Covid19 Archives - Friends of Socialist China

“Everyone’s happy to do their part”: interview with a Xi’an resident in lockdown

We’re pleased to republish this interview of Shi Huli, a community education worker in Xi’an. At the time the interview took place, Shi had been locked down with his family for just over two weeks (the Xi’an lockdown has since been lifted after several days in a row with no transmission). Shi’s description contrasts sharply with the tales of “authoritarianism” published in the Western media: thousands of community workers worked night and day to ensure that every family had sufficient food and supplies, and that people’s medical needs were met. Meanwhile, multiple rounds of mass testing were carried out. The overall result is that a small outbreak in Xi’an – a major city of 13 million people – was prevented from getting out of control.

The interview was carried out by Eben Dombay Williams and originally appeared in Challenge.

Following a recent outbreak of 127 cases of COVID-19, Xi’an, the ancient capital of China and home to the Terracotta Warriors, has become the latest lockdown as a part of China’s “zero COVID” strategy. Despite being the most populous country on Earth and the first to face the disease, China has been one of the greatest success stories in the fight against COVID, achieving not only one of the lowest death rates in the world, but sustaining sharp economic growth while many Western countries have stagnated.

The global fight against the pandemic has now turned into a tale of two systems. Socialist China, which has a planned economy and is able to combine state intervention with grassroots mobilisation to prioritise human need, has only had 4,639 deaths from the disease since the pandemic began, and only two deaths on the mainland throughout the whole of 2021 (Hong Kong and Taiwan have different systems of government and had 64 deaths and 843 deaths respectively). Meanwhile, as two major centres of global capitalism and neoliberalism, the US and the UK have so far had 859,046 and 150,056 deaths apiece from the pandemic, mostly among the poor and working class. Between them, these two countries now have over half the active COVID cases in the world.

One virus, two systems: infographic comparing Covid strategies in China and the US

It’s been a year since the last death from Covid in China, yet the Western media continues to claim China’s Zero Covid strategy is “unsustainable”. Compared with the West, however, China’s strategy looks decidedly sustainable.

Covid in the US

Nearly 900,000 deaths due to pandemic
Every state has suffered multiple major outbreaks
Epidemic of Long Covid affecting millions
Elderly and vulnerable people still having to limit social contact
63 percent of population fully vaccinated
Hoarded vaccine doses, perpetuating global vaccine apartheid
Millions have fallen deeper into poverty

Covid in China

Fewer than 5,000 deaths due to the pandemic
Hubei the only province to experience severe outbreak
Very few people suffering with Long Covid
Virus is under control so people are able to live ordinary lives
87 percent of population fully vaccinated
Exported over 2 billion vaccine doses, prioritising Global South
Poverty alleviation program continues uninterrupted

It's been a year since the last death from Covid-19 in China. In that time, hundreds of thousands have died from the pandemic in the West. And yet the Guardian, the New York Times and others continue to complain that China's strategy is "authoritarian" and "unsustainable." pic.twitter.com/ATt11CKTqI
— Friends of Socialist China (@socialist_china) January 26, 2022

Zero Covid: China silences the critics

This article by Carlos Martinez, originally published in the Morning Star on 24 January 2022, discusses the recent Covid-19 outbreaks and containment measures in the major Chinese cities of Xi’an and Tianjin. The article addresses the flurry of criticism that has appeared in the Western mainstream media in relation to China’s Zero Covid strategy, and concludes that this criticism is designed specifically to demobilise progressive opinion around developing a people-oriented approach to suppressing the pandemic in the West.

It’s coming up to a year since the last death from Covid in China. Since 26 January 2021, China’s Covid death count has been stuck on 4,636. The vast majority – 99.9 percent – of these deaths took place during the first three months of the pandemic, and the most were in Hubei, the province in which the outbreak was first detected. In the southern province of Guangdong, population 125 million, there have been just eight deaths from Covid.

This extraordinary record has been achieved through strict adherence to a Zero Covid policy. Traditional epidemic containment measures – lockdowns, mass testing, social distancing, mask-wearing, hand-washing – have been combined with advanced technology such as AI-based outbreak modelling. In addition, China developed some of the first vaccines, and so far just under 90 percent of the population has received at least two doses.

