DONATE

Saturday, April 18, 2020

China, W.H.O. & UN Coverup Part One:

I Think There is a Bioweapon Issue Elitists Don’t Want to Know About

Edited by John R. Houk
Posted April 18, 2020

There is a world-wide pandemic. There are wicked culprits behind the spread of this pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of people globally not to mention right here in the USA.

WHO (no pun intended) ARE THE WICKED CULPRITS?

The ChiCom government (i.e. Mainland Communist China), the World Health Organization (aka W.H.O.) and by extension the United Nations are the culprits.

Even though not a single government or so-called reputable media organization will go out on the limb and state the obvious; viz., China was working on a bioweapon and screwed up. The more China is being exposed in a massive coverup with the complicity of UN affiliate organizations, especially the now apparent documentation at the least of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 origination was a biolab and NOT a Chinese Wet Market, the more I am convinced (though can’t prove) a bioweapon mishap occurred in a biolab.

With that personal opinion in mind, this post contains a series of articles and videos I think you might at least cause yourself wonder about a Chinese bioweapon mishap.

JRH 4/18/20
Your generosity is always appreciated - various credit, check 
& debit cards are accepted by my PayPal account: 
Or support by getting in the Coffee from home business – 
OR just buy some FEEL GOOD coffee, that includes immune boosting products.
*************************
Sources believe coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan lab as part of China's efforts to compete with US

April 16, 2020

EXCLUSIVE: There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China's attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China's government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.

This may be the "costliest government cover-up of all time," one of the sources said.

The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus – a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there – was bat-to-human and that "patient zero" worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly. Sources emphasized -- as is often the case with intelligence -- that it’s not definitive and should not be characterized as such. Some inside the administration and the intelligence and epidemiological communities are more skeptical, and the investigation is continuing.

What all of the sources agree about is the extensive cover-up of data and information about COVID-19 orchestrated by the Chinese government.

Asked by Fox News' John Roberts about the reporting, President Trump remarked at Wednesday's coronavirus press briefing, "More and more we're hearing the story...we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation."

Documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment. The Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and the sources tell Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country's propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy.

U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020, photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP)

Responding to the report, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday afternoon: "It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that and we've had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that. I would just say at this point, it's inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we don't know for certain."

“Even today, I see them withholding information and I think we need to do more to continue to press them to share,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told “America’s Newsroom" on Wednesday, referring to China. Esper added that he wouldn't speak to "intelligence reporting," but that "most people believe it began naturally — it was organic, if you will. I think in due course, once we get through the pandemic we're in right now, there'll be time to look back and really ascertain what happened and make sure we have a better understanding so we can prevent this in the future."

Sources point to the structure of the virus, in saying the genome mapping specifically shows it was not genetically altered.

Speaking to "The Story" Wednesday evening, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remarked: "What we do know is we know that this virus originated in Wuhan, China. We know there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was. There is still lots to learn. You should know that the United States government is working diligently to figure it out."

Concerning the State Department cables warning about the Wuhan laboratory, Pompeo said the installation "contained highly contagious materials — we knew that, we knew that they were working on this program, many countries have programs like this. In countries that are open and transparent, they have the ability to control them and keep them safe, and they allow outside observers in to make sure all the processes and procedures are right. I only wish that that had happened in this place."

On Thursday, China's foreign ministry pushed back on the suspicion that the virus escaped from the facility, by citing statements from the World Health Organization that there is no evidence the coronavirus came from a laboratory.

Americans were originally helping train the Chinese in a program called PREVENT well before the Chinese started working on this virus. The French government helped the Chinese set up the Wuhan lab.

China "100 percent" suppressed data and changed data, the sources tell Fox News. Samples were destroyed, contaminated areas scrubbed, some early reports erased, and academic articles stifled.


There were doctors and journalists who were "disappeared" warning of the spread of the virus and its contagious nature and human to human transmission. China moved quickly to shut down travel domestically from Wuhan to the rest of China, but did not stop international flights from Wuhan.
Additionally, the sources tell Fox News the World Health Organization (WHO) was complicit from the beginning in helping China cover its tracks.

Commuters wear face masks to protect against the spread of new coronavirus as they walk through a subway station in Beijing, Thursday, April 9, 2020. China's National Health Commission on Thursday reported dozens of new COVID-19 cases, including most of which it says are imported infections in recent arrivals from abroad and two "native" cases in the southern province of Guangdong. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Trump announced at the White House coronavirus news briefing in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the WHO, saying it had put "political correctness over lifesaving measures." The United States is the WHO's largest single donor, and the State Department had previously planned to provide the agency $893 million in the current two-year funding period.

