Is it safe yet for big media to tell the truth about China’s virus?
“Beijing’s efforts from the very start of the crisis to hide information, silence whistleblowers, put out false data and thwart any real outside investigation are too extensive to fully recount,” Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote over the weekend, pointedly adding, “the Chinese government’s actions were both reckless and deliberate.”
Leading to many more deaths — the official tally being 2.6 million souls worldwide. So far.
Yes, the Chinese Communist Party leaders are actually “bad folks.”
Last year, though, the media treated candidate Trump’s attacks on China as just so much posturing and blame-shifting. The Post, for example complained of “too much political heat” regarding the pandemic — “some generated by China” and “some by Donald Trump in his attempt to distract attention from his catastrophic pandemic response as president.”
A month ago, a World Health Organization team traveled to China to finally look for the source of the contagion. “International experts investigating the origins of Covid-19,” the BBC reported at the time, “have all but dismissed a theory that the virus came from a laboratory in China.”
It turns out, as the Post explained, “the team lacked the training and forensic skills required to investigate this possibility” and “were under strong pressure from China to steer clear of the subject altogether.” The editorial urged the WHO to renew their investigation and “forcefully insist that China not stand in its way.”
“Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 shattered a fragile understanding between Washington and Beijing,” Rogin had informed readers at the outset of his essay, “and put the most important relationship of the 21st century in the hands of a novice.”
I call that a reprieve.
But the fact that our current prez is an old political pro?
Worrisome.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* There is “no going back to the stance that the Obama administration had taken toward China in 2016,” Rogin argued, “when . . . most uncomfortable issues were swept under the rug.”
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See all recent commentary (simplified and organized)
More on the Wuhan Lab angle: “Twelve Monkeys in Charge”
2 replies on “Now Safe to Blame?”
Why don’t you write about Trump’s involvement in the rash of attacks on Asian people?
You haven’t said anything about the attack on the US Capitol. Why?
Well, Pam, of course I have talked about the attack on the capitol, condemning the violence and calling for prosecution of those breaking the law. Good morning!