On Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show, New York Times science and health reporter Donald McNeil praised China's mass quarantine camps as the best way to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. A CBC documentary reveals what that policy entails: Citizens are literally being dragged out of their homes as they cry and scream. Others have their doors welded shut.
If you read the New York Times, I have a very serious question for you: Why?
Here is a news outlet that routinely spreads junk science on everything from agricultural biotechnology to alternative medicine. One of its reporters, Eric Lipton, defends anti-vaxxers. It's so out of control at the NYT that, not long ago, it ran an article touting the benefits of witchcraft.
So, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise when one of its reporters goes on cable TV to endorse China's COVID-19 response, which included, among many other horrifying things, literally dragging people out of their homes and forcing them into mass quarantine camps.
NYT Reporter Endorses Chinese-Style Mass Quarantine Camps for Americans
Donald McNeil, a science and health reporter for the New York Times who covers infectious disease, went on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show to explain, in his opinion, the only proper way for a country to contain a pandemic. The interview is absolutely chilling.
"You don't want infected people -- or suspected infected people -- with their families. They'll just pass it on to them." If sick people shouldn't be at home with their families, then where should we put them? McNeil explains that China sends people to special "fever clinics" and "quarantine hotels" -- which are really nice ways of saying "mass camps."
McNeil goes on. "That is the key element: There is no home isolation. There is no home quarantine." He assures us that these facilities are not "concentration camps" because they had nurses, beds, and dance lessons.
Uh huh. If it's such a good time, then why does this CBC documentary (see video below) depict people crying and screaming as they're being dragged out of their homes? Fever camp should be fun!
Did Rachel Maddow object to such an obviously tyrannical policy? Nope. She endorsed it. "People are going to clip this and send it to their local health department."
In Reality, China's Pandemic Response Was a Horror Show
That's not the only thing China did. The government also welded shut the doors of apartment buildings, trapping (and endangering) people inside. Social media was censored from Day One, preventing people from sharing information. Those who criticized the government's response were threatened with seven years in jail.
It gets even worse. According to Human Rights Watch:
A boy with cerebral palsy died because no one took care of him after his father was taken to be quarantined. A woman with leukemia died after being turned away by several hospitals because of concerns about cross-infection. A mother desperately pleaded to the police to let her leukemia-stricken daughter through a checkpoint at a bridge to get chemotherapy. A man with kidney disease jumped to his death from his apartment balcony after he couldn’t get access to health facilities for dialysis. And at least 10 people died after a hotel being used as a quarantine facility collapsed.
This is the response that the World Health Organization has praised. And it's the response that the NYT's Donald McNeil praises, too. At one point in the Maddow interview, Mr. McNeil says, "China has had enormous success in beating down its epidemic."
That's true. Of course, it's because they beat their people in the process.
