Corona documentary revealed: China apparently withheld explosive knowledge at the beginning
Created: 05/19/2022, 05:20
By: Astrid Kistner
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Thousands of people are still infected with the corona virus every day, and a documentary has now shed light on the origin of the pandemic.
Was China holding back explosive knowledge?
Munich – Corona has claimed millions of lives, brought the world to a standstill at times and divided societies in the discussion about the danger of this virus.
But what have we learned from this pandemic?
Could it have been avoided?
The highly exciting documentary The Outbreak, which ZDF showed on Tuesday, is dedicated to this question in detail.
Corona documentary revealed: China apparently withheld explosive knowledge at the beginning
Commented by leading international scientists, she traces the key moments of the first ten weeks after the discovery of the novel virus in Wuhan, China.
This 90-minute film by Michael Wech is worth watching because it tells so much more than what is already known.
The documentary shows what happens when scientists are not heard or discredited.
When politicians hesitate for fear of making uncomfortable decisions, when emotions are given priority over facts in crisis management.
“An enormous amount of time was lost in January and February 2020.
The world ran into the catastrophe with its eyes open,” says US epidemiologist Richard Hatchett in the film.
He was one of the scientists who was extremely alarmed in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21, 2020: "In the 20 years that I have been dealing with epidemics, I have never been so concerned," he told a journalist on site.
"What we have to do now is take so-called non-pharmaceutical measures such as school closures, contact and travel restrictions."
Corona pandemic developed extremely quickly - China plays a decisive role
The world, but above all its political decision-makers, did not want to hear him at this point.
The pathogen had already been decoded, so there was the sequence of the genome and the knowledge that it was transmitted from person to person at an alarming rate.
A circumstance that the World Health Organization (WHO) downplayed until the end of January.
Chinese authorities had previously prevented the genome sequence from being shared with scientists around the world.
"Chinese doctors who shared their knowledge were brought before the police and given a serious warning," said Dake Kang, a journalist with the Associated Press investigative team in Beijing.
When the material was finally available to everyone, it was the breakthrough for tests and vaccines that could be developed in laboratories.
At the same time, parallel worlds emerged: one in which science lived, shocked by the growth and danger of this virus, and one in which politics desperately tried not to stir up panic.
Corona: Could the pandemic have been prevented?
"We were appalled by the sluggishness and lack of seriousness with which the US has addressed the threat," said a former Barack Obama adviser.
A group of former presidential advisers, who had been preparing for a pandemic for years, formed behind the scenes of politics in the states early on.
The Wolverines, as they called themselves, networked with doctors and scientists worldwide.
"We could have prevented this pandemic, but the danger has been downplayed for far too long," says Jeremy Farrar, one of the leading researchers in the corona pandemic.
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After swine flu, bird flu and Ebola - epidemics that could be contained - it was difficult to get through to politics.
The fear of doing something wrong - as this documentary shows - was and is great among political decision-makers.
"But Corona is like a hurricane," explains an infectiologist in the film.
“You have to evacuate the city when the sun is shining and the wind is light.
If you wait until the hurricane hits, it's too late.” ASTRID KISTNER
When fighting the virus, virologist Hendrik Streeck distinguishes between a “summer tire” and a “winter tire mode”.
In the current interview, he explains his point of view.
