FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY P OLICY S ERIES No. 236 / JULY 2021 IT ALL BEGAN IN CHINA BY BARRY COOPER AND MARCO NAVARRO-GÉNIE FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY II deas that change your world / www.fcpp.org 1 FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY BARRY COOPER Barry Cooper is a Senior Fellow with Frontier Centre for Public Policy. As a fourth generation Albertan, he was educated at Shawnigan Lake School, the University of British Columbia and Duke University, where he received his doctorate in 1969. He taught at Bishop’s University, McGill, and York University before coming to the University of Calgary in 1981. For the past twenty-five years he has studied western political philosophy, both classical and contemporary. Much of his teaching has focused on Greek political philosophy whereas his publications have been chiefly in the area of contemporary French and German political philosophy. Over the years he has spent considerable time in both countries, teaching and doing research. MARCO NAVARRO-GÉNIE Marco Navarro-Génie, BA (Concordia University), MA, PhD (University of Calgary), is a Senior Fellow who has served as vice-president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy following two decades in academe. His areas of interests are fiscal federalism, higher education, immigration and labour, and energy and environment. He comments regularly on Canadian institutions, policy, and politics for various print and broadcast outlets. FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY 203-2727 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3J 0R2 Tel: 204-957-1567 Email: [email protected] The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is an independent, non-profit organization that undertakes research and education in support of economic growth and social outcomes that will enhance the quality of life in our communities. Through a variety of publications and public forums, Frontier explores policy innovations required to make the prairie region a winner in the open economy. It also provides new insights into solving important issues facing our cities, towns and provinces. These include improving the performance of public expenditures in important areas such as local government, education, health and social policy. The author(s) of this study have worked independently and the opinions expressed are therefore their own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the board of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Copyright © 2021 by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Policy Series No. 236 • Date of First Issue: July 2021. Reproduced here with permission of the author(s). Any errors or omissions and the accuracy and completeness of this paper remain the responsibility of the author(s). Frontier Centre for Public Policy expresses its appreciation and thanks to the Lotte and John Hecht Memorial Foundation for supporting for this project. ISSN 1491-78 I deas that change your world / www.fcpp.org 2 FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY P OLICY S ERIES No. 236 / JULY 2021 IT ALL BEGAN IN CHINA BY BARRY COOPER AND MARCO NAVARRO-GÉNIE TABLE OF CONTENTS The Beginning 4 SARS-CoV-2 Was Perfectable Adapted To Infect Humans 8 Politics As Much As Science Has Informed All Accounts of the Origin of the Virus 10 Other January 2020 Events 15 Taiwan’s Success Was Born of Distrust of Beijing’s Public Statements 16 The Joint WHO-China Study 18 Conclusion 21 Endnotes 23 3 FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY THE BEGINNING Timelines associated with the spread of All warfare COVID-19 have changed over the past year and, with new information, may change again in the future. There seems to be is based on widespread agreement in publicly available sources that individuals with odd flu-like deception. illnesses were observed in China as early as August 2019. Nothing was publicly confirmed Sun Tsu, until a 70-year-old man with Alzheimer’s The Art of War, I: 18 disease was diagnosed in late December 2019 in Wuhan. According to the Lancet, which, despite recent irregularities, remains a flagship English-language general medical journal, the symptoms of this first patient presented around December 1.1 There also seems to be agreement that by late 2019 the “novel” coronavirus had jumped from an animal to a human being; this is called a zoonotic transmission. At this point, narrative agreement breaks down. Some observers said the transmission from an unspecified animal to a human took place in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, also in Wuhan. It was called a “wet” market not simply because it sold slaughtered live seafood that requires water to live. It was also the site of the live slaughter of pangolins, wolf pups, hares, Sika deer, rabbits, bamboo rats, hedgehogs, snakes, raccoons, dogs, porcupines, badgers, pigs, salamanders (regular and giant), two types of crocodiles, geese, ducks, doves, chickens, and peacocks.2 A second narrative began with the infection of the wife of the patient with Alzheimer’s who showed symptoms of pneumonia at the end of the first week in December but who had no known history of exposure to the Wuhan wet market. She was then hospitalized in an isolation ward. Some observers then turned their attention to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, some 12 kilometers away from the market. 