Based on an essay by Kaori Fukushima, this article examines China’s concealment of information over the source of the new coronavirus, doubts about the Huanan Seafood Market theory, the existence of a biosafety laboratory in Wuhan, and the suspicion created by speech and media control.
It argues that, given China’s repeated concealment of life-and-death information, only the end of media control and full disclosure can reveal the truth.

March 12, 2020
Looking back on everything that has happened so far, it cannot be helped if people suspect that China is still hiding something.
The following is a continuation of the essay by Kaori Fukushima, one of Japan’s foremost China watchers, published in this month’s issue of the national must-read monthly magazine Hanada under the title “Even Hunting Down People from Wuhan and Hubei: A Cruel Story of the New Pneumonia.”
Her essay also clearly shows that those who only subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun and similar newspapers and only watch television news programs such as NHK’s Watch 9 are left as information weaklings who know nothing of the truth.
Kaori Fukushima graduated from Osaka University, joined the Sankei Shimbun, studied at Fudan University, worked as a correspondent in Beijing, and is now active as a journalist.
The source of infection is not the market.
Looking back on everything that has happened so far, it cannot be helped if people suspect that China is still hiding something.
The fact that Chen Qiushi and others have been detained also shows that the Chinese Communist Party has not reflected on its concealment.
This coronavirus is truly a strange virus.
The fatality rate in Wuhan City is around 4 percent.
As of the 9th, it was 4.06 percent.
The average in China as a whole is around 2 percent.
Some point out that the fatality rate appears unusually high because Wuhan’s medical system has collapsed.
But if the fatality rate of seasonal influenza is 0.01 percent, this virus is more virulent than influenza.
It has an incubation period of up to two weeks, and in some cases no pneumonia symptoms appear.
It survives for several days in feces and on elevator buttons, and aerosol infection has also been confirmed.
At first, it was said that elderly people and patients with underlying diseases were more likely to become seriously ill.
However, deaths among young and middle-aged people without preexisting conditions have also occurred, and cases in which the cause of death was heart failure or multiple organ failure have also been reported.
It is also said that even after recovery, antibodies may not form, and reinfection may be possible.
And what the true host of this coronavirus is still remains unknown.
At first, live wild animals at the Huanan Seafood Market were thought to be the source of infection.
However, according to a joint report by doctors at Jinyintan Hospital, the first infected person had no connection with the market.
Of the four people hospitalized by the 10th, three had no connection with the market.
It is more persuasive to think that the first source of infection was not the market but somewhere else, and that an infected person or animal brought the virus into the market.
About thirty kilometers from the market, there is a national biosafety laboratory that conducts experiments on BSL-4 viruses.
Considering together the fact that animal experiments on coronaviruses were being conducted there, although one hopes it cannot be true, one cannot help wondering whether this virus really arose through natural mutation.
Perhaps taking into consideration the government’s desire to proceed as scheduled with Xi Jinping’s state visit to Japan and the Tokyo Olympics, Japanese experts are also calling on people not to be too afraid, saying that the virus is not so dangerous.
But China has repeatedly concealed important life-and-death information.
There may still be something it is hiding about the true nature of this virus.
The only prescription for curing this cruel disease, which is covered in panic and suspicion, is the end of speech and media control and the disclosure of information.