A World health Organization (WHO) team of experts has concluded a joint traceability study with Chinese experts in Wuhan, where the original outbreak of the new coronavirus occurred. WHO experts involved in the study said it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus that caused the pandemic was leaked from a laboratory, and that transmission to humans through animal intermediate hosts was the most likely scenario. This conclusion and the activities of the group of experts, which were arranged by Chinese officials, drew severe criticism and questions from observers, who said that they lacked the transparency necessary for scientific investigations and that they were playing along with the script of the Chinese authorities.
Investigation conclusion: lab leak “highly unlikely”
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was most likely transmitted to humans through an animal intermediate host, but it is highly unlikely to have escaped from the laboratory, a WHO expert panel leader said at a joint press conference with Chinese experts in Wuhan on Tuesday (Feb. 9).
Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus, the P3 and P4 laboratories at the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research have been suspected of being the source of the world pandemic and the focus of attention on this WHO traceability investigation, despite vigorous denials and attempts to divert public attention by Chinese officials and their tightly controlled media propaganda.
Peter Ben Embarek, head of the WHO expert panel, said at the conference that based on the WHO panel’s investigation at the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research and exchanges with researchers, it was concluded that it was highly unlikely that the virus was leaked from the laboratory and that no further investigation would be conducted in the future.
At the conference, Chinese expert Liang Wannian said that the Wuhan Institute of Virus was completely free of the new crown virus before the outbreak, so there was no possibility of virus leakage.
However, the Chinese expert’s words appear to add to Ambarek’s above conclusion and are quite different from what is known.
It was widely reported in the international media that after the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak more than a year ago, Dr. Shi Zhengli, the head of coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virus and known as “Batgirl,” fell into a state of anxiety and fear, saying that she did not sleep for nights, repeatedly recalling every study she had done, every action she had taken, and constantly asking herself if the virus had leaked from those labs of hers. The virus was leaked from her labs?
The findings, announced by WHO experts at a joint press conference, did not really surprise many people. Some commentators even argued that the retrospective investigation activities and professional remarks of these WHO experts in Wuhan were quite consistent with Chinese official expectations and public opinion directions, further undermining the credibility of this UN agency that manages human health.
The official Chinese news agency Xinhua stated in a circular release of the relevant report that “coronaviruses with high genetic sequence similarity to neocoronaviruses have been found in bats and pangolins, but the similarity is not yet sufficient to make them direct ancestors of neocoronaviruses; animals such as mink and cats are highly susceptible to neocoronaviruses, suggesting that bats, pangolins or skunks, felines, and other species may are potential natural hosts.”
The release also mentions that “New coronavirus in the South China seafood market may have been introduced through infected persons, contaminated cold chain products, and animal products, but it is not yet possible to determine.”
The Wall Street Journal report noted that the WHO investigation team’s claim that the new coronavirus could also have been transmitted to humans through imported frozen Food “is a theory that has been heavily promoted by the official Chinese media.”
And food safety guidance posted on the WHO website dismisses the theory that cold-chain foods transmit viruses: “To date, there is no evidence that viruses causing respiratory illness can be transmitted through food or food packaging.”
Observers: Wuhan Virus Institute suspected as source of COVID-19
A video shows the WHO panel’s convoy entering the Wuhan Virus Institute with tight security and a tense atmosphere, with media and onlookers kept outside a human wall of police and plainclothes officers, bringing to the fore the high sensitivity and mystery of the site without diminishing the high level of suspicion among some academics that the new coronavirus originated in a laboratory.
Dr. Jing, a scientist working on genetic research in the U.S., told Voice of America, “It’s just a play, and everyone is playing their part according to the script. The results were known before we left.”
The Chinese scientist, who has been engaged in academic research for many years, said he used his scientific common sense and professional experience to judge that regardless of the results of the WHO survey, the suspicion that the new coronavirus that has infected the world originated in Wuhan and came from a laboratory cannot be eliminated.
“This virus outbreak, Wuhan, no matter what, that suspicion can not be cleared.” Dr. Jing said, “That (virus) everyone saw, it started in Wuhan. That source is there. You can no longer how to push to foreign countries are useless. And then there is a virus institute in Wuhan, which is such a coincidence? I can think of it with my toes. How can it not be related to it? It just depends on whether you say the truth or not.”
