THE VIRUS ESCAPED FROM THE CHINESE LAB… WHAT IF IT WAS TRUE? – 05/17/21
GUESTS
ANTOINE BONDAZ
China researcher
Foundation for Strategic Research
CAROLINE PEAT
Science and medicine journalist – “Le Point”
RAPHAËLLE BACQUÉ – Duplex
Grand reporter – “Le Monde”
Author of “Patient zero”
ÉTIENNE DECROLY – Live from Aix-en-Provence
Virologist, research director at CNRS
Member of the French Society of Virology
Could it all come from an accident? While the Coronavirus has killed more than 3 million people worldwide since December 2019, the mystery remains as to its origin. But in recent days, around twenty renowned scientists have been relaunching the hypothesis of a laboratory accident. First qualified as a conspirator, this explanation would in fact be plausible. In the respectable journal Science, these scientists last Thursday called for new investigations.
Because it now seems certain that information has been withheld by China. Indeed, documents relating to research carried out between 2014 and 2019 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were disclosed on the social network Twitter, via the account of an anonymous scientist accustomed to shocking revelations. They question certain data taken for granted by the international scientific community on the number and nature of coronaviruses kept by the institute and on the experiments carried out on these viruses.
If the WHO for its part stressed the need to establish the origin of the virus, the investigation carried out by the international team concluded that a laboratory incident was “extremely unlikely”. This report, drawn up following a field mission last January and February, is therefore today questioned by the authors of the column published in Science. “Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report dealt with the possibility of a laboratory accident”, denounced these scientists. The question of China’s obstruction of this investigation is therefore put on the table, and undermines the WHO while the United States is preparing to fully return to the international organization.
Meanwhile, the Indian variant continues to worry. Spotted for the first time in India, this variant which is now emerging in Europe raises the specter of a fourth wave. A British study published last Thursday indicates that its contagiousness and dangerousness could be even higher than those of the English variant. Professor Djillali Annane, head of the intensive care unit at Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine), fears a new epidemic outbreak next September, “we could currently be in the same situation as last January with the British variant ”.
So, is the hypothesis of a laboratory accident at the origin of the spread of the Coronavirus possible? Has the WHO been too weak against China? Can the Indian variant cause a fourth wave?
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