In the last three months my restless conscience has been severely haunted by these tormenting questions: Did China secretly suppress the vital information about the evolution of the Coronavirus and resultantly put the entire world in fatal danger? Why did China fail to alert the World Health Organization (WHO) of the outbreak of the respiratory virus as early as December 2019?
Excessive global pressure is mounting on the Chinese Government to display transparency and openness concerning the actual evolution of the virulent Covid-19. The United States (US), Germany, Britain, France and other European countries are threatening to sue China for its failure to timeously alert the world of the outbreak of the virus.
There is anecdotal evidence to attest that China secretly knew about the outbreak of the pandemic as early as mid-December 2019. Towards the end of last year, a clinical physician based at Wuhan Central Hospital, Dr Li Wenliang, warned several doctors in Wuhan city, China, about the possible outbreak of the disease. In a cautionary post sent through WeChat (Chinese social media) to a group of doctors, Dr Li warned of “a possible outbreak of an infectious disease that resembles the 2002 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Wuhan, Hubei province, in China”. The heroic doctor’s warning came after observing that certain patients at Wuhan Central Hospital were secretly quarantined for respiratory infections.
Bizarrely, Dr Li was summoned and arrested by Wuhan’s Public Security Bureau for “spreading false and dangerous rumours that endangers public order”. This revelation presents a great probability that China could have suppressed crucial information pertaining to the genesis of the virus.
On 20 January when Covid-19 had already infected more than 3000 Chinese people, president Xi Jinping addressed the nation and revealed the outbreak of the virus. China’s autocratic and ultra-secretive system of government has fatally compromised the world’s technical preparedness to pre-empt and contain the spread of the virus. If China had alerted the WHO and the global humanity as early as December 2020, this virus could have been contained and probably eliminated. The Covid-19 virus eventually mutated into a global pandemic as a result of human migration from China to other countries. By the time the Chinese president revealed the existence of the virus on 20 January, some infected persons from China could probably have left for other countries. The United Nations (UN) must commission a non-partisan forensic inquiry into this mysterious evolution of Covid-19.
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