Experts suspect that China has much more data from the early pandemic that “has yet to be shared!”

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“WHO continues to call on China and all countries to share any data on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, immediately. The world needs to move away from the politics of blame and, instead, exploit all diplomatic and scientific approaches so that the global scientific community can do what it does best — collaborate, focus on this health crisis, and find evidence-based solutions to thwart future pandemics.” Maria Van Kerkhove

Toronto Caribbean Newspaper actively sources news from reliable and trustworthy sources, one being LIVESCIENCE (https://www.livescience.com/)  a science-based website that shares topics relating to: human behavior, health, animals, archeology, space, and of course biology.

As I was scanning through their latest releases, I found something that although is past due news for us, is now for some reason being highlighted.

Scientists in China collected key coronavirus data in 2020 from a market in Wuhan — ground zero of the first reported outbreak of COVID-19 — but new reports are exposing that they didn’t share the raw data publicly until March 2023. Experts suspect that China has much more data from the early pandemic that “have yet to be shared” with the global research community.

China likely has data that could shed light on how the pandemic began (of course they do), Van Kerkhove wrote, and the country’s failure to disclose the data makes the whole world more vulnerable to future pandemics.

The undisclosed data likely include details of China’s wild and farmed animal trades, as well as the operations of labs in Wuhan that work with coronaviruses, according to the editorial. The data also may include details about the earliest potential cases of COVID-19 detected in China and the diagnostic testing that was conducted in humans and animals in the early days of the pandemic.

So how did this all come out? Why now is attention being drawn to the blatant cover-up?

In early March, researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) uploaded never-before-seen coronavirus data to Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID), an open-access database that includes data on influenza viruses and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The data was later removed from GISAID but not before being downloaded by researchers outside China.

What did they find?

Well, this international team of researchers reported that the data showed that SARS-CoV-2 genetic material and the DNA of common raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) were present in and around the exact same stalls at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in January 2020. The data cannot prove that the raccoon dogs, a fox relative, were actively infected with SARS-CoV-2 at the time, but they strongly raise the possibility that infected animals were at the market, potentially spreading the virus to other animals and to humans.

This analysis prompted a meeting of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), the China CDC researchers and the international team that analyzed the newly released raccoon dog data. China’s failure to share the data back in 2020 is “simply inexcusable,” Van Kerkhove wrote in her editorial.

“Still needed are studies that trace and test those animals to their source and serologic studies of the workers in live animal markets in Wuhan or in the source farms,” Van Kerkhove wrote. “Without such investigations, we cannot fully understand the factors that led to the start of this pandemic.”

“Every new piece of data could potentially move the world closer to stopping another pandemic — perhaps a worse one — in the future.”

Let us not forget that this is not the first time that China has been put on the hot seat about exactly what they know about the pandemic. There has been reported evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nearby Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, along with their collaborator, the U.S.-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, have engaged in what the U.S. government defines as “gain-of-function research of concern,” intentionally making viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in order to study them, despite stipulations from a U.S. funding agency that the money not be used for that purpose.

There does seem to be an air of suspicion that hovers around China and their overall dealings in gain-of-function research, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other scientific questions that have been left unanswered.

I guess only time will tell; after all time reveals all.