Coronavirus: WHO inquiry as close to useless as you could get while still having any inquiry

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus, wearing protective gear are seen during their visit to the Hubei Center for animal disease control and prevention in Wuhan.

The World Health Organisation report into the origins of the COVID-19 virus has zero credibility and is not worth the paper it probably won’t be written on.

It took more than a year after the virus outbreak for a Beijing-approved WHO delegation to get a Potemkin village tour of stale sites, and receive carefully curated data that supports Beijing’s ­account of the virus.

None the less, the WHO team is right to join the consensus of scientific and analytical agencies in saying the virus almost certainly came from a wild animal, probably a bat, through some other wild animal, into humans.

Similarly, the virus probably did not come, by accident or design, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The relevant Australian scientific and intelligence agencies have examined this exhaustively. Their view is that it is not a designer virus born in a laboratory and almost certainly did not escape a laboratory.

However, the agencies are also clear that it cannot absolutely be ruled out that the virus may have been studied in a laboratory and could conceivably have escaped from such a lab. There is no reason to think it did, but it cannot be absolutely ruled out.

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic leave after visiting a museum exhibition about China's fight against Covid-19 in Wuhan.

The WHO team also says that it is possible the virus came originally from outside China. This is also incredibly unlikely because there was no virus outbreak anywhere before Wuhan.

Therefore while it is theoretically possible that it originated somewhere else and was taken into China, it’s incredibly unlikely. The WHO canvassing such a possibility will be music to Beijing’s ears because it can invest its own conspiracy theories — remember the claim that a US military sports team brought the virus to China? — with the WHO’s tawdry authority.

The WHO inquiry was as close to useless as you could get while still having any inquiry.

Given this, was the Morrison government wrong to incur diplomatic cost by unilaterally suggesting the inquiry a year ago?

Yes, it was a modest diplomatic mistake, but it is absurd to suggest that all the troubles we have had with Beijing since then arise from that mistake.

As Labor’s Penny Wong pointed out at the time, it would have been better if Canberra had made the inquiry suggestion in the company of a few other like-minded nations.

However, two points are vital.

First, it was absolutely reasonable to call for such an inquiry. If Beijing overreacts, that is Beijing’s fault, not Canberra’s.

Second, it is wholly fraudulent to accept the idea that all the economic sanctions and coercion Beijing has applied against Australia since then arise from that one decision.

Beijing objects to our foreign interference legislation, banning Chinese telcos from NBN and 5G, preventing Chinese investment in our critical infrastructure, etc. Beijing’s punishment of Australia is entirely unreasonable but it is based on matters of substance.

There is no reason to accept the implausible and simplistic line of causality between the WHO ­inquiry suggestion and all the troubles since.

Beijing’s bad behaviour is Beijing’s decision, not Canberra’s.