Hong Kong Virologist: Chinese Censorship of Scientists Led to Deaths

TOPSHOT - This photo taken on June 4, 2019 shows …
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A Hong Kong virologist now living in the United States told Fox News in an interview Monday that lives were lost because the Chinese communist regime censored her findings surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking with host Bill Hemmer, virologist Yan Li-Meng emphasized the importance of responding to a pandemic as early as possible in order to save lives, action she says China actively prevented.

“This is a huge pandemic we have seen in the world,” she said. “It’s more than anything we’ve known in human history. So, the timing is very, very important. If we can stop it early, we can save lives.”

According to Yan, Beijing knew about the virus well before it became a topic of public concern and were aware that 40 people were already infected and that human-to-human transmissions were taking place. She added that as she was investigating this issue, her supervisors blocked her from sharing research that she claims would have saved lives.

“I have to hide because I know how they treat whistleblowers, and as a whistleblower here I want to tell the truth of COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] and the origin of the SARS-2 COVID virus,” she explained. She has since fled to the United States to ensure her safety, but says she still fears for her life.

Yan went on to describe how China had repeatedly blocked findings of senior researchers related to the SARS pandemic in 2003, from which around 774 people died. SARS is another known coronavirus.

She explained:

I know how they treat whistleblowers. [They want] to keep people silent if they want to reveal the truth, not only about COVID-19, but also for the other things happening in China. For example, during the SARS [pandemic of 2003], senior doctor Professor Jiang Yanyong had revealed evidence [of a cover-up] in Beijing … and also in Shanghai [another physician’s] team reviewed the sequence of the SARS-COVID-2 [coronavirus] for the first time in the world and published it in February this year and then their lab was shut down by the government.

I am waiting to tell all the things I know, provide all the evidence to the U.S. Government. And I want them to understand, and I also want the U.S. people to understand how terrible this is. It is not what you have seen … This is something very different. We have to chase the true evidence and get the real evidence because this is a key part to stop this pandemic. We don’t have much time.

Yan’s accounts corroborate separate reports accusing Chinese officials of covering up the viral outbreak at a time when its impact could have been greatly reduced. In May, Australian media published a report – allegedly written by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – claiming that the Chinese regime had been “disappearing” doctors and whistleblowers, censoring information about the outbreak, destroying samples of the virus in their laboratories, and refusing to hand over samples to foreign scientists for further analysis.

As of Tuesday, more than 13 million people have contracted the Chinese virus and close to 600,000 have died. The United Nations recently warned lockdown measures could trigger famines in dozens of countries and force 420 million people into extreme poverty.

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.

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