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China

WHO-led Team Expected in China in January To Probe COVID-19 Origins (reuters.com) 96

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
An international mission led by the World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to go to China in the first week of January to investigate the origins of the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, a member and diplomats told Reuters this week. From a report: The United States, which has accused China of having hidden the outbreak's extent, has called for a "transparent" WHO-led investigation and criticised its terms, which allowed Chinese scientists to do the first phase of preliminary research. China reported the first cases of a pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, central China, to the WHO on Dec. 31 and closed a market where the novel coronavirus is believed to have emerged. Health ministers called on the WHO in May to identify the source of the virus and how it crossed the species barrier. Now a team of 12-15 international experts is finally preparing to go to Wuhan to examine evidence, including human and animal samples collected by Chinese researchers, and to build on their initial studies. Thea Fischer, a Danish member, said that the team would leave "just after New Year's" for a six-week mission, including two weeks of quarantine on arrival.
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WHO-led Team Expected in China in January To Probe COVID-19 Origins More

WHO-led Team Expected in China in January To Probe COVID-19 Origins

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  • Literally a Year Too Late (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nice job "World Health Organization". Way to stay on the ball.

    • Re:Literally a Year Too Late (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @05:22PM (#60842712)

      Indeed. The coverup is complete, the witnesses have been disappeared or cowed, stories have been rehearsed and the optimal WHO investigators have been agreed upon. Expect nothing of note from this carefully curated "investigation."

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Joe2020 ( 6760092 )

      A year too late, but enough time to destroy conclusive evidence.

    • Nice job "World Health Organization". Way to stay on the ball.

      Surely "staying on the ball" would be to concentrate on the pandemic that was raging around the world and killing people. Only when they have that under some sort of control and vaccines start to be distributed should they start look back on the oranges of the virus and what lessons can be learned handling pandemics.

      The only reason why so many people were whining about the where the virus came from was that they wanted to distract from the poor performance of the governments' handling of the virus.

    • The W.H.O. is only allowed what its individual member allow, and told what its member tell them. They are not that magic organisation with super power which can go in any country , do what they like, and force country to spit out info. They are SOLELY a coordination group which take the info member give and make an assessement from that info and spread them to other member.

      TL;DR : they are an info and coordination group.

      All that stupidity about the "W.H.O. being beholden to china" and the utter stupidi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stooo ( 2202012 )

        >> The W.H.O. is being made a scapegoat by politician and others for their own failing.

        WHO are politicians.

    • clearly one and a half year after the fact to collect a bunch of carefully crafted lies.
      What a shitshow is this WHO ? Why don't we just disband and dissolve it ?

  • An international mission led by the World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to go to China in the first week of January

    This has to be old news. Surely they are talking about January 2020 right?

    • Surely they are talking about January 2020 right?

      No, it's a mistake in the translation from the Chinese calendar!

  • Do they expect us to trust them? WHO just lost all credibility with strings pulled from China.

    • I think they don't care if you trust anyone or not. It's not about you at all. It's not about Trump and it's not about the CPC. This is about information gathering and science. It's attitudes like yours that have meant it has taken this long for independent (ie not US) scientists to be allowed into China to investigate. The CPC know full well that people from the US are just interested in blame and wi jump on any little thing and blow it out of proportion...

  • A big fuck you for spreading this out.

    -The rest of the world

  • Let's be real (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @05:03PM (#60842652) Homepage

    I'm so tired of this being about the US or Trump. You say

    The United States, which has accused China of having hidden the outbreak's extent

    The "accusation" is fact:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

    "Dr Li, 34, tried to send a message to fellow medics about the outbreak at the end of December. Three days later police paid him a visit and told him to stop."

    China tried to cover this up at the start. Or, are we going to make the argument that Donald Trump has some mind-control powers that he's using on the BBC?

    • I have no problems believing that the CPC attempted to cover this up. Covering stuff up is par for the course in China, and the CPC is very good at it. There is enough evidence to conclude that COVID-19 originated in bats and spread to humans at a lab in Wuhan, due to lax controls. No evidence that there was any malice, just negligence.

      Seeing the CPC fall because of COVID would be amazing, but I don't think proving that COVID originated in bats being studied in a Chinese lab is going to be enough of a sca

      • No evidence that there was any malice, just negligence.

        When you're dealing with studying things of this nature (COVID, anthrax, etc) negligence **is** malice.

      • There is enough evidence to conclude that COVID-19 originated in bats and spread to humans at a lab in Wuhan

        Is there? I'm legitimately curious. I don't think I've seen that.

        It's well known that the virus made the jump from animal to human in/around Wuhan, and there's a lab in Wuhan that studies this sort of virus in bats, but is there evidence of a link between the two beyond the coincidence?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And who gives a fuck at this point. The US and Europe has long known about the virus. The two equally fucked up, despite knowing months before major outbreaks occurred in the west. Trying to point fingers at China for their own much larger fuck ups is ridiculous.

