A Subcommittee on the Prevention of Covid Infections: Sen. Burr, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, and the Covid Commission Planning Group

Infectious disease experts predict that pandemics will occur with increasing frequency, fueled by global travel, climate change and humans moving into closer proximity with animals. Biodefense experts say that pandemics are every bit as big a threat to national security as terrorist attacks. But the public may not see it that way.

Now in the House majority, Republicans have formed a special subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee specifically to investigate, among other things, China’s role in the early spread of the virus and US government dollars that helped fund some research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the research facility at the center of the lab leak theory.

Those inquiries are partisan. A panel of experts that are highly qualified would be appointed by congressional leaders from both parties to the independent commission. It would have subpoena power, the same as the September 11 panel. It would be charged with examining the origins of the pandemic as well as the response by the Trump and Biden administrations.

Sen Richard M. Burr said there was no substitute for showing the vision that was shown in the early 2000s at creating an architecture that would fix things that we got wrong.

Mr. Zelikow now leads the Covid Commission Planning Group, a privately funded effort involving about three dozen independent experts who have spent the better part of the past two years conducting research to lay the groundwork for a national inquiry. The group, which has held several hundred interviews, grew tired of waiting for Congress and plans to publish its findings in a book this spring, Mr. Zelikow said. He declined to discuss details.

The World Health Organization warned the government that they would underestimate the true death toll if they narrowed their criteria to include only deaths from Covid infections.

If Liang was shifting focus to less strict protocols, then another public health expert, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, who made his name fighting the SARS outbreak, made misleading claims about the virus. He said that he hasn’t seen cases of long-term organ damage because he didn’t believe it was a case of COVID-19.

Zhong also said that 78% of patients infected with the Omnicron variant won’t be reinfected for quite a long time. Studies suggest that people will be re-impregnated every two years if protection against re-infection declines dramatically.

China reverses its zero COVID policy: how to deal with the controversy on the internet? A response from a Beijing internal medicine doctor

The about-face did not go unnoticed on the Chinese internet. Posts juxtaposing experts’ TV appearances before and after state policy change has gotten more than 100,000 views.

It has come to the attention of the disease outbreak containment expert commission that they are getting apologies online.

Whiplash aside, much of the online discussion has moved to how to deal with the aftermath of the policy change, including what preventative measures and treatments are available.

The remedies to fight COVID have yet to be tried. An internal medicine doctor who’s a member of the prestigious Academy of Engineering recommended the method of rinsing out your mouth with iced salt water daily. The commenters were confused. “Wasn’t salt water rinse debunked two years ago? Does an iced version make a difference?” one wrote in a blog post.

A local government in southwest China suggested making tea out of orange peels and monk fruit – both common ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine – to prevent infection. Dr. Zhong said weeks ago that he hasn’t found any medication that is effective at preventing a COVID infection.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1143413739/confusion-and-falsehoods-spread-as-china-reverses-its-zero-covid-policy

COVID-19 and the Chinese diaspora: What do we really need to know about the rise of the world? A comment on Chen Wenhong

The chaos and uncertainty right now reminds Chen Wenhong, an associate professor of media studies and sociology at University of Texas, of the atmosphere in early 2020 when COVID was first spreading. “It’s kind of flying in the dark.”

According to the surveys done in 2020, health professionals and state media are the most trusted sources for information about COVID-19. And with access to the global internet cut off for most, there are few alternatives to state media and its constellation of aligned social media accounts, says Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

A recent example was how the Communist Party-controlled newspaper, The Global Times, cited a misleading report in the British tabloid, Daily Mail, that suggested without evidence that vaccine maker Moderna manufactured the virus. The Global Times used the coverage to attack other theories regarding the virus’s origin, such as the one that said it leaked from a government research lab. Other smaller social media accounts made videos of the report, putting “British Media” in the headlines.

“The Chinese diaspora has played a very useful role here to share with people back in China about their personal COVID experience,” Chen says, “knowing that in most cases it will not be that serious.”