Senior administrations separately tell Fox News the rollout of the president’s “blueprint for reopening the U.S. economy” will happen Thursday afternoon, first for governors and then briefed to the press.

Meanwhile, Trump's own handling of the crisis has come into focus. On January 24, for example, Trump tweeted in praise of China’s “transparency" on coronavirus.

Though they were not speaking for the president, the sources ventured an explanation, saying it was diplomatic talk to make the Chinese "feel good" while the investigation was ongoing, with trade and other talks happening simultaneously.

In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”

Fox News' Barnini Chakraborty and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
++++++++++++++++++++++

109K subscribers - Premiered Apr 7, 2020

As the world is gripped by the ongoing pandemic, many questions remain about the origin of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus—commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Join Epoch Times senior investigative reporter Joshua Philipp as he explores the known facts surrounding the CCP virus and the global pandemic it caused.

In his investigation, Philipp explores the scientific data, and interviews top scientists and national security experts. And while the mystery surrounding the virus's origin remains, much is learned about the CCP's cover-up that led to the pandemic and the threat it poses to the world. READ THE REST
++++++++++++++++++++
China decimated US intelligence apparatus years ago, posing steep challenge during coronavirus cover-up


April 17, 2020

A glaring spotlight has been cast on U.S. intelligence operations in China in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and how exactly the novel pathogen originated in the city of Wuhan.

While China's official narrative is that the disease was born out of a wet market in the city, sources within the U.S. intelligence community are now examining the theory that the origin of the pandemic stemmed from a laboratory — not out of malicious intent, but from an accident while undertaking dangerous virus research to keep up with the United States. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Fox News' Jennifer Griffin U.S. intel is investigating the origins.

Intelligence experts stress that the attempt to usurp the U.S. as the global superpower is at the heart of their brutal dismantling of intelligence operations within the country. But American intel has been working from a disadvantage ever since several operatives' covers were blown over the last decade, leading to a purge by Beijing.

Reports emerged in 2017 that China had dealt a huge blow to the CIA's infrastructure within its borders. From 2010 through to around 2013, according to The New York Times, more than a dozen carefully curated assets in China were jailed or killed — with one even brazenly shot outside a government building as a perceived warning to others.

"It was devastating. The setback probably delayed the U.S. national security community from fully comprehending Beijing's move toward a more oppressive and assertive policy," Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific security chair for the Hudson Institute, told Fox News. "The gap in a sharper understanding of the Chinese Communist Party's true aims bought it more time to enact greater information suppression at home and more aggressive political warfare abroad."

The moves were deemed one of the worst in the agency's modern history.
"We didn't lose just a single spy. We lost entire networks," said Dean Cheng, senior research fellow and lead China expert at the Heritage Foundation. "That means that many of the various people who worked for us were all rolled up, which, in turn, would have devastated the credibility of our own agency and affected our ability to recruit new people."

According to multiple former intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation, the blow was felt hard — and some have questioned whether U.S. intelligence in the country ever adequately recovered.

"This was a well-planned, multifaceted strategic operation. First, blind your adversary. In this case, collect intelligence by hacking or other means to identify operatives. Then, remove those human assets or sources by imprisonment or execution. This is far more subtle than blinding our satellites, which would be an overt act of war," explained one former U.S. Army intelligence leader. "The best intelligence is Human Intelligence, HUMINT, which comes from recruited assets or 'agents.' That is confirmed or denied by other collection such as IMINT (imagery) or SIGINT (signals collection)."

The steady exodus of sources, coupled with the drying up of information from inside, subsequently spurred a joint FBI/CIA investigation code-named Honey Badger, which revealed the devastating fallout. It remains unclear if the breach was ignited by a mole – or moles – within the CIA's China scope, or by a high-level hacking that compromised insiders — or a combination of both.

"Our intelligence gaps in China are large enough to drive a truck through, especially when it involves the biggest challenge in intel collection: elite politics," noted Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at the Asia Society who is writing a book on Beijing's influence in America. "What's the relationship between Chairman Xi (Jinping) and the men who run the Central Military Commission, the body that oversees the Party's military? How much control does Xi have over the Politburo Standing Committee, whose seven members, Xi included, run China? We know astonishingly little about the personalities and power politics at the top of the Party, and I assume that the intel community faces similar limitations."


