“It is not and it should not be political.
Discovering the origins of Covid is a scientific question that is resolved with samples that can be sequenced, on which we can do experiments, ”insists Etienne Decroly, virologist at the CNRS.
With around thirty scientific personalities, the researcher signs an open letter calling for an independent investigation to understand how this disease could have passed to humans.
Among the signatories of this text published in the Wall Street Journal and in Le Monde, we find Jamie Metzl, member of the Clinton administration and former collaborator of Joe Biden, among other scientists who work in American, Australian and Belgian laboratories. , German, Austrian or French.
Doubts about the method
From France, virologist Bruno Canard, geneticists Virginie Courtier and Jean-Michel Claverie, for example, have associated their names with this approach.
The collective hits hard: "Because we believe that the process and the efforts of the joint team
(Editor's note: the WHO-China
fact-finding
mission
) to date do not constitute a thorough, credible and transparent investigation, we call for the the international community to put in place a structure and a process capable of doing so, ”they did not hesitate to write.
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These hyperconnected scientists had the idea of this call at the time of the press conference which gave the first conclusions of the joint WHO-China mission on February 9.
The presentation, which lasted nearly three hours, dismissed the hypothesis of a virus coming out of a laboratory "as too improbable" and called for an investigation into the link with imported frozen meat, a track advanced several times by Beijing, way of suggesting that the Covid could come from elsewhere.
For the time being, this mission has not delivered its conclusions, not even an interim report contrary to what had been planned.
This Friday, we learned that the final report would be unveiled in "the week of March 15".
WHO denies
But faced with the bronca raised during the Wuhan press conference, the president of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had all the same had to crack a denial: “Some have wondered whether certain hypotheses had been abandoned.
After having discussed with the members of the team, I wish to confirm that all the assumptions remain on the table ”, he specified.
Covid, a disease well known to bats that live thousands of kilometers south of Wuhan, could have passed through the pangolin before infecting humans or another wild animal.
Another option, the intermediate host would in fact come from intensive breeding, mink for example.
This virus could also have accidentally come out of a laboratory ... One year after the start of this pandemic which has killed more than 2.5 million humans, the mystery remains unsolved.
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Be that as it may, the open letter denounces the weakness of the mission of the WHO, in the first place "half of the joint team brought together in the framework of this process is made up of Chinese citizens whose scientific independence could be limited ”, we can read.
The collective also points out that "the process of selecting the international experts for the team did not allow conflicts of interest to be detected correctly".
In the viewfinder, the British zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the NGO EcoHealth Alliance, which has been collaborating for several years with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Where the virus could have escaped from.
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“Elucidating the origins of the disease does not have a vague historical interest which would fall within the past, it is an essential question for the future, insists Etienne Decroly.
Understanding how this virus got to humans is essential.
Otherwise, another virus is likely to follow the same path.
The appeal of the letter of the thirty scientists is all the more urgent as it concerns scientific investigations as well as police investigations: the longer we wait and the less testimonies, the less reliable the genetic material.
