The only things that matter to Trump are his personal money and his personal ratings. After running his ratings into the ground with those unhinged daily White House rallies, and unable to hold his regular unhinged rallies, Trump is now searching for scapegoats and excuses.
For reasons that mostly escape me, all of Trumpty Dumpty’s horses and all of his men have decided the best option now is to blame it all on the Chinese.
This is absurdity at ever level, and we need to attack unmercifully that latest attempt at gaslighting.
The Claim
It is all so random as to defy rational explanation. But it seems the essence of this latest gaslighting binge is “China created the virus, then they covered it up, and as a result Trump was left with an impossible situation. Under the circumstances, Trump has been brilliant once again.”
The Outbreak
The problem is that is little or no evidence that the Chinese did anything wrong beyond the normal bureaucratic inefficiencies that are always present. The crux of this gaslighting is “What did the Chinese know and when did they know it?” Let’s look at the time line.
There is a whole lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on here. The implication of the gaslighting is that the Chinese did a big cover-up for 2 months (mid-November to mid-January). We cannot know exactly what was known by whom in the early days. Let’s begin with what we do know.
Although the Chinese were aware that “something” unusual had happened late in 2019, the signs of an epidemic did not appear in China until around January 23, 2020 according to the data from Worldometers.info.
The epidemic moved quickly, peaking at about 4000 new cases a day on Feb 4, 2020. The peak in daily deaths occurred about 10 days later on February 15.
This time line is important. Before January 23, the Chinese were dealing with a small number of cases that would have appeared anecdotal. Clearly by January 23, they were well aware this was an epidemic of human-to-human transmission.
We get a very clear picture of China’s state of mind / level of understanding by looking at when and how they reacted. It was, not coincidentally, January 23 when China imposed the lock-down of Wuhan. From that action, we can very reliably conclude:
The knowledge of a growing epidemic was taking shape in the days before January 23. The full import of this knowledge did not reach the highest levels of Chinese government until shortly before January 23.The behavior of the Chinese after that is completely consistent with them trying to act responsibly in a fast-changing crisis. On Feb 12, 2020, we see a spike of 14,000 “new“ cases. These were obviously not new cases. They were cases that China had gone back to research and include in their totals. That tells us that they certainly did not have the full picture on January 23, and they were eager to present their information transparently — far more transparently than anything Trump was inclined to do in the same period (or any period for that matter.)
To complete that part of the timeline, China lifted the Wuhan lock-down once the deaths reached single digits per day (announced Mar24, 2020 and implemented Apr 7 2020.) Further, during this time period, China offered assistance to other nations (including the US) as they had passed the worst of their own crisis.
There is absolutely nothing even slightly sinister in any of that. On the contrary, from Jan 23, 2020 forward, China’s behavior was exemplary. That leaves us with the question of what happened before January 23.
What Happened Before Jan 23?
The crux of the new Trump gaslighting is a tweet sent by the World Health Organization saying “… Chinese Authorities have found no clear evidence of Human to Human transmission ...”
Fox and others are frothing at the mouth about this single tweet. This seems to be their entire grievance. But look at the date. That was 10 days before the Chinese began to deal with this as an epidemic and imposed the Draconian measures in Wuhan — measures which limited their deaths to under 5000 despite this being the epicenter of the outbreak and in a highly populated area.
So what is the import of the tweet? All the tweet proves is that 10 days before China officially acknowledged the epidemic and took decisive action, there were discussions between somebody in China and somebody at the WHO saying there wasn’t yet clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. So what?
What does it all mean?
Is it likely that “somebody” had a pretty good idea that this was passed human-to-human in November and December? Probably. Did they have “you bet your career” level of evidence? We don’t know, and really it doesn’t matter. We know that BOTH the WHO and China since January 23 have been at the forefront of trying to help the world cope with this disaster. There simply is no good motive for a cover-up, other than the usual bureaucratic CYA that happens within all large organizations.
Finally, none of this changes the fact that by January 23, 2020, the whole world except for Donald J. Trump knew this was an epidemic and soon would recognize it as a pandemic. Meanwhile, back at the White House, on March 10, 2020 Trump was still saying things like “...it's over 100 different countries. And it hit the world. And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away ..” www.cbsnews.com/... But it didn’t go away. And Trump was not prepared. And he didn’t do a great job with it. And nearly 60,000 Americans are dead, with thousands more dying every day.
That’s the issue. Leave the Chinese out if it.