THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020 N ATracking an OutbreakGlobal Fallout
Nine months into the pandemic,
the European Union’s second
wave of the coronavirus is proving
to be more deadly than the first,
after average daily deaths set a
new record on Nov. 24, exceeding
4,000 for the first time since April.
The data, which includes the 27
European Union member states
as well as the United Kingdom, is a
stark indicator of the challenges
facing E.U. leaders, with many un-
der pressure to ease coronavirus
restrictions over the Christmas
period.
In the first three months of the
second wave, 16 E.U. countries
have already surpassed the num-
ber of deaths they recorded in the
first wave, from February to Sep-
tember.
Some E.U. countries that
avoided major outbreaks in the
spring have been badly hit by the
second wave. The Czech Republic,
which suffered fewer than 500
deaths in the outbreak’s first
wave, has recorded nearly 8,
deaths since Sept. 1. Croatia
scrambled to revive its tourism
sector, which makes up around a
fifth of its economy, by opening its
borders on July 1 to tourists from
all countries.
Those countries are now facing
a surge of deaths in the secondwave that already total eight
times their first wave toll.
Italy is again struggling to keep
its virus outbreak under control,
with its second-wave death toll on
course to match the early months
of the pandemic. Daily deaths
surged past 800 on Nov. 24 for the
first time since March.Other E.U. countries, however,
have managed to keep the virus at
bay. Ireland has recorded fewer
than 300 deaths since Sept. 1, just
15 percent of its first wave total, af-
ter a second lockdown that the
country’s prime minister, Michael
Martin, said was “probably Eu-
rope’s strictest regime.”Many E.U. countries have again
begun tough restrictions and lock-
downs. Germany has extended its
measures, including limiting
restaurants to takeout only and
private gatherings to five people,
until at least Dec. 20, while in
Greece, residents can leave home
only for essential activities.Source: New York Times database | Note: Chart shows the seven-day moving average of deaths in the 27 European Union member states in addition to the U.K., Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
THE NEW YORK TIMES4 , 0003,2 , 0001 ,March April May June July Aug.Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.April 9
4 ,081 deathsNov. 2 8
4 ,082 deathsSpring wave Fall waveCovid-1 9
daily deathsThe E.U.’s Deadly Second Wave
Is Already Worse Than the First
March April May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.255075100Sources: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control; European Commission’s Joint Research Centre; national health departments
Note: Data is shown for 24 European countries that provide daily occupancy data to the ECDC.Hospitals in Central and Eastern Europe Have Been Hit Hardest
Daily Covid-19 patients per 100,000 peopleTHE NEW YORK TIMESCzech Rep.FinlandFranceIrelandSpain
U.K.HungaryBulgariaItaly
Italy
PolandSloveniaBelgiumThis article is by Josh Holder,
Matina Stevis-Gridneffand Allison
McCann.How Deaths in the Second Wave Compare With the First, by Country
Daily deaths per 100,000 peopleExceeded spring peakSource: New York Times database | Note: Charts represent the seven-day moving average of reported deaths. Liechtenstein is not shown. Countries far below their spring peaks include those whose
highest daily deaths in the fall were 30 percent or less than in the spring. THE NEW YORK TIMESBelow spring peak Far Below spring peak
19 countries 9 countries 2 countriesCzech Rep.GreeceCroatiaPolandSlovakiaSlovenia BulgariaHungaryMaltaLithuaniaLatviaAustria RomaniaIcelandPortugalCyprusLuxembourgEstoniaGermanyItalyFranceNetherlandsSpainU.K.
DenmarkNorway Sweden FinlandIrelandBelgiumgg2 deaths per
100,000 people1PANDEMIC CURVE
The mild-mannered German sci-
entist never anticipated becoming
a Chinese propaganda star.
But Alexander Kekulé, the direc-
tor of the Institute for Biosecurity
Research in Halle, Germany, has
been all over the state-run media in
China in recent days. News outlets
have taken Dr. Kekulé’s research
out of context to suggest that Italy,
not China, is where the coronavirus
pandemic began. Photos of him
have appeared on Chinese news
sites under headlines reading,
“China is innocent!”
Dr. Kekulé, who has repeatedly
said that he believes the virus first
emerged in China, was startled.
“This is pure propaganda,” he said
in an interview.
Facing global anger over their
initial mishandling of the outbreak,
the Chinese authorities are now
trying to rewrite the narrative of
the pandemic by pushing theories
that the virus originated outside
China.
In recent days, Chinese officials
have said that packaged food from
overseas might have brought the
virus to China. Scientists have re-
leased a paper positing that the
pandemic could have started in In-
dia. The state media has published
false stories misrepresenting for-
eign experts, including Dr. Kekulé
and officials at the World Health
Organization, as having said the vi-
rus came from elsewhere.
The campaign seems to reflect
anxiety within the ruling Commu-
nist Party about the continuing
damage to China’s international
reputation brought by the pan-
demic. Western officials have criti-
cized Beijing for trying to conceal
the outbreak when it first erupted.
The party also appears eager to
muddy the waters as the World
Health Organization begins an in-
vestigation into the question of how
the virus jumped from animals to
humans, a critical inquiry that ex-
perts say is the best hope to avoid
another pandemic. China, which
has greatly expanded its influence
in the W.H.O. in recent years, has
tightly controlled the effort by des-
ignating Chinese scientists to lead
key parts of the investigation.