Referring to the emergency exercise held by the authorities before the Wuhan World Military Games that included the New Crown virus accident, Dr. Jing pointed out that it was never a coincidence. “There must have been something about it for the authorities to think of doing this drill,” he said.
Professor Song Yongyi, a China scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Voice of America that he has no confidence in the conclusions reached by the belated joint investigation, but based on what he knows about the Communist regime and the eagerness of some Chinese scientists to win awards and take first place in the world, he believes the likelihood of the virus running out of the Wuhan Virus Institute lab is at least 50 percent.
“In this situation now, you go back to investigate, it’s already a horse’s back.” Song Yongyi said, “How do you think it’s possible to investigate something too big? It’s been more than a year apart. The evidence that should be screwed up it has long been screwed up. I personally believe at least 50% of this is out of the laboratory. I don’t necessarily think it was intentionally leaked, but you go look at the Shi Zhengli reports, you go look at those guys who had nothing better to do than to get those things. And they’re going to take first place in the world in getting that stuff.”
International public opinion has been critical of the Chinese government’s lack of information transparency in its response to the New crown outbreak, and questions abound about the cover-up by Beijing authorities. It is believed that the number of confirmed cases and deaths in China has been deliberately suppressed and concealed, in the same vein as the underreporting of the SARS outbreak in Beijing 17 years ago and the mass spread of AIDS in Henan province in the 1990s due to the “plasma economy”.
Zhang Hai: WHO has been reduced to a tool to cover up the truth
Chinese official media reports indicate that a joint expert group of WHO and Chinese experts studied a large amount of Epidemic-related data and information, visited nine units on site, including Jinyintan Hospital, the South China Seafood Market, and the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and had extensive discussions with medical personnel, laboratory personnel, scientific researchers, market managers and merchants, community workers, recovering patients, families of fallen medical personnel, and residents. The joint research results have been basically formed.
The above-listed participants in the exchange do not include the families of ordinary citizens who died of Neoconiosis who publicly requested to meet with these WHO experts.
Zhang Hai, a Wuhan native working in Shenzhen, has spent the past year insisting on accountability for his father, who died of the disease, to Wuhan authorities suspected of concealing the outbreak. He expressed disappointment that the WHO panel of experts in Wuhan failed to engage with hard-luck families who sought accountability from officials, and expressed a high degree of disapproval of the activities and conclusions reached by those experts in Wuhan in their retrospective investigations.
Zhang Hai told VOA that the activities of the WHO expert panel to Wuhan were arranged by the authorities and had no independence, and that the Wuhan authorities who concealed the outbreak were already lightly skilled in falsifying and lying.
Zhang Hai told VOA that the WHO has been reduced to a tool to help cover up the truth. He said, “The WHO has been reduced to a tool, it’s as simple as that. There can be no such thing as so-called justice. I don’t see it anymore.”
U.S. view: virus originated in Wuhan
On the question of whether Wuhan has been identified as the origin of the new coronavirus, State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a regular press conference on Feb. 9 that he did not think any reasonable person would argue that the new coronavirus came from anywhere else.
The spokesman also said the U.S. side looks forward to seeing the WHO panel’s investigation report before drawing its own scientific conclusions based on information and analysis available to the U.S. intelligence community.
On Jan. 15, the day after the WHO panel arrived in China, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mentioned in a statement released by the State Department that multiple researchers at the Wuhan Virus Institute had fallen ill in the fall of 2019 with symptoms consistent with New Crown pneumonia, while Shi Zhengli of the institute publicly stated that she had “zero infection” there. Pompeo noted, based on new intelligence, that Shi Zhengli and other researchers have long been working on a bat coronavirus codenamed RaTG13, which has a 96.2 percent approximation to the novel coronavirus causing the current world pandemic.
It is not known whether the WHO experts at the Wuhan Virus Institute asked Pompeo about these questions or whether they received a reasonable explanation.
Suspected erasure of important data
What is known is that the traceability investigation, which has been delayed for more than a year, has taken many twists and turns to get off the ground. For a long Time, Beijing was adamantly opposed to the investigation, fearing that Wuhan would be identified as the source of the virus and be held accountable by the international community. Later, in order to ease international pressure, it said it was in favor of the investigation, but insisted that the investigation in China be controlled by Chinese experts, and asked WHO to investigate not only China, but also the United States, Italy, Iran and other countries with serious outbreaks. Until just before the trip, Beijing postponed the WHO expert team’s trip for about another week, citing visas and the epidemic as reasons.
