Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:China COVID-19 cover-up

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was:  superceded by move to mainspace. The article has been moved to mainspace. The arguments here concern a draft, not a mainspace article, and further deletion arguments for it should be brought to AfD. If the decision is made to move the article back to draftspace, there is a consensus to keep assuming substantial changes to the article have not been made. (non-admin closure) Zoozaz1 talk  03:31, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Draft:China COVID-19 cover-up

 * – (View MfD) &#8203;

Forum-shopping attempt to create a WP:POVFORK of material that has been rejected multiple times on WP:MEDRS grounds from parent articles (e.g., Talk:Investigations into the origin of COVID-19, Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information). See also User:Adoring nanny/Essays/Lab Leak Likely and Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2021_May_7 Eggishorn  (talk) (contrib) 22:19, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep The topic is related but different. This article is not about the origin of Covid. It's about the Chinese cover-up. Sources include NYT, WaPo, AP, BBC, NPR, CNN, NBC, Time, and the Economist. First-rate news sources for a news topic. Adoring nanny (talk) 22:22, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete/Rename Broadly agree that this is at least in-part WP:POVFORK. Feels like it would at least benefit from a WP:NPOV rename. Bakkster Man (talk) 22:42, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * POV fork of what article? Adoring nanny (talk) 13:01, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * see COVID-19 misinformation by China. ProcSock (talk) 20:47, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. You asked me this very same question a week ago on the talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:11, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that much of the material on suppression of research would be off topic for that article. The disputes with the US and Australia are definitely off topic. The material on the refusal to release line data is probably off topic. The fact that WHO rules require a report whenever medical personnel become infected is again of dubious relevance. The upshot is that although there is overlap, the topics are not the same. Furthermore, much of the material in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China would be off-topic at the cover-up draft. Adoring nanny (talk) 17:18, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The fact that the draft contains such tenuously related subjects is simply a reflection of the fact that the draft was written as a hodge-podge of various anti-Chinese material. It's difficult to see any other connecting thread here, other than that this is a catch-all article for POV material that has been rejected (or which is already covered in a neutral manner) in other articles. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:29, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep The definition of Cover-up is "any action, stratagem, or other means of concealing or preventing investigation or exposure". Reliable sources explicitely say there has been concealing or preventing of investigation, ergo the name is appropiate. However, it is suspicious that the draft appears after the topic was debated with no consensus on other "mother" articles (I remember discussing it in "Investigations into...", for example), I propose the draft is: i) kept as short as possible; ii) checked to contain only high RS; iii) checked that all facts with political tones are adequately attributed and given NPOV treatment. If the author of the draft accepts to make themselves efforts in these directions, the allegation of a POV-Fork is greatly suppresed, IMHO. Forich (talk) 23:17, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with all of those, except for possibly "as short as possible". I've added everything I can see that's relevant, but I have no idea what may emerge in the future, or what others may add. I'll add that part of the reason I started the article is that concealing information is not the same as misinformation. The concealment of the line data from the early cases is a particular example. The concealment of this has been discussed by multiple sources. I never attempted to add it to any misinformation article because it's not misinformation. Adoring nanny (talk) 23:39, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I have elaborated on my support for the draft here. I discuss whether a POV-Fork tag is awarded, the title, among other issues.  Forich (talk) 20:15, 21 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. Those trying to remove this page are pretending that the hypothesis has never been covered by any RS, ignoring that both Science and Nature have covered it, and the NYT has run a long series of articles about it. . Trying to remove this draft is the most absurd step yet--they are clearly out to supress even the attempt to write an article on it. The hypothesis may be wrong, but as it has been covered by RS it is hardly fringe. We shouldn;t be presenting the hyporthesis has proven right, or as proven wrong.   And even when it is proven wrong, as I expect it will,  it still needs to be discussed, because its a major chapter in the history of thinking about this disease.  The nominator here is pretending that there is consensus that it can not be covered except by MEDRS quality sources, it has no place on Wikipedia. That's a biased and false interpretation of MEDRS.-- the true meaning of MEDRS is that we cannot say definitely it is right without MEDRS quality sources saying so, but nobody is proposing to do that.  I am not certain whether or not we have MEDRS quality sources to say it is wrong, but that's irrelevant to discussing it both as a scientific hypothesis and as a social fact.
 * The motivation for their view escapes me. It can't be science, because science takes alternative hypotheses seriously until proven wrong, and even then continues to discuss them in full detail as examples. I can only suppose that they are saying that because the hypothesis was originally proposed by a group with a far-right wing bias, that it must necessarily be wrong, and so wrong we should pretend it has never been proposed and that no responsible publication has ever discussed it.  This is the very opposite of science, of NPOV, of WP:V-- an unprecedented perversion of the encyclopedia.
