Science Pulling Together to Avoid Exposing China's Wuhan Responsibility

"These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons." 

Viscount Ridley, co-author, Viral: the search for the origin of COVID

"He [Prof.Mike Farzan, Scripps Research] is bothered by the furin site and has a hard time [to] explain that as an event outside the lab, though there are possible ways in nature but highly unlikely."

"I think this becomes a question of how do  you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the laboratory in Wuhan, how much could be in nature -- accidental release or natural event?"

"I am 70:30 or 60:40."

Jeremy Farrar, director, Wellcome Trust

"[The furin cleavage site] strikes me as unusual."

"I think the only people with sufficient information or access to samples to address it would be the teams working in Wuhan."

Professor Andrew Rambaut, University of Edinburgh

"Further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."

Dr.Ron Fouchier, U.S. biosecurity expert

"I share  your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony."

Dr.Francis Collins, U.S. National Institutes of Health

 

Wuhan Institute of Virology: Associated Press

Harmony, now that's a word describing a social condition that Beijing is particularly fond of. Harmony means that suspicions are set aside, along with accusations. And that includes an entire range of human social constructs along with state interventions and initiatives, including the co-opting of sovereign nations into a giant grip as China expands its own sovereignty in control and command. It includes penalties and punishment for doubting Beijing's right to exercise its authority within its sovereign ambit so mass re-education and slave labour is China's internal business and no other countries'.

And harmony is best achieved by Beijing's word being taken for what it is not; trustworthy. The pathogen that has proven so deadly to so many millions around the globe is a naturally evolving phenomenon, according to Beijing, a zoonotic pathogen that has roiled the world body like no other such has before it, on a scale to alter human social interaction, take down the world economic order, and re-order the global community on a scale previously unimagined.

Whether or not it is even proven that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 and ultimately all its mutated nuances plaguing the world was a laboratory escapee from a highly secure lab that was not sufficiently secure is one thing; China's response to the original virus in containment within China with little concern for its escape out of China in maintaining open national borders and accusing other countries of racism for closing theirs, stands as a special example of abandonment of responsibility.

And the world's leading scientists in the field of deadly pathogens in the interests of an open scientific community of trust and cooperation where scientists from all over the world can freely exchange between themselves in communicating their latest discoveries is quite wonderful in theory, but in practise may leave something to be desired; allowing the world's leading human-rights suppressor and oppressor to go on denying any role in the mass destruction the world faces.

Elite British and American scientists appear to have more or less agreed that COVID-19 likely was an accidental release from a secure laboratory's explorations in virus attributes and combinations; science is nothing if not curious and unleashing potentially destructive organisms in the conceited belief they are more than capable of restraining the results to a closed laboratory setting does on occasion result in breakaway accidents; unfortunate occurrences at the mild end, catastrophic in this particular instance.

Information has now come to light of the discussions that took place between scientists of great renown and their opinion of the Wuhan virus that speedily took over the world. "A likely explanation", said an email from Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust focused on health research based in London being that COVID had evolved rapidly from a SARS-type virus within human tissue in a low-security laboratory. This was a communication received by Dr.Anthony Fauci and Dr.Francis Collins of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, that such evolution may have "accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans".

A teleconference between a dozen scientists on February 1, 2020 led to a series of emails, Dr.Farrar's one of them, some refuting the theory of an escaped virus, urging caution, and others more convinced of the likelihood of a virus escape. Members of the U.S. House Oversight committee granted access to the documents led to their becoming publicly available. The emails are indication that scientists were actively attempting to close the debate into a laboratory leak theory.

Of particular concern was a part of COVID-19 called the furin cleavage site, representing a section of the spike protein aiding the virus entry into human cells, creating its huge infectiousness capacity. Scientific institutions in possession of these emails repeatedly spurned outside efforts to publish their content. The University of Edinburgh as an example refused a Freedom of Information request to scrutinize Dr.Rambaut's emails that claimed "disclosure would be likely to endanger the physical or mental health and safety of individuals".

Ilustracija/AFP

Incriminating or Coincidental?

"We have come to the conclusion that based on the data analyzed it suggest the virus was highly likely to be spreading virulently in Wuhan, China, as early as the summer of 2019 and definitely by the autumn." 

"We assess with high confidence that the pandemic began much earlier than China informed the WHO about COVID-19."

Internet 2.0, cybersecurity consultancy

Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli is seen here inside the laboratory in Wuhan   Getty Images

 

Another peg in the holes steadily being filled on various enquiries over the full story of the SARS-CoV-2 virus's origins. An intelligence analysis of the rate of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests  being acquired in China pre-dating the time when the world was being informed of an emerging and fast-spreading new coronavirus points a crooked finger of damage-control detection squarely at the Chinese Communist Party having disguised a mysterious virus outbreak, failing to adequately alert the world to the danger that lurked as the virus continued to spread, refusing to be contained.

In Wuhan as early as the summer of 2019 the unidentified novel cornavirus was already spreading, earlier than given notice of by China, according to PCR testing equipment intelligence analysis of spending. "Notable significant and abnormal" purchases of PCR laboratory equipment was tracked to the second half of 2019, information that has been the subject of a newly-published report where analysts had studied PCR procurement contacts in Hubei province's capital of Wuhan.

 

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which some people allege was the source of a SARS-CoV-2 leak.    Credit: Thomas Peter/Reuters/Alamy

Spending, found the analysis, had just about doubled from that of the previous year. The data and the findings by Internet 2.0, a cybersecurity consultancy specializing in studying data out of China, was shared with U.S. government officials as growing speculation circulates of the coronavirus originating in a laboratory in Wuhan and somehow escaping its environs. An episode that has since created a global calamity of unprecedented proportions.

