Communist covid lockdowns and labs

Workers in a Foxconn facility in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou appear to have leaving the facility to avoid COVID-19 curbs, with many traveling by foot days after an unknown number of factory workers were quarantined in the facility following a virus outbreak (Photo: AP)
Workers in a Foxconn facility in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou appear to have leaving the facility to avoid COVID-19 curbs, with many traveling by foot days after an unknown number of factory workers were quarantined in the facility following a virus outbreak (Photo: AP)

Summary

Chinese workers flee a factory while new questions arise about virus origins

Voters in the United States now have a chance to punish politicians who endorsed crippling lockdowns during the Covid panic. Meanwhile in China, citizens who are not allowed to choose their leaders seem to be taking extreme measures to escape continuing lockdowns. And now Chinese citizens may have even more reason to blame the communist regime for its actions at the dawn of the Covid era.

Martin Quin Pollard and Bernard Orr report for Reuters on the workers at a Chinese plant that does manufacturing for Apple Inc.:

In Zhengzhou, a Foxconn plant that makes iPhones and employs about 200,000 people has been rocked by discontent over stringent measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, with numerous staff fleeing the facility, prompting nearby cities to draw up plans to isolate migrant workers returning to their home towns.

“There were so many people on the road, as if we were escaping from a famine," said a Foxconn worker in his 30s surnamed Yuan, who said he scaled fences in order to leave the plant and return to his central China home town of Hebi.

The Reuters team also reports on an amusement park lockdown elsewhere in China:

In Shanghai, the city’s Disney Resort abruptly suspended operations on Monday to comply with COVID-19 prevention measures, with all visitors at the time of the announcement required to remain until they return a negative test.

Videos circulating on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, which could not be independently verified, showed people rushing to the park’s gates, which were already locked. Videos of people fleeing malls and office buildings for fear of being locked-in have become commonplace on Chinese social media this year.

Over at the South China Morning Post, a report from Phoebe Zhang suggests that believe it or not the Zhengzhou workers are actually more scared of Covid than the lockdown, due to misleading reports from the regime:

The exodus of workers from the Foxconn Technology Group plant, the world’s largest iPhone assembly line, in Zhengzhou in the past few days reflects the fear that ordinary Chinese still hold for the disease almost three years into the Covid-19 pandemic.

It also underlines the Chinese government’s mounting challenge – to change narrative and accurately inform the public of the nature and consequences of the disease – if Beijing chooses to pivot from its zero-Covid policy, experts say.

“[The authorities] created fear and portrayed [the virus] as a monster, something which is very scary to the general public. For three years they have not corrected the wrong image of these worries, that’s the root cause of these problems," said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “If one day China heads toward reopening, this has to be changed."

Jin said the stringent controls imposed in China created a stigma not only for people suffering from Covid-19 but also for people who might bring viruses in, making them an enemy in the community.

Of course the virus is a monster for some while posing little risk to others. The world-wide failure of public health authorities to focus on the vulnerable while discouraging broad lockdowns will haunt people around the world for years.

Speaking of the Covid monster, there remains the question of its origins. The Journal’s Warren Strobel reported on Thursday:

The Covid-19 pandemic that has killed millions worldwide “was most likely the result of a research-related incident" in China, and not natural transmission of a virus from animal to human, a new report by Republicans on the Senate health committee concludes.

The study cites details about the early spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid; the fact that no animal host has been identified nearly three years into the pandemic; and troubled biosafety procedures at labs in the Chinese city of Wuhan to buttress its conclusion.

The 35-page report by Republican committee staff acknowledges that definitive conclusions about the pandemic’s origins are impossible without more evidence. But, it says: “The hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy."

... The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2021 that, according to U.S. intelligence reporting, in November 2019 three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough to require hospital treatment, fueling calls for increased examination of the lab-leak theory.

Then on Friday Katherine Eban of Vanity Fair and Jeff Kao of ProPublica reported on the work of Toy Reid, a veteran U.S. diplomat who helped the Senate staff interpret “a notoriously opaque language: the ‘party speak’ practiced by Chinese Communist officials." Ms. Eban and Mr. Kao report:

As part of his investigation, Reid took an approach that was artful in its simplicity. Working out of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, and a family home in Florida, he used a virtual private network, or VPN, to access dispatches archived on the website of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). These dispatches remain on the internet, but their meaning can’t be unlocked by just anyone.

... in the fall of 2019, the dispatches took a darker turn. They referenced inhumane working conditions and “hidden safety dangers." On November 12 of that year, a dispatch by party branch members at the [biosafety level-4] laboratory appeared to reference a biosecurity breach.

once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace. Although [we have] various preventive and protective measures, it is nevertheless necessary for lab personnel to operate very cautiously to avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers. Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4] Party Branch have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.

Reid studied the words intently. Was this a reference to past accidents? An admission of an ongoing crisis? A general recognition of hazardous practices? Or all of the above? Reading between the lines, Reid concluded, “They are almost saying they know Beijing is about to come down and scream at them."

Ms. Eban and Mr. Kao continue:

Vanity Fair and ProPublica downloaded more than 500 documents from the WIV website, including party branch dispatches from 2017 to the present. To assess Reid’s interpretation, we sent key documents to experts on [Chinese Communist Party] communications. They told us that the WIV dispatches did indeed signal that the institute faced an acute safety emergency in November 2019; that officials at the highest levels of the Chinese government weighed in; and that urgent action was taken in an effort to address ongoing safety issues. The documents do not make clear who was responsible for the crisis, which laboratory it affected specifically, or what the exact nature of the biosafety emergency was.

What could it have been?

James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival."

 

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