CCP Coronavirus outbreak may have started in September, say British scientists

[Vanguard One]

 

[vi-va]

Not Scientist, but propagandist.

 

[Thamizh Puli]

frankly this is likely. since the world suspects China knew about the outbreak as early of Oct or early Nov, may be the infection/crossover to human in Wuhan started in late September

 

[khansaheeb]

frankly this is likely. since the world suspects China knew about the outbreak as early of Oct or early Nov, may be the infection/crossover to human in Wuhan started in late September

Everyone is making wild guesses and accusations depending on their agenda. We know it was in China but how it got there and from where, no one knows.

 

[Yaseen1]

it is natural that when some new disease originate in world, in earlier period no one have idea about what disease it is and mostly doctors will regard is as existing disease like ordinary flue or pneumonia unless its extraordinary effects are revealed which takes time to become evident
so this is not considered as basis to blame china

 

[zectech]

Not Scientist, but propagandist.

These moronic "scientists" are looking in the wrong country. Wuhan got the first illness in October and November. The United States had the cases going back since the Summer of 2019, which the video points out, however, they are looking in the wrong country for the start coronavirUS. They should be looking for the first cases being in the US where the virus spread slowly and gradually went to Europe.

Coronavirus: ‘strange pneumonia’ seen in Lombardy in November, leading Italian doctor says

• Virus was circulating ‘before we were aware of the outbreak in China’, says Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research
• Italy has now reported more than 4,800 deaths from Covid-19, more than any other country in the world

Liu Zhen in Beijing
Published: 9:00pm, 22 Mar, 2020

Updated: 8:15am, 25 Mar, 2020

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...ange-pneumonia-seen-lombardy-november-leading

This above story, from sources at National Public radio in the US, matches with other American news reports that the US had the virus first from pneumonia from unknown source, then misdiagnosed as the flu.

Mutation A was less deadly and less contagious and circled the globe before the Chinese were aware of Mutation B in Wuhan in December.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

frankly this is likely. since the world suspects China knew about the outbreak as early of Oct or early Nov, may be the infection/crossover to human in Wuhan started in late September

did it really? US National Academy of Sciences is not so sure from the genetic data.

Original research paper from US National Academy of Sciences:

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/07/2004999117

Summary:

https://www.genengnews.com/news/spr...econstructed-using-genetic-network-technique/

Their results uncovered three variants of SARS-CoV-2, consisting of clusters of related lineages, which they designated A, B, and C. Variant A was most closely related to the virus found in both bats and pangolins, and represents the effective root of the outbreak.

Type B is derived from A, separated by two mutations, then C is in turn a “daughter” of B. “Overall, the network, as expected in an ongoing outbreak, shows ancestral viral genomes existing alongside their newly mutated daughter genomes,” the team noted.

Forster and colleagues found that type A, which was the original human virus genome, was present in Wuhan, but surprisingly was not the city’s predominant virus type. Their analyses showed that mutated versions of A were seen in Americans reported to have lived in Wuhan, and a large number of A-type viruses were found in patients from the United States and Australia.

 

[master_13]

News today that many deaths in the US during early January, American doctor thought those people died of regular flues. Of course when it comes to China, west hold different standard, they expect china to know it was a new virus right away.

 

[beijingwalker]

No, it may start last June or July

'Respiratory outbreak' being investigated at retirement community after 54 residents fall ill
Two have died and 18 were hospitalized in Virginia, officials said.
Enjoli Francis
July 11, 2019, 6:32 PM ET

Deadly virus outbreak at Virginia retirement homeAccording to the Fairfax County Health Department, 11 days ago 54 people became ill with symptoms ranging from cough to pneumonia, now the "respiratory illness' left 2 dead and many hospitalized.WTTG

Two people have died and 18 others have been hospitalized after a "respiratory outbreak" at a Virginia retirement community, according to officials.

