No kidding …

… China’s Smear of Mario Vargas Llosa an Attempt to Silence Criticism - PEN America. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Various observers—including PEN America’s CEO Suzanne Nossel—have concluded that the Chinese government’s efforts to tightly control the narrative around the virus has exacerbated the spread of the virus. In a column for Foreign Policy written earlier this month, Nossel wrote, “China and Iran stand out for muzzling doctors who tried to warn about the coronavirus, downplaying the number of cases and deaths as the epidemic progressed, and inflating the success of their containment efforts. The predictable result was that the virus spread more quickly and widely than if these governments had been forthright from the start.”