Fever Thermometer
fever thermometer, The authorities were acting in the interest of the Communist Party, not the Chinese people, and that meant keeping their nation and the world in the dark as long as possible. Yet the Chinese people have paid the price, including Dr. Li. After returning to his hospital, he contracted the coronavirus from a patient. Just over three-and-a-half weeks later, Dr. Li has reportedly died from the illness he tried to expose. His tragic death didn’t have to happen. Neither did the more than 560 others have died in the past two months. A further 28,000-plus have already caught it, from Australia to America. Both numbers are going up by the day, with no end in sight. Hundreds, if not thousands more, are sure to die before the crisis ends.
fever thermometer - China has worsened this crisis by doing the only thing it knows how to do: suffocating speech and strangling speakers. Like all communist nations, past and present, Beijing suppresses knowledge that officials deem threatening, whether to their own power, to the integrity of Maoist ideology, or to the veneer of socialism’s supremacy over other systems of government. The coronavirus fit the bill, risking China’s economic growth and the image of the party as an effective authoritarian manager of society. From the perspective of Beijing, Dr. Li had to be silenced. Indeed, by communist logic, Dr. Li had to die for the sake of the state.
fever thermometer, Xi Jinping and his communist cadres are learning the hard way that Stalin’s dictum is not accurate: “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.” Killing the messenger does not solve the problem, but it does make others afraid to talk about solutions. This isn’t the first time China has tried to cover up the truth about a public health crisis with disastrous results. Beijing tried the same approach with SARS in 2003. Officials waited months to publicly discuss that virus, allowing it to spread across the southern part of the country, into Hong Kong, and beyond. SARS killed nearly 350 people in mainland China; at least double that number will die from the coronavirus. Now, as then, the Communist Party is letting its own people perish for the sake of its grip on power.
fever thermometer - CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER And they won’t stop with Dr. Li. In recent days, Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi, two Chinese citizens known for prolifically posting photos and videos online from inside the quarantine zone in Wuhan, have disappeared. Fang’s last message reportedly stated: “all people revolt - hand the power of the government back to the people.” Sadly, this phenomenon is not restricted to China. More than 30 years ago, the Soviet Union hid the truth of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It failed to order mass evacuations as a radioactive cloud spread over Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Some 20,000 people developed thyroid cancer as a result.
fever thermometer - CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The current regime in Cuba also puts ideology ahead of its people’s medical needs. That nation suffers high rates of infant death, which officials reclassify as deaths in utero to avoid global criticism and artificially raise the average life expectancy. Rather than devote resources to saving children, however, Havana sends Cuban doctors to dozens of foreign countries to spread communist goodwill. In the middle of January, as the coronavirus began spreading across the globe, a Chinese official near the epicenter declared that “politics is always Number 1.” This logic -- that the good of the Party outweighs the good of the people -- is the doctrine of every Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist, and Maoist country in history. Dr. Li Wenliang’s death is a testament to this truth. To remember him is to remember that communism kills its own people, even as it endangers the rest of us.