 * I have never in 14 years here used language like this--there has never before been so misguided an attempt on WP to use science to pretend that history never happened, or to reject science becausee of the politics of those who propose an hypothesis. . (I see this off-WP all the time, almost entirely from far-right bigots and professional falsifiers of the truth.).  DGG ( talk ) 23:59, 19 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Sure you got the right MFD? This isn't about the lab leak. Whether there's anything here that would deserve a separate article or whether this could be covered in an already existing article is an entirely different question, one which I've frankly not explored much, but this isn't about the lab leak. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:08, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What I have said applies to all attempts to remove articles in this area.  DGG ( talk ) 00:38, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What is "this area"? Your entire argument above about the lab-leak hypothesis is completely irrelevant to the draft under discussion. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * the area is, obviously, the lab leak hypothesis. The attempt to cover-up the investigation is one of the arguments for why the lab leak hypothesis might be worth considering. Personally, I'm not convinced it does provide strong evidence--the Chinese government tends to react this way to any potential criticism. But it's worth discussing as part of the suggested evidence.   DGG ( talk ) 19:52, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Most of the draft isn't even about the lab-leak hypothesis. It gets a few mentions in the second half of the draft, but most of the draft is about supposed cover-ups of the initial outbreak. Reading through your reasoning above, I don't see much that's relevant to the draft we're discussing. You talk a lot about MEDRS, how the lab-leak is supposedly being censored throughout Wikipedia, but not about the contents of the draft you're ostensibly commenting on. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:34, 21 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep: The topic is notable and widely covered by the media as well as peer-reviewed sources; besides, Adoring nanny has done a good job of sourcing it well. Far from being a POV fork, I believe it's good enough to be an article (if not now, at least in the future, as events unfold). An editor spoke of the title being POV; that is a different matter, and isn't a sufficient reason for deletion. HalfdanRagnarsson (talk) 02:53, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep: As per above mentioned points shared by the participants. -Hatchens (talk) 03:07, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 *  Weak Delete/Wait Delete as POVFORK. This content is actually not that bad, it truly did occur almost an exact reproduction of COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China with an explicit POV added in. The POV tone in the writing is particularly worrisome. I think with a more NPOV rewrite, it could stand alone and probably enter articlespace. Having seen the section I mentioned, I am swayed by the arguments of below. I do not think this draft adds much of anything. This just feels like an attempt to avoid building consensus with the users in the aforementioned articlespace.-- Shibboleth ink (♔ ♕) 04:38, 20 June 2021 (UTC) (edited)-- Shibboleth ink  (♔ ♕) 14:27, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * A good deal of what the draft claims did not actually occur (see, for example, my comment below), or is presented in an incredibly selective and non-neutral manner. The true information is, for the most part, already covered in the article, COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:42, 20 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. Independently WP:NOTABLE topic worthy of a page. CutePeach (talk) 11:32, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak keep Not convinced this is independently notable enough to warrant a stand-alone page (could it be covered in existing articles?), and the POV tone is horrible, but that's what a draft is for. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:21, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I would say that any information worth keeping can be incorporated into COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. This draft is largely a selective presentation of a few points already covered in that article, along with a few false claims thrown in (see my comment below for an example), written in a completely unacceptable POV tone. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:19, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * In that case (since I was not aware of the existing article), Delete- this is already appropriately covered in COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China (including subsections about propaganda, censorship, whistleblowers, ...), without the poor POV tone. Editors should instead go to that article to try to resolve the noted NPOV issues there, instead of spinning this off to yet another POVFORK. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:33, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete This is a part of a long long history of people creating a "controversy about X" page when they can't force changes into Article X due to NPOV, UNDUE, or other good reasons. I have yet to see any good come from these attempts.  If the subject was notable, it would be part of the main page.  I have serious difficulty figuring out how this subject can be covered in a NPOV manner.  It is also hard to see how much real use it is to have a page to tell us that the CCP is made up of paranoid liars who reflexively cover up everything and attempt to control all news that comes out of the PRC.  I assume that we cover this on the main pages about the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China.  Hyperion35 (talk) 12:48, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete: This is an obvious POV fork of COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. The article is written in an argumentative manner, and is a highly selective (and sometimes false) depiction of events obviously meant to push a certain POV. Just take this sentence as an example:
 * The "media report" being referenced here is actually coverage of the outbreak in official Chinese state media. CCTV (in Chinese) and CGTN (in English) both publicly announced the outbreak on 31 December 2019. To claim that China did not report the outbreak at that time is simply false, and to then refer vaguely to a "media report", without mentioning that it was a report by the country's largest state media outlet, is simply deceptive. The whole draft is like this.
