China: Biden Handling Beijing Pneumonia Poorly Could Have ‘Significant Impact’ on Democrats

A Chinese pro-regime professor told the state-run propaganda outlet Global Times on Sunday that Democrats could see a “significant impact” on their popularity if the ongoing out-of-control pneumonia outbreak in China becomes a concern among American voters.

China is currently struggling to keep its poor communist healthcare infrastructure functional amid a soaring rise in the number of cases of pneumonia in the country, particularly in Beijing and the northeast cities. A large number of patients flooding hospitals are children, adding to the national alarm.

The Communist Party’s national health authorities have repeatedly insisted that it has no evidence of the spread of any novel pathogens spreading, blaming the outbreak on influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterial infection.

The Global Times blamed the high number of hospitalizations attributed to diseases typically causing less severe illness on an “immunity gap” created by China’s savage “zero-covid” policy, in which genocidal dictator Xi Jinping ordered millions of people in the nation’s largest cities under perpetual house arrest and forced those suspected of Wuhan coronavirus infections into crowded and unsanitary quarantine camps.

The theory, attributed to Chinese public health experts, is that the lockdowns resulted in the public, and children especially, not receiving normal exposure to pathogens that would have built up their immune systems and made them more resilient against common respiratory viruses such as influenza.

Chaotic scenes of hospitals flooded with desperate parents, children being forced to do homework while connected to an IV drip, and emphatic assurances the situation is under control from the Communist Party have led to global unease about the situation as many recall the early days of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.

Beijing similarly reassured the world that it would contain the disease and it posed no significant threat before the Wuhan coronavirus fueled a pandemic that killed an estimated 7 million people around the world.

In response, a group of Republican senators led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Friday urging him to “immediately restrict travel between the United States and the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”

“At this moment, the world faces another unknown pathogen emanating from the PRC that could spread to other countries, including the United States,” the senators’ letter read, apparently rejecting the claims by Beijing and the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) that the pathogens spreading within China are common respiratory viruses and bacteria.

“The PRC has reported an increase in this mystery illness — which it claims to be pneumonia caused by known pathogens — since mid-October. This illness reportedly is a special hazard for children and has overrun hospitals in the north of the country.”

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Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News

“We must take the necessary steps to protect the health of Americans, and our economy. That means we should immediately restrict travel between the United States and the PRC until we know more about the dangers posed by this new illness,” the letter read. “A ban on travel now could save our country from death, lockdowns, mandates, and further outbreaks later.”

The Global Times responded to the letter on Sunday by accusing the senators of “pathological hatred” and claiming the letter is an attempt to elevate the issue in public concern.

“This partisan-driven nonsense will not have a significant impact on government decision-making, experts said,” according to the state propaganda outlet. The Times did predict, however, that the story could have a significant impact on the 2024 presidential election if voters consider Biden to handle the situation poorly.

“These hype tactics clearly have domestic political considerations,” an “expert” identified as Professor Li Haidong was quoted as saying. “If this topic continues to ferment in the arena of US domestic public opinion, it will have a significant impact on the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects. This is the intention of these Republican lawmakers.”

Li’s prediction appeared to contradict a claim in the article by another “expert,” Lü Xiang, who insisted that the senators’ concern about the spread of a potentially unknown disease in China was “extreme” and a “foolish and shameless” political move. Li conceded the possibility that the concerns were far more mainstream than Lü’s perception in America.

In a separate article on Sunday, the Global Times smeared Sen. Rubio as “an extreme nationalist and ideological fanatic” who was “aiming at accumulating political capital” and not concerned about the public health situation in China. Again, however, the Global Times conceded that concerns over the pneumonia outbreak could pose a challenge to Biden’s pro-China foreign policy, most recently exemplified by Biden giving Xi a warm welcome to San Francisco and a four-hour meeting intended to mend fences damaged by China sending a spy balloon across the continental United States.

“If more politicians in the US call for imposing a China travel ban, it will create a toxic political atmosphere and undermine China-US relations,” the Times claimed. “This may be exactly what Rubio wants to see, although it will greatly harm the US economy and the interests of ordinary American people.”

The “American people” allegedly hurt by these policies listed in the article included “Tesla CEO Elon Musk, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan.”

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