After extensive research I have found the only public tweet related to that comic strip image from this morning. It was photoshopped. I'm sorry.
(media.greatawakening.win)
ℹ️ ⚔️ Info Warfare ⚔️ ℹ️
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WAY too much detail, but this is fun, so:
I have no information either way on this particular strip, I've never read The Phantom, but am reasonably familiar with old comics and comic strips. Looking at the linework reproduction, this is what each version looks like to me:
The "Sleep Death" version's linework is blurred and crushed together like a copy of a copy, the tree trunk has been deliberately removed to fit the modified panel-cropping, and of course the coloring is far inferior. It’s definitely an inferior copy. It may be a later (1979?) reprint/editing of an earlier original printing (1957?).
The "China Virus" version artwork is so clear that it's arguably unnatural if it's coming from a 1957 newspaper. It might be a cleaned up version of the type you might get in a "The Collected Phantom Comic Strips" kind of reprint volume, using the original artwork carefully reproduced with cleaner lines on good paper. If that's the case they'd probably keep the original dialogue.
In any situation it's unlikely anybody would add extra artwork (the tree trunk), so the line art of the "China Virus" version is very probably the original, and "Sleep Death" the inferior reprint.
But it's quite possible that this was an old strip reprinted in 1979 newspapers with the 1950s dialogue sanitized for changing sensibilities (and crappier printing). That happens.
This means that both sides might be telling the truth here: "China virus from 1957!" "No, sleep death from 1979!" Stuff gets reprinted, stuff gets censored.
Source: Endlessly reading the old 1970s Warren reprints of the '40s The Spirit comics. Now that was quite the reprint/editing/censoring shit show...
Haha I bet!