According to the study report, purchases of PCR equipment representing standard protective devices used in laboratories amplifying small amounts of DNA critical in tracking COVID-19, increased from $6.9 million in 2018 -- $5.7 million in 2017 -- to $13.4 million in 2019 in Hubei Province. The number of PCR contracts also increased from 89 in 2018 to 135 the following year, when the outbreak took place.

The spending increase accounted for contracts at four main institutions: the Chinese Centre for Disease Control in Hubei province, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, and a military hospital based in Wuhan. These institutes' roles in disease control and prevention makes these circumstances all the more notable. The "significant increase in spending" was noticed to have taken place, according to the report, from the summer of 2019.

The prevailing and growing theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology appears to be substantiated by contracts the investigators discovered, including one of $60,000 in early November. Two purchases totalling $350,000 of pathogen detection equipment made by the Wuhan CDC in September, used for the Military World Games held a month later in the city also came under study given that athletes who attended fell ill with symptoms aligned with COVID, after returning from the Games.

American military athletes among them. Which gave China the opportunity to spread their version of events, that the U.S. military brought COVID with them while they were in China, and are ultimately responsible for the global pandemic that has wracked the world with medical emergencies, millions of untimely deaths, vast social disruption and economic meltdowns. China appears to be coping extraordinarily well. It's had a head-start in control, and it, after all, produces most of the world's PPE equipment...

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was linked to early cases of the new coronavirus   Gerty Images

There Are Strange Things Done In The Midnight Sun

Peter Daszak (right), Thea Fischer (left), and other members of the WHO team investigating the origins of covid-19 arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province.

 

"We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere."

"This whole process is being poisoned by politics."

WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan 

 

"The technical team will prepare a proposal for the next studies that will need to be carried out and will present that to the director-general."

"He will then work with member states about the next steps. There is no timeline."

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib

 

"[The first phase of the WHO expert panel study was] insufficient and inconclusive. There is a need for a] timely, transparent, evidence-based and expert-led Phase 2 study, including in the People's Republic of China."

"[There is a need for access for independent experts to] complete, original data and samples [relevant to the source of the virus and early stages of the outbreak]."

"We appreciate the WHO's stated commitment to move forward with Phase 2 of the COVID-19 origins study, and look forward to an update from Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus."

U.S. Diplomatic Mission, Geneva 

Workers in protective gear carry a bag containing a giant salamander that was reported to have escaped from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP)

When the mysterious appearance of a strange pneumonia was discovered in patients admitted to hospitals in Wuhan, China in December of 2019, and soon afterward the virus began spreading outside China's borders, Beijing took exception to the virus, identified as a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 being familiarly referred to as the 'Wuhan virus', until the World Health Organization gave it the pandemic name it is now known by, COVID-19.

 

And now that world powers like the United States and Great Britain are leading a drive for a full and deep investigation to discover the origins of the virus causing COVID-19, Beijing continues to deny that suspicions harboured by many in the West that the closed high-security Wuhan Virology Institute laboratory might possibly have loosed the virus accidentally, giving the virus its villainous start on its global predation. Chinese authorities found it much more palatable to insist that the Huanan wet market was a likelier source of the zoonotic when the pathogen made its leap from animal to human.

A growing clamour of voices calling for an independent, unbiased and unchaperoned-by-Chinese-authorities investigation take place to settle the question once and for all; whether the virus origins was a lab-held virus that made its escape or the leap of transmission between species. The WHO assembly was informed by a Chinese representative the official Chinese position that the "China part" of the origin-tracing study "has been completed". In other words: you want to study further, go right ahead but don't expect any cooperation from China. 

 

An interpreter made it clear as well that China was interested in seeing "a global origin-tracing cooperation" -- the translation of which is that China feels the hunt would be best carried out elsewhere than in China. Literally washing its hands of any further investigation, much less the thought that China would further lend itself to another such survey as the original WHO 'independent' investigation when the investigation team was comprised of more Chinese investigators than WHO investigators. 

 

And where the official presence of Chinese authorities at all interviews and site visits constrained a deep and useful investigation, topped off by China's refusal to allow the WHO investigators access to critical records. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian suggested on Wednesday that U.S. sites should be explored -- reflecting Chinese specious 'speculation' the coronavirus could have emerged there. Surely derisively. 

 

Wuhan, a central Chinese city of 11 million people, is where China's first-ever BSL-4-certified laboratory is located. This is a rare classification identifying laboratories meant to work with the world's most lethal pathogens. When it was opened in 2018, the Wuhan Institute of Virology campus was recognized as specializing in coronavirus studies, particularly bat coronaviruses which just happen to represent the likely origin of COVID-19. 

 

The Wuhan Institute is noted for its  unusual housing of the "most comprehensive inventory of sampled bat viruses in the world", according to a January investigation by New York magazine, considered the most rigorous journalistic probe into the COVID-19 potential lab origins. In addition, the lab is understood to engage in gain-of-function experiments, where researchers attempt to supercharge coronaviruses to infect lab mice or human cell samples. Gain-of-function is meant to discover methods of combating the emergence of new viruses from nature, but it is also "exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS-2-like virus could have emerged", explains a scientific breakdown of COVID-129 origins by The Wire, an Indian news site.

Given these incriminating circumstances, how likely is it that a novel coronavirus linked to bats might have simply by coincidence begun infecting humans who just happened to be located within easy walking distance of a laboratory that incidentally is the world centre for studying highly infectious bat coronaviruses? As a plot of fictitious origins it is hardly believable, as a scenario of real-time circumstances, there is no competition for the actual location of the Virology laboratory escape.

