China's handling of the Covid 19
I hesitate to even write this as I know how China is very much concerned on anyone critical of them. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls all the social media in China and will track anyone who they perceive as criticizing them or their policies, by deleting their posts and even arresting them as they see fit.
I fear there is a possibility of them even tracing those outside of China and blocking those people from entering China in the future. So I don't want to take any risk, as there is a possibility of me going to China either for travel or any work-related purpose in the future. I will try to filter as much as I could in my writing. I do not hate China, but I as many others just want to know the truth of the current situation. I am aware that other countries also have shortcomings in their dealing of this virus spread.
With the recent Covid-19 case, it is difficult for anyone including myself to refrain from talking about China and how they have been dealing with the outbreak. This Coronavirus outbreak has had a huge impact on the entire world including in my country. People are put under lockdown, the economy is badly affected, and of course the high rate of infections and deaths resulting from this virus is terrible. What could have been done initially to stop all this? I would say it is transparency.
The thing that the Chinese government could have done was firstly, investigate and alerted the WHO and the international community earlier. The Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP), claimed that they had seen government documents that say the first Covid-19 case was actually in end of November. During the whole month of December, doctors in Wuhan had encountered and seen for themselves patients that had contracted the virus, and developments of this must have reached the attention of the government. However, the government did not allow any news coverage of the actual virus to be transmitted, and the Wuhan mayor himself admitted that he could not report the true extent of the new virus because he did not have authorization from the CCP government. Even doctors themselves were afraid to share what they found for fear of reprisals, as can be seen in the example of the late Li Wenliang.
This have resulted in the virus to spread, and valuable time that can be used to contain the virus, passed by. If the report from SCMP is to be believed, it took more that a month before the CCP government finally reported to the WHO on the 31st of December that there was a new virus around, although up to this point, they still did not know the details and whether it was a transmittable human to human disease. Indeed, as late as January 20, the WHO itself was still unsure if it is transmittable between humans. It was only on January 22, when they finally confirmed that it was transmittable.
This late announcement could be the result of WHO relying too much on China, and as China did not announce the extent of the seriousness of the pneumonia cases at the time, WHO also did not announce. In fact on January 18, the Wuhan local government allowed for the gathering of 40,000 people for a pot-luck dinner which contributed to more cases and it showed how the people of Wuhan were still not aware of the danger that they were facing, since their own government did not want to announce the extent of the virus. To say that they the government did not know is rather difficult to accept, as I believe they did know, since China has an advanced medical system in place, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been dealing with Coronavirus disease for many years. If in fact they did not know, it means they were not taking it seriously.
It is very strange that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been mostly silent during this pandemic. More light should be illuminated on them and whether they could have had a role in this. There are persuasive signs to show the institute might have had a role in leaking out the virus to the public accidentally.I'm not accusing, but if this is true, then it is expected that the Chinese government will do all that they can to cover up this story. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is under the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), which is a government body, and any news that the institute could have anything to do with the origin of the coronavirus could reflect very poorly on the Chinese government. So we should not expect to see the Chinese government dig into the possibility of whether the Wuhan institute is responsible for this pandemic, because whether it is or isn't, the Chinese government must already know, and they would not reveal details of it anytime soon.
We can only expect either external journalists or independent Chinese journalists to shed some light into this possibility.
Wuhan lockdown
Wuhan was put under lockdown five days after the first gathering of the pot-luck, which was on the 23 January. It was indeed a good move, only that it could be better if it were done earlier and the pot-luck event was prevented altogether. What made it worse was that before the lockdown was enforced which was at 10am of that day, thousands of people had already left Wuhan, and even escaped to other coutnries.
In my particular country, I have written in my previous post that the current outbreak is not attributable to Chinese nationals arriving, as those that did arrive earlier that were tested positive had been isolated and discharged from hospital. In my country, the cause was from returning nationals that eventually failed to quarantine themselves and eventually spread the disease to others. But in other countries, there are many cases of Chinese nationals or people returning from China to their respective countries that eventually resulted in the disease to be spread.
Be that as it may, the thing has already occurred and recently, the lockdown of Wuhan has already been lifted, but the fact that earlier announcement for Wuhan and Hubei people to be careful and take greater precautions could have contributed greatly to reducing the spread should not be denied.
Chinese media
The Chinese state media through their various mouthpieces such as CGTN, CCTV and Xinhua have been constantly covering the Covid-19 case and of course being biased towards the Chinese Communist Party, often portraying them as having done the very best in response, as well as continuously criticizing the Western countries' response. It is very interesting to see CGTN and CCTV's videos on Youtube when Youtube itself is banned in China.
Foreign news such as Al-Jazeera have interviewed citizens of Wuhan who disagrees with the official CCP version of events, but most talk anonymously, fearing the Chinese government will punish them. That's the difference between Chinese and Western media outlets. In the West, they openly criticize their government and policies, and even the Chinese media can interview people from America who disagrees with Trump. But no Chinese citizen dares to criticize Xi Jinping or the Chinese government or their policies openly when they are interviewed by foreign news outlet. It is truly unfair.
Even in my country Malaysia, people can openly criticize the government and their policies. A foreign journalist can interview an opposition party for instance, or anyone who has disagreement with the government, and can publish the video without the people being interviewed having to hide their identity. This shows how repressive the Chinese state are towards the free flow of information.
What you end up hearing are all praises of the CCP, and how the CCP has done a very good job from the start from the people that the Chinese news media are interviewing.
The Chinese state medias' responsibility is to steer public opinion away from criticizing China, and it is largely working. Many people seem to accept their version of events and this is evident with the responses on social media, as well as the number of shares of their videos on those platforms. People don't even question the role that Wuhan's Institue of Virology might have in this. My advice is, when watching their content, you need to be a bit critical and not accept everything they present at face value. Just imagine, the Chinese in China have been fed with these biased news every single day and without Youtube, twitter and many other platforms, their exposure to different opinions especially from people outside China are very limited.
Those of us who have access to different news platforms need not be like them. It is clear that there was something lacking with China's handling of this pandemic at the earlier stage, that led to the current stage it is now. Sure, other countries also have their own shortcomings in dealing with this issue when it came to their own countries. I'll be the first to say that Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom are prime examples of what would happen if you do not take a pandemic seriously, and if you do not set up a proper pandemic response team in place.
But we have to identify the root cause. And the fact is that this virus started in China and the Chinese knew about this first.
We also need to dig deeper into what role Wuhan's institute of virology could have played. Isn't it strange that Wuhan has a Virus institute that happens to study bat coronaviruses for many years prior to this outbreak? Isn't it strange that China's "bat woman", Shi Zhengli, that leads the research into Coronavirus in bats just happens to be based in Wuhan? More serious research needs to be done on the role of Chinese agencies in the early stage of this outbreak if we are to prevent a future outbreak of a similar nature.
I fear there is a possibility of them even tracing those outside of China and blocking those people from entering China in the future. So I don't want to take any risk, as there is a possibility of me going to China either for travel or any work-related purpose in the future. I will try to filter as much as I could in my writing. I do not hate China, but I as many others just want to know the truth of the current situation. I am aware that other countries also have shortcomings in their dealing of this virus spread.
You must always be careful when talking about China
With the recent Covid-19 case, it is difficult for anyone including myself to refrain from talking about China and how they have been dealing with the outbreak. This Coronavirus outbreak has had a huge impact on the entire world including in my country. People are put under lockdown, the economy is badly affected, and of course the high rate of infections and deaths resulting from this virus is terrible. What could have been done initially to stop all this? I would say it is transparency.
The thing that the Chinese government could have done was firstly, investigate and alerted the WHO and the international community earlier. The Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP), claimed that they had seen government documents that say the first Covid-19 case was actually in end of November. During the whole month of December, doctors in Wuhan had encountered and seen for themselves patients that had contracted the virus, and developments of this must have reached the attention of the government. However, the government did not allow any news coverage of the actual virus to be transmitted, and the Wuhan mayor himself admitted that he could not report the true extent of the new virus because he did not have authorization from the CCP government. Even doctors themselves were afraid to share what they found for fear of reprisals, as can be seen in the example of the late Li Wenliang.
This have resulted in the virus to spread, and valuable time that can be used to contain the virus, passed by. If the report from SCMP is to be believed, it took more that a month before the CCP government finally reported to the WHO on the 31st of December that there was a new virus around, although up to this point, they still did not know the details and whether it was a transmittable human to human disease. Indeed, as late as January 20, the WHO itself was still unsure if it is transmittable between humans. It was only on January 22, when they finally confirmed that it was transmittable.
This late announcement could be the result of WHO relying too much on China, and as China did not announce the extent of the seriousness of the pneumonia cases at the time, WHO also did not announce. In fact on January 18, the Wuhan local government allowed for the gathering of 40,000 people for a pot-luck dinner which contributed to more cases and it showed how the people of Wuhan were still not aware of the danger that they were facing, since their own government did not want to announce the extent of the virus. To say that they the government did not know is rather difficult to accept, as I believe they did know, since China has an advanced medical system in place, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been dealing with Coronavirus disease for many years. If in fact they did not know, it means they were not taking it seriously.
