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| Recently, Germany’s largest newspaper ‘Bild’ published an invoice amounting to €149bil that Beijing ‘owes’ Berlin from the impact of Covid-19. — Reuters |
U.S. top health adviser rejects lab-made virus theory
The U.S. administration has been flirting with a theory that the novel coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab, but top White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has rejected that.
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Richard Horton: We should work together with China fighting COVID-19
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| Science man: Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has refuted Trump’s theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan. — AP |
IN recent weeks, some anti-China governments and lawyers have been hyping up unreasonable demands for compensation to the tune of billions – and even trillions – from Beijing for the origin and spread of Covid-19.
China has become an easy target in the current global public health catastrophe just because the first novel coronavirus case was reported in Wuhan in the mainland.
This anti-China campaign to press for hefty compensation is getting more intense as Western politicians lend credence to the movement.
The first case was fired off by a Florida attorney, who filed a federal class-action lawsuit on March 12 against the Chinese government, accusing it of “a slow early response” to the coronavirus crisis in China that caused “injury and incalculable harm” to business and people totalling US$6bil (RM26.2bil).
On April 18, US President Donald Trump added fuel to the fire when he warned that China could face consequences for the Covid-19 pandemic.
“If they were knowingly responsible, yeah, I mean, then sure there should be consequences,” Trump was quoted by Reuters as saying at a daily media briefing.
He did not state the actions the United States might take.
Trump and his senior aides have been accusing China for a lack of transparency in dealing with the coronavirus spread in its Wuhan province, after failing to gain support from scientists in his earlier exertion that the virus had originated from China.
China has repeatedly denied all allegations.
US allies – the UK, France, Australia and India – have joined in the fray to incriminate China.
Most recently, Germany’s largest newspaper, Bild, published a €149bil itemised “invoice” that Beijing “owes” Berlin from the impact of Covid-19.
It is obvious that with the pandemic engulfing over 200 countries, some governments that have failed to contain the virus spread in their backyard are looking for a scapegoat.
Many Western countries have been pointing fingers at China.
Although China has wiped out its epidemic and is helping other countries fight the battle, it continues to face a ruthless barrage of vicious allegations and accusations.
Besides using China as a scapegoat, the US and West are seen as taking the opportunity to smear China and discredit the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by President Xi Jinping.
To them, it is unthinkable that the CPC was able to mobilise 1.4 billion Chinese nationals to stay indoor for two months from January to March until the virus was contained.
Hence, instead of choosing the global cooperation advocated by Beijing, Trump is constantly picking on China with old and new accusations.
As the US is facing a presidential election in November, bashing China is seen as a strategy to gain electoral support as past surveys have shown that many Americans dislike the CPC.
But by focussing on geopolitics, Trump is allowing the deadly virus to creep into all corners of the United States.
The United States is now the worst-hit nation in the current pandemic.
Covid-19 has infected 905,333 people and killed 51,949 across the country as of Saturday, according the Johns Hopkins University.
Globally, infections have shot passed 2.82 million with death toll at over 197,500 as of Saturday, according to the official website of World Health Organisation (WHO).
Science man: Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has refuted Trump’s theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan. — AP
Origin of Covid-19
Up to now, the origin of the virus is still a mystery – at least in the world of science.
Although Wuhan was the first to report the new virus, recent studies on genomes show that Covid-19 could have originated in the United States or elsewhere.
While Trump has now switched his rhetoric to whether the virus had emanated from a lab in Wuhan.
The WHO officials and Trump’s own White House advisers have refuted this hypothesis.
The WHO has repeatedly said that “from all available evidence, the novel coronavirus was not manipulated or constructed in a laboratory.”
Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the White House, has rejected Trump’s allegations too.
Before this, a group of researchers have already written in the journal Nature Medicine: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
Repeated blame on China
Since the talk on origin and lab conspiracy do not hold water, then what else can Beijing be faulted on?
Chinese leaders have been repeatedly accused of “not being transparent, covering up and suppressing information” in the early stage of the outbreak by Trump and his Western allies.
