THREAD. Refreshingly objective piece by @MaxBoot with a few caveats. "If China had acted even 2 wks earlier, it cld've averted 86% of its coronavirus cases. But if Trump (acted) 2 wks earlier he could have prevented 90% of U.S. CV deaths." 1) washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
2) China fumbled the start but it was investigating in the dark. This was a NEW "novel" coronavirus & they were panicked like everyone else. But once they got on the case they turbo-charged their efforts, sequencing the gene code in record time & sending it out 11-12 Jan.
3) Once there was confirmation of Human 2 Human infection they locked down an entire region, Wuhan/Hubei, population the size of the UK on 23rd Jan, locking down the whole country 1st February.
4) The virus arrived 3 years into a vicious economic attack on China as Trump's trade war, plus NED/Rubio-back violence in Hong Kong where mainland Chinese & anyone who disagreed with the protesters were beaten, immolated and killed with no condemnation. hk-protest.com
5) In the US from 24th Jan, Sen Tom Cotton, Bill Gertz, Bannon, Fox News & Radio Free Asia accuse China of creating the #coronavirus in the Wuhan lab. Weeks later, under provocation, a Chinese minister reacts by saying, yeah, you too - a reaction rather than a mirror.
6) With US hostilities out in the open, China's unprecedented efforts to contain #coronavirus - locking down, building 1,000 bed hospitals from scratch, hazmat PPE, providing both TIME & a MODEL - are sneered at, mocked & largely ignored by MSM & politicians. Scientists yell.
7) Every positive thing China does is trashed by hawks, ignored by MSM. Current blackout of China's road to starving the virus of hosts & cautiously reopening is destructive considering China's death rate per capita is lower than West's model S Korea (which is not communist!).
8) Ascribing negative motives to all China does dehumanises them in a 21st century Yellow Peril fever. It also means we end up reinventing the wheel: Nightingale hospitals (UK's repurposed existing buildings), masks, decent PPE, lockdown, track & trace apps all pioneered by China
9) ... building the image of a cruel race incapable of altruism, nothing to do with actual people, but a projection of what's inside us in the West. The sleep of reason produces monsters from the id, not the men & women fighting the virus that's killed them & cost them billions.
10) Every flaw is exaggerated with many invented for the coming war on the upstart rival being built by a declining superpower. While the US pirates its PE, the most famous defective PPE turns out to be from an American company in China.
11) While America's CDC misdiagnosed their early Covid-19 cases as flu, & whose first test kits didn't work, some of China's "defective" test kits have been used in the first few days instead of after 10-14 days when there's enough of a viral load to register. Double standards.
