1月20日，韓國出現首例輸入性新冠肺炎病例。兩天後的1月22日，美國也出現了一例輸入性新冠肺炎病例。九天之後，1月31日，特朗普總統宣布美國進入公共衛生緊急狀態，並禁止來自中國的旅客入境。相比之下，韓國每天仍然接待多達2萬名來自中國的遊客，其2月4日頒佈的禁令也僅限於湖北省（包括省會武漢市）。兩個半月後的4月15日，美國已經錄得632546起病例，28326人死亡，而韓國是10591起病例，225人死亡。就在當天，這個國家甚至還舉行了國會議員選舉，並創下66.2%的28年來最高投票率。韓國絕不是一個另類，台灣、新加坡和香港這些韓國的東亞同胞在新冠疫情應對方面同樣出色。從1月21日至1月23日，這些地方都記錄了首例新冠肺炎輸入病例，但到4月15日為止，它們都成功地將死亡人數控制在了個位數。

美國在預防、遏制和緩解疫情方面的表現與東亞地區大相徑庭，這為我們提供了一個有用的背景來質疑特朗普政府的指控，即中國政府有意隱瞞疫情消息，並且應當對美國和世界各地死亡人數的不斷上升負責。直到4月17日，《華爾街日報》和《華盛頓郵報》的社論版還在重複這一指控。該指控的重點是，中國早在2019年12月31日就知道有新冠肺炎可以人傳人的證據，此外，台灣也向世衛組織通報了相關情況。但中國並沒有向美國和國際公共衛生界發出警告，而是將這一重要信息壓到1月20日，甚至讓試圖發出警告的醫務人員閉嘴。特朗普政府聲稱，如果中國提前三周就承認人傳人真相，積極遏制並緩解疫情，全球冠狀肺炎病例的數量會少95%之多。

這個根據為期三周的時間表做出的指控既不符合事實，也有捏造之嫌，其部分原因，是它所依賴的來源單一，而且後來證明很可疑。

12月31日知道新冠肺炎可以人傳人的說法源於《金融時報》的一篇報道，它引用台灣副總統、訓練有素的流行病學家陳建仁的話說，台灣曾經就新冠病毒向世衛組織發出警告。然而，事實是從未有過這類警告。台灣衛生福利部長12月31日給世衛組織的的電子郵件稱，“中國武漢至少出現7例非典型肺炎病例，這些樣品仍在檢驗中，病患已被隔離治療”。這其中絲毫沒有提及“人傳人”。在4月中旬被追問這件事時，台灣衛生福利部長只辯解說，病人被“隔離治療”應該就是潛在的“人傳人”證據。鑒於當時（12月31日）島上沒有確診病例，台灣是不能聲明“人傳人”是確定事實的。

拋開台灣的這種掩飾不談，與當天武漢市衛健委發佈的消息相比，它也沒有向世衛組織揭露更多有用的信息。12月30日，武漢市衛健委發佈了關於一種“不明原因病毒性肺炎”的緊急公告，並在第二天的疫情通報中列出多達27例非典型肺炎病例。同應對任何呼吸道病原體一樣，人們一直都知道人際傳染風險是不能被忽視的。

更重要的是，當時中國的中央和省級政府已經在集中全力尋找疫情源頭，展開調查，並對病毒進行隔離。鑒定病原體的賽跑從1月2日開始，到1月5日，中國已經告知世衛組織此次疫情的構成與流感、禽流感、中東呼吸綜合征等其他呼吸道病原體是不同的，這使世衛組織得以第一次向全球通報武漢暴發了不明肺炎。1月7日，首個新毒株被分離出來。1月9日，該病原體被判定為新型冠狀病毒。1月12日，它的全部基因序列信息被提交給了世衛組織。1月15日，中國國家衛健委制定了初步的公共衛生對策細則。在當時，追問人與人之間的傳播率並非第一要務，這是可以理解的。

這期間，透明度方面也沒有欠缺。繼12月30日武漢市衛健委發佈“不明原因病毒性肺炎”通報後，1月3日，世衛組織和港澳台地區也收到有關這場形成中疫情的通報。美國疾控中心在第二天就得到消息（從它1月6日發佈最高級別旅行警示來判斷)，並在1月9日向世衛組織轉告了病原體鑒定的初步進展。此外，習近平主席1月7日主持召開了關於疫情控制的政治局常委會議，中國還於1月8日和1月中旬與美國疾控部門進行了更多接觸。

