Prestigious scientist says he heard about Covid-19 before China reported it

As the United States and China remain locked in a verbal battle to convince the world the other is responsible for the coronavirus pandemic, an infectious disease scientist in the United States has said that heard about Covid-19 more than two weeks before Chinese regime notified the world of its first cases.

Speaking to director Spike Lee for a new documentary series, Ian Lipkin, epidemiologist at Columbia University recognized for their work in containing the SARS virus epidemic in the 2000s, He said that through his colleagues he learned of the virus outbreak recently discovered in Wuhan on December 15., 16 days before Chinese health officials reported to the World Health Organization on Dec.31.

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In a separate interview, the researcher Chinese friend and research partner Lu Jiahai said from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, southern China, He had told her about the new virus.

Chinese medical authorities did not realize they were dealing with a novel coronavirus until late December 2019, after detecting patients with similar symptoms, similar to severe pneumonia, mainly from the city of Wuhan from or around December 8.

In late December, health officials linked the cases to a wet seafood wholesale market, raising suspicions that the virus could have passed from animals to humans. More than a year and a half later, this calamity already caused more than 4.5 million dead, devastated economies around the world and led governments to severely restrict individual freedoms. At the same time, the link that demonstrates the spread between animals and humans has yet to be discovered.

China threatens retaliation for Covid origin report

Lipkin, 68, has received praise both in his country and in China for his work advise the two countries on their response to the SARS epidemic (2002-2003), during which he helped the Chinese government “to assess the state of the epidemic, identify scientific gaps and develop a strategy to contain the virus and reduce morbidity and mortality”. In the United States, he joined a Department of Defense task force to help with similar tasks.

At the start of the 2019 epidemic, Lipkin first predicted that the new virus would cause fewer deaths than SARS and then traveled to Guangzhou, where he met with senior Chinese medical advisers. He then contracted Covid-19 and treated himself with hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that former President Donald Trump touted as a miracle cure.

Months ago, Lipkin warned that humans must “live the rest of their lives with this virus” because “it will not go away.” “Newborns will need to be vaccinated forever and we will probably have to give extra doses of keepsakes to those already vaccinated. It will be a recurring problem. I don’t think life will ever be completely normal again, ”he said in an interview. only from 2022, thanks to global vaccination, “Infection levels will drop dramatically” and you will see a “dramatic reduction in deaths “. But he warned: “There are a lot of animals in the world that are going to become reservoirs for this virus. “

China threatens retaliation for Covid origin report

China and the United States: diplomatic battle over the origin of the coronavirus

Since the start of the pandem, American officials have accused China of having created SARS-CoV-2 in a laboratory in Wuhan, from where it was disclosed to the population.

China has categorically denied the claims, and last week U.S. intelligence agencies released a brief, unclassified summary of a long-awaited investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which says the virus “It probably appeared and infected humans during a first small-scale exposure which occurred no later than November 2019”, the first known cases of the virus appearing in Wuhan in December of the same year.

The intelligence investigation ordered by Joe Biden concluded that the virus “was not developed as a biological weapon” and said that “most” of its agencies “assess with little confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was probably not genetically modified “. believe that “no there is enough evidence to make an assessment anyway ”.

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