THE WAGES OF COMMUNISM IS DEATH:

There is authoritative and compelling evidence -- including a study from the University of Southampton -- that if interventions in China had been conducted three weeks earlier, transmission of COVID-19 could have been reduced by 95 percent.

For 40 days, President Xi Jinping's CPC concealed, destroyed, falsified, and fabricated information about the rampant spread of COVID-19 through its state-sanctioned massive surveillance and suppression of data; its misrepresentation of information; its silencing and criminalizing of its dissent; and its disappearance of its whistleblowers.

In late December 2019, Dr. Ai Fen, director of the Emergency Department at the Central Hospital of Wuhan -- "The Whistle-Giver" -- disseminated information about COVID-19 to several doctors, one of whom was Dr. Li Wenliang, and eight of whom were later arrested. Dr. Ai has recently disappeared.

Dr. Ai also detailed efforts to silence her in a story titled, "The one who supplied the whistle," published in China's People (Renwu) magazine in March. The article has since been removed.

On January 1, 2020, Dr. Li Wenliang -- the "hero" and "awakener" -- was reprimanded for spreading rumors, and was summoned to sign a statement accusing him of making false statements that disturbed the public order. Seven other people were arrested on similar charges. Their fate is still unknown.

On January 4, 2020, Dr. Ho Pak Leung -- president of the University of Hong Kong's Centre for Infection -- indicated that it was highly probable that COVID-19 spread from human-to-human, and urged the implementation of a strict monitoring system.

For weeks, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declared that preliminary investigations did not show any clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.

On January 14, 2020, the WHO reaffirmed China's statement, and on January 22, 2020, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised the CPC's handling of the outbreak, commending China's Minister of Health for his cooperation, and President Xi and Premier Li for their invaluable leadership and intervention.

On January 23, 2020, Chinese authorities announced their first steps to quarantine Wuhan. By then, it was too late. Millions of people had already visited Wuhan and left during the Chinese New Year, and a significant number of Chinese citizens had traveled overseas as asymptomatic carriers.

On February 23, 2020, Ren Zhiqiang -- former real estate tycoon and longstanding critic of the CPC -- wrote in an essay that he "saw not an emperor standing there exhibiting his 'new clothes,' but a clown stripped naked who insisted he continue being emperor." He spoke of a "crisis of governance" and the strict limits on free speech, which had magnified the COVID-19 epidemic. He has also gone missing, and it has recently been reported that the CPC has opened an investigation against him.

The world would have been more prepared and able to combat COVID-19 had it not been for President Xi's authoritarian regime's widespread and systematic pattern of sanitizing the massive domestic repression of its people.

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