SOUTH KOREA : ‘The U.S. Is No Longer a More “Developed” Country Than Us’

[xizhimen]

SOUTH KOREA : ‘The U.S. Is No Longer a More “Developed” Country Than Us’
12/02/2020 06:42 PM EST
With American Covid-19 deaths sprawling and Trump raging against the election result, South Koreans' respect for American leadership is plummeting.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA—In Korea, the United States is called 미국 (pronounced miguk), which directly translates to “beautiful country.” It has always seemed like a fitting name, considering Korea’s longstanding admiration of the U.S.

These days in Korea, TV broadcasters talk about the U.S. with grim faces, flashing to B-roll of lines of Americans wrapped around buildings waiting for Covid-19 testing or graphs depicting an exponential growth of pandemic deaths. Newspaper headlines question the strength of U.S. democracy above pictures of demonstrators protesting mythical claims of voter fraud. One recent column in the Hankyoreh, a major center-left daily newspaper, is titled, “Covid-19 and the downfall of the U.S.” Another headline, in sisajournal, a popular weekly current events magazine, reads: “The surprising election system that makes you wonder ‘Is the U.S. actually a democratic country?’” And it’s not just in the news. In boardrooms, in classrooms and in casual dinner table conversations, you’ll hear the same sense of bewilderment: How did the U.S. lose its way?


It’s a shocking development for a country that has, for decades, largely viewed the United States almost like an older sibling—a model of success and progress that Koreans were proud to emulate. Now, many Koreans see the U.S. as a failing country, deeply divided and unable to meet basic challenges. The shift began after President Donald Trump’s 2016 win, when many Koreans were shocked to see him claim the presidency after a string of scandals. But the clincher has been America’s bungled response to Covid-19, followed by Trump and the GOP’s recent efforts to contest the legitimate results of the 2020 U.S. election. For Koreans, the past year has exposed the deep problems within the American system, from hyperpartisanship and deep distrust in government to a poor health care system—issues that have long been familiar to Americans, but not to Koreans, many of whom have maintained the idea of American exceptionalism far longer and livelier than many Americans.

Korea’s admiration of the U.S. was always bound to drop somewhat as Korea grew from one of the poorest countries in the world into its 10th-largest economy, says Lee Hyun-song, a professor of interpretation and translation at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies who wrote a 2015 article about Koreans' changing perception of Americans up to the early 2000s. But, he says, Trump’s tenure, and really 2020 in particular, has accelerated that process, especially among younger generations of Koreans, who are expressing more pride for their country and less likely to turn to the U.S. for guidance.

“There was a strong belief that there was a lot to learn from the U.S., but then that faith in Americans crumbled after they voted for Trump,” he says. “As we’ve watched the U.S. fail to contain Covid-19 and rebel against mask-wearing through the media, we’ve come to realize that the U.S. is no longer a more ‘developed’ country than us.”
It hasn’t always been like this. Korea has historically maintained a friendly relationship with the U.S., and in a 2013 BBC poll, Koreans viewed the U.S. the most positively out of all the Asian countries surveyed. It’s an alliance that dates back to the 1950s, when the U.S. helped end the Korean War and stabilize the Korean peninsula. And since the 1970s, the two have become close trade partners: Korea was the United States’ sixth-largest supplier of imports in 2019.

Korea has also been a successful target of U.S. soft power. In 2016, 53 percent of the movies in theaters here were Korean, while 42 percent were American. As Hollywood infiltrated Korean theaters, the audience left star-struck by scenes of grand, glittery parties, patriotic soldiers and heroic protagonists. U.S. education has also long been seen as the gold standard in Korea, a necessary rite of passage for the elite or a ticket to social mobility for those that can scrape together the funds. It’s the second-most sought after destination for college, following just behind China, a more familiar destination which borders Korea.