She points out that while researchers and journalists pay close attention to social media discourse, many rural residents rely on television and family members in larger cities to stay informed. Many are vulnerable to the disease, live in places where healthcare resources are scarce, and aren’t adept at finding information on social media.

The Chinese government needs to act fast if it wants to get health messages out to the most vulnerable people.

As NPR reported, public health authorities don’t base their messages for the public entirely on science – many considerations are also pragmatic and culturally-based.

Chen says that scientists have some soul searching to do in the next couple of years. “If we know that politics is going to play a role in public health and also in science, how do we conduct ourselves? What are our ethics?

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.

2022 was supposed to be a triumphant year for China and its leader Xi Jinping, as he began his second decade in power with a pledge to restore the nation to greatness.

The Chinese Communist Party and the Origins of Covid-19: The World’s Most Enough Xi Jinping Lived and Learned

In its tightly sealed, meticulously managed Olympic bubble, the ubiquitous face masks, endless spraying of disinfectant and rigorous daily testing paid-off. Any infected visitors arriving in the country were swiftly identified and their cases contained, allowing the Winter Olympics to run largely free of Covid even as the Omicron variant raged around the world.

The new controversy over the origins of Covid-19 is a study in isolation of many of the forces ripping at US-China relations, including US mistrust of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping’s desire to preserve his prestige and that of a political system he holds up as an alternative to Western democracy. When it came to the origin of the H1N1 swine flu, China refused to play by global rules, and in doing so allowed follow-up investigations. All of this only exacerbates intense reaction in Washington, and in turn tears at US political fault lines.

The wave of infections and deaths is unprecedented and has many wondering why after so much sacrifice, the government did not prepare for it.

The success added to the party’s narrative that its political system is superior to those of Western democracies in handling the pandemic – a message Xi had repeatedly driven home as he prepared for a third term in power.

The financial hub of Shanghai soon became the epicenter. After the city reported 3,500 daily infections, local officials imposed a nationwide lockdown, but initially denied it was necessary.

The lockdown also wracked havoc on the economy. China’s GDP shrunk by 2.6% in the three months ending in June, while youth unemployment hit a record high of nearly 20%.

The authorities instead spent the next months building bigger quaIrium facilities, imposing larger lockdowns that affected more than 300 million people, and testing more often to ensure proper care for the elderly.

A group of migrant workers left a locked-down factory in droves to avoid the outbreak at the largest iPhone assembly site in China. A boy died of gas poisoning after he was prevented from being taken to a hospital. A girl died in the hotel after she was delayed in getting medical care.

In late November, a deadly apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi sparked public anger that had been simmering for months. Many believed lockdown measures had hampered rescue efforts, despite official denials.

Protests erupted across the country, on a scale unseen in decades. Over the course of a few days, people gathered on city streets and university campuses to call for an immediate end to Covid testing and demands for greater political freedom.

Protesters even demanded that Xi step down, an unimaginable act of political defiance toward the most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades.

The nationwide demonstrations posed an unprecedented challenge to Xi. The economy was so badly affected by Omicron that local governments ran out of cash to pay their bills, with the infections seemingly spinning out of control.

On December 7, the central government announced a dramatic change in approach, rolling back restrictions and allowing residents to stay at home.

While the easing of stifling restrictions is a long-awaited relief for many, the abruptness and haphazardness of it has caught an unprepared public off guard and left them to fend for themselves.

The medicine that was restricted from being purchased at the pharmacy under the zero-Covid label sold out instantly on online shopping sites. The hospital emergency rooms are filled with patients and there are huge lines outside. Crematoriums are struggling to keep up with an influx of bodies.

The credibility of the government could be affected by the scale of the outbreak and deaths, which were justified on the basis that they were necessary to save lives.

Some studies have estimated China’s abrupt and under-prepared reopening could lead to nearly a million deaths – close to the Covid death toll of the US.

The World Health Organization has accused China of “under-representing” the severity of its Covid outbreak and criticized its “narrow” definition of what constitutes a Covid death, as top global health officials urge Beijing to share more data about the explosive spread.

“We continue to ask China for more rapid, regular, reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive, real-time viral sequencing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a media briefing in Geneva Wednesday.

