On April 15, the State Department told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that state-run media in China, Russia, and Iran are colluding on something nefarious: shifting the blame for the coronavirus pandemic onto the United States.
The State Department’s accusation were noted in an internal GOP Oversight and Reform Committee report, according to Townhall, which obtained a copy of the report. Townhall also revealed that the report delineated how the World Health Organization and China had misled the world about the severity of COVID-19 early on.
The report stated of the collusion among China, Russia, and Iran:
According to a cybersecurity report, Chinese state-run media has attempted to shift the blame for the pandemic away from China and instead painted China as a global leader in the response to the pandemic. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry has openly blamed U.S. servicemembers for originating the virus in China. China further censored and detained any Chinese official, including doctors, who tried to warn of the true origins of the virus.
The State Department has confirmed Chinese, Iranian, and Russian state-run media are all promoting similar messages in an effort to blame the U.S. for COVID-19. Further, China is attempting to use propaganda regarding its pandemic response to convince the world that socialism, communism, and authoritarianism are better than freedom, liberty, and representative government.
Of China and the World Health Organization’s misleading the rold, the report stated:
The global health community relied on these early Chinese reports to plan responses in other countries, and such underreporting may have led other countries to operate under false assumptions regarding the spread of the virus … These preliminary investigations included China jailing any doctor that disseminated any information about COVID-19 not first cleared through state-run media. Additionally, the WHO failed to promote in a timely manner Taiwanese warnings of human-to-human transmission in December 2019; Taiwan is not currently recognized by the WHO as an independent nation. On January 23, 2020, the WHO finally recognized human-to-human spread was occurring – a month after the first warnings.
By the time the WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020, the disease had infected almost 10,000 and killed almost 1,000 people in nineteen different countries. The Guardian has reported the delay in the PHEIC declaration was a result of intense pressure from China. While making the declaration, Dr. Tedros said “China is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak.” Since then, there have been over 2.5 million new cases and 175,000 deaths worldwide.”
The State Department asserted it was countering Chinese propaganda by collaborating with international organizations to reinforce the U.S. perspective; pointing out that China’s claim of its superiority in dealing with the virus as opposed to the U.S. was untrue, and simply calling on the Group of Seven to fight against propaganda campaigns.
On Wednesday, as The Daily Wire reported, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that China is still blocking U.S. scientists from entering the country to study the coronavirus. “Even today, the Chinese government hasn’t permitted American scientists to go into China, to go into not only the Wuhan lab or wherever it needs to go to learn about this virus, to learn about its origins,” Pompeo told Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” according to The New York Post.
Also on Wednesday, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Gen. Hossein Salami ordered his naval units on Wednesday to destroy American naval vessels if they threatened the “security” of Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf, saying, “I have ordered our naval forces to destroy any American terrorist force in the Persian Gulf that threatens the security of Iran’s military or non-military ships. Security of the Persian Gulf is part of Iran’s strategic priorities.”