How China Failed The World By Mishandling The Coronavirus

By now you’ve probably heard of the infamous bat soup that caused this global COVID-19 catastrophe. While we still don’t know for sure if eating bats brought upon this pandemic, experts believe the outbreak began at a wet market in China’s Hubei Province in Wuhan. 

To simplify their explanation, it’s suspected that since the wet market sells exotic live animals for human consumption, these animals that were brought from different regions around the globe and, in their captivity, incubated and mutated a virus into the highly infectious coronavirus the world is dealing with today. 

A Nutritious Dinner of Bats and Snakes, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Picture this: At this particular wet market, you have sellers placing live koalas from Australia next to monkeys from Madagascar right next to tanks of turtles from Sri Lanka right next to snakes in cages from Africa. None of these animals would have come into contact with each other in the wild but their proximity with each other helped the virus mutate into the dangerous strain infecting humans today. This is what is meant when it is said the Wuhan coronavirus COVID-19 is a zoonotic infection that is transmitted from animals to humans.

Theoretically, the virus could have originated in fruit bats, which both snakes (sold at the Wuhan wet market as a delicacy) and humans eat (bat soup is another delicacy in China). Snakes were found to be susceptible to a similar strain of coronavirus, and it's possible that the virus was spread to humans during the handling or butchering of bats and snakes.

Crucial Moment Getting Covered Up at the Start 

On December 8, 2019, the first case of illness was reported in Wuhan, China. It wasn’t until December 30th that the Chinese central government sent a team of experts to Wuhan to investigate the situation. But guess what they did after the investigation? They arrested eight people on January 1, 2020 for speaking about the virus because the main priority of the government was to crack down on whistleblowers for warning others about this mysterious virus that was infecting the public.

The Chinese Government’s Deliberate Evasion of Facing the Threat 

The first death from the Wuhan coronavirus was reported on January 11, and on January 14 the Chinese police started arresting people from the media who were reporting on the coronavirus, claiming that these members of the press were “fabricating and spreading rumors” to cause public distress. 

The Chinese police started arresting people from the media who were reporting on the coronavirus.

And if you think that silencing the press who was trying to do their job wasn’t egregious enough, in order to cover up the outbreak, quell the rumors, and calm the public, the Wuhan government encouraged people to continue with their New Year communal banquet for 100,000 people on January 18, where the attendees shared food and ate from the same dishes. This event was held three miles from where the outbreak was confirmed to have originated. The government knew the virus was in circulation, but they did not cancel the event in order to save face and to look in control. They thus put accelerated and exacerbated the spread of the virus and put their own people at risk.

Continuous Lying and Putting the World in Danger

One day later on January 19, the government released an official statement saying that the much-feared disease was not infectious and that the public had nothing to worry about. This statement was made after there were 49 reported deaths in Wuhan from the coronavirus.

They finally put the city under quarantine on January 23, but by then it was too late. The outbreak happened during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday season so 5 million people who were potentially infected had already left the city, carrying the virus with them (think of it like Thanksgiving travel in America).

How This Crisis Could Have Been Avoided

This is a perfect example of gross negligence by the Chinese governance. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knowingly covered up the severity of the crisis and by delaying the response to the crisis made the epidemic worse. The reason why people around the world today are facing so much inconvenience due to this COVID-19 can be traced back to the CCP’s utter lack of ethical concern for the wellbeing of humanity. Corrupted bureaucrats chose to do away with transparency and instead adopted cover-up measures.

The Chinese Communist Party knowingly covered up the severity of the crisis and by delaying the response to the crisis made the epidemic worse.

Sinologist Professor Steve Tsang, who is the director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London stated that “the CCP always had a monopoly on truth and history in China, and now tries to deny that it originally hid the truth on the virus. CCP officers claim they are right even when it is obvious they are wrong. They have their ‘truth’ in China, but we should question it in the West. Exposing the CCP propaganda for what it is, is a task for us who live in democratic countries.”

Chinese Government Shirking Responsibility 

If the utter mishandling of the pandemic wasn’t bad enough, China’s communist government had the narcissistic gall to petition the World Health Organization to rename the Wuhan coronavirus as COVID-19, instead of rising up and assuming the responsibility for causing this global disaster. The claim for doing so is to not stigmatize people or places, but the reality was that the Chinese Communist Party wanted to pretend this calamity had nothing to do with how they handled the situation in China. Case in point, they have tried to get the virus renamed as the “Japanese virus," the “Italian virus,” or the “Iranian virus.”

Closing Thoughts

The mismanagement of this crisis by the Chinese government is why people - around the world - have to cancel concerts, conventions, meetups, vacations, and so much more. But canceling our gatherings is still a seemingly small inconvenience compared to how everyone now runs the potential risk of falling sick from the Wuhan COVID-19 virus. And in extreme cases, there are those who will ultimately die from the infection. 

All of this could have been avoided if the Chinese Communist Party hadn’t tried to silence those who wanted to warn the public, like Dr. Li Wenliang (who sadly died from the infection) and the many others who tried to do the same and bring transparency to the epidemic. Had their voices been heard, this crisis could have been handled much better and way earlier. This is what the suppression of the press looks like. This is the kind of worldwide human catastrophe that occurs when a tyrannical government curtails the freedom of speech.