The Chinese Communist Party is obsessed with viruses. Its army of scientists claim to have discovered almost 2,000 new viruses in a little over a decade. It took the past 200 years for the rest of the world to discover that many. More troubling is the party鈥檚 negligence on biosafety. The costs and the risk to world health are enormous, as evidenced by a novel coronavirus that escaped Wuhan. This situation can鈥檛 continue. The world must hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable and punish Beijing if it fails to uphold global biosafety standards, including basic transparency requirements.
The most recent example of this malfeasance is playing out around us. The evidence that the virus came from Wuhan is enormous, though largely circumstantial, and most signs point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, as the source of Covid-19. In America, concern about the site is now broad and bipartisan. The Biden administration that it has 鈥渄eep concerns鈥� about the World Health Organization鈥檚 investigation into the early days of the pandemic, particularly Beijing鈥檚 interference with the investigators鈥� work.
The world has known for a long time that WIV poses a huge risk to global health. Two 2018 State Department cables warned of its biosafety problems. They even predicted that SARS-CoV-2鈥檚 ACE2 receptor, identified by WIV scientists, would enable human-to-human transmission. Yuan Zhiming, then director of WIV鈥檚 biosafety level 4 lab, 鈥淭he biosafety laboratory is a double-edge sword: It can be used for the benefit of humanity, but can also lead to a disaster.鈥� He listed the shortfalls prevalent among China鈥檚 biology labs, including a lack of 鈥渙perational technical support, professional instructions鈥� and 鈥渇easible standards for the safety requirements of different protection zones and for the inoculation of microbiological animals and equipment.鈥�
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