WHO on mission in Wuhan, the story of the origins of the virus locked by Beijing
Audio 04:26
Conference of WHO experts visiting Wuhan, China, February 9, 2021 © Hector Retamal / AFP
By: Sophie Malibeaux
9 min
The more time has passed since the first cases of coronavirus infection appeared in China, the more the truth about the origins of the pandemic appears out of reach.
The mystery remains unsolved after the WHO's fact-finding mission to China, but in the information war it seems Beijing has won a battle.
Publicity
The mission of WHO experts in China, which ended on Tuesday, February 9, 2021, did not signal the end of hostilities between Beijing and Washington over the origins of the coronavirus, quite the contrary.
As soon as the mission left,
Chinese diplomacy insisted that the investigation continue elsewhere, especially in the United States
.
As for the new American administration, it immediately expressed its distrust of the results of the investigation, even before the conclusions were formulated.
She asks to check.
In fact, Chinese diplomacy appeared very satisfied with the course of operations.
On her Twitter account, Chinese Foreign Spokeswoman
Hua Chunying even shared the tweet of one of these inspectors, Peter Daszac
, known to have collaborated in the past with Chinese scientists.
On a mission in Wuhan for the WHO, he calls on Twitter, to be wary of American information, blessed bread for the Chinese side.
Clearly, the sequence has reinforced the official Chinese story, now aiming to seek the origins of the virus everywhere else except China.
The thesis of a virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan rejected by Beijing
Could we imagine that the virus accidentally came out of a Wuhan laboratory?
The WHO delegation was able to visit the highly secure P4 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
During the press conference held on the last day of the mission in Beijing, the head of this mission considered an accidental leak of the virus as an "
unlikely
" hypothesis
.
All eyes are instead on the possibility of contamination to humans by an intermediate species itself infected by a first animal, probably the bat, known to harbor many viruses of this type.
But by saying "
unlikely
"
Peter Ben Embarek, head of the delegation commissioned by the WHO
, indicates that this hypothesis can not be completely evicted either.
However, this is not the interpretation adopted by Beijing.
The Chinese delegation, for its part, considers that there is no more to look for there.
As for the hypothesis - very present on social networks - of a virus manufactured in the laboratory intentionally, it remains confined to conspiratorial circles or to anti-Chinese nationalists of the American ultra-right who have been talking from the start, the track of the biological weapon, without substantiating their suspicions.
Donald Trump himself put it forward, his administration claiming to have evidence.
But the fact that they have never been revealed discredits the accusation.
Above all, there is a consensus among scientists who have had access to the sequencing of the virus.
They believe they have not detected any evidence of human intervention in the laboratory on SARS-CoV-2.
When geopolitics gets involved
At the end of the day, the rivalry between the two super powers - Chinese and American - and the circulation of theses not based on any credible base, risks hindering, lastingly, the emergence of the truth.
It became glaringly obvious this fall,
when the Chinese state press began to circulate information that frozen food items had been contaminated
.
Pointing out products imported from Latin America and Europe.
Chinese officials immediately suggested that these products were responsible for contamination without considering the reverse: the fact that they could have been handled on Chinese soil by people already contaminated.
The hypothesis was taken up by the WHO mission, which now plans to broaden the scope of the investigation outside of China, on the supplier side.
In the end, after more than a year of negotiations to be able to investigate in China, the UN delegation is summoned to look elsewhere.
December 2019, and before?
However, there would be enough to go back, in China itself, in the footsteps of the virus before the period considered by Beijing as the start of the epidemic.
In Europe, studies have shown that the virus was circulating in France, Italy, Spain as of November 2019, but
Beijing does not want to hear about it
.
In fact, with regard to China, this possibility is excluded.
Nothing can go back beyond the first official cases of December 2019 according to Beijing.
However, the WHO investigators only had access to the data that the Chinese wanted to give them.
The story of the origins of the virus is well and truly locked.
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