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Thursday, May 29, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:04 PM:
Wanted, for Murder:
Chinese Government
From the Washington Post's
A 'Superspreader' of SARS
How One Woman Touched Off Beijing Outbreak
TAIYUAN, China -- She had been running a 104-degree fever for nearly a week, and the city's best doctors were stumped. They suspected the 27-year-old businesswoman was suffering from a new flu rumored to have appeared in southern China, but knew nothing about how to treat it. So the patient and her family decided to go to Beijing...
Neither she nor her companions wore masks, gloves or other protective gear on the journey. And when she checked into the People's Liberation Army No. 301 Hospital after midnight on March 1, the staff seemed equally uninformed and unprepared. The hospital placed her in a general ward with other patients, she said, and the doctors and nurses took no special precautions while examining her.
Thus did the world's worst outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome begin. Yu passed the virus to her family and friends, to other patients and doctors and nurses, who then spread the disease to countless others in Beijing, eventually undermining the government's coverup and prompting a crisis that has shaken the ruling Communist Party. As of yesterday, SARS had infected 2,514 people in Beijing and killed 175 of them.
The dead include Yu's parents. When she went to the hospital, she told them she'd been in Guangdong. They'd never heard of the strange respiratory disease they'd had problems with down there. Not surprising. The government had covered it up and banned all reporting. Her husband tried to warn a state-run newspaper. The person listened sympathetically but said he couldn't report on it.
In their efforts to keep China from looking bad, they have so far killed 175 people in Beijing. They have sent a local epidemic abroad to possibly kill countless more. All in an effort for an all-powerful state to try to pretend that it can control the forces of nature as easily as it can put bullets in the heads of those who question it. The SARS problem makes clear - again - that communist "people's" governments don't give a damn about the people, only their power. Which is why you cannot have an honest discussion about communism without bringing into the debate this simple fact: Communism kills.
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