There have been flares of anti-Americanism in Korean history, but most were short-lived and targeted specific American entities. Anger in the 1980s was directed at the U.S. government for siding with Korea’s military dictator and helping him suppress peaceful protests for democracy. In 2002, it was directed at armed forces stationed in the country, after a U.S. military vehicle accidentally killed two schoolgirls. And in 2008, Koreans shunned the U.S. beef market—and criticized President Lee Myung-Bak—after Korea announced it would resume imports of U.S. beef despite concerns of mad cow disease. This time around, though, the criticism is both broader and more fundamental: Koreans are beginning to doubt the very idea of America as a beacon of prosperity and progress, as well as its standing as a global superpower.

Some of that questioning began with Trump, whom many Koreans saw as a shocking U.S. presidential choice who bulldozed democratic norms and sowed division. It didn’t help, either, that he also often let loose on longtime U.S. allies, including Korea. He demanded a 49 percent increase in South Korea’s contribution to their shared defense costs, hiking the price up to $1.3 billion; he’s strained the economic relationship by demanding new amendments to trade deals; he even bashed the Academy for awarding Korean film “Parasite” Best Picture. As a result, Koreans’ confidence in Trump sits at just 17 percent.

But disappointment in the U.S. has peaked this year, particularly as Korea has been praised for its pandemic management while the United States maintains the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in the world. Following strict contact tracing, universal mask wearing and transparent communication from the government, Korea currently has seen about 35,000 cases of the virus and experiences less than five Covid-19 deaths a day. In response to the two countries’ diverging paths, favorability of the U.S. in Korea has dropped from 80 percent in 2018 to 59 percent in 2020, according to Pew Research Center.

The shifting attitude is particularly noticeable in the Korean media, where news broadcasters and reporters often inject commentary into their work. Essentially every news segment about the U.S. right now is tinted by criticism. During one recent report by center-left broadcast station YTN about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s apology for ignoring their own advice that discouraged Thanksgiving traveling, the anchors closed with a scathing line: “The hypocrisy of these leaders who are in charge of people’s health and coronavirus control, during a period that is crucial to curbing the pandemic, makes you wonder if their apologies are even sincere.”

Kim Won-jang, a reporter for KBS, the national public broadcaster of Korea, made his disappointment clear in a recent column tilted, “There is no #1 America.” Kim, who studied in the U.S. in 1993 and later brought his whole family to the country in 2012 for a year, documents his dismay at the president’s rhetoric against immigrants, the U.S.’ failing response to Covid-19, the unfounded claims of voter fraud and Trump’s refusal to concede the election.

“Is the U.S. actually a No.1 country?” Kim questions in his article, published on Nov. 9. “It can’t even manage a presidential election, the largest event in the country. Yet again they need the help of the police. And if things get out of control, they aim at citizens. It’s like Zimbabwe. The president denies the election results, and social trust is at a rock bottom.”

While some may point to a booming stock market in rebuttal to America’s critics, Kim told POLITICO that it’s clear economics cannot be the only measurement of a successful country: “No matter how well Tesla’s stocks perform,” Kim says, “the U.S. will only stray further and further from its greatness if its people—many of different languages and ethnicities—can’t unite under common values.”

For Kim and many Koreans, the change in American leadership over the past few years can be summed up by comparing two elections. In his column, Kim describes John McCain’s 2008 concession speech as gracious, in which the former Arizona senator accepted his defeat the night of the election and promised to support Obama as “my president.” That night in Korea, broadcasts were near universally approving, characterizing the election as a moment that elevated the first Black U.S. president and bolstered the U.S.’ reputation of progress and innovation.

Kim’s retelling of the 2020 election isn’t as kind: “Fast forward 10 years. Donald Trump is tweeting ‘71,000,000 Legal Votes. The most EVER for a sitting President!’ while ignoring reality,” he wrote.

Kim says he decided to write the article because the current state of the country is far different from his earlier memories of the U.S. When he was younger, he remembers watching “A Few Good Men,” a movie that taught him the diverse country united under a common identity of being American. The same cannot simply be said anymore, he says, and a division among the people has cost the country both its faith in elections and public health.

