Based on an essay by Ryosuke Endo in Sankei Shimbun, this article compares the 1979 anthrax leak in Sverdlovsk under the Soviet Union with the Wuhan coronavirus crisis in China. It argues that in totalitarian states, officials often prioritize self-preservation and face over human life, concealing vital information. That structure of concealment is the fundamental cause of wider infection and global catastrophe.

April 15, 2020
If the source of infection had been correctly disclosed, there would surely have been lives that could have been saved.
The very research institute staff and military personnel involved were immediately given serum therapy, and not a single one of them died.
The following is from an article by Ryosuke Endo, editor of the foreign news department and editorial writer, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title, “Concealing a Bacterial Leak: The Disease of Totalitarianism.”
The final note is mine.
“Do not eat meat. It may be contaminated with bacteria.”
In April 1979, during the Soviet era, leaflets to this effect were distributed to residences in Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, in central Russia.
Local media also reported the same thing.
From April 4 onward, seriously ill patients with high fever and breathing difficulties were brought one after another to local hospitals.
They had symptoms of anthrax in their lungs and elsewhere, and their conditions deteriorated with extraordinary speed.
The Soviet chief medical officer and other experts entered the area and concluded that it was “anthrax infection from meat.”
According to the recollection of a bereaved woman who lost her husband, visits with patients were not permitted at the hospital, and families learned of their condition only from lists of serious and critical patients posted on a bulletin board.
Public health officials wearing protective clothing came to her apartment and disinfected the rooms with chlorinated lime.
Plainclothes security officers also came, asked about her husband’s movements, and warned her not to speak of the matter.
She was not allowed to open her husband’s coffin.
Personnel of the former Soviet State Security Committee, the KGB, were also stationed at hospitals in the city, monitoring doctors and confiscating medical records and treatment progress documents.
In reality, “infection through meat” was a disinformation operation.
The truth was that anthrax bacteria had leaked from a military bacterial research institute in the closed military district of Sverdlovsk-19.
A staff member at the institute had operated equipment while a filter was detached, and the discharged anthrax bacteria were carried and dispersed by the wind.
The infected people were concentrated in the direction in which the wind was blowing at the time.
These facts became clear only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when speech became free.
People connected with the institute at the time and experts who had conducted investigations began to speak of the truth in the media.
The Soviet Union had continued research into biological weapons in violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
The official death toll is 64, but there is a strong view that the actual number was higher.
If the source of infection had been correctly disclosed, there would surely have been lives that could have been saved.
The very research institute staff and military personnel involved were immediately given serum therapy, and not a single one of them died.
I remembered this incident because, in the issue of the new coronavirus, the theory occasionally emerges that the virus leaked from a research institute in Wuhan, China.
In early March, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said, “We believe that the virus leaked from a laboratory. Animals should not be made the villains as the source of infection.”
One cannot join in an unsupported theory.
However, it is an undeniable fact that China concealed the outbreak of the virus for several weeks or more and silenced doctors, thereby expanding the damage.
When public officials prioritize self-preservation and face over human life and conceal information, it is nothing other than the disease of totalitarianism, common to both China and the Soviet Union.
While China, which imposed a lockdown on Wuhan by force, passed the peak of the spread of infection, the virus spread to Europe, America, and elsewhere, where it is now raging.
China, having failed in its initial response, has now turned to active medical-aid diplomacy, and high-ranking officials have even made patronizing remarks.
It is presumably an attempt to advertise the superiority of the Chinese-style system, with an eye to the world after the coronavirus crisis subsides.
Of course, a system that disregards freedom of speech and individual dignity must never be praised.
As in the case of the Soviet Union, perhaps the time will come when truths about the Wuhan virus, which cannot be known now, will come to light.
This genuine essay is one that NHK’s Arima and Wakuda must read with their eyes wide open.
Even if they read it, however, their brainwashed minds will probably not change.
In other words, it is already too late for them.
They are foolish people who cannot break free from a reporting posture that aligns itself with the information warfare of the Chinese Communist Party.
Such are the people who control NHK’s news division.