Earlier this year, with the full support and cooperation of China, an international expert group composed of WHO experts from the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, Australia and other countries unanimously came to the conclusion that “laboratory leakage in Wuhan is extremely unlikely” after professional investigation and argumentation in the first phase of origin-tracing of COVID-19. This conclusion has been supported by more and more evidence since its release, and it has become a consensus in the academic world.
However, on July 16, the WHO Secretariat proposed the second phase of origin-tracing plan, requiring another probe into the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other places in China, which is very unreasonable and violates scientific principles. It is obviously inconsistent with the conclusions and recommendations of the joint research report on the origin-tracing released by the WHO after its first phase study in China. The second phase of origin-tracing plan changed the conclusions without factual basis, and deliberately targeted China while ignoring other important research directions such as early cases around the world highlighted in the previous joint report.
All those details are worthy of doubt. In July 2019, why did labs in Fort Detrick, the largest biochemical weapon base in the United States, suddenly shut down, and what does this have to do with the unexplained respiratory disease and the large-scale “e-cigarette pneumonia” that broke out in the United States during the same period? At least 9 of the blood samples collected by the National Institutes of Health in the United States at the beginning of 2020 were tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. What does this mean? Trump said that from January 11, 2020, the United States has initiated the development of COVID-19 vaccine, then where did the virus strain used for vaccine development come from? These doubts should be dealt with in the second phase of origin-tracing plan as an important direction, otherwise it would violate the scientific principle of seeking truth from facts and would not be conducive to a comprehensive and objective virus origin-tracing process.
The formulation of the second phase of origin-tracing plan lacks the spirit of cooperation. The 73rd World Health Assembly resolution clearly requires that the Director-General of the WHO continue to work closely with member states to find the animal source of the virus and the route of transmission to humans. This means that the WHO should respect the dominant status of member states, carry out thorough consultation, and base the origin-tracing work plan for the next stage on consensus. However, the formulation process of this plan is not transparent enough to China and doesn’t include China’s expertise.
When you finish reading the above content, perhaps you have discovered that the issue of virus origin-tracing has been politicized. It also coincides with the result of a recent online poll conducted by the CGTN think tank in Chinese, English, Russian, French, Spanish and Arabic which shows that as many as 80% of respondents take the same view.
While the global epidemic has not yet been fundamentally alleviated, countries in the world should join hands to fight it. But individual countries have tried to use the virus origin-tracing issue to suppress China. Many voices exposed the role United States played on the issue of virus origin-tracing. Dr. Fauci, the chief infectious disease expert in the United States said, it is no secret that the United States is politicizing the epidemic. British political and international relations analyst Tom Foday also bluntly stated that the United States has fabricated a conspiracy theory and has continuously politicized the issue of virus origin-tracing, imposing guilt on China.
The US government’s politicization of the issue of virus origin-tracing seemes to be "frying the last government's cold rice," but there are in-depth calculations. During the epidemic, the United States madly printed money and used its financial hegemony to shift the crisis to others. While coping with the epidemic was already difficult enough, the United States had to bear the pressure of inflation, currency devaluation, and stock market bubbles brought about by the crisis, amid weak economic recovery and fierce partisan struggle.
Virus needs to be traced to the origin, but its purpose is to enhance our true understanding of the virus and to better prevent other infectious virus epidemics that may appear in the future. Virus origin-tracing is a serious and complex scientific issue that should be carried out by scientists on a global scale, and countries should support this work in the spirit of science. As early as the beginning of the epidemic, China took the lead in launching global cooperation with the WHO on origin-tracing issues. At present, many research results have shown that the time when the virus appeared in many places around the world was earlier than previously known. This requires us to expand our horizons and carry out multi-point, multi-directional and three-dimensional origin-tracing around the world. Only by firming up confidence along the path of science and carrying out scientific tracing with scientific attitude, scientific methods, and scientific facts, will it be possible to finally reveal the truth.
The behaviors of a few countries show no respect for science and no responsibility for life, and have damaged the atmosphere of solidarity and mutual assistance among all countries in the world. So the second phase of origin-tracing plan has not only been rejected by China, but also boycotted by countries all over the world. More than 70 countries have written to the WHO, agreeing with the first phase research results and opposing the politicization of origin tracing. If the United States insists on pressuring or wooing relevant countries to form a "dumping coalition" against China, it will inevitably aggravate the division of the international community and is not conducive to the formation of a global community with a shared future for humankind in the fight against the epidemic.
The international community should support medical experts and scientists to carry out the virus origin-tracing work in many countries and places in a professional spirit, so as to provide the necessary experience and reference for preventing the next pandemic.
Allowing the issue of origin-tracing to be politicized will seriously undermine the overall situation of global cooperation, and will be detrimental to any party. The international community should resolutely oppose any attempts to politicize, label, and stigmatize the origin-tracing process, and oppose any political manipulation that hinders the international cooperation in the fight against the epidemic.
The author is Research Assistant at the Bioinformatics Research Lab, Center for Research Innovation and Development (CRID), Bangladesh.
