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Covid-19: How Did it Start? A Timeline of a Coronavirus Cover-Up

March 23, 2020 Jordan Ruimy

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.

Chinese communist regime still claims only a couple of hundred people died in Tiananmen Square massacre. Why would anyone take COVID19 figures it puts out at face value?

— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) March 22, 2020

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:

November 17th: Patient Zero? According to a March 13th, 2020 reports via Chinese government officials, a 55-year-old Hubei Province resident contracted the virus and was hospitalized. There may have been earlier patients; the search for them continues. [Source]

December 1st: The second case emerges. A Wuhan man starts experiencing symptoms. No epidemiological link could be found between this case and later cases. [Source]

December 8th — December 18th: Seven more cases diagnosed with novel coronavirus; two of them linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market; five were not. [Source]

December 10th: Wei Guixian, one of the earliest known coronavirus patients, starts feeling ill. [Source]

December 16th: Patient who works at wildlife wet markets admitted to Wuhan Central Hospital with infection in both lungs. [Source]

December 21st: 36 people were infected so far.

December 25th: Medical staff at two separate hospitals were quarantined when they came down with unidentified viral pneumonia. [Source]

December 27th: Wuhan health officials are told a new coronavirus is responsible for hospitalizations all around Wuhan. [Source]

December 27th: Dr. Zhang Jixian sounds the alarm about a new disease that has already infected 180 patients in Wuhan, the Morning Post. [Source]

December 29th: Four more people with pneumonia hospitalized in Wuhan. All four had worked in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which sells wild animals to the public. [Source]

December 29th: Wuhan CCDC staff start their field investigation for “pneumonia” patients potentially linked to the market. [Source]

December 30th: Ai Fen, director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts information on WeChat about the new virus. Chinese authorities reprimand her for doing so and warn Fen not to spread any more information about it. [Source]

December 30th: Wuhan Dr. Li Wenliang also shares information on WeChat about the new SARS-like virus. Police take him in for questioning shortly afterward. [Source]

December 30th: Wuhan health commission tells hospitals of a “pneumonia of unclear cause” and orders them to report any related information. [Source]

December 31st: Chinese Health officials finally inform the World Health Organization about a cluster of 41 patients with mysterious pneumonia. Most were connected to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a wet market in the city of Wuhan. [Source]

January 1st: Wuhan Public Security Bureau continues to intimidate doctors sounding the alarm, they bring in for questioning eight doctors who had posted information about the illness on WeChat. [Source]

January 1st: Hubei Provincial Health Commission official orders labs in Wuhan to stop testing samples and to destroy existing samples of the “Sars-like” virus. [Source]

January 1st: Chinese authorities closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. There is still no proof that the virus actually started there. [Source]

January 2nd: The Wuhan Institute of Virology identified and mapped the genome of a new coronavirus – but it was kept secret. [Source] 

January 3rd: Dr. Li arrested by Wuhan police. [Source]

January 3rd: Police forces from Wuhan, the capital of the Chinese province of Hubei, arrested and “punished eight journalists for ‘publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification.’” These journalists are still missing. [Source]

January 6th: Rumors of the virus were strong enough that U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield offered to send a team to China. The Xi Jiping dictatorship didn’t accept the offer. [Source]

January 7th: Xi Jinping becomes involved in the response.

January 9th: China finally admits there is a coronavirus. They do not reveal critical information about who was sick, when they got sick, and critical demographic information about those infected. As a result, the evaluation of the outbreak remained inadequate [Source].

January 12th: Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported in a TV broadcast that a “new viral outbreak was first detected in the city of Wuhan, China, on 12 December 2019.” [Source]

January 13th: The first case was reported outside of China in Thailand.

January 14th: WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.” What?! This continues the World Health Organization’s recent behavior of protecting dictatorships. [Source]

January 14th: The Hong Kong news outlet reports that a group of journalists, including one of its reporters, were detained for hours while covering the outbreak at a Wuhan hospital that has been treating patients. TVB said its reporter was "then taken to the police room in the hospital for questioning, and asked to delete the materials shot in the hospital." [Source]

January 15th: The patient who becomes the first confirmed U.S. case leaves Wuhan and arrives in the U.S., carrying the coronavirus. While Li Qun (the head of the Chinese CDC emergency center) said on state television “after careful screening and prudent judgment, we have reached the latest understanding that the risk of human-to-human transmission is low.” [Source]

January 20th: China confirmed human-to-human transmission and the first case was announced in South Korea.

January 23rd: Chinese authorities FINALLY place Wuhan under lockdown and quarantine.

January 30th: WHO declared a “public health emergency of international concern.”

January 31st: President Trump banned foreign nationals from entering the US if they had been in China within two weeks prior.

February 21st: The number of COVID-19 cases spikes in Italy, signaling that an outbreak in the country was beginning.

February 29 - March 19: Nearly all US states declared a state of emergency.

March 14th: The New York Times reported that Ren Zhiqiang is missing.  

Tags COVID-19, TIMELINE, coronavirus, china
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