It is very strange that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been mostly silent during this pandemic. More light should be illuminated on them and whether they could have had a role in this. There are persuasive signs to show the institute might have had a role in leaking out the virus to the public accidentally.I'm not accusing, but if this is true, then it is expected that the Chinese government will do all that they can to cover up this story. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is under the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), which is a government body, and any news that the institute could have anything to do with the origin of the coronavirus could reflect very poorly on the Chinese government. So we should not expect to see the Chinese government dig into the possibility of whether the Wuhan institute is responsible for this pandemic, because whether it is or isn't, the Chinese government must already know, and they would not reveal details of it anytime soon.
We can only expect either external journalists or independent Chinese journalists to shed some light into this possibility.
Wuhan lockdown
Wuhan was put under lockdown five days after the first gathering of the pot-luck, which was on the 23 January. It was indeed a good move, only that it could be better if it were done earlier and the pot-luck event was prevented altogether. What made it worse was that before the lockdown was enforced which was at 10am of that day, thousands of people had already left Wuhan, and even escaped to other coutnries.
In my particular country, I have written in my previous post that the current outbreak is not attributable to Chinese nationals arriving, as those that did arrive earlier that were tested positive had been isolated and discharged from hospital. In my country, the cause was from returning nationals that eventually failed to quarantine themselves and eventually spread the disease to others. But in other countries, there are many cases of Chinese nationals or people returning from China to their respective countries that eventually resulted in the disease to be spread.
Be that as it may, the thing has already occurred and recently, the lockdown of Wuhan has already been lifted, but the fact that earlier announcement for Wuhan and Hubei people to be careful and take greater precautions could have contributed greatly to reducing the spread should not be denied.
Chinese media
The Chinese state media through their various mouthpieces such as CGTN, CCTV and Xinhua have been constantly covering the Covid-19 case and of course being biased towards the Chinese Communist Party, often portraying them as having done the very best in response, as well as continuously criticizing the Western countries' response. It is very interesting to see CGTN and CCTV's videos on Youtube when Youtube itself is banned in China.
Foreign news such as Al-Jazeera have interviewed citizens of Wuhan who disagrees with the official CCP version of events, but most talk anonymously, fearing the Chinese government will punish them. That's the difference between Chinese and Western media outlets. In the West, they openly criticize their government and policies, and even the Chinese media can interview people from America who disagrees with Trump. But no Chinese citizen dares to criticize Xi Jinping or the Chinese government or their policies openly when they are interviewed by foreign news outlet. It is truly unfair.
Even in my country Malaysia, people can openly criticize the government and their policies. A foreign journalist can interview an opposition party for instance, or anyone who has disagreement with the government, and can publish the video without the people being interviewed having to hide their identity. This shows how repressive the Chinese state are towards the free flow of information.
What you end up hearing are all praises of the CCP, and how the CCP has done a very good job from the start from the people that the Chinese news media are interviewing.
The Chinese state medias' responsibility is to steer public opinion away from criticizing China, and it is largely working. Many people seem to accept their version of events and this is evident with the responses on social media, as well as the number of shares of their videos on those platforms. People don't even question the role that Wuhan's Institue of Virology might have in this. My advice is, when watching their content, you need to be a bit critical and not accept everything they present at face value. Just imagine, the Chinese in China have been fed with these biased news every single day and without Youtube, twitter and many other platforms, their exposure to different opinions especially from people outside China are very limited.
Those of us who have access to different news platforms need not be like them. It is clear that there was something lacking with China's handling of this pandemic at the earlier stage, that led to the current stage it is now. Sure, other countries also have their own shortcomings in dealing with this issue when it came to their own countries. I'll be the first to say that Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom are prime examples of what would happen if you do not take a pandemic seriously, and if you do not set up a proper pandemic response team in place.
But we have to identify the root cause. And the fact is that this virus started in China and the Chinese knew about this first.
We also need to dig deeper into what role Wuhan's institute of virology could have played. Isn't it strange that Wuhan has a Virus institute that happens to study bat coronaviruses for many years prior to this outbreak? Isn't it strange that China's "bat woman", Shi Zhengli, that leads the research into Coronavirus in bats just happens to be based in Wuhan? More serious research needs to be done on the role of Chinese agencies in the early stage of this outbreak if we are to prevent a future outbreak of a similar nature.
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