The Fairfax County Department of Health said that 54 individuals had become ill with "respiratory symptoms ranging from upper respiratory symptoms (cough) to pneumonia" in the last 11 days at Greenspring Retirement Community in Springfield.

In a letter Wednesday to residents obtained by ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV in Washington D.C., Greenspring described symptoms as "fever, cough, body aches, wheezing, hoarseness and general weakness."

Benjamin Schwartz, a health department director, told ABC News on Thursday that the outbreak had been reported in the assisted-living and skilled-nursing sections. He said the outbreak began with the first case on June 30.

The specific cause of the outbreak had not yet been identified but additional tests of samples were being done, according to Schwartz.

The assisted-living and skilled-nursing facility in Greenspring is home to 263 residents, Schwartz said. He said the two patients who died in the outbreak had been hospitalized with pneumonia but were "older individuals with complex medical problems."

"One of the things about skilled nursing facilities and assisted living facilities is [that] when you have a lot of people in close proximity, who have underlying medical conditions, there is an increased risk for outbreaks," he said. "Seeing a respiratory outbreak in a long-term care facility is not odd. ... One thing that's different about this outbreak is just that it's occurring in the summer when, usually, we don't have a lot of respiratory disease."

Of those initially hospitalized, seven have returned to the retirement home, said Courtney Benoff, regional communications manager for Erikson Living, which owns the retirement home.

The health department said that although there had been no new hospitalizations in the "past couple of days," residents were still getting sick in the outbreak.

In a statement, Greenspring said that its "highest priority is the welfare of those who live and work on campus."

"In keeping with this commitment the community has acted with an abundance of caution, and in partnership with the Fairfax County Department of Health, has taken all necessary measures to fully implement proven infection prevention and control strategies. We remain vigilant in our response and will continue to provide frequent and transparent updates to residents, staff and family members," the retirement home said in a statement.

The Fairfax County Health Department said it is investigating the incident.

The department said that appropriate measures had been taken to reduce the risk of infection and keep residents safe, including closing the facility to new admissions, cancelling group activities, keeping ill residents in their rooms and increasing cleaning.

Residents experiencing any of those symptoms were urged to call the community's medical center.

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/respi...sion=true&from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0

 

[rott]

it is natural that when some new disease originate in world, in earlier period no one have idea about what disease it is and mostly doctors will regard is as existing disease like ordinary flue or pneumonia unless its extraordinary effects are revealed which takes time to become evident
so this is not considered as basis to blame china

Exactly! But westerners and their puppy India have their own evil agenda.

 

[Thamizh Puli]

Everyone is making wild guesses and accusations depending on their agenda. We know it was in China but how it got there and from where, no one knows.

actually that's beginning to emerge as well, but slowly because CCP is exercising such control over flow of info. In spite of such iron grip what is emerging is :

* the bats in reference occur in China but far away from Wyhan (acc to Shi Zhengli)
* they were brought to Wuhan for research in the Wuhan lab
* the French scientist & Nobel Laureate, inventor of HIV virus, after looking at the Covid-19 virus genome has stated it is not natural and must have been engineered in a lab
* Shi Zhingli has been muzzled by China CCP since then
* the whistlebloer doc in Wuhan has been muzzled by China CCP since then
* Chinese universities researching source of virus have been officially told not to publish their finding by CCp China
* University websites that published the above restrictions by China CCP have been told to take the wen pages down - when CCP officials were contacted they said the guideline restrictions were not cleared for publishing

These are adding significant weight to the conclusion that many countries have come to : that China CCP is hiding the real story of how the Wuhan lab lost control and did not know how to contain the synthetically combined virus (combines of HIV and Malaria strains) they were experimenting upon

did it really? US National Academy of Sciences is not so sure from the genetic data.

Original research paper from US National Academy of Sciences:

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/07/2004999117

Summary:

https://www.genengnews.com/news/spr...econstructed-using-genetic-network-technique/

Their results uncovered three variants of SARS-CoV-2, consisting of clusters of related lineages, which they designated A, B, and C. Variant A was most closely related to the virus found in both bats and pangolins, and represents the effective root of the outbreak.

