By Ayuba Ahmed
The news first broke at the close of last year, precisely, December, 2019, of the advent of a lethal flu like viral disease soon to be variously christened Coronavirus, Novel Coronavirus and, its WHO abbreviated COVID-19. The latter name infers that, like the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS, 2012, and the even earlier Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS 2002 which occurred before it, COVID19 is merely a 2019 strain or variety of viral diseases that seem to be ever present in the world.
Essentially different in its lethal capacity, speed and mode of infecting its victims, so far only human beings, the COVID19 was first reported in the Wuhan city in the Hubei province of China in December, 2019.
From what had appeared to the rest of the world as a localized, transient incident in a hitherto obscure town and dismissed perhaps, as at best, a phenomenon for the Chinese to contend with, the disease has impacted the shores of most nations of the planet.
While over two million have been infected and tens of thousands have since died; the monumental disruption of the economies of nations will definitely linger well after the pandemic would have ended its human toll.
With scientists projecting 12 to 18 months for reliable vaccines to be available, it doesn’t seem that the slimy human calamity will be over soon. The world has not witnessed such an Armageddon in living memory.
Ranging from the bizarre to the laughable, China has been variously held culpable as the incubator of the virus. Initially tracing the origin of the disease to animals such as bats, frogs and pangolins among others, the “transmission of the coronavirus to humans”, was portrayed in many parts of the world as due to the Chinese “medieval” habits of dealing and feeding on such animals.
The fact that Wuhan city is reputed for its wet markets, where assorted live, wild animals are kept and traded on, was given as the reason why COVID-19 originated there. But, this notion did not last for long because it was soon proved that the novel coronavirus, unlike the Middle East virus and the MERS, is not a zootomic virus; meaning that, it is not a virus that is transmitted from animals to humans.
Rather, science has been proving the coronavirus to be a human to human infection. While indeed, the virus might have originally evolved from animals, it is however, yet to be empirically proved that the much vaunted Chinese diet of certain wild animals was responsible for the transmission of the coronavirus from animals to humans.
As in the proven incident before it, the virus that triggered the MERS was traced to some domestic animals, especially camels, in the Middle East and not those in the wild. Also, could the coronavirus not have sprung up from among other peoples elsewhere in the world who, like the Chinese, similarly delight in the meat of such suspect animals such as snakes, bats, pangolins and the like? If so, that Covid-19 sprouted from China can be described as a share accident that could have occurred in similar social cultural environments in the world.
Next in the blame game targeted at China, is the “hypothesis” spurned especially by the Western media to the effect that the stealthy lethal virus was invented in the laboratory of the Wuhan Virology Institute. According to news reports carried by wide circulating tabloids in the USA, the “virus escaped and infected a female scientist working in the Wuhan lab and she in turn, inadvertently infected her boyfriend” and from there, commenced the deadly global journey of the virus.
Plausible and seemingly convincing as the above postulation might appear on the surface, its fallacies and weakness are firstly, brought out in the fact that in their “investigative reports” scooped from, “reliable intelligence sources in China”, the identities of the said female laboratory worker and that of her boyfriend were not given to remove the report from the realm of subjective journalism garbed in fantasy, imagination and conjecture.
In any way, a broad spectrum of world renowned scientists, tellingly, from reputable universities and research institutes in the West, have since debunked the conspiracy theories aimed at portraying China as having artificiality created the virus as, “a new biological weapon”.
Dismissing the projection as, “a really misleading claim and really bad science”, Professor of Virology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, Emma Hodcroft further has this to say of the venom pointedly aimed at Beijing: “We see absolutely no evidence that the virus has been artificiality engineered or purposely released”.
Similarly, leading a global team on a WHO sponsored study, “The Proximal Origin of SARS COV-2”, Professor Kristian Anderson concluded thus: “By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly confirm that the SARS-COV-2 (i.e COVID-19) originated through natural processes.”
This scientifically proven opinion has since been corroborated in independent research works by Professor Robert Gary of the Tulane University, New Orleans and many other reputable scholars in Europe and North America.
But, rambunctious, boisterous President Donald Trump of the USA will not let go any straw of opportunity, no matter how baseless, flimsy, whimsical or illogical, in his well-known rabid obsession to vilify Beijing.
Starting from his efforts to tag COVID-19 a deliberate laboratory invention in the Wuhan Virology Institute and thus, his derisively calling it, ” the Wuhan virus”, Mr. Trump, alongside his international hatchet man, Mike Pompeo, have lately begun the campaign implying that, China has all along been economical with the truth about details of time of the discovery and of the virus as well as figures of its casualties.
This allegation however runs against the grains of the facts which are that, barely weeks after its outbreak in Wuhan, China formally reported detection of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization in January, 2020.
It is also pertinent to note that the research by Professor Anderson and his team on the origin of the coronavirus was largely based on the data generated by Chinese scientists which they shared with medical scholars across the world.
Instead of disparaging the country for its prompt containment of the spread of the diseases and its casualty figures, China should instead be praised for its scientific feat and social discipline that made it possible to limit the scope of Covid-19.
This is so much unlike Donald Trump and his ally counterparts who have so far failed to clip the wings of the novel coronavirus as evident in the high figures of infection and fatalities.
The scenario of blame game, finger pointing and stereotyping that was created to obscure the real meaning and challenges of the disease is at best a portrayal of irresponsible and inept understanding of the basic requirements of humanity in what has become a global village.
A manifestation of the rivalry or global power play between the Western world led by the USA and China tinted and greatly hindered proactive measures that should have been taken at the very exception of the pandemic.
Perhaps, the thousands of people that have died and still dying in the USA, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Germany and other parts of the world might have survived, if the requisite global collaborative efforts had been allowed to firm at the appropriate time.
On the other hand, the Chinese political authority deserves commendation of the rest of the world for demonstrating not only focused leadership that resulted in the mitigation of the ravages of the pandemic within the country, but as well displayed its role as a responsible member of the global community by the extensive medical and manpower assistance being rendered in aid of countries without ideological blemish and idiosyncrasies.
So much unlike Mr. Trumps White House, that, in a rather rash, illogical decision decided to stop the US financial contribution to the World Health Organization on the nebulous and infantile ground that the agency has been too inclined to China. In the end, China comes top.
Ayuba Ahmed is a Kaduna based journalist and analyst.