By January 15th the virus had crossed the borders of China and incidence of a virus was noticed both in Thailand and Japan and both countries sounded the alarm before China did. It was only on January 23rd that the Chinese Government ordered a full lockdown of Wuhan thus allowing the virus to spread unhindered at the crucial early stages.
by Dr. S. Chandrsekharan
The Corona Virus that is officially called Covid-19 has triggered a global health crisis. The virus has affected most of the countries and has claimed more than 15,000 lives. More deaths are inevitable. After some inexplicable delay, the WHO came out with the declaration that it is a pandemic. It was too late then. Losses to the World economy will run into trillions. One UN Study has assessed that over two million jobs could be lost because of the pandemic. In some countries like Italy, the virus is spinning out of control.
Thus, the World is suffering for China’s folly. Two weeks ago, Political Scientist Andrew Michta declared that the “The Chinese State is culpable.”
Media Reports indicate that before Prime Minister Modi declared a lockdown on 24th March, the Indian Foreign Minister is said to have discussed with his Chinese counter part about their experience. The only experience the Chinese counterpart could have given is how to cover up, suppress information and spread misinformation without doing little to contain the virus from spreading. But the Chinese could create a “national crisis” in India which they could not do even during the 1962 war of aggression.
One other issue that is mentioned in the Press is that the Chinese Premier requested the Indian Foreign Minister not to use the term “Chinese Virus”. If one can call it a Spanish Flu or use the term Middle East for another virus, we see no reason why it should not be called Chinee Virus as there are enough indications that it originated from Wuhan in Hubei Province.
The South China Morning Post of Hongkong had reported that the first occurrence of the Coronovirus was as early as November 17 of last year.
By January 15th the virus had crossed the borders of China and incidence of a virus was noticed both in Thailand and Japan and both countries sounded the alarm before China did.
It was only on January 23rd that the Chinese Government ordered a full lockdown of Wuhan thus allowing the virus to spread unhindered at the crucial early stages.
In this connection, our earlier paper “China Falters and the World Suffers” in paper No 6549 dated 15th March may be read along with this paper. The Chinese Government censored and detained those brave doctors and whistle blowers who attempted to sound the alarm and warn their fellow citizens. The case of the doctors being called by the Security Officials and made to give statements that what they said were “lies” is well known. It is only two weeks ago that China officially admitted the mistake and offered a “solemn apology” to Dr Li’s family and said that the two Police Officers who coerced eight of the Doctors to give a written apology were handed over disciplinary punishments. The poor Police Officers were made the scape goats. It is the system that has to be censured and not the individuals. In the initial stages, the Chinese Government also maintained that local officials were to blame for allowing the epidemic to spiral out of control. This again is not true as it is the system that has to be blamed.
In October 2007, in a detailed paper titled “Severe, Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona virus etc. by Vincent C. Chang and others, warned of the possibility of the re emergence of SARS and other noted Viruses from animals or Laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored. The paper also mentioned of the presence of a large reservoir of SARS like viruses in horse shoe bats, together with the culture of eating habits of eating exotic wild animals in Southern China is a Time Bomb that was waiting
.
Whether this warning was taken seriously by the authorities is not known but the general narrative has been that Corona Virus cases originated from the Wuhan Food Market. In another 2017 paper, more recently, a Scientist Zheng LiShi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and her colleagues set out how, after nearly five years of collecting faecal samples from bats in the Yunnan caves, said that they had found corona viruses in multiple individuals of four different species of bats. The genome of that virus, Ms. Shi and her colleagues have now announced, is 96 percent identical to the Wuhan virus that has recently been found in humans. And those two constitute a pair distinct from all other known corona viruses, including the one that caused SARS. In this sense, nCoV-2019 is novel — and possibly even more dangerous to humans than the other coronaviruses
Ms. Shi and colleagues have been tracing coronaviruses in bats since 2005, warning that some of them are uniquely suited to cause human pandemics. These warnings were lost sight of by the authorities.
In our earlier paper we had mentioned about the state of the art bioresearch laboratories in China. In it we had said the following.
It is said that Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese Bio Warfare Programmes. The Wuhan Institute of Virology started in 2012 has very fine and competent Research Scholars some holding PhDs doing comprehensive Research on virology and bio safety. In their collaboration with the French now known as P4 Virus Lab. it has the most modern state of the art Centre for Infectious Diseases. Were these professionals involved in examining the causes or were they themselves responsible for the virus?
Former President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedenjiad alleged that the coronovirus that emerged in Wuhan was produced in a Laboratory. There was another report that the Wuhan Institute of Virology located about 12 miles from the Sea Food Market was the epicentre of the virus. These reports need to be looked into.
In all, the World is paying a heavy price for the initial delay in China coming out openly on the incidence of the virus and in this, even the WHO is also guilty in delaying to declare it as “pandemic”. Was'nt Andrew Michta right in stating that the Chinese State is culpable?
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