Posted on 02/09/2021 11:53:37 AM PST by Kaslin
'When the government says on television that it’s ‘preventable and controllable,’ and when experts say there’s no human-to-human transmission, many ordinary people believe them.’
More than a year after the Wuhan coronavirus exploded on to the global scene, an international team of investigators has—finally—gone to China to examine and investigate its causes. But as a new PBS documentary explores, they may not find much during their visit, because China’s Communist government has concealed or destroyed the evidence.
The 90-minute “Frontline” episode, “China’s COVID Secrets,” provides additional details to a story most observers in the Western world have broadly learned since last spring: Chinese stonewalling prevented the world from responding to the coronavirus before it morphed into a global pandemic.
Controversies about use of the term “Wuhan virus” and similar derivatives aside, the film shows where true culpability for the pandemic lies—not with the Chinese people, but with the Communist government. Its inaction cost the lives of thousands of its own citizens, plus a worldwide medical and economic nightmare.
“Frontline’s” reporting adds new context and information to the general chronology, including leaked documents and an interview with an anonymous worker at Wuhan Central Hospital. The details reinforce the extent of the information that Chinese doctors, and later authorities in the Chinese government, knew during the at least 57 fateful days prior to the Wuhan lockdown:
To be sure, elements of incompetence, or sheer failures of imagination—the medical version of the “fog of war”—also affected China’s response. But when doctors on the ground say “even a fool” knew the virus was spreading among humans, and the government punished doctors like Li Wenliang for trying to prepare and warn their colleagues, the response goes well beyond bureaucratic bungling and into the realm of state-sanctioned malfeasance.
International institutions fare little better than the Chinese government in the documentary. The World Health Organization (WHO), which is supervising the long-delayed investigative trip to China, largely adopted a conciliatory posture towards the Chinese Communist government. In a leaked recording of an internal staff meeting, senior WHO official Mike Ryan offered a prescient warning to his colleagues about their appeasement: “The danger now, despite our good intent, it may be, especially if something happens, there will be a lot of finger-pointing.”
Under international law, China had an obligation to report the existence of a new coronavirus within 24 hours—an obligation it did not meet. Yet one day after Ryan said privately that China’s statements to WHO were “not good enough,” the organization’s representative in China publicly praised the country’s “extremely rapid investigation.”
The WHO representative also claimed that “it appears that the cases have stopped….And we can see that there is no clear evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission”—the exact opposite of the Wuhan hospital worker, who said “even a fool” could have seen the signs.
By Jan. 20, when China finally admitted the virus’ human-to-human spread, an estimated 80,000 individuals had become infected. By that point, controlling such a large and widely spread pandemic, with cases seeded throughout China and the world, quickly became an exercise in futility.
As one observer in the “Frontline” documentary noted, other countries bear responsibility for the shortcomings in their pandemic response after Jan. 20, 2020. In the United States, those failures include the botched launch by the Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration of their coronavirus test, which led to massive yet silent spread of the virus in February and March. But prior to last Jan. 20, responsibility for the pandemic lies solely within the borders of mainland China.
Perhaps the greatest condemnation of the Chinese Communist Party’s behavior comes from Chinese citizens—people like Zhang Hai, who lives in the country’s south. Early last January, he drove his father back to Wuhan, where his father qualified for state-run health care, so he could have an operation following a fall.
In that Wuhan hospital—where doctors wore only “regular masks,” and no other protective equipment, for fear of causing a panic—his father contracted a fatal dose of COVID, leaving Zhang Hai wracked with grief:
It was me personally who brought him to his death. So I feel extremely guilty. At the same time, I’m really angry. Normally, ordinary people believe the government. So when the government says on television that it’s ‘preventable and controllable,’ and when experts say there’s no human-to-human transmission, many ordinary people believe them.
If the Wuhan authorities hadn’t concealed it, my father wouldn’t have left me. Because they covered it up, so many people lost their precious lives.
“Boycott PBS!” - China Joe
“Wait .... what? Get me Big Bird on the line!”
CHINA VIRUS!
CHINA VIRUS!
CHINA VIRUS!
CHINA VIRUS!
“Under international law, China had an obligation to report the existence of a new coronavirus within 24 hours—an obligation it did not meet.”
Biological War Crime.
Well at least we know now, per WHO, the virus didn’t escape the Wuhan Lab....whew!
Given that it’s PBS they’ll find a way to blame Orange Man Bad.
The RP had a chance to defund them.
The RP decided they needed to wait and see...
Any word on the gerbils involvement here. I recall him saying in Jan the virus was not airborn.
A BIDEN WIN IS AN AWARD TO CHINA FOR INVADING US USING COVID 19
Every time an American looked at an item for where it was made in it came from China. Now China’s reliance making everything was being threatened by a change in leadership in America which was a major consumer of those products. When Americans hailed their leaders decision to make many of them in their country US. Their politburo worried.
Worse yet opponents to the Chinese regime in power had its citizens protesting its policies , as in Hong Kong, since that change in American leadership wave the American flag and present Trump’s name when doing so. All of which presented those in power the need to destroy that leader Donald Trump.
Would a runaway plague created by a nation which could threaten populations of an enemy cause them to react by demanding extreme restriction of movement by its population to prevent its spread ? Thus wind up fragmenting its economy and create defeat for that leader’s upcoming election.When they released it that was the CCP intention but it got away from them and went world wide
You must be talking about Fauchi. Good comparison. LOL!
Good that this kind of thing is finally seeing the light of day. The whole world should be made aware of China’s outright lies that cost so many lives. Not just in the United States, but around the world.
The western world should be positioning itself to completely decouple from China and economically isolate them until that horrible country collapses.
Good luck with that...
If this is the best cover up Front Line can conjure, the Chiners are fully exposed.
It’ll drip out, as it always does, so they can call it “old news” when it does.
Exactly....for this guys role here, he should be executed for crimes against humanity.
This PBS documentary is good in showing that CCP ruled Red China made decisions to not inform the rest of the world that the virus was detected, was a very bad coronavirus and that it was transmitted very fast human to human. Totalitarian governments are not open and ethical.
The CCP also failed in containing it as the shutdown of Wuhan was done too late. They let the Chinese people travel out of the virus area due to the Chinese New Year holiday before doing that shutdown. Those travelers went everywhere, including Europe and America before we in the west were aware how dangerous the virus was.
I bet somewhere they still blame Donald Trump.
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