U.S. COVID-19 vaccine revelation debunks Washington's lies
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a COVID-19 response press briefing in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., May 11, 2020. /Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a COVID-19 response press briefing in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., May 11, 2020. /Reuters

Editor's Note: The following article is taken from the Chinese-language opinion column "The Real Point".

President Donald Trump's latest remark that scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Health began developing a COVID-19 vaccine on January 11 has stunned the world. It means that the genome sequence was shared by China in a timely manner and was concealed from the public by Washington, who vilified China after claiming it had not been transparent in sharing the information.

Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said at a recent Congress hearing that the CDC was in contact with its Chinese counterpart and discussed the novel coronavirus issue on January 2. Ten days later, Beijing shared the genome sequence of the virus with the World Health Organization.

"Scientists at the NIH began developing the first vaccine candidate on January 11—think of that—within hours of the virus's genetic code being posted online," said the U.S. president at a press conference on Friday. However, his remarks contradict his previous claim that he didn't know about the virus until late in January. Which statement is true?

His statement means that the government waited two months before declaring a national emergency on March 13, squandering precious time to save lives. It also fuels suspicion concerning the timeline of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., since an increasing number of people now knew that it was spreading across the country long before the date announced by the government.

New Jersey mayor Michael Melham stated last month that he believed he contracted the new coronavirus back in November. The public health department in Santa Clara also identified an individual who had no known history of travel and died of COVID-19 at home on February 6, three weeks ahead of the first fatality confirmed earlier by the federal government.

U.S. media have since reported that 171 people, none of whom had a history of traveling to regions affected by COVID-19, were infected in Florida two months before officials announced it had hit the state. Patients had reported symptoms of the virus as early as on January 1, but the information was removed from the state's official website on May 4 without any given reason.

The Lancet medical journal published an editorial on Saturday entitled "Reviving the US CDC". It notes that the nation's health protection agency "has seen its role minimized and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus."

Concealing information, suppressing science, protecting private interests, evading questions and falsely accusing others have been at the heart of Washington's actions when handling the pandemic. They are also the root causes behind the COVID-19 tragedy currently ravaging the United States and it all begs the question: what are the authorities trying to hide?

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