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驻芝加哥总领事赵建在领区主流媒体发表署名文章《新冠病毒溯源不应被政治化》
2021-11-20 00:35


11月15日和18日,驻芝加哥总领事赵建分别在美中西部地区英文媒体《论坛星报》、《芝加哥论坛报》发表署名文章《新冠病毒溯源不应被政治化》。

文章指出,当前新冠病毒疫情仍在全球肆虐,抗疫仍是当务之急。病毒没有国界。各国只有团结合作,科学抗疫,才能战胜疫情。病毒溯源对有效防控疫情具有重要意义,这是一个重大科学课题,应该也只能由科学家依据事实,通过严谨分析,得出科学结论。

文章强调,中国始终高度重视并积极参与新冠病毒全球科学溯源合作,并秉持公开、透明、科学、合作的原则,先后两次邀请世界卫生组织专家到中国开展病毒溯源研究。世卫专家组今年3月在华开展了28天的溯源工作联合研究,去了所有他们想去的地方,见到了所有他们想见的人,查看了所有他们想看的资料,发布了翔实、权威、专业、科学的联合研究报告,得出了实验室泄漏"极不可能",应在全球范围内寻找跟踪早期病例样本等重要结论。

文章通过援引多位国际知名病毒学家、科学家的论点驳斥一些美国阴谋论者宣扬的新冠病毒"中国实验室泄漏论"等谬论和谎言,指出新冠病毒起源于自然,这是包括美国在内的国际学术界和医学界的普遍共识。美国国立卫生研究院院长柯林斯去年3月就发表文章指出,新冠病毒是自然界产生的,不是实验室操作的产物。柯林斯今年接受CNBC采访时再次指出,大量证据表明新冠病毒系自然起源,没有人为制造特征。去年4月,美国国家情报总监办公室官方网站也曾声明美情报界同意科学界的广泛共识,即新冠病毒不是人造,也未经过基因改造。去年以来,众多国际知名科学家在《柳叶刀》、《自然》、《细胞》等权威刊物上发表论文指出,新冠病毒只可能来源于自然,不可能是人为制造的,没有科学证据支持"实验室泄漏论"。也没有证据表明任何早期病例与武汉的研究所有任何关联。一些人热衷于散布新冠病毒源于武汉病毒研究所的谎言,其目的就是把溯源政治化,对中国进行污名化,达到不可告人的政治目的。武汉病毒研究所P4实验室具有国际科学界公认稳定可靠的生物安全防护设施和完整严格的生物安全管理体系。曾在武汉P4实验室工作至2019年底的澳大利亚病毒学家丹妮尔·安德森在接受彭博社采访时表示,武汉病毒研究所实验室有同世界上任何一所类似实验室同等严格的安全管理程序和要求。事实上,自2018年正式投入运行以来,武汉P4实验室从未发生过任何病原泄漏和人员感染事故。2019年12月30日以前,武汉病毒所没有接触、储藏和研究过新冠病毒,也从未设计、制造和泄漏新冠病毒。所有武汉研究所的工作人员迄今均保持新冠病毒"零感染"。有人声称,武汉病毒研究所有三名研究人员曾于2019年11月到医院就诊,症状与新冠肺炎一致。这完全是无中生有。安德森在接受采访时也明确证实,同期与她一起在实验室工作的同事并没有一人感染新冠,她本人也没有受到过感染。

有媒体宣称2012年几名云南矿工生病,很可能就是被新冠病毒感染。武汉病毒研究所当年曾对这些矿工的血清样本做过多次检测,并未检测出蝙蝠冠状病毒。云南矿工疾病与新冠病毒没有任何关联。一些阴谋论者声称蝙蝠冠状病毒RaTG13可能是新冠病毒的源头。实际上RaTG13是武汉病毒研究所团队2013年从云南墨江采集的生物样本中检测到的一组病毒序列。该所从未培养出活的病毒,RaTG13也并非是从矿工血清样本中发现的,与矿工的疾病没有任何关联。《科学》杂志2020年7月24日刊载的文章指出,RaTG13和新冠病毒之间的进化距离大约是20年到50年,是很远的进化关系。这些情况中国科学家已经通过各种渠道向世卫组织专家做过说明。

文章强调,事实上,世界各地越来越多研究和证据表明,在中国武汉发现确诊病例之前,新冠病毒已在欧洲、美洲等世界许多地方出现。这充分说明,在全球更广范围内继续寻找早期病例,开展多点多地溯源十分必要。中国对新冠病毒全球溯源问题的立场是一贯、明确的。溯源是科学问题,中国始终支持并将继续参加科学溯源,但坚决反对政治操弄、对中国搞有罪推定和进行污名化。这不是搞病毒溯源,而是散布"政治病毒",中方绝不接受,世界绝大多数国家也明确反对。在当前形势下,世界各国应当加强团结,切实汇聚科学家等各方力量,把做好全球疫情防控作为当务之急,摆脱政治干扰,积极稳妥在全球多国多地范围内合作开展溯源工作,尽快找到最有可能的病毒源头,尽最大努力预防类似的疫情再次发生。


文章英文全文如下:

Origin Tracing of COVID-19 Should not be Politicized


As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the world, the fight against the virus remains the most pressing task for us all. Virus knows no borders. Only when countries pull together and fight by science's rules can we defeat the pandemic.

