American intelligence would later surmise that the central government had been caught by surprise because of the duplicity of local officials, but it is also true that Chinese authorities continued to downplay the threat once they knew about it. They demanded that researchers stop publishing about the virus without government authorization and cease warning about the danger of the outbreak. They continued to deny that there was evidence of human transmission. The government refused to share virus samples with the U.S., which set back the production of the tests needed to detect the disease by
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