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Some in the West agree. “I’m pretty annoyed that people are making such extremely serious claims,” said Nancy Connell, a microbiologist and member of the NIH National Biosafety Science Advisory Board, while at the Johns Hopkins Center in February last year. Health Safety. “Extremely irresponsible.”
But while the lab leak theory is partly supported by a deep distrust of China, the country’s dubious track record of reliability and a series of interesting missteps haven’t helped.
During the SARS epidemic of 2002-’03, Chinese authorities downplayed the extent of the epidemic for months until a leading military surgeon blew the whistle. At the onset of Covid-19, China also concealed information about early cases and curtailed internal discussions. This situation worsened in March 2020 when a number of Chinese ministries decided that scientists must seek approval to publish any work related to covid-19 research.
Meanwhile, several Chinese institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, have instructed scientists – with rare exceptions – not to speak to the press. For some, this has been a relief. Conducting English interviews on politically sensitive topics is prohibitively daunting for many Chinese speakers, especially as any language mistakes related to tenses and auxiliary verbs can be easily misinterpreted and have serious consequences. At the same time, many Chinese scientists have become reluctant to talk to Western journalists for simpler reasons: Most reporters who contacted them said they did not understand the intricacies of science and displayed strongly biased ideas.
“I just wanted to keep my head down and concentrate on my work,” Shi said. “I thought after a while the storm would break.”
Some of the Wuhan institute’s actions have definitely raised red flags. For example, in February 2020 the virus took its databases offline and unavailable to outsiders – leading some to suggest that it may contain critical information for the origins of covid-19. Shi said that the portion of the databases that were publicly available before the outbreak contained only published information; The Wuhan institute, like research organizations in other parts of the world, had unpublished data that could be shared on request through portals for academic collaborations. The institute says it has taken its databases offline due to security concerns; There have been thousands of hacking attempts since the start of the pandemic. “IT executives were really concerned that someone could sabotage their database or, worse, implant virus sequences with malicious intent,” he said.
Instead of directly dealing with the publicity crisis, China has fueled distrust by running its own campaigns of confuse and disinformation.
Still, Zhang of the University of Kent says China’s behavior needs to be understood in the country’s broader political, media and cultural context. China, with its completely different media tradition, said, “Western press has neither the vocabulary nor the grammar to deal with a publicity crisis.” “The first instinct of the Chinese authorities is to always close the channels of communication.” To them, he said, this often seems safer than dealing with the situation proactively. Several top Chinese scholars, who asked not to be named because they feared political backlash, said this also reflected a lack of trust among China’s top leaders. “While China is willing to assert itself as a global power, it is still extremely insecure,” said one of them.
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