Covid-19 looks set to be the most contentious Coronavirus outbreak, even if it's a minor offender compared to predecessors like Swine Flue (300,000 dead) in 2009.



Not only is there disagreement at national borders, there's controversy as to responsibility for the outbreak itself. Japanese and Taiwanese news sources are now asking how successful America will be with its narrative that China was the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Larry Romanoff* summarized this argument in an article, "China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US? Japan, China and Taiwan Reports on the Origin of the Virus"



China's top respiratory specialist, Zhong Nanshan said, “Though the COVID-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China. To me, that means China has cracked the case. They're pretty damn sure that it had a foreign origin.



Asahi TV reported that some of the 14,000 Americans who have died of influenza in the past 120 days may have unwittingly contracted the coronavirus. That went viral on Chinese social media, as did charges that the US government failed to grasp how rampant the virus is in the US.



Then Taiwanese** TV news presented flow charts suggesting the coronavirus originated in the US. Apparently, when viruses mutate they do so linearly and researchers can tell the order in which mutations occur and where they are detected.



Says Larry Romanoff, "One of his main points is that the type infecting Taiwan exists only in Australia and the US and, since Taiwan was not infected by Australians, the infection in Taiwan could have come only from the US.



"The basic logic is that the geographical location with the greatest diversity of virus strains must be the original source because a single strain cannot emerge from nothing. He demonstrated that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of China have only one, as do Taiwan and South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, Singapore, and England, Belgium and Germany), constituting a thesis that the haplotypes in other nations may have originated in the US."



This stoked speculation in China that the coronavirus may have originated in the US. The PRC, which normally clamps down on such speculation, instead told citizens, "Discuss the matter rationally." The People’s Daily lent its considerable weight by publishing a SinaWeibo post, “Perhaps the US [military] delegates brought the coronavirus to Wuhan in October, and some mutation occurred to the virus, making it more deadly and contagious, and causing a widespread outbreak this year.” (February 23)



Shen Yi, professor of international relations at Fudan University, noted that global virologists and intelligence agencies are working to track the origin of the virus, "The symptoms and the contagiosity of the COVID-19 are evident to all. It is impossible to conceal the origins of the disease," Shen said, urging the public to seek truth from facts.



I'm betting that China is telling the truth and, if it is demonstrated that the US is the guilty party, fallout will be horrendous.



Given the terrible propaganda beating we meted out to the Chinese on this issue, and coming on top of the FAA's failure to regulate the 737Max, such a failure on the part of the CDC will cause reputational damage from which the US Government will not soon recover.



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*https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-coronavirus-shocking-update/5705196

**https://m.weibo.cn/status/4477008216030027#&video