Dan Scavino via Wikimedia Commons

The Chinese Communist Party propaganda machine (CCP) is in full swing trying to reset the Wuhan Coronavirus narrative to distance itself and China from their culpability in this pandemic. This is information warfare.

The CCP is using its influence over the World Health Organization (WHO) and it’s unwitting minions in the western press to attack President Trump for calling the pandemic a “Chinese Virus.”  However, as I explained in the World Tribune…

Well before President Trump ever referred to the “Chinese Wuhan Virus,” or the new coronavirus spread across American cities, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was already “weaponizing wokeness” in the West over anything it perceived as critical of China’s role in mishandling the epidemic.

But is clear the CCP is diverting attention and blame because, not only did this new coronavirus originate in China, it also became a global pandemic specifically because of the repressive Chinese authoritarian regime’s obtuse incompetence and secrecy.

Trump is right to focus on China’s culpability.

According to a recent study from the University of Southampton, the global outbreak of the coronavirus could have been dramatically reduced had China’s communist government acted sooner.

The first case of the virus was reportedly detected as early as mid-November of last year, but the CCP did not admit there was an outbreak, or human to human transmission until and quarantine Wuhan until Jan. 23.

That was seven weeks after the virus first appeared.

“As events in Italy, the United States, Spain, and France have shown, quite a lot can happen in a week, much less seven. By then, mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted that more than 5 million people had already left Wuhan,” writes Shadi Hamid in the Atlantic.

The research found “that if interventions in [China] could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively – significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease.”

Had the Communist Party leadership in China acted appropriately just three weeks earlier they could have almost eliminated the chance (95 percent) of this disease spreading globally and causing a pandemic. But they failed, miserably. And they failed due to the nature of their repressive regime.

The CCP is engaged in a full scale effort to reset the narrative away from China’s origin and culpability for this pandemic, and shift blame to the U.S. This is why  President Trump is right to keep the attention on the Chinese government as the cause of this global pandemic.

The U.S. in an information war with China. In addition to defeating this pandemic – that is a war the U.S. must win.

Paul Crespo is a defense and national security expert. He served as a Marine Corps officer and as a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at US embassies worldwide. He holds degrees from Georgetown, London, and Cambridge Universities. Paul is also CEO of SPECTRE Global Risk, a security advisory firm, and a Contributor to American Defense News.

https://americanactionnews.com/foreign-affairs/why-trump-is-right-to-blame-china-for-pandemic/