OPINIONISTA: Conspiracy theories, hypocrisy and bioterrorism amid the Coronavirus battle By Terry Bell
There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy, let alone irony, in the ongoing allegations by President Donald Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo that the origin of the Covid-19 Coronavirus could have been a laboratory in China. It is an allegation that plays into widespread conspiracy theories that the virus was manufactured by scientists.
However, since 1976 when the Biological Weapons Convention came into force, scientists in these facilities were supposed only to be analysing, understanding and working on antidotes to potential diseases. But there is still no formal verification system in place to monitor whether biological weapons are being developed, produced or stockpiled, so some biological warfare experimentation may still be going on.
More than two years ago, a high-level panel of scientists, convened in 2015 by the World Health Organisation noted that viruses can be transmitted from animals to humans; that the multi-billion dollar trade in wildlife trafficking, both as pets and for consumption and the manufacturing of traditional medicines, should be seen as a real danger.
“It seems to make sense,” Trump said of the allegations about the Wuhan lab. “We’re going to find out.” Pompeo, in a television interview, noted: “We are still asking the Chinese Communist Party to allow experts to get into that virology lab so that we can determine precisely where this virus began,”
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