“WHO is concerned about the risk to life in China and has reiterated the importance of vaccination, including booster doses, to protect against hospitalization, severe disease, and death,” he said.

There, the outbreak has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums, triggered shortages of medicine, and sparked fears of a spread to less resourced areas as experts warn of a potential spread to less resourced rural areas during the upcoming lunar new year.

The EU’s requirement for a negative Covid test for passengers traveling to the EU, and the need for more forthcoming genomic data, and how to expand it

On Wednesday, the European Union “strongly encouraged” its member states to introduce a requirement for a negative Covid test for passengers traveling from China to the EU, according to a statement released by the Swedish presidency of the bloc.

The WHO’s Tedros said Wednesday it was “understandable” that some countries were taking these steps, “with circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming.”

But the group and WHO officials continued to stress the need for more forthcoming genomic data. The UN body faced criticism at the beginning of the epidemic that it did not push China enough for data, amid concerns that Beijing was covering up critical information. Beijing has defended its openness.

“We need more information on sequencing around the country, (and for) those sequences to be shared with publicly available databases like GISAID so that deeper analyses can be done,” she said. GISAID is a global initiative that provides access to the genomic data of different influenza viruses.

It will require some agreements between the airlines and the government, as well as the way and when to do it, but it looks like a promising area of research for the future. “Certainly, expanding the wastewater surveillance just is another data point that can be helpful, and it’s a less-intrusive way of doing disease surveillance.”

She said that she thinks they have done some early testing of the blue water in a single flight, and that this program could be expanded to test collections of wastewater from multiple flights or a single airport.

U.S. Airlines, Covid-19 and WHO: a multi-wavelength response from China after the global COVID-19 mission

United Airlines told CNN that it has “been in touch with the CDC and are evaluating our participation” in the program. CNN has requested comment from the CDC and from other US carriers that service China.

Starting Thursday, travelers from China must show a negative Covid-19 test result before flying to the US as Beijing’s rapid easing of Covid-19 restrictions leads to a surge in cases. The UK, Australia and Canada are implementing the same measures. The Chinese government has warned that China would take countermeasures against the restrictions.

Despite the low official figures, China insists that its data is transparent due to the high spread of the virus and relatively low booster rates among the elderly. The US, World Health Organization and other countries have urged China to share more data. In a call with his Chinese counterpart last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged China to upload more health data, a US official told CNN.

The Biden administration is not planning, as of now, to impose any punitive measures on China if it does not release more Covid-19 data, a second US official said.

In May of 2020 WHO member states requested that the agency put together a science-led effort to get to the root of the epidemic. Although China agreed to the mission, tensions were high by the time the WHO group left for Wuhan, and engagement with China quickly unravelled after the group returned.

At a time when asking about the coronaviruses were considered taboo, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory issued a classified report in May 2020 about the possible escape from the lab in Wuhan.

That July, the WHO sent a circular to member states outlining how it planned to advance origins studies. Proposed steps included assessing wild-animal markets in and around Wuhan and the farms that supplied those markets, as well as audits of labs in the area where the first cases were identified.

But Chinese officials rejected the WHO’s plans, taking particular issue with the proposal to investigate lab breaches. The WHO proposal was not agreed by all of the member states, and the second phase should not focus on pathways that had already been found to be extremely unlikely by the mission report, stated the Spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, continues to engage with the Chinese government officials in order to encourage China to be more open and to share data. And WHO staff have reached out to the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing to try to establish collaborations. “We really, really want to be able to work with our colleagues there,” says Van Kerkhove. It is a deep frustration.

“I still hope that progress will be made,” says Thea Fischer, a public-health virologist at the University of Copenhagen, who was a member of the mission to Wuhan and is part of SAGO.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath: When did the Department of Energy come to terms with the Wall Street Journal, academia, and outside government?

It is possible for intelligence agencies to make assessments with either medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment means the information is not reliable or too fragmented to be used in a conclusive way to make a conclusion.

