China, under the leadership of paramount leader Xi Jinping, has given the humanity the biggest setback of this century in the form of Coronavirus. The diseases from Corona has taken 11,587 thousand lives and 2.8 lakh people have been infected so far. This figure is of the reported cases, lakhs of others might be suffering from the virus, and many more might have died, as the cases reported by China has no transparency.
Italy has announced 627 more deaths on Friday, the biggest increase in the country’s four-week epidemic in a single day, a day after surpassing China’s death toll. The total number of deaths in Italy has reached 4,032 above China’s 3255 death toll. This discrepancy raises a lot of questions about the death toll in the densely populated country of China where the Wuhan virus originated, and spread to every province, leading to large scale misery, mayhem and lockdown.
As per a tweet Jennifer Zeng, Chinese human rights activist based in New York, 8.1 million (81 lakh) SIM cards got deactivated from China in January and February. Her tweet insinuated that these people might have died and China is probably massively underreporting the deaths and cases.
Data of China Mobile since 2017
Column 1-5 are date, total users, net monthly growth, net cumulative growth of the year, 4G & 5G users
One can see that total users kept growing until Dec 2019. Then it lost 862K users in Jan and 7.254M in Feb. 8.118M net loss in 2020. #CCPVirus pic.twitter.com/2LkEXjlVle— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferatntd) March 21, 2020
“Data of China Mobile since 2017 Column 1-5 are date, total users, net monthly growth, net cumulative growth of the year, 4G & 5G users One can see that total users kept growing until Dec 2019. Then it lost 862K users in Jan and 7.254M in Feb. 8.118M net loss in 2020,” tweeted Zeng.
There were speculations among skeptics that China is underreporting the cases to save its economy. Now many evidences suggest that this might be true. Earlier it reported that mass cremation of bodies took place in Chinese city of Wuhan. And later, China expelled journalists from prominent American newspapers like WSJ, NYT, and Washington Post, who reported that the Communist government is underreporting and hiding crucial data and information from global scrutiny.
It is a fact not hidden from anybody that the communist country of China did not reveal how hazardous the virus could be to the rest of the world when it was in its initial stages. The Xi Jinping regime hid the severity of the Chinese Virus for the better part of November and December when it had just started to spread around the Wuhan province.
Had China been wise to put up the crucial information in front of the world, many lives might have been saved. Also, it has been reported that the fatality rate from virus in many European countries is greater than that of China. Now this might be due to the high media age in European countries but it is also possible that there is something that China did right to contain the virus but now hiding this from the world.
The Chinese government on its own has brought the whole world down on its knees. They lied to their citizens and they lied to the world through their mouthpiece WHO. From initially denying to sound out the alarm bells to breaking its practice of naming the virus after its origin to publishing a biased report helping China with its narrative, the WHO has done it all. As was the case with Ebola and Nipah, the viruses were named after the places of origin. The WHO broke this practice when it came to the Chinese Virus.
China tried to deny the fact that the virus originated from the city of Wuhan. Various experts have concluded that the zoonotic virus originated in Wuhan’s Huanan market in China as, of the first 41 cases of the virus, 27 of them had been to the wet market. In a sequence of events which mirror that of the 2003 SARS outbreak in China, the Chinese government closed the market under the pretext of ‘renovation’. The SARS coronavirus too originated in a similar wet market which spread to 29 countries and killed almost 800 people.
China was always hesitant in allowing any information relating to the novel Coronavirus to come up before the rest of the world. In line with its crackdown on those speaking up about the dangers posed by the mysterious infection, Chinese doctor Li Wenliang who was one of the first whistleblowers who tried to warn about the Coronavirus had sadly succumbed to the virus after treating the patients of the virus. His voice was muzzled by the Chinese authorities and as China erupted in grief and anger, the state-run media squarely pinned the blame on local authorities.
The Chinese authorities continued the crackdown against those speaking up about the Coronavirus. Last month, two Chinese journalists, Chen Quishi and Fang Bin mysteriously disappeared. Their crime: exposing the real face of the Chinese government as they exposed its inability to tackle the virus at its epicentre in Wuhan.
Data sharing between governments is a critical factor in tackling such epidemics. But China, where the virus originated has been inhibiting the process. It is not only hiding the real picture, but is also harassing its own citizens if they speak up about the real threat posed by Covid-19.
Moreover, Beijing is continuously trying to shed responsibility. Amidst the growing intensity and space of the novel virus, it is crucial that its origin is tracked down at the earliest. All evidence points to the epicentre of the outbreak, Wuhan, where the virus is said to have originated.
But the Chinese government has sought to blame the United States instead. The Chinese government machinery is working overtime to deflect the blame. And this is exactly where the roots of the problem lie. A true picture and real data of the issue cannot emerge unless China where the virus originated owes up and starts sharing the real picture.
Even as the world grapples with the Coronavirus Pandemic, Beijing continues to hide data and refuses to cooperate, leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself.
