Chinese Foreign Ministry on U.S. Smears: ‘It’s Immoral and Inhumane To Politicize Public Health’

April 2, 2020 (EIRNS)—In the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s regular daily briefing today, spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded sharply, but methodically, to the lies coming out of the U.S. Congress and elsewhere that China has under-reported the scope of the coronavirus in that country.

Answering a question from Bloomberg, which put out the story on the secret “intelligence community” report on China’s alleged under-reporting, Hua slammed those “several politicians who are habitual liars.” Responding to what she called “endless, immoral slanders,” Hua detailed a methodical time-line of how China responded from the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, going back to Dec. 27, 2019.

Citing articles by such scientific publications as The Lancet or Science that lauded China’s response, she stated that China has always been transparent. In contrast, she pointed to cases in the U.S. in which scientists had been prevented from publicly reporting testing results. She noted that as recently as March 2, Dr. McCarthy from the New York-Presbyterian Hospital told CNBC that his hospital had to “plead” with health authorities to test suspected cases of coronavirus. Can the slanderers explain this, Hua asked?

“Out of humanitarian spirit,” she said, China would like to help the American people and provide support

“as our ability permits. However the comments by these few U.S. politicians are just shameless and morally repulsive.... Slanders, smears, and blame games cannot make up for lost time. More lies will only waste more time and lead to more lives lost. A word of advice to these politicians: At this moment, lives should come before politics. It is immoral and inhumane to politicize public health.... I hope they will lose no more time and focus instead on fighting the pandemic and saving American lives.”