U.S. vicious slanders on China over COVID-19 origins tracing and the truth (part 3)

Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-06 12:49:45|Editor: huaxia

Vicious slander 3: The personnel of the Wuhan Institute of Virology were accidentally infected while collecting virus samples in the wild. Three staff members of the Wuhan Institute of Virology were infected with the epidemic in November 2019.

Facts and truth: None of the staff members or graduate students of the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been infected with the novel coronavirus.

◆In March 2021, the Wuhan Institute of Virology issued a statement stating that so far, its employees and graduate students have maintained zero infections.

http://www.whiov.cas.cn/tzgg_160286/202103/t20210323_5981805.html

◆The Western media reports of "three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology going to hospital in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with the novel coronavirus infections" were completely groundless. China has repeatedly asked the skeptics to reveal the names of these three people in order to make the reports clear, but no one has so far provided a name.

http://english.scio.gov.cn/pressroom/2021-07/25/content_77650203.htm

◆In June 2021, Bloomberg reported that Australian virologist Danielle Anderson, who had paid many visits to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for months of study, said that by the end of 2019, no one she knew in the institute got ill. Anderson also said that when many of her colleagues from Wuhan went to Singapore for a meeting in December 2019, no one was discussing the spread of any "disease" in the laboratory.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid-come-from-a-lab-scientist-at-wuhan-institute-speaks-out

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-06-28/last-foreign-wuhan-lab-scientist-video

Vicious slander 4: The management of the P4 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is "unscientific" and there are "security loopholes."

Facts and truth: The P4 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a Sino-French governmental cooperation project with strict protective facilities and measures.

◆As a laboratory with the highest level of biosafety protection, the Wuhan P4 laboratory has no record of pathogen leakage accidents or infection of its personnel since it was officially put into operation in 2018. The Wuhan P4 laboratory has been designed, constructed and operated in accordance with international requirements and national standards. It not only has stable and reliable biosafety protection facilities, but also has established a complete biosafety management system and a team of professional support and maintenance personnel. The hardware facilities, management level, staff, and working methods of the Wuhan P4 laboratory are the same as those of other P4 laboratories operating safely in the world.

Vicious slander 5: Satellite images show that in October 2019, the number of vehicles in the parking lots of several hospitals such as Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University and Maternal and Child Hospital of Hubei Province increased significantly compared with the same period in 2018. At the same time, the Baidu search engine recorded a soaring number of words such as "cough" and "diarrhea." Therefore, the novel coronavirus disease may begin to spread in Wuhan at the end of August 2019.

Facts and truth: The relevant inferences are purely subjective, and related evidence cannot lead to corresponding conclusions. The relevant reports and studies are very absurd.

◆In response, the World Health Organization stated that people should not over-interpret the changes in the number of cars in hospital parking lots, and "jump to" two or three inferences, and then link them to the COVID-19 epidemic.

◆Baidu, a Chinese hi-tech company, responded to this question with an index chart. The chart shows that the search volume for "cough" and "diarrhea" has not changed significantly from previous years, and the search for "diarrhea" has decreased slightly around December 2019.

◆Zeng Guang, a member of a high-level expert team on the prevention and control of COVID-19 from the National Health Commission of China, wrote an article refuting the study as a typical misuse of big data epidemiology and as very absurd in many respects. One absurd thing is about the time, referring to the study that dated the spread of the novel coronavirus back to August 2019 based on parking lot traffic and Baidu search data. In October of that year, the Wuhan Military World Games was held. If the virus had spread in August, it was impossible that the military athletes from all over the world that participated in the games felt nothing. It was also impossible that U.S. military athletes who went to a local hospital in Wuhan for medical treatment at that time noticed nothing.

The second absurd thing is about the understanding of the disease, according to Zeng. The study used data from the Maternal and Child Hospital of Hubei Province as one of the main supporting evidence. This hospital is a major pediatric hospital in Wuhan. However, most people infected with COVID-19 were not children. The child infection rate of COVID-19 is relatively low.

