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With yet more data proving Sweden’s no-lockdown policy worked, an interesting article by Michael Thau has noted that China and a gullible (or worse) U.S. media pushed the West to lockdown in early 2020.
Thau constructed a timeline that showed how China worked to publicise its “success” in stemming COVID via draconian measures.
And stateside the MSM ate it up. For instance, on 10 March 2020, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal all featured headline stories claiming China’s lockdowns worked. The barrage of simultaneous coverage for a story that wasn’t based on a sudden event carried the smell of propaganda all over it.
In the CNN coverage, the chairman of China’s Communist Party in Wuhan, Wang Zhonglin, complained that the CCP wasn’t getting enough credit for limiting COVID. The American news network dutifully amplified that deceptive narrative:
“Hundreds of millions of people have also been placed under lockdown, while others have been unable to return to work due to travel restrictions. Those containment efforts do appear to have been successful, with the number of new cases slowing to a trickle in recent weeks, as new outbreaks continued to emerge worldwide.”
The other news outlets gave similar glowing coverage. For instance, the Journal’s story was titled “How China Slowed Coronavirus: Lockdowns, Surveillance, Enforcers.” It gave largely uncritical coverage of CCP’s narrative that extreme lockdowns had led to unbridled success against COVID.
Over the next days and weeks, U.S. media went into a full court press of the Trump administration, proselytising for lockdowns. But the “China success” narrative wasn’t limited to the media. Federal authorities also chimed in with specious claims.
For instance, on 11 March, CDC director Robert Redfield testified to Congress. When a questioner, Bob Briggs Rep. (R-OH) suggested China’s data about the outbreak might be suspect, Redfield discounted the idea, asserting: “Clearly China has got control of their outbreak. They had 20 cases in the last 24 hours.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci was also on hand that day, peddling fear porn. Specifically, he cited China’s unverified data attesting that that COVID-19 was “at least 10 times more lethal than the flu.”
As Thau emphasized in his article, Fauci’s quote led to literally hundreds of media stories that were crucial in creating a narrative that panicked the entire country. Within weeks, the nation was in “15 days to flatten the curve” mode, and embarked on a nightmare that has yet to really relent.
There’s more to the story here.