The “Chinese Virus”

BLOG

By the end of 2019, the world had learned about the novel virus. The World Health Organization defined the novel coronavirus as a global emergency to the public health on January 30, 2020, one month after its outbreak. On March 11, it was declared as a pandemic. As of June 9, 2020, nearly 7 million cases of the novel coronavirus had been reported worldwide, with more than 400,000 people already dead from it. The virus has spread to 188 countries and territories.

At first, everyone was convinced that the virus had spread spontaneously, and that it had accidentally spread from the wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. According to the information, it reportedly jumped to a human being from a bat. Over time, however, this version lost its credibility. Soon, there were reports that China had failed to disclose information about the virus in time, and the first cases were reported not at the end of December, but much earlier. One should pay particular attention to the story of Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, who tried to inform colleagues about the novel virus. He also published a post about it on the Chinese social network Weibo, but he was later summoned to law enforcement agencies where he wrote a “confession,” according to which he claimed “to have spread rumors and violated public order”. Wenliang was admitted to Wuhan Hospital on January 30 with a diagnosis of COVID-19. He died on February 7. The news of his death caused huge indignation on the same social network.

The Chinese pro-government media were quick to deny news of his death, but due to special interest not only in the country, but also worldwide, the truth could not be hidden for long, and his death was officially confirmed. The tragic story of Li Wenliang and the repressions against him further fueled suspicions that Beijing had been concealing the virus for some time. Some of these suspicions raised against China were confirmed in early May. It turns out that in January 2020, when the World Health Organization had not yet declared COVID-19 a pandemic, China had drastically increased imports of medical equipment. In particular, imports of surgical masks increased by 278%, surgical gowns by 72% and surgical gloves by 32%. At the same time, the exports of all these products from China decreased significantly. From October 2019 to January 2020, the balance of exports and imports of 38 medical products in China changed drastically. All of this indicates that China was preparing for a major outbreak and concealed the real danger from the rest of the world.

More information about the source of the virus has also been revealed, and it is said the virus spread not from the Wuhan wet market, but from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This institute has been working on coronaviruses since the early 2000s. Two cases of the leakage of the SARS-type virus from Chinese laboratories have been confirmed. Another important circumstance: according to the official version, the virus jumped to humans from a bat in the Wuhan wet market. It turns out that bats were not sold at all in this market, and therefore, this version is not convincing, while the novel coronavirus starting not in the Wuhan market, but in a laboratory, is much more plausible.

There is information concerning the safety standards in Chinese biological laboratories. In 2015, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the first laboratory in China to receive a fourth level of international biological safety. Two years before the spread of the Covid infection, the laboratory was inspected, in January 2018. According to the report, the laboratory was carrying out dangerous experiments on bats infected with coronavirus and was not complying with the relevant safety standards. By reconciling the above data, one can surely say that China had information about the spread of the virus and its potential danger much earlier, but it did not consider it necessary to inform the rest of the world in a timely manner. At the same time, Beijing was carefully preparing to defeat it, and it officially became the first state to celebrate victory over the virus with a flash mob involving the Secretary General of the Communist Party.

Let’s not try to judge how ethical this performance was, but it is important to note that by hiding the information, global medicine lost the opportunity to get ready for the novel coronavirus; global medicine lost time to create a vaccine and medication that still do not exist, as it takes time to do so; the world economy and individual countries lost the chance to get ready to face not only the novel virus but also the impending economic catastrophe. The impact of the virus on the world economy is particularly significant. The global economic crisis began in February 2020 and it is still not over. As a result of the pandemic, the world saw a sharp rise in unemployment, a decrease at the stock markets, a collapse of the tourism industry, a collapse of the medical industry, a sharp decrease in oil prices, a collapse of the energy industry, a sharp rise in domestic debt and a sharp decrease in consumer activity. The World Monetary Fund has already assessed the 2020 crisis as the worst recession since the Great Depression. Despite the fact that many countries around the world successfully managed the outbreak and showed satisfactory results, with some surpassing the peak at the cost of great sacrifices, and are now gradually returning to normal life, many questions remain unanswered. The main reason for this is that the success of some countries in the fight against the virus will not make it possible to return to the pre-crisis economic situation unless the global pandemic is completely defeated. Given the fact that many countries around the world are currently going through the most difficult phase of the fight against the virus, the prospects for recovery are still unclear. At the same time, it is expected that a new wave of virus may come in the autumn, which makes the vague prospects for recovery even more hopeless.

China's actions concerning the novel coronavirus reminded many of the Chernobyl disaster. At that time, the Soviet authorities tried to conceal the problem both from the rest of the world and from their own population. The debate over the death toll during the Chernobyl disaster is still ongoing. According to various sources, 4,000 people died within a short range of the blast and 6,000 rescuers died. However, the official statistics still recognize only 31 deaths due to acute radiation syndrome. The approach of the Soviet Union and China is very similar, but it should be noted that the problem of COVID-19 by its content and scale is much more complex and long-lasting. The existing consequences are much more severe, and no-one knows when the world will finally return to a normal life without the novel coronavirus and masks.

By David Bragvadze

Image source: vox.com