The Time a Coronavirus Hit Iran
Six tragicomic scenes from the staging of a pandemic in early 2020
Iran being in the news yet again makes this a great time to look back at the bizarre role the country/regime played in the staging of a spreading coronavirus from afar.
Six tragicomic scenes come to mind.
1. Regime officials wiped out.
It’s a weird virus indeed that seeks & destroys seventeen regime officials. The mob doesn’t even get that kind of hit-job rate. Impressive. Most impressive.1
2. Mass graves propaganda launch
After the Wuhan has to build a hospital and China is burning a lot of corpses stories came satellite images purporting to show Iran digging mass graves for its coronavirus dead.
The message? “See how serious this virus is? So serious that they have to dig trenches for the bodies!”
Iran was Ground Zero for the mass graves propaganda global tour that included (where else?) New York City, South Africa, India, Peru, Indonesia, and Ecuador. Because if your zoonotic/lab leaked virus doesn’t kill a lot of people, your pandemic declaration isn’t worth much, is it?
[Note: The Washington Post covered this too - on March 12, 2020.]
3. Dancing doctors & nurses.
Some of the earliest videos of dancing healthcare workers were “set” in Iran.
One tweet reported an “F-Off Coronavirus Dance Challenge” in Iranian hospitals, saying, “This is how brave #Iranian doctors and nursing deal with Coronavirus…by the way, the regime can f-off as well.”
Maybe that’s a clue about the fate of those aforementioned 17 officials?
4. On/off/on positive flu tests
Although the competition from Hispaniola and Australia is very fierce, ultimately, I must give the *Best* Positive Flu Test Graph Award to Iran.
No real baseline to speak of, and the number of specimens is low, but what in the world happened there with that drop in December 2019, followed by three months of nothingness during the time coronavirus spread was allegedly taking hold and killing the regime, before positive tests for Influenza B try to make a comeback in from April through September 2020?!?!
Wild.
5. Lockdown object lesson
Surely The Never, Ever Wrong New York Times got it right when it came to Iran and coronavirus?
Nope.
They were worse than awful with a March 3, 2020 story that used Iran as a “pro-lockdown” object lesson/cautionary tale.
Iran did it wrong.
They didn’t listen.
They were too secretive and prideful and now the supreme leader is dead from the virus that no one needs to die from if they will just take it seriously — like America MUST DO BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!
See how that worked? (All too well.)
And Foreign Policy followed the lead/lede…
6. New York City bomb fuse
And finally, believe it or not, New York City’s first case of New Virus (a.k.a. first positive result on a generous PCR test) was a healthcare worker in her 30s returning from…Iran.
She had no unusual symptoms, wasn’t hospitalized, and either had a different strain than the supreme leader of Iran or better health, because she lived.
This made for a very quaint “bi-coastal” spread narrative in the U.S. We had cases on the Western seaboard *coming from* the Far East - and cases on the Eastern seaboard *coming from* the Middle East and Western Europe.
Good thing the Feds called 15 Days to Slow the Spread when they did. Otherwise that woman coming back from Iran would’ve been like a fuse lighting a bomb in the most-populous city in America!
I have no special insights about why the “setting” of Iran appears to have been leveraged as part of a strategic operation to stoke fear over a cold.
I do think it’s odd that on March 10, 2020 — the day before the WHO’s pandemic declaration — the U.S. used “COVID-19” as a basis for demanding that Iran release wrongfully-detained Americans on humanitarian grounds.2
Also strange is that the same day the CARES Act was passed - March 25, 2020 - The New York Times editorial board was citing “this coronavirus crisis” as a reason to ease sanctions on Iran.
This may have been garden-variety political opportunism, but it’s still a good reminder that Iran played more than a “bit part” in the Global Pandemic Show.
Post Publication Additions
Nicholas Christakis was pushing the WHO narrative about Iran’s outbreak in early March 2020. He also promoted WaPo’s “Coronavirus Burial Pits” story.
Bloomberg story
A 22 March 2020 story in an Iranian news source claimed eleven athletes in Iran had died of coronavirus infection months.
Story text:
More than ten current and former Iranian athletes have fallen victim to novel coronavirus, according to data collected by Radio Farda.
The local sports federations' channels on Telegram, the most popular messaging app in Iran, have been crammed in recent days with posts commemorating prominent active and veteran athletes.
The cause of their deaths is not mentioned in the official notices. Still, many are believed to have died of COVID-19.
Radio Farda has collected a list that names eleven Iranian athletes whose deaths from the virus have been officially confirmed.
Meanwhile, for some unspecified reasons, many bereaved families of athletes are reluctant to publicly admit that their loved ones have died of the virus.
Furthermore, it appears that the state-run media are banned from publishing news about Iranian athletes who fall victim to the Covid-19.
Director of Emergency Operations in the World Health Organization's (WHO) new Emergencies Program, Dr. Rick Brennan, revealed on Monday, March 14, that the number of coronavirus cases in Iran was potentially five times higher than what is being reported.
"We've said the weakest link in their (the Islamic Republic authorities) chain is the data. They are rapidly increasing their ability to test, and so the numbers will go up", Brennan who had earlier visited Iran said.
A 22-year-old member of Iranian women's futsal national team, Elham Sheikhi, was the first athlete publicly named as a victim of Covid-19. Ms. Sheikhi was from the province of Qom that was the epicenter of the deadly outbreak.
Nevertheless, the state-run Radio-TV (IRIB) attempted to cover up her death by interviewing an older athlete and Ms. Sheikhi's namesake, insisting that she was alive.
Images of Sheikhi's grave circulated on social media forcing IRIB and other state-run news outlets to relent and admit that the young futsal player indeed died of Covid-19.
The eleven athletes who died of the novel coronavirus were engaged in basketball, boxing, chess, futsal, judo, soccer, taekwondo, and wrestling.
Roughly a month prior to this article, The New York Times was reporting on positive tests in Iran among officials. Note how the idea that a virus was “spreading” between people permeates the report.
Related: Iran pleads for medicine as it fights epidemic under sanctions (March 12, 2020) | Constraining Iranian Nuclear Scientists Press Statement from Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State (March 18, 2020)
Incredible the 'deadliest virus in our lifetime' killed none of the fossils in Washington, luck eh?
I had forgotten about the Iran C19 narrative till now. I’m still wondering how the cabal is able to control a country like that with a West-hating theocracy. Or is there another explanation? Is it possible their leaders saw early merit from playing along? Perhaps with sanction relief offered under the table?
Great report, thanks.