In Shenzhen, China’s Silicon Valley, theProduction lines at global tech giant Foxconn, Apple’s main supplier, came to an abrupt halt.. Volkswagen and Toyota gigafactories in Changchun, in the northeast of the country, have come to a standstill. Large-scale lockdowns, including that of the 25 million inhabitants of Shanghai that started on March 27, and the Asian stock markets that are collapsing due to the fear of a rupture in the global supply chain… This dark scenario, hated by the Chinese government, which has established as a golden rule its zero-Covid policy, is a blow to Beijing. While since the appearance of the virus at the end of 2019, China has published figures that are at least suspicious -4,636 deaths compared to 140,000 in France, for example-, the Omicron wave that has hit the country since March is unprecedented and exceeds 5,000 cases dailyunheard of locally.
It also overwhelms neighboring countries like South Korea, another champion of Covid-zero, which represents more than a quarter of all global contamination. This new outbreak, which comes when the epidemic is also on the rise in Europe, is a reminder that Covid-19, with its more than 6 million victims, is one of the deadliest pandemics in history – except for the plague or the Spanish flu. . But more than two years after its appearance, its origin remains unknown. An incredible scientific enigma, despite the multiple investigations launched by the best researchers. So, could we one day know where this deadly virus came from?
A privileged track
It is not the “smoking gun”, that is, the irrefutable and definitive proof of the origin of Covid-19, but for some experts the clue is precious: considered by the scientific community as the number one clue, although a laboratory accident should also be considered very seriously (LabLeak), the zoonotic natural origin hypothesis, which argues that the new coronavirus was transmitted directly from bats to humans or to humans via an intermediate animal – the pangolin was wrongly suspected for a while – saw its rating skyrocket on February 26, 2022. And for good reason, on that same day, three scientific studies, one conducted by the director of the Chinese center for disease control and prevention, George Gao, the other two by various Western researchers, including American virologist Kristian Andersen, are previously published and indicate that Sars-CoV-2 would have initially spread in Huanan Market, Wuhan, where he would have passed from animal to man. “It is still too early to draw definitive conclusions, but these studies confirm that this place played a key role in the early days of the pandemic,” analyzes Florence Débarre, a CNRS researcher who works on the initial dynamics of the epidemic born in Wuhan. at the end of 2019. This market for the sale of fish but also wild animals, potential vectors of the virus, had been identified in early 2020 as the probable primary focus of Covid-19.
read alsoThe secret history of the Wuhan P4 laboratory sold by France to China
During 2020, another lead, LabLeak, initially wrongly labeled “conspiracy” in the media, came to compete with this mainstream theory. It was popularized by a certain Donald Trump, who, on March 20, 2020, launched in the middle of a press conference that this “virus from China” is the result of an accident in a laboratory in Wuhan, the P4. Contrary to his main adviser, the cautious Anthony Fauci, former director of the powerful American Institute of Infectious Diseases, the president of the United States has thrown, without providing the slightest evidence, a huge stone into the pond. And he put France in an awkward position. Because if the capital of Hubei has the Rolls-Royce of virology, a highly secure building, constantly in depression, and which houses the most lethal viruses in the world, it owes it to Paris. And to Jacques Chirac, who validated this transfer of sensitive technologies to Beijing after the end of the SARS epidemic in 2004. The Trumpian accusation then unleashed the commotion in the Elysee. It is in charge of the national coordinator for intelligence and the fight against terrorism (CNRLT), Pierre de Bousquet de Florian. According to a confidential document sent to the CNRLT in mid-May 2020, and consulted by challengesHowever, the hypothesis of an accident inside the P4 is considered “very low”. “In November and December 2019, only the Ebola and Nipah viruses were studied in the laboratory, not the coronaviruses, says a senior official familiar with the subject. The information that our partners have given us does not encourage us to focus on P4, but more well in other labs in Wuhan.”
