The first signs of Chinese skepticism of the virus’s origin came from the face of its fight against the epidemic, the celebrated doctor Zhong Nanshan, who was instrumental in the 2003 handling of the SARS crisis and has been featured in numerous televised interviews during the COVID-19 outbreak. At a press conference on Feb. 27, Zhong stated that the virus “may not have originated in China.”
Days later, the clearest salvo in the conspiracy campaign came from China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, who tweeted: “CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
The seemingly coordinated effort to, at minimum, sow doubts about the virus’s origin, and, at its most extreme, to directly accuse the U.S. military of creating and spreading the pathogen, has come from Chinese medical leaders, ambassadors and Foreign Ministry spokespersons — not to mention the hundreds of thousands of comments on Chinese social media echoing the conspiracy theories.
As a retired doctor the thing in all this that impresses me is this first guy. He saw 4 patients that were sufficiently so new, so ill, he was alarmed. When he had seen FOUR.