The yearslong onslaught has subsequently made it "extremely challenging to recruit assets with access and placement, especially at the Wuhan Lab," one former defense intelligence analyst stressed.

"In a situation like this, it takes a significant amount of time to first figure out what the source of exposure was, so you do not keep falling prey to the same vulnerability, and then begin the spy recruitment and onboarding cycle," observed Greg Barbaccia, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst and current expert in counterintelligence and insider threat.

And the recovery process is a protracted one.

"China remains one of the largest focuses of United States intelligence collection efforts and is only ramping up," Barbaccia said. "The biggest challenge is that the Ministry of State Security (MSS) has a world-class counterintelligence and counterespionage operation. They have access to all the information that flows in, out, and through the country, as well as all possible information on their population. This makes for a supremely difficult environment to run a human source, or employ a technical collection capability."

Yet information collection in China has been hampered in other ways, too.

"It is not just intelligence networks that provide critical support to national security," stressed David Maxwell, a China and military expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). "Restrictions on our diplomatic activities and the ability for our diplomats to engage people throughout China hinders our ability to develop situational understanding.

"This includes all the intelligence disciplines, human and technical (to include medical intelligence reporting), as well as diplomatic reporting, law enforcement reporting, and media reporting."

Dan Hoffman, a retired CIA station chief, underscored that there are no "denied areas of operation" within the U.S. intel umbrella and that Americans continue to operate everywhere, utilizing a combination of human sources, overhead reconnaissance – such as drones – open-source data and a top-notch teams of analysts.

According to a Washington Post report earlier this month, State Department officials visited the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory – one of several research facilities in the area – in 2018 and issued a cable back home warning of steep safety concerns.

John Wood, a defense expert who specializes in asymmetric warfare, stressed that the U.S. capabilities are the most advanced and extensive in the world.

"Consequently, the battle for AI supremacy between USA and China is critical to who will prevail over the long term," he said. "The issue is not the collection of data, but the timely and accurate understanding and execution upon the data's findings, and at that, we remain the best in the world."

Nonetheless, U.S. officials remain confident that the exact origins of the virus that has claimed the lives of more than 143,000 people worldwide will eventually be brought to light.

"Over the last few years, the Trump administration has made it a priority to dismantle China's penetration of our universities, research labs, corporations and Intelligence agencies," said one former Pentagon intelligence official. "It will take years to repair the damage and try to get ahead.

"Until then, we will remain hampered, but we always find a way through other avenues. It's only a matter of time before we have a reasonable understanding of the origins of corona," the official concluded.

Hollie McKay has a been a Fox News Digital staff reporter since 2007. She has extensively reported from war zones including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, and Latin America investigates global conflicts, war crimes and terrorism around the world. Follow her on Twitter
++++++++++++++++++++
Coronavirus: WHO Director Has a Long History of Cover-Ups


By Soeren Kern
April 18, 2020 at 5:00 am

o   "WHO officials have complained privately that Ethiopian officials are not telling the truth about these outbreaks. Testing for Vibrio cholerae bacteria, which cause cholera, is simple and takes less than two days.... United Nations officials said more aid could have been delivered to Ethiopia had the truth been told." — The New York Times, May 13, 2017.

o   Tedros dismissed the accusations against him by playing the race card. He said that criticism of him stemmed from a "typical colonial mind-set aimed at... discrediting a candidate from a developing country." — The New York Times, May 13, 2017.

o   "By yielding to the Khartoum's regime's threat, you are complicit in the failure to respond to a disease that currently threatens many hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians — and is currently active in twelve Sudanese states." — Open letter to Tedros from a group of American physicians accusing him of failing to investigate outbreaks of cholera in Sudan, September 11, 2017.

o   A day after U.S. President Donald Trump accused the WHO of being "very China-centric," and threatened to cut funding to WHO, Tedros responded: "Please quarantine politicizing COVID. We will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave." Tedros also said that criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic was motivated by racism.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, faces increased scrutiny over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Tedros has a long history of covering up epidemics and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, where he served as the minister of health and minister of foreign affairs. In that role, he oversaw a massive expansion of China's role in Ethiopia. China is Ethiopia's biggest foreign investor, largest trading partner and largest lender. Pictured: Tedros (left) meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on January 28, 2020. (Photo by Naohiko Hatta - Pool/Getty Images)

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is facing increased scrutiny over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than two million people around the world and killed at least 150,000.

