Editor's note: The following article is taken from the Chinese-language opinion column "The Real Point."

China refuted on Thursday accusations made by some U.S. politicians and intelligence officials that Beijing concealed the extent of the coronavirus epidemic and under-reported the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. 

Foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said "it is immoral and inhumane to continue to politicize a public health issue," advising those politicians to "put the safety of people's lives and health before politics."

Unfortunately for American citizens, it appears that those politicians care more about scapegoating and stepping up the coronavirus blame game.

When Vice President Mike Pence was asked why the U.S. was so late in understanding the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic in a recent CNN interview, he cast blame on China. "The reality is that we could've been better off if China had been more forthcoming," he claimed. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other intelligence officials have also accused China of spreading misinformation and hiding information about the number of infections despite frequent clarification by health experts.

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, has repeatedly refuted the groundless accusation of China being "non-transparent" in revealing the numbers. He also cautioned against "profiling certain parts of the world as being non-cooperative and not transparent."

WHO Representative in China Dr. Gauden Galea, who witnessed and participated in the country's battle against COVID-19, has stated that his office received an informal notice about the virus from China on December 31 – the night before the virus-hit seafood market was closed down.

On January 1, the WHO convened a teleconference for its representative office in China, regional office, and headquarters in Geneva, and formed a response team before China officially reported it two days later. On January 20 and 21, personnel from the WHO representative office in China conducted a field visit to Wuhan, the epicenter of the country's outbreak.

All these are evidence of China's timely sharing and reporting to the WHO that laid the foundation for the agency to analyze and evaluate the trend of the outbreak, and later issue global epidemic prevention warnings.

What did the U.S. government do after receiving the alerts in early January? 

Can Pence, who's in charge of the country's coronavirus response team, explain why infectious disease expert Dr. Helen Chu was told to stop testing after submitting local test results to the country's regulatory agency in February? Why was she told to shut up after alerting the U.S. of domestic outbreaks in January? Why did the New York-Presbyterian Hospital have to plead to test people?

What the U.S. politicians have done provides further evidence of the claims made in a report published on The Daily Beast. The American news and opinion website wrote that the White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies to accuse China of "orchestrating a cover-up and creating a global pandemic" in an attempt to shift domestic attention from the failure of its prevention work. Washington is playing politics at the cost of people's lives.

From igniting racism to slandering and smearing China, some American politicians are compromising the health of its citizens and hindering international counter-pandemic cooperation for their own political gains. Sadly, it reveals the lousy political ecology in Washington. If they continue along this path, what they will find around the corner could be the end of their political careers.

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