Should We Allow the Perpetrators of Covid 19 to go Scot Free?
Should We Allow the Perpetrators of Covid 19 to go Scott Free?
It took me a while to frame the title of this piece, for it in itself is loaded with many innuendos’ suppositions and accusations. But the underlying anger has not been adequately expressed in the title. We all have struggled with the pandemic, the current phase being the worst where everyone has suffered. The varying degree of suffering has only helped unite all in the period of grief and difficulty. Since nations are still under the Pandemic’s wraps, the period of retrospection and retribution has yet not arrived. But already enough people are asking if this virus was man-made and if yes, should not the ‘Guilty’ in some way held accountable?
Covid inundates our media space and our daily life. Another article on it is hardly an idea of leisurely reading. Who wants to hear more ways to die than to live? Or What are the newer symptoms and the never-ending after-effects? They have all but dulled our senses into a depressive state that even the Netflix movie’s best cannot uplift. No wonder the Salman Khan starrer: ‘Radhe’ failed. There are no adequate words to capture the mayhem that the Pandemic has caused worldwide. An accounting figure: over three million people have died due to this virus to date. What if this was on account of some human follies: like greed, power and money? Would someone believe it? Not many; for rest, they would be all conspiracy theories.
In Mar 2020, a paper written by five virologists was published by Lancet Publication, a medical journal. They claimed the Covid virus was not lab-grown. It has its origin in nature. It was followed by an Op-Ed (Opinion Editorial) on Mar 20 in another medical Journal’ Nature Medicine, by a group of virologists led by Ken Anderson. He stated more or less the same things as the earlier article but giving a more detailed explanation. The declaration killed any other reason other than the natural cause for the emergence of the virus.
Wuhan, the city where the first epidemic had struck, at the time was like a dark fortress from where nothing could leave or enter. Those of us who remember the first images arriving out of Wuhan on TV saw the Chinese forcible nailing the entrances of the affected families consigning all its inhabitants to the mercy of God and the coronavirus. If some people survived this ordeal, they are too scared even to talk and declare their existence. Unaware that everyone would face a similar fate one day, all TV watchers were shocked at the inhuman treatment meted out affected people. China was the first country to have announced successfully fighting the first wave of coronavirus. By then, the virus was travelling across seven seas and affecting all other nations. The wet market in Wuhan was the culprit, and Bats transmitted the virus-like the SARs I. China sold the theory to every country and individual. Complicit to this act was the Communist Party of China and the WHO (World Health Organisation). The world knew very little about the actual happenings, and it was easy to believe any news which reached the ear first and appealed to logic. Hence, the Mar 20 declaration convinced all that this is all but a man-made disaster.
Understanding also comes with time and more so scientific Understanding. The first signs of trouble started when the WHO team visited China early this year, 2021, to inspect the sites to investigate the cause of the Pandemic. They were first denied permission to investigate by China. After external pressure cleared some ground, the investigating team came out without indicting anyone, least of all China. But they did not close the matter and left enough scope to suggest that the issue requires further investigations to determine the real cause of the virus, which was not music to China. The WHO was shunned by President Donald Trump and had ceased all funding to the organisation. Since then, they were being funded by the Chinese, which invited widespread criticism of their handling the Pandemic announcement and going easy on blaming China.
WHO’s complacency itself may have resulted in thousands of deaths. They took their own time to declare this as Pandemic, consequently allowing the coronavirus’s crucial 15 days incubation period to grow everywhere and claim many unsuspecting victims. Will ever WHO be held accountable for their lack of courage to take on China for the delay in their disclosures? But this was the beginning of the complicities. Somewhere in Apr of 2021, when the dust and controversy of the WHO commission were settling down, came a startling revelation from a Russian virologist about holes in the theory of Ken Anderson’s Op-Ed. The same was picked up by CNN and shown in a 60 minutes program that didn’t reach a better part of the world. In May 21, journalist Nicholas Wade put out an article in a ‘Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ that shook the world by the disclosure. In a systematically well-argued article, he cut the clutter and analysed why Ken Anderson’s explanations were flawed and not conclusive. He argued that the hypothesis that the virus was lab-grown and had escaped from a lab had more credence than the nature-made and animal hopping theory propounded by WHO and earlier virologists. To prove his point, I wish to present only one of his arguments to the readers:
The genetic composition of the virus, which was detected in patients in Dec 19 in Wuhan, was examined and compared to later samples, but the genetic composition had not changed. This behaviour is unlike a virus that constantly mutates to find the best combination to match the cell’s DNA it lives on, especially if they hop from bats to animals then humans, as claimed earlier. It suggested that the virus was a perfect match in the first instant and hence did not find any need to mutate as it matched the human DNA from the beginning. There were no similar virus strains recorded in any Wuhan hospital before Dec 19. It can happen if it has been structured to suit human DNA and leaked out of the lab. Simultaneously, the Wuhan lab experimented with creating a coronavirus strain for humans on Mice with human cells or humanised mice as they are called. Many other scientific facts are strange and do not fit the theory of mutating viral species hopping.
In Wuhan making the ‘Gain of Function’ experiments, Complicit were Chinese virologists, funded by the NIAID: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. It’s a US government-funded organisation that deals with, as the name suggests, research and control of infectious diseases. The lab at Wuhan where this high toxic experiment was going on was also not secure in terms of safety parameters. There are four levels of safety BSL 1 to 4, with four being the safest. SARs I experiments was risky enough to be conducted in a BSL3 lab. Yet the coronavirus for humans experiments known to be more toxic was being undertaken in a BSL 2 level lab. Escaping of virus from level 2 labs is not uncommon.
Why was it done? The ‘Gain of function’ expression means: When the downside risks are minor, upside gains are multifold. The experimenters wanted to be ahead of nature’s curve, which would have brought them immense wealth and fame. Irrespective of the virus being lab-made or creating nature, the conspiracy lies in the fact that the agencies and people involved had hidden the outbreak to control the virus. It took another month before the world ever got to know that coronavirus has struck. Unfortunately, the Chinese doctor who first notified its existence died within ten days of his disclosure to the world. The authorities in charge and the governments have been complicit in letting the virus come this far. Vested interests and lack of transparency has resulted in this deadly Pandemic. Even today, governments across the globe continue to hide more than they reveal. China cannot escape the blame for giving birth to the virus, whether man-made or nature made. They should have done more to control it. Instead, they hid it and allowed it to migrate. Should the world forgive them? And what about the US? Can the US government escape blame? It’s time the world asks the Chinese government and the US health authority why they allowed the experiments to create a monster in their labs? Do they carry on their conscience the death of three million people and counting?