 * The early days of the outbreak are already covered in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. Rather than creating a separate article to push a particular POV about the outbreak, any DUE information should be covered neutrally in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. But this draft is simply the worst type of POV-pushing. As I said on the talk page of the draft, this is the kind of thing that can be published on a blog, but it's totally unfit for Wikipedia. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:08, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The early days of the outbreak are already covered in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. Rather than creating a separate article to push a particular POV about the outbreak, any DUE information should be covered neutrally in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. But this draft is simply the worst type of POV-pushing. As I said on the talk page of the draft, this is the kind of thing that can be published on a blog, but it's totally unfit for Wikipedia. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:08, 20 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep: What we care about with a draft is that it is factual, neutral, and cited. Or we care that it is moving in that direction. Once confident that it is, then AFC reviewers, or others, will move it to be an article. Article space is where this discussion should take place, after acceptance, where the gaze of the full community is upon it. It is wholly inappropriate to delete it based on its topic when it is a draft. Once it is good enough to accept and once it is accepted, take it to AfD if you must. This is the wrong venue. Fiddle Timtrent  Faddle Talk to me 16:44, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What if a draft is a POVFORK of an existing section, COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China, and it is also even more poorly written than the existing section. What really needs to be done is for the main article to be trimmed to reasonable length, and spinoffs created as per WP:SPLIT, not as attempts to evade other, even more fundamental stuff such as the WP:NPOV policy... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:37, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * When submitted for review one hopes that the reviewer will spot this. Even if they do not and accept the draft, I view the correct venue to be either a requested merge or an AfD. I do not believe that MfD is the correct venue. Note, please, that I am making no comment on the draft itself, nor its contents, nor will I be drawn on that in this discussion. If I do that I will do it as a reviewer, within it, not within this MfD, or, possibly, later if it is accepted.
 * A Draft must have a better than 50% chance of not failing an immediate deletion process in order to be accepted. Even those that do not are not often deleted at MfD, instead being allowed to wither on the G13 vine. Fiddle Timtrent  Faddle Talk to me 18:44, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I should have said "Spot this, if it is present" because I have not reviewed, nor done other than skimmed, this draft. Fiddle Timtrent  Faddle Talk to me 18:49, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep: Whether the laboratory hypothesis turns out to be true or not, it is clear that China has implemented a huge attempt to cover-up that it may have happened. It is enough to observe the block imposed on the research systems in publishing new studies on the subject without first having passed the scrutiny of the state control bodies. This should also be intuitive enough if you have a good understanding of China's behavior: whether something is true or not, it would never want its image to be tainted, like any authoritarian dictatorship in history. Just look at the behavior of the press on the documented cultural genocide of the Uighurs. --Francesco espo (talk) 22:06, 20 June 2021 (UTC) — Francesco espo (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Keep. What's the justification for having a deletion discussion about content in draft space? Is there anything here that is blatantly false? The rationale for this should be informing readers of facts. Whether the sky is blue is not an opinion, subject to point-of-view warring. This is a blatant attempt at information suppression and censorship. This is obviously not an obvious POV fork of COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. It is a WP:Summary style subtopic, a more detailed article about . The main article is over 300K bytes which certainly justifies a more detailed article about the government response. wbm1058 (talk) 15:41, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: The draft is a mess of SYNTH and POV issues. Whether enough of it is salvageable to be worth keeping it in draft space I don't know – I'm inclined to think it's better to start from scratch. It certainly should not be moved to mainspace in anything resembling its current form. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 17:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Ample coverage of this and enough of it to have its own article. This should be moved to mainspace.   D r e a m Focus  18:46, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the topic is probably notable, and the prospective article is at least reasonable enough for draftspace. Should it be moved to mainspace, it may be reasonable to have a discussion at AfD on its merits, but it seems to pass the bar for MfD. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:36, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, the title needs fixing and some prose changes for NPOV but that can be done in mainspace. Wikipedia is an WP:IMPERFECT encyclopaedia. Content with RS that should be included somewhere but doesn't fit into the other articles is being removed on grounds of 'not applicable to this article' while we vote to delete the article where it would be relevant? ... ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:53, 4 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep for now. The article title is bad as a "cover-up" implies that the event being covered up actually occurred, but we don't know that. However, China's general secrecy around the origins of COVID is notable. Even if the full chain of intermediate animal species were found tomorrow, completely disproving any theories that reflected poorly on China, it would still be highly notable that there were efforts to suppress the publication of research, censor discussion, etc around the pandemic. The COVID in mainland China article is huge and could benefit from information being moved into a separate article. However, it is clearly not finished at the moment and has a positively accusatory tone in places; if it were published as-is it would be a deletable POV-fork. User:GKFXtalk 20:46, 23 June 2021 (UTC)


