"In search of the truth": Coronavirus origins: how unseen Wuhan research notes could hold the answers – and why lab-leak rumours refuse to die

Dr Shi Zhengli, aka "China's Bat Woman" at the Wuhan Institute
of Virology. She worried that covid might have leaked from her lab

["In search of the truth" is the headline to this story in the print version of the Post. The rest of the headline above is the online version of it. Either way, they're pretty provocative headlines, it seems to me (at least, I'm guessing, from Beijing's pov), and I'm encouraged that the Post still has the guts to write such pieces.]

China is clearly hyper-sensitive about the lab leak hypothesis: that the virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they had been studying the very coronaviruses that have killed, as of today, 3 million people around the world. Their basic line has been "we looked into it, and it didn't happen" -- the Chinese version of "nothing to see here; move on".

Beijing's concern is obvious and understandable: what if it were proven that covid escaped from the WIV? There would be immediate and loud calls for reparations. So, the WHO "investigation mission" went it and found it "extremely unlikely" that the virus had escaped. Nota bene: how long China took to allow the WHO team in -- long enough to purge the records, which they clearly did, as 30,000+ sets of data are missing. And there are other questions remaining. Including: why did the WHO say it was "extremely unlikely" that there was a lab leak, when by their own admission they didn't have the forensic tools needed to carry out an investigation into that hypothesis?  They ruled it out without the necessary research. 

Amazingly, the South China Morning Post, our local English language paper here in Hong Kong, ran a detailed article covering this hypothesis and it hasn't (yet) been deemed a threat to national security under our new National Security Law. I keep my breath baited for the time when this becomes verboten, just as the Post's owner, Jack Ma, was given a $US 500 million fine last week on his holding company Alibaba. What next? I'm living in the hope that the Chinese are letting the Post go cause it's in English and poses no real threat to Beijing. It lets those silly foreigners let off some steam. Let them play in their sandbox.

Meantime China is very upset that Japan has plans to release some waste waters from the Fukushima nuclear plant. The New Scientist doesn't see it as any big deal. Me, I'm no expert, as also aren't most folks getting very upset. I note two things: 1. Korea is very upset because they say their waters will be polluted. Well, if you look at the chart of currents, the Koriushu current takes any waters off Fukushima off to California, nowhere near the coasts of Korea.

2. The amount -- 1.2 million tonnes of water -- is equivalent to zero point, then sixteen zeros and a seven, percent of the Pacific Ocean. (0.00000000000000007%) This is undetectable. It still doesn't excuse the water release. But nor does it make it the climate catastrophe it's being made out to be. Still, there may be better things to do with it. I don't find the study by Japanese experts compelling. [Note, btw, that this came out for discussion in February 2020, over a year ago, so the criticism that Japan has just landed this on the world as a surprise is not valid].

China calls for an international investigation of Japan's Fukushima water release plans. Sure. Like the international investigation into a massively more dangerous pathogen -- Covid -- that it has refused and which it has punished Australia for suggesting. Give me a break. 

Here's the coronavirus origins story in the Post. And, because I don't trust that this mightn't disappear, here is the story at the Internet Archive.