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Monday, March 30, 2020

British Scientific Advisors: China Covering Up Full Extent Of Virus, Could Be 40 Times Worse Than Reported

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Scientific advisors to the British government have reportedly told the Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China is covering up the full extent of the coronavirus pandemic, and that things could be 40 times worse there than the communist state admits.

The Daily Mail reports that “Mr Johnson has been warned by scientific advisers that China’s officially declared statistics on the number of cases of coronavirus could be ‘downplayed by a factor of 15 to 40 times.’”

“There is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable,” an anonymous government source told The Mail.

“They [the Chinese government] know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it they are spreading lies.”

“It is going to be back to the diplomatic drawing board after this. Rethink is an understatement,” another government source said, with a further source adding that “There has to be a reckoning when this is over.”

The British government also “believes China is seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with ‘predatory offers of help’ [to] countries around the world.’” the report continues.

China has been delivering hundreds of thousands of testing kits and masks to nations around the world. One problem, however, is that they don’t work.

“In Spain, which currently has the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, the government purchased 640,000 rapid test kits from China and South Korea as it fights the pandemic,” The Free Beacon reported this week.

“Experts soon discovered, however, that the tests it purchased from Chinese company Bioeasy were only correctly identifying coronavirus cases 30 percent of the time, according to Spain’s El Pais.” the report notes.

“The Czech Republic also purchased 150,000 rapid test kits from China, and have likewise found problems.” the report continues, adding that “One doctor using the tests found that 80 percent of the kits were faulty and has reverted back to the conventional lab tests, which are significantly slower to process.”

Other countries such as Turkey and Georgia, as well as Holland have reported problems with the tests and the masks.

Ever since the outbreak began in December, it has been acknowledged that China has been lying about the true numbers.

A scientific study out of the University of Southampton in the UK found that had China acted sooner to combat their coronavirus, then the further spread could have been almost entirely avoided, and it would not have become a global pandemic.

It has become clear that the first cases of the Chinese virus were reported in mid-late November and early December, with scientists even estimating that the first jump of the virus from animals to humans probably occurred in October in the city of Wuhan.

Instead of acting immediately, the Chinese government waited until January 23rd before issuing quarantine orders to the 11 million people living in Wuhan.

The communist state was also actively working to suppress and punish doctors and scientists who tried to get warnings out, and lied to the world by claiming there was “no evidence” of human-to-human transmission.

As the communist state relaxed lockdown orders and opened up again this week, further questions were raised. It has been reported that thousands of urns at funeral homes in Wuhan, along with cremation statistics, do not tally with numbers of new cases and deaths being logged by the Chinese government.

China has a previous track record of lying about health crises. In 2003, The New York Times reported that China admitted to under-reporting the total number of SARS cases.

Trump's Approval Rating Soars As Media Seeks Blackout

Authored by James Fite via LibertyNation.com,

To the great consternation of many a left-leaning Americans, the latest polls from Gallup, Reuters/Ipsos, and Economist/YouGov all show the president’s job approval at 49%, crushing the dreams of those who hoped Coronavirus would finish what the Russia and Ukraine investigations never could.

Claims of misinformation aside, could this be the real reason biased news outlets have decided to stop covering Trump’s briefings?

No Love From The Left

Love him or hate him, there’s no denying the man is a ratings goldmine. According to Nielsen, 12.2 million people watched the president’s Monday briefing on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC – that’s up there with Monday Night Football. And that doesn’t cover the millions more who watched via ABC, CBS, NBC, or online streaming sites. But is that a good enough reason for media outlets to cover him? That’s the question The New York Times asked recently – a question answered by a Seattle area NPR affiliate, KUOW, with a resounding “no.”

The Washington radio station cited “a pattern of false or misleading information provided that cannot be fact checked in real time” as the reason to dump Trump. And they’re not alone. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple calls the decision wise, hinting at Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC that they could learn a thing or two if only they would pay attention. MSNBC and CNN, it seems, took the hint, as staffers of both networks have argued the case against airing Trump’s pressers, saying it likely amplifies the spread of misinformation. The president’s son, Eric, took to Twitter to bemoan the trend:

Buying Into The Bias

While the media outlets claim this is all in the name of furthering the truth, the timing is suspicious. The president – who, you may recall, is in the middle of a re-election campaign – is enjoying impressive approval numbers, including amongst many Democrats. He has garnered bipartisan support from both houses of Congress in his handling of the Coronavirus crisis. Even Joe Biden – the man who launched his presidential campaign from the platform that Trump is terrible for the country and must be removed at all costs – has said the president is doing a good job during the emergency and expressed hope for his continued success.

The track record of these outlets was already disappointing, thanks to their backfired attempts to bury Trump in negative coverage from the moment he first announced his candidacy. They couldn’t stop him from being elected, they couldn’t get him impeached, and now it seems they can’t get him blamed for COVID-19. How else can they prevent his re-election? Well, if nonstop negative coverage helped Trump win the White House in 2016, perhaps refusing to publish his pressers will cost him the win in 2020. These regular updates have been called by many in the media little more than Trump campaign events, so this move should come as no surprise.

What about the claim that the briefings are chock full of lies? The Associated Press took it upon themselves to fact check the president, to once and for all prove either that Trump is a liar or that the anti-Trump media is simply biased. You can likely guess how they ruled on this issue.

Thankfully, Liberty Nation’s newest contributor, Dave Patterson, decided to fact check the fact-checkers – and found them woefully wanting.

“AP introduced inaccuracy when the writers conflated two quotations, losing precision and making the single quotation wrong,” he wrote.

“Additionally, they did not put President Trump’s statements in context and created an inaccurate perception for the reader of what the president said.”

When Dave lined up what the AP attributed to the president beside what Trump actually said and the historical data that backs up his claim, the discrepancies – and the AP’s bias – became glaringly clear.

Why are these media outlets really pushing back against covering the president? Either to try to oust him from the White House in November or perhaps out of pure spite, it would seem.

Setting aside the increasingly common conflict of profits vs political bias, isn’t there a far more compelling reason for the press to report the actions and words of Donald Trump than whether or not they think he’s honest or what kind of ratings he can draw?

He is the president of the United States, and almost everything he says and does – certainly anything said during a media briefing – is a matter of national history.

What does it say about our press that they would refuse to report on the president during a time of national emergency?