不友善：對 COVID-19 起源的探索如何變得政治上非常不愉快(3/3)

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

Toxic: How the search for the origins of COVID-19 turned politically poisonous (3/3)

Associated Press - DAKE KANG and MARIA CHENG

Updated Mon, April 22, 2024 at 6:09 a.m. PDT·14 min read

(continue)

As criticism of China grew, the Chinese government deflected blame. Instead of firing health officials, they declared their virus response a success and closed investigations into the officials with few job losses.

“There were no real reforms, because doing reforms means admitting fault,” said a public health expert in contact with Chinese health officials who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

In late February 2020, the internationally respected doctor Zhong Nanshan appeared at a news conference and said that “the epidemic first appeared in China, but it did not necessarily originate in China.”

Days later, Chinese leader Xi ordered new controls on virus research. A leaked directive from China’s Publicity Department ordered media not to report on the virus origins without permission, and a public WeChat account reposted an essay claiming the U.S. military created COVID-19 at a Fort Detrick lab and spread it to China during a 2019 athletic competition in Wuhan. Days later, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson repeated the accusation.

The false claims enraged U.S. President Donald Trump, who began publicly blaming China for the outbreak, calling COVID-19 “the China virus” and the “kung-flu.”

Chinese officials told WHO that blood tests on lab workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were negative, suggesting they hadn’t been previously infected with bat coronaviruses. But when WHO pressed for an independent audit, Chinese officials balked and demanded WHO investigate the U.S. and other countries as well.

By blaming the U.S., Beijing diverted blame. It was effective in China, where many Chinese were upset by racially charged criticism. But outside China, it fueled speculation of a lab leak coverup.

By the time WHO led another visit to Wuhan in January 2021, a year into the pandemic, the atmosphere was toxic.

Liang, the Chinese health official in charge of two earlier WHO visits, continued to promote the questionable theory that the virus was shipped into China on frozen food. He suppressed information suggesting it could have come from animals at the Wuhan market, organizing market workers to tell WHO experts no live wildlife was sold and cutting recent photos of wildlife at the market from the final report. There was heavy political scrutiny, with numerous Chinese officials who weren’t scientists or health officers present at meetings.

Despite a lack of direct access, the WHO team concluded that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.” So it came as an infuriating surprise to Chinese officials when, months later, WHO chief Tedros said that it was “premature” to rule out the lab leak theory, saying such lab accidents were “common,” and pressed China to be more transparent.

China told WHO any future missions to find COVID-19 origins should be elsewhere, according to a letter obtained by AP. Since then, global cooperation on the issue has ground to a halt; an independent group convened by WHO to investigate the origins of COVID-19 in 2021 has been stymied by the lack of cooperation from China and other issues.

Chinese scientists are still under heavy pressure, according to 10 researchers and health officials. Researchers who published papers on the coronavirus ran into trouble with Chinese authorities. Others were barred from travel abroad for conferences and WHO meetings. Gao, the then-director of the China CDC, was investigated after U.S. President Joe Biden ordered a review of COVID-19 data, and again after giving interviews on the virus origins.

New evidence is treated with suspicion. In March 2023, scientists announced that genetic material collected from the market showed raccoon dog DNA mixed with COVID-19 in early 2020, data that WHO said should have been publicly shared years before. The findings were posted, then removed by Chinese researchers with little explanation.

The head of the China CDC Institute of Viral Disease was forced to retire over the release of the market data, according to a former China CDC official who declined to be named to speak on a sensitive topic.

“It has to do with the origins, so they’re still worried,” the former official said. “If you try and get to the bottom of it, what if it turns out to be from China?”

Other scientists note that any animal from which the virus may have originally jumped has long since disappeared.

“There was a chance for China to cooperate with WHO and do some animal sampling studies that might have answered the question,” said Tulane University’s Garry. “The trail to find the source has now gone cold.”

___

Cheng reported from Geneva.

