Covert Chinese research remains a threat to world, says Wuhan cover-up author Sharri Markson

Sharri Markson believes countries such as Australia must suspend their involvement with Chinese scientific projects until the Asian giant allows its international partners greater oversight of its research.

Sharri Markson is the author of What Really Happened in Wuhan. Picture: Adam Yip

The author of a book that investigates the origins of Covid-19 believes countries such as Australia must suspend their involvement with Chinese scientific projects until the Asian giant allows its inter­national partners greater oversight of its research.

At the virtual launch on Wednesday of her book, What Really Happened in Wuhan, Sharri Markson, The Australian’s investigations writer, said the “risky research” that continues to be conducted in China poses a serious, ongoing threat to the global community.

“It should make us reconsider our international scientific co-­operation with China. Up until now, there have been no limits to it … but we can’t keep sending money where we ultimately have no oversight … and no access,” Markson said.

The 37-year-old Walkley Award winner spent a year researching and writing about Covid-19 and its origins.

Markson’s book, and her recent documentary on Sky News that features an interview with former US president Donald Trump, pursues the likelihood that on all of the available evidence, the virus was engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that high-ranking Chinese and US officials – including Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – were complicit in a cover-up. “I think while the leak of the virus was accidental, the cover-up and the decision to allow it to spread were very deliberate,” Markson said at Wednesday’s launch.

“Dr Fauci knew exactly what was happening at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He was sitting in every Oval Office meeting but never mentioned to Donald Trump that there’s a lab in Wuhan that has the world’s largest collection of coronaviruses.”

Markson said one of the central queries highlighted in her book was how quickly China started working on a vaccine.

 

The available evidence suggests the Chinese must have started work on a vaccine in late 2019, well before the outside world had even heard of the virus, she said.

“What that indicates is that they were aware there was a problem and they were working on a vaccine for it before they told the World Health Organisation that there was an outbreak.”

Markson was critical of the “left media” for failing to investigate the possibility that the virus originated in a laboratory and for dismissing her work as a conspiracy theory. “When I started reporting on this … I was just writing straight news stories that the Five Eyes intelligence network was investigating whether the virus had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” she said.

“But (ABC’s) Media Watch used the word ‘conspiracy’ five times in one segment – that’s a show that’s meant to be the arbiter of what good quality journalism is.

“So we did see this extraordinary pushback to the possibility that the virus had leaked from a lab, from the left media. And you have to ask why they were so determined to politicise an issue that should be a scientific question.”

Speaking at the launch, US Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he could not “overstate the importance” of Markson’s work: “It’s especially important for an Australian to be writing this story, because Australia is directly in the sphere of influence of China.”