According to a Naharnet article (April 19, 2020), the Wuhan lab director denies virus link: http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/271176-director-of-wuhan-lab-denies-virus-link .
At the very end of the same article about this denial, we can read: “This week authorities in the city admitted mistakes in counting its death toll and abruptly raised the figure by 50 percent.”
To confirm this HUGE increase in figures, Bambi consulted other sources. She found several articles, including one by the BBC, CNN, and even the CBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52321529
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/asia/china-wuhan-coronavirus-death-toll-intl-hnk/index.html
Of course, accurately counting mortality during a pandemic is challenging for several reasons described in the article below from France 24, perhaps well summarized in this tweet from France’s health authorities (https://www.france24.com/en/20200401-nursing-homes-in-europe-struggle-with-pandemic-s-uncounted-dead):
“France’s leadership has admitted the number of deaths from coronavirus is not accurate because it only reflects people who died in hospitals, excluding people, especially old people, who died either at home or in retirement homes (where the pandemic is taking the lives of many)”.
Sometimes, errors can happen in crises like wars or even without crises. Of course, this can happen in all countries. Bambi recalls having read numerous articles about this phenomenon. For instance, during one of the rounds of wars in Lebanon, one adolescent girl was wrongly declared dead (massacre). She woke up after some time in the morgue.
However, to come back to China, one must recall that this country (i.e., a dictatorship, as a reminder) has acted like Russia with Chernobyl, hiding the tragedy from the rest of the world. Who knows? Perhaps in the hope of addressing it silently… but, obviously, it failed and we all are where we are at now.
Bambi’s problem is not China per se, as China is true to itself. It has been like that before the pandemic.
Bambi’s issue is with our own Minister of Heath, Ms. Hajdu, who declared that she has “confidence on those public health officials working so closely on this issue since late December-Early January”.
Furthermore, as reported by an earlier post by Bambi, she replied to a question from a reporter asking “… whether the WHO’s data could be relied upon if China’s isn’t accurate”:
“Your question is feeding into conspiracy theories that many people have been perpetuating on the Internet”.
GOLDSTEIN: Patty Hajdu’s China Syndrome
Mmm, Bambi now wonders whether Ms. Hajdu will take a closer look at the Chinese data and if her answer will still be the same as the above. Perhaps with further time, and with any new legislation about misinformation, there will be no journalist who would dare to ask such a question to Ms. Hajdu.
Perhaps Ms. Hajdu can consult Australian peers, such as Foreign Minister Marise Payne, who is calling for an independent investigation into “China’s early response to the outbreak in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 emerged late last year”.
According to the article Channel News Asia above, “Payne said Australia shared similar concerns to the United States, whose President Donald Trump has accused the WHO of “mismanaging” the crisis and covering up the seriousness of China’s outbreak before it spread”.
Bambi also shares Mr. Trump’s concerns. Even if he has orange hair, he can be right sometimes. On this one, he is right. On this one, Ms. Hajdu is wrong.
This being said, Bambi has wished to see a wiser Mr. Trump in the circumstances (but this is too much to ask for, given his personality ?). Perhaps the USA should not rush into cutting funding to the WHO at this critical time, that is in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the WHO badly needs a serious reform.
To conclude this post, we do not need to be world leaders or reporters to understand that the WHO seems to have been hijacked by China. For example, as Bambi posted on April 5, 2020 (in the middle of this Covid-19 tragedy!), China has been appointed to the UNHRC panel. Does that make any sense? Mind you, it shares this responsibility with other dictatorships or other authoritarian countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, etc. Once again, are these wise choices?
