An investigative report published this week in the Times of London revealed that China’s People’s Liberation Army has been conducting virology research with potential military applications at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) since at least 2017. The report, which cites secret Chinese communications intercepted by U.S. investigators, suggests that the “covert project of dangerous experiments” being conducted at the infamous lab was a direct predicate for the global outbreak of Covid-19.
Scientists researching the disease at the WIV were among the first patients to be sickened with the virus, which disrupted life across the planet and cost the lives of millions. These scientists were reportedly engaged in gain-of-function experiments, in which pathogens are genetically altered to increase the risks associated with infection in an effort to better understand how to mitigate those risks. When the researchers became so sick with a flu-like illness in the fall of 2019 that they required hospitalization, Chinese officials did not appear to be confused about the nature of the problem on their hands.
Chinese officials locked down a previously accessible public coronavirus database in September 2019, altered its data to hide the pathogen’s origins, and subsequently took it offline altogether. When Chinese officials eventually revealed the genomic sequence of the virus they had been studying, it led investigators to speculate about the PLA’s apocalyptic objectives.
A State Department investigator summarizing the conclusions to which the government’s inquiry led said, “Despite presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation, and cover-up of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Previously unreleased State Department cables obtained by a journalistic nonprofit reveal the extent of the PLA’s investment in “shadow labs” at the WIV. Those dispatches contradict claims from Chinese officials and the WIV’s Western financiers, such as EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak, who dismissed the prospect that classified civilian-military biological research was ongoing at the institute and could have produced the virus that was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2.
The scandal of the century, as it has been called, is avoidable. The pandemic that disrupted life across the planet could have been contained in China if Beijing had not covered it up. However, the U.S. executive agencies that helped fund what was apparently PLA-linked research at the WIV provided that help in the Trump years. While Beijing was covering up the emerging plague, Trump himself echoed the assurances the Chinese Communist Party was providing the rest of the world.
Both Democratic and Republican partisans have few incentives to appear scandalized by these revelations. Neither party’s activists enjoy the psychological satisfaction associated with hammering their domestic political opponents over this. It’s too stale to juice the cycle of dunking and debunking typical of any modern political controversy.
This is not about accountability, because it seems clear at this point that no one will be held accountable. What these revelations do demand, though, is a full accounting, so that we can prevent a similar outbreak from happening in the future. American voters deserve to know just how the Covid pandemic happened, and they deserve elected representatives who are properly prepared to prevent the next global disaster.