Type B is derived from A, separated by two mutations, then C is in turn a “daughter” of B. “Overall, the network, as expected in an ongoing outbreak, shows ancestral viral genomes existing alongside their newly mutated daughter genomes,” the team noted.

Forster and colleagues found that type A, which was the original human virus genome, was present in Wuhan, but surprisingly was not the city’s predominant virus type. Their analyses showed that mutated versions of A were seen in Americans reported to have lived in Wuhan, and a large number of A-type viruses were found in patients from the United States and Australia.

spin it anyway but 3 very strong things point to China CCP screw up in causing the pandemic:

1. muzzling of Shi Zhengli
2. muzzling and disappearing of scientists from Wuhan
3. issuance of guidelines by China CCP to University restricting labs from disclosing virus source research
4. categorical statement by Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

actually that's beginning to emerge as well, but slowly because CCP is exercising such control over flow of info. In spite of such iron grip what is emerging is :

* the bats in reference occur in China but far away from Wyhan (acc to Shi Zhengli)
* they were brought to Wuhan for research in the Wuhan lab
* the French scientist & Nobel Laureate, inventor of HIV virus, after looking at the Covid-19 virus genome has stated it is not natural and must have been engineered in a lab
* Shi Zhingli has been muzzled by China CCP since then
* the whistlebloer doc in Wuhan has been muzzled by China CCP since then
* Chinese universities researching source of virus have been officially told not to publish their finding by CCp China
* University websites that published the above restrictions by China CCP have been told to take the wen pages down - when CCP officials were contacted they said the guideline restrictions were not cleared for publishing

These are adding significant weight to the conclusion that many countries have come to : that China CCP is hiding the real story of how the Wuhan lab lost control and did not know how to contain the synthetically combined virus (combines of HIV and Malaria strains) they were experimenting upon



spin it anyway but 3 very strong things point to China CCP screw up in causing the pandemic:

1. muzzling of Shi Zhengli
2. muzzling and disappearing of scientists from Wuhan
3. issuance of guidelines by China CCP to University restricting labs from disclosing virus source research
4. categorical statement by Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier

I was not aware that US national academy of sciences was spinning anything.

 

[khansaheeb]

actually that's beginning to emerge as well, but slowly because CCP is exercising such control over flow of info. In spite of such iron grip what is emerging is :

* the bats in reference occur in China but far away from Wyhan (acc to Shi Zhengli)
* they were brought to Wuhan for research in the Wuhan lab
* the French scientist & Nobel Laureate, inventor of HIV virus, after looking at the Covid-19 virus genome has stated it is not natural and must have been engineered in a lab
* Shi Zhingli has been muzzled by China CCP since then
* the whistlebloer doc in Wuhan has been muzzled by China CCP since then
* Chinese universities researching source of virus have been officially told not to publish their finding by CCp China
* University websites that published the above restrictions by China CCP have been told to take the wen pages down - when CCP officials were contacted they said the guideline restrictions were not cleared for publishing

These are adding significant weight to the conclusion that many countries have come to : that China CCP is hiding the real story of how the Wuhan lab lost control and did not know how to contain the synthetically combined virus (combines of HIV and Malaria strains) they were experimenting upon



spin it anyway but 3 very strong things point to China CCP screw up in causing the pandemic:

1. muzzling of Shi Zhengli
2. muzzling and disappearing of scientists from Wuhan
3. issuance of guidelines by China CCP to University restricting labs from disclosing virus source research
4. categorical statement by Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier

The lies the U.S. is using to blame Covid-19 on China

Rainer Shea
Apr 1 · 9 min read

For clarification: above is a picture of a member of Hong Kong’s pro-U.S. fascist movement. Their sign is a "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position-y: calc(1em + 1px);">response to Covid-19

The Washington imperialists and the corporate media are manipulating the narrative around Covid-19 in the same ways that they’ve controlled discourse around the comparably dramatic crisis of 9/11. Just like how the Bush White House immediately concluded (based upon still "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position-y: calc(1em + 1px);">dubious evidence) that Osama Bin Laden was the one who had directed the attacks in order to justify starting the war in Afghanistan, and like how the Bush team campaigned to associate Saddam Hussein with 9/11 to justify invading Iraq, Covid-19 is being weaponized as a war propaganda tool. And now the designated enemies are China, Iran, Russia, and the other countries which threaten U.S. hegemony.

