CIA agents in China are attempting to find a more accurate depiction of infection and death rates from the coronavirus than the figures reported by the Chinese government.
U.S. intelligence officials doubt that any hard data exists and believe that Beijing is just as ignorant of the coronavirus’s true toll on the country as the rest of the world, according to the New York Times. The CIA has warned the White House since at least February that Chinese totals could not be confirmed.
Intelligence agents believe that Chinese bureaucrats in Wuhan, where the virus originated, have lied about the true numbers of infected and dead from the virus or have intentionally not tested and monitored cases as they should. The bureaucrats fear that reporting numbers that are too high will result in retaliation from the Chinese Communist Party.
Reports out of China have shown a pattern of doctors and officials mysteriously disappearing after trying to warn others about the origins and extent of the virus.
GOP Sen. Tom Cotton from Arkansas said that China should face a “reckoning” after the United States and other global powers deal with the coronavirus. Cotton has already introduced legislation to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to move their supply chains out of China.
“As we get through this pandemic, there has to be an accounting and a reckoning for China,” Cotton said on Thursday. “Because China, through its dishonesty and corruption, turned what could have been a manageable local outbreak into a global pandemic that will ultimately cost not only our people but the world trillions and trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.”
