Thread by @Ayjchan

Last month @WHO Tedros said he was ready to deploy missions to investigate whether Covid-19 came from a lab.

Chinese media published an unnamed expert: "WHO will have to be held accountable if worldwide effort at [virus] origin tracing enters a deadlock."
voanews.com/covid-19-pande…

This seems a bit like they're saying that if the WHO continues to be open to an investigation of possible lab origins of Covid-19, then the next phase of an investigation into the origins of the pandemic will be stalled. scmp.com/news/china/dip…

To be as clear as possible, @WHO did not say that Covid-19 definitely came from a lab.

It's that a lab/research-related #OriginofCovid19 is still one of the plausible hypotheses & must be properly investigated for the sake of humanity's future survival. who.int/director-gener…

Specifically, @WHO DG Tedros said on 30 March 2021: "Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy."

This stands in contrast to the jubilant press announcements by some media companies (which I will not amplify) that the @WHO investigation (actually not an investigation according to even the WHO and the team itself) had ruled out lab origins of the virus as "extremely unlikely."

On March 30, 2021, the governments of numerous countries spanning North America, Europe, Oceania, Asia and the Middle East similarly called for a more transparent and timely investigation into the #OriginsofCOVID19

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1380161125883514884

So what is their response now that the WHO is being warned via Chinese media that their comments about possible lab origins of Covid-19 could stall the next phase of the investigation?

My hope is that those 14 countries, the EU, and more countries launch their own investigation into the origins of Covid-19. If they produce an evidence-based analysis, even without China's cooperation, that should be published and considered the authentic report on the origins.

Even if an independent international investigation fails to determine exactly how the SARS2 virus emerged in Wuhan, at least there will be an honest account to the world that a lab leak was plausible but not possible to investigate properly due to lack of cooperation from China.