A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman insulted anyone questioning the Communist Party’s suspect data on the number of Wuhan coronavirus cases in the country on Thursday, disparaging them as “morally repulsive.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, one of the Communist Party’s most belligerent figures, offered the disparaging remarks in response to a question during her daily briefing regarding reports that China significantly downplayed the number of coronavirus cases and deaths nationwide.
The question specifically referenced a Bloomberg report that quoted American intelligence officials who concluded that the data China offered the world on the pandemic it allowed to occur was not reliable. The Bloomberg report followed months of reports from anti-communist and human rights publications like the Epoch Times and Radio Free Asia (RFA) finding significant discrepancies between the official death toll in Wuhan, where the virus originated, and the number of dead people being processed by the city’s seven funeral homes.
“My colleagues and I have been elaborating on all the details of China’s response, which shows clearly that China has been giving open, transparent and timely updates to the world,” Hua alleged in response to a Bloomberg reporter, referring to the mounting reports that the Communist Party intentionally misled the world into believing the epidemic in China was less severe than it was, preventing travel bans that may have prevented hundreds of thousands of coronavirus infections worldwide.
Hua referred to anyone questioning the false Chinese numbers as “habitual liars.”
“[I]n response to their endless, immoral slanders, I feel I have no choice but to take a few moments to clarify the truth once again,” Hua sighed. “The comments by these few US politicians are just shameless and morally repulsive”:
As we’ve repeatedly said, slanders, smears and blame games cannot make up for lost time. More lies will only waste more time and lead to more lives lost. A word of advice to these politicians: at this moment, lives should come before politics. It is immoral and inhumane to politicize public health, which should be condemned by all in the US and beyond.
Hua also cast doubt on the reality that the virus originated in Wuhan, claiming that its origin “is a serious matter that requires scientific, fact-based and professional assessment made by experts.” Hua also claimed that China identified the first cases of coronavirus in the city on December 27, 2019. In reality, leaked Chinese communist data shows the first Wuhan coronavirus case identified in mid-November 2019 and no serious scientists doubt that the virus originated in China.
China’s official government position is that the virus is an American biological weapon developed in Maryland, a claim for which no proof has surfaced.
On Twitter – which Hua uses freely despite the Chinese regime banning its citizens from accessing it, raising the question of if Hua is flagrantly breaking her own country’s laws – the Communist Party mouthpiece continued to attack American officials who publicized the fact that China’s coronavirus data is at best flawed, at worst deliberately manipulated to benefit Beijing.
In one tweet, Hua appeared to blame Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading America’s response to the pandemic, for any future deaths at the hands of the Chinese coronavirus.
Slanders & blame games cannot make up for lost time. More lies will only waste more time and cost more lives. People's lives should always be valued and placed ahead of politics. It is immoral & inhumane to politicize such a serious public health crisis.https://t.co/2PEe4ozUaT
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) April 2, 2020
Questions began to arise regarding China’s official numbers in February, at the peak of the epidemic in Wuhan, when the Epoch Times made calls to funeral homes in the city and asked how many deceased they were each processing on a daily basis. Some funeral home managers said they were cremating hundreds of bodies a day, an unsustainable number compared to official Communist Party statistics.
By the end of March, the Communist Party began partially lifting the Wuhan lockdown and allowed families to collect urns with the remains of their loved ones from the funeral homes. Reports in the Epoch Times, RFA, and the independent Chinese outlet Caixin estimated that the total number of dead in those funeral homes, subtracting estimates of the number of people who would have died in Wuhan without a viral outbreak, was somewhere between 32,000 and 45,000 people.
The Chinese government claims that 3,326 people have died of Wuhan coronavirus nationwide at press time.
Subsequent reports interviewing locals in Wuhan found high levels of distrust among those who witnessed the virus ravaging their community in real-time. Some expressed concerns that the outbreak was ongoing despite Communist Party claims it had subsided in the city. Forcing residents to stand close together on lines for hours to pick up the remains of their loved ones, some noted, may accelerate infections.
The American task force leading the country’s coronavirus response is using China’s official data to map out a plan to maximize the number of lives saved. Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the leading voices on the task force, confirmed in mid-May that her team “believe those data” coming from China, specifically those showing at the time no new coronavirus cases in Wuhan.
A little over a week later, Birx said that America’s coronavirus response was faulty because it relied on Chinese data.
“I think the medical community interpreted the Chinese data as that this was serious but smaller than anyone expected,” she said. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data.”
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