What does this mean for the future? Despite this drop in respect, Korea will still continue its alliance with the U.S. to keep neighboring countries like China, Russia and North Korea in check. And familiarity will also keep the two countries close, says Kim, since Koreans still spend an exorbitant amount of money on American brands: There are 3.3 million Netflix subscribers in Korea, and the country annually spends over 1 trillion won on Starbucks. But the U.S. might continue to become a less popular destination for Korean emigrants and students—to the detriment of the American talent pool. Discouraged by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and complicated visa policies, the number of Korean international students in the U.S. has already been declining with no sign of return: 23,488 Korean students signed up for a visa in 2018, a 23 percent drop from the 30,565 students in 2015.

It’s possible President-elect Joe Biden might be able to slow or reverse the U.S.’s dropping reputation in Korea and help mend relations between the two countries. Lee says many here were relieved to see him beat Trump. All eyes will be on the new president to see if he can curb the “America First” mentality that has wrecked its alliances with multiple countries, adds Kim.

Some of the damage, however, may be irreversible. It won’t be so easy for Koreans to forget TV clips of full U.S. hospitals and maskless crowds. “To be clear,” Lee says. “Koreans won’t be sending their unconditional support to the U.S. as they did before.”

Koreans Believed America Was Exceptional. Then Covid Happened.

With American Covid-19 deaths sprawling and Trump raging against the election result, South Koreans' respect for American leadership is plummeting.

www.politico.com

 

[johnq]

Here is proof that criminal Chinese Communist Party government lied about Covid-19 pandemic, just to show that Chinese Communist Party government cannot be trusted about anything with their propaganda claims:

From: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devastating-lies/
The Comprehensive Timeline of China’s COVID-19 Lies

On today’s menu: a day-by-day, month-by-month breakdown of China’s coronavirus coverup and the irreparable damage it has caused around the globe.

The Timeline of a Viral Ticking Time Bomb

The story of the coronavirus pandemic is still being written. But at this early date, we can see all kinds of moments where different decisions could have lessened the severity of the outbreak we are currently enduring. You have probably heard variations of: “Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be transferred from human to human until it was too late.” What you have probably not heard is how emphatically, loudly, and repeatedly the Chinese government insisted human transmission was impossible, long after doctors in Wuhan had concluded human transmission was ongoing — and how the World Health Organization assented to that conclusion, despite the suspicions of other outside health experts.

Clearly, the U.S. government’s response to this threat was not nearly robust enough, and not enacted anywhere near quickly enough. Most European governments weren’t prepared either. Few governments around the world were or are prepared for the scale of the danger. We can only wonder whether accurate and timely information from China would have altered the way the U.S. government, the American people, and the world prepared for the oncoming danger of infection.

Some point in late 2019: The coronavirus jumps from some animal species to a human being. The best guess at this point is that it happened at a Chinese “wet market.”

December 6: According to a study in The Lancet, the symptom onset date of the first patient identified was “Dec 1, 2019 . . . 5 days after illness onset, his wife, a 53-year-old woman who had no known history of exposure to the market, also presented with pneumonia and was hospitalized in the isolation ward.” In other words, as early as the second week of December, Wuhan doctors were finding cases that indicated the virus was spreading from one human to another.

December 21: Wuhan doctors begin to notice a “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause.”

December 25: Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan are suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and are quarantined. This is additional strong evidence of human-to-human transmission.

Sometime in “Late December”: Wuhan hospitals notice “an exponential increase” in the number of cases that cannot be linked back to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

December 30: Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to a group of other doctors warning them about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), urging them to take protective measures against infection.

December 31: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declares, “The investigation so far has not found any obvious human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infection.” This is the opposite of the belief of the doctors working on patients in Wuhan, and two doctors were already suspected of contracting the virus.

Three weeks after doctors first started noticing the cases, China contacts the World Health Organization.

Tao Lina, a public-health expert and former official with Shanghai’s center for disease control and prevention, tells the South China Morning Post, “I think we are [now] quite capable of killing it in the beginning phase, given China’s disease control system, emergency handling capacity and clinical medicine support.”

January 1: The Wuhan Public Security Bureau issued summons to Dr. Li Wenliang, accusing him of “spreading rumors.” Two days later, at a police station, Dr. Li signed a statement acknowledging his “misdemeanor” and promising not to commit further “unlawful acts.” Seven other people are arrested on similar charges and their fate is unknown.

