January 2020: The "China is lying about coronavirus cases and deaths" and "China is locking down" psy-ops

Reminders about planted narratives that fed the spread story

Changes made to headline after content added 16 April 2025.

---

Going through a folder of bookmarked X posts, I was reminded of an early storyline:

China is lying about coronavirus cases and deaths. It’s worse than they’re saying! Brace for impact, Global Citizens!

Here’s an example from January 24, 2020 - the same day the second U.S. case positive test was announced.

“No longer seeing reliable infected total updates because of the obviously forthcoming Chinese media blackout. Expect China to lean on western legacy media to hush up numbers also.”

Thinking back to those early days, I remember first hearing about some virus—or strange pneumonia—circulating in China. Then came the ridiculous videos of people supposedly collapsing in the streets, which I found completely unconvincing. (If you need a reminder of how absurd and obviously staged those clips were, here’s a nice refresher via

Jonathan Engler

. ⬇️)

Remember the absurd videos of people "dropping dead from coronavirus" in China in January 2020?

The reason I wasn’t particularly fazed at the time is simple: I generally assume the Chinese government is lying about most things, and I trust exactly none of what their officials say.

Looking back, it’s easier to see how that deep-seated distrust—shared by many Americans, at least—was cleverly weaponized early on. It kept people focused on the where and who, and not enough on the more important question: Was there actually a dangerous coronavirus headed our way?

China is covering up the China virus! It’s worse than they’re saying! They let it spread from a lab or market or something - and now the whole world is about to pay!!

Five years later, we’ve come full circle — quite literally in my country, where the Old Boss has returned as the New Boss.

This time, though, he’s backed by a much louder chorus singing from the ‘China Virus’ songbook, while far too few voices are asking whether the real cover-up is that there was never a pathogen spreading from anywhere at all.

---

Post Publication: China Locking Down psy-op

Elizabeth Hart

posted a good reminder in the comments about another early and recurring psy-op involving China ‘locking down".

As far as I can tell, the term lockdown was activated as authorities began pretending that a spreading coronavirus was about to engulf the globe. An early Anglosphere story was published on 22 January 2020, the day after the U.S. announced its first “case.”

To what extent Wuhan or anyplace else in China actually “locked down” mattered less than the idea that the new virus was spreading, deadly, and needed to be taken seriously. Such reports were important to priming “the West” for drastic measures.

Later, in February, stories about China doing things that were “too” extreme - i.e., sealing off buildings and trapping people inside their homes - sent the message western Europe, America, and elsewhere along the lines of no matter what your government does to you, at least it’s not doing what China is doing to its people.

As Elizabeth points out, Australia did ‘lock down’ very hard, in a manner not much different from what China was reportedly doing. This makes sense from a storyline perspective, because it needed to look like an island nation was successful in keeping the virus out. (Indeed, Australia and New Zealand reported no excess - negative excess, really - in those 2020 months, which poses a challenge to the idea that ‘lockdowns’ are inherently deadly and raises questions about data manipulation.)

The “China is doing really bad things” refrain was repeated in early 2022 with reports and video of China literally bolting people inside their residences.

Elizabeth said,

It's incredible to think back on all this now, the biggest psyops in history!

Absolutely mortifying to think how people were sucked in by all this z-grade movie scenario that has caused such deliberate destruction in our societies.

And China must have been complicit in it...who was coordinating all this, the actual perpetrators pulling the strings?

I agree that China was complicit, and I continue to believe the COVID event was a coordinated operation that involved nations with centers related to the WHO’s Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System [GISRS]: Australia, China, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, and Russia - plus Germany.