Controversial Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz has slammed her own newspaper’s reporting on China and its opposition of Covid lockdowns in the country.
On Saturday, the Post tweeted an article about China’s record number of coronavirus cases, noting how only a tiny proportion its billion-strong population are vaccinated.
‘A coronavirus outbreak on the verge of being China’s biggest of the pandemic has exposed a critical flaw in Beijing’s ‘zero covid’ strategy: a vast population without natural immunity,’ the post said.
Within hours of the tweet, Lorenz, an ‘internet culture’ columnist for the paper, re-tweeted the report with her own view on the matter, tearing apart the reporting.
‘There is no lasting ‘natural immunity’ to COVID. You can get covid over and over and over again bc there are so many endlessly evolving strains and antibodies wane. Also, choosing not to kill off millions of vulnerable people (as the US is doing) isn’t a ‘critical flaw’,’ Lorenz wrote
Twitter users were appalled Lorenz would seemingly defend the authoritarian country’s lockdowns and implied human rights violations – with one user accusing her of ‘spreading misinformation’ noting how her editors were unlikely to sanction her because any controversy would lead to more views for the Post’s website.
Lorenz later attempted to clarify her earlier tweet by suddenly praising the Post’s reporting adding how the article contained ‘a lot more nuance btw’.
There were also very few direct responses to Lorenz’s original tweet because her Twitter settings do not allow for a right of reply unless followed by her directly.