As was also the case after 9/11, the imperialist narrative managers are using McCarthyism, censorship, and intensive demonization of the designated enemies to hide the growing amount of evidence that the U.S. is connected to the crisis.

The evidence is in favor of the virus having originated in the U.S., not China

Like how the CIA "conspired with Saudi Arabia to cover up details about 9/11 which contradicted the official Washington narrative, or how the media has ignored the evidence of Mossad foreknowledge of 9/11, the U.S. State Department and major media outlets are working to conceal and deflect from the questions about America’s potential responsibility for the virus.

There have beenmany events in the last year that suggest the U.S. brought the virus to China, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute in Fort Detrick was closed down in July 2019. Then in October, a team of U.S. troopers who had trained near Fort Detrick traveled to Wuhan, staying a mere 300 meters from the seafood market where the first cluster of cases were detected (though this market isn’t likely to be the first place where the virus could have been brought in, since the troops were at a distance from it). If these troops were deliberately sent there to proliferate the virus, it wouldn’t be unprecedented in U.S. warfare; Washington history of transferring viruses to use as diplomatic cargo for secret military programs.

These coincidences, while not necessarily compelling evidence for the bioweapon hypothesis on their own, are accompanied by solid evidence that Covid-19 started in the United States. As Larry Romanoff has “the genome varieties of the virus in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere. It would seem the only possibility for origination would be the US because only that country has the ‘tree trunk’ of all the varieties.” Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University, has helped support the hypothesized link between the U.S. troops and the original Wuhan outbreak by concluding that “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace.”

But enough with my hesitant language about how it’s supposedly still unclear whether the virus came from America. Chinese spokesman Zhao Lijian has formally accused Washington of bringing the virus to China, saying “When did patient zero begin in U.S? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be U.S. army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! U.S. owe us an explanation!” Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali has made a similar statement about Covid-19’s origins: “Instead of leveling false accusations against China and Iran, U.S. officials should respond to international demands regarding its role in creating and spreading the coronavirus and the continuation of its crimes against the Iranian people by keeping in place the economic sanctions.”

Was Covid-19 engineered in an American laboratory? While a recent study has provided evidence against this, bioweapons don’t even have to be artificially created-just look at all of the already existing diseases that U.S. biowarfare operations have "); brought to Cuba. And even if the virus came from the U.S. to China by accident, it’s certain that China is not the country where the virus came from.

Painting China’s response to the virus as “incompetent” and “authoritarian”

Anti-Chinese propaganda often takes the form of the Western media observing benign events in China or minor slip-ups in Chinese policy, and twisting them into outrage stories. So was the case for the imperialist propaganda machine’s representation of the story of Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who mistakenly spread a false message on WeChat and was subsequently warned about it by Chinese authorities. The government then paid tribute to Li for helping combat the virus and retracted their warning against him after his death, but disingenuous pundits used the incident to score rhetorical points in the information war against China.

The government’s response to Wenliang didn’t have to do with his public revelation of the virus, which was done only a day before the government decided to officially announce that the virus was a problem. Yet it’s been suggested that his decision to speak up about the virus conflicted with the agenda of the government, and that the government had targeted him for his whistleblowing.

This ridiculous distortion of events was used to justify the Western media’s deeply unfair overall portrayal of the Chinese response to the virus, as represented by this paragraph from a recent Vice ");article:

China initially ignored the outbreak that first surfaced in Wuhan in early December, silencing doctors who tried to raise the alarm before eventually enacting a draconian and restrictive lockdown that impacted 50 million people.

