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Medicine China

WHO Abandons Investigation Into Origins of COVID-19 Pandemic 248

Bruce66423 shares a report from Nature: The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned. Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn't going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. "Their hands are really tied." [...]

"There is no phase two," Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but "that plan has changed." "The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins," she said. Researchers are undertaking some work to pin down a timeline of the virus's initial spread. This includes efforts to trap bats in regions bordering China in search of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2; experimental studies to help narrow down which animals are susceptible to the virus and could be hosts; and testing of archived wastewater and blood samples collected around the world in late 2019 and early 2020. But researchers say that too much time has passed to gather some of the data needed to pinpoint where the virus originated.
"The ending of the investigation is not a surprise," adds Bruce66423. "But why 'quietly'?"
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WHO Abandons Investigation Into Origins of COVID-19 Pandemic

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  • Smart move (Score:5, Funny)

    by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @02:05AM (#63294439) Journal

    No one really wants to know where it actually came from anyhow. It didn't create any economic impact, so definitely not worth our time to sort out the root cause.
    New episodes of StarWarsRewrite++ will be on Disney soon, and new episode of OldYellerStone premiers this Friday. ... /s

    • Re:Smart move (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @04:51AM (#63294643) Homepage Journal

      The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons. Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up, or manufacture evidence that it arrived from somewhere else.

      The WHO really can't afford to get mixed up in that. It is totally reliant on nations volunteering information and accepting help.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        Welcome to the real world, where major screw-ups have consequences! Facing accountability is not a good excuse for covering things up in any other case, including Western governments, but I guess the Chinese Communist Party gets a pass in your book.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          You proved my point. You aren't interested in the science, only in there being "consequences" for China.

          You can't seriously expect China to assist you in your prosecution of them, so we will lose that scientific knowledge and more people will die in the next pandemic.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Entrope ( 68843 )

            What? Your entire point was, and continues to be, that we should ignore the scientific and electrical facts because they would be POLITICALLY INCONVENIENT. Take your favorite topic where the US government or a European government has done something wrong. Would you accept "the answer would be used politically, so we can't investigate that" in that situation?

            • by Entrope ( 68843 )

              *scientific and epidemiological facts. Stupid phone.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              No, I'm saying the opposite. If you want to know what actually happened, don't start by saying your goal is to assign blame and seed restitution.

              As an engineer I've found that having a no-blame culture really helps. I don't care who was responsible, I just want to fix it and make sure it doesn't happen again. If people get defensive I can't do that.

              • Re:Smart move (Score:5, Informative)

                by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @06:54AM (#63294835) Homepage

                No, you literally said this:

                The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons. Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up, or manufacture evidence that it arrived from somewhere else.

                Sometimes people -- even governments, and even the CCP -- need to grow up and admit that something bad happened under their watch. The fact that some people will criticize you for it comes with having influence in the world. That dynamic is no excuse for dropping an investigation, which is what you're endorsing with "The WHO really can't afford to get mixed up in that."

                See, for example, how the US government shot down three UFOs recently because they were discovered shortly after that Chinese balloon. They're still investigating those, but are leaning [go.com] towards them being "commercial or benign", and are sharing those tentative assessments in the interest of transparency.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by Opportunist ( 166417 )

            more people will die in the next pandemic.

            Well, good to know there's a silver lining to that cloud.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )

        Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up, or manufacture evidence that it arrived from somewhere else.

        Are you suggesting this isn't already the case?

      • Re:Smart move (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @08:32AM (#63295003)

        The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons

        So fucking what? Everything is used to political reasons. Tens of millions of people died from this likely lab leak and you're worried "oh noos, somebody might make it political?" Please.

        Then when the next one happens there would be a very strong incentive to cover it up

        You mean exactly like China did with this one?? You make zero sense.

        • by mark-t ( 151149 )

          There are legitimate logistical reasons for a country may want to want to cover it up, even if were not "a lab leak" as you conjecture. It is only in hindsight that such decisions can be seen as a miscalculation on their part. But that still doesn't make any part of it intentional.

          But you sound like you've already made up your mind what the "facts" are, and it's unlikely anyone is going to convince you otherwise.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          So you need China's help to do the investigation. Obviously China isn't going to let you investigate if it thinks you will immediately turn round and use the freshly printed peer reviewed paper to beat them over the head with.

          This is not hard to understand. You need cooperation, but all you have are the smouldering remains of that bridge.

      • The problem is if the source was identified it would be used for political reasons.

        This is not a reason to hide the truth.

        IF you are a scientist, you look for truth, even if you don't like the result.

        If you are a politician, covering up the truth will be even worse. Because eventually it will get out.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          If you are a scientist you need a visa to visit China, and they aren't likely to grant you one if the purpose of your trip is to supply their international rivals with information use against them.