With respect to circumstantial identification of source, American diplomats back in 2018, long before the emergence of the coronavirus causing COVID, visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology and afterward drafted a cable to Washington complete with a heads-up warning of a mishap waiting to happen. Their distinct impression was that the facility's safety and security standards were lax enough to risk sparking a pandemic. According to the Washington Post, which headed the story, "The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory", read the cable.

Three years later, the revelation that a US. intelligence report that three workers at the Wuhan Institute were hospitalized "with symptoms consistent with both COVID19 and common seasonal illness", came out this week. Another very peculiar coincidence, this time bringing Canada into the narrative, when researcher Xiangguo Qiu, working at the high-security BSL-4 lab at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg was escorted from the facility along with her scientist husband and a Chinese student, all later fired, with no public explanation.

The two-week investigation by the World Health Organization scientific team of ten, joined by a team of 17 Chinese scientists in Wuhan conducted interviews under constant supervision. The researchers spent a mere few hours at the Virology lab where select documents were presented for their examination but no forensic examination of lab protocols was undertaken, only a few supervised meetings with laboratory staff who assured them the institute had witnessed "no disruptions or incidents" at the time of the emergence of COVID-19.

"The lab leak hypothesis has picked up more adherents as time passes and scientists fail to detect a bat or other animal infected with a virus that has covid’s signature genetics. By contrast, within a few months of the start of the 2003 SARS pandemic, scientists found the culprit coronavirus in animals sold in Chinese markets. But samples from 80,000 animals to date have failed to turn up a virus pointing to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes covid."

"The virus’s ancestors originated in bats in southern China, 600 miles from Wuhan. But covid contains unusual mutations or sequences that made it ideal for infecting people, an issue explored in depth by journalist Nicholas Wade."

"Scientists from the Wuhan Institute have collected thousands of coronavirus specimens from bats and registered them in databases closed to inspection. Could one of those viruses have escaped, perhaps after a “gain of function” experiment that rendered it more dangerous?"

Arthur Allen, KHN

The World Community Has a Right to Know

Lab-leak theories centre on the Wuhan Institute of Virology   Reuters

"[Of the lab-leak theory]: That possibility certainly exists, and I am totally in favour of a full investigation of whether that could have happened."

"[I am] not convinced [the virus originated naturally]."

Dr.Anthony Fauci, U.S. President Biden's chief medical adviser   

 

"From day one China has been engaged in a massive cover-up."

"As the evidence for the lab-leak hypothesis grows, we should be demanding the full investigation of all origin hypotheses that's required."

Jamie Metzl, a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council 

 

"We do need to be a bit patient but we also need to be diplomatic."

"We can't do this without support from China. It needs to be a no-blame environment."

Prof Dale Fisher, Singapore's National University Hospital 

"I've read it, [report released by the Washington Post calling into question when and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged] it's a complete lie."

"Those claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don't even know where such information came from."

Yuan Zhiming, director, Wuhan National Biosafety Lab, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan, China

The story in the Wall Street Journal claims that three laboratory workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November of 2019, and were admitted to hospital for treatment. A month later, China advised the World Health Organization of the sudden appearance of a zoonotic, a virus transmitted from animal to human, and that authorities in China felt confident the virus had erupted in a fresh food market where wild animals were sold and pangolins were the suspected source.

The U.S. intelligence report cited by the paper had originally been the product of an investigation authorized by then-President Donald Trump who stated  his determination to get to the bottom of the matter that he suspected was Beijing's lack of openness in alerting the world community of the presence of a galloping new virus with unknown properties but a surprising level of lethality, initially presenting as a new kind of pneumonia. 

It was the newspaper's contention and possible purpose of re-visiting the investigative report and coming away with greater details, that what it revealed could conceivably bring support to the evidence already in question, leading to a broader and deeper investigation into what many in the scientific community suspect -- and many others object to -- that the COVID-19 virus could have been a lab escapee.

What is undeniable unless new information arises, is that the first cases of a strange new pneumonia were being reported toward the end of December 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where coincidentally two high-security laboratories for the study of viruses were located. One laboratory had undertaken studies of viruses collected from bats in caves and theorized that the bats had infected pangolins and the pangolins carried the virus with them when they were trapped for sale at the live animal market in Wuhan.

 

Although rumours have circulated widely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 was not a zoonotic that naturally occurred, infecting people who had come in contact with a vector at the Wuhan market, but rather a laboratory-produced virus and that inept, insecure methods led to its escape, China has steadfastly denied any such allegations. Claiming instead that the lab theory was unproven and nonsensical and simply represented U.S. paranoia.

 

Instead Chinese authorities point to the possibility that the virus may very well not have originated in China, or Wuhan, at all, and was imported with frozen food from some other geographic location. Wildlife trading too was cited as a source, as well as a circulating virus that had emerged elsewhere and found its way to China by some unsuspected means. China's foreign ministry rejected the claim that three lab workers had been hospitalized, characterizing it as a lie.

 

The World Health Organization, which had sent an independent team of researchers to Wuhan months ago to undertake a detailed investigation, now entertains thought of another investigation, this time perhaps without Chinese authorities' interference, although without Beijing's approval for yet another group of scientists arriving in Wuhan there can be no follow-up of the original which declared its joint opinion that no lab escape of a virus was a likely explanation for the pandemic.