The Communist Party government has led an incredible, society-wide mobilisation to suppress SARS-CoV-2 and thereby protect human life.

NYT equates China’s health workers with Adolf Eichmann

In the infamous words of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

It would seem that this maxim has been taken to heart by the editors of the New York Times. Every day, this dependable mouthpiece of the US ruling class pumps out a steady diet of increasingly deranged anti-China articles. However, on 13th January, they excelled themselves with a new low – a front page story despicably comparing the public health and medical personnel, who have been bravely fighting an outbreak of Covid in the Chinese city of Xian, to Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust.

We are pleased to publish this excellent and succinct rebuttal of this ‘big lie’ by John Walsh, originally carried by Asia Times. John was until recently a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the US.

In a article on the front page of The New York Times on January 13, reporter Li Yuan equated the public health and medical personnel behind China’s successful battle against Covid-19 in the city of Xian to Adolf Eichmann, a principal architect of the Holocaust. The article’s opening sentence views these personnel as typical of “the millions of people who work diligently toward” containing Covid-19 in China.

The anti-Covid campaign in Xian, a city of 13 million, has terminated the spread of Covid-19 without a single death and limited its spread to about 2,000 cases. The Nazi Holocaust designed and managed by Eichmann resulted in the extermination of millions of Jews.

The piece takes aim at the millions of Chinese who have worked tirelessly to do the rapid mass testing, tracing, quarantining and vaccinations and to staffing the lockdowns including ensuring that those under lockdown were supplied with necessities of life.

What can the world learn from China’s response to Covid-19?

This short article by Jin-Ling Tang and Kamran Abbasi, republished from the British Medical Journal, provides a valuable summary of China’s successful strategy suppressing Covid-19. The authors note that while Zero Covid created certain short-term costs, the overall result has been far preferable to the alternative, given that China has reported only 0.05 percent of the total number of global cases despite making up 19 percent of the world’s population.

Old school public health and technology can allow aggressive containment to succeed

The combination of high transmissibility and moderate severity made SARS-CoV-2 a perfect pathogen for a perfect pandemic, unlike SARS, MERS, and flu. In two years, the covid-19 pandemic has swept the entire globe and caused over 250 million infections and five million deaths, despite unprecedented efforts to stop it.

China was the first country affected and held the world’s interest as it battled to understand and contain the new pathogen. But China has reported only 0.05% of the total number of global cases despite making up 19% of the world’s population. The question then is what can the world learn from China’s response to SARS-CoV-2? A new collection of articles written by people involved with that response attempts to shed light on China’s experiences and draw out lessons for the rest of the world (www.bmj.com/how-china-responded-to-covid-19). Indeed, China’s prevention and control strategies remain more aggressive than most other countries.

One virus, two systems: contrasting approaches in socialist China and capitalist United States

We are pleased to reproduce this detailed comparison by Rosa Astra and Benjamin Zinevich in Liberation News of the Covid-19 containment measures taken by China and the US. The article describes the decisive steps taken by the Chinese government to suppress the pandemic; debunks the various ‘cover-up’ conspiracy theories; and contrasts the US’s disastrous failure to manage the pandemic with what has been achieved in China – “a system that values human lives over corporate profits”.

As the Omicron variant causes record levels of infection in the United States, the end of the pandemic seems as far away as ever. But far from preparing a robust response to defeat the virus, the Biden administration is preparing to surrender and encourage the public to “learn to live with” COVID indefinitely.

When the Party for Socialism and Liberation pointed out the fact that China has in fact succeeded at virtually eliminating deaths from the virus, we were attacked by far-right pundits like Ben Shapiro – who took the position that such a feat is essentially impossible and asserted that China’s achievement was just a massive falsification.

