China has been trying to absolve their blame for the Coronavirus Pandemic by saying the outbreak started elsewhere. The Guardian. State media has been reporting widely that the virus can be found on frozen food imports, and idea not supported by western doctors. They also claim that though the virus was first found in Wuhan, the virus did not start there. Instead they said the first human to human transmission happened on the "Indian subcontinent". China has also hyped up reports from Italy that showed people with Coronavirus antibodies in Italy in fall of 2019, but western doctors have dismissed this as the antibodies were likely for other Coronaviruses and not SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused Covid-19 disease. It is largely seen that China is pushing these theories in order to downplay their role in the pandemic.
My Comment:
I actually think there is some small evidence that the Coronavirus did not start in Wuhan. After all the bats that are likely the source of the virus do not actually live in that part of China. A possible explanation is that it was a traveler from the bat region that went to Wuhan and infected people. But the idea that the virus didn't start in China? I don't see any evidence of that. We would have been seeing widespread cases in other countries in the months of November, December and January if that was the case.
I have always thought that the pandemic was due to a lab leak from one of the germ research labs in Wuhan. I don't think it was an intentional release but I think it was due to incompetence from the people at that lab. I think there is a strong circumstantial case for that idea, though it is far from proven.
What is extremely unlikely is that the virus came from India. Like I said the bats that are the likely source for the virus live in China, not India and I'd be shocked if India was the source of the virus. Especially since they didn't see an early wave of infections, unlike China. I guess it is possible that a Chinese person went to India, infected someone there and then the virus came back to China but even that means the actual source was India.
I also think that China's claims that the virus can be transmitted from frozen foods to be delusional. The one thing I have heard again and again is that the Coronavirus doesn't transmit easily from fomites, surfaces in contact with the virus. Instead the virus mostly infects from infected droplets caused by coughing, sneezing, talking and even singing. This isn't like influenza where surfaces are a major concern. Plus, it's not like people are licking their frozen food packages and people also tend to cook their food. I'm not saying it is impossible but it's extremely unlikely that the virus spread this way in the initial phases of the pandemic.
The problem is that no matter how the virus started it's going to be pretty much impossible to ever determine for sure where it came from. China is not allowing a full investigation and without that it's not possible to figure it out. Part of that is due to the culture of secrecy in China but I think it has more to do with China wanting to avoid blame for their role in this virus.
It seems very clear to me that China is downplaying their role in this pandemic. Even if the idea that this was a leak from their research labs is false it's not like they didn't make this situation much worse. All China had to do was cut off international travel like they did with internal travel. They didn't and it helped spread the virus across the world.
China's actions caused the deaths of almost 1.5 million people globally and did untold damage to the world's economy. They are responsible for almost all of those deaths as they could have easily prevented the virus from spreading.
It makes sense thought that the Chinese are downplaying their government's role in the pandemic. It could be argued that what they did was a casus belli, a justification for war. At the very least they deserve sanctions for their actions and for their effort to cover up the actual source of the virus.
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