Beijing, Vindicatng Itself

Mr Zhang's father (Supplied: Zhang Hai)

"Very important site visits today -- a wholesale market first & Huanan Seafood Market just now."  "Very informative & critical for our joint teams to understand the epidemiology of COVID as it started to spread at the end of 2019."

Peter Daszak, zoologist with U.S. group EcoHealth Alliance, member of WHO team

 

"The government's first priority is to protect the people's health and safety, but it failed to inform the public as soon as the coronavirus outbreak happened."

"My father, a very patriotic soldier, had devoted his youth to the nation … but he was killed by COVID-19 in his later life."

"The epidemic would never happen if the government had truly put the people's interest [as their] first priority."

"[He wouldn't trust visits organized and limited by the Chinese government, and thought the information patients gave could be] highly suspicious."

"They could have been trained many months ago, and been ordered to stage and repeat the government's narrative."

"I am highly concerned that the WHO experts in Wuhan are not a match for these counterfeiters."

 Zhang Hai, 51, Wuhan resident

 

The WHO team visits an exhibition about the Government's successful response to contain the coronavirus in Wuhan on Saturday.   (AP: Ng Han Guan)

"[I had] police interviews, cameras pointing at home, and dismissal from work. They pressured my families, stalked my activities, which is completely unscrupulous."

"[I am told] don't contact the foreign media, because it will be used by anti-China forces, which is detrimental to our country."

"I just want everyone to know that the government is a murderer for hiding the epidemic."

 Parent who lost an only child

Government propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party officially denies it was in any way irresponsible over its handling of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, over charges that it waited too long to warn the international community and the World Health Organization of its discovery of a strange new pneumonia-like illness that was plaguing people in Wuhan City. Its assurance when it did alert the WHO that person-to-person transmission was unlikely was inaccurate and harmful to the world's understanding of what was unfolding.

Not only does Beijing deny that it acted in anything but a responsible manner, but it also denies that the virus itself first emerged in Hubei Province, northern China. Rather, the propaganda slyly insists it emerged elsewhere, abroad, and was imported to China. That happened in one of two ways, they claim; either through infected frozen meat exported by a European country into China, or it was deliberately brought to China by U.S. agents. 

Beijing's inexcusable attempts to hide the presence of a new, highly contagious and lethal-to-the-elderly virus, its silencing of physicians in Wuhan hospitals who raised the alarm, threatening them and accusing them of spreading 'false news', also did not happen, but represents a malicious attempt on the part of the West to smear China. Casually speaking of the virus as the 'Wuhan virus', or the 'Chinese virus' sends Beijing into paroxysms of fury, but not a word is murmured by the WHO about racism when the media speak of the new 'U.K.' mutation', or the 'South African' variant.

Beijing screamed bloody murder and called it racism when other countries began to close their borders to China, and the World Health Organization chastised those that did, wagging a finger of racism at them as well. Yet once China succeeded during the first wave of the coronavirus to achieve a measure of control, it closed its borders to entry from abroad, where Italy and Spain in particular were experiencing a crisis in runaway COVID infection rates overwhelming their health care systems.

A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. The WHO team is investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has visited two disease control centers in the province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

American authorities and some U.S. bioscientists raised the possibility that the virus was an escapee of a biohazard laboratory located not far from the Wuhan live meat market which sold pangolin, wolf cubs, bats, snakes and other live animals for slaughter for the human palate and where the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first said to have emerged. To this day there is no consensus of opinion over that hypothesis; eminent scientists declare it to be hugely unlikely while others retain suspicion.

China delayed the entry of the WHO team of investigators to Wuhan City although it had initially agreed that it would cooperate with their mission to study the breakout of the virus that had crossed the species barrier from wild animals to human victims, not an entirely rare occurrence and invariably difficult to control. But after delays and controversy, the team, having undergone a 14-day mandatory isolation period on arrival in China, is now into its third day of a two-week investigation.

"The team plans to visit hospitals, laboratories and markets. Field visits will include the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Huanan market, Wuhan CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention] laboratory."

"All hypotheses are on the table as the team follows the science in their work. They should receive the support, access and the data they need."

World Health Organization statement

 

"It is now that the actual field work can begin, and it is my expectation that for this part of the mission we will have unhindered access to the requested destinations and individuals."

"But it is important to remember that the success of this mission and origin-tracing is 100 percent depending on access to the relevant sources."

"No matter how competent we are, how hard we work and how many stones we try to turn, this can only be possible with the support from China."

Thea Fischer, Danish team member

China's foreign ministry for its part said the WHO team is scheduled to participate in seminars, visits and field trips, and it is no doubt hoping that it can de-politicize the assumptions some of the WHO members come equipped with, while carrying on its own politicization of a topic so overwhelmingly pervasive throughout the world and so deadly that millions of lives globally have been lost to the viral predator. Beijing, by setting its own program for the visit before the investigators, likely seeks to diminish the time allotted for the WHO members' own agenda while consuming that time in 'meetings'.