 

That opinion was reached despite that there were no unescorted interviews permitted where the investigators could privately, without interference and the presence of Chinese authorities, closely question someone who might have information critical to the investigation, nor were the investigators permitted to see collected data directly relevant to the more immediate Chinese investigation of the market where purportedly the outbreak was traced to.

 

According to Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for WHO, the organization's technical teams were currently making decisions on whether to proceed further and if so, how. Further study was obviously required into the role of animal markets, as well as the hypothesis of a lab leak. The issue, after all, is that of a lethal, minuscule, unseen pathogen seeking out new hosts, invading body cells and replicating wildly. A virus that has in the space of a year-and-a-half killed three and a half million people worldwide.  

Knowing its true origins could help medical science more fully understand the nature of the pathogen and how best to control it. It could also lead to techniques of detection and deterrence that could help avoid future such global pandemics. As well as teach both the global medical community and governments how best to anticipate new and perhaps even more deadly invasions of viruses from wild animal to humanity.

 

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was linked to early Covid cases   Getty Images

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Global Disaster

Waiting to receive Covid-19 vaccinations in Mumbai, India, on Monday.   Credit...Divyakant Solanki/EPA, via Shutterstock

"The current wave is particularly dangerous."

 "It is supremely contagious and those who are contracting it are not able to recover as swiftly. In these conditions, intensive care wards are in great demand."

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal

 

"[The world is entering a critical phase of the pandemic and needs to have vaccinations available for all adults as soon as possible]."

"This is both an ethical and public health imperative."

"As variants keep spreading, this pandemic is far from over until the whole world is safe."

Udaya Regmi, South Asia head, International Federation of Red Cross, Red Crescent Societies

 

"As India did that, [halting vaccine exports to retain supplies to inoculate its population], the pipeline of vaccines dried up for COVAX."

"I don't know who did the maths, but someone did the maths wrong."

"And the decision to go exclusively with the Serum Institute of India and not provide the license to more manufacturers has proved deadly for the developing world [in a shortage of vaccines for re-distrition]."

Leena Menghaney, Médecins Sans Frontières, New Delhi

 

"The ferocity of the second wave did take everyone by surprise."

"While we were all aware of second waves in other countries, we had vaccines at hand, and no indications from modeling exercises suggested the scale of the surge."

K. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific adviser to the Indian government

 

"The situation is horrible, absolutely terrible ... Everyone is afraid, every single person."

"People are afraid that if I am talking to a person, maybe I won't get to talk to them tomorrow or in the near future."

Manoj Garg, resident, New Delhi

AstraZeneca doses manufactured in India arriving in Kathmandu, Nepal, in January.  Credit...Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press

In January, when the Indian government appeared satisfied that it would be able to control the initial outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it enacted strict orders for its population to remain at home to venture so far and no further from their homes, and only for essential business. The infection rate in India's largest cities wasn't as disastrous as it might have been, given crowded living conditions and matters appeared to be well in hand. As one of the world's largest producers of vaccines, India also magnanimously began donating vaccines to its less-well-off neighbours.

It's a familiar scene; countries that succeeded in gaining a level of control over the global pandemic looked outside their borders at neighbours struggling to achieve what they did, and generously offered assistance. Some countries when China was in the throes of the first infections with the pathogen that originated in Wuhan, sent respirators, masks and anything else they had to give assistance, at a time when their own countries had not yet been engulfed by the fast-spreading virus that all too soon hit Europe and North America, sending Italy and Spain into a headspin.

Things have not proceeded well for India. To a good degree perhaps it was predictable; in fact India with its great population of 1.35 billion people was initially thought of as a potential tinderbox of opportunity for any threatening virus, and it seemed puzzling at first that it hadn't exploded into a firestorm of cases. It's almost as though the virus has a sense of dramatic timing, keeping the world in suspense, and then striking. It has struck India through a second venomous wave that seems unstoppable.

 

India is now experiencing what Italy did a year ago, in the shortage of hospital beds and medical oxygen. Italy became a symbol of the worst that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could inflict on humanity, but worse was to come when the U.S. and Brazil began their own epic struggles for survival against a beast of a virus. The world was given a hopeful boost of encouragement at early news that vaccines were in development, and then a vision of recovery as a handful of pharmaceutical manufacturers saw their products succeed in third level trials leading to approvals for mass inoculations.

 

Confidence was high for those countries with vaccine-producing facilities and the logistics of production and distribution and contract-signing proceeded apace. With India's own national vaccine producer on contract with AstraZeneca and the assurance that it could handle the demand for its product both at home and abroad. Now, however, for a week of succeeding days hundreds of thousands of new COVID cases have been logged for the world's second largest population. There are now 18 million in India infected with COVID-19.

 

Each day over 300,000 people test positive for the virus. The health facilities and crematoriums are working on overdrive and they are still being overwhelmed. On Wednesday alone, 360,960 new cases of COVID were tallied, horrifying India itself and the world around it, impelling other nations to begin sending relief to India, medical equipment, medical oxygen, respirators, personal protection equipment. The numbers are staggering, but according to experts these are not true numbers which are in fact, many times greater than the official tallies.

 

Yesterday alone, 3,293 Indians died of COVID-19. There is one death from COVID reported in Delhi state every four minutes. Ambulances convey bodies of COVID-19 victims to temporary crematorium facilities set up in public parks, parking lots and anywhere else they can be installed to relieve the pressure. Bodies are burned on funeral pyres set up in row after row. 

