Insights Into Persistence of Pneumonia-Associated Infections and the Subsequent Rise in Deaths in China

A mourner carries the cremated remains of a loved one as he and others wear traditional white funeral clothing, during a funeral in Shanghai, China, on Jan. 14, 2023. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

On Pinnacle View, a commentary program on the New Tang Dynasty, political observers and medical experts expressed concern over the ongoing pneumonia-related outbreak that has overwhelmed Chinese hospitals, with an increasing number of patients suffering from fevers and coughs and many symptoms becoming severe in a short time, causing a surge in deaths.

Despite the disturbing symptoms and the surge in infections and deaths, Chinese hospitals didn’t perform nucleic acid testing. They dodged any diagnosis of potential COVID-19 variants while uniformly treating cases as “influenza.”

Over a couple of years, since Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities lifted a stringent anti-virus policy and city lockdowns at the end of 2022, the pandemic seems to have disappeared from Chinese people’s daily lives as COVID-related news has almost been unseen in the official media or on censored social media platforms.

However, strict prevention measures are still in place at high-level official venues, and nucleic acid tests are usually performed on visiting foreign guests and accompanying journalists.

These apparent anti-epidemic precautions in favor of the ruling elite, along with suspicious silence from hospitals, have ignited concerns that the evolving virus may still be ravaging China, with people wondering how much of the truth about COVID-19 is being concealed in the communist-ruled state.

‘Virus Has Evolved Even More Deadly’

Providing his views in Pinnacle View, independent TV producer, Li Jun said he noticed that many Chinese doctors and nurses have recently accepted interviews by overseas media, including The Epoch Times and the New Tang Dynasty. They uniformly claimed that the COVID-related epidemic hasn’t gone away, and hospitals have been under tremendous pressure due to rising infections and the severity of illness.

Mr. Li cited an April 4 report in the Chinese language of The Epoch Times, in which a chief doctor, who left only the surname of Liu for security reasons, revealed the surge in infected patients. “It’s appalling that the hospital’s 50-odd beds have been occupied recently and that many patients lodged in nearby hotels and came to the hospital to get their medicines, equivalent to semi-hospitalization.”

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People wait for medical attention at the Fever Clinic area in Tongren Hospital in the Changning district in Shanghai, on Dec. 23, 2022. (Hector Retamal /AFP via Getty Images)

The doctor was convinced that “the virus has evolved even more deadly.” As he saw, many patients were infected with COVID-19 mutations or had after-effects or complications, with dire health conditions. Some symptoms emerged very rapidly, like vomiting and diarrhea overnight and then dying the following day.

He told the reporter that he knew about a sudden death case of his colleague’s wife, who was infected in the hospital when she came to get some saline injections for a cold. “When she returned home [that day], she immediately developed symptoms, and her coughing reaction was particularly strong. When my colleague went back, she said to him, ‘I’ll make you a meal,’ but before the meal was finished, she suddenly fainted on the floor and could not be resuscitated.”

Mr. Li noted that many hospitals are under stern surveillance, even police stationed there. All testing equipment has been taken away, no nucleic acid testing is allowed, and all previous cases related to the outbreak have been destroyed. Doctors in outpatient and inpatient departments are separated to avoid conversations and information leaks.

Deaths are increasing, as evidenced by many Chinese netizens who found more graves when they returned to their hometowns for the Tomb-sweeping Festival, a Chinese traditional festival in the first week of April. One netizen exposed that his neighboring village has a mortality rate of about 3 percent, more than fourfold the average.

Simultaneously, the price of the cemetery plot has increased as the demand has increased. In first- and second-tier cities, a cemetery plot has a whopping price ranging from 100,000 to 200,000 yuan ($14,000–$27,000), with other limits such as only 20 years of term of use and charges for annual cemetery management fees.

This has promoted a boom in cremation houses, according to Mr. Li. More citizens resort to third- or fourth-tier cities and spend about 200,000 yuan ($27,000) on buying a place for the ashes of their loved ones.

“One can imagine that the number of Chinese people who died from the epidemic was enormous.” Mr. Li said.

Immunity of Chinese People Declines

Xiaoxu Sean Lin, a former U.S. Army microbiologist, believes weakened immunity contributes to increased deaths. “The fatality of illness has two preconditions: one is how strong the virus itself is, and the other is how weak your immunity is, and if your immunity declines, you will die.”

So, the core issue is how much the health of the Chinese people has been devastated over the past few years, Mr. Lin said in Pinnacle View.

