China’s state news agency ridicules slow US response to coronavirus pandemic outbreak in Lego-like animation

Chinese and US national flags flutter at the entrance of a company office building in Beijing on January 19, 2020. (Photo by AFP)
China’s official news agency has published a short animation that mocks the US response to the new coronavirus pandemic as the two countries remain locked in a dispute over the origins of the flu-like pathogen.

In an animation titled “Once Upon a Virus,” Xinhua showed Lego-like figures that represent the two countries as they act on a stage and trade barbs.

The Chinese side, featured in the form of a warrior wearing a face mask, derides the United States, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, and America’s slow response to the deadly contagion.

In the video, posted online and viewed 1.6 million times on Twitter, China warns the US about the severity of the problem, while Washington dismisses the warnings and then blames Beijing for not raising the alarm sooner.

“We discovered a new virus,” says the warrior.

“So what?” replies the Statue of Liberty. “It’s only a flu.”

The warrior later asks the statue, “Are you listening to yourselves?” as she begins to turn red with fever and gets hooked up to an intravenous drip.

The animation ends with the statue saying, “We are always correct, even when we contradict ourselves,” while China responds, “That’s what I love best about you Americans, your consistency.”

The US has been sharpening his rhetoric against China since the new coronavirus emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year and grew into a global pandemic.
Washington claims that there is evidence Beijing created the new coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, in a medical lab in Wuhan. This is while the US intelligence agencies say they have seen no evidence to show the virus is “man-made.”

In February, China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed rumors that the virus may have been artificially synthesized at one of its laboratories or perhaps escaped from such a facility.

US President Donald Trump once again claimed on Thursday he was confident the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese virology lab, but declined to describe the evidence.
Trump said in an interview with Reuters that he believes China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is proof that Beijing “will do anything they can” to make him lose his re-election bid in November.

US Democrats have criticized Trump since the epidemic erupted in Wuhan, saying he has failed to develop a comprehensive and effective plan for testing Americans for the coronavirus and tracing contacts of those who are infected by the virus, which has so far infected about 3.4 million people and killed over 244,000 across the world.

More than 3.8 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week as the US economy slid further into a crisis that is becoming the most devastating since the 1930s.

The economists have forecast that the unemployment rate for April could go as high as 20% — the highest rate since it reached 25% during the Great Depression.