We all know that China’s lack of safety protocols started this pandemic, and it appears they have been downplaying this from the jump. But a recently leaked released memo shows it is not gross incompetence since the Chinese president was warned back in January that this was a dire situation. The Chinese president decided not to act right away and allowed a week to go by before helping his own people or putting any safety guidelines out. His inaction gave us this pandemic.
“That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus.
But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a critical time — the beginning of the outbreak. China’s attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected almost 2 million people and taken more than 126,000 lives.
“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”
Other experts noted that the Chinese government may have waited on warning the public to stave off hysteria, and that it did act quickly in private during that time.
But the six-day delay by China’s leaders in Beijing came on top of almost two weeks during which the national Center for Disease Control did not register any cases from local officials, internal bulletins obtained by the AP confirm. Yet during that time, from Jan. 5 to Jan. 17, hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan but across the country.
It’s uncertain whether it was local officials who failed to report cases or national officials who failed to record them. It’s also not clear exactly what officials knew at the time in Wuhan, which only opened back up last week with restrictions after its quarantine.
But what is clear, experts say, is that China’s rigid controls on information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up the chain of command muffled early warnings. The punishment of eight doctors for “rumor-mongering,” broadcast on national television on Jan. 2, sent a chill through the city’s hospitals.
“Doctors in Wuhan were afraid,” said Dali Yang, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Chicago. “It was truly intimidation of an entire profession.”
“The documents show that the head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the situation on Jan. 14 in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials. A memo states that the teleconference was held to convey instructions on the coronavirus from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, but does not specify what those instructions were.
“The epidemic situation is still severe and complex, the most severe challenge since SARS in 2003, and is likely to develop into a major public health event,” the memo cites Ma as saying.”
“The documents come from an anonymous source in the medical field who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. The AP confirmed the contents with two other sources in public health familiar with the teleconference.”
“Under a section titled “sober understanding of the situation,” the memo said that “clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible.” It singled out the case in Thailand, saying that the situation had “changed significantly” because of the possible spread of the virus abroad.
“With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling, and the risk of transmission and spread is high,” the memo continued. “All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic.”
So China knew a pandemic was afoot and failed the rest of the world when they decided not to share this information. They even told the WHO that it was not transmittable from human to human. So China has no excuse, they should have taken action much faster and warned the world of what was coming. They could have saved countless lives.
If you ask me , the – chicoms – ( chinese communists ) had this in mind all along. What better way to destroy the American economy and become world leaders than an outbreak of death lol. It sure would explain why they lagged way behind in putting quarantine measures in effect when it would actually help lol.
I agree. It was by design!
The Democrats are defending the Chinese now.
This destruction was the Communists evil way of gaining control of the world and of course take down America.They have helpers here from the American Communists/Democrats who get MONEY from this EVIL CCP.Americans better sober up and take a hard look at the behaviour of the so called Democrats before it is too late and they have their own MADURO
More “anonymous sources.” The actual source for all of this, including the “make China pay” as well as “it leaked from a Wuhan biolab” is the UK Ultra-right “Henry Jackson Society” as well as its MI6, which then “trickles down to the US State Dept, intelligence networks, FOX News, etc, etc. Shades of the Skirpal hoax of last year.
So, China is innocent? They, you, Democrats are complicit in all of it. And, HELL YES! We should make them pay. All manufacturing should be brought back to America
Our last four clowns, were complicit in selling us out. Where are you going to find more corruption than Slick Willie, The Hildebeast, Obama and her husband and the Bushes.