Since the first cases of a mysterious new respiratory illness were recorded in China in late 2019, scientists have come to know the pathogen called SARS-CoV-2 (as well as its variants in Greek letters) intimately. He decoded their genetic architecture and, using this knowledge, created remedies and vaccines that reduced the pandemic to a central fear in many parts of the world.
However, more than three years after the arrival of the coronavirus, the basic maxim remains: where exactly does it come from?
At first, researchers pointed the finger at China’s exotic animal industry. A wildlife market in Wuhan, a city in Hubei province, emerged as the possible site of the original broadcast. And a little-known creature, the pangolin, widely suspected of having served as a vehicle for unintentional zoonosis, or animal-to-human movement of the coronavirus.
But a faction of researchers has insisted that the virus spread from a laboratory such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, most likely as a result of an accident. 2022, especially since genetic knowledge seemed to imply, circumstantially but convincingly, evidence of human engineering.
Today, the clinical network sometimes remains the zoonotic hypothesis: that is, the virus has passed from animals to humans in the wildlife market or at some other point of interspecies contact.
However, evidence for the lab leak narrative is piling up.
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the federal Energy Ministry, whose ranks include highly trained biologists, revised its estimate to reflect developing (though still tenuous) confidence that the virus emerged from a Chinese lab. Other agencies disagree with this assessment. ; The progression only underscores how debatable the question of how the pandemic began remains.
The Department of Energy is one of several agencies tasked through the Biden administration with assessing whether the coronavirus originated in a wildlife market or as a result of a lab accident.
At a White House briefing Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden’s management was determined to figure out how the pandemic began. “We need to know what happened here,” Kirby told reporters.
The news added to frustration with Beijing, which allowed little valid research into how the pandemic began.
“The Chinese government can accuse others of politicizing #COVID19,” Asian expert and diplomat Jamie Metzl wrote on Twitter, “but by destroying samples, hiding evidence, silencing Chinese scientists, and undermining foreign efforts, Beijing has conducted a thorough investigation into the origins and putting the global at risk. “
It is totally transparent which led the Ministry of Energy to revise its estimate; the recent update to members of Biden’s management and congressional leaders says the agency’s investigators now have “little confidence” in the origin of a COVID-19 lab leak.
For intelligence analysts, an unreliable assessment is very incomplete evidence. Still, the update indicates that the evidence may shift in favor of a lab leak.
An intelligence official told the Journal that the Energy Department’s reviews were based on what Saturday’s report described as “new information, additional review of educational literature, and consultations with experts outside the government. “
Four other agencies have expressed “low confidence” in a zoonotic origin, meaning the coronavirus originated in a wildlife market, but lack evidence to make a more definitive statement. According to the New York Times, those agencies reviewed new evidence provided through the Department of Energy, but chose to stick to its initial assessment.
In other words, the war of words remains.
“There is no consensus at this time within the U. S. government. “We are in the U. S. state about how exactly COVID started,” Kirby said Monday.
Last month, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general said he was in charge. The U. S. Department of Health criticized the National Institutes of Health for exercising sufficient oversight of secondary grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that had been awarded for several years through a U. S. intermediary, EcoHealth Alliance.
Proponents of speculation about the lab leak say understanding the role of the EcoHealth Alliance is key to unraveling the mystery of the pandemic’s origins. Supervision of the paintings that Chinese scholars were doing with the American budget.
China’s Foreign Ministry vehemently rejected the Journal’s reports. “Tracing the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is science and deserves not to be politicized. China has supported and participated in science-based global origin tracing,” spokeswoman Mao Ning told a news briefing. Mondays.
Mao pointed to a World Health Organization (WHO) report that the zoonotic hypothesis.
“Some parties avoid repeating the ‘lab leak’ narrative, avoid smearing China and avoid politicizing origin tracing,” he said.
You are welcome. In early 2021, an organization of researchers conducted research in Wuhan, in what remains the only case of Western observers authorized to conduct fieldwork related to the origins of coronaviruses.
The report that followed concluded that the maximum maximum of the virus likely originated in a market. He evaluated the option of a lab leak as “very unlikely. “
Critics said the WHO had not emphasized China strongly enough; critics also pointed the finger at pro-China researchers (including EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak) of the WHO team that visited Wuhan. Finally, even the leader of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that he was opposed to ruling out the option of a laboratory accident, contradicting the report. The company itself had produced.
Earlier this month, the WHO questioned reports that it was unable to further investigate the origins of the pandemic due to Beijing’s intransigence. The episode only underscored how little clarity investigators have managed to achieve, and how Beijing’s obstruction continues to thwart attempts at valid investigations. .
President Biden has promised to compete with China globally, but it’s still an absolute conflict. Lingering questions about how the coronavirus began have thwarted this nuanced approach, forcing the president to face a challenge that will be difficult for him or any Western leader to resolve.
In May 2021, Biden asked the intelligence network to assess how the coronavirus began, indicating that his administration was willing to consider what had been Donald Trump’s presidency as a matter of conspiratorial thinking. (The Energy Ministry revisions stem from the 2021 directive. )
At the same time, Biden was careful not to confront Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the issue. With China potentially preparing to assist Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and, in the long term, in all likelihood preparing for an invasion of Ukraine. Taiwan, Biden will have to decide conscientiously where and with what force to pressure Xi.
The recent uproar over a Chinese surveillance balloon that flew over the United States before being shot down by the U. S. military has irritated tensions between Washington and Beijing.
That leaves the Republican-led House of Representatives as the most likely source for a competitive investigation into the lab leak theory. GOP leaders have vowed to conduct a thorough investigation into how the pandemic began after regaining reduced space in last fall’s congressional midterm elections.
But those efforts have been hampered by far-right figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. , who have complex and unfounded conspiracy theories about the pandemic, adding outlandish accusations that the coronavirus is a “biological weapon” manufactured with the complicity of Americans. officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, a famous immunologist and former White House adviser.
The most classic Republicans seek to hold China accountable by adopting demonstrable conspiracies and lies.
“Evidence has been accumulating for more than a year in favor of speculation of a lab leak. I’m glad some of our agencies are starting to pay attention to common sense and replace their assessment,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisconsin, told The New York Times.
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