Vice, which is one of the outlets that’s been known to promote content under the direct guidance of the U.S. government in recent years, is here engaging in a subtle ploy to associate China’s response to the virus with “authoritarianism.” China’s “draconian restrictive lockdown,” which is another way to say “quarantine,” was entirely necessary and in line with how most other governments have handled the virus. But Vice’s phrasing is meant to reinforce the narratives that China had failed to respond to the virus quick enough, and that the actions it took against the virus were oppressive and sinister.

The underlying message, which is that those quarantined by China’s government were put in an unusually miserable and repressive state compared to the other quarantined populations around the world, is absurd. Thanks to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, China’s people have had access to universal healthcare during this crisis. They’ve been in a country that’s virtually eradicated poverty. They’ve been able to contact police officers who go shopping for families in need of assistance during the quarantine. This contrasts capitalist countries like the United States, where the gutted and highly privatized healthcare system is being ");overwhelmed, the people who’ve lost their jobs during the quarantine are already largely in financial hardship due to neoliberalism, and the police have continued to act as a terrorizing force which frequently shoots innocent people.

Another claim the Vice article makes is that “even the slightest reference to coronavirus or the government’s response was erased” as a result of China’s censorship. This is also misleading. Most of what the censors deleted was people referring to the military games in regards to the virus, likely as a measure for keeping the public from jumping to conclusions too early about America’s potential role in the crisis. They did not go after posts that referenced the severity of the crisis, but rather material that could be harmful to international relations.

This week, the U.S. propaganda machine expanded upon these claims by "); alleging that China lied about the extent of the virus. Unsurprisingly, the intelligence agents who are cited as sources for this revelation are anonymous. And the Bloomberg reporters who helped break this story didn’t even see the report behind it, instead having the details outlined to them by these mysterious officials. There was no evidence to back up their claims; all they did was craft another headline that reflects the other baseless insinuations from imperialist propagandists.

These charges and mischaracterizations distract from the enormously effective efforts of the CPC in combating the virus. Because of the party’s rapid construction of medical centers and sustained widespread quarantine, the disease has recently ")been close to obliterated within the country. China has also ");provided medical resources to numerous countries, a humanitarian act which the mentioned Vice article somehow tries to spin as a bad thing.

The CPC responded as best as was possible for it to, and keeping a spreading pandemic within a country’s border is essentially beyond the powers of any state. So China can’t be accused of letting the virus spread throughout an unnecessary amount of its people (as the U.S. government can certainly be accused of). Nor can China reasonably be accused of “letting” the virus spread globally.

Using McCarthyism and censorship to shut down those who challenge the warmongering claims

Pandemics create a scary kind of political psychology. Similarly to the mass fears of terrorism throughout the last two decades, when people feel threatened by a disease they become hostile towards those who step out of the defined parameters for keeping society safe. While those urging people to disregard all of the Covid-19 safety advice are engaging in dangerous misinformation, this fringe and extreme position is being conflated with voicing dissenting views about where the virus came from and which country is responsible.

Headlines about pro-China Covid-19 content being “foreign disinformation” are promoting the perception that it’s wrong to ask the questions I’ve posed throughout this article, or to point out the falsehoods of Western reporting on China’s handling of the virus. It’s making dialogue about the issue harder to have, and it’s giving leverage to the oligarchic censorship engines within the U.S./NATO empire.

Facebook has been deleting posts about the virus to a far more thorough extent than has been the case for China’s censors. At the same time, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the BBC, and other entities have joined in on a project called the Trusted News Initiative. TNI partner Noel Curran has said about the project’s goal that “There is a tide of misinformation and bad information, driven mainly through online social platforms, which is threatening to undermine public trust and cause further anxiety for people. This initiative underlines the role of public service media in tackling misinformation head-on and delivering accurate content that audiences can safely rely on.”