Although China has admitted there were early missteps and underestimation of public risks during the initial stage, it had quickly acted to inform the WHO and scientists in the United States soon after.
“This miscalculation did not hinder the communication between Chinese and foreign scientists. All data were sent out, including a thesis by Chinese scholars in international academic journals,” said China’s Global Times.
On Jan 20, China made public its findings on human-to-human transmissions.
Global Times argued: “At the global level, the time lost could have been compensated by taking resolute measures. This was especially true for those countries far from China.”
Wuhan locked down its city in the early hours of Jan 23, and from then onwards, China rapidly mobilised. Harsh measures to prevent contagion were criticised but the country struggled on.
And by early March, China had brought the situation in China under control.
In fact, the accusation that Beijing had delayed in informing the world about Covid-19 has been refuted by WHO and Western scientists.
Scientists in China have won international praise for hitting several key milestones in understanding the novel, fast-moving virus, according to research and innovation forum Science/Business on April 7.
Ian Jones, professor of biomedical sciences at Reading University, told its newsletter: “We will never know if faster action in those first days could have averted the outbreak. Despite the initial slow reaction, there has been a very open dialogue since and many research findings from the Chinese experience are now appearing.”
Dr Zhang Jixian, the first doctor to report Covid-19 cases to Wuhan authorities on Dec 27, defended Beijing by stating authorities had responded promptly after getting her report.
In an interview on April 18 with CGTV, the director of the department of respiratory and critical care medicine at the Hubei Provincial Hospital showed records of a medical consultation of seven Covid-19 patients at the early stage.
A vendor at the Huanan Seafood Market, who was sent to the hospital on Dec 27, 2019, showed the severest symptoms among the seven.
“I reported to the district at noon on Dec 27, and they came to conduct an epidemiological survey that afternoon and collected patients’ blood samples and throat swabs,” Zhang said.
As the hospital in which Zhang works could not identify the source of infection, expert help from the district level and provincial CDC was sought.
“They reacted quite quickly,” Zhang recalled.
“I suspected it could be a kind of infectious disease, but did not expect the virus to spread like this – so infectious and serious, and affecting so many areas.”
On Jan 3, China formally reported the situation to the WHO and other countries, including the United States.
Does the case against China hold water?
Hostile groups may file charges against China, but are these grounded on norms and legal principles?
It is an international practice that a sovereign or a government cannot be sued.
It is obvious from the reasons cited against China thus far that most have been based on imaginary assumptions and baseless allegations.
Even if the virus had originated from Wuhan, China should not be made to compensate the world, as virus knows no boundary and country. It can emerge anytime and anywhere.
When the H1N1 pandemic, which started in the United States in 2009 claimed an estimated over 200,000 lives worldwide, there was no claim against Washington.
Did Washington compensate the world for the economic and financial loss to investors and countries resulting from the collapse of the Lehman Brothers of the US in September 2008?
When the Ebola broke out in West Africa, the world behaved in a sympathetic and civil manner.
By the same token, China – the first victim of the pandemic – should not be assaulted.
Perhaps, governments attacking China should reflect on what they had not done after witnessing China suffer in January.
Hannan Hussain, a security analyst at the London School of Economics, comments “there is no case against China as Beijing has concrete information-sharing reference points”, including sharing the genome sequence of Covid-19 in January.
“Washington lacks similar precedents, given its removal of key CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) officials that were tasked with the tracking, investigation and containment of diseases in China,” he wrote in the South China Morning Post recently.
Reuters revealed on March 26 that the Trump administration had cut its staff presence at the CDC in Beijing by two-thirds over the past two years.
While the “lion-mouth” claims against China may eventually turn out to be a waste of time, the West and their proxies will achieve their motive of smearing China.
China-bashing will continue.
This should not come as a surprise, given that the United States and the West have often wanted to contain the rise of China, which has become the world’s second-largest economy and is now the only enviable country focusing on rebuilding its virus-battered economy.
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