World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been playing the toady for the Chinese Communists since the pandemic was first loosed upon the world in Wuhan, China in December of 2019. He abandoned any pretense of impartiality and ran interference for his masters in Beijing when the first investigations into the origins of the coronavirus were conducted.
But slowly, over the intervening two years, Tedros has had an epiphany. Indeed, the number of researchers and scientists admitting that the possibility of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology led to the pandemic is growing as time goes by.
According to the Daily Mail, Tedros is also coming around to accepting that hypothesis. He confided to a senior European politician that the most likely explanation was a catastrophic accident at the Wuhan Institute where infections first spread in late 2019.
In essence, it’s now down to a process of elimination. For two years, scientists have been looking for the specific animal species that would have passed the coronavirus to humans. They’ve concentrated on bats, but other mammals have been tested — tens of thousands of them — looking for the “‘zoonotic’ spread” that researchers confidently predicted would show up and solve the mystery of the coronavirus’s origins.
There’s been no sign of the coronavirus spreading from a specific animal species to humans. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. But it’s certainly a compelling reason to try and force China to cooperate in the investigation.
Dr Tedros updated member states on the pandemic this month, admitting: ‘We do not yet have the answers as to where it came from or how it entered the human population.
‘Understanding the origins of the virus is very important scientifically to prevent future epidemics and pandemics.
‘But morally, we also owe it to all those who have suffered and died and their families. The longer it takes, the harder it becomes. We need to speed up and act with a sense of urgency.
Surprisingly, Tedros called out China for its lack of cooperation.
“All hypotheses must remain on the table until we have evidence that enables us to rule certain hypotheses in or out. This makes it all the more urgent that this scientific work be kept separate from politics. The way to prevent politicisation is for countries to share data and samples with transparency and without interference from any government. The only way this scientific work can progress successfully is with full collaboration from all countries, including China, where the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported.”
Why is this important? Finding the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will help us better understand the bug and create more effective, safer vaccines. It will also aid us in determining where the next pandemic will come from.
China is not likely to cooperate in any investigation that would show negligence on the part of any Chinese citizen that led to the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party would be threatened with its survival if it ever became known it not only caused the pandemic but fought fiercely to prevent vital information on the coronavirus from being shared.
It’s going to take a lot more pressure than the Director-General of the WHO can bring to bear on China to unlock the secrets of the coronavirus’s origins.
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