 

A mass cremation this week in New Delhi for people who died from the virus.  Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

In the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, Genesis hospital informs families they must take their family members elsewhere in view of its supplies of oxygen fast depleting. "The hospital is trying to get fresh oxygen but we are told we have to make alternative arrangements", stated Anjali Cerejo who must now attempt to find another bed elsewhere for her father who had been admitted to the hospital which now is unable to keep him as a patient. 

There is a burgeoning black market in operation however, where scarce supplies, including medical oxygen can be had at prices far, far in excess of what their usual rate is. For those who can afford those astronomical prices there may be a hope, but for the vast numbers of other afflicted people when the public hospitals and clinics are unable to respond, there is no hope. 

 

It is a scene of bedlam as people are lined up on trolleys, in cars and rickshaws with their family members holding oxygen cylinders for them, desperately awaiting an empty bed in the hospital.

India, according to the World Health Organization's weekly epidemiological update, accounts for 38 percent of the 5.7 million cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide last week. The B.1.617 variant of the virus that surfaced in India has a higher growth rate than other variants in the country, according to early modelling, suggesting increased transmissibility. 

India's best hope lies in vaccinating its vast population, in experts' opinion. Registrations were open for everyone in the population above age 18 to be vaccinated. Ironically and tragically, the world's biggest producer of vaccines is vastly short of stocks to inoculate the estimated 600 million people now eligible, added to the efforts to inoculate India's elderly, and those with other compromising medical conditions.

Several states in India have reported a shortage of coronavirus vaccine doses. AP Photo: Rafiq Maqbool

"I think the highest priority, you know, to be quite frank, has to be India."

"I mean, their situation is so desperate and the cases continue to rise [validating the decision to retain vaccines produced in India to be used in India]."

"This is a crisis now at a global level [but countries in Africa awaiting doses supplied to COVAX by India must wait]."

Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist, Columbia University 

The Serum Institute in Pune, India, is the world's largest vaccine maker. Supplied: The Serum Institute

India/Israel, A Tale of Two Nations

"One of the countries in which the pandemic is spreading brutally is our friend India. On behalf of all ministers and citizens of Israel, I would like to send our condolences to my friend, Indian PM Modi, and to the citizens of India over the tragic loss of life happening there. I have instructed the head of the National Security Council to render such assistance as may be requested. I hope that there will be an international effort, in which Israel is ready to be a full partner, to stop this tragedy."

"We are ahead of all other countries vis-à-vis the rate of fully vaccinating our citizens and this is very impressive. Even as we rejoice here, we still understand that large sections of humanity are suffering greatly. In any case, we are ready to help with whatever may be necessary."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 

There is great friendship, recognition and empathy between Israel and India. One, a tiny state whose presence on the world stage is both a rebuke to the world where diaspora Jews have always been marginalized, held in contempt, ostracized, denied official status, villainized and persecuted through the ages to the present time. In returning to its historical Judaic homeland, reclaiming its heritage and geography, Jews throughout the world are invited to return to a place of welcome, safety and security.

That, in any event, is the purpose and reason for the re-establishment of the State of Israel. Propelled by a 20th Century genocide of state-organized annihilation of Europe's Jews that was so successful, 80 years later the global Jewish population has not been able to match its numbers pre-Holocaust. The first reaction of Israel's Middle East neighbours was rejection of its presence, and exile of the millions of Jews who had lived in adjoining countries for thousands of years.

In the same year that Israel reasserted itself as a sovereign nation, India was torn apart when its Muslim population asserting a need for its own sovereignty on religious grounds, saw Pakistan born as Britain withdrew as a colonial power. Just as Israel in its infancy was met with conflict when the combined armies of some of its neighbours sought to destroy the nascent state, the division of India resulted in a paroxycsm of deadly violence between Hindus and Muslims with the exchange of populations.

Israel has lived ever since 1948 with the presence of two governments, led by Fatah and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip whose aim is to destroy Israel's presence and claim the entire geography that was offered through a Partition plan by the United Nations which Jews accepted and the Palestinians declined. Pakistan's ongoing hostility of a most incendiary, deadly nature, fed by both countries claiming Kashmir as their own, reflects an intractable enmity constantly threatening India with terrorist attacks and war, just as Israel faces the same from its Palestinian neighbours.

Both Hindu-dominated India and Judaic Israel have similar cultural values, and both are democracies. Israel's small size and its central government has made possible by a far-sighted prime minister, a swift response to the deadly coronavirus that is ravishing the globe's human populations. An agreement with a leading manufacturer of pharmaceuticals which had successfully tailored a vaccine against COVID provided Israel with a sufficient quantity of vaccine doses to undertake a huge and speedy vaccination of its population.

Israel's population size of 9 million people, can hardly be compared to India's massive 1.3 billion population, an unwieldy number in a large geography with varied languages, ethnic groups, cultures and lifestyle mode. Three quarters of India's population lives rurally and traditionally. Although India is one of the world's leading vaccine manufacturers the logistics involved in speedily vaccinating such an immense population is mind-boggling. Culture and tradition inform the Indian way of life, as does the size of the population leading to intensely crowded communal living conditions.

While Israel's population is now wildly celebrating its timely rescue from the stifling confinement brought on by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, opening restaurants and places of entertainment and Israelis may now socialize unmasked in public with life returning to normal in an atmosphere of herd immunity, India, teeming with humanity in its great crowded metropoli and countrysides alike, is in the throes of an utterly uncontrolled massive invasion of a deadly pathogen.

"We were quickly vaccinating the population, and at the same time, we were dealing with huge numbers every day. And then all of a sudden, there was a breaking point [when the 'R number' trended low]", explained Israel's Health Minister Yuli Edlstein. "You are reaching a threshold that is very close to herd immunity. We're seeing an explosion of other patients now -- everyone who was afraid to come in [to hospital] before [now arriving for mundane medical procedures]", said Yoram Weiss, director of Jerusalem's Hadassah University Medical Center.

