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This week someone I know – who travels to China frequently – sent me a video of Chinese lawyer and citizen journalist Chen Qiushi, who compiled a video of the situation in Wuhan, China of the coronavirus outbreak.

Qiushi apparently — and I say apparently because I cannot independently verify Qiushi’s statements in the video — was doing citizen journalism to warn the outside world about the disastrous situation faced by China’s disorganization and failure in quelling the outbreak of the virus.

According to multiple sources Qiushi has now disappeared. Social media statements coming out of China, sources in the region and Bloomberg has since reported his disappearance. However, it is uncertain if he is in hiding or if he has been located by the Chinese government and taken into custody for his reports. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and WeChat have been some of the only outlets for the people of China to get the truth out about the outbreak and how it’s being handled by the communist government.

On The Sara Carter Show, I interviewed Gordon Chang, who lived in China for roughly 20 years and is the author of the book “The Coming Collapse of China.” Gordon, who is a renowned expert on the Far East, told me that China has manipulated the actual number of infections and deaths related to the Wuhan virus, created a propaganda campaign to blame the United States for the outbreak and has blocked journalists from reporting the facts about the outbreak. SaraACarter.com is continuously publishing news updates of the coronavirus outbreak with the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University map tracker.

The Wuhan Coronavirus has been designated a global health emergency by the World Health Organization and medical experts believe it is only a matter of time before the WHO and CDC designate it a global pandemic. According to Johns Hopkins there are 34,963 people infected with the virus and 725 deaths. Remember, the situation is fluid and the numbers change by the hour and the day.

“The Chinese people right now are completely focused in on trying to save themselves, but when this disease passes and this could be June or July, we’re gonna see the recriminations dominate the narrative in China,” said Chang on Thursday’s podcast. “Already we had a longtime critic Xinhua University in Beijing come out and call for Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, to step down and I think that shows that people right now are bold and they’re bold because they know that so many people support them. And when people lose their fear, and that’s exactly what’s occurring right now, then governments can change.”

https://youtu.be/l8wqizSpNsA

Chang told me “there’s been a paralysis at mid to low levels of governance in China.”

He noted that the “videos of the hospital in Wuhan being built in ten days and all of the lights in the Wuhan buildings with these messages to cheer on the people, but the point is that at the middle to the lower levels there is a paralysis.”

There are also looming questions about where the virus originated and whether, as Sen. Tom Cotton, R- questioned during a hearing on the matter last week if the virus escaped out of a biosafety level-four facility located in Wuhan. Biosafety level-four facilities are laboratories are used to diagnose and study viral pathogens that can be deadly.

“We still don’t know where coronavirus originated,” said Cotton. “Could have been a market, a farm, a food processing company.”

“I would not that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus,” he added.

We still don’t know where coronavirus originated. Could have been a market, a farm, a food processing company. I would note that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/CtuU2czBLp — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 30, 2020

The first symptoms of the Coronavirus were noticed in China on December 1, 2019 and “was diagnosed on the eighth, but it was not until the 31st of December that China made any public mention of this at all, and it wasn’t until about the 21st, 22nd, 23rd of January that the Communist party moved into action.”

Based on social media posts emanating from China many citizens in the country now “believe that this virus did escape from the lab. Other Chinese people are saying it was deliberately released from the lab.”

He said these “wild rumors” have the Chinese government on edge and “the point is not whether they’re true or not, the point is that people in China believe that they are true and that is forcing the Communist party to come up with a narrative to counter that.”

He said “this is where the U.S. comes in because part of Beijing’s efforts to counter this narrative of the release of the virus from the P4 lab is that the United States is spreading germ weapons in China, which is absolutely ludicrous, but this is what many people believe the Chinese government is doing behind the scenes: spreading this rumor to protect itself because it realizes it’s vulnerable.”

“Right now it is the hostility of the Chinese regime, which allowed this virus to spread, which is also now doing its best to prevent others from helping China.”