Third, Zeng said, searching for "cough" and "diarrhea" as keywords is ridiculous. In the early stage, many patients infected with COVID-19 have the symptom of cough, but not many have diarrhea. Later, the early-stage symptoms will eventually develop into pneumonia symptoms. If the virus had spread in August 2019, why haven't these symptoms turned into pneumonia for such a long time?

Vicious slander 6: The Wuhan Institute of Virology is only about 300 yards (about 0.27 km) away from the Huanan seafood market.

Facts and truth: About 300 yards away from the Huanan seafood market lies the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is more than 10 km away from the Huanan seafood market, with the Yangtze River between their locations.

Vicious slander 7: The United States House Foreign Affairs Committee minority staff, led by Republican Representative Michael McCaul, published an investigation report targeting the Wuhan Institute of Virology, claiming that the institute had issued an air conditioning system renovation contract worth of 606 million U.S. dollars. This contract made people suspect whether the air conditioning system could normally work before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Facts and truth: The actual value of this contract is 606,000 U.S. dollars. This low-level mistake in the decimal point of the data in McCaul's report was copied and spread by irresponsible mainstream U.S. media, exposing a lack of independent and rigorous professionalism of the U.S. side, which attempts to fabricate evidence in a rush.

◆McCaul's report also exaggerated the funding for the other six projects of the Wuhan Institute of Virology by 100 or 10 times. For example, according to the report, the costs of the security services of the Zhengdian Park of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the maintenance of the P3 laboratory and the laboratory animal center, and the transformation project of the hazardous waste treatment system are respectively 1.3 million U.S. dollars (approximately 8.3 million yuan), 401,300 U.S. dollars (approximately 2.6 million yuan), and 1.5213 million U.S. dollars (approximately 9.86 million yuan), while the actual amounts are 830,000 yuan, 260,000 yuan and 986,000 yuan.

When citing relevant data, McCaul's "researchers" removed the decimal point from the data of the Chinese side, leading to huge mistakes. The U.S. media including The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, without fact checking, cited and spread the report's mistakes.

Vicious slander 8: The Sierra Nevada Corporation, a main contractor of the U.S. Department of Defense, has issued a report saying that the core evidence for the novel coronavirus originating from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was that in mid-October 2019, many "roadblocks" were set up on the roads around the institute.

Facts and truth: The U.S. Daily Beast website pointed out that the so-called "roadblocks" were actually related to the road works around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the traffic near the institute was no different.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-contractors-report-on-wuhan-lab-origins-of-coronavirus-is-bogus

Vicious slander 9: The Wuhan Institute of Virology has cooperated with the Chinese military to carry out the "gain-of-function" research of the coronavirus.

Facts and truth: The Wuhan Institute of Virology has never cooperated with any other parties, including the Chinese military, to conduct research on the "gain-of-function" research of the coronavirus.

◆In July 2021, Zeng Yixin, deputy head of the National Health Commission of China, stated at a press conference that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has not conducted any "gain-of-function" research of the coronavirus, and there is no so-called man-made virus there.

http://english.scio.gov.cn/pressroom/2021-07/25/content_77650203.htm

◆In June 2021, Shi Zhengli, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said in an interview with The New York Times that her laboratory had never conducted or cooperated in "gain-of-function" experiments to enhance the virulence of the coronavirus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/world/asia/china-covid-wuhan-lab-leak.html

◆In June 2021, Australian virologist Danielle Anderson, who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said in an interview with Bloomberg that there was no evidence that the institute carried out a viral gain-of-function experiment.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid-come-from-a-lab-scientist-at-wuhan-institute-speaks-out

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-06-28/last-foreign-wuhan-lab-scientist-video

Vicious slander 10: The Wuhan Institute of Virology, through cooperation with Professor Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, has acquired "the technique to modify a virus without leaving a trace," which "hides" the modification mark when artificially intervening in virus gene recombination.

Facts and truth: The Wuhan Institute of Virology has never designed, manufactured or leaked the novel coronavirus, nor does it have the ability to completely design and create new coronaviruses. The Wuhan Institute of Virology does not have the so-called technique of modifying a virus without leaving a trace. (more)

KEY WORDS: US,Origins Tracing,Slanders
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