Did China Unleash a Bio-Weapon?

By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 16/04/2020

This is the ten-trillion-dollar question burning in the minds of many – except for NZ journalists, who day-after-day sit through press conferences about the Covid crisis with our government leaders and never mention the word “China.”

The fact that our largest trading partner has obviously indulged in a monumental cover-up that has brought the entire world economy to its knees and literally paused our lives in a Kafkaesque lockdown should see all our journalists peppering our leaders with questions about our country’s future relations with China.  Instead we hear them only asking about the details of government handouts.  They are beyond pathetic and the very definition of “non-essential” workers.

The Chinese Communist Party has an official narrative, which, along with the World Health Organisation, they’ve peddled daily since the Wuhan virus wrecked China’s economy before it travelled down the Silk Road to wreck the economies of the rest of the world.

That narrative is: the virus originated from a live animal market in the city of Wuhan.

If this is true, why then did health officials inside China go to such extraordinary lengths to silence the medical whistleblowers, like Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned his medical colleagues in a private message about a SARS-like illness spreading in Wuhan on December 30th, 2019? 

“Days later, he [Dr.Li] was summoned to the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan and made to sign a statement in which he was accused of making false statements that disturbed the public order.

Dr. Li died of the virus on February 7th, 2020, or so we were told.

On January 1st 2020, the genome sequence of the virus was submitted to Chinese health authorities. An employee at a genomics company claims that the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered them to stop testing samples from Wuhan and destroy all existing samples of the disease.

On January 2nd, one study of 41 patients in Wuhan accounted for 27 having contact with the live animal market, leaving 14 which did not, signifying that human-to-human transmission was occurring and the CCP knew that it was, or that the CCP knew it had come from another source other than the market.

On January 14th, the World Health Organisation announced on Twitter:

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.”

By January 15th, both Thailand and Japan record their first known cases of the virus from people who had visited China. 

January 19th, the BBC reported that: 

“Chinese officials say there have been no cases of the virus spreading from one person to another.

Instead, they say, the virus has crossed the species barrier and come from infected animals at a seafood and wildlife market in Wuhan. The WHO’s China office said the analysis was helpful and would help officials plan the response to the outbreak.”

The United States announces on January 21st its first case of the virus in a resident who had recently returned from China.
 
For the next five days, millions of people move around China and the world as they celebrate the Lunar New Year with loved ones on January 25th.
 
The virus went global.

On January 22nd, the World Health Organisation’s Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, commends President Xi and China’s Health Minister in this official statement to the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee:

“I was very impressed by the detail and depth of China’s presentation. I also appreciate the cooperation of China’s Minister of Health, who I have spoken with directly during the last few days and weeks. His leadership and the intervention of President Xi and Premier Li have been invaluable, and all the measures they have taken to respond to the outbreak.”

The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is located 20 miles away from the Wuhan live animal  market – this is a high level biohazard level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory purpose built for the study of the most lethal pathogens in China. 

Professor Guizhen Wu, an expert in infectious disease and prevention, said that a silver-lining to the 2003 outbreak of SARS – which wrought havoc on the Chinese society and economy – was the construction of China’s LB (Laboratory Biosafety) system, an organised network of synchronised national procedures and biosecurity labs, culminating in China’s only level 4 Biosafety lab in Wuhan.  Wu wrote: 
 
“Currently, China has raised biological safety and security, of which LB is a crucial part, to the height of national strategy.”

Professor Wu went on to mention a pathogen “leak,” perhaps because of the need to have the pathogens transported:

“After a laboratory leak incident of SARS in 2004, the former Ministry of Health of China initiated the construction of preservation laboratories for high-level pathogens such as SARS, coronavirus, and pandemic influenza virus. Samples previously preserved by provincial research institutions and medical institutions were transferred to designated national institutions for storage.”

Professor Wu raised concerns about biosecurity not given enough attention in China, not having enough “well-trained and experienced LB specialists”:
 
“Moreover, compared to developed countries, China is still in the beginning stages of LB development. Our innovation capacity is relatively weak… Similarly, the research and development of LB techniques and equipment fell behind some western countries. The design and reliability of our LB system also lacks acute evaluation criteria and schemes.”

What is more likely – that a Wuhan live animal market contained a virus which jumped the species barrier from animal-to-human transmission, rapidly allowing  for human-to-human transmission, or that the Chinese Communist Party lied about another “leak” of a SARS-like virus which could already pass from human-to-human originating from its only level 4 biosecurity lab?

It is highly believable that upon seeing his own country’s economy tanking from the effects of this new virus, President Xi and his officials clamped down forcibly on the whistleblowers so that the virus could spread around the world in an act of malevolence along the lines of “we’re going down and you’re coming with us.”

What else explains the litany of lies the world was subjected to from China and WHO as the virus went global?

Whether the spreading of the virus was intentional on China’s part or not, the fact that they did not communicate their knowledge of a lethal human-to-human contagion the very second that they knew about it, speaks volumes about their respect for the rest of humanity.

Are we as a nation going to keep our economy hitched to a trading partner who is either this negligent or this malign?

That is the major question that every single NZ journalist should be asking of our leaders in the press briefings…again and again and again. 

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"