Another typical, misleading story

A WP report detailed the preparation of COVID-19 from the US perspectives: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/?arc404=true.  Expectedly, it fired a few back door shots against China.  Aside from the oft mandatory accusations, two specific issues were raised.  The first is that US offered to send a team to China in early Jan but China refused.  The second is that China didn’t give US a virus sample.  Both issues aimed to mislead, typical of the mainstream Western media. 

For the first issue, China has been cooperating with WHO throughout.  WHO sent a team to China in early Jan, and then more teams later, some with American or at least Western experts.  WHO is the premier UN and international medical authority, and is China’s obligation.  Once information is received by WHO, everybody can access it, including the US.  Is there anything the US can do WHO can’t do?   If US sent a team, should Germany, Japan, and everybody else send a team too?  Trump has significantly reduced American CDC staff and work in China over the past three years, so it is truly disingenuous for WP to claim now it wanted to make up, when there is the other, perfect WHO channel.  

A minor point in the WP report is that Chinese experts stated “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” on Jan 14.  The implication is, of course, China was hiding something.  But this statement has been hotly debated since, and the best explanation is everybody was still learning about COVID-19 at the time.  The same WP story stated later that “in mid-February, Fauci and Redfield told White House officials that there was no evidence yet of worrisome person-to-person transmission in the United States. … Fauci later conceded that as they learned more their views changed.”  By the same token, should we conclude that Fauci tried to hide something in mid Feb?

The second raised issue is that China didn’t give US a virus sample, thereby hindering the development of test kits.  This is bogus scientifically.  The virus sequence, which was publicly available, is all one needs to design a test kit.  A viral sample can serve as a positive control, but it is not necessary: for testing one must first extracts RNA, which destroys the virus anyway, whereas positive control RNA can be made based on the virus sequence information.  There are more ways to get by without a primary virus sample; e.g., one can make the virus anew by synthetic biology, which the US is fully capable of doing.  Besides, the US soon have its own patients since Jan 20, so it is another political hack job by WP to blame or implicate China not providing virus samples in late Jan for the lack of preparation in the US until the end of Feb.  Lastly, how did other countries get their test kits?  Did China send them virus samples?  In other places, the quality of test kits was hardly an issue, and countries like South Korea and Germany made plenty of kits early on.  How did they achieve that?  The WP story didn’t say, because doing so would invalidate its whole thesis. 

These two issues, minus sufficient background, were used by WP to shift the blame to China, and to further cover up a poor relationship with WHO over the years.  US has many long overdue bills from the UN and WHO, and either because of that or because of self-confidence, CDC likes to do it alone.  This time it or the US just didn't have a sense of urgency and faltered, China or not, while there are other countries that have been better prepared.