In the fall of 2020, several researchers gathered around the virologist Etienne Decroly, director of research at the CNRS, and formed the “Paris group”, believing that this LabLeak hypothesis should not be ruled out. Then, on May 13, 2021, in the prestigious journal Science, twenty high-level scientists called for the trace of a laboratory accident to be seriously considered. This is also the meaning of the work of the group of independent researchers Drastic, created in the spring of 2020. On several occasions, in well-founded reports carefully read by the FBI and the DGSE, they pointed out the opacity of the Wuhan Institute. of Virology (WIV), which controls several laboratories, including P4.
According to Drastic, the IVW sent in particular to Darpa, a US agency attached to the Pentagon, in 2018 a request for assistance of 14 million dollars to carry out genetic modification experiments on bat coronaviruses. “Wuhan is full of laboratories that are not exemplary in their management and their health rules, supports Gilles Demaneuf, a big data expert in New Zealand and a member of Drastic. We really have to look beyond P4 and consider that P2 laboratories or P3, less safe, are more at risk, like those at Wuhan University.” This city of 11 million inhabitants, where the logistical support force of the Chinese army is located, on which the Academy of Military Medical Sciences depends, has a dozen sites (see map), meticulously scrutinized by sleuths of this hunt for the truth. also the business of the World Health Organization (WHO). Except that so far, the UN body has lost its credibility.
Total OMS failure
The inspection mission to Wuhan in January and February 2021 It was therefore a total failure. The 13 experts from the organization sent to the scene visited the Huanan market in a hurry and did not stay even three hours at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. On February 9, the mission, carried out jointly with Beijing, even dared to declare that the pandemic was “very likely” due to a zoonosis and did not rule out the theory, spread by Chinese propaganda, that the virus had been introduced to through frozen products from abroad. “This sequence was an absolute disgrace and led to an unfair report”, is carried away by a French diplomat. The controversial study is finally published on March 30 and concludes that transmission to humans by an intermediate animal is a “likely to very likely” hypothesis, while escape of the virus from a laboratory remains “extremely unlikely.” The controversy is such that the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, must retire and guarantees that “all hypotheses remain open”. To complete the discredit of the WHO, the press also reveals that one of the members of the mission, the zoologist Peter Daszak, a fervent supporter of the natural explanation of Covid-19, has collaborated in the past with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The WHO, cornered, reacts by validating in the summer of 2021 the creation of a scientific council called Sago, in charge of clarifying the organization about the origin of Covid and more broadly of making proposals to prevent new pandemics. Composed of 27 members, this assembly, in operation since the end of November, has the mission of not discarding clues. Symbol of this openness, while the previous WHO mission in China included almost only virologists, this new committee also includes an expert in laboratory safety, the Canadian Normand Labbe, or even an anthropologist. “We’re really looking at all the hypotheses,” says Jean-Claude Manuguerra, head of the Institut Pasteur’s emergency biological intervention unit and vice president of Sago. We must have an open mind and not lock ourselves in preconceived things. analyze all the elements of the scientific literature.” The 27, who have held more than thirty videoconferences since the fall, will present their recommendations to the WHO in the spring, which should make them public immediately.
With a strong geopolitical connotation, the origin of the pandemic remains a mystery to this day. Last May, Joe Bi-den put pressure on US intelligence by asking it to “redouble his efforts” and deliver a report within 90 days. Delivered in August 2021, this top secret document failed to move the issue forward. In France, as in Europe, the subject is even frankly taboo. While Emmanuel Macron said on April 16, 2020, in an interview with the Financial Times, “there are clearly things that have happened [en Chine] that we don’t know”, the executive has maintained from a lead rule, as illustrated by the absence of answers to our questions sent to the Elysée, Matignon, the Quai d’Orsay or the Ministry of Health. “It is possible that we will never have definitive answers about the origin of co-vid-19,” argues virologist Etienne Decroly, who deplores China’s opacity and the WHO’s caution. But he wants to believe it: “Technology, in particular through new sequencing methods, could change the situation.” It’s not for tomorrow.