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Praising Beijing, the World Health Organization has concealed concessions from China and possibly sacrificed the most productive possibility to get to the bottom of the virus’s origins, which is now Trump’s favorite line of attack.
By Selam Gebrekidan, Matt Apuzzo, Amy Qin and Javier C. Hernández
GENEVA – On a bloodless weekend in mid-February, when the world still harbored false hopes that the new coronavirus could be contained, a World Health Organization team came to Beijing to examine the epidemic and investigate a critical question: does the virus move from animals to humans?
At this stage, only 3 deaths due to Covid-19 were shown outside of China and scientists hoped that locating an animal source of coronavirus would unlock clues on how to prevent it, treat it, and avoid similar epidemics.
“If we don’t know the source, we will also be vulnerable in the long run to a similar epidemic,” said Michael Ryan, director of emergencies at the World Health Organization, that week in Geneva. “Understanding this source is a very next step. “
What the team didn’t know is that they wouldn’t be allowed to investigate the source at all. Despite Dr. Ryan’s statements and his emergency committee’s recommendation, the organization’s leadership discreetly negotiated terms that left its own experts out. They would not question China’s initial reaction or even a stopover in the live animal market in Wuhan City, where the outbreak gave the impression that it originated.
Nine months and more than 1. 1 million deaths later, there is still no transparent and independent investigation into the source of the virus. China, notoriously allergic to external scrutiny, has hampered the effort, while World Health Organization leaders, if they are frustrated in private, have largely ceded control, even as Trump’s management has fulminated.
Since the early days of the epidemic, the World Health Organization, the world’s only public fitness company, has been indispensable and powerless. The Geneva-based company provided key data on vaccine verification, remedy and science. When Trump’s leadership made a decision to expand its own verification kits, rather than relying on WHO, the neglected outcome caused delays.
At the same time, the fitness organization has spread misleading and conflicting data about the threat of spread through asymptomatic carriers. Its experts have been slow to settle that the virus would possibly be suspended in the air. founded on politics and economics, not science.
WHO’s staunchest advocates point out that, due to the nature of its constitution, it is indebted to the countries that finance it and is not the only foreign organization to bow to China’s power, but even many of its supporters have been frustrated by The Secret of the Organization, its public praise of China, and its discreet concessions. These decisions helped Beijing to transparent its first mistakes in managing the epidemic.
Now, as a new wave of Covid-19 envelops Europe and the United States, it is in the midst of geopolitical stagnation.
China’s authoritarian leaders must coerce the organization; President Trump, who officially got rid of the U. S. framework in July, has now made the decision to destroy them; and European leaders are running to reform and hold it accountable.
Searching for the origins of the virus is one of the WHO ID commitments.
On the surface, an investigation into the origin of the virus is progressing. Beijing recently approved a list of outdoor researchers. The fitness organization agreed that key elements of research: the first patients in China and the market role in The Epidemic will be led by Chinese scientists, according to documents received through the New York Times. The documents, which were never made public, show that WHO experts will review and “complement, duplicate” studies in China.
Although it praised the Chinese government, the organization refused to reveal the main points of its negotiations with Beijing and made percentage documents with member states outlining the terms of its investigations.
“WHO prioritizes the country,” said Gian Luca Burci, the agency’s former legal adviser, “but if you do that to the end, you lose your comfortable power. “
The question of the origin of the virus remains a critical mystery that, if resolved, could help you avoid another pandemic and help scientists create vaccines and treatments. When the first SARS outbreak began spreading in China in 2002, the government hid the outbreak for months, but when they nevertheless identified it, they temporarily allowed foreign groups to investigate the animal source.
This time, the search for a source secretly wrapped up.
Internal documents and interviews with more than 50 public fitness officials, scientists and diplomats provide information on how a global fitness organization, with no power, access and cooperation from China, has struggled to achieve this. His considered technique has given Trump and his ally the area to drive unfounded conspiracy hypotheses and theories, and deflect blame from his own mistakes.
The prospect of apolitical research into the origins of the virus is diminishing. China has won concessions from the fitness organization that have helped the country delay studies and prevent its government from a potentially shameful review of its early reaction to the epidemic.
“Unfortunately, this has political research,” said Wang Linfa, an Australian virologist in Singapore who helped identify bats as hosts of sarS’s first coronavirus. “Everything they do is symbolic. “
The organization said it participated in large-scale research, regardless of political distractions.
