The WHO still at the service of Beijing: the Chinese thesis of the virus arrived in frozen products cleared
Concluded the guided tour of WHO experts in Wuhan. A blockbuster for the propaganda of the Chinese regime: the origin of the virus is animal, but they cannot indicate which or how. They will investigate. Unlikely laboratory origin: they will not go deeper, there will be no new studies. But in the meantime they cleared the Beijing conspiracy theory of the virus that arrived in frozen products: "Captain Findus was" would be possible, but escape from the laboratory would not. And Beijing tries: investigation in China closed, now look for the origin of the virus in other countries …
Premise, or rather, we confess that we have a (pre) judgment: there is no way and there is no reason to believe the WHO after the delays, failures and subjection to Beijing already demonstrated, and documented, in the first crucial weeks of the coronavirus outbreak in China. If even the WHO had today recovered autonomy and independence of judgment in its relations with the Chinese authorities – and has not recovered them, judging by the total lack of transparency on the compromises and the "rules of engagement" of the recent mission in Wuhan – the Beijing regime would still have had over a year to cancel any evidence and pollute the "crime scene". So even a mission of bona fide scientists simply could not come to inconvenient conclusions for the Chinese Communist Party.
Second premise: it is good to clarify that it was not just a WHO mission, but a joint WHO-China mission, from which a joint relationship will arise. In fact, the 17 experts of the organization could not move independently, but took part in a tour led by the regime, flanked by 17 Chinese experts led by Dr. Liang Wannian, who presented the conclusions of the investigation together during the final press conference ( but speaking first) to the head of the WHO delegation, Peter Ben Embarek.
Predictably, therefore, the WHO team that went to China, Wuhan last month, to investigate the origins of the virus, married all the most favorable versions in Beijing. And the real news is not, as we will read and hear, that he believes the coronavirus that caused the pandemic to originate from a laboratory is "extremely unlikely". We took this minimum target for Beijing for granted. However, we did not expect the WHO team to go so far as to clear the Chinese thesis of the transmission of the virus through frozen products, functional in Beijing to remove suspicion from itself and turn it on other countries (including Italy, as we will see).
Therefore, the WHO has once again allowed itself to be exploited by China, whose purpose is to raise a smokescreen, as one would say in Rome "throw it in caciara": the virus is of animal origin, but it can have come from anywhere, and for this it is necessary to conduct investigations in other countries. In short, Beijing gets a solid basis from WHO to insist that investigations now move elsewhere, outside of China.
Obviously there is nothing conclusive, we are talking about probable or unlikely hypotheses. “Have we drastically changed the picture? No. Did we add any significant details? Absolutely, ”Embarek said. But in the meantime, even though there are no certainties, the probable / improbable distinction has very concrete, almost definitive effects, not only as it is obvious at the communication level: there will be further investigations on the hypotheses declared probable or possible, the WHO studies will focus, while those deemed unlikely will be abandoned. Think of a criminal investigation that was opened a year after the crime committed, a detective who arrives after a year at the crime scene, inevitably altered, and who formulates various hypotheses, but thus, on the spot, completely abandoning the track considered less likely…
But let's see specifically how all the conclusions trace the Beijing plan.
There is no evidence that the virus circulated massively in Wuhan, or in the province of Hubei, before December 2019. First point in favor of Beijing, which sees its official version confirmed with respect to both journalistic reconstructions and scientific studies that backdate the appearance of the virus in the country.
Regarding the origin, four hypotheses were taken into consideration: direct transmission to humans, transmission through an intermediate species, transmission through frozen food products; laboratory escape.
The hypothesis considered "most likely", explained Embarek, is that the new coronavirus has reached humans by passing through an intermediate species. It is a pity, however, that scientists have not yet found any clues about what this animal species might be.
And it seems logical to believe, after a year, that if evidence had emerged of a passage through an intermediate species, even if only to deny the accusations against him, Beijing would have spread them with the greatest possible publicity and speed. That the Chinese themselves, on the other hand, preferred to focus on the alternative hypothesis of the cold chain, suggests that the hypothesis of the intermediate species is unlikely.
