(Minghui.org) The infection cases have exploded in China since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abruptly ended its zero-COVID policy on December 7, 2022. This tsunami of a pandemic is much worse than two previous waves of the pandemic, the SARS outbreak in 2002 and the coronavirus outbreak in 2020.
First Wave
After SARS broke out in southern Guangdong Province in November 2002, it quickly spread up north to Beijing. Then top CCP leader Jiang Zemin decided to block the information. “If we can still maintain stability and prosperity, 2 million deaths are worth it,” he said according to The Real Story of China’s Jiang Zemin. Although Jiang Yanyong, a retired surgeon from the People’s Liberation Army’s Hospital 301, issued a statement about the outbreak to the media, he was quickly silenced and penalized according to military regulations.
Luo Gan and Wu Guanzheng, two members of the CCP’s Central Politburo Standing Committee, who were heavily involved in the persecution of Falun Gong, were both infected in April 2003. Jiang Zemin moved his entire family to Shanghai and ordered, “We must defend Shanghai with our lives.”
Although many people in Shanghai were infected, the CCP maintained due to political reasons, that the city only had two cases. Local residents dismissed that. “That is a joke,” one netizen wrote. “There are already five infected in my apartment complex.”
Second Wave
The CCP locked down Wuhan on January 23, 2020, and notified the world of the COVID-19 outbreak. This day coincided with the 19th anniversary of Jiang’s regime staging the so-called self-immolation incident on Tiananmen Square in 2001 to defame Falun Gong. Within four months, the disease spread to the whole world with 5.4 million infections and 342,000 deaths by May 23, 2020.
Like SARS, the CCP again covered up the disease and censored information. The official death toll in Wuhan stood at 2,531 as of March 25, 2020, but the actual fatalities estimated based on cremations and urns distributed during that time could be at least 10 times higher.
Third Wave
We are now experiencing the third wave. During the Liaoning Province pandemic prevention and control meeting on December 20, mayors from all 14 cities provided updates of their local COVID situations. About 50% of Shenyang residents were said to be infected, and this number could reach 80% by January, including four counties under its administration. In addition, 80% of Shenyang government employees had been infected and only 12% were still working.
Other areas in China are facing a similar situation. The Zhejiang Health Commission reported on December 25 that the number of infections had reached one million, and the daily new cases were increasing at a rate of 10%. Similarly, at least 500,000 infection cases had been found in Qingdao City of Shandong Province. Tang Weiguo, the founder of Shanghai Kehua Bio-Engineering, a manufacturer of the rapid test kits, died of COVID at age 66 on December 25.
After China’s National Health Commission (NHC) changed the disease name from “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to “novel coronavirus infection” on December 26, Zhang Liang, a physician in Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province told Radio Free Asia on the same day that the number of infections was extremely high, with 80 – 90% of local residents already infected. This figure is consistent with the prediction from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Washington University, which estimated that China could see as high as 4.6 million daily infections by March 1, 2023.
Even Hong Kong had 20,865 new cases on December 28 according to Central News Agency, among which 1,176 were imported. Italy, the European country that was hit hard by the first wave in February 2020, mandated COVID testing on December 26 for travelers from China. On two such flights that were checked at Milan Malpensa Airport, half of the Chinese passengers tested positive.
Continued Cover-up
Although the CCP claimed the new COVID surge was caused by the omicron variant, many people doubted that. Netizen Jinse Huanian wrote on December 26 that she treated 29 patients in six hours at a fever clinic. Twenty-one of them were hospitalized. Moreover, all 22 patients who went through CT scans were found to have pneumonia. This means that the symptoms were not caused by the mild omicron variant that attacks the upper respiratory tract.
Song, a doctor in Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province, said on December 27 that almost all patients he saw had pneumonia. His department director told employees that such lung damage was alarming, since it was not a flu or upper respiratory tract infection. The symptoms also varied, from aching to the bone all over, to sore throats that prevented drinking or eating. Some also had difficulty breathing.
One netizen learned from a pathological friend in Beijing that many original variants were found in recent infections. As a result, many cases of white lung damage were seen in youth and middle-aged patients. Without genetic sequencing, however, it is hard to determine the exact strain.
Regardless of the symptoms, however, doctors were instructed to avoid diagnosing patients with “pneumonia,” wrote a netizen in a Twitter post on December 28 with the hashtag of @wuwenhang.
In response to this crisis, the United States is actively monitoring the COVID variants to be prepared for a possible crisis. This includes tracking inbound travelers and following up on mutants.
China is Unique in Pandemic
COVID-19 started in China, spreading worldwide and causing huge losses, and is now surging in China again, more rampant and lethal.
China is unique in this pandemic also because the CCP regime has always covered up the real situation and censored information, from the First Wave to the Second Wave to the current Third Wave. This is not accidental, because of the CCP’s track record of lies and brutality since it took power in 1949.
Since the totalitarian regime does not care about people’s lives, it enforced a military-style lockdown for the past three years until it could not hold it any longer due to public anger. Once loosening it up, however, about 250 million people were infected in the first three weeks of December.
There is an ancient saying that “plague has eyes.” Since its beginning, the disease has targeted CCP members and those who closely followed the regime.
Staying Safe in the Unpredictable Pandemic
Like other disasters, plagues have accompanied human history for thousands of years. Plagues usually happen when society loses its moral compass and persecutes good people. The ancient Roman Empire, for instance, was weakened by numerous plagues amid the persecution of Christians and eventually collapsed.
The same thing happened to China, a land with a 5,000-year-long history where virtue was cherished. But with the indoctrination of communism since the CCP came to power, China has also gone through unprecedented cultural and social destruction. After ravaging Paris in the French Revolution and destroying the Soviet Union with massive killings, communism brought more harm to China. This includes the deaths of at least 45 million citizens in the Great Famine, systematic cultural destruction during the Cultural Revolution, suppression of the democratic movement in the Tiananmen Massacre, and the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.
Despite the CCP’s brutality and lies, Falun Gong practitioners have never stopped following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to be good citizens. The mind and body improvement practice brought hope to Chinese society and beyond. But the CCP’s core ideology of falsehoods, evilness, and class struggle totally goes against Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. In the past 23 years, tens of millions of Falun Gong practitioners, along with their family members, were discriminated against for their faith. A large number were detained, imprisoned, and tortured, with many being subjected to forced labor, mental abuse, and even forced organ harvesting.
As the CCP is actively pushing the communist agenda in China and globally, however, many people have been misled by its censored information, including the defamatory propaganda against innocent Falun Gong practitioners. The CCP was plunging our society into an abyss even before the pandemic.
Three years of a pandemic have resulted in 663 million infections, 6.7 million deaths, and immeasurable social and financial losses. It is time to learn the lesson, reject the CCP, and follow our conscience for a better, safer tomorrow.
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Category: News Commentary
