Scientists reject ‘lab-leak’ yarn on COVID-19

DESPITE continuing pressure from Western governments, particularly, US Imperialism and facts distortion by the corporate mainstream media, more and more scientists are taking the bold move of rejecting the yarn first spread by the US government that COVID-19 ‘escaped’ or “leaked” from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, resulting to the global pandemic.

Turning to online discussion to air their position, prominent scientists in Europe, Australia and even in the United States, basically support the result of an official investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO) that established the virus was more likely to have jumped from animals to humans (“zoonotic transmission”) and that its spread is most likely due to the ‘cold process chain’ involving the shipment of frozen foods to China from outside sources.

(See Pinoy Exposé Issue No. 11; March 23 -29, 2021 main story, ‘Virus did not escape from Wuhan lab—WHO experts).

The scientists also support the WHO report that found no sufficient evidence to support the claim of then US President Donald Trump early in 2020 that the virus “escaped” from a secret Chinese military laboratory located in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in early December 2019.

It can be recalled that Trump made the baseless accusation against China in an attempt to up the ante of his administration’s anti-China campaign and in an effort to divert blame to the fast spread of the virus in the US mainland, causing thousands of deaths among US citizens (as of this edition, the United States still topped the list of the most COVID-19 affected country with more than 33.8 million cases and over 600,000 deaths, according to the monitoring of the John Hopkins University).

Thomas C. Mettenleiter, head of Germany’s Federal Institute for Animal Health, in an interview reported by Xinhua last July 9, 2021, said the West’s ‘lab-leak’ theory is “highly unlikely.”

He noted that ‘high security laboratories’ have “special comprehensive safety technology” and such “protective measures are standard in such laboratories worldwide.”

Australian virologist Danielle Anderson, reportedly the only foreign scientist who was working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the coronavirus outbreak, told Bloomberg that she never contracted COVID-19 while working at the facility in late 2019.

“If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick – and I wasn’t,” said Anderson, as quoted in an official report by Global Times.

US President Joe Biden and members of the US Congress, clearly following Trump’s yarn, had rejected the WHO finding, thus boosting Western Imperialism’s claim against China.

While claiming he, too, is interested to know the origin of the virus, Biden made it clear that he wants the WHO to pester China for more information, despite the more than 2 months of study spent by WHO experts in Wuhan and elsewhere in China before releasing their report last February during a global press conference.

Global Times, in a separate report on July 8, said that a day before, a group of 21 international scientists led by Professor Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney and Professor Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh said in a pre-print paper published on July 7, 2021, that the mostly likely COVID-19 origin is zoonotic and there is zero evidence for a lab accident.

David L Robertson, a professor at MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research and one of the authors of the paper, told the Global Times on July 8, 2021 that the topic of COVID-19 origins has become “so politicalized,” and “it is important to make sure the right investigations are prioritized, i.e., we follow the evidence to where it leads and don’t get caught up scapegoating individuals or institutions based on hypothetical scenarios.”

The Global Times also reported that last July 5, 2021, 24 international scientists published an open letter in the highly-respected medical journal, the ‘Lancet,’ reiterating the natural origins hypothesis of the virus.

The 24 scientists including Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO-led team studying the coronavirus’ origins, said in the letter that besides reaffirming solidarity with those in China who confronted the outbreak, they wanted to express their view on the most likely scenario that the SARS-CoV-2 originated in nature, not in a laboratory.

“We did not know the source of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and neither did anyone else. Blaming the Chinese government and its scientists is reprehensible because there are no definitive data pointing to the source of this virus,” added virologist Charles H Calisher, a professor at Colorado State University Calisher in an email sent to the Global Times.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry, for its part, repeated its challenge to US authorities to also open their facilities, particularly, Fort Detrick, to the scrutiny of WHO experts, similar to what China did. Fort Detrick is where the US military ‘weaponized’ viruses, bacteria and chemicals for military use.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin during a media briefing on July 5, 2021, said US Imperialism should “immediately stop its political manipulation,” of the virus’ origin.

Wang also dared US Imperialism to stop pressuring the science community and invite WHO experts to carry out COVID-19 origins research in the US in a transparent manner.

Wang said the US should also provide “a responsible explanation” of the real situation at Fort Detrick and the more than 200 biological laboratories the US has established around the world.

Zhao Lijian, another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, noted that US Imperialism “has no right” to “blackmail or threaten” China on the COVID-19 issue. Nor is US Imperialism “qualified to throw mud” at China on behalf of the international community.