Dr. Birx: Actions of China May Have Led to Slow Coronavirus Response

She explained “When you talk about could we have known something different, you know, I think all of us — I mean I was overseas when this happened, in Africa, and I think when you look at the China data originally, and you said, ‘Oh well, there’s 80 million people, or 20 million people in Wuhan and 80 million people in Hubei,’ and they come up with the number of 50,000, you start thinking of this more like SARS than you do this kind of global pandemic.”  Later:  “I think the medical community interpreted the Chinese data as this was serious but smaller than anyone expected, because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data” (Washington Examiner).  

From Business Insider: China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials. The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret, and they declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake (Bloomberg).  From Erielle Davidson: Always refreshing when mainstream media *breathlessly* reports what we all have known for weeks (Twitter).  

National Review has put together a timeline of China’s deception and includes this: What you have probably not heard is how emphatically, loudly, and repeatedly the Chinese government insisted human transmission was impossible, long after doctors in Wuhan had concluded human transmission was ongoing — and how the World Health Organization assented to that conclusion, despite the suspicions of other outside health experts (National Review).  

From Becket Adams: Democrats and members of the U.S. news media should be reconsidering their remarks defending and praising China amid the COVID-19 pandemic, especially now that those remarks are being highlighted by China’s aggressive and sophisticated propaganda machine (Washington Examiner).