Deja vu all over again: the Chinese government is accused of trying to cover up an epidemic of unknown pneumonia that is reportedly overwhelming hospitals and closing schools.
CCP Deploys Cover-Up for Mysterious Pneumonia Outbreak in Children | Epoch Times | Eva Fu:
December 5, 2023 - "The sense of helplessness that has gripped the Chinese people on and off since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago is again returning as the country grapples with an unidentified pneumonia outbreak that's infecting children and overwhelming hospitals.... [S]ick children have been filling hospital waiting rooms and hallways and spilling outside the main gates..... From north to south, the spike in children’s respiratory hospitalizations is shutting classrooms and pushing health authorities to issue a flurry of announcements telling teachers and students who feel unwell to stay home....
"Just like three years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears dismissive of the disease’s risk, telling a concerned World Health Organization that there are no 'unusual or new pathogens' or clinical symptoms. The regime partially attributed the uptick to a mid-October upgrade in a respiratory surveillance mechanism.... Beijing’s explanation, which the international health agency as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have quoted verbatim, has convinced few in China or abroad....
"Sean Lin, microbiologist and former lab director at the viral diseases branch of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, expressed frustration over the WHO’s reliance on China’s regime for information.... After whistleblower doctors sounded the alarm on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan during the final days of 2019, it took nearly three weeks before the Chinese regime acknowledged that the virus can spread from human to human. During that time and afterward, authorities reprimanded the medics who spoke out, arrested citizen journalists, and muzzled reporters while orchestrating an internet cleanup on any mention of the outbreak deemed undesirable to its image. Many lawmakers in Washington, especially Republicans, see the same thing happening in China now....
"Even by the numbers from Chinese authorities, who have a persistent record of playing down unflattering data, the image is dire: Beijing alone reported more than 72,000 infections in the week that ended on Nov. 26.... The statistics released by the Beijing Municipal Health Commission are so far the only data point to gauge the severity of the current outbreak.... Chinese state media have spent the past month attempting to reassure the public that the outbreak is just a routine winter spike of common respiratory pathogens and that there’s little need to panic. The Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, People’s Daily, carried an article saying that mycoplasma pneumonia is 'preventable and controllable,' phrases that the regime used in January 2020 when the COVID-19 outbreak in China began to draw international anxiety.
"But the focus on mycoplasma might be a deliberate step to mislead and detract, according to Mr. Lin.... Unlike COVID-19, mycoplasma doesn’t lead to the 'white lung syndrome' — characterized by lung areas' showing up white on chest X-rays because of fluid buildup — that has been plaguing Chinese children recently, according to Dong Yuhong, an infectious disease analyst with 12 years of experience at Swiss multinational pharmaceutical Novartis. Nor has any past respiratory disease season reached the scale China is now grappling with.... Conventional treatment methods for mycoplasma pneumonia haven’t worked either....
"COVID-19 is probably still the driving force behind the current wave, according to Mr. Lin, the microbiologist.... '[Most likely,] some of the other respiratory pathogens destroyed their upper respiratory defense mechanism, so now COVID just goes straight in,' he said. Children may be the first group to take the hit, Mr. Lin said, but infections have also spread to adults.... As Xi Jinping prepared for his recent visit to San Francisco to sell China as a friendly market for foreign investors, he personally ordered officials to gloss over the gravity of the outbreak and make the case that a COVID-19 mutation isn’t the cause so that international visitors wouldn’t be scared away, a whistleblower close to the central Party leadership in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai and the Chinese military told The Epoch Times....
"In the northeastern province of Jilin, a woman whose son displayed white lung symptoms and was diagnosed with mycoplasma pneumonia said a doctor she was acquainted with told her that COVID-19 was the main cause..... Ms. Jin, of central China’s Xi’an City, heard the same from her hospitalized nephew: The doctor told him that he had COVID-19. 'They just called it by a different name,' she told The Epoch Times, relaying the doctor’s words. It’s the same playbook that the regime followed a year ago at the height of the devastating COVID-19 wave in December 2022. Beijing tweaked the criteria for classifying COVID-19 deaths, ... excluding anyone with underlying conditions. People involved in issuing death certificates, including multiple doctors, told The Epoch Times that they were ordered to not mention COVID-19.
"In some areas, even a public mention of sickness is taboo. At least two parents from Beijing and Tianjin told The Epoch Times that teachers have instructed parents to not mention their children’s sickness in the school chat groups for fear of 'negatively impacting others.' 'Everything is a national secret,' Mr. Wei, from Beijing, told The Epoch Times.
China Pneumonia Outbreak: Amid Surge, Classrooms in Hebei Disinfected | Vantage with Palki Sharma | Firstpost | December 1, 2023:
No comments:
Post a Comment