Columnists
Controversy dogs the origin of COVID-19
The West always praised for their quick response to world disasters has so far failed to find a vaccice for Covid 19
Six months after it entered the global pandemic scene, Covid-19 (Corona Virus 2019), is the worst virus to invade the world in a century. The other comparable pandemic was the influenza attack of 1918, which especially ravaged Europe, inflicting more than one million deaths.
With no foreseeable let-up in sight in its advance on the world, Covid-19, has so far racked up more than half a million deaths and over ten million infections in 203 countries. The country so far that appears to have been spared, is the Polynesian island of Tonga.
Attention has explicitly been turned to China which reported the first virus attack at the end of December, 2019. And the persistence of the reference to China has stuck, described by USA New York’s Bard College Professor, Walter Russell Mead as, “The Real Sick Man of Asia”, as the origin of the virus. US President Donald Trump, has consistently referred to Covid-19 as the, “Chinese disease”.
It is linked to two previous virus diseases; MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) viruses, which erupted in China. The composition of Covid-19 virus bears a stark resemblance to those other two viruses.
At the outset, there was a publicized claim by Dr. Danny Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, who “studied Chinese biological warfare”, linking the virus to the Wuhan Virology Institute in eastern China, as Beijing’s covert biological weapons programme. Journalist Olivia Beaver, who is keen on the institute, says in her book, “The Hill”, that it affected human beings, was as a result of a leakage, or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person from the facility.
China’s security and Police officials did not help to stem this claim with their treatment of the Wuhan medical doctor, Li Wu Yang, the first astute person to have noticed this. He became a “whistleblower” after he was initially arrested and muzzled by the Chinese Police. Later, anyway, Dr. Li was proved right, as he himself succumbed and died from the virus infection. This then gave rise to more ardent suspicions that the Wuhan Institute was on a research for Chinese bio-warfare warpath.
Issues of this bio-weapon research have sprouted with other social media “fake” suggestions that the virus could have been researched, either in the US or Canada, and financed by the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, referred to as an Illuminati, then infused into China, as a clever business venture to help develop a vaccine, that would be sold to seven billion people worldwide.
As the world ramps up the development of a medicine and vaccines for the virus, this unilateral profit-motive advance of the vaccine has been undermined. In a recent international virtual conference on a combined effort by high-placed countries, philanthropists and businesses to fund-raise to make a vaccine, the European Commissioner, Ursula von der Leyen, urged, “a global development of a vaccine affordable for all, including the low-end countries.”
Chinese “experts” have dismissed the Wuhan Virology Institute claims; and have linked the corona virus to animal contraband traffickers from the African wildlife, who may have sold the meat in the food markets in Wuhan. This is a direct reference to the wild animal trafficking from the African Continent, as the origin of the virus. Yet, save for the Ebola outbreaks, no African country has had any link to the origin of Covid-19.
Indeed, Africa would have been initially severely affected because of its “fragile” medical institutions, but providentially, as of now, it has been spared of the worst outbreaks, except for probably South Africa, Egypt and Morocco. This is in contrast to the outbreaks in Europe, Russia and the Americas, which boast of advanced medical systems that would have been able to stem and treat the tide of the virus, but have so far been unable to.
Suggestions for the low infection rates in Africa have been put at a relatively young population. Other propositions that have been debunked, is that: Africans have a genetically-concerted immune system; the warm climate; and/or, the high presence of Vitamin 4 (which constantly boosts the immune system) in a number of their local foods.
In the Chinese claim, the virus then spread from the butcheries and vegetable markets, the “wet” markets, in Wuhan city to the population. It is arguably how, then, Dr. Li, contracted the virus. The influential medical journal, The Lancet, has disputed this wild animal market connection.
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