顯然，華盛頓官場指責北京釀成重大過失，在1月份最關鍵三周的大部分時間裡隱瞞重要的新冠肺炎信息，直接導致目前全球病例激增，這是非常不準確的。中國東亞鄰國的低死亡率讓事情被掩蓋了。這種指控還回顧性地假定人們在出現病症的前期就可以獲得有關新冠肺炎高感染率、長潛伏期和傳染高峰的完整信息。就算北京和世衛組織能在1月上半月確認人際傳播的事實，但如果沒有早期協調一致的預防、遏制和接觸者追蹤策略，全球的新冠肺炎病例數量仍然會和今天一樣龐大。事實上，在“戰爭迷霧”般的三周大部分時間裡，北京方面迅速、有力且充分透明地做出了回應。

只有1月15日至1月20日（當天習近平主席首次就這場危機發表公開講話）的那段時間，中方或會因為淡化國內疫情的嚴重性而受到指責。確實應該更早讓公眾提高警覺，而不必引起恐慌。應該對人口流動實行更嚴格的控制，哪怕代價是中斷農曆假日出行計劃。武漢市政府也不應該允許1月18日還舉行讓人匪夷所思的“百人宴”。但即便如此，還是需要有十分跳躍的邏輯，才會相信有那麼一大批已經受感染的武漢居民在極短時間內獲得簽證，登上飛機前往國外和美國（美國已於1月17日開始對來自武漢的入境旅客進行篩查）。值得一提的是，1月17日和18日，習近平主席也正在國外（對緬甸進行國事訪問），這也許讓那段時間的應對變得遲鈍了。但無論如何，大量證據都已表明，當時這種新型冠狀病毒已經跨出中國邊境，可能早在1月初就已找到它的人類傳播媒介。此外，中國在1月23日之後採取的嚴厲封鎖措施在很大程度上遏制了病毒後來在全球範圍內更廣泛地傳播，從而彌補了之前的一些失誤。

中國正在背負着沉重的新冠病毒十字架前行。短短20年時間裡，在這片土地上第二次發生了全球性公共衛生突發事件，它奪走人們的生命，破壞人們的生計。非法的野生動物交易和缺乏監管的菜市場必須取締，某些中國人吃野生動物的習慣必須實質性改變。如果要扭轉“一帶一路”是病毒傳播入口的名聲，飽受蹂躪的“一帶一路”國家，如伊朗和意大利，必須得到財政支持。作為非洲主要的主權債權國，中國有義務安排重大的債務重組和徹底免除債務。被似是而非的指控和掩蓋事實、不透明、進行政治交易的臆測分散注意力決非當前要務，更不用說與之糾纏了。

The first imported case of COVID-19 was recorded in South Korea on January 20th and in the U.S. two days later on January 22nd. Nine days later, on January 31st, President Trump declared a domestic public health emergency and suspended the entry of travelers arriving from China. South Korea, by contrast, continued to receive as many as 20,000 visitors daily from China, limiting its ban to Hubei province (including its capital, Wuhan) on February 4th. Two and a half months later, on April 15th, the U.S. recorded 632,546 cases and 28,326 deaths. South Korea, by contrast, had recorded 10,591 cases and 225 deaths. On that date, the nation even conducted its National Assembly elections, recording a 28-year high voter turnout of 66.2 percent. South Korea is by no means an outlier; it has been bested in its COVID-19 response by its East Asian compatriots, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Each recorded its first imported case of COVID-19 between January 21st and January 23rd, yet each had managed to limit its death count to the single digits as of April 15th.

The vastly contrasting performances of U.S. and East Asia of prevention, containment, and mitigation provide an instructive context to interrogate the Trump administration's accusation that the Chinese government deliberately suppressed information on the breakout of COVID-19, and that its secrecy is to blame for the mounting casualties in America and across the globe. The charge has been repeated on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, as recently as April 17th in the latter case. The crux of the accusation is that China knew – and the World Health Organization (WHO) was kept informed separately by the Taiwanese – that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 as early as December 31st, 2019. Yet, rather than alert the U.S. and international public health community, China suppressed this vital piece of information until January 20th and even silenced the medical professionals who tried to raise the alarm. The Trump administration claims that had China acknowledged the truth of human-to-human transmission and moved aggressively on virus containment and mitigation three weeks earlier, the number of global coronavirus cases would have been reduced by as much as 95 percent.

This three-week timetable-based accusation is both factually incorrect and materially bogus, in part because of its reliance on a solitary – and as it turns out, dubious – source.

The origin of the December 31st revelation of COVID-19's human-to-human transmission is a Financial Times story that quoted Taiwanese Vice President Chen Chien-jen, an epidemiologist by training, as saying that Taiwan had alerted the WHO of the virus. No such alert was in fact provided. What Taiwan's Ministry of Health and Welfare did email the WHO on December 31st was that “at least seven atypical pneumonia cases [had been] reported in Wuhan, China … [and while] the samples [were] still under examination, [the] cases ha[d] been isolated for treatment.” There was no mention whatsoever in the message of “human-to-human transmission”. Pressed on this point in mid-April, Taiwan's Health and Welfare Minister could only justify that patients being “isolated for treatment” should have been construed as evidence of potential human-to-human transmission. Given that there were no confirmed cases on the island at the time (December 31st), Taiwan could not state that human-to-human transmission was a definitive fact.

