Scapegoating China
FRONTLINE|June 5, 2020
As the COVID-19 death rate spikes and the economy tanks in the United States, Donald Trump and his advisers target China and the World Health Organisation with an eye to winning the forthcoming presidential election.
JOHN CHERIAN
Scapegoating China

IT HAS BEEN APPARENT FOR SOME TIME NOW that the Donald Trump administration, in order to cover up for its failure to effectively combat the COVID-19 pandemic, is going all out to target China, where the first cases were detected. Under Trump’s watch, the United States has recorded more than 1.5 million cases by the third week of May, with the death toll surpassing 90,000. According to the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the death toll will cross the 1,00,000 figure by June 1. Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, have not let facts stand in the way as they ratchet up their accusations against China.

The U.S. has accused China of letting the virus spread to the rest of the world by either suppressing or withholding information after the first infections were detected in Wuhan in end 2019. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has once again reiterated that there is no scientific evidence to prove that the new strain of the coronavirus was created in a lab. “Everything about the stepwise evolution over time indicates that this virus evolved in nature and then jumped species,” Fauci told the National Geographic news channel in a recent interview.

This story is from the June 5, 2020 edition of FRONTLINE.

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This story is from the June 5, 2020 edition of FRONTLINE.

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