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With so many lives and livelihoods at stake, Western governments would be as unwise to blindly trust Chinese-made data as they would be to blindly trust Chinese-made masks. Besides, Beijing has already proven that it should not be trusted. First it suppressed the reporting of the initial outbreak, censoring and arresting Chinese citizens who tried warning of the Wuhan virus. Then after admitting it existed, claimed — falsely— that there was no human-to-human transmission.

Photo by Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg

Hajdu has been weirdly defending the communist regime ever since, but it’s only looked weirder the more we learn about China’s ongoing chicanery. Hajdu’s insistence that “as long as coronavirus exists in one country, it exists in all of our countries,” to take another example, ignores findings last month from the University of Southampton that suggest 95 per cent of COVID-19 infections could have been avoided if China had taken the threat more seriously and taken action just three weeks earlier. Meanwhile, the bureau chief of China’s communist propaganda outlet, China Daily, praised Hajdu as a “role model” for putting “paparazzi journalists and fearmongers” in their place. He was talking about our free press.

What would sound a lot more sensible — and believable — is if Hajdu had acknowledged that this is a fast-moving pandemic; that no government has perfect data; that if, instead of defending its irresponsible behaviour, she insisted China absolutely must do better; and that she explained that in the short term, dramatic precautions are nevertheless essential as we learn more about how dangerous this thing really is. But since those measures include unprecedented and mounting economic self-destruction, we could at least be mature enough to admit that our decisions are relying in part on faulty data made in China. And if merely raising such questions weren’t considered uncouth, we might even ask whether misrepresenting the virus’s lethality may have even served Beijing’s national interest.

National Post

klibin@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/KevinLibin

Editor’s Note: The University of Southampton study mentioned had found 95 per cent of infections could have been prevented in China. An earlier version of this story had incorrectly said that included cases outside of China.