Lives lost to COVID in 2021

🇺🇸 415,000
🇨🇳 2
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslweb) January 1, 2022

In the United States, which has seen more deaths from the disease than any other country on Earth, there were 476,863 new deaths in 2021, up from 370,777 in 2020.[1] However, it is in fact widely accepted that only two people died of the disease in China in 2021 on the mainland, plus 64 deaths in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and 843 in Taiwan (where the central government of China does not exercise control) – according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering COVID-19 Data Repository.[2] This brings China up to a total of 4,636 deaths in the mainland and 5,699 deaths overall since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, most of which occurred in the first few months of 2020.

Xi’an’s Covid response: Preserving human life is preserving freedom

This article by Keith Lamb, originally published in CGTN, counters the Western media’s critique of China’s Zero Covid strategy and of the comprehensive virus suppression measures currently being enforced in the city of Xi’an. The author points out that the Covid death rate in the US has been almost a thousand times as high as in China; on that basis it would surely be appropriate to learn from China’s experience and to cooperate with it in tackling the pandemic.

With the total number of new COVID-19 cases since December 9 reaching 1,573 in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province, local and central government, backed by voluntary citizen support, are doing everything in their power to extinguish the epidemic. China’s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan has advocated for decisive and resolute measures to curb the outbreak, and, in response, the local government has backed up her words with concrete action.

With all of Xi’an’s approximately 13 million residents under lockdown, supply chains have been kept efficient to ensure that essential items such as food and medicine are available to all, especially those in need. Ten medical teams and a 24-hour hotline provide treatment to those isolated. Donations of food and supplies are not just pouring in from neighboring local governments but private citizens too.

New Year address by President Xi Jinping

We reprint here President Xi Jinping’s New Year Address for 2022 delivered from Beijing on New Year’s Eve. In direct and vivid language, the Chinese President succinctly covers a broad canvas ranging from nature to sports to space exploration. He reflects on the great achievements of an extraordinary year that saw the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China and the adoption of a major resolution on party history:

Standing on the Tian’anmen Rostrum, one could only marvel at the extraordinary journey traveled by this major Party, a journey of Chinese Communists leading the Chinese people, in their hundreds of millions, in an unyielding struggle against all obstacles and challenges, and scoring spectacular, epoch-making achievements over the past century.

China’s historic victory over extreme poverty was naturally another major theme. As a seasoned Marxist, in his Address, Comrade Xi integrated the general with the particular on the basis of the mass line:

The myriad of things we attend to all boil down to matters concerning every household… The concerns of the people are what I always care about, and the aspirations of the people are what I always strive for.

Reviewing his country’s signal contribution to the global battle against Covid-19, the Chinese President noted:

Only through unity, solidarity and cooperation can countries around the world write a new chapter in building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Embedded below the text is CGTN’s video version of the speech, with English subtitles.

My greetings to you all. The year 2022 is approaching. From Beijing, I extend New Year wishes to all of you!

The past year has been a year of exceptional significance. We have lived through landmark events in the history of our Party and our country. At the historical convergence of the Two Centenary Goals, we have set out on a new journey of building a modern socialist country in all respects and are making confident strides on the path toward the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Radhika Desai: The pandemic has turned out to be a tale of two systems

This insightful article by Radhika Desai, originally published in CGTN, seeks to understand why the advanced capitalist countries – particularly the most neoliberal and financialized ones – have performed so poorly in the face of Covid-19; and why socialist countries have done so much better.

As the world marked the second International Day for Epidemic Preparedness (IDEP) on December 27, 2021, nothing is clearer than the world’s richest and most powerful countries’ un-readiness before the pandemic. The highly transmissible Omicron was causing flight delays and cancellations by infecting flight crews, especially in the U.S.

Why are the richest countries doing so badly against the virus? It is not just that they have hogged available vaccine supply, giving second and third doses, while the virus rages and mutates elsewhere. It is not just that they have left China to donate 600 million vaccine doses to Africa even as the U.S. leads a new Cold War with it, dividing the world, rather than participating in any united world effort against the pandemic.

The fact is that the pandemic has turned out to be a tale of two systems. The world’s richest countries, led by the most neoliberal and financialized ones, the U.S. and the UK, have performed abysmally while socialist countries, led by China, have performed far better.