Origin tracingof COVID-19 is of great importance to effective prevention and control of the pandemic. It is a serious scientific subject about which scientific conclusions should and can only be made by scientists based on facts and rigorous analyses.

Several pandemics in human history have shown that the place where cases are first reported is not necessarily the place of origin of the virus. For instance, the "Spanish flu" that broke out toward the end of WWI did not originate in Spain. China was the first country to report COVID-19 cases at the end of 2019 and the first country to issue the global alert. But this does not mean that the virus originated in China.

China has attached great importance to and actively participated in global scientific cooperation in origin-tracing studies. Following the principles of being open, transparent, cooperative and science-based, we have twice invited WHO experts to China for origin-tracing research. In March this year, the WHO expert team carried out a 28-day joint research in China, during which they visited all the places they wanted to go, met all the people they wanted to meet, and reviewed all the data they wanted to see. Based on this research, the team released a comprehensive, authoritative, professional and scientific joint study report that came to the important conclusion that lab leak is "extremely unlikely", and that samples of early cases should be traced down globally.

It is the general consensus of the international academic and medical circles, including those of the U.S., that COVID-19 originated in nature. Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) pointed out in his article published in March last year that "this novel coronavirus arose naturally"; it "was not a product of purposeful manipulation in a lab". In a recent interview with CNBC, Dr. Collins reiterated that vast evidence has shown that the virus is "a naturally occurring virus" and "does not have the earmarks of having been created intentionally by human work." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) also said in a statement carried in its official website in Aprillast year that U.S. intelligence agencies agreed with the broad scientific consensus that COVID-19 was not man-made or genetically engineered. Since last year, many internationally renowned scientists have published papers in authoritative journals like The Lancet, Nature, and Cell, noting that COVID-19 can only come from nature and cannot be artificially created, and that there is no scientific evidence to support the "lab leak theory", or to link the early cases to Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Some people have been actively spreading the disinformation that COVID-19 originated from the WIV. They are doing so to politicize origin tracing of the virus, stigmatize China, and achieve ulterior political purpose.

The P4 laboratory of WIV has stable and reliable biosecurity protection facilities and a complete and strict biosecurity management system recognized by the international scientific community. In an interview with Bloomberg, Australian virologist Danielle Anderson who had worked at the Wuhan P4 laboratory until the end of 2019 said that the WIV laboratory has the same strict security management procedures and requirements as any similar laboratory in the world. In fact, the Wuhan P4 laboratory has never had any pathogen leak or personal infection accidents since it was officially put into operation in 2018. As of December 30, 2019, the WIV had never handled, stored or studied COVID-19, nor had it engineered or leaked the virus. So far none of its staff has been infected by the virus. Some claimed that three researchers from the WIV visited hospital in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with those of COVID-19. This is pure fabrication. Danielle Anderson also unequivocally confirmed in the interview that none of her colleagues working in the lab during the same period of time was infected with COVID-19, nor had she herself ever been infected.  

Some media claimed that in 2012, several miners in China's Yunnan Province fell ill, most likely from COVID-19 infection. The WIV conducted multiple tests on the serum samples of these miners that year, and no bat coronavirus was detected, which proved that the Yunnan miners' disease was not in any way related to COVID-19.

Some conspiracy theorists claimed that bat coronavirus RaTG13 may be the origin of COVID-19. But the fact is RaTG13 is a set of viral sequences detected by the WIV team in 2013 from biological samples collected from Mojiang, Yunnan. The institute has never cultivated any live virus, and RaTG13 was not found in the miners' serum samples and has nothing to do with their illness. According to an article published in the Science magazine on July 24, 2020, the evolutionary distance between RaTG13 and COVID-19 is a few decades, which is a very long evolutionary relationship. Chinese scientists have explained all these facts to WHO experts through various channels.

In fact, more and more studies and evidence from around the world have indicated that before confirmed cases were reported in Wuhan, China, COVID-19 might have appeared in many parts of the world, including Europe and the Americas. This has made it highly necessary to continue with the search for early cases in a wider areas of the world, and to conduct virus origin tracing in multiple places.

China's position on global origin tracing is consistent and clear-cut. That is origin tracing is a scientific matter; China supports and will continue to participate in scientific tracing, but firmly opposes political manipulation, presumption of guilt and stigmatization of China, because these are not acts of origin tracing, but spread of "political virus", which China will never accept and will be opposed by the vast majority of countries in the world.

Given the current situation, countries in the world need to strengthen solidarity and pull the strength of scientists and all other forces to fight the pandemic as the top priority. It is important that we get rid of political interference, and conduct origin tracing actively and prudently in multiple countries and regions around the world, so as to identify the most likely source of the virus at an early date and prevent recurrence of similar outbreaks to the best of our ability.






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