Translation

（繼續）

隨著對中國的批評越來越多，中國政府轉移責任。 他們沒有解僱衛生官員，而是宣布他們的病毒應對措施取得了成功，並結束了對官員的調查，只作出少量解僱。

一位與中國衛生官員有接觸的公共衛生專家表示：「真正的改革沒有發生，因為改革意味著承認錯誤」。由於此事敏感性，專家要求匿名。

2020年2月下旬，國際知名醫生鐘南山出現在記者會上表示，「疫情首先出現在中國，但不一定起源於中國」。

幾天後，中國領導人習近平下令對病毒研究實施新的控制。 中國宣傳部的一份被洩漏被出來指令, 要求媒體未經許可不得報道病毒起源，一個微信公眾號轉發了一篇文章，聲稱美國軍方在 Fort Detrick 實驗室製造了COVID-19，並在2019 年體育比賽期間將其傳播到中國在武漢。 幾天後，中國外交部發言人重申了這項指控。

這些虛假說法激怒了美國總統特朗普，他開始公開指責中國應對疫情爆發負責，稱 COVID-19 為「中國病毒」和「功夫流感」。

中國官員告訴世衛組織，武漢病毒研究所實驗室工作人員的血液檢測呈陰性，顯示他們之前沒有感染過蝙蝠冠狀病毒。 但當世衛組織要求進行獨立審查時，中國官員猶豫不決，並要求世衛組織也對美國和其他國家進行調查。

北京透過指責美國來轉移責任。 這在中國很有效，許多中國人對帶種族歧視的批評感到不安。 但在中國以外，這引發了人們對實驗室洩漏事件被掩蓋的猜測。

2021 年 1 月，即疫情爆發一年後，當世衛組織再次訪問武漢時，那裡的氣紛已經非常不愉快。

負責世衛組織早些時候兩次訪問的姓 Liang 的中國衛生官員繼續宣揚病毒是透過冷凍食品運入中國的不確定理論。 他壓制了有關病毒可能來自武漢市場上的動物的信息，組織市場工作人員告訴世衛組織專家，說沒有出售活體野生動物，並從最終報告中刪除了市場上野生動物的最新照片。 會議受到嚴格的政治審查，許多出席了會議的中國官員都不是科學家或衛生官員。

儘管缺乏直接接觸，世衛組織團隊得出的結論是，實驗室洩漏「極不可能」。 因此，幾個月後，當世界衛生組織總幹事譚德塞表示，現在排除實驗室洩漏理論還 “為時過早” ，稱此類實驗室事故 “很常見” ，並敦促中國提高透明度，這令中國官員感到非常氣憤驚訝。

據美聯社取得的一封信稱，中國告訴世界衛生組織，未來任何尋找 COVID-19 起源的任務都應該在其他地方。 自此之後，全球在這議題上的合作陷入停滯。 世衛組織召集的調查 2021 年 COVID-19 起源的獨立小組，由於缺乏中國的合作和其他問題而受阻。

十名研究人員和衛生官員表示，中國科學家仍面臨巨大壓力。 發表有關冠狀病毒論文的研究人員遇到了中國當局的麻煩。 其他人則被禁止出國參加會議及世衛組織的會議。 在美國總統拜登下令審查 COVID-19 數據後，時任中國疾管中心主任的 Gao 先生受到調查, 他在接受有關病毒起源的採訪後又再次被調查。

新證據受到懷疑。 2023 年 3 月，科學家宣布在 2020 年初從市場收集的遺傳材料顯示貉 DNA與 COVID-19 混合，世衛組織表示這些數據早在幾年前就應該公開分享。 這研究結果被發布，然後被中國研究人員刪除，幾乎沒有任何解釋。

一位不願透露姓名的中國疾病預防控制中心前官員表示，中國疾病預防控制中心病毒病研究所所長因市場數據的發布而被迫退休。

這位前官員說: 「這與起源有關，所以他們仍然擔心」。 「如果你試圖查個水落石出，萬一它是來自中國的話怎麼辦？」

其他科學家指出，任何最初可能傳播病毒的動物早已消失。

杜蘭大學的 Garry說： “中國有機會與世界衛生組織合作，進行一些動物採樣研究，這可能會回答這個問題”; “尋找源頭的路徑現在已經變冷清了。”

So, this report suggests that the hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has gone dark in China. Political infighting has stalled and thwarted attempts to find the source of the virus. This report is written by western journalists drawing on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents and interviews. I hope non-government experts in China can also do a similar report based on their data and from their perspective. This report shows that in China there are three groups of people involved: the CCP party officials, the scientists, and the health officials.

This report also suggests that the matter could have played out differently, as shown by the outbreak of SARS, a genetic relative of COVID-19 happened nearly 20 years ago. At that time China initially tried to hide infections, but WHO complained swiftly and publicly. Ultimately, Beijing fired officials and carried out reforms.