Scientists call for new probe into COVID-19 origins - with or without China
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A joint ChinaWorld Health Organization (WHO) study into COVID-19 has provided no credible answers about how the pandemic began, and more rigorous investigations are required - with or without Beijing’s involvement, a group of international scientists and researchers said on Wednesday.
The joint study, released last week, said the likeliest transmission route for SARSCoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, involved bats and other wildlife. It all but ruled out the possibility it had leaked from a laboratory. In an open letter, 24 scientists and researchers from Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan said the study was tainted by politics.
“Their starting point was, let’s have as much compromise as is required to get some minimal cooperation from China,” said Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, who led the drafting process for the letter.
The study’s conclusions were based on unpublished Chinese research, while critical records and biological samples “remain inaccessible”, the letter said.
Claims by WHO Director General Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus that China has withheld data have been rejected by Liang Wannian, China’s senior COVID19 expert. Liang also appeared to rule out any further joint investigations in China.
Metzl said the world might have to “revert to Plan B” and conduct further investigations without China’s involvement. China has rejected allegations that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan, the city where COVID19 was first identified.
The joint China-WHO study said the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely”, saying there was “no record” that any laboratory had kept SARS-CoV-2-related viruses. Tedros said more research was required to “reach more robust conclusions”.
But Metzl said China should disclose information that would allow the lab-leak hypothesis to be disproved.
“China has databases of what viruses were being held... there are lab notes of the work that was being done,” he said.
One was Mr. J.I. Ramphal, who strongly denounced the Circular as harmful to Indian development. The other was Dr. J.B. Singh, who defended the Circular and saw it as being in harmony with Indian traditions. After some years, Dr. Singh conceded that holding on to Indian traditions about education of the female would be unhelpful to the Indian section of the population.
Ramharack cites a letter to the editor, written by Singh in 1935, in which Singh, reflecting on the Ruimveldt riots of 1924, expressed the opinion that the British Guiana Labor Union (BGLU), with its predominantly African membership, could not adequately represent Indian sugar workers, a growing majority on the sugar plantations. Yet, history recalls in many places that the BGLU, in its early days, was the only organization giving effective labor representation to sugar workers. Such was their satisfaction at that period that they nick-named H.N. Critchlow “Black Crosby”, after an Immigration Agent General, whose service to their cause met the approval of the workers. Critchlow and Singh were to have another disagreement during the debate in the Legislative Council on the report of a Commission appointed by the Governor to report on changes in the right to vote in general elections. Critchlow had been a pioneer in the call for adult suffrage, the right of all Guyanese, without exception, to vote at age 21. However, by the time the Franchise Commission Report came to be debated in 1944, developments had brought about changes in social relationships and perceptions. These changes affected the race class attitudes of political sectors and some of their representatives. It appears to this reviewer that one of these developments was the introduction into the political process of what has been called the Indian Colonization Scheme. The other was the Franchise Commission Report and the debate on it in the Legislative Council. The two issues were inter-related, although they occupied public attention at different periods of time.
Just about the time Ramharack’s new biography was about to appear on bookshelves, there was a publication in the Guyana newspapers of the reprint of a document with a brief introduction by Dr. Eric Phillips, the chairperson of Guyana’s Reparations Organization. The document itself included excerpts from British Guiana’s governing organs, recording developments during the time when the Colonization Scheme was being actively pursued. The excerpts bore the signature of Jonathan Adams of the Reparations group.
Responding to the publication described above, Jung Bahadur Singh’s biographer, in a letter to the editor, directly asked Phillips to explain his “motive” in issuing the publication about issues which Phillips himself had said had not attracted much attention when they were current in the first quarter of the 20th century. The book under review itself contains evidence that the Colonization Scheme attracted the well-deserved attention in the private and public concerns of the Indian and the African ethnic organizations. The governments of the United Kingdom, India and colonial British Guiana were also actively and openly occupied with the issues. So also were organizations of the Planter class. To assume, as has been assumed, that writers of history have ignored the issue and context of the Indian Colonization Scheme is an unfortunate error. In actual fact, its place in public affairs was so weighty that it led to official delegations being exchanged among Britain, India and British Guiana. Evidence of this claim is not hard to find.
