China arrested the doctors who tried to warn them about the coronavirus.
President Trump fires people for telling the truth about him.
The position that Lt Col Vindman held was the sort of spot where it is essential to have someone who will tell presidents truth they don’t want to hear. More than that, the position that Donald Trump holds is the sort of spot where it is absolutely imperative to have someone who will listen to truths he doesn’t want to hear.
America’s greatness is due in no small part to the fact that we don’t force people to lie. We allow them to say the truth and we respond to reality on reality’s terms.
But Trump’s America lies about everything. Trump and his followers even lie about scientific facts. If Plank’s Constant endangers their politics, then Plank’s Constant is rubbish. If they need five to be less than a majority of nine, then they behave as if it is.
Our president purges people for telling the truth. He attacks them. He vilifies, mocks and tries to destroy them. He is constantly threatening to send his political enemies to jail for picayune insults to himself and his “greatness.”
He’s crazy. Anybody can see it.
People in China are being subjected to draconian governmental efforts to stop a virus that the government arrested doctors for identifying and trying to stop early on. People have died because the Chinese government, like all totalitarian states, demands that those in responsibility lie in order to support government-sponsored fantasies.
The miracle is that there are still brave people like Lt Col Vindman and these Chinese doctors who will tell the truth, even at their own peril.
Lt Col Vindman is the kind of man America needs in positions of trust.
Here, in three news stories, is the tale of one of the Chinese doctors who were arrested and threatened for trying to warn people about the Coronavirus.
China Arrested Doctors Who Warned About Coronavirus Outbreak.
HONG KONG—The new coronavirus that has spread consternation around the world over the last few weeks has now killed more people in China than the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003. China’s health commission reported Sunday that there were 361 deaths nationwide. During the SARS outbreak, 349 people died in mainland China and 774 altogether around the world. The Chinese stock markets took major hits Monday, and the whole nation feels its growing isolation.
Yet last December—before people all over China began falling sick with pneumonia-like symptoms, before people around the world grew alarmed about a disease leaping from captured wild animals to human shoppers in dense Chinese food markets, and before the coronavirus reached new shores after being carried onto planes by human hosts, forcing the World Health Organization to declare a global emergency—eight people discussed how several patients in Wuhan were experiencing severe, rapid breakdowns in their respiratory systems.
They were part of a medical school’s alumni group on WeChat, a popular social network in China, and they were concerned that SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, was back.
It wasn’t long before police detained them. The authorities said these eight doctors and medical technicians were “misinforming” the public, that there was no SARS, that the information was obviously wrong, and that everyone in the city must remain calm. On the first day of 2020, Wuhan police said they had “taken legal measures” against the eight individuals who had “spread rumors
A Chinese doctor who was silenced by police for warning about the coronavirus outbreak has been diagnosed with the disease.
Li Wenliang, 34, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, sent a message in a chat group on 30 December to fellow doctors warning them of an outbreak.
Dr Li Wenliang has been diagnosed with coronavirus after trying to warn others about the spread of the disease (Weibo)
He wrote: “Quarantined in the emergency department”, according to the New York Times.
He had noticed seven cases of a virus he thought looked like Sars, the virus which sparked a global epidemic in 2003.
Dr Li Wenliang was silenced by Chinese police after warning about the coronavirus outbreak (Weibo)
The patients he treated were quarantined in his hospital and thought to have come from the seafood market in Wuhan where the outbreak is believed to have originated.
But four days after his warning he was called to a police station to sign a letter in which he was accused of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order”.
He was one of eight people identified by police for allegedly “spreading rumours”.
However, at the end of January, Dr Li published a copy of the letter on social network Weibo.
The letter Dr Li Wenliang was told to sign by police (Weibo)
The hero Chinese doctor who first warned of coronavirus before he was killed by the illness was warned by police in a letter that if he ‘refused to repent he would be punished’.
Doctor Li Wenliang, 34, died on Friday but previously shared the note on his Weibo social media account revealing Wuhan police had accused him of ‘disrupting order’ and asked him to stop his ‘illegal behavior’.
It included two sections which Li had to answer, in which officials told him he was receiving a ‘reprimand for illegally spreading untruthful information online’ and that police wanted him to ‘reflect on his actions’.
Li returned to his job at Wuhan Central Hospital to treat patients after being reprimanded and died from coronavirus himself soon after sharing the letter, which was dated January 3.
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