The Taiwanese dissembling aside, the revelation to the WHO contained no more useful information other than what the Wuhan City Health Committee had itself put out that very same day. On December 30th, the Committee issued an urgent public notice about a viral “pneumonia of unknown etiology”, and in its epidemic briefing the subsequent day, it listed as many as 27 atypical cases of pneumonia. As with any respiratory pathogen, it was always understood that the risk of person-to-person spread could not be discounted.

More to the point, Chinese central and provincial authorities were laser-focused at the time on getting to the bottom of the outbreak and investigating and isolating the virus. The race to identify the pathogen kicked off on January 2nd. By January 5th, China was able to report to the WHO that the outbreak differed in structure from other respiratory pathogens such as influenza, avian flu, MERS, etc., enabling the latter to report globally for the first time that cases of an unknown pneumonia had broken out in Wuhan. On January 7th, the first new virus strain was isolated; by January 9th, the pathogen was judged to be a new coronavirus; on January 12th, its full genetic sequence information was deposited with the WHO; and on January 15th, a detailed protocol of initial public health countermeasures was instituted by China's National Health Commission. Interrogating human-to-human transmission rates was (understandably) a less immediate priority at that time.

Throughout this period, there was no deficiency either on the transparency front. Following the Wuhan City Health Committee's viral “pneumonia of unknown etiology” notice of December 30th, the WHO as well as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan were informed of the brewing epidemic on January 3rd. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was kept in the loop the next day (judging by the CDC issuing of its highest-level travel notice on January 6th), and preliminary progress on pathogen identification was relayed to the WHO on January 9th. For added measure, the President Xi Jinping presided over an epidemic control-related Politburo Standing Committee meeting on January 7th, and further outreach to American disease control counterparts was initiated on January 8th and again in mid-January.

Clearly, the Beltway accusation that Beijing was materially negligent by suppressing vital COVID-19-related information during the better part of this critical three-week period in January – and, as a direct consequence of which, there is now an explosion of global cases – is grossly inaccurate. The low fatality count in China's East Asian neighborhood belies it. The accusation also retrospectively presumes that perfect information could be available at that early hour on COVID-19's aggressive infection rate, long incubation period, and peak contagiousness at the pre-symptomatic stage. Even if Beijing and the WHO had been able to confirm the fact of human-to-human transmission during the first half of January, without an early and concerted prevention, containment, and contact tracing strategy in place, the global COVID-19 case-load would have been just as large today. For the better part of that 3-week 'fog of war', Beijing did, in fact, marshal a prompt, robust, and adequately transparent response.

It is only for the period between January 15th and January 20th (when President Xi publicly addressed the crisis for the first time) that the Chinese side could be faulted for domestically downplaying the gravity of the outbreak. An elevated public alert could have indeed been put out much earlier, without necessarily engendering panic. Stronger controls on population movement should have been instituted, even at the expense of interrupting lunar holiday travel plans. And Wuhan city authorities should never have allowed the unconscionable public potluck supper of January 18th to take place. But even here, it requires a herculean leap of logic to believe that droves of infected Wuhan residents obtained entry visas in a flash and boarded airplanes to foreign and U.S. destinations (which had started screening Wuhan-originating arrivals on January 17th). For what it is worth, President Xi Jinping, too, was outside the country (on a state visit to Myanmar) on January 17th and 18th, stultifying the response perhaps during this period. The weight of evidence in any case points towards the novel coronavirus already coursing its way across China's borders by that time, having probably found its human transmission medium in early January. Furthermore, China's draconian post-January 23rd lockdown measures did much to stanch the wider global spread of the virus thereafter and compensate for some of its earlier failings.

China has a heavy COVID-19 cross to bear going forward. For the second time in the short space of 20 years, a global public health emergency that has ravaged lives and livelihoods has originated on its soil. The illicit trade in wildlife and underregulated wet markets must be quashed, and the wild animal-eating habits of certain Chinese diners must be socially changed. Devastated Belt and Road Initiative countries, such as Iran and Italy, must be financially supported if the Initiative is to deflect the reputation as a gateway through which viruses travel. And as a large sovereign creditor in Africa, China bears an obligation to provide significant debt restructuring as well as outright relief. Getting distracted by – let alone embroiled in – specious accusations and theories of cover-ups, non-transparency, and political dealing should not be a priority at this moment.