It’s an extension of the McCarthyism, censorship, and stigmatization of supposed “fake news” that’s dominated Western politics in recent years. Media hysteria about “Russian interference” after the 2016 election ")facilitated an unprecedented series of censorship measures from corporations and governments, rationalized by a desire to protect trust in institutions. Amid the last decade’s growing backlash to neoliberalism, the ruling class has been waging a war on dissenting journalism and socialist politics. Now is another opportunity to silence and shame those who challenge imperialist and capitalist narratives.

An example of the emerging hostile atmosphere towards dissent can be found in a recent graphic from Counter Hate UK, which advises people to respond to “Coronavirus misinformation” with the following measures: “Report misinformation to platforms,” “[don’t] reply, share, or quote misinformation,” and “spread official advice” to “drown out fake news.”

This is the psychological weapon that the U.S./NATO empire is using to keep itself on the path of war escalations and internal repression: instilling people with the fear that if they challenge anything the centers of power tell them about the virus, they’ll endanger society. But we need critical thinking and open dissent more than ever during this time. The capitalist ruling class is neglecting the needs of the masses while using the crisis to exacerbate inequality, and we poor and working people need to fight back. We must challenge the narratives which enable the imperialist war campaigns against China and other countries, and we must work to intensify the class struggle.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

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[Thamizh Puli]

The lies the U.S. is using to blame Covid-19 on China

Rainer Shea
Apr 1 · 9 min read

For clarification: above is a picture of a member of Hong Kong’s pro-U.S. fascist movement. Their sign is a "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position-y: calc(1em + 1px);">response to Covid-19

The Washington imperialists and the corporate media are manipulating the narrative around Covid-19 in the same ways that they’ve controlled discourse around the comparably dramatic crisis of 9/11. Just like how the Bush White House immediately concluded (based upon still "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position-y: calc(1em + 1px);">dubious evidence) that Osama Bin Laden was the one who had directed the attacks in order to justify starting the war in Afghanistan, and like how the Bush team campaigned to associate Saddam Hussein with 9/11 to justify invading Iraq, Covid-19 is being weaponized as a war propaganda tool. And now the designated enemies are China, Iran, Russia, and the other countries which threaten U.S. hegemony.

As was also the case after 9/11, the imperialist narrative managers are using McCarthyism, censorship, and intensive demonization of the designated enemies to hide the growing amount of evidence that the U.S. is connected to the crisis.

The evidence is in favor of the virus having originated in the U.S., not China

Like how the CIA "conspired with Saudi Arabia to cover up details about 9/11 which contradicted the official Washington narrative, or how the media has ignored the evidence of Mossad foreknowledge of 9/11, the U.S. State Department and major media outlets are working to conceal and deflect from the questions about America’s potential responsibility for the virus.

There have beenmany events in the last year that suggest the U.S. brought the virus to China, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute in Fort Detrick was closed down in July 2019. Then in October, a team of U.S. troopers who had trained near Fort Detrick traveled to Wuhan, staying a mere 300 meters from the seafood market where the first cluster of cases were detected (though this market isn’t likely to be the first place where the virus could have been brought in, since the troops were at a distance from it). If these troops were deliberately sent there to proliferate the virus, it wouldn’t be unprecedented in U.S. warfare; Washington history of transferring viruses to use as diplomatic cargo for secret military programs.

These coincidences, while not necessarily compelling evidence for the bioweapon hypothesis on their own, are accompanied by solid evidence that Covid-19 started in the United States. As Larry Romanoff has “the genome varieties of the virus in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere. It would seem the only possibility for origination would be the US because only that country has the ‘tree trunk’ of all the varieties.” Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University, has helped support the hypothesized link between the U.S. troops and the original Wuhan outbreak by concluding that “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace.”

