Lijian Zhao, a senior Chinese official, is openly lying about what the CDC Director said earlier this year to make it look like the Chinese coronavirus started in the United States and not in the Wuhan wet market:
US CDC admitted some #COVID19 patients were misdiagnosed as flu during 2019 flu season. 34 million infected & 20000 died. If #COVID19 began last September, & US has been lack of testing ability, how many would have been infected? US should find out when patient zero appeared.
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 22, 2020
So, please remember the propaganda battle going on every time President Trump sends journos to their fainting couches when he says “Chinese virus”:
Shameful CCP propaganda https://t.co/q1mwlOpPra
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) March 22, 2020
Screenshot for posterity:
China’s official disinfo campaign shows no sign of abating. Here a foreign ministry spokesman re-ups the hoax that the coronavirus might have started in the US pic.twitter.com/3n6JBAVksO
— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) March 22, 2020
Here’s some background on how he’s “deliberately mischaracterizing” what the CDC director actually said:
More details from my colleague in Beijing on the disinfo Zhao is concocting. He’s deliberately mischaracterizing a comment made this month by CDC director Redfield, tacking on the “2019 flu” to suggest (falsely) he was talking about months ago https://t.co/SMD0w2JKzv https://t.co/GCvKJB3VZo
— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) March 22, 2020
Here:
Official spokesman of China’s MFA trying to suggest CDC Director’s March 11th House testimony admitted that Covid cases had been misdiagnosed throughout 2019 flu season, so first US cases could be Sept 2019, ie, way earlier than first China case. Except, that’s not what CDC said https://t.co/hZh4MPDE5K pic.twitter.com/ZxlUuIGvxa
— David Rennie 任大伟 (@DSORennie) March 22, 2020
Zhao has also been retweeting random Twitter accounts who think COVID-19 was in the U.S. before January 2020:
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman now quote-retweeting "the lizard king." pic.twitter.com/KmofxFDLt7
— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) March 22, 2020
So, when’s Twitter going to add one of those disinformation warnings, at the very least?
A hostile foreign power is abusing an American platform in the attempt to sow discord and division in a nation in crisis. @Twitter should think long and hard before it permits the CCP to use Twitter's platform and resources to spread misinformation. https://t.co/HcQaXlZMOJ
— David French (@DavidAFrench) March 22, 2020
COME ON, JACK:
Yo @Twitter, this seems like a good tweet to use your new labels to flag as misleading and outright BS. https://t.co/ILsZclzqq6
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) March 22, 2020
This is a pretty clear example of something Twitter should act on:
China says the virus started in the US.
China also says there are no domestic Chinese cases of the virus.
Both are lies. https://t.co/SWQHsH5Deq
— Bryan Dean Wright (@BryanDeanWright) March 22, 2020
But, nah. Keep going after those meme-makers who used a bit of a song or something:
Twitter suspends accounts for using copyright music but allows Chinese propagandists to spread lies about a coronavirus killing people daily all over the world.
Fix your platform, @jack. https://t.co/293kTys84b
— ForAmerica (@ForAmerica) March 22, 2020
But in an interview with Axios, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. tried to tamp down this conspiracy theory talk:
New: Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai disowns U.S. military lab coronavirus conspiracy, in an interview with @jonathanvswan.
More from the interview here, including full transcript:https://t.co/h1SEocEJXc
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) March 22, 2020
Well, how about getting these clowns to delete their tweets?
Worth noting Cui, an old hand in diplomacy (and Hopkins SAIS grad) who is almost certainly on his last posting, has never been on the same page with the younger generation of diplomat colleagues who tweet this disinformation https://t.co/htp9r4V7bY
— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) March 22, 2020
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