The Department of Energy issued a new assessment, first reported by the Wall Street Journal. A senior US intelligence official told the Journal that the update to the intelligence assessment was conducted in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and in consultation with experts outside government.

“Now is the time for the entire Biden administration to join the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the majority of Americans by publicly concluding what common sense told us at the start – the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China,” McCaul said in a statement.

The intelligence community under the auspices of the Director of National Intelligence includes 18 government agencies, including the DOE office.

The Republicans on Capitol Hill have been pushing for further investigation into the lab leak theory while accusing the Biden administration of playing down its possibility, but as the latest intelligence assessment was shared with Congress, they were also complaining that the administration was playing down the possibility.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul said Sunday he was “pleased” that the Department of Energy “has finally reached the same conclusion that I had already come to.”

The Texas Republican asked for a full and thorough analysis of the report and the evidence behind it.

The basis of the work of the committee will be that the US has been trying to integrate China peacefully into the global system as a competitor not an enemy, but that a new generation of Chinese leaders is trying to dismantle the US global order and international order.

There are extensive hearings that need to be done. I hope our Democratic colleagues in the Congress can support that. I know the Republicans in the House are certainly supportive of that,” the Senate Armed Services Committee member said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

What the US Intelligence Community is Saying About Covid-19 and Its Implications for the Pandemic and Emerging Cybersecurity Threats

Such definitive statements, based on one assessment, do not recognize that the US intelligence community is still divided over the matter. Some Republicans have long sought to prove that the virus was a conspiracy by China to unleash contagion on the world, and many have long appeared to be seeking an explanation for the pandemic that could mask Trump’s negligence in handling it.

The committee was reviewing the information given by the office of the director of national intelligence, according to a statement from a spokesman for the chairman.

“Right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” Sullivan told CNN’s Dana Bash. “Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”

So why does it matter where Covid-19 came from? Relman, the microbiologist at the University of California, Palo Alto, noted to CNN that finding the answer can prevent the next epidemic.

The US Energy Department’s assessment adds to the confusion about what happened in China, three years after the start of a Pandemic that is still disrupting daily life.

But the lab leak theory has gained more traction with time, especially following reports that the intelligence community found evidence that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell seriously ill with a mysterious virus in November 2019 – although it’s not clear whether they contracted Covid-19 and no further evidence has emerged to corroborate that report.

Three other intelligence community elements were unable to figure it out without further information, the community report said.

The Case for the New US Senate Select Committee on China and the Covid-19 Pandemic: Trump’s Support of the Lab Leak Theory in the Biden Administration

For the better part of 2020, advocates of the lab leak theory had to fight against claims they were being xenophobic or racist — in part thanks to anti-Chinese rhetoric from then-President Donald Trump, who embraced the theory.

An inquiry launched by Trump’s State Department, which sought to investigate whether China’s biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, was shut down early on in the Biden administration.

A letter from public health experts published in February 2020 in The Lancet, an influential scientific journal, also set the tone early by declaring the virus to have a natural origin.

Some elements of the intelligence community reached differing conclusions on a given issue. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”

Past pandemics have emerged from natural transmission through animals, and it often takes months or years to discover the host that the virus passed through as it adapted to infect humans.

An already inflamed relationship between the US and China is being exacerbated by two fresh controversies – one over the exact origins of Covid-19 and the other stemming from stern US warnings that China must not arm Russia in its war in Ukraine.

The new disagreements are so fraught that the recent unprecedented diplomatic showdown over a suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated across the continental US is not even the most recent or intense cause of strife.

The new select committee needs to break the cycle of politics if they are to provide a useful examination of US-China relations that will result in effective policy recommendations.

Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, the new committee’s chairman, told CNN’s Manu Raju that Tuesday’s hearing would not focus specifically on the latest drama – after the Department of Energy assessed with low confidence that the Covid-19 pandemic originated with a lab leak in the Chinese city of Wuhan. He wanted to show Americans that the threat from China was not just an over there problem, and that is why he planned to discuss the finding at a future hearing.

A Republican from Wisconsin said that they want to understand what happened with the Chinese Communist Party in order to get the right policy.