Adhanom, who goes by the name Tedros, is an Ethiopian microbiologist who, with the help of China, began a five-year term as head of the WHO in July 2017. He has been accused of misrepresenting the severity and spread of the coronavirus in an attempt to pander to China.

The historical record shows that Tedros, the first African and the first non-physician to lead the WHO, has a long history of covering up epidemics and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, where he served as the minister of health and minister of foreign affairs.

In May 2017, when Tedros emerged as the top candidate in a three-way race to lead the WHO, the New York Times reported accusations that Tedros covered up three cholera epidemics in Ethiopia when he was the country's health minister between 2005 and 2012.

Tedros claimed that cholera outbreaks occurring in 2006, 2009 and 2011 were only "acute watery diarrhea" — an infectious disease known in the rest of the world as cholera. He said that the outbreaks were limited to remote areas of the country where laboratory testing was "difficult" and that international concerns were overblown. The epidemics eventually reached neighboring countries including Kenya, Somalia and Sudan. The New York Times explained:

"WHO officials have complained privately that Ethiopian officials are not telling the truth about these outbreaks. Testing for Vibrio cholerae bacteria, which cause cholera, is simple and takes less than two days.

"During earlier outbreaks, various news organizations, including The Guardian and The Washington Post, reported that unnamed Ethiopian officials were pressuring aid agencies to avoid using the word 'cholera' and not to report the number of people affected.

"But cholera bacteria were found in stool samples tested by outside experts. As soon as severe diarrhea began appearing in neighboring countries, the cause was identified as cholera.

"United Nations officials said more aid could have been delivered to Ethiopia had the truth been told."

The director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Lawrence O. Gostin, said that he called attention to Ethiopia's long history of denying cholera outbreaks because he believed the WHO "might lose its legitimacy" if it is run by a representative of a country that itself covers up epidemics.

"Dr. Tedros is a compassionate and highly competent public health official," Gostin told the New York Times. "But he had a duty to speak truth to power and to honestly identify and report verified cholera outbreaks over an extended period."

Tedros dismissed the accusations against him by playing the race card. He said that criticism of him stemmed from a "typical colonial mind-set aimed at... discrediting a candidate from a developing country."

The Guardian reported that the Ethiopian government has been reluctant to acknowledge the cholera outbreaks "for fear of damaging the economy." The Washington Post explained that Ethiopian authorities have a propensity for refusing to call bad news by its real name:

"Acute watery diarrhea [AWD] is a potentially fatal condition caused by water infected with the Vibrio cholera bacterium. Everywhere else in the world it is simply called cholera.

"But not in Ethiopia, where international humanitarian organizations privately admit that they are only allowed to call it AWD and are not permitted to publish the number of people affected.

"The government is apparently concerned about the international impact if news of a significant cholera outbreak were to get out, even though the disease is not unusual in East Africa.

"This means that, hypothetically, when refugees from South Sudan with cholera flee across the border into Ethiopia, they suddenly have AWD instead."

In a similar manner, when international aid groups in 2016 sounded alarm bells over the lack of rain, Ethiopian authorities, including Tedros, were divided over whether they should call it a drought. The Post reported:

"The narrative for Ethiopia in 2015 was a successful nation with double-digit growth, and the government did not want to bring back memories of the 1980s drought that killed hundreds of thousands and left the country forever associated with famine.

"'We don't use the f-word,' explained an aid worker... referring to famine."

Similar allegations of cover-up were reported while Tedros was Ethiopia's foreign minister between 2012 and 2016. In October 2016, for instance, Tedros wrote in a blog post that he opposed efforts by Human Rights Watch to force Ethiopia to accept an international investigation into the way the government responded to anti-government protests.

The protests began in November 2015 due to public anger over the government's heavy-handedness. They escalated in October 2016, when government security forces fired on a large crowd of festival-goers. The protests, which eventually spread across the country, left hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands detained.

Tedros's cover-ups continued after he became the director general of the WHO. In September 2017, a group of American physicians, in an open letter addressed to Tedros, accused him of failing to investigate outbreaks of cholera in Sudan:

"The mandate of the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) could hardly be clearer; in the words of the Organization: 'Our primary role is to direct and coordinate international health within the United Nations' system. Our goal is to build a better, healthier future for people all over the world. Working through offices in more than 150 countries, WHO staff work side by side with governments and other partners to ensure the highest attainable level of health for all people.'

