The Chinese Communist Party — after skating by without truly cooperating with any serious investigation into the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus — is balking at new scrutiny that's coming from the international community calling the proposed terms that include an investigation into a potential lab leak "impossible" to accept.
The head of the World Health Organization, which itself was compromised by CCP influences as the pandemic broke out, announced last week it was premature to rule out the theory that COVID-19 was the result of a lab accident. This significant reversal also saw WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also air rare criticism of the Chinese Communist Party's lack of transparency during the WHO's first joint investigation with China into COVID's origins.
Now, China is scrambling to block the second phase of WHO investigations to again avoid any responsibility for unleashing the Wuhan coronavirus on the world.
During a Thursday press conference, the vice minister of China's National Health Commission Zeng Yixin declared "we will not accept such an origins-tracing plan as it, in some aspects, disregards common sense and defies science," according to reports.
Citing "privacy concerns" as the reason it could not turn over additional data — an ironic assertion given China's all-powerful and all-knowing government — Yixin said "we hope the WHO would seriously review the considerations and suggestions made by Chinese experts and truly treat the origin tracing of the COVID-19 virus as a scientific matter, and get rid of political interference."
It appears the Chinese Communist Party is taking a page from Dr. Fauci's messaging playbook by attributing criticism and scrutiny of China's actions to attacks on science itself.
A Chinese official who sits on the WHO-China joint investigation team also sought to turn the focus away from his country. Liang Wannian said "a lab leak is extremely unlikely and it is not necessary to invest more energy and efforts in this regard." How convenient.
Wannian suggested WHO investigators look outside of China as attempts to trace the origin of COVID-19 continue, focusing on other countries with bats. If the lab leak theory is to be considered, Wannian said, other countries — including the United States — should investigate their own labs, not China's.
Yuan Zhiming, a director at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, also sought to quash future scrutiny of his lab, stating the Wuhan coronavirus "was of natural origin" and claimed "no virus leak or staff infections had occurred at the facility since it opened in 2018."
The Wall Street Journal broke the news that "three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report," shooting holes in Zhiming's and most other Chinese claims that there's no reason to look closer at the WIV and what may have transpired there before COVID spread from China around the world.
As Chinese officials scramble to reject a new WHO investigation, work continues on a U.S. report on COVID's origins commissioned by President Biden — after he killed an investigation launched by the Trump administration. In his announcement of his U.S. inquiry on May 26, Biden asked for findings within 90 days.