China, conspiracy theories, and the murky coronavirus origin story | Columbia Journalism Review - Jon Allsop:
April 15, 2020 - "Josh Rogin, of the Washington Post, published a column [April 14] that appeared in the paper’s Global Opinions section, but contained bombshell new reporting. Per Rogin, in early 2018, officials from the US Embassy in Beijing repeatedly visited a laboratory in Wuhan where researchers were studying coronaviruses in bats, and their possible transmissibility to humans. Embassy staff were so concerned about safety issues they said they’d observed on their visits that they sent two warnings back to the State Department, urging the US government to give the lab support. In the first of the cables, which Rogin obtained, officials warned that the lab’s work on coronaviruses 'represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic'....
"Two years later, with a new SARS-like pandemic sweeping the earth, the warning cables 'have fueled discussions inside the US government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus,' Rogin reports. There’s no evidence that the new coronavirus was manufactured; most scientists agree that it came from animals. But as Xiao Qiang, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, told Rogin, 'that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals.'
"Rogin’s story was shared widely on social media, including by prominent mainstream journalists..... This was not surprising: earlier this year, Tom Cotton, a hawkish Republican from Arkansas, mentioned the Wuhan lab in an interview on Fox News ... but was pilloried by major news organizations for spreading a “fringe' 'conspiracy theory' that 'was already debunked'....
"The US intelligence community reportedly believes that the Chinese government has grossly understated the full extent of the coronavirus outbreak in the country, and it’s far from alone in that assessment. According to the [New York] Times, officials in Wuhan have, in recent weeks, broken up virtual groups set up by victims’ relatives, censored photos of relatives collecting victims’ ashes, and even assigned minders to supervise burials. In the early days of the virus, Chinese authorities silenced Li Wenliang, a doctor who tried to raise an early alarm.... Journalists who tried to blow the whistle disappeared. Last month, Beijing expelled American reporters working for the Times, the Post, and the Wall Street Journal....
"Last week, China imposed tight restrictions on the publication of academic research linked to the origins of the coronavirus. As Rogin notes, its government won’t answer even basic questions on the topic, and has tried to suppress investigations into the possible involvement of the two labs in Wuhan. 'Beijing has yet to provide US experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases,' Rogin writes. A Shanghai lab that published the virus genome in January 'was quickly shut down by authorities for "rectification"'....
"The most useful response, here, is not to get sucked into the right-wing fever swamps, but to isolate legitimate questions, and try and report out the answers. As Rogin writes, the coronavirus origin story 'is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one.'"
April 15, 2020 - "Josh Rogin, of the Washington Post, published a column [April 14] that appeared in the paper’s Global Opinions section, but contained bombshell new reporting. Per Rogin, in early 2018, officials from the US Embassy in Beijing repeatedly visited a laboratory in Wuhan where researchers were studying coronaviruses in bats, and their possible transmissibility to humans. Embassy staff were so concerned about safety issues they said they’d observed on their visits that they sent two warnings back to the State Department, urging the US government to give the lab support. In the first of the cables, which Rogin obtained, officials warned that the lab’s work on coronaviruses 'represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic'....
"Two years later, with a new SARS-like pandemic sweeping the earth, the warning cables 'have fueled discussions inside the US government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus,' Rogin reports. There’s no evidence that the new coronavirus was manufactured; most scientists agree that it came from animals. But as Xiao Qiang, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, told Rogin, 'that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals.'
"Rogin’s story was shared widely on social media, including by prominent mainstream journalists..... This was not surprising: earlier this year, Tom Cotton, a hawkish Republican from Arkansas, mentioned the Wuhan lab in an interview on Fox News ... but was pilloried by major news organizations for spreading a “fringe' 'conspiracy theory' that 'was already debunked'....
"The US intelligence community reportedly believes that the Chinese government has grossly understated the full extent of the coronavirus outbreak in the country, and it’s far from alone in that assessment. According to the [New York] Times, officials in Wuhan have, in recent weeks, broken up virtual groups set up by victims’ relatives, censored photos of relatives collecting victims’ ashes, and even assigned minders to supervise burials. In the early days of the virus, Chinese authorities silenced Li Wenliang, a doctor who tried to raise an early alarm.... Journalists who tried to blow the whistle disappeared. Last month, Beijing expelled American reporters working for the Times, the Post, and the Wall Street Journal....
"Last week, China imposed tight restrictions on the publication of academic research linked to the origins of the coronavirus. As Rogin notes, its government won’t answer even basic questions on the topic, and has tried to suppress investigations into the possible involvement of the two labs in Wuhan. 'Beijing has yet to provide US experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases,' Rogin writes. A Shanghai lab that published the virus genome in January 'was quickly shut down by authorities for "rectification"'....
"The most useful response, here, is not to get sucked into the right-wing fever swamps, but to isolate legitimate questions, and try and report out the answers. As Rogin writes, the coronavirus origin story 'is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one.'"
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