Removing Politics Is Impossible

In his latest Washington Post column Josh Rogin expresses his dissatisfaction with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report on the origins of SAVS-CoV-2:

Determining the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus should have nothing to do with politics. It is a forensic question, one that requires thorough investigation of all possible theories, and one that should encompass both the scenario that the virus jumped from animals to humans in nature as well as one related to human error in a Wuhan lab. But a fatally flawed investigation by the World Health Organization and Chinese officials and experts only muddies the waters, and it places the WHO further at odds with the U.S. government and the Biden administration.

A joint study group, consisting of WHO representatives and 17 Chinese experts, will release its long-awaited report on the origins of covid-19 on Tuesday, but you can read it all here now. Unsurprisingly, the report promotes the theory the virus spilled over to humans in nature, perhaps from a bat through an intermediate animal host, and dismisses the possibility of a lab accident-related origin as “extremely unlikely,” and therefore unworthy of further study.

Of course, we already knew this because all the results were previewed in China’s state propaganda media two weeks ago by the lead Chinese scientist. The Chinese government received the report in advance and had tightly controlled the investigators’ visit to Wuhan, where the outbreak originated and where labs hold the world’s largest collection of bat coronaviruses. Even before the report was issued, the Biden administration publicly questioned its objectivity and credibility.

concluding:

The Chinese government and the friends of the Wuhan lab want to dismiss any efforts to call for more investigation into the lab-accident theory as conspiracy theories. But that conspiracy now would have to include the Trump administration, the Biden administration, Redfield and the growing list of scientists who insist that this possibility be explored. Critics often conflate the fact there is “no proof” of the theory with the false assertion there is “no evidence” to suggest it.

“When people talk about ‘no evidence’ [of a lab accident], you could argue there’s ‘no evidence’ on either side,” said Flinders University Professor of Medicine Nikolai Petrovsky, one of more than two dozen scientists who signed an open letter calling for a full and independent investigation into the origins of covid-19. “There’s as much evidence for the potential lab leak hypothesis as there currently is for a natural animal crossover event. I think we have to be fair and say it’s a completely open question.”

The WHO team wants to move on to searching for the virus in packages of frozen food in other countries. Let them do it. Meanwhile, somebody else will have to investigate the lab-accident theory, because the WHO and Beijing have no intention of treating it with the seriousness it deserves. The Biden administration can help by releasing all the information it has on the lab now. That would help us to get closer to the truth — and help to prevent future pandemics.

I’d like some likely and confident explanation of the source of the virus as much as the next person but what struck me about his column was how unrealistic it was. All of the entities mentioned (the Chinese government, the U. S. government, the WHO, etc.) are all human institutions and as such are inherently political. As Aristotle put it man is by nature a political animal. You cannot separate the politics from human actions. Even physics, that most rigorous of sciences, is political in nature.

Furthermore, any investigating organization may only conduct its investigation with the permission and cooperation of the Chinese government. There is no authority anywhere which could force them to surrender information they do not wish to be known.

The remedy for this is not endless investigations or futile demands for cooperation but to recognize the limitations and, given the Chinese authorities’ motivations for secrecy take that into account in our relations with China.