Tag: Viruses

U.S. Intelligence Agencies May Never Find Covid’s Origins, Officials Say

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For three years, the U.S. government has been tied in knots over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, frustrated that China’s hindrance of investigations and unwillingness to look critically at its own research have obscured what intelligence agencies can learn about whether the virus escaped from a lab. Inquiries during the Trump and Biden administrations have yielded no definitive answers. The Energy Department and the F.B.I. favored the theory that a laboratory leak may have caused the pandemic. Five intelligence bodies considered theories of natural transmission — that the coronavirus…

WHO Accuses China of Withholding Data on Covid’s Origins

Chin@Strategy

The World Health Organization rebuked Chinese officials on Friday for withholding scientific research that may link the origin of the coronavirus to wild animals called raccoon dogs, asking why the data had not been made available three years ago and why, after it was published online in January, it could not be found now. Before the Chinese data disappeared, an international team of virus experts downloaded and began analyzing the research. They say it supports the idea that the pandemic could have begun when illegally traded raccoon dogs infected humans…

What Are Raccoon Dogs?

Chin@Strategy

On Thursday, scientists unveiled new data on the possible origins of the Covid-19 pandemic — and put a strange, squat creature squarely in the spotlight. Meet the raccoon dog; it earns its name from its black facial markings, which give the animal a masked appearance and a more-than-passing resemblance to those infamous raiders of urban trash cans. The animals were at least occasionally sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where many virologists suspect that the Covid-19 pandemic may have started. Scientists had previously announced that swabs from the market…

China Dismisses Latest Claim That Lab Leak Likely Caused Covid

Chin@Strategy

China accused the United States of politicizing the coronavirus pandemic again on Monday, in response to reports that the Energy Department had concluded that an accidental laboratory leak had likely triggered the spread of Covid worldwide. The rebuke marks the latest salvo in a running war of words between the two countries over the origins of the virus, an issue that has taken on as much of a political dimension as a scientific one as the rivalry between the two superpowers deepens. “Covid tracing is a scientific issue that should…

Health Experts Warily Eye XBB.1.5, the Latest Omicron Subvariant

Chin@Strategy

Three years into the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to impress virologists with its swift evolution. A young version, known as XBB.1.5, has quickly been spreading in the United States over the past few weeks. As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that it made up 72 percent of new cases in the Northeast and 27.6 percent of cases across the country. The new subvariant, first sampled in the fall in New York State, has a potent array of mutations that appear to help it evade immune defenses and…

‘Tragic Battle’: On the Front Lines of China’s Covid Crisis

Chin@Strategy

Slumped in wheelchairs and lying on gurneys, the sickened patients crowd every nook and cranny of the emergency department at the hospital in northern China. They cram into the narrow spaces between elevator doors. They surround an idle walk-through metal detector. And they line the walls of a corridor ringing with the sounds of coughing. China’s hospitals were already overcrowded, underfunded and inadequately staffed in the best of times. But now with Covid spreading freely for the first time in China, the medical system is being pushed to its limits.…

New Research Points to Wuhan Market as Pandemic Origin

Chin@Strategy

Scientists released a pair of extensive studies on Saturday that point to a market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. Analyzing data from a variety of sources, they concluded that the coronavirus was very likely present in live mammals sold in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late 2019 and suggested that the virus twice spilled over into people working or shopping there. They said they found no support for an alternate theory that the coronavirus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. Members of the Wuhan…

The Olympic Torch Arrives in Beijing Under Cloud of Protests, Covid

Chin@Strategy

The Olympic torch arrived in Beijing on Wednesday, beginning a countdown to a Winter Games being held under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic and calls for a boycott over China’s rights abuses in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang. The arrival ceremony, like the official lighting of the Olympic flame in Athens on Monday, unfolded without spectators, one of many concessions to Covid-19 that will severely restrict access to the games, which begin on Feb. 4. China, with the “full support” of the International Olympic Committee, is planning to hold…