In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, is briefed about the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. China’s president visited the center of the global virus outbreak Tuesday as Italy began a sweeping nationwide travel ban and people worldwide braced for the possibility of recession. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP)

Niall Ferguson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, has written a great article and Twitter thread about the Wuhan coronavirus.

First, he dings folks for trying to blame President Donald Trump instead of putting responsibility where it belongs, on China. He also notes some of the ridiculous virtue signaling of people, rather than calling out China for wrongdoing, such as the mayor of Florence suggesting Italians “hug a Chinese person.”

But then he gets into questions that we need to keep asking Xi Jinping and the Chinese government.

Six questions for Xi Jinping, US edition: 1. What exactly was going on in Wuhan that led to the initial emergence of SARS-CoV-2? https://t.co/oeERjTN4Yh — Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) April 7, 2020

2. How big a role did the central government play in the cover-up after it became clear in Wuhan that there was human-to-human transmission? — Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) April 7, 2020

3. After it became clear that there was a full-blown epidemic spreading from Wuhan to the rest of Hubei province, why did you cut off travel from Hubei to the rest of China — on Jan. 23 — but not from Hubei to the rest of the world? — Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) April 7, 2020

4. What possessed your Foreign Ministry spokesman to start peddling an obviously false conspiracy theory on social media and why has he not been fired? — Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) April 7, 2020

(The ridiculous conspiracy theory that it was from the U.S. and spread to China.)

5. Where exactly are Ren Zhiqiang and Ai Fen, to name just two of the Chinese citizens who seem to have vanished since they expressed criticism of your government’s handling of COVID-19? — Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) April 7, 2020

6. Finally, how many of your people has this disease really killed? https://t.co/oeERjTN4Yh — Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) April 7, 2020

Now all these are obviously great questions that we should repeat again and again to the Chinese when we are able to hold their feet to the fire at the end of all this.

But I wanted to focus on just one for now because it seems to me this is the first time someone has really highlighted it and to me, it feels like such an incredible point.

Why did China cut off travel from Hubei, the province with Wuhan in it, to the rest of China — on Jan. 23 — but not from Hubei to the rest of the world?

Up to Jan. 14, they were still trying to buffalo people to some degree by telling people it couldn’t be spread from human to human. Of course, they knew better even then. But their very actions showed they knew it on Jan. 23, yet still, they let flights out to all over the world.

If we just look at the U.S. with flights in between Jan. 23 and Jan. 31, when Trump cut travel with China, according to Ferguson, there were 19 flights that departed Wuhan for JFK or SFO in January.

According to the @nytimes https://t.co/rbKlYSPMay, 19 flights departed Wuhan for JFK or SFO in January. The flights were largely full, according to VariFlight. Data from https://t.co/BOXyCQg5iD also show a China Southern flight landed at SFO on Feb. 1. https://t.co/PmfXaPMrc3 — Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) April 9, 2020

There’s absolutely no question they knew at that point and yet they sent the flights out anyway. Not only didn’t they cut off travel with the U.S., they flipped out and complained when Trump cut travel on Jan. 31 and called it racist and an over-reaction, echoing some of the Democrats at the time. They also cited WHO, which said it wasn’t necessary to cut travel or trade.

On Jan. 23, China “officially” had 830 cases. By Jan. 31, they had 11,791.

To quote Ferguson, “And so long as a fifth of humanity are subject to the will of an unaccountable, corrupt and power-hungry organization with a long history of crimes against its own people, the rest of humanity will not be safe.”

We said this when the media and business connections to China were all exposed over the Hong Kong protests. But now it’s clear that we need to disconnect, for the safety of our nation and our very lives.