A hospital staff member checks oxygen cylinders inside a hospital in Srinagar, India-controlled Kashmir, on Sunday. India’s crematoriums and burial grounds are being overwhelmed by the devastating new surge of infections tearing through the populous country with terrifying speed, depleting the supply of life-saving oxygen to critical levels and leaving patients to die while waiting in line to see doctors. (Mukhtar Khan/The Associated Press)

This, at a time when India has been forced to stop exporting vaccines to sources outside the country to conserve it for desperately needed vaccinations throughout its own interior. When the hospitals already crowded beyond saturation are running out of oxygen and are unable to treat seriously ill COVID patients. When extemporary sites in public parks, parking lots and anywhere else available are being turned into vast cremation sites.

India's new coronavirus infections hit a record peak for a fifth day, reporting 352,991 cases in the last 24 hours, with the overwhelmed graveyards and crematoriums a stark symbol of the crisis. Here, health workers and relatives carry the body of a COVID-19 victim for cremation in Jammu, India, on Monday. (Channi Anand/The Associated Press)

 

Looking for Answers to COVID Derivation in China

"The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high containment laboratory."

U.S. Diplomatic cable

"It's a fabulous piece of virology by the Chinese group and it's very impressive, but they haven't been thinking clearly about what they are doing."

"It's very worrying."

Simon Wain-Hobson, virologist, Paris Pasteur Institute

"[The Chinese government was responsible for the most] ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history."

"The deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat [is beyond praiseworthy]."

World Health Organization report

"So it was apparent [that the investigation was marred by clear political tension]  and there were people from foreign affairs in China attending our meetings and so on."

"It was at times tense, but always very well mannered and good humoured."

"The group [WHO investigators] wasn't designed to go and do a forensic examination of lab practise in Wuhan, China]."

Dominic Dwyer, microbiologist, Austrian WHO investigative team

The WHO team investigating the origins of the novel coronavirus arrives at the heavily guarded Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in February. Photograph: Héctor Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

 

Much-needed answers to questions regarding the true provenance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 remain elusive. China's initial identification of a wet market in Wuhan as the source of the novel coronavirus cross-species-infection from animal to human was proven to be untrustworthy. And as the virus flamed out of China to invade the world at large, the peculiar coincidence of a virology laboratory located in sneezing distance of where the first COVID cases were detected raised suspicions that all was not as revealed.

China's first BSL-4 laboratory, a classification representing facilities equipped to deal with dangerous pathogens, was located adjacent the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory had most recently been involved in research on coronaviruses and in particular on bat coronaviruses, the very type believed to be most closely related to the virus causing COVID-19. U.S. diplomats visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018.

What they saw there persuaded them to send a cable to Washington with a warning about the lax standards at the facility and the risk it potentially posed of possibly becoming the future source of a pandemic. In January of 2021 the State Department claimed it had evidence staff at the Chinese institute were revealed to have symptoms now known to be those of  COVID-19, back in the fall of 2019.

This would not have been the first time that a high-security virology laboratory in China posed as a possible source of runaway globe-altering pathogens on the loose. The Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in 2013 had been accused of "appalling irresponsibility" when scientists there mixed avian and human influenza viruses in the creation of a new and potentially deadly hybrid. Dr.Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist in France warned that the lab might have created a virus with the potential to be the cause of between 500,000 and 100 million global deaths.

When a serious security breach took place at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada in July of 2019, Chinese researchers Xiangguo Qiu, her husband and a Chinese student were escorted from the Winnipeg facility by RCMP and questioned regarding a shipment of Ebola and henipavirus samples, both pathogens flown without adequate safeguards out of the laboratory to Wuhan. There has been silence ever since, no explanation for the event, but the suspicion lingers of scientific espionage.

 

The World Health Organization investigation team discussed the conclusions of its investigation at a press conference in Wuhan, China, on 9 February.   Credit: Kyodo News/Getty

Australia boldly insisted the world required a thorough probe into the origins of COVID-19. Beijing has since exacted a number of penalties on Australia, an important trading partner with China. Threats and attempts at forcing Australia to stand down have been numerous. Eventually the World Health Organization agreed to a more neutral version of the Australian proposal and dispatched a team of ten researchers to China for a two-week period. The team was assigned to conduct interviews and review reports, all under strict surveillance by Chines authorities.

The microbiologists at the Wuhan laboratory knew full well that Chinese authorities expect them to say little and certainly nothing incriminating. Beijing made a point of threatening any medical personnel at the beginning of the epidemic in Wuhan that their professional accreditation would be endangered if they failed to behave with proper circumspection. "If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier I think it would have been a lot better", ophthalmologist Li Wenliang stated.

Shortly afterward the young physician who had been interrogated over having alerted his professional peers to the presence of a strange new and deadly pneumonia-like virus that had entered hospitals, was dead himself from the lethal effects of having contracted COVID. Beijing was found to be funding research into COVID's origins and at the same time censoring results through a specialized task force. Scientists working on bat coronaviruses have had samples confiscated and orders were given to avoid speaking to the press.

Peter Daszak of a World Health Organization team rolls up a vendors layout map of Huanan Seafood market after signing on it as he prepares to leave his hotel for the airport at the end of their WHO mission to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Beijing, Vindicating Itself

Mr Zhang's father (Supplied: Zhang Hai)

"Very important site visits today -- a wholesale market first & Huanan Seafood Market just now."  "Very informative & critical for our joint teams to understand the epidemiology of COVID as it started to spread at the end of 2019."

