It’s been now over four months since the Coronavirus (COVID-19) began in China, and the National Health Commission has announced again today that there are no new local cases in the country. What gives?
Chinese officials are also claiming that more than 500 cinemas in China have reopened with, according to them, the Coronavirus threat having completely receded in Hubei Province [via Variety]. State media CGTN reported that 486 theaters were open for business on Friday. On Monday, the number had risen to 507, representing less than 5% of all cinemas.
The official number reported by the Chinese government, so far, has a tally of 80,967 positive cases, with 3,248, having died from the Coronavirus. And yet, Italy surpassed the total number of deaths a few days ago. In Italy, the numbers are nasty, with a death toll of over 6000 people as of now —almost double that of China’s. Spain is inching closer to those morose numbers as they recorded another 434 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing their fatality total to 2,206.
Meanwhile, the United States, although not as bad as Spain, Italy, France, and Iran, has 35,000 cases, with a relatively slim death toll of 459.
Sorry, but the Chinese numbers just don’t add up for me. It wouldn’t surprise me if China is concealing their real numbers. After all, it is a totalitarian state, ruled by a dictator-like Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping. Freedom of speech is dead over there, with the government retaining almost all aspects of communication. Google, Twitter, and Facebook are banned in China, replaced by Chinese state-approved alternatives that make it much easier for authorities to control.
You actually think that a government that jailed journalists and doctors for trying to warn the world about Covid-19, ordered labs to stop testing and destroy the samples, lied to the WHO about the nature of the virus, and spent billions to cover it all up, is actually gonna publish numbers that will make them look bad? Fat chance.
The virus wasn't even front-page news on the Wuhan Evening News, the city's best-selling newspaper, from January 6 to January 19, according to the Financial Times.
It doesn’t help that the misinformation campaign spearheaded by China’s Foreign Ministry is now accusing the U.S. military of creating, bringing and spreading the coronavirus to Wuhan.
If we look at the first reported cases in the U.S, there is no doubt that the virus came from China to the United States [via Wikipedia]:
The first reported case in the U.S. was in Washington state on January 21, 2020, which affected a man who had returned from Wuhan, China. He was released after two weeks of treatment. A few days later, another case was reported in Chicago, by a woman who had also just returned from Wuhan. Two more cases were confirmed on January 26, similarly by two people who had returned from Wuhan.
With this pandemic pushing the world to the brink of near health care and economic collapse, one must be reminded that all signs are pointing towards the virus having started in Wuhan back in November, maybe earlier. What we do know about COVID-19 is that it may have originated from a “wet” wildlife food market in Wuhan, more specifically, from a bat and/or Pangolin that had the virus. There are some reports that hint at the virus having started way back on November 17th of 2019, when a 55-year-old individual from Hubei province tested positive for the virus. And yet, China didn’t report any of these cases to the World Health Organization until December 31st, going as far as to suppress any doctors or researchers who sounded the alarm on the potential dangers.
Although the theories out there suggest that the virus originated in the wildlife “wet” markets of Wuhan, where bats, raccoons, cats, are sold for public consumption, we still don’t know that for a fact. Why? Because “patient zero,” the first person to have contracted the disease, has still not been found.
In the next few days, weeks and months to come, you will be hearing a lot more about the Chinese cover-up of the virus, the suppression to hide the seriousness of the disease to the rest of the world. This is a timeline that may make things a little clearer for those uninformed about the authoritative nature of the Chinese government and how they suppressed information about this virus to the rest of the world: