Just a Few Questions We'd Like Answered, Beijing...?

This aerial view shows the P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on May 27, 2020. Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Even though the World Health Organization sent an investigative team to Wuhan, China, to look into allegations that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 might have been initiated as the result of a viral 'escape' from research being carried on at one of two laboratories in the city, the investigative team reached no conclusion. Their intention was to interview the Chinese scientists at the laboratory, and to visit both the high-security (P4) laboratory and the wild food market that the laboratory insisted was the source of the outbreak.

The WHO team was never permitted any independence, always accompanied by both Chinese authorities and members of the high-security laboratory. Their findings were 'guided' by Chinese authorities who strenuously denied any possibility that the virus could have escaped from the laboratory confines. This, though it was known and reported by visiting scientists that conditions at the laboratory were not as strictly controlled as they should be for such a high-security laboratory working with deadly bacterium and coronaviruses.

Beijing has been criticized from day one for its lapse in immediately notifying the WHO that a new virus was wreaking havoc on Wuhan. Initial reports played down the serious nature of a strange new type of pneumonia arising in Wuhan hospitals that was not responding to usual treatment, and causing deaths. Soon enough the world became aware of a young eye doctor who alerted his colleagues through social media of a peculiar and dangerous new virus, and who was brought before authorities for 'spreading false news'. He contracted COVID himself and died of it.

Now The Wall Street Journal has revealed that three employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been taken to hospital as a result of symptoms now familiarly associated with serious bouts of COVID-19, a full month before the authorities in Beijing alerted the world of the presence of a new and extremely disturbing virus that had somehow leaped the species barrier from animals to humans. Beijing is well known to have kept possession of critical, sensitive information  the investigators were interested in studying.

What swiftly took place since December of 2019 across the globe as SARS-CoV-2 swept through the world is well enough known; a coronavirus pandemic we're still struggling with over a year-and-a-half on. But with the misfortune of the global pandemic came a ray of light, as soon afterward highly effective vaccines emerged out of other laboratories to throw a lifeline to humanity. 

 

Once China had got its outbreaks under control after screaming 'racism!' when it was offended that closed-border recommendations took effect, it focused on producing a number of vaccines. While denying it was responsible for the global outbreak of a dangerous new zoonotic, Beijing saw an opportunity to ingratiate itself to the world, as the manufacturer of anti-COVID vaccines which it would generously share with an ailing world. 

Although China was the first country out of the starting  gate with its vaccines, it has never produced a vaccine with a high efficacy rate. Its four different vaccines which it has trialed in a number of countries facing desperately high COVID-19 rates, like Brazil,  have been anything but successful, with an average efficacy rate hovering around 50 percent, as compared to the leading Western vaccines with rates of 85 to 95 percent efficacy.

The world deserves answers to some of its questions. China's reaction to a situation which impacted the entire world was first and foremost to protect its reputation. Any responsible government must recognize that in a situation of this magnitude that would swiftly affect the global community, it would have an obligation to act swiftly and decisively. Beijing chose not to. The long-suffering people of China deserve better from its suffocating government.

In this March 14, 2020 file photo, health officials inspect bats to be confiscated and culled in the wake of coronavirus outbreak at a live animal market in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia. The WHO on Tuesday urged countries to suspend the sale of live animals captured from the wild in food markets as an emergency measure, saying wild animals are a leading source of emerging infectious diseases like the coronavirus. (AP Photo, File)