    • The United States, which has accused China of having hidden the outbreak's extent
      The "accusation" is fact

      I thought the US official policy per Trump tweets and other official outlets is that the numbers are phony and they're just high because we test more, and it's not any worse than the flu anyway, and the heat over summer would make it disappear, or if a Democrat is elected it will disappear because the whole thing is just a phony narrative driven by the left?

      How can China hide something that doesn't exist? The president of the United States said its all a big nothing burger made up by his opponents! China

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        COVID symptoms are pretty generic and it appears China noticed it before Italy and several US states. Still, there might have been some brief coverup, or just wishful thinking.

        Then there's the US, where a large portion of the population, including the president, is still trying to cover it up.

    • The "accusation" is fact

      And the fact is the USA made an accusation. What's your point? Neither what you're saying nor what the TFS said are in any way wrong or even inconsistent with each other.

      It's a fact China covered it up.
      It's also a fact that the USA accused them of it.

    • That is not what you think it is. In no way is it a cover-up of the extent of the outbreak or an attempt to make it public knowledge. In fact, he explicitly attempted to not make it widely known. He actually didn't know what he knew and the announcement was being made anyway.
      So, no, I for one don't buy that as evidence of anything much at all, except telling someone to stick to the process.

  • Just in time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday December 17, 2020 @05:17PM (#60842690) Journal
    With the U.S. having 3,600+ deaths recorded on Wednesday [cnn.com], the highest in the world at any time, over 247,00 new cases, also a record, and over 300,000 dead, yup, another record, now would be a good time to see where things all started. We can reminisce when the con artist said he had things pretty much shut down, that everything was fully under control and a problem that was going away [go.com], praised Xi for all his hard work, and how the U.S. was working closely with China on mitigation efforts [washingtontimes.com].

  • Why china any more??? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Kelxin ( 3417093 )
    It has been shown repeatedly it was out in the world months before it was found in China... https://www.webmd.com/lung/new... [webmd.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bob4u2c ( 73467 )
      Italy you say? I wonder if Italy has a large number of Chinese immigrant workers who travel back and forth between China and Italy? Yep, they do reuters.com [reuters.com]. So that leaves one to wonder, did the virus start in Italy or was it brought there?

      Also if you read the article. It doesn't say Italy discovered the virus in a boy back in November (it heavily infers it though). It says they re-examined swabs taken from patients and found that they had traces of the virus. What the article doesn't state is how

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        The CDC (yes, the American one) also found COVID in blood donated in 2019, in nine states across the US.

        Wuhan was where a weird pneumonia was first identified as a new and dangerous disease. Where it actually made the species jump is anyone's guess.

      • > Chinese immigrant workers who travel back and forth between China and Italy? Yep, they do reuters.com. So that leaves one to wonder, did the virus start in Italy or was it brought there?

        Right. It could well have been taken from Italy to China. It's only bigotry that makes people jump to on conclusion or the other.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by bob4u2c ( 73467 )
          You are right it could have been. Without performing an open independent investigation we will never know. But that is the whole point of this story, that the WHO is now only getting the chance to look at the records in China almost a year afterwards. Even then, it looks like there will be sever limits on access to information and records. Even if the cleanup of records hasn't begun they still have almost a month to get their story straight.

          As far as where it most likely started, ask a fire chief wher

    • It has been shown repeatedly it was out in the world months before it was found in China...

      The virus decided to stop infecting people in Italy and instead it travelled to China, infect everyone in Wuhan, because why not, and it then went back to Italy, because it realised it had unfinished business there. This is your theory.

      (Beware of the sarcasm!)

      Viruses don't care which country these are in. If the virus had started in Italy would it first have spread in Italy or at the very least spread in Italy simultaneously to Wuhan assuming the virus would have been carried to China immediately after firs

    • Your own link states that it is from Wuhan, just that it was in Italy months earlier than assumed before.
  • Absolutely NOTHING to see there or to be gained by this.
    The time for the inspection was when the infection first happened. Now? If this was done at a lab, it has been cleaned up. If nature, then really nothing to see.

  • Lemme ask a few questions:
    1) Do you really think china will give any evidence other than the narrative they want to paint for the world to see?
    2) Do you think any evidence exists more than a year after covid started?

    If you answered 'no' to any of these questions, then don't send the team, its a waste of time.

    • It's been a massive cock-up from the start.

      The only gain there can be is to deliver further evidence to what we already know, but the greater picture won't change after we've witnessed the outbreak live and in devastating detail spread across the planet.

      Of course does China not want to take them blame. Which country would willingly want to admit to have caused the deaths of millions? It would be a political international suicide for any country. Nobody is going to put on a shoe of this size without a fight.

  • Could there possibly be any evidence that hadn't been compromised by now?

  • How very not useful.

  • This is so much laughable!!!

    Few months ago the sent a "team" of 2 scientists for the very same reason because that's all China allowed. And now after US has begun shipping vaccine, the origins of the vaccine is undoubtedly gone, they are going to investigate? Can't say President Trump was too harsh when he pulled support.

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