China’s ‘dynamic Zero Covid’ policy remains a model for the world

This article from Danny Haiphong, first published in CGTN, discusses key recent developments in the Covid pandemic, including the emergence of the Omicron variant and the announcement of a lockdown in the Chinese city of Xi’an. Danny notes that China’s strategy of early detection, mass testing, quarantine and properly-supported lockdowns continues to represent a model of a people-first approach to managing the pandemic.

The Omicron variant represents another troubling chapter in the COVID-19 pandemic. Countless travel plans have been canceled as scientists and infectious disease experts attempt to gain a greater understanding of the latest variant. In the United States, shortages in tests and healthcare workers have placed immediate strains on society. Forecasts for global economic growth have become less optimistic.

Bloomberg magazine, a U.S. media outlet known for its anti-China bias, recently admitted that China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has been an effective measure against the pandemic. The report stated that China’s average daily COVID-19 cases would rise to 637,155 if the country adopted a U.S.-style approach to the pandemic. Bloomberg quickly changed the subject to more anti-China talking points and avoided any elaboration on the factors for China’s success against COVID-19.

Bloomberg repeated a trend in U.S. media which either ignores the success of the “dynamic zero-COVID” policy or calls it “authoritarian.” This has come at a great cost to the people of the United States and Western countries, who have suffered the worst consequences of the pandemic. Yet the U.S. and Western media have taken part in endless speculation about China’s policy to deflect from the failed COVID-19 responses of their own nations.

The truth is that China has by far been the most successful in protecting human life over the course of the pandemic. China has experienced three deaths per million in the population from COVID-19. The United States, which leads the world in the total number of COVID-19 cases and deaths to the pandemic, averages more than 2,400 deaths per million in the population.

U.S. and Western media have claimed China’s policy cannot be emulated in so-called free and democratic societies. China is accused of irrationally attempting to prevent transmission entirely, the costs of which are too high for Western societies that prioritize the economy over the health of the public.

This is problematic for several reasons. First, China’s strategy does not seek to eliminate transmission entirely but rather to reduce the human and economic costs of the pandemic as quickly and effectively as possible.

Second, the depiction of China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy as “irrational” and detrimental to the economy ignores the fact that Western economies have experienced the harshest economic fallout from the pandemic. U.S. economic growth had only begun to catch up to a 2 percent GDP year-on-year average growth in recent months before Omicron reignited economic uncertainty. China was the fastest major economy to achieve growth amid the pandemic and, according to World Bank estimates, is set to grow at two to three times the rate of the United States in 2022. Clearly, China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has taken economic development into account from the very beginning.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the U.S. and Western rejection of China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy is that it reflects how effectively misinformation has spread within societies that have adopted a wrongheaded, anti-China political agenda. The United States, for example, was wracked with such high levels of distrust in both the government and healthcare system that an “infodemic” took hold very early on in the pandemic. Former President Donald Trump only aided in spreading misinformation about the pandemic by blaming China for the U.S.’s woes and frequently employing the term “China virus” during his briefs to the country. Current President Joe Biden has done little to increase confidence in the U.S.’s capacity to protect human life beyond a change in rhetoric.

Misinformation has only worsened social fractures in the U.S. and West and weakened already threadbare public health systems. Under such circumstances, China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy remains an important model for the world. China’s policy focuses on rapidly addressing outbreaks and establishing long-term strategies for pandemic control and containment. The policy is currently being employed in the city Xi’an, which was placed under lockdown as of December 23 following an outbreak of the Delta variant. Residents have undergone several rounds of mass testing, schools have closed, and local authorities have coordinated with all sectors of society to ensure people have their basic needs met.

China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has been a consistent example of a people-first approach to the pandemic amid a period of global uncertainty. According to chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention Wu Zunyou, the policy has protected 950,000 Chinese lives over the course of the pandemic. This is nothing short of a miracle. U.S. and Western observers would thus benefit from taking an unbiased view of China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” approach rather than the politicized orientation that has been adopted by the media and political establishment.

Health care for profit is more deadly than Covid-19

We reproduce below a valuable article from Workers World contrasting the response of the socialist and capitalist countries to the coronavirus pandemic. The author observes that the success of China, Cuba and others in suppressing the virus can be attributed to a political and economic system based on the interests of the people rather than the protection of private profit.