Peter Daszak, zoologist with U.S. group EcoHealth Alliance, member of WHO team

 

"The government's first priority is to protect the people's health and safety, but it failed to inform the public as soon as the coronavirus outbreak happened."

"My father, a very patriotic soldier, had devoted his youth to the nation … but he was killed by COVID-19 in his later life."

"The epidemic would never happen if the government had truly put the people's interest [as their] first priority."

"[He wouldn't trust visits organized and limited by the Chinese government, and thought the information patients gave could be] highly suspicious."

"They could have been trained many months ago, and been ordered to stage and repeat the government's narrative."

"I am highly concerned that the WHO experts in Wuhan are not a match for these counterfeiters."

 Zhang Hai, 51, Wuhan resident

 

The WHO team visits an exhibition about the Government's successful response to contain the coronavirus in Wuhan on Saturday.   (AP: Ng Han Guan)

"[I had] police interviews, cameras pointing at home, and dismissal from work. They pressured my families, stalked my activities, which is completely unscrupulous."

"[I am told] don't contact the foreign media, because it will be used by anti-China forces, which is detrimental to our country."

"I just want everyone to know that the government is a murderer for hiding the epidemic."

 Parent who lost an only child

Government propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party officially denies it was in any way irresponsible over its handling of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, over charges that it waited too long to warn the international community and the World Health Organization of its discovery of a strange new pneumonia-like illness that was plaguing people in Wuhan City. Its assurance when it did alert the WHO that person-to-person transmission was unlikely was inaccurate and harmful to the world's understanding of what was unfolding.

Not only does Beijing deny that it acted in anything but a responsible manner, but it also denies that the virus itself first emerged in Hubei Province, northern China. Rather, the propaganda slyly insists it emerged elsewhere, abroad, and was imported to China. That happened in one of two ways, they claim; either through infected frozen meat exported by a European country into China, or it was deliberately brought to China by U.S. agents. 

Beijing's inexcusable attempts to hide the presence of a new, highly contagious and lethal-to-the-elderly virus, its silencing of physicians in Wuhan hospitals who raised the alarm, threatening them and accusing them of spreading 'false news', also did not happen, but represents a malicious attempt on the part of the West to smear China. Casually speaking of the virus as the 'Wuhan virus', or the 'Chinese virus' sends Beijing into paroxysms of fury, but not a word is murmured by the WHO about racism when the media speak of the new 'U.K.' mutation', or the 'South African' variant.

Beijing screamed bloody murder and called it racism when other countries began to close their borders to China, and the World Health Organization chastised those that did, wagging a finger of racism at them as well. Yet once China succeeded during the first wave of the coronavirus to achieve a measure of control, it closed its borders to entry from abroad, where Italy and Spain in particular were experiencing a crisis in runaway COVID infection rates overwhelming their health care systems.

A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. The WHO team is investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has visited two disease control centers in the province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

American authorities and some U.S. bioscientists raised the possibility that the virus was an escapee of a biohazard laboratory located not far from the Wuhan live meat market which sold pangolin, wolf cubs, bats, snakes and other live animals for slaughter for the human palate and where the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first said to have emerged. To this day there is no consensus of opinion over that hypothesis; eminent scientists declare it to be hugely unlikely while others retain suspicion.

China delayed the entry of the WHO team of investigators to Wuhan City although it had initially agreed that it would cooperate with their mission to study the breakout of the virus that had crossed the species barrier from wild animals to human victims, not an entirely rare occurrence and invariably difficult to control. But after delays and controversy, the team, having undergone a 14-day mandatory isolation period on arrival in China, is now into its third day of a two-week investigation.

"The team plans to visit hospitals, laboratories and markets. Field visits will include the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Huanan market, Wuhan CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention] laboratory."

"All hypotheses are on the table as the team follows the science in their work. They should receive the support, access and the data they need."

World Health Organization statement

 

"It is now that the actual field work can begin, and it is my expectation that for this part of the mission we will have unhindered access to the requested destinations and individuals."

"But it is important to remember that the success of this mission and origin-tracing is 100 percent depending on access to the relevant sources."

"No matter how competent we are, how hard we work and how many stones we try to turn, this can only be possible with the support from China."

Thea Fischer, Danish team member

China's foreign ministry for its part said the WHO team is scheduled to participate in seminars, visits and field trips, and it is no doubt hoping that it can de-politicize the assumptions some of the WHO members come equipped with, while carrying on its own politicization of a topic so overwhelmingly pervasive throughout the world and so deadly that millions of lives globally have been lost to the viral predator. Beijing, by setting its own program for the visit before the investigators, likely seeks to diminish the time allotted for the WHO members' own agenda while consuming that time in 'meetings'.

 

Beijing has also made it abundantly clear that it has complete control over where the WHO team will be escorted, always in the presence of handlers. And the many Chinese who are intent on being interviewed by the WHO team while Chinese authorities harass and threaten their outspokenness, is simply yet another facet of a lost cause; try as they sincerely will, with the obstacles placed in their path to fulfilling their mission, it is highly unlikely the WHO will come away with anything but Beijing's approved narrative.

 

A worker in protective overall passes by a warehouse at the Baishazhou wholesale market during a visit by the World Health Organization on the third day of field visit in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

COVID Hospitalization in Canada's Capital

Vanessa Large. Photo Tony Caldwell/Postmedia

"It was never peaceful. Everyone was very anxious. They all knew. The patients weren't naive, they knew they had COVID, and they knew coming in what was on the TV. 'OK, I'm not doing well and you're talking about ICU. Is this it? Is this where we're going'?"

