China’s Global Times government newspaper accused leftist President Joe Biden this week of declaring the Chinese coronavirus pandemic “over” as a means of boosting Democrat prospects in the upcoming midterm elections, predicting that doing so would “lead to a spike in cases and deaths” throughout America.
Biden – who had previously spent his presidency defending sanitary mask mandates and attempting to impose laws requiring the ingestion of vaccination products – appeared to make a dramatic reversal during a CBS News interview on Sunday in which he declared that the world had moved on because the pandemic is “over.”
“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with [Chinese coronavirus],” Biden told CBS News’ Scott Pelley. “We’re still doing a lot of work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”
Biden’s comments followed similar, and rare, optimism from World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who last week stopped short of declaring an end to the pandemic but promised the world “the end is in sight.”
“Last week, the number of weekly reported deaths from [Chinese coronavirus] was the lowest since March 2020. We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We are not there yet but the end is in sight,” Tedros said at a regular press briefing. We can see the finish line. We are in a winning position but now is the worst time to stop running. Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap the rewards of all our hard work.”
The Global Times, an official Chinese government mouthpiece, enthusiastically disagreed with Biden on Monday, calling his comments “extremely irresponsible” and accusing him of dishonesty on the pandemic in an attempt to prevent a major defeat for the Democrats in November’s elections.
“Chinese observers believe that the [Chinese coronavirus] issue in the US has become a political tool for a partisan battle instead of a public health issue concerning people’s lives,” the Global Times claimed, “which highlighted that the Biden administration’s decision-making is extremely irresponsible.”
The communist regime-approved “experts” cited predicted mounting deaths attributable to Biden’s interview and claimed that Biden’s failure to secure America’s borders would also exacerbate the problem.
“Experts said that Biden’s extremely irresponsible remarks may lead to a spike in cases and deaths in the US in the fall and winter when [Chinese coronavirus] intertwines with the flu,” the state propaganda outlet relayed. “In addition, the lack of prevention and control measures coupled with loosening border control in the US puts the world at risk of a resurgence of [Chinese coronavirus].”
One such expert, a “research fellow” identified as Lü Xiang, drew a direct line from Biden declaring the pandemic over to the poor results expected for Democrats in the upcoming elections.
“Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that as a weak president, Biden’s declaration had apparent political motives,” the Global Times cited, “as he attempted to show the government’s achievement and boost morale of the Democratic Party before the midterm elections.”
“Instead of making decisions based on scientific assessment from health departments, Biden bluntly announced the end of the pandemic which was absolutely unscientific and extremely irresponsible, Lü said,” the Times noted, describing Biden’s coronavirus policy with its favorite slur for American politics, “chaotic.”
Chinese state media’s attacks on Biden follow months of brutal coronavirus lockdowns in the communist country that have alarmed even the once-supportive W.H.O. Tedros, the W.H.O. chief, warned against lockdowns in May, stating that rolling lockdowns of entire cities was “not sustainable” as a long-term strategy and unnecessary given the sharp decline in the virus’s death rate and the existence of vaccine products.
“We know the virus better and we have better tools, including vaccines, so that’s why the handling of the virus should actually be different from what we used to do at the start of the pandemic,” Tedros said at the time, leading to Chinese officials censoring photos of Tedros online.
Global disgust with its lockdowns, and domestic unrest including attacks on police, have made China reconsider officially declaring entire cities locked down. Instead, it now locks down individual neighborhoods, sometimes locking down all neighborhoods in one city but not declaring a formal city lockdown. As of early September, at least 70 Chinese cities were in total or partial lockdown, most prominently Chengdu and Ghulja.
In Ghulja, a major city in the Uyghur region of East Turkistan, residents have taken to sharing social media videos demanding the government either allow people to leave their homes or provide food. Some residents have shared videos apparently showing the corpses of their loved ones who died of starvation or lack of access to critical medicine. China is currently engaging in a genocide of Uyghur and other Turkic people in the region, which has led to many activists accusing China of deliberately starving out the population of Ghulja in an attempt to speed up the results of its genocide.