Coronavirus shows China has learnt nothing from SARS epidemic
The coronavirus has exposed China for the totalitarian monster it is and has brought down the reputation of the World Health Organisation, especially following the death of virus whistleblower, Dr Li Wenliang, Piers Akerman writes.
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The coronavirus has exposed China for the totalitarian monster it is and has brought down the reputation of the World Health Organisation and other institutions that have been trying to ignore the frightening realities of China’s command and control system.
One deluded group has even claimed the Australian government is racist for closing our border and quarantining evacuees.
The death on Friday of Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist who first exposed the virus, rocked China and brought about an extraordinary outpouring on Chinese social media.
Chinese leadership is now in damage control and the Communist Party, which has regained strength under Xi Jinping, is struggling to reassert itself.
Dr Li contracted the virus while working at Wuhan Central Hospital and sent out his warning after recognising that the symptoms were not too dissimilar to those of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).
According to the account he posted on the Chinese social media platform Weibo from his hospital bed a month after issuing his initial warning to a doctors’ chat group to wear protective clothing to avoid possible infection, he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau and told to sign a letter in which he was accused of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order”.
In his Weibo post he describes how on January 10 he started coughing, the next day he had a fever and two days later he was in hospital. He was diagnosed with the coronavirus on January 30. Eight days later he was dead.
While he was only warned by Wuhan police on January 1, the eight doctors with whom he discussed the virus were arrested and forced to confess to spreading false rumours after they tried to alert the public to the unfolding coronavirus outbreak.
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On January 31, they were cleared by the usually conservative Supreme People’s Court which urged Wuhan officials to learn a “profound lesson” from their mistake, saying “rumours stop when information is public”.
It took the Chinese government over a month to report the outbreak of the coronavirus strain to international health authorities and it has under-reported cases, downplayed the severity of the infection, and dismissed the likelihood of human transmission.
Since mid-January, however, authorities have been forced by the overwhelming evidence of the emergency to take a more aggressive approach, quarantining 50 million people in an effort to limit transmission from Wuhan in Hubei province, where the virus originated, to the rest of China.
The number infected was officially more than 34,000 as of Saturday but unofficial estimates are more than double. No one is safe, contrary to initial claims.
The World Health Organisation is going to bring together an international group of scientists and public health experts this week to identify research priorities and co-ordinate funding with the aim of fast-tracking the development of testing, vaccines and other treatments.
But WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been a one-man cheer squad for China’s response, in particular, heaping praise on Xi Jinping after their recent meeting in Beijing, for his “detailed knowledge of the outbreak”, and holding off on declaring the virus a global health emergency at a January 23 meeting when Tedros said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China.
While declaring an emergency, Tedros held back from imposing travel or trade restrictions.
“There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade,” he said in Geneva on Thursday though many WHO members had already declared their own travel bans.
A WHO representative who opposed Australia’s border closure to travellers from China was also given a sympathetic hearing by the ABC.
In Melbourne, a protest organised by William Wong, from Stand Together Against Racism claimed Australia’s policies toward the disease were discriminatory.
“We’re protesting against closing the border, against the sending of people to Christmas Island and also about abuse and racist attacks towards Chinese communities and also Asian-looking persons,” he told 3AW’s Tom Elliott.
The Chinese government has learnt nothing from the SARS epidemic, WHO has shown itself to be in thrall to China, and the Australian government has acted responsibly to protect its citizens.