Corona Origin: The World Will Not Find Out Anything From China

US President Biden calls for an independent, international investigation into the corona outbreak in Wuhan. There will never be: China's political system prevents it.

Did Covid-19 break out in a laboratory accident in Wuhan ? This question electrifies the American public right now. The trigger is a report published in the Wall Street Journal , according to which three scientists from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan became so seriously ill with the flu in November 2019 that they had to be treated in hospital. So were you already sick with Covid-19 a month before the first evidence of Corona? The institute is researching coronaviruses and it is not far from the Huanan Seafood Market, the first corona superspreading location. The WSJ report is based on information from US intelligence agencies.

Read more: The World Health Organization report

US President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that parts of his intelligence services do not want to rule out the laboratory orthosis, which is why he has commissioned it to get to the bottom of the origin of the corona pandemic. The laboratory orthosis states that virus researchers accidentally infected themselves while doing their work and then carried the virus outside. One reason the thesis often appears so spectacular in public debate is because it has been associated with conspiracy myths according to which dark forces exposed a homemade virus.

Do You Know What I Have Posted On Twitter Facebook Instagram Reddit tumblr

Biden's approach is underpinned by 18 international biologists, immunologists and other specialists who demanded in the journal Science at the beginning of May that there should be new studies on the spread of the coronavirus . Those that went deeper than the failed tour of experts from the World Health Organization ( WHO ) in Wuhan at the beginning of 2021. They could not find any evidence for the more likely assumption that a dangerous encounter with wild animals was the cause, nor for the hypothesis of a laboratory accident, which they had classified as "extremely unlikely". WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later criticized the report, saying that the laboratory orthosis also required further investigation.

As always, the answer from Beijing is harsh

The story of the three sick researchers in November 2019 does not have to mean anything at first. Autumn is fresh in Wuhan too, there are plenty of colds and flu. In addition: China does not have a family doctor system as we know it in this country. If you catch the flu, you go to the hospital. In addition, according to the WSJ report, nothing more is known about the symptoms and treatment of the three laboratory employees. Rather, it is crucial that the Chinese authorities prevent the laboratory orthosis from being weakened in any way.

Read also: Russia has become the first country in the world to formally approve the use of the coronavirus vaccine

The US President announced on Wednesday that the US and its partners around the world would urge the Chinese government to give access to all important data and to enable a comprehensive, transparent and evidence-based international investigation in Wuhan. In view of a global pandemic with more than 3.4 million deaths that started in Wuhan, this is actually a natural demand.

As always, the leadership in Beijing responds to something like this with harsh counter-propaganda, spreading a corona narrative that is intended to shift the blame for the outbreak of the pandemic on to foreign actors from the outset . For example, US soldiers are said to have brought the virus to Wuhan in 2019 or imported frozen goods are the route of spread. Biden's announcements are accordingly a "conspiracy theory," said a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington. China supports a comprehensive study of all early Covid-19 cases worldwide and an investigation of "some secret bases and biological laboratories around the world".

Read also: vaccine supply facilities

Because of this narrative, China also does not provide any information about which route the virus took to turn from the animal world into a threat to humans. The investigation into the virus outbreak in Wuhan by WHO experts was delayed for almost a year. When they finally got there in early 2021, their work on site was severely hampered.

Read more: the coronavirus would leave a research center in Wuhan

Joe Biden will therefore also know that his requested examination will never take place in Wuhan. Getting to the bottom of the origin of the corona pandemic with care and expertise requires cooperation with China's authorities, with its scientists, and surveys of the local population in Wuhan. Such research can take years or decades, as Yangyang Cheng writes, who deals intensively with the question of the origin of the corona .

Only: all of this is politically completely impossible in China. The global public may never know who the corona patient was zero. For this, the functionaries of the Communist Party (CP) ruling in China would also have to let foreign experts into the country and let them work unhindered. But that is simply not in the DNA of this Leninist cadre party.

It is also possible that Chinese authorities have destroyed possible evidence of the virus origin. In the end, however, the leadership in Beijing doesn't even have to have anything great to hide in order to prevent the virus outbreak from being cleared up transparently, says China expert James Palmer. The political system always disguises everything, especially when the Communist Party functionaries are dealing with foreigners. In addition, officials lied about the danger of the virus in December 2019 and early 2020, damaging the rest of the world. For this reason alone, investigations would be prevented.

The Communist Party autocracy will therefore remain immobile on the virus question. It is possible that the US government simply wants to bring some movement and pressure into China policy with the intelligence investigation. Trade talks between the two states are now resuming for the first time since the end of the Trump era. And it's a lot of money for both of them.