In addition, while the WHO team was waiting for visas, British journalist Johnson Bucks of the Mail on Sunday reported on Jan. 9 that hundreds of pages of information related to research done at the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virus Research had been deleted. The report noted that details of more than 300 studies published on the state-run National Science Foundation of China’s website no longer exist, including many studies of animal infections of human diseases.
Dr. Jing, a scientist engaged in genetic research in the U.S., noted that Shi Zhengli published an academic paper about the RaTG13 experiment in the Nature (Nature) journal in January 2020, but said that this experimental material sample is no longer available, which is very suspicious and does not meet the norms of scientific experiments, and should be withdrawn from the journal that published the paper.
Comment: Be wary of the Chinese side of inaccurate information
On February 11, Ben Lowsen, a China expert who works for the U.S. military, published an article in the U.S. publication The Diplomat warning the WHO to be more vigilant about China.
The article said that the WHO team that was previously denied access to the People’s Republic of China appears to have paid a high price for the current access, putting its own credibility at risk. The article says that allowing China to play by a different set of rules without erecting barriers to stop its “united front” of disinformation has repeatedly put the WHO in an awkward position.
Rosen points out that the information provided by the Chinese government is simply not reliable.
This is not to excuse the mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis elsewhere, he notes in the article, but as the example of the late Dr. Li Wenliang and the comments of Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang (who admitted to the media that he did not keep the public informed and whose interview was later deleted) show, China is the only major country to have lied and covered up this pandemic.
This article argues that “even now, Beijing is still openly and conspicuously attempting to dump the blame anywhere outside of China.”
Wuhan residents seek answers to their questions
A Feb. 9 report by Xinhua News Agency said that when a new crown pneumonia outbreak broke out in Wuhan in late 2019, China acted swiftly, took the initiative to communicate information about the outbreak, adopted the most comprehensive and strictest preventive and control measures, and achieved remarkable results in the prevention and control of the outbreak.
Judging from the reactions on the Internet, many Wuhan residents did not agree with the positive performance of China after the outbreak in the city as the official media reports above were intended to convey.
Yao Qing, a freelancer who was hurt by the epidemic-derived disaster, was deeply confused by the authorities’ performance at the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan. She told Voice of America that she had hoped that the arrival of WHO experts in Wuhan would clear up some of the confusion.
In particular, Yao said, “Since coronavirus had already been found in Wuhan, at what level did it reach? How did they go about reporting it? What went wrong in the process that led Wuhan to have a Vanguard banquet on the eve of the city closure? (Reported) eight doctors were admonished for this situation in the end who made the (decision)? It is a mystery even now, and it is not resolved even now. I wonder if the WHO will be able to resolve these doubts when they come over?”
The eight admonished doctors mentioned by the woman seeking compensation for secondary injuries she suffered in the outbreak are believed to include Dr. Li Wenliang.
Following the tragic death of Dr. Li Wenliang, who was first alerted to the outbreak in a WeChat group but was silenced by the authorities, many Chinese netizens and public intellectuals immediately took a stand and spoke out, criticizing officials for quickly branding as rumors the outbreak alert that was first issued to civilians by medical personnel such as Li Wenliang, and for downplaying the dangerous situation of human-to-human transmission of the pneumonia virus through various administrative means, thus missing the opportunity to control and eradicate the outbreak. good opportunity to control and eradicate the epidemic.
February 6 marked the first anniversary of Li Wenliang’s tragic death from the disease. The Chinese authorities have made no public statement about this date. However, there were spontaneous commemorative events in China and abroad, and online and offline, on the anniversary of Li Wenliang’s death. Some Wuhan residents who visited the martyr’s cemetery where Li Wenliang’s tomb is located to lay flowers were surprised to find that Li’s name was deliberately obscured on the martyr’s list, making it difficult to locate his tombstone.
In response to the authorities’ perceived insult to the martyr, Wuhan resident Yao Qing asked, “What are they afraid of when Li Wenliang’s martyr’s tomb is covered up?”
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