On CBS News on Sunday, Gallagher warned: “We may call this a strategic competition, but it’s not a tennis match. What type of world do we want to live in? Do you want to live in a free world or do you want to live in a free world? he said, referring to the Chinese region where the US has accused China of inflicting genocide on the Uyghur minority, a charge China continues to vehemently deny.

The committee may be one of the few areas where a divided Congress – and potentially the White House – can find common ground. The Biden administration has reinforced the already tough stance toward China that ex-President Donald Trump adopted later in his presidency. The law that President Joe Biden signed last year allowed the government to spend $200 billion in an attempt to take the leadership of the Semiconductor chips industry which could decide the economic race between the US and China for decades to come.

The Case against a lab leak or animal spillover: Why the US and China should have no monopoly on its share of nuclear research, research, or policy

The bottom line here is that neither a lab leak nor animal spillover can be ruled out. Tom Frieden, the former Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN on Monday that they don’t have definitive information.

It didn’t take long for Republicans to claim political victory after the Wall Street Journal published a story saying that the Department of Energy believed a lab leak was to blame. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green posted, ” Conspiracy theorists – 100 Media – 0.”

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted: “Re. Being proven correct doesn’t matter in China’s lab leak. The Chinese Communist Party should be held accountable so this doesn’t happen again.

But even if the virus did emerge from a laboratory, it doesn’t mean it was necessarily man made or that the rest of the world was deliberately exposed.

This week in Washington, the issue became an excuse for Republicans to target scientists and government health experts and to make a big deal of Covid-19 that still has massive gaps.

“China has never had to incur any costs for its support for Russia. This (would be) the first time – it is a very important crossroads,” Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, said on CNN Monday.

The new front in US- China antagonism has begun to trickle down to US politics. While being tough on Beijing is a bipartisan position, the idea of a broadened conflict in Ukraine conflicts with the more limited view of US power projection abroad among “America First” Republicans. McConnell is a traditional hawk who supports more US aid for Ukraine, but some conservatives like Ron DeSantis are against it. In a rare foreign policy comment last week, he specifically mentioned potential Chinese involvement.

His comments reminded me that politics are the ultimate motivators in Washington. And few issues are as politicized as tortured US relations with China.

CNN’s John King Question to the U.S. Senator Josh Hawley: Why the USDA is concerned about the lab leak theory of Covid-19

Three elements of the intelligence community did not believe there was enough evidence to make a determination. And one agency, which CNN has reported is the FBI, had medium confidence in the lab leak theory.

A lot of attention has been given to the theory that the Chinese government was involved with the origin of the flu. About half of them think that a lab leak is to blame for the vaccine’s origin, and the other half think it came from human contact with an animal.

US lawmakers who have pushed the lab leak theory seized on reporting that the Department of Energy assessment was not publicly known.

The Department of Energy’s assessment was demanded by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and he promised to push for more reports to be declassified.

While the intelligence community remains very much split on what led to the virus, they were completely aligned on three key points when they first issued a two-page unclassified report in 2021:

Dr. Anthony Fauci – the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whom Republicans have told they will call before Congress to testify about the origins of the disease – has consistently repeated he believes the virus most likely occurred naturally, since other, similar viruses have evolved that way.

“We have never had a Covid commission like the 9/11 Commission,” he said. I think we need it. More Americans have died of Covid than in any other American war since the American Revolution, which is a major national security issue.

CNN’s John King posed a question to Dr. Megan Ranney, the deputy dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University.

We know when the next step is, said Ranney. It is not our purpose to keep America from having to go through the last three years again, while we are focused on where Covid-19 started.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/politics/covid-lab-leak-what-matters/index.html

King: How China hides it, but now it’s blocking investigation and what you can do about it, and why we don’t know yet

King spoke with a former deputy director of national intelligence about the report.

“If you want to blame somebody in terms of how this all unfolded, it’s very clear that China hid this, did not move quickly enough, and now is blocking investigation,” she said.

“We don’t just take information or just take a feeling and turn it into analysis,” she said. “We’re actually doing a rigorous process and that’s why we don’t know yet. The evidence isn’t there.”