The World Health Organization (WHO) is now recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame for the release of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is the cause of the covid pandemic that has swept through the world in a series of waves.
That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.WHO concluded last year that it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 might have spilled into humans in the city of Wuhan from a lab. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped into people from bats, possibly via another animal.Yet in a report released Thursday, WHO’s expert group said “key pieces of data” to explain how the pandemic began were still missing. The scientists said the group would “remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.”
I have been covering the reasonable, and in my view probable, lab-origin for the covid pandemic since February of 2020, when I noted that Chinese university researchers believed virus may originate from government laboratory in Wuhan.
Other sign-posts on the road to reaching this sensible conclusion are:
The report was written by the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO),. This panel consisted experts from the United States, China and 25 other nations that first came together last year after widespread criticism of a joint WHO-China investigation into the coronavirus’s origins that produced a report that read like Chinese propaganda.
The SAGO relied on currently available data, which has been hidden, redacted and obfuscated by China.
The team is designed not only to help investigate the origins of the coronavirus but also to set up a framework for understanding the origins of future outbreaks. Its work is expected to last for years, WHO officials said.“It is just the start,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a World Health Organization epidemiologist, told reporters. “They’ve made some good progress. They’ve clearly outlined that there’s more work to be done.”Even so, the report may breathe life into a debate that has never come to a firm conclusion: Where did the coronavirus pandemic come from? While many scientists have favored a theory of zoonotic spread, the lab-leak theory has gained prominent support from some experts, including some U.S. officials.
The search for “truth” can go on for years. Meanwhile, given what is now known about the questionable state of the laboratory and its biological safety practices, perhaps we should be more concerned about what is going on today.
Here is the research the wuhan Institute of Virology is touting on its website.
Since then, a number of research groups were recruited or updated their interests to study on diverse pathogens of infectious diseases including SARS-CoV, influenza viruses, hemorrhagic fever viruses and antibiotic resistant-tuberculosis. With the construction of the national high level biosafety laboratory platforms it is also the bounden duty for the institute to study highly pathogenic agents, which currently occur in China and potentially imported aboard. This team now has full capability for the quickly response to EID outbreak regarding the pathogen detection, identification and pathogenesis studies.
I submit that it may be more worthwhile for the WHO team to look at the current research at Wuhan, in order to prevent the next pandemic.
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