No sooner had the World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday published its report into the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus, than the Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was making a public statement distancing the organisation from what observers are calling a “whitewash”.
The report, which had been conducted with heavy reliance on Chinese scientists and under pressure from Chinese authorities, concluded it was “extremely unlikely” that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped from a lab, claiming instead it was most likely the novel virus had passed from bats via an “intermediate animal host” before sparking an “explosive outbreak” in Wuhan in December 2019.
With a rare and welcome criticism of the Chinese Government, Dr Ghebreyesus said: “I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing” and insisted that “all hypotheses remain on the table”.
The United States, the UK and 12 other countries (Australia, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, South Korea and Slovenia) issued a joint statement echoing the Director General’s concerns: “It is equally essential that we voice our shared concerns that the international expert study on the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples.”
The European Union, more meekly, said that it regretted the delays and the “limited availability of early samples and related data”.
Dr Peter Ben-Embarek, head of the WHO mission at the centre of the controversy, defended his report, saying the “zoonotic origins” of the pandemic had been the agreed remit of the investigation rather than a potential laboratory accident. A defence which rather begs the question as to why the investigation was disbarred by design from looking into one of the key possibilities.
Dr Ben-Embarek, for reasons best known to himself, felt moved to offer a rather feeble defence of the Chinese Government’s lack of cooperation.
Of course there are areas where we had difficulties in getting down to the raw data, and there are many good reasons for that. In China, like in many other countries, there are restrictions on privacy laws that forbid the sharing of data, including private details to outsiders in particular. Where we did not have full access to the overall data, this has been put as a recommendation for future studies. So the idea is that, because we didn’t have time or because certain authorisation needs to be given before we could get access to the data, all that could be done in the second phase of studies.
Science journalist Matt Ridley aptly called it a “pure whitewash” when he appeared yesterday morning on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s show on talkRADIO. He pointed out that although the report concludes it’s very likely that an animal carried the virus to Wuhan, this conclusion is at odds with the 20-30 pages in the report which note that 45,000 animals in China have been tested for the virus and none have been found with it.
A lab escape was once dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Back on February 19th 2020, 27 prominent scientists declared in the Lancet: “We stand together to condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” Another group of experts, on March 17th, proclaimed in Nature Medicine: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
Now, though, it is very much regarded as a plausible hypothesis. Matt Ridley, who is writing a book on the subject, and Harvard medical geneticist Alina Chan explained why it is being taken seriously by experts in an eye-opening article in the Telegraph.
They write that, unlike SARS from 2003, SARS-CoV-2 was not found to mutate rapidly in early human cases, suggesting it was already well adapted to infecting human beings. Furthermore, in May 2020, the director of the Chinese CDC announced that none of the animal samples collected from the Wuhan wet market had tested positive for COVID-19.
Ridley and Chan write:
Yet there is little doubt that the pandemic began in Wuhan. All the early cases were in the city and the majority of the first recorded cases in other countries were among people who had travelled from Wuhan. Persistent attempts by the Chinese Government and scientists to play up possible origins in frozen-food imports and pre-Wuhan cases in Europe have been unpersuasive so far.
There is still no sign of an original animal source of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, or the rest of Hubei province. Horseshoe bats that live in the area have been extensively sampled for viruses for years without SARS-CoV-2-like viruses showing up. Therefore, the strongest connection between such viruses in Yunnan and the human outbreak in Wuhan is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the fact that it had collected SARS-like viruses from the Mojiang mine.
But this is circumstantial, not direct evidence. Although SARS leaked from a Beijing laboratory twice in 2004, infecting 11 people, there have been no public reports of an accident at the WIV. Moreover, RaTG13 is not SARS-CoV-2: there are significant differences between the viruses. This is why full transparency about all the viruses held in the WIV would be helpful, including all of the SARS-like viruses collected in the Mojiang mine.
Unfortunately, the Institute’s database of more than 20,000 viruses was taken offline around the time of the outbreak for “security reasons”, and the WHO team were not given access to it. The WIV is the foremost laboratory for studying these kinds of viruses in the world, and had collected large numbers of coronaviruses from hundreds of miles away. With no sign of a source in the wet market or animals, the coincidence that the outbreak began in the vicinity of such an institute is too great to be easily dismissed.
The theory was given a boost in January 2021 when the US State Department released a statement saying it had “reason to believe that several researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses”.