4 FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY Others looked at the even closer (280 meters) they might mutate to become more infectious Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and to humans.”8 These experiments are called Prevention. The Wuhan virology lab, which “gain-of-function” or GoF experiments. As the happens to have close ties to the National name implies, they are intended to generate Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg,3 viruses with novel properties that may be was built by a contractor for the People’s more pathogenic and/or transmissible than Liberation Army (PLA) and is associated with wild viruses or even to generate viruses the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. with attributes that do not exist in nature.9 Evidently, the PLA sponsored research and Despite being routinely used, it would be an experiments in genetic editing, human understatement to say such experimentation performance enhancement, and similar is controversial.10 For that reason, the bioweapons work.4 It was intended to be a United States has banned GoF experiments top-level security laboratory (as well as a top- from time to time and they have not been secret one) that would be capable of safely conducted in the Winnipeg lab. They were handling the most deadly human pathogens. reinstated in the U.S. on December 19, 2017, The Chinese certified that it met Biosafety after having been discontinued there since Level Four (BSL-4), the highest safety rating October 2014.11 available, but many scientists outside China 12 viewed that classification skeptically. In Shi provided a different account. For 2017, an article in Nature raised questions context, two matters should be borne in about the safety protocols in Chinese mind. First, the Wuhan Institute of Virology microbiology labs, adding historical weight has been studying bats and bat diseases for to the possibility, raised early in the history a quarter-century. At the time, they were of the pandemic, that the virus may have concerned with discovering the origins of escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology SARS-1 or SARS-CoV-1. It turned out that the into the human population that frequented cross-species infection from bats to humans the market.5 was discovered relatively early. The Chinese scientists eventually traced the origin of the In January 2018, the United States sent SARS-1 virus to a cave in Yunnan province, scientists with diplomatic status to visit the over 1,200 kilometers south of Wuhan. The Wuhan virology lab. They discovered that nearest relative to SARS-CoV-2 is also a SARS-like coronaviruses from bats could coronavirus that the Wuhan lab isolated from interact with the human receptor found in the a horseshoe bat found in Yunnan in 2013.13 lungs, called ACE2, which “strongly suggests This virus, then called RaTG13, shared 96.4 that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can percent of its genome with SARS-CoV-2. The be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like 3.8 percent of genetic difference is equivalent diseases.”6 The Americans also found that the to between twenty and fifty years of natural lab personnel did not follow or practice BSL-4 evolutionary change. But, as we shall see, security protocols but were closer to BSL-2. that is not the whole story. In any event, how a bat in Yunnan led to an infection in Wuhan The Institute of Virology was controversial has yet to be definitively accounted for. for another reason. Virologist Shi Zhengli was nicknamed the “bat lady” for directing The second contextual factor is the adversarial a team that had accumulated an extensive geopolitical relationship between the United collection of coronaviruses from bat caves States and China. For example, Shi said that of southern China.7 She has also conducted then-president Donald Trump “owed us an experiments on bat viruses “to find out how apology” for suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 5 FRONTIER CENTRE FOR PUBLIC POLICY escaped from the Wuhan lab.14 denied doing so was entirely to be expected. What matters in this context is capability, not On July 15, 2020, Shi emailed Science with a a focus on accidents or intentions. reply to a series of written questions (a link is available in the Science article in the previous There remains yet another problem: about a footnote). When asked if a bat “in or close third of the original cluster of Wuhan cases to Wuhan” might have infected someone, had no exposure to the wet market, which she said that she favoured the theory that meant that COVID-19 was already spreading the virus spread through an intermediate through inter-human contact in December host.