 

Beijing has also made it abundantly clear that it has complete control over where the WHO team will be escorted, always in the presence of handlers. And the many Chinese who are intent on being interviewed by the WHO team while Chinese authorities harass and threaten their outspokenness, is simply yet another facet of a lost cause; try as they sincerely will, with the obstacles placed in their path to fulfilling their mission, it is highly unlikely the WHO will come away with anything but Beijing's approved narrative.

 

A worker in protective overall passes by a warehouse at the Baishazhou wholesale market during a visit by the World Health Organization on the third day of field visit in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

World Health Organization Unresponsive to Queries on COVID Recommendations and Timelines

"We haven't any alternative pitched to us [from the World Health Organization] at all. There could be perhaps an alternative pitch, which we would consider."
We asked for him [Canadian Dr.Bruce Aylward, WHO senior advisor] just to show up for an hour knowing that his time is valuable, but just one hour knowing that we would work around his time zone."
Canadian Member of Parliament Matt Jeneroux

"WHO has stated its strong commitment to a timely review of the global response in a transparent, independent and comprehensive manner."
"We are in the initial phase of the most complex and time-sensitive public health response in the history of the organization and our single-minded focus is thus on working with countries in the fight against the [global SARS-CoV-2] pandemic."
Canadian House of Commons Committee letter to WHO 

"To me this is not about politics. I am not there [on the committee] to delve into the politics of the WHO. I am purely interested in their information and the way they responded to the COVID-19 crisis."
"I don't understand the difference. If he is prepared to come forward and on the record answer questions, why wouldn't he want to do that with our committee."
Member of Parliament Don Davies

Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organisation (WHO) attends a news conference of the WHO-China Joint Mission about its investigation of the coronavirus outbreak in Beijing, China, Feb. 24, 2020. Thomas Peter/Reuters

The World Health Organization has been criticized for giving the impression by its actions and statements clearly in favour of the Chinese response to the novel coronavirus, that its behaviour toward the Chinese Communist Party leadership is simply too deferential when its mandate is meant to be strictly objectively scientific in orientation, ensuring its guidance and advice to the world's nations is without bias, based strictly on medical science and factual evidence.

Not only has its chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, come under suspicion for the perceived unctuousness he displays toward China's Xi Jinping but that suspicion has now extended toward the former assistant director general of the World Health Organization who led an expert group examining the coronavirus' emergence in China. Dr.Aylward, in an interview with a television station out of Hong Kong where the issue of Taiwan was raised, terminated the interview rather than respond.

And because the WHO through Dr.Tedros initially praised the Chinese response and parroted its findings on human-to-human transmission, and played down the impending seriousness of the growing infection and death rate just as China did, leading to the international community being lulled into a state of complacency when a state of immediate alert should have been mandated, many countries' authorities have questions they would like answers to from the WHO.

Resident doctor Kelvin Lou puts a CVC line into a patient in a COVID suspect room in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at St. Paul's hospital in downtown Vancouver, Tuesday, April 21, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS / Jonathan Hayward)

To that end, the Canadian House of Commons committee looking into the issue had twice invited Dr. Aylward to come before them to respond to a number of queries relating to the novel coronavirus. To each of those invitations, Dr.Aylward responded in the negative. Had he recommended the presence of a senor aid to represent him, who would answer those questions, the committee would have accepted that as a reasonable alternative, but no such offer was forthcoming.

The UN agency's legal counsel responded to the committee by letter following the first invitation when counsel Derek Walton advised the agency is prepared for its decisions to undergo a full review, but not at the present. To which the head of the parliamentary committee, MP Jeneroux pointed out that Dr.Aylward has given time for media interviews, and as such it appears reasonable for him to spare time for an appearance before the committee representing his own government as a citizen of Canada.

That, since the Canadian response to the crisis of this global pandemic that has impacted so heavily around the world as an infectious disease afflicting over a million people worldwide with steadily growing numbers, while 244,000 people have died so far from its complications, the issues are of monumental importance. All the more so that the crisis and its response, driven by recommendations from the WHO, makes it incumbent on that body to be responsible for itself to the very audience so dependent on its guidance.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer,  Blair Gable / Reuters

The World Health Organization had been unequivocal, recommending against travel restrictions and border closings initially, with a side note that it would be 'racist' to close borders to China. They also advised against the use of protective masks by the public. Recommendations which Canada's chief public health officer, Dr.Theresa Tam, was guided by as she agreed with the WHO's recommendations before eventually changing her opinion over those issues.

Provided by: Public Health Agency of Canada