More worrying is the prospect that the virus might not just be an escaped sample of a naturally occurring bat coronavirus, but an engineered virus from gain-of-function research. This may explain, for example, why it was already well adapted to human-to-human transmission.
Ridley and Chan again:
We know from published work that Dr Shi and her colleagues were not only analysing the genomes of viruses, they were also manipulating them. This includes the creation of ‘chimera’ or hybrid viruses with genes taken from two different viruses. It also includes the testing of these viruses in ‘humanised’ mice, endowed with a certain human gene.
The practice of building chimera coronaviruses, sometimes leaving no trace of manipulation, is not new. Such experiments have been conducted in select laboratories such as the WIV for years, for the purpose of understanding how novel viruses could spill over into humans. The ultimate goal is to create a universal vaccine for all SARS-like viruses.
The scientists might find it unbearable if they instead caused a pandemic. But they did not find it unthinkable. In a 2015 article co-authored by Dr Shi these words appear: “Scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue… The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens.”
SARS-CoV-2 is not so deadly as the bat virus that killed three of the six miners who caught it directly from the bats in 2012. The WIV held samples of nine bat viruses sourced from that Mojiang mine, one of which, RaTG13 was noted (though without making the link) by WIV researchers themselves to be very similar to SARS-CoV-2.
Could SARS-CoV-2 be an engineered version of those viruses, perhaps made less deadly but ready for human-to-human transmission? It’s one possibility, but without further access to samples and data, repeatedly denied by the Chinese authorities, scientists have no way to find out.
It’s very important we find out soon, though, so we can know exactly what we’re dealing with and what lessons we should learn.
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Spotted this earlier and was really shocked. I don’t know anything about this querdenker group but investigating them on the grounds of ‘sedition’ is sinister.
querdenker = lateral thinking, in my rough off the cuff german.
This is old news. Basically any organisation in Germany who are suspected of undermining the constitution, and this is more often than not the far right but certainly also includes the far left, are investigated by the federal constitutional court. The AFD are a far right political party with around 10% representation in the German parliament who have struggled, and are struggling, to avoid the Nazi label. It must be said that that the AFD are the only major party with lockdown sceptic policies. The Querdenker is a movement which is opposed to repressive government policies, not just those associated with Covid.
Think what you want about the whole process, and I personally believe it is overdone with respect to putting the Nazi label on political opposition and movements, and while the process may not be quite fair it is at least very open. There are huge open political discussions and debates to decide if Movement Y or Party X will be examined by the constitutional court, the court cannot just decide by itself to investigate. And on top of that the court is not a puppet of the government; many government complaints have been rejected by the due legal process of this court. So while the Querdenker movement may be being investigated by the constitutional court, I’m actually not sure if they are, the outcome is by far unclear.
In addition to all this anyone can complain to the constitutional court, not just the government. I’m not sure but I could certainly believe that the German government is the subject of the most complaints. Recently in the German media it was reported that the FDP (liberal opposition party) are starting a complaint about the government imposing an automatic curfew.
So I would suggest to everyone reading this comments section that they note the fact that the German people do have a constitution and that this constitution is a written document designed to defend the inalienable rights of every person in Germany (not just citizens) and is used as a measure for legal purposes to judge if the rights of the German people are in anyway endangered and is itself rigorously defended by the German state through an independent court. Correct me I am wrong but I am relatively sure that there is no constitution for the United Kingdom and as far as I can work it out the “freedoms” of the UK people are rapidly being eroded by the stealth tactics of unknown sources (government, media and whatever).
Which system would you prefer?
I´ve read the AfD manifesto. It´s far – right only if you believe BoJo is a Conservative…..
Good analysis. I make no ‘Brexit’ comment intended, pro or anti, but the knowledge in UK of how its neighbours are run is very low. Mainly because the UK media and public attention has always been US-biased.
But will you agree that Germany is currently undergoing internal pressures partly because Mutter is standing down, partly because of realignment to the East and partly because the ‘wind generation’ chickens have come home to roost. Then there is covid and its use to ‘control’ events.
Well it seems neither system works, doesn’t it?
Ultimately the people are the only guarantors of their own freedom.
I think in general it ought to be easier to have a clear written constitution to point at when fighting tyranny, but it has done the Germans little good.
I am not reassured by the fact that there are debates about who can be investigated. If you believe in freedom of speech, which more or less no-one really does any more, if they ever did, then why would you need investigations of this kind. There are plenty of existing laws against obviously criminal behaviour. As soon as you accept you may want to investigate people for “undermining the constitution” it’s open to abuse.
