WHOdunnit: did virus emerge from a Wuhan lab or not?

It’s been a busy week in the Covid world – which, let’s face it, is the world we all live in.

To begin with, there was a smidgeon of good news. A US study published in the British Medical Journal suggests that delaying the interval between first and second doses of Covid-19 vaccines could, within the 18-65 age group, actually increase the level of protection against the virus – a finding which directly contradicts the advice given by both AstraZeneca and Pfizer when their vaccines were first announced at the end of last year. 

Boris Johnson must have punched the air upon hearing this, for if the study is right it means that, by pure fluke, his Government’s decision to extend the gap between first and second jabs to 12 weeks, rather than the recommended three-to-four (in order to get as many people as possible at least partially protected), was right all along.

The prime minister, it would seem, can do no wrong. It is as if his return from a near-death experience with Covid, preceded as it was by a stubborn refusal to recognise the seriousness of the situation, had given him a unique insight into what had to be done from that point on to keep Britain safe. 

But then came the news that the Indian variant of Covid could mean that the intended easing of lockdown restrictions in June might have to be postponed. The PM was banking on an opening up of society in time for the arrival of summer and was clearly dismayed that the virus was once more shaping up to frustrate his plans. 

At the global level, meanwhile, looking back not ahead, was the week’s principal preoccupation. An official report into the way in which the world in general, and the World Health Organisation in particular, responded to the pandemic as it unfolded was released on Monday. Supposedly independent but commissioned by the WHO itself, which appointed its members, it was extremely coy about the one question that everyone wants answered: who is to blame and how did it happen? 

When something really bad happens that could potentially end the careers of important people, there is an entirely understandable urge to look for the cover-up, and only rarely are those doing the looking disappointed. 

China is more or less exonerated. We are asked to accept that the highly secretive Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was studying exactly the type of SARS viruses that gave rise to Covid-19 and is but a hop and a skip from the now-notorious Wuhan wet market, played no part in the chain of events that to date has resulted in some three million deaths worldwide. The report makes no mention of the fact that as the disease first jumped continents, to Iran and Italy, Beijing banned Chinese doctors and officials from sharing information with the outside world. 

Should we have been surprised? Headed by Helen Clark, a former New Zealand premier and long-time UN insider, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the 82-year-old former Liberian President and winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the report prefers to spread the blame as widely, and thinly, as possible. As Andrew Bremberg, the former US ambassador to the WHO, put it, “The focus of this was supposed to be on how did this start … but at every step of the way they kept expanding it to, ‘let’s look at everything’”. 

Helen Clark appears unbothered by such cynicism. “We didn’t set out as a panel to cast blame,” she told journalists, adding: “We have described what happened as the Chernobyl moment in global health.”

Quite so. And wouldn’t we all like to know how Chernobyl started!

Looking on the bright side, and with unique specificity, Clark and Sirleaf, together with their colleagues, go out of their way to commend China for its speedy action in containing the disease and its (rather more belated) release of findings into the nature of the pathogens responsible. They refuse, other than in passing, to waste time criticising the WHO for advising governments in the early months of the crisis to leave their borders open and for offering little or no opinion on the wearing of masks. Instead, they call on the UN and global leaders to give the organisation more power (and more money) so that future threats can, as it were, be headed off at the pass. 

In the meantime, to show that it pulls no punches (perish the thought), the report’s authors castigate various unnamed governments for having “devalued science” during the search for a cure. I will hazard a guess that the Covid sceptics who cannot be named include Donald Trump, best remembered for his advice that those showing symptoms should inject themselves with bleach; Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, who told Brazilians to “stop whining” about Covid, which he dismissed as “just a little cold”; the Mexican President López Obrador, who urged his followers to eat, drink and be merry to protect the economy; and the Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani, who started off by saying the cornavirus wasn’t a problem and ended by threatening to hang anyone guilty of hoarding masks or PPE.
All four, and others too anonymous to mention, will be shaking in their shoes.  

Writing in the science website Medium.com in advance of the report’s publication, Nicholas Wade, a former science editor of the New York Times, vilified by the scientific establishment for his views on genetics and race, is characteristically more forthright in his opinions. He blames China, but points the finger, too, at virologists in America and Europe who hoped to profit from the research going on in Wuhan. In particular, he points to the fact that controversial work on viruses pursued at the institute by China’s Dr Shi Zheng-li – known as the Bat Lady – was funded by the US National Institute of Health. He even dares to have a go at the sainted figure of Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to the President, for an alleged lapse of judgement in okaying the research. 

People around the world, says Wade, are looking for answers and have been ill-served up to now not only by governments but by a compliant media. “Perhaps,” he concludes, “the international community of virologists will come to be seen as a false and self-interested guide. The common sense perception that a pandemic breaking out in Wuhan might have something to do with a Wuhan lab cooking up novel viruses of maximal danger in unsafe conditions could eventually displace the ideological insistence that whatever Trump said can’t be true.” 

Angels and ministers of grace defend us. Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey!