A NEW poll has revealed that over half of Britons think China is to blame for the global COVID-19 pandemic which, at the present moment, has caused half of the world’s population to be under stay-at-home orders.
The poll, carried out by MailOnline, found that 56 percent of UK citizens believe the Chinese government is responsible for the spread of the novel coronavirus around the globe, compared to just 26 percent who said that Beijing is not to blame. Another 18 percent of those who were polled said they weren’t sure.
Furthermore, figures from the poll revealed that there’s overwhelming support among UK citizens to implement a worldwide ban on so-called ‘wet’ animal markets, where, despite a growing amount of evidence which suggests otherwise, some people believe the virus may have originated in Wuhan.
While three-quarters of survey respondents said they would like to see ‘wet’ markets banned, more than half (54 percent) believe that calling the coronavirus the ‘Wuhan Virus’ is entirely appropriate.
During a press conference earlier this week, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab expressed that there needed to be a “deep dive’ into the facts surrounding the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.
“I think there absolutely needs to be a very, very deep dive after the event review of the lessons – including of the outbreak of the virus – and I don’t think we can flinch from that at all, it needs to be driven by the science,” Raab said.
“So we ought to look at all sides of this and do it in a balanced way, but there is no doubt we can’t have business as usual after this crisis, and we will have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier,” the foreign secretary added.
Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump suggested that there could be “consequences” for China as a result of it misleading the rest of the world regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, which some have suggested began there as early as last fall
Trump also cut off $500 million that would’ve gone to fund the WHO this week, accusing the international organization of failing to do enough to stem the spread of the virus.
