After two months of being on lockdown, China finally lifted its restrictions, causing thousands of its locals to flood public places and go back to their normal routine. Wealthy businesses and their wives went to Guangdong to shop. Citizens went to tourist spots to relax and those in the provinces are back in the wet markets to buy and sell.
After a sharp contraction in its economy, China is now open for business. However, other countries in the world, especially those in the West, are still struggling and are still in lockdown, completely heading towards economic ruin.
Many are now speculating, did China hid the real number of coronavirus victims? Is the pandemic in the country over? Is the outbreak really under control or are the Chinese officials just covering up the total death toll?
Did the pandemic really begin in Wuhan or in the Huanan seafood market? Was the virus designed in the city's state-run Institute of Virology just like what some experts and President Donald Trump have implied? There are so many questions and speculations that the Communist Party in China refuses to answer.
In an attempt to piece all of the information and evidence together, the Daily Mail has spoken to virologists, economists, and activists in order to understand what China is hiding and how the COVID-19 came bout.
The alleged source of COVID-19
According to Ma Jian, the author and human rights activities who are known as the "Chinese Solzhenitsyn", in 1977, a strange strain of flu started infecting people in Northern China. The symptoms duplicated those of the flu but it is not mostly fatal. The strange flu was last seen two decades ago and it was thought to be extinct.
Genetic tests done by virologists indicated that it was an extinct flu from the late 1950s. In its prime, the strain had been so widespread that anyone alive was likely to have been exposed to it and developed an immunity. What is notable about the virus is that it only survives in the middling temperature range, as though it was created to do this.
In fact, the virus had been scientifically selected to flourish in lab temperatures. Through gene testing, it showed that the virus had not mutated for over 20 years in the way that it would have done if it had been replicating for generations outside the lab.
According to a report by the University of California, San Diego, in the journal PLoS One in 2010, there is evidence shows that the virus had been frozen and stored in a lab for years. Then it had been thawed, and somehow escaped to prey on a new generation that had no natural immunity.
All fingers were immediately pointed to Chinese virology labs as the source of the virus. Investigators suggested that the virus may have escaped from a lab where researchers were working on a new vaccine. The story has chilling echoes today for experts who fear that the pandemic, COVID-19, emerged not from Wuhan's Huanan market, but escaped from one of the city's laboratories that are experimenting with bat coronaviruses.
The cover-ups
In December 2019, before the outbreak made its way into mainstream media, doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital posted a message alerting colleagues to the mysterious new disease. The doctors were then accused by security forces of making false comments and they were forced to sign statements agreeing not to discuss the disease.
In early April, Chinese authorities began to crack down on the publication of academic research about the origins of the novel coronavirus. Two Chinese universities published web notices requiring academic papers dealing with COVID-19 to be scrutinized first by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The research on the origins of the coronavirus is sensitive, and they are subject to checks by government officials, according to the notices posted by Fudan University and the China University of Geosciences.
According to Jane Duckett, a professor at Glasgow University's Scottish Center for China Research, it is a typical response by the Chinese authorities to try to control the narrative on any story that they might think threatens them. With coronavirus, it may be because they know that their initial response to the outbreak was not good enough and would cause dissatisfaction among the Chinese people.
Will the real nature of COVID-19 come to light?
Professor Eddie Holmes of Sydney University stated that there is no enough evidence to show that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Coronaviruses are commonly found in wildlife species and they jump to new hosts frequently. Animal to human transmission is the most likely explanation for the origin of COVID-19.
Several credible voices in the Western scientific community maintain their stance that the pandemic is a natural occurrence and not a scheme cooked up in a laboratory. But if there is one thing that everyone can agree on is that the inaction and secrecy of the Chinese authorities have lead Western intelligence services to determine the truth.
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