          The reality is you need to be nice to China or you don't get to investigate. That sucks but it's the same in every country.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        It's not so much that it would be used "for political reasons", that would absolutely happen if those in power had any incentive to do so. It's that those in power would have something to lose if the news ever got out.

        You can be certain that there is someone, or many someones, in power right now who were involved in orchestrating and planning the virus, simply because it's not being investigated. If the less-powerful political party had something to lose, it would be sought as if life depended on it - becau

    • so definitely not worth our time to sort out the root cause.

      Your sarcasm is irrelevant. You're right at this point it's not worth any time to do any further digging. The answers have been narrowed down to all key points of relevance:
      a) China did it: Things we can do about it: Fuck all.
      b) Natural spread through wet market: Things we can do about it: We're already doing it, pressure has been on to reduce wet markets for years.

      There's zero value in digging into the cause economically and socially now beyond pointless finger pointing, and we have balloons we can use for

    • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

      I'm not sure what we'd learn.

      There's no way this was a deliberately-released bioweapon. China's vaccines suck, and probably hundreds of thousands of their citizens are dying to this wave.

      SARS-COV-2 itself doesn't look engineered.

      https://www.datascienceassn.or... [datascienceassn.org]

      If it was, they were hiding their tracks incredibly well and it was much weaker than it needed to be. Prematurely-released bioweapon is possible but super-unlikely.

      An accidental lab-leak of a GoF would look engineered so that didn't happen.

      So we ha

  • Only 2 hypothesis:
    • virus came from the forest, it happened because of deforestation: we won't stop deforestation anyway
    • virus escaped from lab(engineering or sample from the wild): all leaders have been infected thus we will never use them as a weapon but crappy labs will still exist somewhere.

    All scenarios lead to new pandemics.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @03:11AM (#63294489)

    Let's imagine for a moment that we find with undeniable proof what caused the pandemic. What would come out of it?

    - Scenario: It was due to the unsanitary situation on the wet market.
    - Result: Wet markets get banned, which will work as great as the ban on "traditional medicine" shit for tiger woo and rhino horn. I.e. not at all. Officials look the other way and the only net result is that the sanitary situation now deteriorates further because they can't be controlled at all, leading to more pandemics.

    - Scenario: It escaped a lab.
    - Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day, other than that nothing happens because no country would ever allow international examinations of their bio research labs.

    - Scenario: It was deliberately launched as either an attack on China or ... (insert conspiracy nuttery here)
    - Result: A massive international diplomatic stink, with China accusing the US of attacking China and the US accusing China of an attack that backfired badly, with troll farms fanning the conspiracy nuttery fires and both sides finally having an excuse if they really want to start a war.

    Frankly, can someone think of a scenario that actually ends in a situation that is better?

    • by Chikungunya ( 2998457 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @03:32AM (#63294519)

      "Frankly, can someone think of a scenario that actually ends in a situation that is better?"

      -Scenario: Virus came from nature as every other pandemic ever, the origins are clarified and characterized, precursor virus and closely related variants identified and the process of the jump described in detail
      -Result: ancestor virus antigens mapped and a vaccine that allows immunity against these not-yet-well-adapted viruses developed, people can now be protected from the next SARS virus so it becomes much more difficult that it can successfully jump to humans. Next pandemic (from highly pathogenic coronavirus) averted.

      I think that scenario is realistic and would justify investigating the origins.

      • by vivian ( 156520 )

        The problem with that is you then have to acknowledge existence of viral research labs that try and do this antigen mapping, and all the nutters point to them claiming they are being used to develop weapons.

        • The Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to find viruses of pandemic potential to try to then proactively develop vaccines for them. This involved genetically engineering viruses to see how much they would need to evolve to become really dangerous. We know this because of their papers and grant applications, public record.

          Reckless experiments, but not actually a bioweapon. And then via sloppy hygiene it leaked. Very simple. Leaks happen all the time in biolabs.

          The technology to do this has only bee

          • Yeah, that's gonna happen. Say, which country do you think would jump on that. Except for maybe Finland [youtube.com].

            • by sinij ( 911942 )
              Ask yourself, do you want Zimbabwe doing gain of function research in 2040? What is cutting edge technology will become common place in a few years.

              We have a working example with nuclear nonproliferation. This is because humanity on the whole agreed that unaccounted nukes are very bad for everyone, no exceptions. Today the nuclear technology is well-understood by everyone, but very few countries (i.e., nobody but Israel and North Korea) did it. The same needs to happen with gain of function research.
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Let's say for a moment this is true (I doubt it is, but for the sake of argument). What do you think will happen if it is proven?

            China has already made efforts to better secure all its bio labs. It's not going to close them down though. Or let you inspect them.

            What would an investigation actually do to improve the situation? The only outcome will be that China is further alienated from the WHO and cooperation with Western experts.

