Beijing’s renewed outbreak of Covid-19 could not possibly, of course, have originated within China. It had to be implanted on the population via imported salmon. But thank God the manager of the city’s Xinfadi food market has been dismissed, so it won’t happen again.
That, at least, is the Chinese version of events. For weeks, the country has claimed to have beaten the virus, with the occasional new case being blamed on foreign arrivals. Now, with 100 cases in the past week, Beijing is heading into lockdown. And it is all the fault of foreigners – nevermind that the virus almost certainly originated in China in the first place, and that authorities initially covered it up.
No doubt it suits China to spin a narrative that its careful efforts to suppress Covid-19 have been undone by carelessness elsewhere in the world, especially in the West. But the real lesson of the outbreak in Beijing is quite different.
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