WHO team member on origins of COVID-19 says ‘patently bogus’ attacks on report ‘undermine science’

Since before the team of scientists from 12 countries traveled to Wuhan, China earlier this year to try to uncover the origins of the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, Western countries and corporate media have been claiming. that China would block their efforts, rekindling politically useful but scientifically discredited conspiracy theories.

Following the report by the World Health Organization (WHO) Wuhan team on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, the United States and its allies have shouted to the scandal, claiming that the Chinese government was at fault on their investigation after it did not point the finger at Beijing. However, the scientists who conducted the investigation are now pushing back, claiming their academic report has become needlessly political football.

“Several daily attacks, obviously bogus, but gullible followers believe them.” This is how Peter Daszak, a New York-based zoologist who was part of the international team of scientists who visited China’s Hubei province earlier this year, described the reactions of a “gang of right-wing media ”. on Twitter Wednesday.

“The real problem is that it undermines science and ironically puts American citizens at risk by leading us into burrow plots instead of better understanding how to prevent pandemics,” he added.

The WHO report, released on Tuesday, gave the theory that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology the least credibility of the four theories it examined, calling it “extremely unlikely. “, but noting that” more timely and comprehensive data “is needed to draw firmer conclusions. The other three theories – direct and intermediate zoonotic fallout and cold food chain transmission – are all considered somewhere between possible and very likely. They also raised a possible additional vector: the 7th Military World Games, a huge military sporting event held in Wuhan in October 2019, two months before the first cases of the virus were detected.

Opposition prepared to report

Even before the report was published, American and American academics were mobilizing against it. An open letter written on March 4 calls for a “full and unrestricted international forensic investigation into the origins of COVID-19”, saying the WHO team “did not have the mandate, independence or the access necessary to conduct a full and complete investigation. unrestricted investigation of all relevant hypotheses of origin of SARS-CoV-2 – whether it is a natural spillover effect or a laboratory / research incident. “

The letter, signed by more than two dozen academics, was curated by Jamie Metzl, a senior researcher at the Washington, DC-based Hawkish Atlantic Council think tank, which is funded by a host of Western defense contractors, from oil and banking giants, and Gilles Demaneuf, data scientist at the Bank of New Zealand.

Demaneuf advanced the unfounded theory that 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS, or SARS-CoV-1) escaped from a Chinese biology lab and the DRASTIC research group he currently heads attempted to claiming the same about SARS-CoV-2 through style trials we don’t know like this one are expected to be published in the UK Spectator on Saturday.

The US State Department also released on Tuesday a statement signed by 13 other countries calling for “transparent and independent analysis and assessment, free from interference and undue influence.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN on Sunday ahead of the report’s release that the United States had “real concerns about the methodology and process” of the report, including that the Chinese government “apparently helped with the to write”.

An unexpected critic of the report was WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who, in comments accompanying the publication of the report, said he did not believe “this assessment was sufficiently thorough” and explicitly noted that “although the team concluded that a lab leak is the least likely hypothesis, it requires further investigation, possibly with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am prepared to deploy.”

Origins of the theory of laboratory leaks

The ‘Wuhan lab leak’ theory arose at the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, when Steve Bannon, former head of right-wing media Breitbart and close political ally of then-US President Donald Trump, s ‘is associated with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo. Wengui to create a platform for a University of Hong Kong researcher named Li-Meng Yan who previously worked on viruses in the coronavirus family. According to Harvard University’s Media Manipulation Casebook, Guo and Bannon brought Yan to the United States, arranged a series of interviews for her, and funded several self-published reports claiming to prove SARS-CoV-2 was a “weapon.” Chinese organic ”.

While Yan’s claims were posted on Guo and Bannon’s G News as early as January 25, 2020, the story quickly spread everywhere from ZeroHedge to Fox News to the New York Post. Peter Navarro, an economist who served as an assistant to the President of the Trump administration, director of trade and manufacturing policy and policy coordinator of the Production Act tweeted a story about Yan’s report in September using the hashtag #ChinaLiedPeopleDied. “

As of March 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 genome had already been sequenced and scientists concluded “irrefutably” that the virus had not been altered.

However, Trump revived the theory in May as the outbreak spiraled out of control and deaths in the United States approached 100,000, and he started looking for someone to blame, though he praised the response. from China to the outbreak earlier this year. Since then, he and figures like Navarro and former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have continued to argue the discredited theory, with former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Robert Redfield making the claim last week. .

WHO scientists push back

Daszak is not the only member of the WHO team pushing back opponents: Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO zoonotic disease expert who led the Wuhan team, pushed back Metzl’s attempts and other sympathetic academics trying to paint the report as a frustrated investigation.

“We did not conduct an investigation”, Embarek tweeted to Metzl on March 10, in response to an invitation to meet the signatories of the open letter. “We have conducted and evaluated joint scientific studies.”

“I don’t know why you (and the group of bankers) keep calling it an investigation,” he said. written the same day to Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also signed the open letter under her initials YA Chan. “The international mission was conceived as part of a series of scientific studies.”

Chan also pushed the lab’s escape theory on SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, claiming in august during an argument on Twitter with a number of immunologists and virologists, that the theory that it comes from nature “is not supported by evidence”.

John Mackenzie, an Australian virologist who led the WHO mission in 2003 to study the origins of SARS, criticized the rare moment of disunity with Ghebreyesus, telling Bloomberg that the WHO chief “should stand by the report of his committee ”and noting that he finds it“ very strange that he belittles him and that he turns away from it.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical officer on COVID-19, told Bloomberg that the data collected by her Chinese counterparts at the end of 2019 was the most comprehensive she had ever seen. Dutch virologist and member of the WHO Marion team Koopmans noted on Twitter that the methods suggested by the US State Department were questionable at best.

“Go and ask for data?” Would this be accepted in the US, UK, Australia, etc.? Interested in hearing, ”she said to herself.

In an interview with the China Global Television Network (CGTN) on Wednesday, Daszak urged critics to “READ the report!” It’s hundreds of pages filled with never-before-seen information, testing thousands of samples that haven’t yet been released. “

He further noted that, contrary to claims that their research was blocked by Chinese authorities, in Wuhan “we have met scientists ready, willing and able to collaborate.” He noted that the team already intended to continue their investigation and welcomed support for their ongoing work, although he cautioned people to “decouple scientific research from political interference. … it is bad for our health!”.