As the global vaccination rollout brings light to countries wrapped in a Covid-19 darkness, an emerging “political virus” has cast a shadow on the origins of the disease.
As of Tuesday morning, more than 187 million people around the globe have contracted the virus, with more than 4 million lives lost.
However, some self-interested Western politicians are concocting conspiracy theories and spreading misinformation about the origins of the deadly virus, including the tired lab-leak hypothesis. Such unsubstantiated notions do nothing but distract researchers dedicated to learning how and where the contagion began.
Scientists are increasingly worried about the consequences of unfounded allegations, which will hinder origin-tracing work and undermine preparations for the next pandemic.
How and when the novel corona virus reached “patient zero” remains unanswered.
Evidence has begun to emerge that Covid-19 had been circulating around the world earlier than the pathogen was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Upon this background, one can reason that with WHO primary report out and their search ongoing, any country to announce a parallel investigation led by political appointees should not only worry us but inspire us to ask more questions.
On the outbreak of Covid-19, China took stringent measures to contain the pandemic, while Washington branded Beijing’s efforts as draconian.
Instead of learning from measures China employed in containing the corona virus, the US chose denial, and as tens of thousands of people lost lives to Covid-19, some pundits and politicians started blame game possibly to divert people from critiquing their weakness in containing the virus.
Instead of focusing on producing more vaccines and supporting efforts to contain the spread of the virus not just in the West but also in developing world, The U.S. administration is now choosing to concentrate on finding the origin of corona virus.
Washington should join the world in fighting the pandemic by supporting other countries, making vaccines readily available, and supporting research and science.
Currently, the world is facing a twofold crisis: first, a pandemic threatening to ravage public health systems around the globe, if governments and individuals fail to enforce and adhere to strict social distancing to preempt the pandemic from growing exponentially and to push for more people to take the vaccines; second, an epidemic of information, in which anyone gets to say anything, credible or not, to advance whatever agenda.
While all of these causes warrant reflection and debate, the COVID-19 pandemic is not the context in which to decide on their merit; fear and grief cloud reason and skew public opinion. Instead, this global public health emergency must be taken at face value and lessons learned should center on enhancing preparedness for and responses to epidemics and pandemics alike.
According to reports from CDC, in mid-June, a new antibody testing study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which analyzed more than 24,000 blood samples from all 50 U.S. states between Jan. 2 and March 12, 2020, found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the country earlier than initial reports, which date back to late December 2019.
In early June, the World Health Organization requested an Italian research team re-test the samples in their study. Last November, Italy’s National Cancer Institute reported that it found evidence of COVID-19 antibodies in the blood of four Italian cancer test subjects in October 2019, meaning they would have been infected by the virus in September, while the first known patient in Italy was detected with infection on Feb. 21, 2020.
Dominic Dwyer, an Australian virologist with the University of Sydney, thinks that animals are the likely source of Covid-19, but it remains overhasty to reach a definitive conclusion right now, saying “the ‘gotcha’ evidence still eludes in what can take years.
In the view of David Fidler, a global health researcher with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank, it’s hard to expect COVID-19 origin investigations to reveal definitive data any time soon, according to a report published in the science journal Nature in late May.
The experts assessed the likelihood of possible pathways, saying Covid-19 introduction through an intermediate host is “likely to very likely,” through cold/food chain products “possible,” and through a laboratory incident “extremely unlikely.”
Calling the report “a very important beginning,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do.”
Nonetheless, some Western politicians have cooked up the lab-leak hypothesis to blame China and unleash intense waves of disinformation about the disease’s origins, which have drawn criticism from the science community.
Pandemics, like other existential risks, are nothing new; from the Black Death to the Spanish Flu, catastrophic events – some natural, some of our own making – have beset humanity throughout history. In each case, normalcy returned eventually, and life moved on, so why care now?
Because scientific and technological progress, absent of independent, impartial oversight, not only create opportunities, but challenges that, if left unaddressed or mismanaged, could alter our way of life irreversibly. While this realization must not prompt the misconception that the Covid-19 pandemic is an opportunity, rather than a global health emergency, it should enable us to see that the havoc SARS-CoV-2 will wreak pales in comparison to probable existential risks.
For the time being, there is nothing more important than minimizing the impact on public health systems, especially in developing countries, to ensure optimal treatment for Covid-19 patients in need of hospitalization. However, in the medium-term, following a thorough investigation of how governments and public health systems responded to this pandemic, action should be taken to establish an international, multilateral agency mandated to identify, monitor, and mitigate probable existential risks, even if localized and non-imminent at this point in time.
Due to the politicization of the virus, there is bound to be hindrance as some non-scientists are rushing to fabricate evidence in the name of science, because they have been tasked to do so within three months, instead of offering assistance to the WHO and facilitating the worldwide hunt for the source of the virus, including what is happening in their own country.
Meanwhile, scientists are increasingly worried about the consequences of unfounded allegations, which will hinder origin-tracing work and undermine preparations for the next pandemic.
Earlier this month, two dozen prominent international scientists reiterated their belief that the corona virus evolved naturally rather than escaped from a lab, in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal.
Allegations and conjecture are of no help, as they do not facilitate access to information and objective assessment of the pathway from a bat virus to a human pathogen that might help to prevent a future pandemic, written in the Lancet Journal.
Recrimination has not, and will not, encourage international cooperation and collaboration.
There are many scientists who say that politicizing the science does not help genuine efforts to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2, or ongoing collaboration between Chinese and Western scientists.
It just generates “doubt” and “mistrust” and fundamentally undermines the united global effort needed to prevail against the virus and the pandemic.
Similarly, Dedkov said politicizing the topic is purely counterproductive, urging his colleagues to work together to find the cause of the pandemic instead of blaming China without proof.
No one wins in the West’s politicization of the Covid-19 origin probe to attack China. The Western allies have too casually dismissed the findings by a joint WHO-China team that found no evidence of a lab leak. The important work of tracing the virus’ origin should be a matter for science, not politicians who appear bent on pinning the blame on China.
World leaders must not politicise the corona virus pandemic but unite to fight it, the head of the World Health Organization warned and reminding all that the pandemic is still accelerating and producing record daily increases in infections.
Countries must come together to fight the virus. WHO bashing can wait. We will have many body-bags in front of us if we don’t behave, was the impassioned plea from World Health Organisation chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking to the media on the origin of the virus since the WHO had been notified of the first cases of pneumonia of unknown causes from China.
Countries will need to show such global solidarity and maturity if they want to get the virus under control. Till such time, the performance evaluations can wait.