It would be difficult enough to deal with claims that 5G is spreading Covid19 or that it is a military designed bioweapon to impose a New UN World Order, but the explosion of conspiracy theories transmitted on social media haven’t been the most damaging virus misinformation, it has been countries themselves who have repeatedly lied, manipulated and hidden the truth of this pandemic.
The two countries dealing with the Pandemic most have both been the deepest pockets of deceit.
The virus made its first appearance in a Wuhan “wet market,” an emporium (apparently common in China) that featured live and newly slaughtered animals in close proximity. SARS and avian flu are also thought to have originated in these markets, which amount to an ongoing threat to global health.
From the first reported case, on December 1, 2019, until January 5, 2020, the Chinese government engaged in a cover-up. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty recounted, in early January, China’s National Health Commission forbade reporting on the new disease. On December 30, Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to other physicians warning that a SARS-like illness was spreading. He was arrested (along with six others) and obliged to apologize for “spreading rumors.” (Dr. Li Wenliang died of COVID-19 on February 7.)
Throughout early January, as cases mounted, the Chinese government issued soothing statements suggesting that the new pneumonia was not transmitted from person to person. As late as January 15, after Thailand and Japan had reported their first cases, official government sources were denying that human-to-human transmission had been proven, saying the risk was “low.”
Only on January 23, six weeks after the first case, did China announce a quarantine of Wuhan. By that time, millions had come and gone from the city during the busy holiday season, and cases had been reported in Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
…add to this questions over the true infection and death toll in China, claims American soldiers started the spread of the virus, their buying up of global stocks of medicines while telling the world little and their use of Uyghurs to work in factories when workers had been sent home and very little of what China has to say can be trusted or believed.
But America has been just as deceptive…
President Trump engaged in a series of soothing statements himself. On January 22, after the first U.S. case was reported, he said “We have it totally under control.” On February 2, he boasted that “we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” Twice in February, the president promised that “when we get into April, in the warmer weather — that has a very negative effect on that, and that type of a virus.” On February 26, when cases topped 60, Trump claimed that “we’re going very substantially down, not up.” In South Carolina, on February 28, Trump likened criticism of his handling of the pandemic to impeachment, saying “this is their new hoax.” On March 6, he continued this theme. Facing criticism for his false statement that “anyone who wants a test can get a test,” Trump tried to string together a “fake news”/Ukraine theme. He said the tests were “beautiful,” adding “The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?” Asked whether he was concerned about the virus’s spread on March 7, the president said “No, we’ve done a great job.”
…add to this questions over death counts, Trump knowing in January that China was lying about the true scale of the pandemic and sacking a Naval Captain for publicly warning of a pandemic on his Aircraft carrier, and America has been just as bankrupt when it comes to telling the truth.
We can’t trust ‘news’ on social media and we can’t trust the Governments themselves – one of the legacies of this universal experience we are globally experiencing will be that there wasn’t a universality of truth, that were were a thousand different lies masquerading as the truth all desperately promising explanation while erasing complicity.
The virus hasn’t just infected us and our economies, it has infected the truth.
We seem to have inoculated ourselves to the truth via social media bubbles that tell us what we want to hear and foolishly believe we have herd immunity to the murder of lies.
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This is not a conspiracy or a theory. “National Did It!”
lol…yup …they sure did!….Simon Bridges was up to his eyebrows in it!….you can tell by his smile
Or even when Simon’s lips move
Simon Bridhges is the reflection of National Party policy.
First promise nthe things you want to hear. – then when in power just lie about not doing the things that they said should happen.
“Tricksters all”.
Come on folks, lies about COVID-19 by the Chinese and US governments are one thing the NZ National party clearly didn’t do. Perhaps there’s a joke here that I’m missing, but otherwise off-topic and hyper-partisan comments like these make TDB look like the mirror image of Whale Oil :/
Yep Daryl this one went way over your head. However if you’re looking for hyper-partisan, look no further than Mike Hosking radio breakfast show.I dont normally tune in but unfortunately the Radio Sport frequency has defaulted to Hoskings breakfast show.Whailoil on the radio.
lol
The Washington Post reckons Trump made 16,241 “false or misleading” statements in the three years to January 20 this year. PolitiFact tries to keep up in real-time and struggles to stay on top of the baloney about the coronavirus crisis.
Trump’s motives, apart from what many people might say is a pathological inability to tell the truth, is to redefine the truth, to choose his own “alternative facts”. In doing so he sows confusion about what the media, judiciary, rivals or institutions say. In that way, it’s remarkably similar to the disinformation methods of Russia and China. Newsroom Peter Bale – Destabilising the Concept of Truth
Wuhan lock down allegedly 6 weeks after the first case is deceptive as China told the world of the virus long before then.
You have been cherry picking information as well as using old information that is clearly wrong.
