It might not have been so bad if the Chinese had been honest from the beginning. But they couldn’t be honest about it, because it would have meant owning up to the secret bio-weapons project that they had been hatching against the rest of the world and that had “escaped” from their lab. So instead of sharing data about the sudden epidemic and maybe getting the help they needed to contain it, they hid it.
Made(up) In China
The stories coming from China over the past weeks have ranged from wishful thinking to pure fiction, while the rest of the world holds its breath waiting for a new pandemic to strike. There is no way to overestimate the calamity that is occurring in China today, the number of people there who have been infected or killed by the Novel Coronavirus, or the threat that the rest of the world is facing now because of China’s systematic carelessness and active repression of vital information. 
They covered it up, and they arrested anyone who revealed that a coronavirus – now known as 2019 Novel Coronavirus or 2019 nCoV –  was now killing their own people by the thousands. Even now, when the entire world is facing a pandemic, China still only admits to hundreds of confirmed deaths and thousands of infected people, when the numbers are likely to be exponentially higher. And they still refuse assistance from the United States.

The Chinese government said the virus came from an open-air meat market in the city of Wuhan in central China. Wuhan was a city of eleven million people, and appeared to be the epicenter of the virus. The Chinese government closed the market and implied that the situation was under control. But it wasn’t!

It couldn’t have been further from “under control”
People were falling in the streets and dying where they fell. The hospitals were jammed with people seeking medical help, people were being ordered to stay at home, to limit contact with other people, even forced to ‘self-quarantine’, and finally the city was shut and no one could go in or out. But it was far too late for that. The virus was spreading far beyond their ability to contain it. And by February, nearly the entire country was under quarantine and the virus was continuing to spread.
But it didn’t come from a meat market. In reality, according to my sources, the virus actually “escaped” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Level-4  biohazard lab as the result of an accident in the laboratory. And more than that, China had been weaponizing the virus, making it more virulent, more easily spread, faster to mutate, and potentially more lethal. (For more information about this, see “What is China Hiding? The Real Story About the Coronavirus”)
The first stories came out of Hong Kong, where people who had visited Wuhan became ill with an unknown virus. People in Hong Kong were being warned not to travel to Wuhan. 
Then I started hearing about that open-air meat market in Wuhan, where the virus was said to have originated. At first, China reported that it came from bats (apparently bat soup is a delicacy in that part of the world). And most recently, the scaly anteater was blamed. But that was just cover for a far more sinister story. 
It didn’t take long before I also heard that the virus in Wuhan was spreading like wildfire and about how many of dead and dying were not being reported. I also heard about the real source of the virus, and it was alarming, to say the least. 

And the story is now getting out and the numbers of those who are getting sick and those who have already died is growing alarmingly. It is time for us to stop believing the lies that China has been telling us and come to grips with what is really going on and how it is likely to affect us. 
As of February 5, China’s National Health Commission reported that 28,018 cases of the virus have been confirmed and 563 people have died in the country. Since then, another 3,694 new cases have been confirmed as well as 73 additional deaths, with most of them in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. That is according to the Chinese government. 
Those numbers are alarming enough, but they don’t make sense. And here’s why:

• From the beginning, the Chinese have not been able or willing to keep proper records on this out-break; patients were misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all, and certainly the number of sick and dead was massively undercounted;
• New temporary hospitals are being built in a rush (in ten days) in order to house thousands of patients;
• The government began burning the bodies because there were too many to bury, and trucks filled with body bags were seen driving through the city, while the crematoria began working non-stop, day and night, seven days a week; while a pall of smoke hangs over Wuhan; 
• Weather satellites have been identifying high levels (even by Chinese standards) of sulfur dioxide over Wuhan from burning organic material;

• A growing shortage of body bags and most medical supplies was reported to be widespread; 
• People have been silenced by the government for releasing information and photographs to the public, something the Chinese government called “misinformation”. Among those harassed by the government was Dr. Li Wenliang, the first doctor to warn about the virus, who himself became a victim of it last week, after blowing the whistle on its dangers; 
• Videos popped up of people being dragged from their homes by police, only to disappear; 
• The government was reported to be warehousing infected patients in hotels, 

• Some 1,400 military medics were brought in from the People’s Liberation Army to run the new hospitals, which include revamped shipping containers and prefabricated buildings, in addition to the new rapid-build hospitals;
• The once vibrant cities of China that were humming 24-hours a day, cities like Shanghai, are now silent, the streets are empty. even the port is empty. One resident of Wuhan wrote, “Wuhan is like a ghost city at night. There are only ghost-like ambulances transporting patients. This is heart-breaking to see. Hope my hometown can recover soon”.
• Industry is shut down. The factories are silent and empty. Commerce is at a standstill.

This is not rocket science. We know that the numbers are far higher than the Chinese government is telling us. The fact that they engineered this virus and don’t want us to know is no longer sufficient reason for them to play this deceptive game that is now putting the entire world at risk. 

The irony is that in developing a secret project to create such a powerful and toxic virus with which to attack an enemy, they have inadvertently turned it on themselves and will likely kill millions of their own people before this is over. Sadly, it is the very secrecy that they are trying to maintain that is responsible for the high number of casualties. 
So here are some more realistic numbers:
The latest estimates from first-hand accounts are that as many as 50,000 people in Wuhan alone have already died from this epidemic, and that there are 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in China.
One estimate of the damage to the Chinese people is that the mortality rate will ultimately prove to be anywhere from 35% to 65%.

First Reports
I first reported about this coronavirus on January 29, after holding on to the story for several days. When I first heard about it, it was already taking its toll in China, but almost no one in the United States knew anything about it. I did not publish my report immediately because I needed confirmation. The fact that such a nasty story was so secret, even though people were dying in huge numbers, concerned me – a lot. One of the worst things that a reporter can do is to spread rumors in order to “get the story out first”. But I am not a reporter. I’m an analyst. I don’t need to get the story “out”, I need to get it right.
So what about us?
Now the purpose of this article is not to cause panic. This is all happening in China, and only a few cases of the virus have made it to the U.S. and other countries around the world. And more than that, our government is using the time they have today to prepare.
Medical practice in the U.S. is far more advanced when it comes to protocols of medicine and sanitation than it is in China. And the protocols for containing such a virus are far better in America. That, and the fact that we have had a head-start to prepare for the virus, gives us a better chance to fight it. 
It is still too early to tell how the virus will behave in the U.S. It was designed to mutate easily and quickly, so its future path is still unknown. But work is already being done to develop a diagnostic that can identify the virus quickly, and an antidote to it that will keep Americans relatively safe.  
We are still in the early days of this developing crisis. There is no crisis here – yet. But the experts tell us it’s coming. And the more we know about it, the better our chances will be to survive it.