China’s report of zero new coronavirus cases sparked celebration across the globe, with some viewing the communist regime’s Thursday report as a beacon of hope.
While global efforts to curb the impact of the virus continue, there is reason to doubt China’s “milestone” claim of no new local coronavirus infections.
1. There are still cases of people reporting symptoms, but China is reportedly refusing to test them.
One patient in China, identified as Ms. Fu, told the anti-communist publication the Epoch Times that her condition deteriorated after officials released her from a “makeshift” hospital. The city has since shut temporary hospitals down, a move which coincided with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Wuhan visit this month.
While Chinese officials claim that the hospitals are no longer in high demand due to the purported decrease in cases, some, such as the patient who spoke to the Epoch Times, said people exhibiting symptoms of the virus are continuing to suffer:
Fu said she was not the only patient being released who has not recovered.
After the city announced that all makeshift hospitals would be closed, the Wuhan expo center dispatched a bus to transport patients to quarantine centers. Patients in severe condition were transferred to hospitals. Others who were deemed healthy returned home.
Fu said that she spoke with the roughly 20 other patients on the bus. They similarly had lung damage.A 36-year-old man who was also at the makeshift hospital where Fu stayed died 36 hours after being discharged, according to Fu.
Simply put, there are no new cases to report if the government is closing makeshift hospitals and refusing to see patients. That could be one way the Chinese government is able to report misleading, albeit blatantly false, numbers and thereby spread false optimism.
2. “Cured” coronavirus patients are dying.
In addition to symptomatic patients going untreated, some of those previously deemed “cured” are reportedly dying after leaving hospitals. One patient, 36-year-old Li Liang, passed away less than a month after supposedly recovering from his initial coronavirus diagnosis. Doctors dismissed his renewed symptoms and attributed them to “stress.”
As Breitbart News detailed:
Li Liang was diagnosed with the coronavirus on February 4 and admitted to one of Wuhan’s improvised virus hospitals on February 12. On February 26, he was released after testing negative for two days, his fever seemingly cleared up, although scans showed massive damage to his lungs from the infection.
As per regulations, Li was relocated to a quarantine center in a local hotel for 14 days of isolation and observation. He began complaining of renewed symptoms on February 28 and was too weak to stand by March 2. The doctors attributed his weakness to “stress” and refused to let his wife see him.
Li was back in the hospital by the afternoon of March 2 and dead by sundown. He died in his wife’s arms, telling her that he wanted to go home. She said she wept over his body for hours until a funeral home collected his remains.
3. There is a surge in “pneumonia” deaths in China that are not being counted as coronavirus.
The Epoch Times recently identified a funeral director from the Jining, Shandong, province, who claimed that he has seen a spike in “unidentified pneumonia” appearing on death certificates. That may serve as a sign that the Chinese Communist Party is “not properly labeling Wuhan virus cases and artificially deflating numbers.”
Breitbart News explained further:
His testimony, if true, echoes similar reports of Chinese hospitals failing to confirm coronavirus cases in individuals dying of respiratory failure in areas with a high concentration of coronavirus cases. The Epoch Times has relied on the testimony of workers at funeral homes, crematories, and other similar facilities to reveal evidence of overwhelming numbers of bodies the government must now process as a result of the outbreak.
4. The number of cases in Xinjiang concentration camps remains unknown.
The number of coronavirus cases among those imprisoned in the dozens of overcrowded, dirty internment camps in Xinjiang province, where the Communist Party is holding hostage between 1 to 3 million Muslims, is shrouded in mystery.
Outside of the camps, Uyghurs live in fear of doing anything to prompt an arrest, including asking for medical help. A Radio Free Asia (RFA) report from February speaks to the larger point of underreported cases. One Uyghur former detainee feared seeking treatment for the virus “because breaking an ongoing quarantine for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) could see him sent back to the camps, officials said.”
In certain areas of the XUAR, such as the city of Atush (in Chinese, Atushi) in Kizilsu Kirghiz (Kezileisu Keerkezi) Autonomous Prefecture, residents found to have left their homes without permission during quarantine face the threat of 15 days detention in the region’s network of internment camps, where as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas are believed to have been held since April 2017.
Nonetheless, the total number of cases across the concentration camps — breeding grounds for the spread of an infectious virus — remains widely unknown.
5. Residents of Wuhan don’t seem to be satisfied with their government’s performance.
While mass reports appear to indicate that Wuhan, the city where the virus began to spread — despite false Communist Party claims to the contrary — is on the other side of the bell curve, residents of the city do not appear to be satisfied with their government’s response and performance. Recent video shows residents jeering a top Chinese Communist Party official shouting, “Everything [they say] is fake!” after “being told to stay home during his visit to their compound,” one report from RFA indicated:
Residents are also growing frustrated by rising food prices, travel restrictions, and access to basic supplies. Hundreds in Yingcheng, Hubei, recently protested the arrest of a man who sold “fresh, affordable food as an alternative to the Communist Party’s old, overpriced offerings”:
According to the Post, the Yingcheng protest occurred last Thursday, highlighting the difficulty with getting information out of locked out communities. As residents have not been allowed to leave their homes, the Communist Party has been distributing food door to door. Residents complained of reportedly old, insufficient, and extremely expensive food.
A local resident the Post referred to as “Cheng,” using his connections with supermarket owners, was arrested last week for offering the invaluable service of selling fresh foods at a lower price than the government’s.
“According to a post on social media by the city government’s Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] emergency command centre, the protest began at about 7.30pm at the Sea Mountain residential complex, which is home to about 8,000 people,” the Post noted. “Defying the terms of the lockdown, hundreds of residents gathered on a basketball court within the compound to vent their anger. They dispersed only after local government officials and police arrived at the scene.”
Cheng reportedly lived at the complex and helped his neighbors.
“We were so angry that we’d been deprived of choice, of access to cheaper and better products,” one participant reportedly told the Beijing News.
Wuhan residents also grew disgruntled after two senior district government officials delivered 1,000 portions of plastic-wrapped pork to a community in the district in a garbage truck:
Wuhan sacks officials after pork deliveries are tipped into street from back of rubbish truck https://t.co/g5NHj7gHuJ
— SCMP News (@SCMPNews) March 12, 2020
There were 229,390 cases of the coronavirus across the globe as of Thursday afternoon.
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