 * keep per Adoring nanny rationale--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:40, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment How is this topic any different from COVID-19 misinformation by China? Seems like the entire article could be merged into that one. Also, this will almost certainly be rejected on review for the absolutely egregious WP:NPOV violations, or will be instantly nominated at AfD and WP:TNT'd for the same reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlb96 (talk • contribs) 04:06, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Did I actually forget to sign this post? That's a first. Mlb96 (talk) 04:41, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The difference that misinformation and hiding of information are not the same thing. Adoring nanny (talk) 19:41, 29 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Merge in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China - a neutral non-conspirational title that represents better reliable sources would be " CCP's China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic", that is obviously a subtopic of the main article. The current draft doesn't even present these claims as such, but presents those beliefs as facts.  Unsurprisingly, it's similar to with the lab leak hypothesis where the approach begins with a believed conclusion (Special:Permalink/1024906752, Special:Permalink/1024565970), etc. reminiscent of .  — Paleo  Neonate  – 06:56, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd recommend choosing a different word than CCP, such as Chinese Government. Using CCP to refer to the Chinese Government is like using Democratic Party to refer to the US government. I can go into more detail on a talk page, if needed. – Novem Linguae (talk) 08:35, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * They're not actually the same. Since, I think by law possibly, the Chinese Communist Party is the only party that can govern China. This is not the same vis a vis the Democratic party and the US govt. And Jinping's power derives from being General Secretary of that same party, not from the ceremonial presidency. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:19, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I also have concerns that the term is weaponized. I see and hear it in contexts where folks want to emphasize how "communist" China is, because being "communist" or "socialist" is this big scary thing. Would be happy to discuss this more on a talk page somewhere. – Novem Linguae (talk) 16:11, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure, I can understand that concern, but it's also a reasonable way of referring to the government of a single-party state, in much the same way that we might talk about 19th-century Austria-Hungary as the Habsburg Empire, or using the term "Mullahs" as a shorthand for the religious council that exercises real political power in Iran. Hyperion35 (talk) 20:28, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Since communist or not was not part of the point I was making I have replaced it with China's, like in my original suggestion at the draft's talk page. Thanks for the comments, — Paleo  Neonate  – 15:45, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Merge into COVID-19 misinformation by China. The arguments to delete the article are largely based on the fact the article alludes to conspiracies on the origins of COVID-19. However, the article only mentions that very limitedly and is otherwise about the Chinese government's handling of the pandemic. I think in order to prevent a NPOV fork, it is necessary to delete this article and move the unbiased and relevant portions. — F ORMAL D UDE  ( talk ) 03:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. It is a notable topic. The page is a little more than a stub and in the right format. It could be a useful place for expansion for what is an overly long subsection of COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. As is, it could be merged, but not as it could become and if we don't let a page start how can it finish. I would like a more focused title, but that's not relevant here. Merge Page is far too close to COVID-19 misinformation by China Dushan Jugum (talk) 04:25, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem with that is that the topic of COVID-19 misinformation by China is too narrow. I actually proposed a broadening of the topic of the latter article at an early stage. But it's a part of a series of misinformation by governments articles, so a rename would break the pattern. Not renaming excludes key information-hiding episodes. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:20, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Having one page for cover-ups and one page for misinformation confuses me, even though they are technically different. If this page was about delay in warning the world of covid-19 or covering-up the possible Chinese source of the virus, then I get it. But "all government cover-ups on covid" is too close to "all government misinformation on covid". That said I have no wish to be the person who keeps this argument going when I think the consensus is "keep": vote removed. Dushan Jugum (talk) 23:27, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: Note Draft:COVID-19_lab_leak_hypothesis, discussed at Deletion_review/Log/2021_June_7 SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:14, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep: This is not a good use of draftspace, and the authors’ objectives will be stymied by it being in draftspace, but “delete” is not the answer. No AfC reviewer will accept it if it is submitted.  If anyone tries to mainspace it it will be AfD-ed as a POV fork, and in the meantime no serious Wikipedian will treat it seriously.  Instead. Proponents of this draft should ensure that anything agreed is done in mainspace, but to the extent that this happens from the draft, this is poor practice with respect to attribution.  SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:00, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * “Delete” is not the answer because MfD is not a venue or forum for examining the real question. I suggest Close, in favour of an RfC. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:03, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep/Merge Strong no to deletion. WP:MEDRS doesn't seem to apply here, this topic doesn't really fall under the umbrella of "biomedical information". Probably should be merged somehow with COVID-19 misinformation by China, but not if that means being held to some absurd non-applicable standard. WP:MEDRS is for medical pages. Keep it there. If whistle blowers have been disappearing, whether or not it's in a medical journal shouldn't enter into the consideration of whether there is a RS.KristinaLu (talk) 23:22, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - Evidence suggesting official interference in the scientific investigation into Covid19 origins has been in mainstream RS-quality news since https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-coronavirus-pandemic-china-only-on-ap-bats-24fbadc58cee3a40bca2ddf7a14d2955 so we have to document this, and a page dedicated to the topic I think is the best way of handling the matter. We might be best off renaming or merging the content, but I'm against using MfD to this end on drafts. The problems in the draft can be handled by normal editing and regular AfC process. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 09:30, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Merge: Strongly oppose deletion, but I prefer it to be merged with COVID-19 misinformation by China. The title certainly doesnt hold up to WP:NPOV Nyanardsan (talk) 01:29, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * See this removal for example (not entirely wrong). No article exists that properly covers the subject of this article. When people add the content that is in here to other articles, it is removed as out-of-scope. That makes this MfD particularly bizarre, and makes the almost month-long discussion, especially when the consensus is quite clear, even more-so. If it remains unclosed for a full month I intend to move the draft to mainspace myself. No reason why the editing process shouldn't continue while discussion awaits closure, as it does for an AfD. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 08:49, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm going to move this draft to mainspace, leaving the MfD banner at the top, for these reasons:
 * An article with notability issues, POV issues, etc, should be sent to AfD. Pages are draftified only if they are promising but need further work for mainspace. The creator can undraftify the page, at which point it should be left in mainspace and nominated at AfD, as use of the draft namespace is not required by any policy. (see Drafts) The arguments made in this MfD are AfD arguments (NPOV etc).
 * It has been outstanding for a month. A closure request has been made, and a notice placed at AN, but there seems to be no prospect of a closure anytime soon.
 * If this were nominated at AfD, it would be permitted to remain in mainspace (with a deletion notice on the top) and for editorial work on improving the article to continue until there was an affirmative consensus to recommend a different action. The default state for a newly created article is that it gets to remain in mainspace. That state changes only if: a) the article is eligible for CSD; or b) consensus is found to take another action. This prospective article does not qualify for CSD.
 * The creator has indicated they want it in mainspace, where it would be more productive to collaborate and get this draft to meet NPOV. There is a clear numerical consensus here in favour of keeping the draft, but a willing admin closer has not yet been found. There is no policy to suggest it must be kept in draftspace until that happens, and frankly such a situation is untenable as it would be akin to using draftify + MfD as a new form of 'article quarantine', a concept that consensus does not support.
 * Events and coverage come out related to this article which are perfectly suitable for inclusion somewhere in Wikipedia but are removed from existing articles on the basis of (apparently) not being 'within that article's scope'. Indefinitely keeping this draft in a suspended state is thus harmful to readers.
 * ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:26, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete fork of COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. - Nabla (talk) 23:49, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. I was neutral on whether to keep this in draftspace, but in article space it is clearly unacceptable, a hopeless mess of POV and verifiability issues. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 12:56, 18 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: A related AfD was created for COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis at Articles for deletion/COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis. Cunard (talk) 01:45, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete/Merge Blatant WP:POVFORK. Many of the keep votes based off that it's a draft are no longer relevant as this was moved to mainspace (note I would still support deletion in draftspace as this page title has no hopes of meeting NPOV). Content not already covered in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China and/or COVID-19 misinformation by China can be merged. Jumpytoo Talk 02:19, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Not a fork. The article has potential to attain important study material on the subject. Sgnpkd (talk)
 * Keep I won't say that the title is ideal, but we should have an article on the censorship and suppression of investigations into COVID-19 undertaken by the Chinese government. This isn't exactly the same subject as the dubious lab leak hypothesis. Absolutely no one denies that information was suppressed by the Chinese government, and many news articles have been published on the subject. This draft should be kept and potentially moved into mainspace.Katemeshi101 (talk) 04:12, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The article has already been moved into the mainspace. The title is certainly the most non-ideal part of the article, and needs to be changed to something more neutral and specific, but really it should be merged with COVID-19 misinformation by China. –– F ORMAL D UDE ( talk ) 04:23, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.