            • For starters the rest of the world that cares to cooperate internationally might get together and agree on a moratorium on GoF research.
            • by deKernel ( 65640 )

              By your logic, why put a murderer in jail because the victim will still be dead. IF they were the trigger for the outbreak then they need to be pulled into the light and held accountable. Stop being so freaking cavalier about this.

          • by HiThere ( 15173 )

            That's not a bad guess. It's possibly true. But I can't imagine an effective international regulation of that.

            I still GUESS that it was circulating in a remote area without doctors, some villager carried it, along with merchandise, into the wet market. After all, until people knew what to look for COVID was just "atypical pneumonia", and it doesn't spread that easily in areas were people are outside most of the time, and in family groups the rest of the time. I think it was spreading LONG before it was

            • There's been suggestive evidence that it was in Italy 6 months before anyone recognized it. But that's due to analyzing old sewage, so don't be too convinced.

              I looked at the followup evidence on that a year later, and it seems the consensus on that was the tests were either contaminated or done poorly.

          • The Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to find viruses of pandemic potential to try to then proactively develop vaccines for them.

            It's more than that, they were trying to engineer a virus that looked exactly like SARS-CoV-2.

          • A far more likely reason would be that safety protocols for dealing with dangerous pathogens were insufficient or disregarded in the Wuhan lab. Negligence and human error are always the most likely explanations for disasters.

            And it is very worth the effort to find out what could have prevented the lab leak, assuming it was unintentional.

            Safety of anything gets a lot better if lessons are learned from failures, that's why jet travel today is as safe as it is.

            And if the lab leak was INTENTIONAL, someone needs

        • In essence you are saying, "Don't do research, don't try to find out the truth, because there are crazy people."

          If that is your opinion, YOU are the nutter. Rational people want to find out the truth more than they want to win an argument.
      • the origins are clarified and characterized, precursor virus and closely related variants identified and the process of the jump described in detail

        But we already know this. The goal of the WHO investigation doesn't have anything to do with genetics. Your scenario is already included in the wet market scenario. We know this virus is already present in nature.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @04:03AM (#63294585)

      We don't need to ban wet markets, nor is it practical to do so.

      We just need to ban the bushmeat trade. There are plenty of good reasons to do so besides Covid.

      • Same net result, you push them underground and it becomes even less controllable.

        • What would you say about banning the private sale of nuclear weapons? Or fully automatic small arms and grenades?

          Does banning them "push them underground and it becomes even less controllable"?

          Nah. You're just cherry-picking your arguments. I highly doubt you're in favor of selling hand grenades in anonymous markets.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by aberglas ( 991072 )

        We need to ban reckless Gain of Function research that created SARS-CoV-2.

        The pangolins were framed!

    • by necro81 ( 917438 )

      - Scenario: It was due to the unsanitary situation on the wet market.
      - Result: Wet markets get banned....

      One need not resort to an outright ban. When The Jungle came out, meat packing in the U.S. was even more awful than these wet markets. We didn't ban sausage; we gradually enacted a way for meat packing to be (mostly) safe and sanitary. (Conditions for workers is still pretty awful, let alone for the animals themselves.)

      In other words: one need not go to unworkable extremes to enact positive chan

    • - Scenario: It escaped a lab. - Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day, other than that nothing happens because no country would ever allow international examinations of their bio research labs.

      Uh what? By "conspiracy nuts" you mean people who think it came from the lab in which case they would say "yeah, I thought so." And if it turns out it did come from the lab then the likely outcome would be an agreement on a moratorium on GoF research at the minimum. It's not like China cooperates now.

      • They won't say "yeah, I thought so". And you know it. They will simply extrapolate and go overboard in a "I was right finally, so I'm right with any outrageous claim" spiel.

        So I was right that it came from a lab, and thus it is the evil Chinese reptilian overlords from the hollow earth...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )

      - Scenario: It escaped a lab.
      - Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day,

      What you are saying is that you don't want anyone to look for the truth because conspiracy theorists will be happy. Something is wrong with you. Search for the truth where it leads, not because you want to win an argument against crazy people. Otherwise you have become one of the crazy people.

      You have to look for the truth and accept it when you find it, not be afraid because there is a conspiracy theorist out there. That's not scientific.

    • - Scenario: It escaped a lab.
      - ONE Result: The conspiracy nuts will have a field day, other than that nothing happens because no country would ever allow international examinations of their bio research labs.
      - SECOND Result: if safety protocols for labs were insufficient, they can be improved, if safety protocols were correct, but not adhered to, the nations and institutions responsible get punished and asked for reparations, future bio-safety inspections can and will know what and where to look for in audi

  • scared (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @03:26AM (#63294507)

    "But why 'quietly'?"

    Because the WHO, and almost everyone else, is scared of the manipulative and aggressive over-reaction from the Chinese Communist Party.