The ominous toll of 800,000 deaths from COVID-19, reached in the U.S. Dec. 14, confirms that health care for profit is more deadly than the virus itself. The U.S. has consistently had the most COVID-19 deaths of any country. (tinyurl.com/3nunmuv7)

Since the omicron variant surfaced here Dec. 1, infection rates have jumped off the charts with 193,305 new cases on Dec. 17. The CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) forecasts more than 1 million new COVID-19 cases during Christmas week. (tinyurl.com/sjy4ch2k)

Yet China, where COVID-19 was first identified and brought under control, has had no deaths from COVID-19 in 2021. This fact alone confirms that a scientific approach with fully accessible health infrastructure, universal vaccination and national coordination at every level is decisive.

Want to know how to beat Covid? Look at China

We are pleased to republish this very useful article by Scott Scheffer, originally published in Struggle for Socialism, about the successes of China’s struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic, and contrasting these with the deadly failures of the United States.

The world is now nearing the end of the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States has the highest death toll in the world – 823,390 as of Dec. 16.

With all the scientific resources available, and billions of dollars in the vaults of the richest capitalist class in history, the U.S. should have been able to succeed in a vaccination campaign and treat everyone before they were infected. Vaccines should have made their way throughout the world, including the global south where the challenges of poverty magnify the horrors of the pandemic.

Instead, the White House and U.S. intelligence agencies have taken their cue from the Trump administration and continued apace with a manufactured narrative that slanders and blames China for the pandemic. Their goal is to cover up the global calamity created by the giant multinational corporations they serve and turn people’s attention away from the incredible success of the Chinese socialist public health system in fighting the pandemic.

Xi Jinping calls for global cooperation on climate change and warns against Cold War

In this important speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for a coordinated global effort to suppress the pandemic, to tackle climate change, and to prevent a New Cold War.

Xi reiterates his oft-stated belief that vaccines must be a global public good, and urges countries to work together to ensure fair and equitable distribution, with particular attention to developing countries. Speaking on the need for a comprehensive low-carbon transition, he points out that this will be impossible without simultaneously pursuing development and improving the living standards of those that currently live in poverty.

He notes that humanity’s major challenges cannot be solved in the context of a New Cold War, and warns against any attempts to divide the world on ideological lines or to break with the principles of multilateralism and respect for sovereign development, stating that “the Asia-Pacific region cannot and should not relapse into the confrontation and division of the Cold War era.”

Leaders of the Business Community,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,

I am very glad to meet you again. At present, COVID-19 is still ravaging the world, and the journey to global economic recovery remains a difficult and tortuous one. The Asia-Pacific has all along been an important engine driving the global economy. Indeed, it is among the first to regain the momentum of recovery in this crisis. At this historical juncture, it is important that we in the Asia-Pacific face up to the responsibility of the times, be in the drive’s seat, and strive hard to meet the goal of building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future.

Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit expounds a vision of peace, cooperation and sustainable development

We are very pleased to print the text of President Xi Jinping’s speech, delivered by video link on October 30, to the G20 Summit in Rome. In his speech President Xi makes five key calls to the international community, namely to:

1. Work in solidarity to combat COVID-19
2. Cooperate to promote recovery
3. Embrace inclusiveness to achieve common development
4. Pursue innovation to tap growth potential
5. Promote harmonious coexistence to achieve green and sustainable development

Taken together, these five themes represent a comprehensive programme for humanity to overcome its present grave challenges and advance to a better future. It represents the antithesis of the new Cold War peddled by the various imperialist powers even whilst they also intensify an increasingly ill disguised contention between themselves. President Xi’s proposals constitute a programme around which the broadest united front of countries at various levels of development can coalesce and should be supported by all progressive forces.

Your Excellency Prime Minister Mario Draghi,
Dear Colleagues,

I wish to begin by sincerely thanking Italy, the G20 President, for the great efforts it has made in hosting this Summit.