The first cases of Covid19 in China were not from the wet market. The actual origin of the virus has yet to be made public, once it is known.
The Ophthalmologist reported what he thought may be a virus to be investigated only his circulation of his assumptions were the cause of reaction by the local health authorities so he was ordered to cease spreading unsubstantiated information.
China has a policy of quashing false information or fake news.
The virus allegation was investigated and when substantiated by virologists, was acted upon and made to be public knowledge.
But that is not how American propaganda has it.
WHO has good records and has acted very professionally with wide international support.
The team Trump clowns need no comment sadly.
That’s not true. The virus wasn’t brought to the wet markets, it came from bats sold at the market. That’s enough information we don’t need to know who patient zero was because infections came from Wuhan, it wasn’t smuggled into Wuhan or what ever.
Sam there is a lot of misinformation around, but the genome of viruses changes over generations so tracking the earlier viruses is a task undertaken by Taiwanese, Japanese and Chinese labs. The consensus is that earliest viruses were not from the wet market group of infected victims.
The initial premature question posed by Chinese health officials was could a similar virus known to be carried by bats found some distance away, have jumped species to humans. This was speculation that has become widespread and now reported by some news agencies as fact.
But it is a different virus and later work on the genome ruled out the possibility of transmission from bats. The Novel coronavirus does not belong to the bat virus “family”. It is an outlier.
Virology is highly technical and reporters from MSM are hardly qualified interpret any current virology with authority.
I don’t care whether blame is leveled against China, USA or whoever but examination of genome samples and data has been shared across several nations cooperating together to ascertain the history and characteristics of the virus.
I have yet to find a scientific paper linking the novel coronavirus to the particular bat in question. I remain open minded.
US propaganda is not helping and they are not sharing their early data on similar cases in the US very early on..
Meanwhile the propaganda continues from the USA.
The mysteries of the Wuhan virus was unlocked 24hrs after the WHo declared it a pandemic and German researchers had mapped the Wuhan virus RNA (ribonucleic acid) and why is this important? It’s important because DNA has a double helix and RNA has one helix which means inside the virus it is dead which gives us some clues that there are subtle flaws in the “wasn’t China theory.”
So how can we go beyond DNA to recover RNA into a more flexible theory? In fact RNA is so fundamental that effectively every scientist begins his research with a statement about RNA. In other words RNA is locked into the ground floor. So if we can’t get below the ground floor to the foundations then it’s very difficult to begin ones research with DNA. This is one of the things the make it impossible for people to counter misinformation.
Strangely even though the point of science is to find out the truth there is a much more noble goal of saving human life. The fact that the Wuhan virus is more in common with bat virus’s in humans than any other virus in humans has incredible applications for finding a vaccine. But the truth seekers have a very different perspective than mine, people like JohnW feel that because naming viruses has a geographical component to the name, that system will still work even though the geographical origins of the virus is erased from history and now these theories are out in a situation where they’re not able to carry the day in fact there are no records that there are predictions of the virus containing DNA.
Now I disagree with the way any of this was handled. But what I have found more troubling is our academic population has given up any idea of decency, truth and fairness because there simply isn’t the resources for everything post neoliberalism. I believe the current scientific structure IS salvageable but it won’t be salvageable if we don’t get the people that I rail against far more money (and I know that’s confusing) but we’ve put away inadequate resources which is very similar to the inadequate number of masks we’ve put away for all front line health staff including rest homes and all essential workers, grocery workers, police, fire, and so on.
We’re asking people who’re devoting themselves to us and we’ve inadequately prepared them for the Wuhan virus. A part of the problem is Bejing, and Washington, and The World Health Organisation are all a part of the problem and the problem is we must give the very people I am most angry at more money.
If this WaPo report is correct, warnings were raised about the Wuhan Lab two years earlier.
A leaked cable obtained by the Post highlights poor management and safety issues at the lab — and one notable concern was for the lab’s research on bat coronaviruses. Safety Concerns at Wuhan Lab Two Years Before Coronavirus Emerged More at link.
The smoking gun:
‘Furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus glycoprotein’
https://www.virology.ws/2020/02/13/furin-cleavage-site-in-the-sars-cov-2-coronavirus-glycoprotein/
“The The spike glycoprotein of the newly emerged SARS-CoV-2 contains a potential cleavage site for furin proteases. This observation has implications for the zoonotic origin of the virus and its epidemic spread in China….
…or in other words:
Dr. Paul Cottrell talks about Coronavirus and Furin (Webb annotation video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOo81uDIcbU
I note on the same site.
Carsten 20 February 2020, 12:29 pm
“Upon introduction into a human – likely in an outdoor meat market – the virus began its epidemic spread.”
Please stop spreading unfounded rumors. (This goes both ways!) There is no evidence that the meat market was the origin of the outbreak. Neither were the first cases related to the market (Huang, Lancet, 2020) nor were any animals found that could have been the source.
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