1. A number of supercomputers used in research institutes across Germany and the United Kingdom
have been attacked by hackers, since January 9th this year. The cyber attackers used a stolen user
account and obtained root privileges.
On May 13, the U.S. (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) alleged
several American organizations researching COVID-19 virus had been attacked by the Chinese.
The security agency states that the chinese attackers have been observed attempting to identify and
illicitly obtain valuable intellectual property (IP) and public health data related to vaccines, treatments,
and testing from networks and personnel affiliated with COVID-19-related research. The potential theft of
this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective, and efficient treatment options.
2. One doctor, Li Wenliang, was warned not to spread "false comments" after raising the alarm
about a SARS like illness going around earlier in December. He eventually caught the virus and
died in early february
“The authoritarian Chinese government has a history of harassing and detaining citizens for speaking
the truth or for criticizing the authorities during public emergencies, for example, during Sars in 2003,
Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Wenzhou train crash in 2011 and Tianjin chemical explosion in
2015," HRW's Yaqiu Wang told the BBC.
3. Professor Bing Liu, 37, was a research assistant professor who had a bachelor’s and doctoral
degrees in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore. He was found dead with
gunshot wounds to his head, neck and torso, at his home in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The
shooter was found in a car nearby, having apparently killed himself after the crime.
His department posted, “Bing was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding
the cellular mechanisms that underlie SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of the following
complications. We will make an effort to complete what he started in an effort to pay homage to his
scientific excellence.”
4. Li Zehua, 25, a citizen journalist in Wuhan, was chased after seemingly filming the situation in
Wuhan during the early outbreak. While he was live streaming in a social media, Weibo, he
recorded two men in plain clothes from the state security knocking on his apartment, probably to
detain him and then it got cut. This was later shared in YouTube.
“The epidemic has exposed this country completely in its corruption, bureaucracy, information control
and censorship,” said Phillip Wu, 25, a freelance writer in Beijing.
5.
Two other citizen journalists in Wuhan, Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin, have also gone missing
while legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, who called Xi “clueless” in an open letter and asked him to step
down, has been detained.
Beijing is known for clamping down on activists who speak out. It has also been keen to show it is getting
the outbreak under control.
6. On Jan 28th 2020, Harvard university chemistry chairman, Charles Lieber, a 60 year old was
arrested on charges of lying about receiving millions in Chinese funding’s and he was a
participant in China's thousand talent program
7. On May 11th 2020, Simons songyang, a 63 year old, who is an electrical engineering professor
and a researcher at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville was arrested on charges of failing to
disclose financial relationship with Chinese government and was charged with wire fraud.
Authorities say simon has defrauded NASA and his University. He secured funding for a NASA
research project but he did not disclose his affiliation with the Chinese University. Neither did he
tell the authorities about his links with Chinese companies
8. May 13th 2020, Professor at case Western Reserve University’s school of medicine, who
specializes in genetics and cardiovascular disease, was arrested over alleged financial ties to the
Chinese government and fraud charges; received $3.6M from NIH for this research at the
Cleveland clinic. He was a Dean of the College of life sciences and Technology and was also a
participant in China's thousand talents program, where he received a grant of three million dollars
from China.
9. Beijing withheld crucial info 6 full days from January 14th to January 20th. CNN went through the
public report of the government’s teleconference that took place a month before it was released. It
said “sober understanding of the situation” was made known to top chinese government officials
and that “clustered cases suggests that human to human transmission is possible”. But that wasn’t
the message shared publicly by the health officials at the time.
In fact, as hundreds of millions travelled leading up to the lunar New Year holiday, mass gathering at
airports and railway stations. The wuhan health commissions maintained that the outbreak was
controllable and preventable and that this was not contagious.
It was not until January 20th that leading health officials acknowledged publicly cases of human to human
transmission possible and they had even stated that the medical personal had gotten infected
10. On April 4, Cabinet ministers triumphantly announced that they had scored a much-needed win,
buying 300 ventilators from China that were unloaded with some fanfare at a military base in
England
Senior British doctors have warned that 250 ventilators the United Kingdom bought from China risk
causing "significant patient harm, including death," if they are used in hospitals, according to a letter seen
by NBC News.
The doctors said the machines had a problematic oxygen supply, could not be cleaned properly, had an
unfamiliar design and a confusing instruction manual, and were built for use in ambulances, not hospitals.
11. Apparently, wuhan is the capital city of hubei, china, being the most populous so it makes sense
that the virus hit wuhan out of all the other places as it was a village and highly populated. China
already has a history of trying to control the population through 1 child policy.
Or maybe they were just foraging for bugs around a farm, infecting livestock — which we then ate.
Their strategy of controlling the virus included shooting the people with the virus and burning them.
Since March, many governments have been scrambling to buy more medical equipment — much of it
from China — to make up for large gaps in their supplies. While much of this equipment has been vital in
combating the pandemic, some has been faulty or unsuitable.
Before the crisis began, it churned out 20 million medical masks every day — around half the world's
total output — but by the end of February, it had already ramped up production to 116 million daily units,
according to Chinese state media.
As of Saturday, 74 countries and six international organizations had signed 192 contracts for Chinese
medical supplies totaling $1.41 billion, Li Xingqian, director of the Commerce Ministry's foreign trade
department, said at a briefing Sunday.