsai’s pro-sovereignty status as a veil for Taiwanese independence.
This in addition to suppressing critical data and lying about their infected and fatalities. They also bought all the face masks:
"China did not just stop selling masks — it also bought up much of the rest of the world’s supply. … On Jan. 30, the last day for which data is available, China managed to import 20 million respirators and surgical masks in just 24 hours." https://t.co/8KwQeCyz7g
— Ana Swanson (@AnaSwanson) March 13, 2020
Communist China took a page from the American left and their new propaganda is that it’s “racist” to note where the pandemic originated.
Racism is not the right tool to cover your own incompetence pic.twitter.com/LmGDyPsULt
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) March 17, 2020
(The Uyghurs were not available for comment.) All of these people …
Sadly, the partisan level of hate has evidently led some in media and politics to hate their own country simply because of who was elected to lead it. As of such, they feel that by boosting communist China’s absurd (and demonstrably debunked) claims they’re hurting Trump — when in reality they’re hurting the country they claim to love and her citizens. If only these reporters and politicos could show as much concern for the abuses of communist China against its own people and the pandemic they unleashed on the world (after warnings before SARS). If only China had acted earlier and not targeted its own people with greater force initially than it did this pandemic.