Yet, despite the tens of thousands of samples taken from animals in various provinces of China (including 50,000 from at least 30 different species of wild animals in the Wuhan market) no coronaviruses corresponding to the one responsible for Covid-19 emerged , not even in bats and pangolins, the WHO continues to consider the hypothesis of passage through an intermediate species the most probable. On the contrary, although it is likely that after a year the Chinese authorities have eliminated all the evidence of a possible leak from the laboratory, this hypothesis is considered unlikely and discarded, while even the hypothesis pushed by Beijing, that of transmission through frozen products. “We know that the virus can survive in frozen foods, but at the moment we don't yet know if it can be transmitted to humans from these foods. In this regard, more research is needed ”, Embarek explained, however defining it as a“ possible ”hypothesis.
This is why the Chinese Liang had a good game in insisting that investigations should now not be "tied to any location". An approach explicitly espoused in the joint relationship with the WHO, in which it is recommended to look for evidence of circulation of the virus before December 2019 wherever they emerge: "It may have emerged through a complex path, a path that may have taken a long time and gone through borders, ”explained Embarek.
Responding to a question about studies that hypothesized the circulation of the virus in other countries, including Italy, before December 2019, Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, a member of the WHO team, said that there is no clear evidence in this. sense, but citing the specific literature and databases available, and making explicit reference to Italy, where cases of contagion are traced back to "end of November" 2019, he added that "this type of information is part of what we have collected, checked and included in our recommendations for the next step. What we mean is that we should look for evidence for a previous circulation wherever there are indications, and this type of indication can come from this type of literature ”.
Nor is it certain that the Huanan market was the first outbreak. Indeed, there have also been infections not linked to this market, but to other markets in Wuhan, and not linked to any market. "It was not the first place where the infection was found," said Dr. Liang, arguing that the first confirmed case is from December 8 and had no connections, while the first case related to the market is from December 12. Another point in Beijing's favor, because it weakens the link between the Huanan market, the place of the first major spread of the virus, and the very close (and very secret) Wuhan Institute of Virology, home to the studies of Shi Zhengli, number two of the institute, nicknamed "Batwoman" for its research on the coronaviruses of bats that inhabit the deep and remote caves of Yunnan.
As we said, "extremely unlikely" is instead considered the hypothesis of the escape from the laboratory, so there will be no future studies on this, explained Embarek. But why? Because laboratory accidents are considered "very rare events". In this case, it should be an existing or already known virus, but WHO experts have ascertained that the Covid virus was not present in any of the Wuhan laboratories ( yes , but over a year later …). And in any case, they found the laboratories in good condition and in full compliance with the rules (again more than a year after the hypothetical accident), a claim contradicted by US intelligence information. "We looked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and it is very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place," Embarek said.
Perhaps also because, as reported by the Wall Street Journal , one of the members of the WHO team, the British zoologist Peter Daszak, who also investigates the origins of the virus for The Lancet , has long-standing professional ties with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, having collaborated in particular with the “Batwoman” Shi Zhengli on bat viruses.
Another hypothesis favorable to Beijing and cleared by the WHO team is that the bats carrying the virus responsible for the pandemic may not be Chinese, but from other countries.
As it happens, if you connect all the dots of this press conference, you will find that the combination of probable hypotheses (animal origin, but no evidence in the tens of thousands of samples taken from dozens of animal species in 31 Chinese provinces), possible hypotheses (frozen products), extremely unlikely hypotheses (laboratory escape), and exclusion of outbreaks in Wuhan before December 2019 (while according to some studies it was already circulating elsewhere), brings the origin of the virus out of China, just as it would like to believe the Beijing regime. "The work in China is finished, now we will have to look for answers elsewhere", concluded Dr. Liang.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/loms-ancora-al-servizio-di-pechino-sdoganata-la-tesi-cinese-del-virus-arrivato-nei-prodotti-surgelati/ on Wed, 10 Feb 2021 05:01:00 +0000.