Also that day, “after several batches of genome sequence results had been returned to hospitals and submitted to health authorities, an employee of one genomics company received a phone call from an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, ordering the company to stop testing samples from Wuhan related to the new disease and destroy all existing samples.”

According to a New York Times study of cellphone data from China, 175,000 people leave Wuhan that day. According to global travel data research firm OAG, 21 countries have direct flights to Wuhan. In the first quarter of 2019 for comparison, 13,267 air passengers traveled from Wuhan, China, to destinations in the United States, or about 4,422 per month. The U.S. government would not bar foreign nationals who had traveled to China from entering the country for another month.

January 2: One study of patients in Wuhan can only connect 27 of 41 infected patients to exposure to the Huanan seafood market — indicating human-to-human transmission away from the market. A report written later that month concludes, “evidence so far indicates human transmission for 2019-nCoV. We are concerned that 2019-nCoV could have acquired the ability for efficient human transmission.”

Also on this day, the Wuhan Institute of Virology completed mapped the genome of the virus. The Chinese government would not announce that breakthrough for another week.

January 3: The Chinese government continued efforts to suppress all information about the virus: “China’s National Health Commission, the nation’s top health authority, ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease, and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them.”

Roughly one month after the first cases in Wuhan, the United States government is notified. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gets initial reports about a new coronavirus from Chinese colleagues, according to Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar. Azar, who helped manage the response at HHS to earlier SARS and anthrax outbreaks, told his chief of staff to make sure the National Security Council was informed.

Also on this day, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released another statement, repeating, “As of now, preliminary investigations have shown no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infections.”

January 4: While Chinese authorities continued to insist that the virus could not spread from one person to another, doctors outside that country weren’t so convinced. The head of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Infection, Ho Pak-leung, warned that “the city should implement the strictest possible monitoring system for a mystery new viral pneumonia that has infected dozens of people on the mainland, as it is highly possible that the illness is spreading from human to human.”

January 5: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission put out a statement with updated numbers of cases but repeated, “preliminary investigations have shown no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infections.”

January 6: The New York Times publishes its first report about the virus, declaring that “59 people in the central city of Wuhan have been sickened by a pneumonia-like illness.” That first report included these comments:

Wang Linfa, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said he was frustrated that scientists in China were not allowed to speak to him about the outbreak. Dr. Wang said, however, that he thought the virus was likely not spreading from humans to humans because health workers had not contracted the disease. “We should not go into panic mode,” he said.
Don’t get too mad at Wang Linfa; he was making that assessment based upon the inaccurate information Chinese government was telling the world.

Also that day, the CDC “issued a level 1 travel watch — the lowest of its three levels — for China’s outbreak. It said the cause and the transmission mode aren’t yet known, and it advised travelers to Wuhan to avoid living or dead animals, animal markets, and contact with sick people.”

Also that day, the CDC offered to send a team to China to assist with the investigation. The Chinese government declined, but a WHO team that included two Americans would visit February 16.

January 8: Chinese medical authorities claim to have identified the virus. Those authorities claim and Western media continue to repeat, “there is no evidence that the new virus is readily spread by humans, which would make it particularly dangerous, and it has not been tied to any deaths.”

The official statement from the World Health Organization declares, “Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks . . . WHO does not recommend any specific measures for travelers. WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China based on the information currently available.”

January 10: After unknowingly treating a patient with the Wuhan coronavirus, Dr. Li Wenliang started coughing and developed a fever. He was hospitalized on January 12. In the following days, Li’s condition deteriorated so badly that he was admitted to the intensive care unit and given oxygen support.

The New York Times quotes the Wuhan City Health Commission’s declaration that “there is no evidence the virus can spread among humans.” Chinese doctors continued to find transmission among family members, contradicting the official statements from the city health commission.

January 11: The Wuhan City Health Commission issues an update declaring, “All 739 close contacts, including 419 medical staff, have undergone medical observation and no related cases have been found . . . No new cases have been detected since January 3, 2020. At present, no medical staff infections have been found, and no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found.” They issue a Q&A sheet later that day reemphasizing that “most of the unexplained viral pneumonia cases in Wuhan this time have a history of exposure to the South China seafood market. No clear evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found.”