    The entire pandemic is the CCP's biggest failure for many years and they are trying to suppress any investigation into it so that they can re-write history to suit them. The pandemic happened because of the CCP encouraging farmers to grow wild animals for sale - live sale - at markets, where they came into close contact with other domestic animals and humans. That is the ideal situation for incubating and spreading new diseases between the wild animals, domestic animals, and humans. The local CCP officials then tried to ignore the problem hoping it would go away, until it was so widespread that it could not be contained and we had a pandemic.

    So any attempt to find out what happened in China at the start of the pandemic is aggressively suppressed and attacked by the CCP. Anyone in China who is part of such investigation is harassed or arrested, foreigners are not allowed in or harassed and obstructed when they do get in, and subtle and overt political threats are made against any countries supporting such investigation.

    SARS (the first one) started in a similar way in Hong Kong, but authorities there acted decisively to contain it. Wuhan authorities just carried on and ignored it, so COVID-19 (SARS the second) started to spread and mutate and here we are.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      "But why 'quietly'?"

      Because the WHO, and almost everyone else, is scared of the manipulative and aggressive over-reaction from the Chinese Communist Party.

      Nothing special about the CCP, the US is almost as bad. Or any sufficiently powerful institution.
      It is the same reason Julian Assange is still in prison - people in power don't like being exposed or embarassed.

      • Re:scared (Score:5, Insightful)

        by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @09:07AM (#63295097)

        Nothing special about the CCP, the US is almost as bad. Or any sufficiently powerful institution.

        *rolls eyes* Yeah, we're almost as bad as a country with no real civil rights and who rounds up ethnic minorities and puts them in reeducation camps.

        I'm not saying we're a perfect country by a long shot but you're being delusional here.

        • by quenda ( 644621 )

          Nothing special about the CCP, the US is almost as bad. Or any sufficiently powerful institution.

          *rolls eyes* Yeah, we're almost as bad

          In the specific issue at hand yes.

          as a country with no real civil rights and who rounds up ethnic minorities and puts them in reeducation camps.

          I'm not saying we're a perfect country by a long shot but you're being delusional here.

          Bad example. A similar number of people are incarcerated in the US and China, despite a far smaller number of people in the US.
          There are so many areas where the US is better, that you could have picked.

          • Re:scared (Score:4, Insightful)

            by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @10:41AM (#63295413)

            I don't know about you but I would much rather live in a country where I'd serve an above average length sentence for a real crime like theft or murder then one where I could go to jail just for being critical of the government.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      No, it's because the WHO deliberately avoids politics that would interfere with its work. Not just for China, for every country.

      The WHO's job is to collect and disseminate medical information. It has no legal powers, all it can do is rely on having good relations with nations who then voluntarily hand over data. The WHO can also offer expertise, but there is no obligation to accept it.

      That's why the WHO doesn't try to assign blame. Not just in China, in Africa when there is an Ebola outbreak, and in the US

  • by VicVegas ( 990077 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @03:40AM (#63294539) Homepage

    Nothing to see here, citizen.

  • Prolly deemed unhelpful to more publicly shame China at this point.
  • China proves again (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Vinegar Joe ( 998110 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @05:48AM (#63294717)

    Money talks, bullshit walks.

    • You're right, money talks. What's the financial benefit to identifying the source at this point? Any possible solution either results in learning nothing new, or being able to do nothing about it.

      The only purpose for continuing this investigation now is political, to either point the blame to or away from China. Pointing the blame to China achieves nothing. You can't do shit about it. Pointing the blame away from China achieves nothing. People don't listen anyway since "the WHO is corrupt".

      Really there's ze

  • The genetics clearly point to it coming from a combination of bats and pangolins because human beings have been in too close contact due to a combination of deforestation and lax regulation of the Chinese wet markets.

    The problem is we also no we can't do anything about that because China's rural economy is dependent on those poorly regulated wet markets and that deforestation.

    So the WHO is giving up because nobody is going to listen anyway and their resources are better spent elsewhere. You can't Er
    • The genetics clearly point to it coming from a combination of bats and pangolins

      False. You are sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

  • "understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks

    If the results of such a study changed human behaviour one jot - nay, even one tittle - I'd say pursue it. But you aren't going to change fuck all. We, collectively, don't learn a lot of lessons, and we don't learn them for long.

  • The investigation must have been getting too close to an inconvenient truth for the shadow government of the world, so they had to pull the plug on that. Ansd people still do nit want to see the truth and eat the spoon-fed fake news about why we lost almost 3 years of our lives, locked up in our houses. Makes me furious hearing these stupid stories.
  • by Your Anus ( 308149 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @10:51AM (#63295455) Journal
    No no.

"Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par." -- Dave Mack (mack@inco.UUCP) "Yours is." -- Allen Gwinn (allen@sulaco.sigma.com), in alt.flame

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