Sec. Esper: If China Had Been More Transparent, We Would Have Been Able to Contain Coronavirus in China

EXCERPT:

ESPER: "No. That’s completely absurd. You know, if the Chinese government had been more transparent early on, and we're talking late fall, December at least, we would all, all of us, all the nations in the world would have been able to get our arms around this and contain it in China where it began and prevent its propagation around the world. In fact, in January I called my counterpart, the Chinese defense minister, and offered up the United States’ assistance to them with regard to understanding the virus and researching and supplies and whatnot. But to have somebody like that from the Chinese government come out and make a statement like that is completely ridiculous and it’s irresponsible and it doesn’t get us to where we need to be. At this point we all need to be working together. We need to be very transparent. We need to be sharing information on vaccines and therapeutics and do everything we can to get this virus under control quickly and get back to normal."