China spared from COVID-19 cover-up

As the pandemic enters its third year, questions about the origins of COVID-19 seem increasingly distant, but if we are to prevent another coronavirus pandemic in the 21st century, understanding the causes of the pandemic is imperative. current.

COVID-19 has caused more than 5.4 million deaths, but that’s just the beginning. The toll of the pandemic includes increased rates of obesity, unemployment, poverty, depression, alcoholism, homicide, domestic violence, divorce and suicide. As the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is fueling record infection rates and disrupting economies in many parts of the world, pandemic fatigue is turning into pandemic exhaustion.

Our chances of eliminating COVID-19 seem increasingly dim. However, as we try to figure out how to live with the virus, we also need to identify the accidental and other missteps that got us here. Above all, this means taking a critical look at China.

It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinpings’ regime censored early reports that a deadly new coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan and hid evidence of human-to-human transmission, allowing a local outbreak to become a global calamity. What remains to be determined is whether COVID-19 arose naturally in wildlife or whether it leaked from a laboratory, namely the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Here too, China has adopted obfuscation rather than transparency. Xi’s regime has blocked an independent forensic investigation into the origins of COVID-19, arguing that any such investigation amounts to origin-seeking terrorism. After Australia called for an investigation into China’s handling of the outbreak, the Xi government punished it with a series of informal sanctions.

China got help to cover up its bad behavior. At the start of the pandemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus echoed the Chinese government’s talking points and praised its handling of the outbreak. Instead of verifying China’s claims, the WHO released them to the world.

Far from condemning this failure of global health leadership, France and Germany took the initiative to nominate Tedros for a second term as head of the WHO, and the United States decided not to present candidate to challenge him. Having run unopposed, Tedros is to lead this critical institution for another five years.

The West has also helped distract China from the lab leak hypothesis. Not only are several Western labs engaged in research to design super-viruses, but Western governments have ties to the WIV, a French-designed institute where US-funded research has been conducted. The US National Institutes of Health and the US Agency for International Development have awarded grants to EcoHealth Alliance, a group studying bat coronaviruses in collaboration with WIV researchers.

The US government has not fully disclosed its funding to WIV projects, much less explained why its agencies would fund research at an institution linked to the Chinese military. A US State Department fact sheet released a year ago proclaims that the United States has the right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funds have been diverted to secret Chinese military projects in WIV.

Why was this risk deemed acceptable in the first place?

Conflicts of interest surrounding the lab leak hypothesis distorted early discussions of the origins of COVID-19. A letter published in The Lancet in February 2020, signed by a group of virologists, is an example. The letter strongly condemned those who suggested that COVID-19 did not have a natural origin. The message was clear: to give any credence to the possibility of a lab leak would be unscientific.

The letter turned out to be organized and written by the president of EcoHealth Alliance. However, by the time the conflict of interest emerged, it was too late. Major US news outlets and social media giants were treating the lab leak hypothesis as a baseless conspiracy theory, with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter censoring references to a lab accident.

It should always have been clear that the lab leak hypothesis had merit, a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing resulting from such a leak. Instead, frank discussion of the possibility was suppressed until May last year, when US President Joe Biden announced that a lab accident was one of two likely scenarios on which agencies US intelligence would be focused as they conducted a 90-day investigation into the origins of the pandemic. .

At that time, the Chinese authorities had plenty of time to cover any leads there might have been. Add to that his reluctance to cooperate with an investigation and it should come as no surprise that the results of the investigations were inconclusive.

However, the exercise was apparently enough to convince Biden to ease the pressure on China. Despite the promise to do everything [possible] To trace the roots of this epidemic which has caused so much suffering and death in the world, he did not prolong the intelligence investigation, and he has since avoided any reference to the origins of the pandemic.

Xi announced in September last year that Chinese labs handling deadly pathogens would come under closer scrutiny, but he continues to denounce any insinuation that COVID-19 may have been the subject of further scrutiny. ‘a leak. Meanwhile, China is profiting from the pandemic as exports surge. The country has capitalized on the crisis to advance its geopolitical interests, including stepping up its territorial aggression, from East Asia to the Himalayas.

However, a judgment could still come. Nearly three-quarters of people in the United States believe it is likely that COVID-19 was disclosed by the WIV. Moreover, as China’s neo-imperialist ambitions have become clear, unfavorable opinions of China have reached record levels in many advanced economies. If world leaders want a mandate to continue investigations into the origins of the pandemic, it’s safe to say they have it.

This is not the first pandemic made in China, the country also produced SARS in 2003, Asian flu in 1957, Hong Kong flu in 1968 and Russian flu in 1977. If the world continues to let China get away with it, that may not be the case. last.

Brahma Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and a member of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

Copyright : Project Syndicate