How the White House turned “China bought us time” into “China lied, people died” and put the world at risk
Tuesday, 23 June 2020
The #COVID19 outbreak has changed everyone’s life. Here is a video on the lives of ordinary people in #Wuhan, the epicenter of the #coronavirus outbreak, where a “pause” button on life has been pressed for the past 20 days. pic.twitter.com/DuApPpA1lb— T-House (@thouse_opinions) February 15, 2020
CDC director openly admitting that some #covid deaths have been misdiagnosed as influenza in the US. The question is when are those deaths. This supports the claims made by Japanese scientists that the virus originated from the US but was covered up.#COVID19 #Corona pic.twitter.com/AwdXAKz6Ao— Taro (@taro_taylor) March 12, 2020
The memo includes advice on everything from how to tie Democratic candidates to the Chinese government to how to deal with accusations of racism. It stresses three main lines of assault: That China caused the virus “by covering it up,” that Democrats are “soft on China,” and that Republicans will “push for sanctions on China for its role in spreading this pandemic.”
The document urges candidates to stay relentlessly on message against the country when responding to any questions about the virus. When asked whether the spread of the coronavirus is Trump’s fault, candidates are advised to respond by pivoting to China. “Don’t defend Trump, other than the China Travel Ban — attack China,” the memo states.
… the GOP’s messaging effort to attack China for the coronavirus pandemic and blame the country’s communist government leadership for “covering it up, lying, and hoarding the world’s supply of medical equipment.”
…encourages candidates to promote unverified theories that the coronavirus is “likely the result of an accidental release by a Chinese research facility,” which China and the World Health Organisation (WHO), among other groups, deny.
Even in Britain, the BBC continues to twist reality by excluding all mention of anything positive done by the most populous nation on Earth, rendering their reports absurd and denying Britons access to the Covid-19 roadmap drawn by China through their trial by fire. In post-Brexit Britain, results of this month’s trade negotiations with the declining US superpower have been largely kept quiet but UK media exclusion of positive news from China and hostile reporting as our death toll rises to over 42,600, have generally not improved.
#Beijing‘s first mobile inflatable #laboratory of Biosafety Level 2 is going into operation soon to increase the test capacity of #COVID19 samples. The lab is located in south Beijing’s Daxing District and final equipment installation and testing is in progress pic.twitter.com/iWz6ecgb8G— Economic Daily, China (@EDNewsChina) June 22, 2020
But, yeah. Let’s blame China.
“Let’s Blame China” first published at Anna Chen’s Madam Miaow blog Tuesday 23 June 2020
EDIT 10th September 2020:
Confirmed: Trump admin knew of the Covid-19 dangers on 28th January 2020 but covered it up
We now know that Trump and his admin knew the dangers of Covid-19 from at least the 28th January 2020 when, according to the Washington Post, he was told at a top secret meeting:
“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump … “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”
Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, agreed. He told the president that after reaching contacts in China, it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
A reminder that Trump closed down the White House Pandemic Team and shut the US CDC’s Beijing office, which was supposed to help China monitor new diseases, by July 2019. Despite being told about the deadly dangers of SARS-CoV-2 at least by the 28th January 2020, Trump ran a super-spreader policy, playing it down, calling it a hoax, stigmatising masks and holding massive unmasked rallies. PPE was pirated from both international supplies and red states at home. As soon as cases grew too numerous to ignore, the White House issued instructions on how to blame China, as reported by The Daily Beast and others.
EDIT 2 31st August 2021
CHINA BECOMES THE FIRST COUNTRY TO END A DELTA OUTBREAK making five times that China has zeroed Covid.
Sky News 24th August 2021: “China records zero Delta cases in a world first. First country to prove they can crush the Delta outbreak after reporting zero locally acquired cases for the first time since July.”