But enough with my hesitant language about how it’s supposedly still unclear whether the virus came from America. Chinese spokesman Zhao Lijian has formally accused Washington of bringing the virus to China, saying “When did patient zero begin in U.S? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be U.S. army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! U.S. owe us an explanation!” Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali has made a similar statement about Covid-19’s origins: “Instead of leveling false accusations against China and Iran, U.S. officials should respond to international demands regarding its role in creating and spreading the coronavirus and the continuation of its crimes against the Iranian people by keeping in place the economic sanctions.”

Was Covid-19 engineered in an American laboratory? While a recent study has provided evidence against this, bioweapons don’t even have to be artificially created-just look at all of the already existing diseases that U.S. biowarfare operations have "); brought to Cuba. And even if the virus came from the U.S. to China by accident, it’s certain that China is not the country where the virus came from.

Painting China’s response to the virus as “incompetent” and “authoritarian”

Anti-Chinese propaganda often takes the form of the Western media observing benign events in China or minor slip-ups in Chinese policy, and twisting them into outrage stories. So was the case for the imperialist propaganda machine’s representation of the story of Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who mistakenly spread a false message on WeChat and was subsequently warned about it by Chinese authorities. The government then paid tribute to Li for helping combat the virus and retracted their warning against him after his death, but disingenuous pundits used the incident to score rhetorical points in the information war against China.

The government’s response to Wenliang didn’t have to do with his public revelation of the virus, which was done only a day before the government decided to officially announce that the virus was a problem. Yet it’s been suggested that his decision to speak up about the virus conflicted with the agenda of the government, and that the government had targeted him for his whistleblowing.

This ridiculous distortion of events was used to justify the Western media’s deeply unfair overall portrayal of the Chinese response to the virus, as represented by this paragraph from a recent Vice ");article:

China initially ignored the outbreak that first surfaced in Wuhan in early December, silencing doctors who tried to raise the alarm before eventually enacting a draconian and restrictive lockdown that impacted 50 million people.

Vice, which is one of the outlets that’s been known to promote content under the direct guidance of the U.S. government in recent years, is here engaging in a subtle ploy to associate China’s response to the virus with “authoritarianism.” China’s “draconian restrictive lockdown,” which is another way to say “quarantine,” was entirely necessary and in line with how most other governments have handled the virus. But Vice’s phrasing is meant to reinforce the narratives that China had failed to respond to the virus quick enough, and that the actions it took against the virus were oppressive and sinister.

The underlying message, which is that those quarantined by China’s government were put in an unusually miserable and repressive state compared to the other quarantined populations around the world, is absurd. Thanks to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, China’s people have had access to universal healthcare during this crisis. They’ve been in a country that’s virtually eradicated poverty. They’ve been able to contact police officers who go shopping for families in need of assistance during the quarantine. This contrasts capitalist countries like the United States, where the gutted and highly privatized healthcare system is being ");overwhelmed, the people who’ve lost their jobs during the quarantine are already largely in financial hardship due to neoliberalism, and the police have continued to act as a terrorizing force which frequently shoots innocent people.

Another claim the Vice article makes is that “even the slightest reference to coronavirus or the government’s response was erased” as a result of China’s censorship. This is also misleading. Most of what the censors deleted was people referring to the military games in regards to the virus, likely as a measure for keeping the public from jumping to conclusions too early about America’s potential role in the crisis. They did not go after posts that referenced the severity of the crisis, but rather material that could be harmful to international relations.

This week, the U.S. propaganda machine expanded upon these claims by "); alleging that China lied about the extent of the virus. Unsurprisingly, the intelligence agents who are cited as sources for this revelation are anonymous. And the Bloomberg reporters who helped break this story didn’t even see the report behind it, instead having the details outlined to them by these mysterious officials. There was no evidence to back up their claims; all they did was craft another headline that reflects the other baseless insinuations from imperialist propagandists.

These charges and mischaracterizations distract from the enormously effective efforts of the CPC in combating the virus. Because of the party’s rapid construction of medical centers and sustained widespread quarantine, the disease has recently ")been close to obliterated within the country. China has also ");provided medical resources to numerous countries, a humanitarian act which the mentioned Vice article somehow tries to spin as a bad thing.

