Trump must stop pushing 'debunked conspiracy theories' that coronavirus came from Chinese lab, warn experts
Health experts have deemed President Donald Trump's claim that the novel coronavirus outbreak might have originated in an infectious disease laboratory in Wuhan, as "unhelpful." The experts denounced the president's promotion of such conspiracy theories, saying it risks undermining the public health response to the COVID-19 crisis, which has claimed thousands of lives worldwide.
Trump, during a press briefing on Thursday, April 30, said that he had seen evidence that the current coronavirus outbreak came from a facility Wuhan, Hubei Province. The president also suggested that the particular viruses' release from the lab was a "mistake."
Senior Research Fellow in Global Health at the University of Southampton, Dr. Michael Head, refuted Trump's claim, saying that scientists have evidence, suggesting that the virus is "not man-made."
"We have good evidence from the genomics research that the virus is not man-made, and the scientific world has very much moved on from this idea. It is unhelpful for high-profile individuals to repeat the debunked conspiracy theories, as it undermines the public health response," Dr. Head said, according to the Metro.
Another expert, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Brendan Wren, also slammed Trump, saying: "Having been to Wuhan a number of times and having had infectious disease researchers from Wuhan working in my labs in London, I don’t believe that there have been any deliberate or nefarious activities with the SARS-Cov-2 virus."
Wren said that Wuhan has an "excellent state-of-the-art infectious disease facilities", adding: "It is generally accepted that the virus has mutated naturally and it has been very difficult to contain within the human community."
"It should be noted that pandemics occur throughout history and indeed we have them every year. These include other viruses and bacteria; for example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria that we know through human activities, such as travel, spread rapidly worldwide," the scientist added. "Pandemics happen naturally and it is unnecessary to invoke a conspiracy theory."
Reports stated that US intelligence agencies are probing the suggestions from the president and his aides who had speculated that the novel coronavirus could have been unleashed from China accidentally. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, on Thursday, issued a statement, saying that it agrees with the scientific consensus.
The statement said that the organization "concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified. The IC (intelligence community) will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."
The theory of COVID-19's origins in the Wuhan laboratory was also recently rejected by leading infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci who said that suggested available evidence on the origins of the virus is "totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human." The expert cited a study by "a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists" to refute the conspiracy theory.