Robert Griffiths: The origins of the Chinese ‘lab leak’ theory

This article by Robert Griffiths, general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, comprehensively exposes the mendacity and cynical motivations of the conspiracy theory that the Covid-19 pandemic was caused by a ‘lab leak’ from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It is republished from the Morning Star.

On January 24 last year, the Washington Times reported: “The deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert.”

Reporter Bill Gertz based his story on a five-year-old broadcast on Radio Free Asia about the Wuhan virology institute and his interview with Dany Shoham, “a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese bio warfare.”

Danny Haiphong: Biden’s Global COVID-19 Summit is an exercise in American selfishness

In this article for CGTN, Danny Haiphong exposes the motivation behind the Virtual Global COVID-⁠19 Summit hosted by Joe Biden on 22 September 2021. Having utterly failed to protect its population from the pandemic, having refused to properly learn from and cooperate with China, and having led the construction of a system of vaccine apartheid, the US now seeks to portray itself as a global leader in the struggle against Covid-19.

On September 22, U.S. President Joe Biden held a virtual summit on COVID-19 and pledged to increase U.S. assistance in the global fight to end the pandemic. Biden’s promises, when taken out of context, appear reasonable. The U.S. will pledge an additional $370 million to administer COVID-19 vaccines globally and work with the European Union to meet the World Health Organization (WHO)’s goal of ensuring 70 percent of the world’s population is fully vaccinated by the end of 2022. The U.S. will also increase its donations of ventilators, therapeutics and personal protective equipment (PPE) to lower-income countries.

Xi Jinping speech at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit

Below we reproduce the statement by President Xi Jinping at the 21st Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on 17 September 2021. The English translation originally appeared on Xinhua. Comrade Xi’s speech covers a number of important topics including the fight against Covid, Afghanistan, multilateralism, the Belt and Road Initiative, and the record thus far of the SCO.

Your Excellency President Emomali Rahmon,

Dear Colleagues,

I wish to thank you, President Rahmon, and Tajikistan for hosting this meeting under Tajikistan’s Presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). As the SCO marks its 20th anniversary, together with all of you, I look forward to reviewing the proud history of the SCO and charting the course for even broader prospects of its future development.

Corporate media politicize WHO investigation on Covid origins to vilify China

This valuable article by Joshua Cho provides a comprehensive and thoroughly-researched refutation of the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis, which Western governments and media continue to promote in the hope of isolating and demonizing China. It was originally published in FAIR on 25 August 2021.

FAIR (10/6/20, 6/28/21) has previously critiqued Western news media’s credulous coverage of evidence-free “lab leak” speculations. One key factor in spreading suspicion that the coronavirus might have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is media’s early and ongoing politicization of the World Health Organization’s investigation into the pandemic’s origins. Much of this politicization weaponizes Orientalist tropes about China being especially, perhaps genetically, untrustworthy—the sort of people who would unleash Covid-19 on the world.

While no new evidence has emerged suggesting that the virus emerged from the WIV, many more Americans now believe it did. A Politico/Harvard poll in July, following an increase of uncritical Western media coverage on the lab leak theory, found that 52% of US adults now believe Covid-19 leaked from a lab, up from 29% in March 2020. This is contrary to the assessment of most scientists, who believe, based on available evidence, that a natural origin for the virus is more likely.

Webinar debunks ‘China lab leak’ theory

We are pleased to republish the excerpts from a Workers World livestream, which took place on 19 August 2021, devoted to debunking the so-called ‘lab leak’ anti-China conspiracy theory. The video is also embedded below.

Lee Siu Hin: I was in China in January 2020, when there was a new outbreak from unknown sources causing pneumonia in Wuhan, a city in central China. At that time, no one knew exactly what it was. China called formally on the World Health Organization to acknowledge that it was COVID-19 in February. No one had done so officially before that. It’s common knowledge and scientific fact.

However, the so-called “lab leak” theory comes from far-right, anti-China neocon warmonger politicians around the Washington D.C. Beltway, notably Senator [Tom] Cotton and the anti-China think tanks and also from the far-right, anti-China cult Epoch Times, the so-called “Falun Gong.” From Day One, they spread the “lab leak” theory. That’s how it started. This is not coming from scientists.