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Western Journal reported that three anonymous U.S. officials verified that a classified U.S. intelligence document was presented to the White House highlighting how Chinese authorities misrepresented how devastating the coronavirus was to their country.
The unnamed officials informed Bloomberg that the message behind the document was that China’s analysis of of the deaths from the coronavirus was “intentionally incomplete”.
Questions about the authoritarian government’s treatment of doctors and journalists that tried to warn people about the coronavirus in the beginning has raised international skepticism, leaving nations wondering if they are making decisions, like shutting down the economy, based on accurate data.
Western Journal continued with their coverage of the emerging of suspect data.
As of Wednesday morning, there were 82,361 cases of COVID-19 in China and 3,316 fatalities from the disease, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
Comparatively, there were 190,740 cases in the United States and 4,127 fatalities.
However, two of the officials told Bloomberg the classified intelligence document concluded China’s reported numbers are fake.
According to Bloomberg, Chinese officials have revised the methodology for counting cases of the virus and imposed a strict lockdown, causing skepticism of the reported numbers both inside and outside of the country.
There have also been reported stacks of ash urns at funeral homes in Wuhan, China, which have also increased scrutiny of the government’s containment narrative, Bloomberg reported last Friday.
The Trump administration has long criticized China for covering up the extent of the coronavirus.
“The medical community made — interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said at a news conference on Tuesday.
“Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”
Other countries have also been accused of hiding the actual number of coronavirus cases and deaths.
In a statement on March 23, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listed the ways the Iranian authorities have contributed to the global spread of COVID-19, including by lying to the public about the true scale of the crisis in the country and continuing flights to China as the virus was spreading.
“The regime continues to lie to the Iranian people and the world about the number of cases and deaths, which are unfortunately far higher than the regime admits,” Pompeo said.
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South Korea reported 9,887 cases of the coronavirus and although the North Korean people were offered help by President Trump and they have reportedly been looking for international help from the region, they have not reported any positive cases.
Mike Pompeo has shown patience for the unique obstacles facing individual countries while encouraging them to be transparent with other countries. He urged all nations to do their best to protect themselves and their best to forward accurate data to the rest of the world as this struggle continues.
