Fact check: Did China’s secrecy cause coronavirus pandemic? NC lawmaker wants it to pay
The issue: U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, a North Carolina Republican, wants to make China pay for the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package, saying the nation’s “lack of transparency” led to the COVID-19 global pandemic.
A public-health expert says China likely delayed reporting cases for a few weeks at the beginning of the outbreak, and may be under-reporting because of local mismanagement.
Americans knew about the virus in early January, at least two months before its spread accelerated in the United States.
Why we’re checking this. There are more than 266,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States and more than 6,000 people have died from COVID-19. Schools are closed, many businesses are shut down, unemployment is at record highs and the U.S. is spending trillions to combat the health and economic effects of the global pandemic.
Walker and some other Republicans in Congress have blamed China, where the virus originated, for its spread and global impact.
What you need to know. Walker, who represents the Greensboro area, wrote on social media that he is working on “a plan” to make China pay for the $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by Congress last week.
“China’s lack of transparency created this. Now we are asking American taxpayers to foot the bill? Not hardly! I am working on a plan to make the Communist Party of China pay for this stimulus package. More to come soon,” Walker posted on Twitter last week.
Walker is working on the mechanism and text for the measure, his office confirmed Thursday.
“The principle is that China’s lack of transparency caused the COVID-19 global pandemic and they need to be honest about their complicity rather than spreading disinformation and deception,” his staff said in a statement when asked about the particulars of the bill.
A classified U.S. intelligence report this week said China concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak, according to media reports, under-counting both cases and deaths.
China reported 82,432 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking worldwide cases. China has more than 1.4 billion people. But The Washington Post reported that in Wuhan alone, the epicenter of the outbreak, actual deaths could be more than 40,000.
“The numbers seem to be a little on the light side, and I’m being nice when I say that,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday when asked about the intelligence report.
The U.S. has more confirmed cases than any country in the world and the numbers continue to rise.
What an expert says
Dr. Shenglan Tang, the deputy director of Duke’s Global Health Institute, said “it might be true” that China is under-reporting its counts, but said that is from lack of capacity of the health care systems in rural parts of the country.
In late 2002 and early 2003, China downplayed an outbreak of the illness that became known as SARS, which killed nearly 800.
“At that time, I would say lack of transparency and honesty,” said Tang, who has been interviewed by media across the globe, including in China, throughout the crisis.
Tang said the Chinese response this time has been much better, even though he said the country likely delayed reporting cases for a few weeks at the beginning of the outbreak.
Virus timeline
The novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, originated in Wuhan in late 2019 — linked to a large seafood and live animal market, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first indications were that it may have been animal-to-person spread, but then spread from person-to-person.
China confirmed it was treating dozens of cases from an unknown cause on Dec. 31, The New York Times reported. The CDC created a COVID-19 Incident Management System on Jan. 7 — the same day China identified the virus.
The first confirmed case in the U.S. was on Jan. 20, a Washington man who had traveled to Wuhan.
At around that time, China undertook drastic lockdown measures in Wuhan and brought in doctors and nurses from other parts of the country to contain the outbreak, Tang said.
Western governments, including those in now hard-hit countries like Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, took longer.
On Jan. 22, Trump was asked about the coronavirus publicly for the first time while in Switzerland. He said he was not worried and that he trusted Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control,” he said on CNBC. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.”
Trump, in a tweet, praised China’s “transparency” on Jan. 24.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” he wrote.
A week later, Trump formed the President’s Coronavirus Task Force. The next day, Jan. 30, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency.
Throughout February, Trump downplayed the threat of the virus — even as he instituted travel restrictions on people who had visited China (Jan. 31) and Iran (Feb. 29).
During that critical two-month period, Tang said, there was significant debate in the academic and scientific community about the virus. Some argued it was bit more dangerous than the flu or common cold, but less serious than SARS or MERS. Others, Tang said, argued it was a “mystery virus and dangerous.”
“There was no consensus,” he said. “There was a lot of debate in Western countries. It also affected the slowdown of political decisions made in Western countries.”
US spread
The first case in North Carolina came March 3. On March 5, confirmed cases in the United States reached 100.
“Quite honestly, I fault China for not giving us a few extra months by not being forthcoming in terms of the disease,” Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, told The News & Observer on March 10.
“We could be maybe two months further ahead if we just had better cooperation from China. But we have two months, six weeks, we got by the president stopping travel until we started sorting the situation out. We could always use more time.”
On March 11, the cases passed 1,000, and Trump delivered a primetime address to the nation. Two days later, Trump declared a national emergency.
The race was on to produce a vaccine or medicine to treat the disease, to secure tests, to find ventilators for patients and personal protective equipment for health-care workers and first responders.
“We’re learning more and more how the Chinese government lied to us since day one about the severity of the outbreak and their efforts to contain it. They continue to lie to us and mislead the world,” Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican, said in emailed responses to questions about Congress and coronavirus aid. “But given the lies and cover-up we’ve seen from China and the rarity of this scenario, I believe Congress and the president have taken swift and decisive action on the whole.”
By the end of March, many parts of the nation’s economy were shut down and schools closed as governors and mayors across the country instituted stay-at-home orders, including in North Carolina.
“Our government was greatly hampered by China misleading the world about the full extent of the virus, so we started from behind,” U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, a North Carolina Republican, said in emailed answers. “... We were all put at a disadvantage by China’s lies.”
Tang said pitting nations against each other is not the right thing to do at this point with the world still facing the pandemic.
Tang said the World Health Organization, for which he worked for seven years, has been too biased in favor of China. China, he said, had done some things poorly and other things well during the outbreak.
“The blame culture is not helpful to everybody. This is a crisis the global village is facing and we really should collaborate,” he said.
Spending trillions
Congress passed its $2 trillion relief package last week that includes checks for many Americans, loans and grants to small businesses impacted by the virus and expanded unemployment benefits for workers harmed by the economic shutdown.
It was the third relief package passed by Congress in light of the pandemic. Some in Congress are already discussing a fourth aid package, particularly with more than 10 million Americans claiming unemployment in the last two weeks.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREOur process
We check claims that are widely shared or published; are about a topic of concern to many of our readers; can be proven or disproven through facts; and could cause people to act or vote in a certain way. This topic met all the criteria.
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Find out more about our process here. And as always, we abide by our newsroom’s ethical guidelines.
Our sources.
Federal government’s coronavirus response timeline from Brookings
White House press briefings and statements
World Health Organization reports
Early news reports about coronavirus outbreak
News reports on U.S. intelligence findings
A timeline of the coronavirus pandemic from The New York Times
Tracking maps from Johns Hopkins University
Previous News & Observer and Charlotte Observer coverage
Interviews with members of Congress and Dr. Shenglan Tang
This story was produced by The News & Observer Fact-Checking Project, which shares fact-checks with newsrooms statewide. It was edited by Politics Editor Jordan Schrader and Deputy Metro Editor Mark Schultz. Submit a suggestion for what we should check, or a comment or suggestion about our fact-checking, at bit.ly/nandofactcheck.
