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Wei Jingsheng, a Chinese national who defected in 1997, has written a book (“What Really Happened in Wuhan”) that details how he first heard of a mysterious new virus at the time of the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, and how he attempted to gather and share information with USA authorities without success. In part, he blames Chinese authorities for actively suppressing all information about the outbreak until it was too big for them to contain.

The NY Post summarizes:

Chinese authorities were acting to suppress news of the Wuhan outbreak, purging the internet of social media posts and news stories and “disappearing” dissidents and whistleblowers who attempted to sound a warning. [...]

“We could have known in November of 2019, that there was a disaster occurring inside Wuhan — inside their most important biological facilities related to coronavirus research,” he said.

Is there any evidence that the Chinese government, before the Wuhan outbreak was officially made public on Dec. 30 2019,

  1. Purged social media posts about the Wuhan outbreak
  2. Purged the internet of news stories about the Wuhan outbreak
  3. "Disappeared" dissidents and whistleblowers who attempted warn others about the Wuhan outbreak.
Fizz
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    Why is this hard to believe? They even fired the local Wuhan authorities thereafter in a typical CCP purge, accusing them of the bad/botched initial response etc. There were countless stories in the media about early whistleblowers like Li Wenliang being suppressed etc. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55963896 – Fizz Sep 15 '21 at 03:16
  • CNN story on more obscure whistleblowers https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/02/asia/china-wuhan-covid-truthtellers-intl-hnk-dst/ I see there that the Wenliang-related incident started on Dec 30 though. So I guess the real Q is whether any other suppression happened before then. The Q should probably make this more clear. – Fizz Sep 15 '21 at 04:15
  • I guess the vague claim of disappeared whistleblowers (from labs) might be an allusion to Huang Yanling etc. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/51830/did-nih-ask-the-ecohealth-alliance-to-provide-information-about-the-apparent-di which others have inquired about. – Fizz Sep 15 '21 at 05:26
  • Story about the SARS-CoV-2 sequencing https://time.com/5882918/zhang-yongzhen-interview-china-coronavirus-genome/ It does mention that other labs had samples, but only one published theirs. Ironically, this was before there were official restrictions (imposed in Jan) on which labs could have such samples. – Fizz Sep 15 '21 at 05:41
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    OTOH, the Chinese state-media says "China has strict disciplines in reporting and publicizing disasters, especially for major infectious diseases, and the lowest level of authority for issuing outbreaks information to the public are provincial health authorities." https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1179364.shtml I'm guessing that's why provincial-level authorities were sacked well before the Wuhan mayor was more quietly removed... – Fizz Sep 15 '21 at 05:50
  • Frankly the Times story doesn't seem entirely correct; according to AP there was a partial sequence published (?) by a private Chinese company (Vision Medicals) on Dec 27 https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-health-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak-public-health-3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae (See the timeline in in the middle of the article.) Actually it seems this company only used the official channels, so they didn't put out press or anything like that, but only notified the Wuhan authorities. I'd guess (given China's laws) that it was more a case of self-censorship. – Fizz Sep 15 '21 at 07:22

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