Sharri Markson: Criticism of China’s virus response does not equal support for Trump
Virtually every statement Chinese authorities have made about coronavirus has been an outright lie, writes Sharri Markson.
Opinion
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Virtually every statement Chinese authorities have made about coronavirus has been an outright lie.
China, echoed by the World Health Organisation, claimed the virus was “preventable and controllable”. They claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
Activists and doctors who sounded the alarm about a new virus vanished or were arrested, and the lucky ones were punished with their faces splashed across the evening news in shame for allegedly spreading false information.
Genomics companies were ordered to destroy samples of the virus and testing of new cases of coronavirus was stopped entirely for a week in early January while Chinese internet authorities censored social media search terms like “SARS variation” and “Wuhan unknown pneumonia”.
Even as hundreds and then thousands become sick and the death toll rose, Chinese authorities continued to insist there was no evidence the new disease would spread widely and condemned travel restrictions from China.
Given there has been blatant disinformation at every step of the way from the PRC, why is the world so quick to believe its story from early on in the piece, before any investigations had taken place, that the coronavirus originated in the Wuhan seafood market?
Viruses have a long history of emerging from unhygienic wet markets where live animals are slaughtered and even if the coronavirus didn’t come from the wet market this time, there is cause for them to be shut down.
It is, as Scott Morrison repeatedly says, the most likely source of the outbreak.
But it also needs to be confirmed.
If it came from a wet market, we need to know this to continue to strongly call for their closure or clean-up.
If it came from a Wuhan laboratory, we need to know this to have a debate about whether “gain of function” research is worth the risk.
According to US embassy officials and scientists who visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018, there were serious concerns about safety practices and management weaknesses.
There have been also been several accidental laboratory leaks — even of SARS — and it is entirely possible this happened again.
The famous “bat woman”, Shi Zhengli, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even produced a November 2015 joint-study that spoke of the incredible risk of the work she was doing.
“The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens,” the study states.
“Gain of function” research is such a heated area of scientific debate that the Obama administration withdrew funding from this type of research in 2014.
As Shi Zhengli said herself in interviews, she was worried it was one of the viruses from her lab when she learnt of an outbreak, until studying the genetic sequencing.
But, when every statement Chinese authorities have issued in relation to this virus has been inaccurate, it is right that a global investigation takes place into the origins of the virus.
Yet, in the media and for some on the left, it’s a case of your enemy’s enemy is your friend.
They confuse criticism of the Chinese regime’s response to COVID-19 with support for Trump.
The Trump administration was far too slow to understand the scale of the pandemic, unlike the Australian government, and the US death toll reflects that.
Nine newspapers were left embarrassed this week when less than a day after they posted a front-page story downplaying the inquiry into whether the virus accidentally leaked from a laboratory, the US’s top spy released a rare statement confirming this was at the heart of the investigation by intelligence agencies.
Just as I was making this point in my column, as if to prove its merit, questions have lobbed from the ABC’s Media Watch!
Why did I not mention the Morrison government’s view there was only a 5 per cent chance the virus leaked from a laboratory? Why did I not tell readers the bat virus being worked on by Shi Zhengli was not the same genetically as coronavirus and why did I not tell readers the overwhelming verdict from scientists is that the virus did not escape a lab?
If Paul Barry was an avid reader of The Daily Telegraph, he would know I broke the 5 per cent figure two weeks ago and that I mention Morrison’s view it was unlikely the virus originated in a lab in every single story.
Even worse for Media Watch, they seem not to be aware that Shi Zhengli has worked with dozens of viruses — not just one — and plans to map as many of the estimated 5000 coronaviruses from bats as she can.
And, finally, my story they are querying me on was not actually about the origins of the virus. It was about how the scientists at the centre of the global investigation studied bats in Australia.
Knowing how excited Tim Blair gets by Media Watch questions, my editor Ben English flicked them on to him.
Blair has helpfully offered a punchy intro for the program:
“Hello. I’m Paul Barry, and welcome to Media Watch.
“It was billed by The Daily Telegraph as a ‘world exclusive’, but was it?
“Yes. It was.
“Next on Media Watch, the inside story of a television fat cat who is still on a $200,000 taxpayer-funded salary for presenting just 15 minutes of TV per week — while millions of Australians are out of work or living on reduced pay.”
I digress, and now my column about China’s lack of transparency over COVID-19 is over.
Aah. Media Watch and the left win after all.