“Given China’s coverup of the outbreak in Wuhan, the WHO’s early praise for the country’s response and the fact that it took a full year to get a joint Chinese-international team on the ground for a brief visit,” explained The Washington Post, “the critical but challenging search for clues faced skepticism from the start.”
“Skepticism” is a kind reaction to the just-released World Health Organization report on the origin of COVID-19’s transmission to humans.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed CNN that “the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it.” Though “foreign scientists on the trip took pains to praise their Chinese counterparts,” The Post noted, “They also acknowledged the limits of working with data collected before they arrived that may or may not be complete.”
Reuters reported yesterday that “Data was withheld from World Health Organization investigators who travelled to China to research the origins of the coronavirus epidemic,” according to a statement from none other than WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Yet, even acknowledging that the WHO report is based on highly questionable and woefully incomplete data, our major media continue to amplify the message that it is “extremely unlikely” the virus passed to humans through a Wuhan lab.
So suggested a BBC story when international scientists went to China last month: “after visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they have closed the lid on a controversial theory.”
Why controversial? It would place further blame on China.
The possibility of a lab accident was raised a year ago, including here, but the media has seemed incurious. Now, with the newly released report, the unlikeliness of a lab breach is again a theme.
But there has been no real investigation.
The Post points out that the scientists who visited “got a tour of the facility, heard about the lab’s rigorous safety protocols and were told the lab was not working with viruses close to SARS-CoV‑2.”
Meanwhile, two new tidbits have emerged: (a) “One member of the team said in a post-trip television interview that researchers at the [Wuhan Institute for Virology] lab were sick in the fall of 2019,” and (b) the final WHO report disclosed that a different lab, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, moved on Dec. 2, 2019.
“I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory,” Dr. Robert Redfield, a virologist and former CDC director, said over the weekend, “you know, escaped.”
It’s almost as if COVID-19’s origin is the one thing we’re not supposed to uncover.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