"And unfortunately, the only answer was, 'We're going to ICU. They're going to do what they can to help  you and we're going to update your family."

"And sometimes we saw patients come back, and sometimes we didn't."

Vanessa Large, registered nurse, COVID Unit, The Ottawa Hospital

Dr.Samantha Halman . Photo Tony Caldwell/Postmedia

"They asked me that if it came to that and it looked like it was going to happen, the only thing they wanted from me was to make sure they weren't suffering, and I promised them we could do that."

"[Every  COVID death is different but all are memorable], We worry about the patients. We worry about them when we go home. We think about them."

"I've seen a lot of people die, and I have to be comfortable with death because it's part of my regular life. But the last six months have really struck with me. These are hard deaths. They're psychologically very hard."

"In many cases, outside this pandemic, I'm usually able to make sure the family is there and they're not alone and people are prepared. But with this, their family member wasn't sick two months ago. They didn't have cancer. They didn't have a terminal illness. They were playing hockey or they were out with their grandkids and all of a sudden, they're gone. And that's really hard to accept."

"Everybody thinks about the classic fever/shortness of breath/cough, but we've had quite a few people who have presented with gastrointestinal symptoms, like profound loss of appetite, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting. We've had quite a number of people presenting with near-fainting spells. We've ha people who have presented with strokes. We've had people come in with blood clots or pulmonary embolisms in their lungs or their legs. In older people, especially people from institutions, we've had people who have come in confused or with delirium."

"Anyone who comes in and we're thinking there's something that's off, all of these people are getting COVID swabbed. There's no real environment where you feel completely safe, because it can present as anything."

Dr.Samantha Halman, general internal medicine specialist, The Ottawa Hospital

The world has faced quite an upheaval in the last nine months; no less so the capital city of Canada and its leading hospital. The public is familiar with the results of announced lockdowns; social isolation, the urging of the medical community to remain alert and distanced, to wear masks and avoid crowds. And adjust to the social changes of lockdown where only those businesses considered crucial may remain open, and other shuttered temporarily -- or permanently. Children being home-schooled or subjected to remote-learning. People working from home, remotely. A sea change from normalcy.

And of course, for those not themselves affected by contracting COVID, or having someone in the family infected, there is the news and the daily case counts to keep the public informed and alert to the ongoing pandemic now resurgent, with a vengeance. From a toehold to a foothold to a complete invasion. And there are the hospital admissions, the transfer to intensive care, the deaths and the recoveries. Hospitals employ a variety of methods; supplemental oxygen, steroids and painkillers. And a lot of attentively quiet listening.

In Ottawa, Canada's capital alone, over 9,000 people were infected by COVID-19, more than half of those infected under age 40. But of the majority of the close to 400 deaths that ensued it was the elderly that carried the brunt of the living sacrifice. Three quarters of those in the elderly category were in their 80s and over, many suffering comorbidities exacerbating prognosis and ultimately outcome. It is interesting to compare illnesses and their death rates. According to Ottawa Public Health's mortality data from the most recent year where data is available, 2015, death from COVID ranks fourth.

Among the leading cause of death, ischemic heart disease led the peak death rate at 800, with dementia and Alzheimer's following at 662 deaths, lung cancer 413, and COVID following in fourth place of leading death counts in the city. Flu and pneumonia accounted for 155 death-responsibility. Although death from any cause is lamentable at the very least, heartbreaking at best for the families involved, COVID deaths prove to be quick and brutal. Someone will decide to go to hospital to find out what it is that appears off kilter with them. 

That shortness of breath is particularly worrisome and horribly uncomfortable. Two hours following admission supplemental oxygen is being administered, and the rate is progressively increased reflecting a steadily worsening condition. Breathing becomes rapid and shallow with 30 to 40 or more breaths per minute, yet failing to provide adequate oxygen. A switch follows from supplemental to high flow oxygen with the use of a breathing machine pumping pure oxygen. 

"Things are spinning out of control very quickly" says Dr.Halman. "It's very scary for patients because you go from coming in and being on two litres of oxygen to suddenly having 20 people thinking about how we're going to transport you safely across the hospital and down to the ICU and talking about putting you on a breathing machine when ten hours ago you weren't even short of breath." About one in five patients hospitalized with COVID required treatment in an intensive care unit, while the remainder had care in a regular COVID unit, many of whom improved to return home.

New development used blood thinners in treatment in reflection of some COVID patients becoming prone to blood clots. Decadron or dexamethasone representing a cortiscosteroid reducing inflammation, and antibiotics are also routinely administered. A dozen trial therapies are being tried out at the hospital including antiviral drugs like remdesivir and convalescent plasma. Patients are turned to lie on their stomachs to  help clear lungs. The most serious patients are placed on ventilators where an endotracheal tube running from mouth to lungs is inserted, the ventilator breathing for the patient.

Dr.Kwadwo Kyeremanteng (Kwadwo Kyeremanteng) jpg

"It's what we call invasive ventilation. It's uncomfortable, you need to be knocked out for it on sedatives and pain medications to tolerate it. People don't realize how difficult it is to be an ICU patient. We have a lot of PTSD, we have a lot of depression after with patients who survive it", explained Dr.Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, intensive care physician at The Ottawa Hospital. "The saddest part is seeing people die alone, which no one deserves, period. When you see someone who has been a good person and lived a good life and cared for their family, and they're dying surrounded by strangers in what look like haz-mat suits, everyone deserves better."