Thank you and Peyrole for your kind words. Indeed neither systems work too well, as has been shown by the quite ridiculous Covid restrictions in both countries. However I maintain that a written document forms a much better basis for protecting the people than the wishy washy “good intensions” of the British “constitution”. Also the debates that go on regarding the instigation of procedures to investigate a particular movement or party surely cannot be regarded as anything else other than healthy democracy? After all the debates are held in what is called “parliament”, and this name is certainly given for a reason.
I would additionally like to say that some of the comments on this thread, yours of course excepted, show a complete immaturity to what is presently going on in the world; intelligent input to any debate looks different from an idiotic an insulting translation of a policeman’s badge.
Anyway, that’s enough talk from me because, as other commentators have said, it’s not all about words. It looks like more serious action may be required.
Germany had a rich history of oppression and tyranny to draw on.
Mind you, our native Fascists are doing a great job of jackbooting a country that once had a tradition of fighting for freedom.
As do the English so say many Welsh Irish, Scots. English soldiers wearing hobnail boots, not jackboots (England could not afford jackboots)
Oh FFS 77 are here again.
fon has been in the officers mess sneaking a brandy or two.
I can roughly translate words on the badge to say “National office for Defence of the constitution, security police” Sounds omminously like STASI (official state security service) of the old east germany. Having visited both sides of the wall, I can say that Germans on either side did not change that much over the 60 years of separation. In some ways they were more friendly and relaxed on the commie side! yes that was a surprise to me as well!!
Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz = Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is Federal Germany’s domestic spying agency, intended to find Neo-Nazis and (for a while) Commies etc. The badge is ‘Sicherheitsdienst’ or ‘Security Service’ (the chap may be the premises security rather than an agent for the field) but ‘SD’ was the ‘intelligence’ wing of the SS back in its day, a most vile bunch. Seems a mocking choice of words for a badge.
I’d be incredibly suprised if this was only happening in Germany. I’m sure other governments have declared lockdown sceptics, as well as conspiracy theorists, a threat to national security and are monitoring them one way or another.
George Orwell demonstrated it’s only natural for the state use its machinery. The trouble starts when there is nothing above the state. It has always been a prpblem with the English version of democracy, some suggest a written constitution might solve the crisis, it has not worked in Germany or the US evidentally. Here we labour under the belief that The Commons exercises contol to restrain the excesses of the State. The jury is still out on that.
I half expect that I will be in some ‘educational camp’ before the end of the year. At least I’ll be with some of the best people.
I’m happy to say you are unlikely to be deemed significant enough to bother with. It is both a blessing and a curse of the English syst em, if you ever are deemed significant enough to bother with you will be brought into the establishment.That is how the English system is meant to operate, you see.
A bit of insider knowledge.
It’s good to know I will be left alone.
Please do not believe a word of what Reuters says about Querdenker being rechts. They are absolutely middle of the road people, many who have never in their life been on demos or politically involved.
Querdenken has a huge popularity as they are not affiliating themselves with any leanings. They fight for the personal freedoms and freedom of speech as laid down in the Grundgesetz.
Yes, they are being watched by the Spy Behoerden, as there are a few ex Stasi people in government who cannot let go.
Thanks for the insight Silke. I suppose we could have guessed that would be the case…
‘Germans Acting German’
…bless ’em, they never change.
The Germans were and are always the most zealous and thorough in everything they do.
Whether it’s engineering, obeying and executing orders, denunciating, fascism, socialism or Covidianism.
They only fooled themselves, and us, for a while that they have changed.
I am ready to hand in my passport now. Not my country and people anymore.
More Orwellian dystopia.
The blue shirt has a badge with the word ‘Sicherheitsdienst’ on it, presumably the premises security, not an agent of the BfV, but the word has a sickening and evil resonance with the SD, the ‘intelligence’ wing of the SS.
There was a movement in Germany some years ago called the ‘Anti-Germans’ (who seemed to be ‘Anarchists’ who so hated ‘West Germany’ (but not, it seemed the ‘East’), that some of them produced a song ‘Bomber Harris do it again’. It probably didn’t occur to them that theirs was the sort of fanaticism that led MRAF Harris to do what he got done, and that the best answer was to be more reasoned, but anyway, I do wonder if they had a point buried beneath all that.