He blamed the ruling CCP for the decline in Chinese people’s immunity. For instance, the officially touted Chinese-made vaccines are actually of low quality and have adverse effects. Numerous people were infected multiple times as they couldn’t get the proper precautions and treatment due to the CCP’s cover-up of the outbreak.

According to Mr. Lin, the current virus dominant in China, JN.1, is a COVID-19 variant, which may present as a mild disease in the United States and other countries. However, among Chinese people with a vulnerable immune system, it presents as a rapidly developing severe disease.

In particular, as per Mr. Lin, the immunity of Chinese youth is now much weaker, so the proportion of young people dying in this wave of respiratory disease has also increased, which is a big problem.

Moreover, the elderly who already have underlying diseases would add to the death toll.

On the other hand, Mr. Lin pointed out that “in the field of public health, a pandemic cannot be examined solely from the disease itself. From the perspective of the state of society as a whole, the mentality of the people, and the whole state of cognition, I think all these factors impacted how pandemics spread across the country.”

Mr. Lin recalled plagues in human history; for example, the influenza outbreak in Spain in 1918 coincided with the tremendous social change in the First World War. When the Black Death of A.D. 541 occurred in Europe, it also met with the collapse of the Roman Empire, which was entirely corrupt at the end of its rule.

“Therefore, pandemics [are] largely related to social dynamics and the fate of nations.”

Virus Targets the CCP

COVID-19 is known as the Wuhan Coronavirus, as it initially started in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in central China, in late 2019 and swept across the globe due to the CCP’s withholding of truthful information during the onset phase.

Ms. Guo said in Pinnacle View that the epidemic is worsening in China, although the CCP obscures the truth, and there is no coverage in the official media. Nevertheless, everyone knew that countless Chinese people have died so far in this epidemic that has lasted for years, and the tragedy persists.

Visitors take an oath inside the Memorial of the First National Congress of the CCP in Shanghai, China, on June 17, 2021. (Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images)

Reviewing official obituaries of senior officials and celebrities, one can see that the number of deaths has continued to climb, indirectly reflecting the persistence and severity of the epidemic in China, according to Ms. Guo. For example, from March 17–25, at least six senior officials died of illness, including Lu Chaoqi, the former deputy editor-in-chief of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the CCP.

Between March 30 and April 2, at least four senior generals died of illness, including Major General Zhang Lixiong. In less than four months this year, more than 2 dozen high-ranking generals in the CCP military have died. In the first two months of this year, at least ten Marxist theorists and professors died, at least 8 of whom were members of the CCP. In the first three months of this year, at least twelve academicians died, 9 of whom were members of the CCP, and more others.

According to Ms. Guo, a majority of the senior CCP officials and prominent figures who died this year were CCP members, and many of them had committed crimes in the campaign to suppress Falun Gong.

“Some people may not be religious or maybe materialists, whatever you believe, but a person’s health is indeed closely related to their mental condition. Psychology has summarized and created charts based on the effects of human emotions on health. The unhealthiest emotions are envy, resentment, anger, and suspicion; the healthiest are cheerfulness, tolerance, and kindness,” she said.

“In terms of basic emotions, the whole theory of communism and socialism was surrounded by envy and resentment, which seriously jeopardized the mental health of human beings. It is well known that a person’s mental state can seriously affect his or her health, especially when viruses are ravaging the human race. Medically speaking, it leads to a decline in overall immunity.”

“Now, the CCP is promoting the Fengqiao Experience, the extreme leftist ideology of communism and socialism, which, according to the exploration mentioned above, has shattered the immunity of the Chinese people.

“It demonstrates the Chinese tend to fall into a particularly hostile or hateful mood, which traditional Chinese medicine defines as a form of dampness, an evil in the body that damages health.

“If you look at it from the perspective of belief in the divine, this ... is even more straightforward: Any interest group or political figure attacking the sacred faith or waging war against believers would be doomed to failure,” Ms. Guo said.

Ancient Prophecy

In Mr. Li’s view, ancient Chinese prophecies have opened new horizons for us modern humans. One of the most renowned is “Shaobing Song” by Liu Bowen, a Chinese military strategist and philosopher in the fourteenth century, spanning the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties.

The prophecy foretells plagues and other major disasters, like this COVID-19 outbreak, according to Mr. Li. It implied, for example, that the epidemic began in the winter of 2019 and would be more dangerous to those who hold power and wealth in their hands; this disease is targeting people who stand with the CCP.

Mr. Li said this ancient sage even predicted the end time of the epidemic; everyone would find it hard to live through the Year of the Dragon (2024) and the Year of the Snake (2025), and only after these two years passed could it disappear.