As the world begins to emerge from this global pandemic, at least in some partially public form, there are quite a few world leaders who are curious as to what China’s culpability in all of this will be.
From the very get-go, something was amiss with Beijing’s reporting on this novel strain of coronavirus. There were tales of whistleblowing medical professionals suddenly made to disappear, rumors of a bat-virus lab just miles from the original outbreak, and all sorts of deceptive data being disseminated by the the authoritarian government.
When the virus hit Europe, it became clear that China had not properly prepared the world for what was coming, and many believed that this was no mistake.
Bill Gates, however, believes that getting some answers from Beijing is a waste of time.
During a recent CNN appearance in which host Fareed Zakaria asked Gates about criticism of China’s handling of the crisis:
“I don’t think that’s a timely thing because it doesn’t affect how we act today,” Gates said. “You know, China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up. They can look back and say they missed some things. Some countries did respond very quickly. They get their testing in place and they avoided the incredible economic pain. It’s sad that even the U.S. that you would have expected to do this well did it particularly poorly. But it’s not time to talk about that.”
“This is the time to take the great science we have — the fact we’re in this together, you know, fixed testing, treatments, and get that vaccine and minimize the trillions of dollars and many things you that you can’t even dimensionalize in economic terms that are awful about the situation we’re in,” he continued. “So, that’s a distraction. I think there’s a lot of incorrect and unfair things said, but it’s not even time for that discussion.”
Gates’ assertion comes after several lawmakers, including Senator Marsha Blackburn, have begun calling for reparations from Beijing over their possibly purposeful mishandling of this crisis.
