The origin of the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus, which has been responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic for almost two years, is essential for understanding how it works and preparing for other epidemics in the years to come. After the thesis of natural origin, that of a laboratory accident – a hypothesis long ruled out – seems more and more probable.
Will we one day know the exact origin of the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus that appeared in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019? Will we know if the pandemic, which killed at least 5 million people according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and brought the world economy to its knees, was of animal origin or the consequence of an accident? laboratory? Which of these two theses is correct? The mystery remains.
Since the appearance of this formidable virus and its procession of variants, the truth about the reality of the epidemic has been abused on all sides and, sometimes, knowingly hidden. In order not to displease the Chinese central power, the doctors who launched the whistleblower in Wuhan were, from the start, ordered to be silent, the local authorities in the Hubei region did not alert Beijing, delaying the taking into account of the epidemic by China as well as by the WHO. And once informed of the reality of this epidemic with exponential contamination, the administration of Xi Jinping knowingly lied by downplaying the figures. Because the epidemic went beyond the health framework and covered geopolitical and economic issues.
Controversial WHO expert report
To these cover-ups were added fake news and conspiracy theories. In the midst of a commercial standoff with China, Donald Trump took pleasure in talking about the “Chinese virus” while doing nothing to curb its lethal spread once it had reached the United States. And while the American intelligence services declared that the origin of the virus was animal, Trump claimed to have seen evidence linking the Covid-19 to a laboratory in Wuhan, the famous P4 laboratory created in 2018 with France in the world capital of coronavirus research.
The thesis of the laboratory accident was then violently contested by the scientific community and in particular by 27 researchers who signed on February 9, 2020 in the reference scientific journal. The Lancet a platform to castigate the conspiracy and ensure that the virus had an animal origin.
However, over the months, the thesis of zoonosis – the passage of a virus called RaTG13 from bats to humans via an intermediary thought to be the pangolin – will crumble, undermined by areas of shadow and the revelations on Peter Daszak, the “virus hunter” author of the forum and suspected of conflicts of interest since his links with the Wuhan laboratory were revealed …
The laboratory accident becomes plausible again and researchers who passed for illuminated to have expressed even doubts are then listened to more.
The report of WHO experts and Chinese scientists, published on March 30, 2021, causes controversy by only retaining the thesis of animal contamination and leads WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to call for a study in-depth on the thesis of the laboratory accident which is then barely mentioned.
But to work seriously on this track, it would still be necessary to have data. White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci had urged Beijing to release specific medical data. Those of miners who had contracted respiratory syndromes in 2013 in a mine in Yunan, some 1,800 kilometers from Wuhan. And those of researchers from the Wuhan Institute who would have contracted symptoms compatible with Covid-19 in November 2019, a month before the official start of the epidemic and after visiting a bat cave. The ace ! China has never transmitted this data.
Was there the human hand?
If an accident in the laboratory – whose security breaches had aroused the attention of the American authorities in early 2018 – has gained consistency, there are still many unanswered questions. Did the Sars-Cov-2 accidentally escape from the Wuhan laboratory where it was stored? Has it become transmissible to humans after a “gain in function” following its cultivation? Or is it a “chimera” made entirely in the laboratory from another virus?
However, it is essential to know the origin of the coronavirus in order to be able to anticipate. Because other epidemics will emerge in the years and decades to come, there is unfortunately no mystery about this.
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