"And yet this impressive mandate is daily made a mockery of by WHO's refusal to refer to the cholera epidemic raging in Sudan by name. Neither your organization nor the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs will refer explicitly to the fact that what you continue to call "Acute Watery Diarrhea" is in fact cholera, Vibrio cholera — a fact established by laboratory tests in Sudan....

"To be sure, the Khartoum regime has made clear that it will punish Sudanese journalists and health officials who dare to use the word 'cholera,' and no doubt threats have been issued to WHO, demanding that you be complicit in silence about this terrible disease. The regime's motive is transparently a desire that the 'reputation' of Sudan not be compromised by associations the regime perceives would inhere in any accurate designation of a disease that is clearly out of control. But the effect of WHO's silence is to ensure that Sudan has not received international medical resources necessary to combat cholera — preeminently massive supplies of re-hydration equipment; medical epidemiologists as well as specialists in treating cholera epidemics; and water/sanitation equipment and engineers.

"By yielding to the Khartoum's regime's threat, you are complicit in the failure to respond to a disease that currently threatens many hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians — and is currently active in twelve Sudanese states....

"Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan is reprehensible. Your failure to transport stool samples from victims in Sudan to Geneva for official confirmation of cholera makes you fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that continues to spread, out of control, with daily new reports confirming that this is indeed a cholera epidemic.

"The inevitable history that will be written of this epidemic will surely cast you in an unforgiving light."

In October 2017, Tedros appointed the late Robert Mugabe, the authoritarian leader of Zimbabwe, as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Tedros had praised Zimbabwe as "a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the center of its policies to provide health care to all." After global outrage, Tedros rescinded the appointment.

Writing for the Sunday Times, Rebecca Myers wrote:

"Diplomats said [Mugabe's] appointment was a political payoff from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — the WHO's first African director-general — to China, a long-time ally of Mugabe, and the 50 or so African states that helped to secure Tedros's election earlier this year...

"Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for the Ethiopian, using Beijing's financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries."

Columnist Frida Ghitis, writing for The Washington Post added:

"The WHO director's decision to honor the dictator is a misjudgment of breathtaking proportions. The stain it has left on the WHO will not be easily cleansed. We must find out what was behind it. If an investigation proves that giving this prestigious appointment to a brutal human rights violator was the result of corruption, Tedros must leave. In fact, Tedros's tenure should already be regarded as probationary, and his judgment in question....

"Some speculate that Tedros's decision to appoint Mugabe was a pay-off to China, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros's victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China's muscle in the world."

In July 2018, China Global Television Network (CGTN), a state-owned media outlet, reported that Tedros had met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing. It was Tedros's second visit to China since he took over as the director general of WHO. CGTN stated:

"The Chinese state councilor [Wang Yi] went on to say that healthcare was an important part of global governance and China's national development strategy. He said Beijing was willing to deepen cooperation with the WHO under a number of initiatives, such as their joint 'Health Silk Road' project, various China-Africa health development plans, as well as the organization's five-year action plan for health, employment and inclusive economic growth.

"Dr. Tedros welcomed Wang's comments, saying their enhanced cooperation would improve health standards in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative."

As Ethiopia's foreign minister, Tedros, an executive member of the Marxist-Leninist Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), oversaw a massive expansion of China's role in Ethiopia. China is Ethiopia's biggest foreign investor, its largest trading partner and also its largest lender.

Writing for Politico, Simon Marks explained:

"Over the course of the last decade, Ethiopia has become increasingly dependent on Chinese investment.

"The Export-Import Bank of China put up $2.9 billion of the $3.4 billion railway project connecting Ethiopia to Djibouti, providing the landlocked country access to ports. Chinese funds were also instrumental in the construction of Ethiopia's first six-lane highway — an $800 million project — the metro system, and several skyscrapers dotting Addis Ababa's skyline.

"Beijing also accounts for nearly half of Ethiopia's external debt and has lent at least $13.7 billion to Ethiopia between 2000 and 2018, data compiled by John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies shows."

Ethiopia is now ensnared in a debt trap that leaves the country vulnerable to pressure from Beijing.

On April 15, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced that he will withhold funding to the WHO while his administration reviews the group's "mismanagement, cover-ups, and failures" related to the pandemic. The United States is the WHO's largest donor, providing approximately $900 million for the two-year budget cycle of 2018 and 2019.

In a statement, the White House said that the WHO "has longstanding structural issues that must be addressed before the organization can be trusted again." It added that the WHO was "vulnerable to misinformation and political influence" and that measures were needed to "counter China's outsized influence on the organization."