The CPC responded as best as was possible for it to, and keeping a spreading pandemic within a country’s border is essentially beyond the powers of any state. So China can’t be accused of letting the virus spread throughout an unnecessary amount of its people (as the U.S. government can certainly be accused of). Nor can China reasonably be accused of “letting” the virus spread globally.

Using McCarthyism and censorship to shut down those who challenge the warmongering claims

Pandemics create a scary kind of political psychology. Similarly to the mass fears of terrorism throughout the last two decades, when people feel threatened by a disease they become hostile towards those who step out of the defined parameters for keeping society safe. While those urging people to disregard all of the Covid-19 safety advice are engaging in dangerous misinformation, this fringe and extreme position is being conflated with voicing dissenting views about where the virus came from and which country is responsible.

Headlines about pro-China Covid-19 content being “foreign disinformation” are promoting the perception that it’s wrong to ask the questions I’ve posed throughout this article, or to point out the falsehoods of Western reporting on China’s handling of the virus. It’s making dialogue about the issue harder to have, and it’s giving leverage to the oligarchic censorship engines within the U.S./NATO empire.

Facebook has been deleting posts about the virus to a far more thorough extent than has been the case for China’s censors. At the same time, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the BBC, and other entities have joined in on a project called the Trusted News Initiative. TNI partner Noel Curran has said about the project’s goal that “There is a tide of misinformation and bad information, driven mainly through online social platforms, which is threatening to undermine public trust and cause further anxiety for people. This initiative underlines the role of public service media in tackling misinformation head-on and delivering accurate content that audiences can safely rely on.”

It’s an extension of the McCarthyism, censorship, and stigmatization of supposed “fake news” that’s dominated Western politics in recent years. Media hysteria about “Russian interference” after the 2016 election ")facilitated an unprecedented series of censorship measures from corporations and governments, rationalized by a desire to protect trust in institutions. Amid the last decade’s growing backlash to neoliberalism, the ruling class has been waging a war on dissenting journalism and socialist politics. Now is another opportunity to silence and shame those who challenge imperialist and capitalist narratives.

An example of the emerging hostile atmosphere towards dissent can be found in a recent graphic from Counter Hate UK, which advises people to respond to “Coronavirus misinformation” with the following measures: “Report misinformation to platforms,” “[don’t] reply, share, or quote misinformation,” and “spread official advice” to “drown out fake news.”

This is the psychological weapon that the U.S./NATO empire is using to keep itself on the path of war escalations and internal repression: instilling people with the fear that if they challenge anything the centers of power tell them about the virus, they’ll endanger society. But we need critical thinking and open dissent more than ever during this time. The capitalist ruling class is neglecting the needs of the masses while using the crisis to exacerbate inequality, and we poor and working people need to fight back. We must challenge the narratives which enable the imperialist war campaigns against China and other countries, and we must work to intensify the class struggle.

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very length of this labored article somewhat shows how difficult it is for CCP and China to wriggle out of their mess. A number of other well established articles have pretty much nullified all CCP Chinese attempts to escape. My earlier post simply summarized current state of this issue, so re-posting something 4 weeks old is useless.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Forster and colleagues found that type A, which was the original human virus genome, was present in Wuhan, but surprisingly was not the city’s predominant virus type. Their analyses showed that mutated versions of A were seen in Americans reported to have lived in Wuhan

If you actually read it carefully it says A originated in Wuhan and a mutated version of A was seen in Americans who reportedly had lived in Wuhan.

News today that many deaths in the US during early January, American doctor thought those people died of regular flues. Of course when it comes to China, west hold different standard, they expect china to know it was a new virus right away.

That "many" is 2 people on in early February

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/us/california-deaths-earliest-in-us/index.html
2 Californians died of coronavirus weeks before previously known 1st US death

New autopsy results show two Californians died of novel coronavirus in early and mid-February -- up to three weeks before the previously known first US death from the virus.