Also on this day, political leaders in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, began their regional meeting. The coronavirus was not mentioned over four days of meetings.

January 13: Authorities in Thailand detected the virus in a 61-year-old Chinese woman who was visiting from Wuhan, the first case outside of China. “Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health, said the woman had not visited the Wuhan seafood market, and had come down with a fever on Jan. 5. However, the doctor said, the woman had visited a different, smaller market in Wuhan, in which live and freshly slaughtered animals were also sold.”

January 14: Wuhan city health authorities release another statement declaring, “Among the close contacts, no related cases were found.” Wuhan doctors have known this was false since early December, from the first victim and his wife, who did not visit the market.

The World Health Organization echoes China’s assessment: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.”

This is five or six weeks after the first evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan.

January 15: Japan reported its first case of coronavirus. Japan’s Health Ministry said the patient had not visited any seafood markets in China, adding that “it is possible that the patient had close contact with an unknown patient with lung inflammation while in China.”

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission begins to change its statements, now declaring, “Existing survey results show that clear human-to-human evidence has not been found, and the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out, but the risk of continued human-to-human transmission is low.” Recall Wuhan hospitals concluded human-to-human transmission was occurring three weeks earlier. A statement the next day backtracks on the possibility of human transmission, saying only, “Among the close contacts, no related cases were found.”

January 17: The CDC and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection announce that travelers from Wuhan to the United States will undergo entry screening for symptoms associated with 2019-nCoV at three U.S. airports that receive most of the travelers from Wuhan, China: San Francisco, New York (JFK), and Los Angeles airports.

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission’s daily update declares, “A total of 763 close contacts have been tracked, 665 medical observations have been lifted, and 98 people are still receiving medical observations. Among the close contacts, no related cases were found.”

January 18: HHS Secretary Azar has his first discussion about the virus with President Trump. Unnamed “senior administration officials” told the Washington Post that “the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market.”

Despite the fact that Wuhan doctors know the virus is contagious, city authorities allow 40,000 families to gather and share home-cooked food in a Lunar New Year banquet.

January 19: The Chinese National Health Commission declares the virus “still preventable and controllable.” The World Health Organization updates its statement, declaring, “Not enough is known to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, the clinical features of the disease, the extent to which it has spread, or its source, which remains unknown.”

January 20: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declares for the last time in its daily bulletin, “no related cases were found among the close contacts.”

That day, the head of China’s national health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected.

Also on this date, the Wuhan Evening News newspaper, the largest newspaper in the city, mentions the virus on the front page for the first time since January 5.

January 21: The CDC announced the first U.S. case of a the coronavirus in a Snohomish County, Wash., resident who returning from China six days earlier.

By this point, millions of people have left Wuhan, carrying the virus all around China and into other countries.

January 22: WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus continued to praise China’s handling of the outbreak. “I was very impressed by the detail and depth of China’s presentation. I also appreciate the cooperation of China’s Minister of Health, who I have spoken with directly during the last few days and weeks. His leadership and the intervention of President Xi and Premier Li have been invaluable, and all the measures they have taken to respond to the outbreak.”

In the preceding days, a WHO delegation conducted a field visit to Wuhan. They concluded, “deployment of the new test kit nationally suggests that human-to-human transmission is taking place in Wuhan.” The delegation reports, “their counterparts agreed close attention should be paid to hand and respiratory hygiene, food safety and avoiding mass gatherings where possible.”

At a meeting of the WHO Emergency Committee, panel members express “divergent views on whether this event constitutes a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern’ or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC.”

President Trump, in an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, declared, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

January 23: Chinese authorities announce their first steps for a quarantine of Wuhan. By this point, millions have already visited the city and left it during the Lunar New Year celebrations. Singapore and Vietnam report their first cases, and by now an unknown but significant number of Chinese citizens have traveled abroad as asymptomatic, oblivious carriers.

January 24: Vietnam reports person-to-person transmission, and Japan, South Korea, and the U.S report their second cases. The second case is in Chicago. Within two days, new cases are reported in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Arizona. The virus is in now in several locations in the United States, and the odds of preventing an outbreak are dwindling to zero.