That same day, members of the U.S. Senate demanded that the WHO provide information, records and documents regarding the origins of the coronavirus as part of a larger investigation into the global response to the pandemic.

In a letter to Tedros, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson and other Republican Senators requested a sweeping list of materials regarding what they called "WHO's failed and delayed response to the Coronavirus."

Meanwhile, an online petition calling for Tedros's immediate resignation neared one million signatures. The petition, posted on the Change.org website, states: "We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his role as WHO Director General."

Timeline of WHO's Efforts to Pander to China

Several media outlets have published timelines of Chinese efforts to conceal the extent of the coronavirus from the rest of the world (here, here, here and here). Following is an abbreviated timeline of Tedros's complicity with China:

o   December 30. Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old doctor, sounded the alarm about a new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Li sent a message to a group of other doctors warning that seven patients had been quarantined at Wuhan Central Hospital after coming down with a respiratory illness that seemed like the SARS coronavirus. The police in Wuhan subsequently reprimanded and silenced Li, requiring him to sign a letter acknowledging that he was making "false comments."

o   December 31. Taiwan contacted the WHO after seeing Li's reports of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus in Wuhan, but the WHO kept it from the public.

o   January 1. An employee of a genomics company in Wuhan 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 to destroy all existing samples.

o   January 3. China's National Health Commission (NHC), 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.

o   January 9. China identified the new coronavirus as the cause of a mystery disease in Wuhan.

o   January 14. WHO tweeted: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus." A day earlier, WHO had reported the first case outside of China — in Thailand.

o   January 20. China confirmed human-to-human transmission of new coronavirus.

o   January 21. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first case of coronavirus in the United States in the state of Washington. The patient had recently returned from Wuhan.

o   January 23. Wuhan, a city of 11 million, was placed in lockdown. China closed all internal transit from Wuhan to other cities in China, but did nothing to stop international flights.

o   January 28. Tedros praised China's "transparency" regarding the virus.

o   January 30. Tedros visited China and praised the country's leadership for "setting a new standard for outbreak response." He also declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

o   January 31. The Trump Administration announced travel restrictions to and from China, effective February 2.

o   February 4. Tedros rebuked President Trump's travel restrictions, saying that they "can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."

o   February 7. Doctor Li Wenliang, the coronavirus whistleblower, died in Wuhan after being infected with the virus. His death sparked an outpouring of grief and anger online in China.

o   February 14. Tedros said that WHO was "seeking clarity on how clinical diagnoses are being made so that other respiratory illnesses, including influenza, are not getting mixed into the COVID-19 data." He also warned against criticizing China: "This is the time for solidarity, not stigma."

o   February 28. WHO, in a 40-page report, praised China's response to COVID-19: "China's bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic."

o   March 11. Tedros finally declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic: "We expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher."

o   March 18. An executive director of WHO, Mike Ryan, criticized President Trump: "We need to be careful of the language we use lest it lead to profiling. The pandemic flu of 2009 started in North America, and we didn't call it the North American flu. This is a time to move forward and fight the virus together. Viruses know no borders and they don't care about your ethnicity, the color of your skin or how much money you have in the bank."

o   March 20. Tedros said that Wuhan reported no new cases of coronavirus.

o   March 29. Ai Fen, a Wuhan doctor who was among the first to alert other medics to the spread of coronavirus, disappeared amid concerns that she had been detained by Chinese authorities. Her whereabouts are unknown.

o   April 8. A day after U.S. President Donald Trump accused the WHO of being "very China-centric," and threatened to cut funding to WHO, Tedros responded: "Please quarantine politicizing COVID. We will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave." Tedros also said that criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic was motivated by racism.

o   April 16. A second wave of Covid-19 erupted in the northern Chinese city of Harbin.

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Follow Soeren Kern on Twitter and Facebook
+++++++++++++++++
PART TWO TOMORROW

____________________
China, W.H.O. & UN Coverup Part One:
I Think There is a Bioweapon Issue Elitists Don’t Want to Know About

Edited by John R. Houk
Posted April 18, 2020
_____________________
Sources believe coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan lab as part of China's efforts to compete with US

AND

China decimated US intelligence apparatus years ago, posing steep challenge during coronavirus cover-up

©2020 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
_________________________
Coronavirus: WHO Director Has a Long History of Cover-Ups

© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute. [Blog Editor: Gatestone Institute permission was not attained. If asked the GI portion of this post will be removed.]


No comments:

Post a Comment