UN experts claim massive cover-up by China, US and UK over origins of coronavirus
DHARAMSALA, 30 Jan: UN experts have said that a laboratory leak was the most likely cause of Covid-19 and accused top British and American scientists of helping China deliberately to suppress debate on the issue.
Authors of two UN reports on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic have stated in a damning joint article published on Sunday by the Mail on Sunday that there has been a suppression of the truth, secrecy and cover-ups on an Orwellian scale over the origin of Covid-19 in China.
A report on the Mail Online quoted the two epidemiologists, Colin Butler, from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health in Canberra, Australia, and Delia Randolph, from the University of Greenwich in London as saying that “a pall of suspicious secrecy, deceit and conflicts of interest shrouded high-risk experiments being carried out in Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid first appeared” and further argued that it was “enforced not only by China but by Western funding bodies and influential Western scientists”.
The professors have further called for a ‘reassessment of the likely pathways that caused this pandemic’ as they alleged a massive cover-up over the origin of the pandemic.
“I realise speaking out may be unpopular, even reducing my work opportunities, but the scale of this pandemic is far more important than any personal considerations,” Professor Butler has said in the report.
Professor Randolph, the lead author of the first report, has stated that she was concerned by the possibility of a lab ‘pathway’ but felt that the agency ‘was averse to including anything so controversial’ in the study that she led.
According to the report, the duo were commissioned, soon after the virus emerged in China, by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to study the causes and consequences of Covid amid suggestions at the time that its origins lay in a wild animal market in Wuhan.
Though Professor Butler was reported to be initially sceptical about a lab leak, the report said that he had a change of heart as evidence began to emerge about hidden data, controversial experiments, and the risky research environment at Wuhan.
He has further alleged that the publication was deliberately stalled for ten months until its final release last autumn, which came with minimal publicity, and only after his personal appeal to the report’s funder.
