Check the latest update:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-cases-world-map/
Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak Across the World
https://youtu.be/C0IRZW3V9oM -https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-cases-world-map/
Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak Across the World
Western Media Lies about China // 关于中国的谎言
China is Getting Smarter // 中国越来越聪明了！ https://youtu.be/do8nnDOzxZk
I'm in the World's Safest Country // 全球最安全的国家
https://youtu.be/J88mrZMcN28
West’s sense of superiority caused failure to act promptly
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| An ambulance sits outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, Monday. Photo: AFP |
West’s sense of superiority caused failure to act promptly
Over the past few weeks, the COVID-19 outbreak has accelerated across Western countries with blistering speed. As of the start of April, there are over 189,000 cases in the US, with the European continent also suffering hefty growth rates, especially in Italy and Spain. The crisis has prompted a growing level of heated rhetoric in some circles suggesting China should now "atone" or "pay a price" for the virus and the economic damage it will inflict on these countries.
Most graphically, an anonymous figure in the British government says that there ought to be a "reckoning" for Beijing once the crisis comes to an end. Solutions proposed have ranged from sanctions, to boycotts, to outright decoupling of societies and descending into nationalist indignation and finger pointing.
The argument for this is that China has not been transparent enough in dealing with the virus, and underreported the scale of the epidemic and therefore exacerbated its spread catching Western countries "off guard." This was the line with what US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mouthed over the past few weeks.
Their response should serve as a template for an unreasonable argument, as it epitomized the politics of privilege and deflection. Some Western countries are effectively trying to offload its own governance failures onto China, making it a convenient international scapegoat. In doing so, they are making priori assumptions that China could not have been legitimately successful in handling the virus, and then in turn used this to downplay their own inability to prepare for epidemic, saying Beijing could not be trusted.
For many decades, the West has lived in a state of privilege. Not since World War II has the majority of its population experienced any kind of serious hardship, instability or detrimental chaos that has regularly afflicted the developing world and transformed life into a struggle for survival itself. Developed countries have not faced internal conflicts, poverty, and famine nor disease outbreaks. As a result, this has ingrained a perception within the Western psyche that relative security, prosperity and order constitute as benign "normality" in contrast to the rest of the world, which does not have such privileges.
People in the West are inclined to believe that disease outbreaks are something that only happens in "foreign," "oriental" and "exotic" countries that don't share the so-called civilized and superior Western way of life. The idea that something like that could happen in privileged country is inconceivable and an injustice, and someone or some country must be held accountable.
As a result of these underlying beliefs, Western governments did not take the COVID-19 outbreak seriously. They observed it for two months, yet did little to prepare. An example of this on a political level is the behavior of the Trump administration, which imposed massive spending cuts on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, failed to acquire testing infrastructure on time, downplayed multiple intelligence reports warning of a potential pandemic and repeatedly sought to dismiss it out of hand for the sake of the country's economy.
On a social level, the Western public did not respond well either. Few in Europe have worn masks and few were willing to observe adequate social distancing recommendations until they were forced to, by which point the outbreak was already serious. Yet as it hits hard, suddenly these countries want to absolve themselves of responsibility and point fingers at Beijing. Given the overwhelming criticism of China's governance structure from these same countries, it seems unreasonable for them to suddenly pretend they were deceived.
Distrust is usually taken as a mandate to be more cautious, not less. Claiming ever increasingly nonsensical exaggerations of China's own reported case numbers reveals their own inability to act and deprive Beijing's virus fight of any legitimacy. It's curious that none of China's neighbors have suffered as must as the US and Europe. Most Asian countries don't have a mind-set of cultural privilege and complacency and take all potential pandemics seriously.
The West is trying to deflect blame, exacerbated by a mind-set which interprets disease outbreaks not as an inevitable aspect of the human condition, but something belonging to exotic, oriental and poorer nations.
This unwarranted sense of privilege has caused Western countries' complacency, and only they are to blame for the tragic results.
By Tom Fowdy - The author is a British political and international relations analyst and a graduate of Durham and Oxford universities.
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CIA is US govt’s pawn to fabricate lies about China
Bloomberg published an article on Wednesday saying that the US intelligence community concluded in a "classified report" to the White House that China has "concealed" the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak, "under-reporting" the confirmed cases and deaths of the virus. Two US officials who asked not to be identified said the report concludes that "China's numbers are fake."
The US has failed to whitewash its incompetence in fighting the epidemic on its home soil, so the US intelligence agencies are dispatched to do the dirty jobs. They have been forging and disseminating false information just to save face. They have no reputation at all. The CIA is completely a shame of intelligence.
Do US intelligence agencies have enough evidence to prove more people have died from COVID-19 in China? It seems that for the intelligence agency of the most developed country, lying and smearing are the only things that the CIA is capable of. It first released a so-called classified report and then refused to disclose more information, saying it's "confidential." This is political hooliganism.
The CIA, the so-called professional intelligence agency of the US, has many scandals. It is accustomed to forgery, monitoring and lying. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once said: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole…We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." That was one of the few times when he was telling the truth.
The timing of the release of Bloomberg's report is noteworthy. Both the number of confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 are rising rapidly every day worldwide, including the US. Over 210,000 confirmed cases have been reported in the US as of press time. On Tuesday, the number of COVID-19 deaths of the US surpassed that of China. Precisely on the second day, many Western media started to question whether China's data was trustworthy. Now, US intelligence agencies have come out to further blacken China. Isn't their intention much too obvious?
All of these explain one fact: US politicians cannot accept that China has had a better control of the COVID-19 epidemic than the US does. After seeing that the US' death toll of the virus has surpassed that of China, their last psychological defense has collapsed.
According to Bloomberg, in addition to China, Western officials also pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, saying that these countries may also be "playing down their numbers" as well. None of these countries is a typical "Western country," and thus have been regarded as "exotic" countries. The US believes that ideology is much more important than the reality and fact. We can imagine that no matter how many deaths China reported, US intelligence agencies will not accept the data, unless the number meets the standards they have had in their mind.
Thus, the CIA is not a so-called independent agency of the US federal government at all. It only acts as a pawn of the US government, chasing and attacking those it regards as rivals, with its eyes blinded by an ideological frenzy.
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