China needs to come clean on its virus problem, or the world will continue to be plagued by it

I suppose one should look upon anything that the World Health Organization says in regard to China—especially its present “praising” of China’s alleged willingness to “discuss” the issue of bringing in foreign scientists to investigate the origins of the COVID-19—with a jaundiced eye. China’s virus data is impossible to believe, and the WHO’s failure to demand accurate information from China strains its own credibility. China is virtually alone in failing to provide numbers of people tested for the virus; Chinese authorities first claimed that it would test everyone in Wuhan, but then later reduced that to “narrow testing,” whatever that means in Chinesespeak. Instead, we have heard many stories of Chinese citizens who have come down with symptoms that were very likely due to the virus, yet when they go to hospitals, they are refused testing and even admittance, and told to “self-medicate” at home—and because they are not tested, if they die Chinese authorities can keep them off the COVID-19 death rolls. 

Does anybody really believe that in a country with the population the size of China, where the pandemic started and Chinese authorities tried to conceal from the world for at least a month before it got out-of-control, hasn’t had a virus-related death in weeks? Foreign Policy recently released a “leak” of the data collected by China’s National University of Defense Technology, which suggested that the actual number of cases is at least 640,000—eight times China current claim; the number of deaths, however, was not recorded. China is currently claiming that the few new cases have been brought in by Chinese nationals returning from abroad, certainly a bizarre claim coming from the country this all started in. 

The Chinese can’t even (or won’t) tell us the precise origins of the COVID-19. There have been various theories as to the exact origins of the virus; originally it was believed to have appeared in a seafood market in Wuhan, and that bats may be receptors, and if not bats, then civet cats. Then there is the “coincidence” of the presence of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been studying coronaviruses. But now a study published in China claims that  genome samples taken from patients in Shanghai suggests that there is a separate “clade” or form of the COVID-19 different than the one that appeared in Wuhan, meaning that the virus may not have in fact originated in the seafood market or in animals at all. For the moment no really knows the true origins of the virus, which has led to calls for a more “international” examination of the virus, given that China very likely lost control of the situation and cannot be trusted to provide truthful information.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post is quoting scientists who are positing that the COVID-19 may never be eradicated even with a vaccine, but keep coming back, although presumably not in pandemic form as nations learn how to control it. But China’s continuing failure to be transparent in its reporting on the virus is extremely dangerous for a very specific reason: if its claims of having brought the virus under control are based on propaganda and lies, there is no way the world will know (unless all are tested) if any Chinese nationals or foreign visitors who come and go after travel restrictions are lifted are carrying the virus, simply because of the Chinese government’s failure to do adequate testing and simply pretending a problem doesn’t exist. It is not only dangerous to foreign nationals, but to the Chinese themselves if they simply have no idea of the true state of affairs.