https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3146907/how-us-weaponises-covid-19-lab-leak-theory
How the US weaponises the Covid-19 ‘lab leak’ theory
- Just as US leaders used al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks in 2001 and non-existent weapons of mass destruction as excuses to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, they are now exploiting the pandemic as part of a full-spectrum campaign against China. In both cases, they are making the world less safe, not least for Americans
The obsession of American politicians, including no fewer than two presidents, with the “lab leak” origin theory of the
in Wuhan is mainly motivated by two goals, and neither has much to do with public health or fighting the next pandemic.One goal has to do with a racist fear which may be called the new “yellow peril” and is combined with America’s perennial “communist” paranoia. The other is simply the natural reflex of politicians to blame others, but never take responsibility, for disasters of their own making. The latter impulse is, for example, amply and shamefully demonstrated by
blaming the Afghan government and army for the fall of Kabul, rather than his own incompetence.But America’s lab leak theory obsession has little or nothing to do with the need for scientific or public health understanding to prevent the next pandemic, which is surely a matter of when, not if. If US leaders truly want to make Americans safe again from pandemic, they are going about in exactly the wrong way.
A full report of a joint investigation by the entire US intelligence community has been presented to Biden. Essentially, one agency believes the virus emerged from a lab leak, four thought it came from animals and three others couldn’t decide. No surprise there. And of course, Biden blames China for hiding essential information, presumably data that would prove China guilty. Isn’t that exactly the mindset of overzealous prosecutors who put innocent people behind bars?
By definition, widely publicising the work of your intelligence community – from the outset – is politicising the issue. Doesn’t intelligence usually work secretly, behind the scenes? If you really want to get to the bottom of the virus origin, you turn to the world’s best scientists and public health specialists who are skilled not only medically, but also diplomatically, through working with foreign governments and international agencies. The US leads the world with such qualified professionals. You don’t need the Central Intelligence Agency for that.
In any case, US politicians neither know nor are qualified to decide the best way to find the truth about the origins of the
. What they are elected to do is to protect their own citizens. As a matter of bio-defence, what they ought to do now, for any country caught with their pants down, as with any national crisis, is to determine what went wrong, how to end it, and what to do to prevent something like that from happening again.
A responsible US government would set up an independent commission to determine why Washington, under
, delayed containment and responses – in fact, he played down the pandemic threat, and at one point praised ’s response – when China’s neighbours, the first group of nations affected by the pandemic, went into red alert and managed mostly to contain the spread.Given the ample lead time, the commission will determine why the US government failed to follow the example of Asian nations, regardless of what information or misinformation China was feeding the world.
Why and how did the world-renowned US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which has helped to detect and contain countless outbreaks around the world, singularly fail to contain the pandemic on its own turf?
Such a commission will then recommend reforms to make sure a pandemic will never threaten so many American lives again. Or at least that’s what responsible US leaders should be doing.
Worst-case scenario planning allows you to plan for all eventualities, so you are prepared and hopefully things won’t come to that. But to do all that, knowing the origins of the pandemic is far less important. Maybe the virus jumped species, or was accidentally leaked or even deliberately released. Who knows? Leave it to the medical and public health professionals to find out.
As Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical team leader on Covid-19, said: “Frankly, the politics of this has taken on a life of its own and we want to bring it back to the science. We do expect those [probes on virus origins] to be pursued, we are working with our Chinese counterparts through technical collaborations and there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes discussions that are happening as well.”
But, like most leaders, US politicians don’t want to wash their own dirty laundry in public. Instead, it makes far more sense to blame someone else. China is the perfect target. Regardless of what it did or didn’t do at the outset of the pandemic, it’s far more convenient to distract the public with theories about Chinese communist maleficence.
It also fits with Washington’s full-spectrum containment strategy against China’s geopolitical expansion. If only it had devoted comparable resources fighting the virus and saving American lives! Like the neoconservative hawks who used al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks in 2001 as an excuse to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, US politicians are now exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic as part of a campaign against China. In both cases, they are making the world less safe, not least for American citizens.
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