On February 1, Dr. Li Wenliang tested positive for coronavirus. He died from it six days later.

From: https://changingtimes.media/2020/10/12/sars-cov-2-lab-origin-hypothesis-gains-traction/
SARS-CoV-2: lab-origin hypothesis gains traction

“On January 21, President Xi Jinping asked the director-general of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom, to withhold information about person-to-person transmission of the virus, as well as pandemic classification. Likely as a consequence, pandemic classification of the virus was delayed four to six weeks.”

The Chinese propagandists on this forum and elsewhere just don't get it. They are the ones that enable the criminal Chinese Communist Party government leadership that covered up the Covid-19 outbreak by accusing Dr. Li Wenliang and others of criminal activities, while lying that human-to-human transmission was not taking place. The Chinese Communist Party government leadership covered it up for at least six weeks and probably much longer, while allowing international travel, allowing the Covid-19 virus to spread everywhere. Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party government leadership is personally responsible for not only the deaths of Chinese people from Covid-19, but also millions of deaths worldwide due to spreading of Covid-19. Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party government leadership caused Chinese people's deaths by covering up that Covid-19 human-to-human transmission was taking place in order to spread the Covid-19 virus worldwide, thus using it as a bio-weapon.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan reveals China’s fake science and the COVID-19 cover-up
WION
Washington
Oct 09, 2020, 05.27 PM(IST)
Written By: Lawrence Sellin

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party supported by some Western scientists and a politically-motivated media have desperately tried to convince the world that the COVID-19 virus originated as a bat beta-coronavirus which underwent a natural mutation process and was then acquired by humans after exposure to infected animals.

Undoubtedly, such subterfuge is meant to protect certain vested interests, including the potentially devastating political and economic consequences for China, global corporate and private investment in China and a negative effect on scientific collaboration and research funding of major Western research laboratories.

In her first article, “Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route,” Chinese scientist and whistleblower, Dr. Li-Meng Yan presented the biological evidence demonstrating that the COVID-19 virus was made in a laboratory.

Now, Dr. Yan has published her second scientific article “SARS-CoV-2 Is an Unrestricted Bioweapon: A Truth Revealed through Uncovering a Large-Scale, Organized Scientific Fraud,” which describes the extraordinary lengths the Chinese Communist Party has gone to cover-up the true laboratory origin of the COVID-19 virus in order to escape responsibility for the pandemic.

For months after the start of the outbreak, China flooded the scientific literature with subtle and sometimes not so subtle messages supporting its narrative that COVID-19 is a naturally-occurring disease that “jumped” from animals to humans in the Wuhan seafood market.

After endless media reports and scientific studies, the theory that the Wuhan seafood market was the source for animal–human COVID-19 transmission was totally discredited, even by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On February 3, 2020, “batwoman” Dr. Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology published an article suggesting that COVID-19 originated in bats and a bat coronavirus named RaTG13 was shown to be 96.2% identical to the COVID-19 virus, thus supporting the naturally-occurring theory.

Since then, literally hundreds of scientific articles have used RaTG13 as a basis for investigating the natural origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that RaTG13 exists only on paper because no live virus or intact genome of RaTG13 have ever been isolated or recovered.
Dr. Yan and her colleagues now make multiple arguments indicating that RaTG13 is a fabricated virus.

One way to determine if a virus is related to or evolved from another virus, in this case, RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus, is to compare the synonymous and non-synonymous mutations in the genetic code.

The DNA genetic code, which is composed of combinations of the nucleotides guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine (G, A, C and T), determines the structure of proteins. It does so through groups of three nucleotides called codons that correspond to specific amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and that code is redundant.

For example, the amino acid arginine can be produced by codons CGT, CGA, CTC or CGG, meaning the third nucleotide in the codon is redundant or interchangeable and will still code for arginine. Any change in the first or second nucleotide will produce a different amino acid.

So, a viral genetic code can mutate, but still produce the same amino acid or a “synonymous” outcome. A mutation in the first or second nucleotide in a codon will result in different amino acid, a “non-synonymous” outcome.

