China’s state-run Global Times was in high dudgeon on Thursday over Western media coverage of China’s respiratory illness outbreak, furiously accusing foreigners of overhyping the situation to fuel a “smear campaign.”
The Global Times fulminated:
Over the past days, Western media outlets have been filled with rhetoric such as “unexplained pneumonia,” “mysterious,” and “concerning” when reporting on respiratory illnesses in China. It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the [Wuhan coronavirus] pandemic, following the same formula of associating China with mysterious pneumonia.
The fact that China was associated with the birth of the mysterious Wuhan coronavirus pandemic is not something any Chinese editorialist wants to discuss. The official stance of the Chinese Communist Party, based on no material evidence, is that the Wuhan coronavirus originated in Maryland. No evidence has surfaced of any cases of novel coronavirus infection documented outside of Wuhan, China, before the initial ones confirmed in the central city in November 2019.
Many people in China are deeply concerned about the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) outbreak and find it difficult to explain. Foreign publications have simply reported on those fears. The Global Times railed against Western media outlets that did little more than relay Chinese news reports and social media posts.
Parents with children suffering from respiratory diseases line up at a children’s hospital in Chongqing, China, on November 23, 2023. (Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The lengthy editorial rant revealed two things about coverage of the RSV (and influenza and mycoplasma) outbreak that greatly annoy the Chinese Communist Party: reminders that China lied outrageously and destroyed data during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, which fuel today’s suspicions of China for mishandling other respiratory diseases, and speculation that China’s lockdowns might return.
For example, the Global Times was furious about theories that Wuhan coronavirus lockdowns weakened public immunity and set the stage for today’s RSV crisis — even though Chinese government doctors are the leading proponents of those theories and the Global Times itself reported them — because China thinks Westerners are using those theories to criticize dictator Xi Jinping’s draconian coronavirus policies.
Chinese media are required to praise Xi’s lockdowns as perfect in all respects, even though Xi abandoned them because of a remarkably massive and vigorous public revolt, so the Global Times does not like foreigners talking about lockdowns weakening natural immunity:
Amid the current surge of respiratory infections in China, a term is being heatedly discussed lately – “immunity gap. On November 24, Stat News, an American health-oriented news website, ran a story with the title: “Pandemic-related immunity gap in kids explains surge of respiratory infections in children in China, says WHO.”
Immunity gap means that after the lifting of COVID restrictions and control measures, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as school closures, travel restrictions, the use of masks in public spaces, social distancing, quarantine, are no longer in place, leading to a resurgence of transmissible infectious diseases. NPIs have been proven effective in reducing the spread of not only novel coronavirus but also many other respiratory infectious diseases, Zhuang told the Global Times.
This pattern is not exclusive to China, but applies to the world. Of course, some Western media outlets prefer to skirt around the fact that China is not the only country experiencing a surge in respiratory illnesses.
The Global Times hilariously followed this up by repeating China’s deranged conspiracy theory that the Wuhan coronavirus was created by the United States as a bioweapon in a military lab: “When the U.S. still owes the world an explanation as to why the Fort Detrick waste leak was followed by increasing lung injury cases nearby and mysterious pneumonia, it is instead busy launching hysterical political attacks against China.”
The “increasing lung injury cases nearby” in question were cases of vaping-related lung injuries in locations as far away as Texas. The Chinese government has never explained the lack of evidence of human-to-human transmission in the vaping-related lung injuries in question, given the highly contagious nature of the Wuhan coronavirus.
The Chinese government’s official pronouncements that the cold and flu season is completely under control are difficult to reconcile with smuggled social media videos of overflowing hospitals, prompting concern in the rest of the world that Beijing might be lying about a disease again.
U.S. media outlets have duly reported analysis from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that concludes China is not dealing with a novel pathogen, and the theory of weakened immunity from the coronavirus lockdowns has merit. They have also, contrary to the Global Times’ accusations, reported that RSV and pneumonia cases are rising in the U.S. as well.
On Friday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and several of his colleagues sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to restrict travel to China until “we know more about the dangers posed by this new illness.”
“A ban on travel now could save our country from death, lockdowns, mandates, and further outbreaks later,” said the letter, which will not be graciously received at the offices of the Global Times.
