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By politicizing COVID-19 origins, the U.S. impedes the global fight against the pandemic
Maitreya Bhakal
04:59

Editor's note: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, the United States has continuously asked the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct a COVID-19 origins investigation in China. Maitreya Bhakal, an Indian commentator who writes about China, India, the U.S. and global issues, shares his view on the reasons behind the U.S.' behavior. The opinions expressed in the video are his own and not necessarily those of CGTN.

CGTN: While a WHO team, after visiting Wuhan, concluded that a lab origin theory is highly unlikely, the U.S. continues to pressure the WHO to launch a second-phase investigation of COVID-19 origins. What do you make of this U.S. behavior? What does the U.S. want to achieve by hyping up the lab-leak theory?

Maitreya Bhakal: It's very interesting how this lab-leak conspiracy theory has worked. And the World Health organization's (WHO) U-turn is more surprising. The WHO was actually accused of "being controlled" by China even though the U.S. is the largest contributor to its funds.

Just imagine the U-turn that the WHO is asking for a second visit to China now which China's sensibly refused. (As of July 20,) 55 countries have actually signed a letter saying that they oppose the politicization of pandemic origins. So, I don't think we need to pay too much attention to this.

This is just a simple propaganda campaign to discredit China. The U.S. regime has a long history of bringing up such fake news, whether it's Iraq WMDs or lab leaks to discredit China, I think in a couple of weeks or months, this will just die away on its own. And no serious scientist actually takes the lab-leak theory seriously.

What this just shows is how gullible the U.S. population is. Early 2020 polls showed that the majority of the U.S. population thinks that the virus did not come from a lab. One year later, the majority of the U.S. population actually thinks that the virus did come from a lab. 

So it was so easy for the U.S. media to completely turn around the opinions of the majority of its population. This shows the strong effect of propaganda in the U.S. But the rest of the world and experts are not convinced. So it's just a conspiracy theory.

CGTN: While China has called for a scientific investigation of the COVID-19 origins, the WHO on August 12 urged China to share raw data on early COVID cases and release information to deal with the lab-leak theory. How do you view the WHO's latest action?

Maitreya: China has already shared everything it had to share. The U.S. actually wants access to that lab. The question is, no country on Earth is going to allow access to its labs and similar facilities to the WHO. Not the U.S., not the UK, not India and not China.

So, it's a good thing that China refused access. And it is very clear that, as with most other international organizations, the U.S. controls the WHO because it's the largest contributor to its funding. It is just one aspect of the information warfare angle of the hybrid war that the U.S. has against China, nothing else; this has no scientific basis.

CGTN: The U.S. is blamed for putting politics before science. What influence will this U.S. approach have on global efforts against the pandemic?

Maitreya: The Western world wishes to portray itself as the savior of the globe. It thinks that it is superior to other people. It thinks that it is on a higher moral standing. The West, particularly the U.S., thinks that its political system is superior to others, especially the Chinese system.

When the time came to provide assistance, the West became selfish. Now the thing is, the West has always been selfish. The reason why the propaganda is increasingly more common than it should is because the West controls the global information highways, more or less. And this propaganda was thoroughly exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

When China helped other nations, then the U.S. and the U.S. media blamed it as "vaccine diplomacy." They proclaimed it as something very nefarious and something very evil that China is doing for global influence – as if the U.S. doesn't want global influence at all.

The U.S. actions are actually impeding global efforts against the pandemic. The time that people take talking about the lab-leak theory distracts people from actually talking about efforts to actually improve the world's pandemic situation. So, the U.S. anyway doesn't care about human life in its own country, and it is trying to distract the world from caring about life in their own countries.

Interviewer: Yang Chuchu

Video editor: Feng Ran

Graphic designer:  Li Jingjie

Managing editor: Yang Chuchu

Associate producer: Wang Xinyan

Senior producer:  Bi Jianlu

Managing director: Mei Yan

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)

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