This is a strange discussion with surprisingly little evidence. I would expect more from a usually rigorous analysis by ‘whatchinawants’. I’m an not Falun Gong and I do not support the CCP. But this rumour did not start with Epoch Times. In fact Jan Jeleikek explicitly dismissed it. It began from mulptile Indian outlets, such as NDTV. That, I think, is crucial to the analysis.
Fair point David. Alex believes that it was more around the Falun Gong community (and he pends a lot of time analysing stories like this), but you are right in that we should have mentioned the Indian connection more. Thanks
"China is also responsible for spreading its own disinformation, for example about the supposed US-origins of COVID. Much of this is aimed at Chinese nationals abroad”. Whoa there!!
The CDC, not China, announced that 1%-4% of Americans were Covid seropositive in December, 2019*, and claimed the world's first Covid death, in Kansas, four days ahead of China**.
As for "Control of information is vital for the Communist Party, especially in the run up to important events like this autumn’s Congress,” we see that control of information is vital for the Capitalist Party, too. All nations shape their narrative, so the question is: whose narrative is the most trusted?
The answer is China: 80% of Chinese trust their Communist media, while only 6% of us trust our Capitalist media.
Two points. First, it is almost inconceivable that Covid did NOT appear in China given all the published evidence. Just because there were traces of Covid in the US before the announcement of Covid does not mean it originated there, in the same way that the discovery of Covid in Italy in Sept 2019 does not mean it originated in Italy. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/coronavirus-italy-covid-19-pandemic-europe-date-antibodies-study
Your second point, about who to believe, is tied to this. I'm not sure where you get your stats from on press credibility, but the counter stat to this is that China ranks 175/180 on press freedom. (And over 100 journalists are in prison.) To be fair, North Korea and Iran and just below it, but that is a pretty damning statistic. If a nation doesn't have a free press then it is hard to believe that it will tell anything other than the national agenda. Beijing's national agenda is to tell the world that Covid didn't originate there, so of course the national press follows that lest they end up in prison too. https://rsf.org/en/index
The WHO investigated and found no evidence of Covid in China prior to Sept-Oct, 2019. The WHO asked permission to repeat its inspection in the USA and was refused.
High death rates take time to grow, even when a virus is on the loose and undetected, but we know the infection doubling time for Covid, so we can work backwards from its peak infection date and figure out when it began infecting local people. America's staggering official death rate (which separate research groups say is understated by 40%-60%) is consonant with an early-mid 2019 beginning.
The CDC didn't find 'traces of Covid. It found 1-4% of Americans had been infected with Covid, based on expensive blood tests. And the world's first person to die from Covid didn't die from 'traces' of it, either.
I judge the trustworthiness of media by what its consumers say about it, not what the media barons say about it. Happily, the mega-PR firm, Edelman, has been asking everyone that question every year for decades. China is #1, Singapore #2.
RSF and the other media ranking sites are funded by the usual suspects. Totally subjective, with zero methodology even.
This is a strange discussion with surprisingly little evidence. I would expect more from a usually rigorous analysis by ‘whatchinawants’. I’m an not Falun Gong and I do not support the CCP. But this rumour did not start with Epoch Times. In fact Jan Jeleikek explicitly dismissed it. It began from mulptile Indian outlets, such as NDTV. That, I think, is crucial to the analysis.
Fair point David. Alex believes that it was more around the Falun Gong community (and he pends a lot of time analysing stories like this), but you are right in that we should have mentioned the Indian connection more. Thanks
"China is also responsible for spreading its own disinformation, for example about the supposed US-origins of COVID. Much of this is aimed at Chinese nationals abroad”. Whoa there!!
The CDC, not China, announced that 1%-4% of Americans were Covid seropositive in December, 2019*, and claimed the world's first Covid death, in Kansas, four days ahead of China**.
As for "Control of information is vital for the Communist Party, especially in the run up to important events like this autumn’s Congress,” we see that control of information is vital for the Capitalist Party, too. All nations shape their narrative, so the question is: whose narrative is the most trusted?
The answer is China: 80% of Chinese trust their Communist media, while only 6% of us trust our Capitalist media.
_____________________
* Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472.
** https://tinyurl.com/6zjzuj3k
Thanks Godfree, as always.
Two points. First, it is almost inconceivable that Covid did NOT appear in China given all the published evidence. Just because there were traces of Covid in the US before the announcement of Covid does not mean it originated there, in the same way that the discovery of Covid in Italy in Sept 2019 does not mean it originated in Italy. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/coronavirus-italy-covid-19-pandemic-europe-date-antibodies-study
Your second point, about who to believe, is tied to this. I'm not sure where you get your stats from on press credibility, but the counter stat to this is that China ranks 175/180 on press freedom. (And over 100 journalists are in prison.) To be fair, North Korea and Iran and just below it, but that is a pretty damning statistic. If a nation doesn't have a free press then it is hard to believe that it will tell anything other than the national agenda. Beijing's national agenda is to tell the world that Covid didn't originate there, so of course the national press follows that lest they end up in prison too. https://rsf.org/en/index
The WHO investigated and found no evidence of Covid in China prior to Sept-Oct, 2019. The WHO asked permission to repeat its inspection in the USA and was refused.
High death rates take time to grow, even when a virus is on the loose and undetected, but we know the infection doubling time for Covid, so we can work backwards from its peak infection date and figure out when it began infecting local people. America's staggering official death rate (which separate research groups say is understated by 40%-60%) is consonant with an early-mid 2019 beginning.
The CDC didn't find 'traces of Covid. It found 1-4% of Americans had been infected with Covid, based on expensive blood tests. And the world's first person to die from Covid didn't die from 'traces' of it, either.
I judge the trustworthiness of media by what its consumers say about it, not what the media barons say about it. Happily, the mega-PR firm, Edelman, has been asking everyone that question every year for decades. China is #1, Singapore #2.
RSF and the other media ranking sites are funded by the usual suspects. Totally subjective, with zero methodology even.