In the absence of a major natural or artificial recombinant event, viruses that are naturally related or evolve from each other, as claimed for RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus, have roughly standard ratios comparing synonymous and non-synonymous mutations.

Dr. Yan’s data show that when the ratios of synonymous and non-synonymous mutations between a critical segment of the RaTG13 and COVID-19 viruses are compared, the result “is abnormal and a violation of the principles of natural evolution.”

The interpretation is that RaTG13 and the COVID-19 virus could not be related to each other through natural evolution and that RaTG13 is a likely fabrication.

In addition, a reconstructed RaTG13 receptor binding domain does not bind to the angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptors in two species of horseshoe bats, implying that RaTG13 could not exist in a bat population from which it would mutate and infect humans, completely undermining the naturally-occurring theory.

Dr. Yan also questions the accuracy of China’s pangolin (scaly anteater) coronavirus data upon which dozens of scientific studies examining potential natural coronavirus recombination events are based.

In early June, another novel bat coronavirus, RmYN02, which shares a 93.3% sequence similarity to the COVID-19 virus, was identified and used to support the Communist Chinese Party’s argument that the pandemic was a natural outbreak.

In that weak attempt to buttress the naturally-occurring theory, the Chinese authors of the RmYN02 article claim that a proline-alanine-alanine (PAA) amino acid insertion represents an ancestor to the proline-arginine-arginine-alanine (PRRA) furin polybasic cleavage site found in the COVID-19 virus, but not found in any other related bat coronavirus.

The presence of the furin polybasic cleavage site is a marker for genetic manipulation and, therefore, countering that fact would be an important objective of the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine.

The RmYN02 hypothesis disintegrates under scrutiny because the PAA sequence is chemically neutral, not basic and it could not cleave anything.

RmYN02 does not even possess the arginine-serine (R-S) cleavage point found in the COVID-19 virus and all related coronaviruses and the published RmYH02 sequence seems to be out of alignment.

Dr. Yan’s second scientific article adds one more nail in the coffin of China’s false theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was naturally-occurring.

The scientific evidence shown in this and previously posted articles is further proof that Covid-19 virus is a result of lab modification by Wuhan Institute of Virology of viruses owned by the Chinese Communist Party funded People's Liberation Army (PLA) laboratories. The fact that Xi Jinping hid person-to-person transmission of the virus from the world for six weeks while allowing international travel from Wuhan is proof that Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party intentionally spread the Covid-19 virus to other countries. The Covid-19 virus was created as a bioweapon through modification/combination of viruses in Chinese Communist Party funded PLA laboratories, and then intentionally leaked from Wuhan Virology Institute in Wuhan as a bio-weapon. The knowledge about the virus was then suppressed as it was allowed to spread to the rest of the world intentionally using the Chinese people as carriers. This should not be surprising as the Chinese leadership does not care about common Chinese people. The Chinese leadership also stocked up on PPE (masks, etc) and antiviral medications ahead of time, so they were well-prepared. And since they were the ones who spread the virus, they knew where to lock down (Wuhan) as well as where to trace the cases within China. Yet they intentionally allowed the virus to spread throughout the world. At the behest of the CCP, the World Health Organization gave the advise not to wear a mask to other countries, even as the Chinese people were required to wear masks to stop the outbreak; masks which the Chinese government had stocked up on while lying to the world that there is no person to person transmission. This also eventually led to shortages of masks around the world (even among medical personnel), helping the virus to spread. Chinese Covid-19 virus detection tests sold to other countries also did not work, and this also contributed to the pandemic increase.

The Chinese Communist government attacked India, US and other democratic countries with the Covid-19 virus bioweapon in order to damage their economies. The Chinese Communist government has largely succeeded in that goal. The economic downturn in these other countries caused by the Chinese Communist government bioweapon (Covid-19 pandemic) has largely helped the Chinese Communist government and associated companies eliminate the competition and gain a larger economic foothold in other countries. The Chinese celebrate while the world suffers from the Covid-19 viral bioweapon pandemic created by the Chinese Communist government.