“Divisions between and within countries have provided a fertile floor for this rapidly evolving virus to spread and gain the upper hand,” W. H. O. CEO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told The Times. He said the political attacks had undermined the world’s response: “Leadership in a crisis like this requires listening, understanding, trusting and moving forward together. “
The consultation of where Covid-19 began is intriguing because the initial theory, focused on illegal sales in the Wuhan market, is now being questioned.
There is strong evidence that the new coronavirus has passed naturally from animals to humans. Scientists have discovered a virus in bats that is a close relative and suspect that it would possibly have inflamed animal species before reaching humans.
But while they agree that many instances were connected to the Wuhan market, many scientists no longer believe this is where the epidemic began.
For now, however, this is where the track cools down.
On the night of December 30, according to local reports, personnel wearing protective gear began cleaning the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, a maze of vendors promoting products, meat and wildlife. disinfectant to prevent an epidemic that officials believed had come from.
A day or two later, the team from the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention arrived. According to an official report, experts sampled products sold on the market and the environment.
But 3 weeks later, George F. Gao, the lead scientist at China’s CDC, told a reporter that the market had closed before his team could conduct a comprehensive search for the animal source.
This is a key moment. The discrepancy in the accounts leaves open two probabilities: if researchers have analyzed samples of live animals, they may hide potential clues about the origin of the virus.
But if they arrived after the market closed and disinfected, they would possibly have taken samples only from places like door knobs, counters and runoffs. Many outdoor experts, this is the most likely scenario. , aimed at preventing human diseases, was quick to leave the market site blank rather than prevent to maintain evidence.
However, this would mean that the Chinese government missed the opportunity to verify the origin or not of the epidemic.
WHO has said research is ongoing, but has done little to explain the uncertainty. Chinese fitness and diplomatic officials did not respond to repeated requests for interviews and were silent about what happened.
“This is a component of the Chinese psyche: demonstrating to the world that they make science more productive,” said Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance in New York. “But in this case, it didn’t work. And I think that’s why we don’t know much more. “
Identifying the source of a virus is not an armchair exercise. After the MERS coronavirus outbreak in 2012, scientists discovered evidence that it was transported via camels, but researchers such as Ghazi Kayali, who took blood samples from Egyptian slaughterhouses, to verify this. he and other researchers eagerly await the main points of China’s first tests.
“What did you find?” Dr Kayali says. ” Was it a live virus or just RNA fragments?Did they pattern the animals that were there?”
The closest thing to the Chinese government came to publish the effects in a press release on January 22, which said scientists had discovered coronavirus in 15 samples on the market, but it is not known whether this virus is excreted through humans or animals. genetic series of some samples, although the data have not provided clues as to the origin of the virus.
WHO would possibly answer some of these questions. In mid-January, China’s National Health Commission informed the local workplace of the organization of its market research, according to an official with direct knowledge of the information.
Chinese officials said in January that the outbreak had begun in the market. Gao del C. D. C, Chinese blamed illegal sales.
In personal conversations, he shared a more accurate hypothesis: W. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at Columbia University, recalled how, at a dinner in Beijing in early February, Dr. Gao pulled out his phone and showed him photos of dead rodents discovered at The Market.
“George Gao became convinced that we were going to involve a cane rat,” Dr. Lipkin said.
Even then, however, Gao saw that it undermined his theory.
Last January, Dr. Gao co-wrote one of the first epidemiological studies on the virus, highlighting the market’s links to the epidemic, but a close look at the knowledge shows something important: 4 of the first five coronavirus patients had no transparent link with the market.
They had swelled up somewhere else.
Last January, Dr. Tedros met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. The epidemic gained momentum, although largely still limited to China, as the two men sat in front of a bucolic fresco in the Great Hall of the People and reached an agreement.
Dr. Tedros rushed to Beijing to pressure Mr. Tedros. Xi to authorize a giant team of foreign experts. A small W. H. O. The team had visited Wuhan a week earlier, but had been on the market or at the largest hospital for infectious diseases.
Xi did not welcome the suggestion that China needed help, but agreed to leave a W. H. O. The project evaluates the “objective, fair and rationally” scenario.
“The epidemic is Satan, and we cannot let Satan hide,” Xi said, according to local media.
The agreement was essential for Dr. Tedros, who last week did not have to claim a foreign emergency after convening a committee to advise him.
What was not publicly known, however, was that the committee’s resolution on 23 January followed intense lobbying, adding from China, according to diplomats and fitness officials. Committee members are foreign experts largely far removed from any influence. The Chinese ambassador made it clear that his country would make an emergency statement as a vote of censure.
China also presented knowledge to the committee, describing a relative control scenario.
Half the committee said it was too early to claim an emergency. The result surprised many countries, as did Dr. Tedros when he publicly praised Tedros. Xi and China’s pneumonia surveillance system.
