US response to COVID-19 shrouded in secrecy

By Dennis Etler

Conspiracy theories about the origin of COVID-19 have gained currency among many people who are critics of US imperialism and its crimes against humanity. The circumstances surrounding its appearance in Wuhan, China, a major Chinese transportation hub right before the advent of the mass migration associated with the Chinese Spring Festival when hundreds of millions of Chinese travel home to celebrate the New Year naturally led many to think it was a premeditated bio-warfare attack against China.

The evidence for that supposition is suspect and many theories of that sort have been debunked. But the ultimate source of the coronavirus is still unresolved. There is genetic evidence that suggests that the variant of the virus found in Wuhan and the rest of China was not the ancestral form. More ancestral variants have been found outside of China, including the US.

Could US tourists have introduced the virus to Wuhan?

New evidence seems to support that possibility. The US has been very secretive about how it plans to combat the novel coronavirus. Certain meetings in the White House have been deemed top secret and medical professionals who lacked the necessary security clearance were forbidden from attending them. This type of secrecy is unprecedented. The reason given was that the discussions revolved around China. We will never know what was actually being discussed and planned in those meetings.

In addition, it's come to light that the US refused to accept test kits from the World Health Organization offered to countries globally in mid-February, preventing the US from beginning to test for the virus as did many other countries. The excuse was that the US was developing its own kits, but those never materialized.

Now it's come to light that a doctor in a medical lab in the state of Washington noticed patients who she suspected were COVID-19 victims, but she was told to cease and desist from testing for it. As a result, the virus spread in Washington state and led to over thirty deaths.

Still, today testing has been minimal allowing the virus to run rampant and spread across the nation. If testing which is essential to mitigate the spread of the virus is not quickly initiated the Congressional doctor says 70-150 million Americans may contract COVID-19 leading to hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths.

The most recent revelation is that many deaths attributed to the flu have been posthumously identified as resulting from COVID-19. It is, therefore, possible that the novel coronavirus has been lurking in the US for some time and is more widespread than thought.

It can be asked, is the lack of testing premeditated? Do those around Trump want to see the spread of COVID-19 in the US? Already the NBA season has been canceled. Could Trump and his minions want to use an uncontrolled epidemic to postpone the upcoming election which they may feel is unwinnable. There are now many more questions than answers.

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Dennis Etler is an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs. He’s a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. He recorded this article for Press TV website.

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