By spreading theories that for-
eigners are responsible for the pan-
demic, the party is deploying a
well-worn playbook. The Chinese
government is rarely willing to
publicly address its own shortcom-
ings, often preferring to redirect at-
tention elsewhere and rally the
country against a common enemy.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has
led a vigorous effort this year to
play down his government’s early
failures in the crisis, instead argu-
ing that the party’s success in con-
taining the virus shows the superi-
ority of its authoritarian system.
The latest propaganda push
gives Mr. Xi a fresh chance to stoke
nationalist sentiment and distract
from festering problems, including
a lingering wealth gap. The govern-
ment seems wary of inviting re-
newed scrutiny of its actions as the
pandemic unfolded, analysts say.
Mr. Xi most likely sees the par-
ty’s missteps as a vulnerability and
is eager to avoid potential chal-
lenges to his authority at home,
said Erin Baggott Carter, an assist-
ant professor of political science at
the University of Southern Califor-
nia. “If Xi is able to escape blame
for the coronavirus, that reduces
one major source of discontent
with his rule,” she said.
In some ways, China’s strategy
resembles efforts by American
lawmakers to distract from mis-
steps in that country by spreading
fringe theories, including the un-
substantiated notion that the Chi-
nese government manufactured
the virus as a biological weapon.
For months, Chinese officials
openly spread conspiracy theories
of their own, implying at one point
that the United States military
could have brought the virus to Wu-
han. Experts and officials are now
going further, trying to give false-
hoods about the origins of the virus
the veneer of scientific fact.
A recent paper by a group of sci-
entists affiliated with the state-run
Chinese Academy of Sciences indi-
cated that the virus could have bro-
ken out in India before spreading to
China. “Wuhan is not the place
where human-to-human SARS-
CoV-2 transmission first hap-
pened,” said the paper, which ap-
peared last month on SSRN, an on-
line scholarly repository. The pa-
per, which was not peer-reviewed,
had been submitted to The Lancet,
a medical journal, for publication.
After drawing wide attention in
the Chinese news media and in
overseas outlets, the 22-page arti-
cle vanished from online sites. A
spokeswoman for The Lancet said
it had been removed from SSRN at
the request of the paper’s authors.
The scientists did not respond to
requests for comment.
The article was the latest in a se-
ries of comments and articles by
Chinese scientists arguing that the
virus had first surfaced in Italy,
Spain or elsewhere before spread-
ing to China.
While recent studies have indi-
cated that the coronavirus may
have been in the United States and
elsewhere earlier than previously
thought, researchers still believe
the most likely explanation is that it
started circulating in China.
Edward Holmes, a professor at
the University of Sydney who has
studied the coronavirus, said the
idea that the virus originated out-
side China seemed to be gaining
traction for political purposes. “It
lacks scientific credibility and will
only further fuel the conspiracy
theories,” he said.
As part of their efforts to redirect
attention toward other countries,
Chinese scholars and officials have
in recent weeks revived another
unproven theory: that frozen food
packages from abroad brought the
virus to China.
While the World Health Organi-
zation says the probability of be-
coming infected from coming into
contact with food and food packag-
ing is low, Chinese officials have
doubled down on the theory.
“More and more evidence sug-
gests that the frozen seafood or
meat products probably spread the
virus from countries with the epi-
demic into our country,” Wu Zun-
you, the chief epidemiologist at the
Chinese Center for Disease Control
and Prevention, said in a recent in-
terview posted on a government
website.
As it seeks to push its theories on
the global stage, the Chinese gov-
ernment has distorted comments
from foreign experts to falsely sug-
gest there is broad consensus that
the virus surfaced outside China.
Michael Ryan, the W.H.O.’s
emergency director, spoke recently
about the need for a rigorous inves-
tigation into how the virus spread
from animals to humans. “We need
to start where we found the first
cases and that is in Wuhan in
China,” Dr. Ryan said at a news con-
ference late last month in Geneva.
But in China, the government
framed Dr. Ryan’s remarks differ-
ently. The news media falsely
claimed that he had said the virus
existed around the world but hap-
pened to be discovered in Wuhan.
Dr. Ryan was more explicit a few
days later, saying the idea that the
virus originated outside China was
“highly speculative.” Official news
outlets in China did not report that
remark.
When Dr. Kekulé, the German
scientist, appeared on a television
news show last month to discuss
the pandemic, he made a point of
saying that it was clear the virus
had first emerged in China. During
the interview, he also criticized Eu-
ropean officials for taking too long
to detect the virus, saying it en-
abled Covid-19 to spread across the
globe.
Chinese news outlets seized on
the latter remarks. “He noted that
for a global pandemic, the starting
shot was fired in northern Italy,”
said a report by China Global Tele-
vision Network, an international
arm of the official Chinese state
broadcaster.
Dr. Kekulé, who has written a
book about the pandemic, was dis-
traught and set out to correct the
record, going on German television
again to say he had been misquot-
ed.
“China uses everything for prop-
aganda,” Dr. Kekulé said in an in-
terview. “I started to realize that I
had to do something about it.”
But Dr. Kekulé’s efforts were
largely in vain. Video clips of his re-
marks about Europe had already
spread widely on the Chinese inter-
net. Thousands of people were
sharing state media articles about
his research, leaving comments
such as, “A billion people in China
thank you!” and “There are not
many scientists who dare tell the
truth.”CHINA
Propaganda Machine
Muddies Virus’s Origin
Misrepresenting Remarks of Experts
And Casting Iffy Theories as Science
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZResearchers believe the virus
originated in Wuhan, China.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESChris Buckley contributed report-
ing. Albee Zhang contributed re-
search.
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