A revelatory new Wall Street Journal report reveals just how much China had a hand in manipulating the COVID investigations in Wuhan.
The underwhelming COVID investigations conducted by WHO investigators in January was fraught with controversy, as China had allegedly controlled most of it.
In February, reports surfaced that Chinese authorities were the ones who carried out most of the COVID investigations and that the 15-man team of WHO investigators and specialists were merely spectators to the event. WHO even went as far as absolving the Wuhan virology lab, which many believed was the true source of the virus that has killed millions worldwide. Instead, China insists that further investigations must be done to determine how the coronavirus had jumped from bats to humans.
Now further damning evidence points to China for preventing WHO investigators from performing a thorough probe has been revealed by a new Wall Street Journal report. In it, reporters Jeremy Page, Betsy McKay and Drew Hinshaw revealed how China "resisted international pressure for an investigation it saw as an attempt to assign blame, delayed the probe for months, secured veto rights over participants and insisted its scope encompass other countries as well."
Moreover, WHO declined to invite the three U.S. government experts that Washington nominated, inviting instead another U.S. scientist. U.S. officials admitted that it was unclear how the COVID investigations would be carried out or how the international team was recruited.
It turns out that China had "veto rights" to choose participants to join the team of investigators.
The only American in the team was zoologist Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit. U.S. officials and scientists were critical over Dr. Daszak's participation, as he had previously worked with Chinese researchers over 16 years.
They believed that his organization's nonprofit work in China would be a conflict of interest. EcoHealth was also found to have funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the same lab at the center of the COVID investigation and the one that was allegedly the true source of the coronavirus.
The Daily Caller's Chuck Ross shared a screenshot of the WSJ report on Twitter, which read, "It soon became evident to foreign officials and scientists tracking the mission that the team's itinerary was partly designed to bolster China's official narrative that the government moved swiftly to control the virus."
The WSJ report also recounted how the WHO investigators' visit at first included a tour of the hospital where they met with the doctor who first alerted the Chinese authorities about COVID, a wholesale market at Huanan where they believed the virus spread through cold-storage, and an exhibition commemorating the Chinese authorities' and President Xi's excellent handling of the virus.
Rather suspiciously, when WHO investigators asked Chinese authorities for access to raw data on the first 76,000 COVID patients, they refused. Instead, the Chinese participants in the WHO investigations suggested looking into the research that suggested COVID had already been circulating in other countries beginning November.
WHO investigations are not over, however. According to NPR, WHO is set to release another set of investigative findings, this time focused on the wildlife farms in southern China that supply animals to the Wuhan markets. Meanwhile, China remains firm that the virus was indeed an accident caused by virus transference from bats to humans.
China.org reported that Liang Wannian, the leader of the Chinese team of the joint expert panel of China and the WHO and a public health professor at Tsinghua University reaffirmed that the research that went into determining the origins of COVID was "based on science, close collaboration, openness and hard work."
Liang insisted, "The virus is of natural origin, and the greatest possibility is that the virus was transmitted from a natural reservoir to an intermediate host before jumping to humans."