In this reviewer’s papers to the 1988 International Commemoration Conferences in Georgetown, he explored the effect of the Indian Colonization Scheme on the domestic political situation in British Guiana. In doing so, he relied partly on a small book by Mrs. Edith Brown, widow of the lawyer, Den Amstel’s A.B. Brown, who was the first African to be elected to British Guiana’s law-making body. From her book and other sources, it appears that the African organizations did not oppose the Indian Colonization Scheme, but thought to introduce an African Scheme, relying on migrants from Liberia. The colonial office allowed the Guyanese Indian delegation to visit India, but disallowed the visit of the Guyanese African delegation to Liberia.
Thus, it is clear that inter-ethnic relations in Guyana have never been the results of mature relations among the groups. They have always been influenced by manipulation by the colonial command, which placed its own interest first. The author, in his letter referred to above, shows awareness of this Command and must know that it had always been decisive in our affairs. Even as this is being written, Guyanese political sectors are showing their readiness to invoke, or warn against, geo-political pressures.
In celebration of his remarkable efforts and his dedication to both the race that gave him birth and the country that was his birthplace, let it be said that J.B. Singh found ways of allowing his talents and expertise to serve diverse communities. This reviewer selects the following examples:
There is the record of the seven times he was elected president of the BGEIA. He had become a member of the British Guiana Workers’ League. He became a trustee of the Man Power Citizens’ Association. He became the first chairman of the multi-ethnic British Guiana Labour Party. Most significantly, he founded the British Guiana Nurses’ Association.
J.B. Singh’s interest in culture included not only practice of the traditions laid down by Hindu sages and the observers of seasonal and functional rituals. His conspicuous residence in Lamaha Street, Georgetown became a nursery for the fine arts in Indian idiom and flavor. His wife was a recognized producer of theatrical works. His daughter, Rajkumari Singh, despite her disability, has been applauded as an archive and producer of what she proudly called “Coolie Culture”. The author named three gifted artists, Gora Singh, a dancer, Mahadai Das, a gifted poet, and a novelist, Rooplal Monar.
The author concludes his very timely and instructive biography with a chapter captioned, “The Rise and Fall of Jung Bahadur Singh”. This title, in the reviewer’s opinion, is misguided. Since he did not present himself as a man of destiny, but as a qualified human being serving necessary causes, the cliché, “Rise and Fall”, does not fit the case. Rather, Dr.
Singh’s defeat was influenced by the new political process and organization of 1953, which worked in such a way that Singh was defeated at the polls by an unknown, but intelligent, shovel man, Fred Bowman, of the PPP. While Dr. J.B. Singh practiced a political culture of service in mass organizations, together with working in secret committees as a member of the Governor’s Executive Counsel, the role of the PPP was public exposure. In the 1953 elections campaign, Dr. Singh’s chief tormentor was Pandit Misir, who regularly exposed Dr. Singh to ridicule by claiming that the member sat on the chairs of the Legislative Counsel uselessly like a “Christmas Father”. Pandit Misir’s claim to fame was that he organized the Yag at Vreed-N-Hoop to be addressed by Mrs. Janet Jagan, causing her to be charged with a breach of the emergency regulations and jail. This trial was the occasion of her famous statement about her origins and faith, which has brought criticism to those who have dared to quote it. During the Yag conducted by Pandit Misir, voices accused the Pandit of reading wrong.
In terms of cultural history and experience, Dr. J.B. Singh, far from rising and falling, was absorbed into the infinite heroically. His body was the first to be officially granted the rite of cremation, for which Dr. Singh had struggled for decades.