After some initial fumbling in December 2019, when the nature of the virus became more certain, China started to notify the WHO and the United States on 3 January, 2020, including sharing of findings in prestigious scientific journals.
Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million people, was first locked down on 23 January, sending an unmistakable signal to the world of a massive virus outbreak. However, it seemed that the initial alarm bells were not taken seriously enough by the United States and other Western countries. When the pandemic finally exploded in their faces, they found themselves caught with their pants down.
Against accusing fingers, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Madam Hua Chunying aired a rebuttal on 31 March, detailing relevant timelines.
Former US Deputy National Security Adviser Nadia Schadlow and scholar Kishore Mahbubani joined Fareed Zakaria on CNN on 19 April to debate President Trump's accusations against China, echoed by supporting politicians.
Responding to a class-action law suit filed in the state of Florida suing China for Coronavirus compensations, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang pointed out its fallacy on 20 April, reminding the world that no compensation was sought from the United States for spread of the H1N1 pandemic in 2009-10. Click here (Similarly, no question of compensation was ever raised for the world financial crisis spawned in the United States in 2008-9).
Conjectures about the origin of Coronavirus abound, including conspiracy theories about lab-engineered "biowarfare" by either side, notwithstanding the fact that the Wuhan virology lab, first established in 1956, has a long history of international scientific collaboration, including the University of Texas's Galveston National Laboratory on biocontainment. Click here
In face of growing demand by world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel to know the truth, a more independent and international investigation is called for than US partisan or bipartisan committees bent on a "China witch hunt". It is also becoming evident that the virus was spreading in the United States much earlier than the Wuhan outbreak.
What the world needs is peer-reviewed global scientific research, ideally involving professionals from both China and the United States - to find out exactly:
(a) regardless of initial spread, where did the current Coronavirus first originate, taking into account various strains of the same virus;
(b) whether the infected cases in some European countries and the US originate from the same virus strain obtaining in China;
(c) whether the World Health Organisation could have alerted the world earlier of this pandemic;
(d) how the WHO could be made even more independent and transparent;
(e) how the world should cooperate in finding an affordable vaccine for Covid-19, poised to ravage the developing world;
(f) how the developing world can be helped to fight this exploding human catastrophe;
(g) what global measures should be put in place to contain Covid-19, including the probability of resurgence with changing of seasons;
(h) what protocols should be adopted by communities and businesses to cope with a new normal of Coronavirus;
(i) what measures should be adopted across the globe to safeguard health and security of international travel, both air, sea and overland;
(j) how international protection against the ravages of pandemics should be funded and managed for the common good and not just big pharmaceutical.
corporations.
On Feature Story News, an interantional broadcast agency, I made the point on 23 April, 2020 that to end all speculations, and indeed, to expose unfounded accusations, China should benefit from a truly independent and international joint investigation as outlined above, perhaps under the aegis of the United Nations.
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