Senator Criticizes China Over Coronavirus ‘Ineptitude And Deceptions’

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) published an op-ed for Fox News on Friday heavily criticizing China over the communist nation’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which originated in the city of Wuhan. 

e coronavirus “appears to have quickly evolved so it can be transmitted from human to human, making it a highly infectious pathogen,” allowing more than 1 million people to become infected around the world, killing more than 50,000, and bringing “the global economy to a halt.” As Gardner explained, the Chinese Communist Party is to blame for the spread the virus:

Doctors in Wuhan began sounding the alarm early on, as patients with serious symptoms began filling Chinese hospitals in December. Dr. Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan, began alerting his former medical school classmates in December about COVID-19 and its similarities to another disease that caused a global crisis in 2002: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Instead of heeding these warnings from experts on the frontlines, the Chinese Communist Party concealed information and punished Dr. Li. He was reprimanded by Communist Party officials at his hospital and forced to write a letter criticizing himself for leaking information.

On Jan. 1, before much of the world would learn of COVID-19, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau summoned eight doctors to publicly admonish them for spreading “rumors” surrounding the new disease. 

As The Daily Wire previously reported, China spent January trying to suppress information about the virus. The communist nation ordered health care facilities that had pneumonia samples to move them to designated testing facilities or destroy them. They were also issued a gag order.

It wasn’t until mid-January that American media outlets started reporting on the cluster of pneumonia cases in China. Around the same time, Chinese state-controlled media outlets reported the outbreak was “under control” and downplayed the virus as mild. 

Throughout January, China continued to suppress doctors who spoke out about the virus and ordered journalists to delete photos and footage taken from a hospital in Wuhan. The nation also severely downplayed the risk of human-to-human contact.

“Even now, the Chinese Communist Party refuses to admit fault and instead proclaims itself the model of how to contain the virus. Chinese leaders have spread venomous propaganda that COVID-19 originated in the U.S. – even though the vast majority of the evidence indicates the disease originated in a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan,” Gardner wrote. “We have no reason to believe the number of COVID-19 cases reported by China is accurate. Now the health of every individual and economy around the world is threatened because of Chinese attempts to hide the truth.” 

The U.S. has nearly 250,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and nearly 6,000 deaths as a result.

Gardner did provide hope for those struggling with the economic shutdown that has occurred in the wake of the outbreak.

“We will come together in this time of need and we will persevere through this crisis as we have many others, but we would have never faced this if not for the Chinese Communist Party’s ineptitude and deceptions,” Gardner concluded.

It should be noted that Gardner is seeking re-election in November.