China Didn’t Stop Virus ‘Cold’ Outside Wuhan

In remarks about SARS-CoV-2, President Donald Trump wrongly said China “stopped it cold” from spreading from Wuhan to other parts of China “but they didn’t stop it cold from coming to the United States, Europe and the rest of the world.” Trump called that “a little strange deal,” promising to seek answers.

But China did not stop the coronavirus from spreading from Wuhan, where it originated, to other parts of China. The number of reported cases and deaths in China’s major cities outside Wuhan have been far lower than the numbers in many European and American cities, but China also took extreme measures to slow the spread of the disease that the U.S. did not.

In the past, Trump has wrongly speculated that China stopped flights from Wuhan to the rest of China while continuing to allow flights from Wuhan all over the world, including to the U.S. But as we wrote, that’s not accurate, either.

More recently, Trump has not mentioned the stoppage of flights, but has simply said China suspiciously has not been hit as hard by the coronavirus as Europe and the U.S.

In a on June 3, Trump asked why the coronavirus that came out of Wuhan “didn’t go to China but it went to the rest