Remember when the World Health Organization concluded this year it is “very unlikely” the coronavirus escaped a research facility in Wuhan, China?
It appears now this assessment came at the direction of Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks, according to the head of the WHO origins investigation team.
Peter Ben Embarek, who lead the WHO-China joint investigation, claims Chinese officials leaned hard on his researchers to drop the lab-leak hypothesis.
“In the beginning, they didn’t want anything about the lab [in the report], because it was impossible, so there was no need to waste time on that,” he said in a documentary set to air on Danish television. “We insisted on including it because it was part of the whole issue about where the virus originated.”
Chinese and WHO officials debated roughly the entire mission whether mentions of the lab leak theory should even be included in the final report, Ben Embarek added. The WHO and its Chinese counterparts eventually struck a deal: The theory could be mentioned in the report “on the condition we didn’t recommend any specific studies to further that hypothesis.”
The WHO’s subsequent report states it is “very unlikely” the virus came from a facility in Wuhan, or any other facility in China for that matter. The report also recommends the matter be dropped with no further investigation.
Asked directly whether the Chinese required their counterparts to include the “very unlikely” language in the report, Ben Embarek told his Danish interviewers, “It was the category we chose to put it in at the end, yes.”
He continued, arguing that a lab leak scenario could include many things, not just a researcher allowing the virus to escape.
“A lab employee infected in the field while collecting samples in a bat cave — such a scenario belongs both as a lab leak hypothesis and as our first hypothesis of direct infection from bat to human. We’ve seen that hypothesis as a likely hypothesis,” he said.
To be clear, Ben Embarek added, it’s entirely possible the virus’s origins could have been “human error.” However, he added, China doesn’t allow for those sorts of things to be said out loud.
“It probably means there’s a human error behind such an event, and they’re not very happy to admit that,” he said. “The whole system focuses a lot on being infallible, and everything must be perfect,” he added. “Somebody could also wish to hide something. Who knows?”
Asked later by the Washington Post to clarify his remarks, Ben Embarek claims his comments were mistranslated.
“It is a wrong translation from a Danish article,” he said, adding no further comment. He declined to respond to the Washington Post’s follow-up requests for clarification.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic also maintains Ben Embarek’s remarks were mistranslated.
“There are no new elements nor [a] change of the position [that] all hypotheses are on the table, and WHO works with member states on the next step,” Jasarevic said.
For good measure, the spokesman also emphasized the interview occurred “months ago,” as if that has anything to do with what Ben Embarek alleges.
Now is a good time to remind everyone the WHO’s investigation in China was clearly a sham, even when it was underway.
For starters, Beijing dragged its feet approving the WHO trip, repeatedly delaying the start date for researchers with no explanation. A few WHO researchers also have strong ties to Chinese research projects. Also, let’s not overlook that the WHO’s investigative team was granted a mere two weeks to conduct its research. And that’s on top of the fact that the WHO team was tailed basically everywhere it went by a large contingent of Chinese officials, including both scientists and party bureaucrats.
There’s a reason Ben Embarek himself said in February, “The politics was always in the room with us on the other side of the table.”
So, yes, China reportedly told the WHO to say it was “very unlikely” the virus escaped a Chinese facility, which the WHO agreed to do. The press in the West then uncritically parroted the WHO’s assessment, claiming it was preposterous, insane even, to suggest the virus had escaped a lab.
That’s how the Chinese Communist Party seizes control of the supposedly free press of the Western world. How often does this sort of thing happen, only we never find out about it?
