New York Times Joins Trump's Anti-China Crusade - Center for Economic and Policy Research
By: Dean Baker - Center for Economic and Policy Research
The Times is Dean Baker's favorite whipping boy. Deservedly!
The sentence Baker isolates in this little diatribe is just plain bad journalism. A statement without the slightest support.
... and which plays straight into the hands of conspiracy theorists.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
There is no doubt that bureaucratic bungling and authoritarian practices slowed China's response to the coronavirus. A New York Times piece documents many of these failings. But, it is a big step to go from the evidence presented in the article to the assertion in the first paragraph:
"Beijing acted against the coronavirus with stunning force, as its official narratives recount. But not before a political logjam had allowed a local outbreak to kindle a global pandemic."
The clear implication of the second sentence is that if China's leadership had responded effectively to the pandemic, it could have been quickly contained in Wuhan and not spread around the world. The biggest problem with this assertion is that there is evidence that the pandemic was already present in Europe before the end of 2019, at a point where no one in China had any clear idea what they were dealing with.
A study released in June find evidence in sewage that the coronavirus had been present in Italy in December of 2019. A more recent study found that a child in Italy may have been infected with the coronavirus in November of last year. There has been other evidence that people in Europe may have already been infected with the disease in late 2019.
If the pandemic was already present in Europe by December of 2019 then China's actions in January 2020 could not have prevented its spread to the rest of the world. This doesn't excuse the government's efforts to suppress information about the pandemic, but it does mean that these efforts did not have the dire consequences claimed by the New York Times.
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This is just plain not true. The Times should print a retraction.
The biggest problem with this assertion is that there is evidence that the pandemic was already present in Europe before the end of 2019, at a point where no one in China had any clear idea what they were dealing with.
So someone from Italy brought the virus to Wuhan? What's the evidence of that? It seems like someone knew what they might be dealing with, but authorities ignored the warnings.
I don't think that is implied.
I think Baker's point is that we do not know exactly what path the virus took. Or more likely, paths... plural.
The Times article is affirmative, on an uncertain topic.
Yet you blame Trump for somehow not stopping the virus while excusing China, who put doctors in jail for reporting the virus.
No. I blame Trump for doing much more poorly than most national leaders.
Is that today's talking point? Just recently it was blaming Trump for all 340,000 plus deaths. Now your back to the prehistoric mindset of blaming the King for a crop failures? Hard to believe that in the 21st century people still attribute the spread of an uncurbable and highly contagious virus to the actions of a single person in each country.
You should probably move to sub Saharan Africa. Their leaders powerful magic has kept the spread of the virus to a fraction of what is in Europe and the Americas. Germany has 63 times the covid fatality rate of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari must be about the best leader in the world, to stop the virus like that!
You bore me, Sean.