Emails reveal WHO, NIH caved in to China’s efforts to control information about coronavirus

New emails obtained by the Daily Caller showed that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) caved in to China’s persistent attempts to absolve itself of any blame for the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).

One of the emails, dated Feb. 15, 2020, revealed that a WHO technical officer informed Dr. Cliff Lane that he would have to sign a confidentiality form and a disclosure of interest (DOI) approved by Chinese authorities.

“The forms this time are tailored to China’s terms so we cannot use the ones from before,” Mansuk Daniel Han, a technical officer at WHO’s headquarters in Switzerland, wrote to Lane.

Lane serves as Dr. Anthony Fauci’s deputy director for clinical research at the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the NIH.

The emails were obtained by the Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on its behalf by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. The request sought emails from both Fauci and Lane referencing the WHO and China.

“These new emails show WHO and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health gave special accommodations to Chinese communist efforts to control information about COVID-19,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

The restrictions Beijing included in its confidentiality forms were not included in the emails turned over by the government to Judicial Watch and the DCNF.

Citizen journalist sentenced to four years in prison for reporting coronavirus toll in Wuhan

That China would want to control the narrative around COVID-19 comes as no surprise. The Chinese government has been accused of silencing doctors, whistleblowers and journalists who tried to alert the public about the virus.

In December 2020, a court in Shanghai sentenced citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who reported on the coronavirus toll in Wuhan, to four years in prison. Human rights lawyer Ren Quanniu, who was involved in the case, has been disbarred.

“City officials suppressed information [on infection risks], worried it would impact their careers,” said Zhang Hai, a Shenzhen resident whose father contracted coronavirus and died after undergoing bone fracture surgery in Wuhan on Jan. 20, 2020.

Zhang and at least four others have tried to sue the city of Wuhan and other authorities for their virus response, but their lawsuits have not been accepted.

Beijing has also maintained a tight grip on scientists both inside and outside China studying the virus.

Earlier this year, the government delayed the visit of WHO team that was going to Wuhan to investigate the origins of the virus. On Jan. 4, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the setback “disappointing.” (Related: China sympathizer and WHO director Tedros Ghebreyesus was ranking member of violent Communist movement in Ethiopia.)

When the team was finally allowed to visit Wuhan, some scientists on the mission said Chinese authorities had refused to turn over raw data on early coronavirus patients in the city.

Chinese authorities conducted Wuhan investigation, not WHO investigators

WHO adviser Jamie Metzl said the investigation into the origins of the coronavirus was in fact conducted by Chinese authorities and not by the WHO investigators.

“The investigation itself was very short,” Metzl told Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News’ “Ingraham Angle,” on Feb. 10. “It was two weeks of quarantine and two weeks of meetings, but the actual investigation was done by Chinese authorities. And so, the WHO investigators were basically receiving reports from the Chinese officials.”

The probe was meant to look into whether or not the coronavirus could have accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Peter Embarek, a Danish scientist who led the WHO mission, claimed it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab. He said that bats were a more likely source.

“The laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population,” Embarek said on Feb. 9. “Therefore, [it] is not in the hypotheses that we will suggest for future studies.”

Metzl was critical of the conclusion reached by the WHO mission. He mentioned that the WHO team outlined four possible beginnings of the coronavirus – bat to human, bat through an animal intermediate host, frozen food shipped from somewhere and the accidental lab leak. While he emphasized the need to look at the fourth option – the accidental lab leak – the WHO team focused on the first three.

“For more than a year, I’ve been one of the leading advocates saying we have to look very, very seriously at option four,” Metzl said.

“But rather than saying, alright, let’s look more deeply at all of those possibilities, the WHO investigators said we should look at the first three, but not at the accidental lab leak,” he continued. “And I’m just miffed that this has happened. I think it’s really terrible. Most of us don’t exactly how COVID began.”

“But certainly, an accidental lab leak is a very, very credible possibility.”

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Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com 1

Asia.Nikkei.com

TheEpochTimes.com 2