“It’s this formula that captured this event,” he said at a press conference.
It wasn’t true. China’s surveillance formula has failed to run into the epidemic, a failure that, according to experts, has allowed its spread to accelerate. referred questions to China.
However, praising China, Mr. Tedros.
Dr. Tedros is a politically minded epidemiologist who served as Ethiopia’s Minister of Health and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is affable and calls leaders and diplomats “my brother. “Critics and supporters agree that he likes to publicly criticize countries.
His supporters say soft international relations are for any leader of the W. H. O. , a very under-funded United Nations agency, founded after World War II, which is based on donations of about 80% of its budget.
When Dr. Tedros took office in 2017, the organization was reviewed after being criticized for its failed reaction to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
But the firm does not yet have a guaranteed budget or authority to make programs or enforce foreign regulations. For the sake of public health, he chooses to work with countries even after other UN agencies have imposed sanctions on them.
When SARS gave the impression in 2002, China hid the epidemic for months and ignored calls from Gro Harlem Brundtland, then WHO Director, only when she publicly embarrassed the country that China cooperated.
This time, things seemed to start better. Chinese leaders have reached out to Dr. Tedros. Beijing had also shared the genomic series of the virus with W. H. O. relatively fast, but only after Chinese scientists beat him. Xi’s decision to authorize a W. H. O. the project is to justify Dr. Tedros’ approach.
“I will congratulate China time and time again because its movements have helped lessen the spread of coronavirus to other countries,” Dr. Tedros said after leaving Beijing. “We deserve to tell the truth. “
Back in Geneva, U. S. Ambassador Andrew Bremberg suggested Dr. Tedros remember China’s praise.
“He’s risking his reputation and that of his organization,” he told Dr. Tedros, according to several Western diplomats briefed on the conversation.
Finally, Dr. Tedros declared an emergency on January 30, on the recommendation of almost all the committee members, with the exception of the Chinese delegate. The committee also indicated that the next WHOChina deserves “review and efforts to investigate the source animal. “
About a week later, in early February, two of the organization’s leading experts traveled to Beijing to negotiate the mission agenda. In the same week, the world’s leading fitness experts ranked the host animal as one of the main tasks.
However, even before the entire team met in Beijing on 16 February, the World Health Organization had ceded ground, according to two other assigned persons, diplomats and others, who agreed not to read about China’s initial reaction or begin investigating the animal source. Said. He couldn’t even get to Wuhan.
“We weren’t there to see the origins of the animals,” said Dale Fisher, a professor of medicine at the National University of Singapore who participated in the mission.
In response to questions, the W. H. O. said it aimed to “understand the epidemic in China to help all countries prepare and populations. “
Once in China, the team agreed that the project would be credible if they went to Wuhan, H said. Clifford Lane, clinical director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Wuhan sealed, so six members (3 Chinese experts and 3 foreign experts) took a special exercise to the city, stayed about a day and visited two hospitals, but did not go to the market.
When the team accumulated to write their report, the 25 members analyzed each and every word for nearly 3 days.
“They would get stuck in one word, ” said Dr. Fisher of his Chinese colleagues.
The project has produced valuable data on the disease, its transproject and China’s successful, albeit draconian, response. His report also credits Xi Jinping, who said he “personally directed and deployed prevention and control work,” which was not corroborated in early epidemic reports.
With regard to the origins of the virus, experts have transferred duty to China more frequently, calling on the government to prioritize “rigorous research. “But they also trust other people that a lot of research is ongoing.
“It’s absolute whitening,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of global fitness law at Georgetown University. “But the answer is that it’s as productive as they can just negotiate with Xi Jinping. “
In Washington, U. S. Secretary of Health Alex M. Azar II, gathered advisers in a boardroom of the Department of Health and Human Services to hear from two scientists who had participated in the W. H. O. china project.
Scientists, still quarantined, described through a video conference the likely blockade that China had imposed, but when questions turned to the origins of the virus, the answers ceased.
“We took a look at the terms of reference,” one of the scientists replied, said a senior U. S. fitness officer. The “mandate” was a document that established mission regulations. Americans have never noticed.
Public statements through the fitness company that animal resource research is well advanced.
If that were true, the Americans knew they were outside, excluded from the investigation through China.
Dr. Tedros is already a lightning rod within the Trump administration, even with some career fitness officials, due to his relentless compliment to China. What their supporters saw as diplomacy, Americans saw as a refusal to use their organization’s ethical authority to call for transparency.
And he didn’t comply. In January, Dr. Tedros announced that China had accepted the percentage of biological samples, but it never worked.
