Posted on 05/08/2003 8:19:30 PM PDT by twntaipan
A veritable mountain of evidence leaves little room for doubt that the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) pandemic originated in China. Nevertheless, an article appearing in the May 6 edition of the Hong Kong newspaper Wenweipo speculates that SARS actually originated in the United States.
The appearance of this "theory" bears all the earmarks of an attempt by China's Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime to deflect blame for its handling of the epidemic, and to thereby shore up its crumbling credibility, by creating the impression that the SARS virus is the product of United States biological weapon research. Whatever short-term efficacy such a disinformation campaign may produce, the final result can only be to further tarnish the CCP regime's image both at home and abroad as well as to undermine the fight against SARS.
Well known as a mouthpiece for Beijing, Wenweipo's editorials and news reports are frequently studied by China watchers eager to decipher the latest direction of Beijing policy-makers as Beijing's "trial balloons." Therefore, the newspaper's excavation and creative remix of a news story more than a year old regarding an anomalous case of pneumonia in the U.S. and the paper's characterization of it as the earliest SARS case, deserves close attention.
The Wenweipo article, "Earliest SARS outbreak suspected in U.S.," cites reports by the Associated Press and Reuters concerning a 45-year-old woman who, while taking part in her mortgage company's annual sales convention near Philadelphia, became gravely ill on February 9, 2002 with symptoms including headache, fever, chills, vomiting and shortness of breath. After being hospitalized, she died the early the next morning.
In connection with this event, more than 80 other persons suspected of having had close contact the unfortunate woman were examined at the same hospital, seven of whom remained in the hospital for further observation, while the hospital in which she died was placed under a short-term quarantine. The Wenweipo reported that there was no thorough follow-up reporting on the matter and implied the existence of an official cover-up, apparently unmindful of the anomaly between the announcement by the U.S. hospital that the woman had apparently died of bacterial pneumonia while SARS is a viral disease.
In any case, the rapid speed with which the SARS virus is know to be mutating leaves little room for the possibility that whatever germ caused the Philadelphia illnesss is the same one which, a whole year later caused the incontestable outbreak of SARS in China.
Why, then, would Wenweipo issue such a report?
It would be difficult to escape the suspicion that, although rumors have scant effect upon those in the know, Wenweipo and its behind-the-scenes masters are attempting to capitalize on the unfortunate reality that most people are extremely gullible, especially when they perceive their own lives to be at stake. Sadly, not a few Taiwan media have uncritically reprinted or broadcast this story,. We may assume that it will rapidly be disseminated among China's people via the Internet, providing "confirmation" for earlier, totally unfounded claims that SARS is an American- or even Taiwanese-made bioweapon. Ironically, these claims that replicate no less difficult to prove allegations in some Taiwan and foreign media that the virus emerged from a PRC weapons laboratory.
Such deceptive news management may have some short-term effect in diverting the pent-up feelings of people in mainland China and Hong Kong from criticism of the PRC government's appalling incompetence and in transforming popular anger into a chauvinist resentment at yet another foreign conspiracy. Nevertheless, such clumsy manoeuvres ultimately will only prove to be counterproductive in stemming the spread of SARS and the consequent erosion of the CCP's credibility at home. Blaming shadow enemies for one's ills will never succeed in curing political, let alone medical, ills at their roots.
Given the urgency shared by all nations to squarely face up to the SARS threat regardless of its origins, we urge the Beijing authorities to be conscientious in reporting pertinent epidemiological conditions, including carefully researched analyses of the entire developmental course of the SARS pandemic.
Attempts to shirk responsibility and shunt the blame onto other countries can have no benefit for China or the world. Such a realization is a minimal prerequisite for China's becoming a genuinely "great power" in the 21st century.
Immediate total support for the ChiCom assertion was echoed by Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, who stated he was "saddened, deeply saddened."
...indeed, it is. . .and as depressing as Chinese propaganda may be. . .we know that in a 'pigs eye' if not some other animal bodily part coveted by the rural Chinese - thanks to their Government practices. . .
. . .that the truth is, that it is China that needs to clean up their act. . .before the entire planet is under attack. . .from inbred viruses.
Reminds me of the *Crintons...
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