The Lancet: How China Managed COVID-19. Active case finding with case management: the key to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic
Sir Patrick Vallance Covid “herd immunity” interview, March 2020, Page 2: Public Health vs Big Business in Covid “Herd Immunity” battle
Sharp timeline observations by K J Noh: How to Yellow-Cake a Tragedy: the NY Times Spreads the Virus of Hatred, Again
The Gray Zone: How a Trump media dump mainstreamed Chinese lab coronavirus conspiracy theory
Peter Beinart in The Atlantic: Trump’s Break With China Has Deadly Consequences.
After scuttling its partnership with Beijing on public health, the U.S. was unprepared for the pandemic.
LA Times: Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses
Covid in the UK 2023: the state of Britain entering winter 2023 with a rising number of cases by Anna Chen
PARTYGATE: another day, another diversion from 176,000 Covid deaths in the UK by Anna Chen
A Twitter thread by Anna Chen on Trump’s Covid timeline from his covfefe tweet in 2017 to catching Covid-19 in late 2020. Original Twitter thread.
People’s Covid Inquiry report summary 1st December 2021: Mike Mansfield chaired months-long inquiry into misconduct in public office. Why did so many thousands die unnecessarily?
The Covid Pandemic, Page 1: How coronavirus was weaponised – natural disaster, man-made calamity
The Covid Pandemic, Page 2: Sir Patrick Vallance’s Sky News “herd immunity” interview, 13 March 2020. Full transcipt.
The Covid Pandemic, Page 3: How “herd immunity” won and changed humanity’s health forever. Public Health vs Big Business conflict.
The Covid Pandemic, Page 4: Medical journals and videos on the damage to the brain and immunity system
The Covid Pandemic, Page 5: I caught Covid again and it’s not getting any better. Covid Inquiry: denial of Airborne vs Droplets mode of transmission prolonged the pandemic
There is a fairly popular hypothesis in the USA that the virus was brought to Wuhan by some participants in the military games of Autumn 2019, in particular the USA ones some of which had symptoms. The USA military forces are in dozens of countries and might be a global center of infections.
But whatever the reality of where the infection started, it does not matter: accusations against the chinese government will continue. That is both inevitable and even discussing or debunking them will not change much.
The fundamental issue is that the USA offer a simple and effective deal to their protectorates: you can export (some) people and (most) trade manufactures to the USA, as long as we control your foreign and security policies and can veto your your political appointments, and you give our corporations a chunk of your markets. This is a deal that most european countries have accepted happily, and most central and south american and third world countries have been made to accept, one way or another.
Given that, the chinese government has started to act too independently, so it is no longer under USA protection. As part of that the chinese economy is trying to expand its sphere of influence across other countries.
The USA elites know very well that the european elites are opportunists (the UK elites have been particularly friendly to chinese business, the italian and french ones have a "whatever" attitude) and would like to be in both spheres of influence, and that most central, south american and third world elites are very bribable. If the USA wait too much, their protectorates may eventually choose instead of being in both, to be only in the chinese sphere of influence (especially if China becomes a net importer of trade manufactures). So the reaction of the USA elites is very understandable:
* To act right now, while the chinese economy is still smaller and less influential, to gradually surround, isolate and break it up, as they did to other empires and countries before (spanish empire, english empire, USSR, Yugoslavia, …).
* As part of isolating China, use propaganda to push the voters of european etc. protectorates towards breaking up with China, so their elites would have an extra incentive to be exclusively in the american sphere of influence.
The propaganda relies on a very common technique: most people cannot verify hearsay, so they trust claims that are repeated by several sources that look independent. So the media of the global american sphere of influence will endlessly repeat old and new claims as if they were independent of each other. Only a (small) minority of the public in the american sphere of influence will try to wonder how realistic the claims are. For their sake it is good that there are various sites like this that point out different stories, but they are not going to be able to do much. The situation is not going to change.
It is quite sad that China will end up isolated from the american sphere of influence, because China has enormous potential to improve science, innovate in business, create new art in a new wave to follow the european and american waves of the past 200+ years, but the logic of empires does not take that into account.