Then he changed the thesis on the origin of the epidemic.
Dr. Gao, director of the Chinese CDC, told the journal Science in March that the virus may not have originated in the market. Perhaps, he said, “it could be a position where the virus has grown,” that is, elsewhere. however, it spread wildly there.
Dr. Gao then told a local television channel that animal samples on the market had nothing to do with the virus, at least indicating that animal samples had been taken, but the main points remained hidden.
“As far as we know, no data has been shared with H. H. S. , nor has it been published in peer-reviewed journals,” the US firm told The Times.
In the United States, where the pandemic began to take root, Trump and his allies began talking about the “Chinese virus. “
Rumors and conspiracy theories, i. e. between far-right and anti-China news sources, have led to the concept that the Covid-19 manufactured in a Chinese laboratory. Scientists and intelligence officials say there is no evidence of such a theory, however, some of Mr. Trump gave him credit.
On April 7, Trump accused the World Health Organization of being too much in China.
“They seem to be very China. Es great to say,” he told reporters.
In May, under heavy complaints about his government’s reaction to the epidemic, Trump announced that the United States would soon withdraw from the foreign organization, which removed it from its allies that shared some of its frustrations but sought to strengthen, not abandon, WHO
Highlighting the extent to which the conspiracy theory against China had infiltrated approved government policy, the National Institutes of Health said they would not fund an allocation through EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization that studies emerging diseases, unless it investigates online complaints. conspiracy and to pass viral samples outside China, according to a letter reported through the Times.
WHO’s withdrawal from the United States and the world’s failure to prevent the pandemic have revived negotiations for the organization’s review. The European Union and other countries must give it more cash and authority to hold countries accountable.
The Trump administration continued to attend consultant reform talks after it withdrew from the organization, much to the frustration of allies. The United States has privately approved WHO’s granting of force to request access to countries, similar to force to nuclear inspectors, according to diplomatic documents.
As the virus spread relentlessly in the United States, Trump continued to attack WHO and China to divert critics from their own mistakes.
If Trump’s idea that Dr. Tedros would loop, he was wrong. Publicly, Dr. Tedros has stayed true to his message of solidarity. “Governments are concentrating on fighting the virus and avoiding politicization,” he said last Friday.
Privately, Dr. Tedros told his colleagues and others that he felt trapped between China and the United States, and told two thugs in the playground.
The World Health Organization discovered something new in May for its stagnant efforts to investigate the origins of the virus. A resolution, sponsored through more than 140 countries, included a clause ordering the company to search for the animal source.
In the summer, even W. H. O. Two experts who visited China in July to outline the terms of the investigation spent two weeks in quarantine. They interviewed experts on the phone but they didn’t do it in Wuhan.
Chinese officials later said the organization began researching in Europe, noting reports that the virus was discovered in sewer systems last year.
In a letter to Chinese officials described to the Times, the fitness organization expressed frustration at China’s delays and insisted that the investigation begin in Wuhan, if only because the first infections were discovered there.
None of these frustrations have spread in public. The organization described only progress. However, he rejected the demands of several governments to reveal the investigative situations he had negotiated with China. On Friday, the organization told The Times that it would soon make the documents public.
An analytical summary of the documents, received through the Times, shows that studies on the origin of the fitness organism virus will be conducted in two phases: the first patients will be searched by examining hospital records and interviewing others who were treated for the virus. The team will also investigate sales at Wuhan’s market position and control the chain of origin, according to the summary.
WHO has agreed that this will be done through Chinese scientists, with outsiders examining their paintings remotely.
In the moment phase, foreign experts will work with Chinese colleagues to locate the virus between animal guests and an intermediate host imaginable.
No date has been set for a visit, diplomats say China and the fitness organization seem willing to take a break until after the US election. Joseph R. Biden Jr. , the Democratic nominee, said he would remain in the United States in the organization if he won.
The organization requested experts for the project and the three scientists of the United States government. None of them were part of the team, a senior U. S. official said. He didn’t make the list public. He said Monday morning that an independent American scientist was on the list.
On Friday, the team nevertheies celebrated their first virtual match.
“It’s doing this task in a politically intoxicated environment,” Dr. Ryan, the organization’s emergency director, said at a news convention later that day.
“It’s hard for scientists to do what they have to do and do in conditions like this,” he said.
Selam Gebrekidan and Matt Apuzzo ed of Geneva, Amy Qin and Javier C. Hernandez from Taipei, Taiwan, Chris Buckley contributed from Sydney, Australia. Albee Zhang and Amy Chang Chien contributed to the investigation.
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