Republican Officials Raise Alarms About Suspicious Viral Outbreak in China
Jose Nino
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Leading Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have recently pushed for United States health authorities to review a “suspicious” grouping of viral infections and reports of pneumonia afflicting children in China. The elected officials cautioned that allowing the Communist Party of China to “repeat its misdeeds from the COVID-19 pandemic” would represent a major dereliction of their duties.
On November 29, 2023, the concerned Republican elected officials sent a letter to Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) Director Dr. Mandy Cohen where they highlighted the Chinese regime’s repeated attempts to clamp down on information about the exploding Wuhan virus pandemic when it began to proliferate across China roughly four years ago. Several international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) have criticized China’s actions in the wake of this virus. Though the Republican elected officials called attention to the fact that the WHO, “has long been criticized for being overly accommodating to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
The rise in respiratory illnesses and cases of pneumonia among children across China have strained hospitals and have raised eyebrows at the WHO, which is calling on China to share data about the outbreak.
Three Republican elected officials, Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Virginian Congressman Brett Guthrie, and Virginia Congressman Morgan Griffith have called on CDC to start demanding information about this viral outbreak.
“The American people should not have to rely on the unaccountable and untrustworthy WHO to communicate information about Chinese public health threats,” the elected officials declared in the letter. “Further, we cannot allow the CCP to block the CDC from accessing the information it needs to protect Americans and assist in appropriate public health response efforts.”
They called on the CDC to brief the committee on a biweekly basis on the matter and answer a series of questions about the surge of respiratory illnesses in China by December 13, which includes whether the CDC has reached out to its Chinese counterparts with respect to the recent outbreak, connected details, and the action plan it will use to tackle this question.
“There’s no question that we should be taking a hard look at it and not counting on them to give us the real facts,” Mr. Griffith, chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said to media outlet NTD. “We need to figure out what we need to do to protect ourselves from a disease that’s in China, from coming here, if we can.”
Indeed, American government agencies like the CDC are not transparent. In fact, they are sometimes outright dangerous.
Such institutions should be defunded if not abolished altogether.
As for China, such health concerns can be reduced through trade decoupling and the wholesale reduction of immigration coming from China. This will prevent the spread of such noxious diseases while also upholding US national security as Chinese nationals will have a much harder time building espionage rings inside the US.
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