2023-06-20 10:31:29
Summary of the article
It is cringe to see how in November 2021 Marion Koopmans and Zembla did everything they could to define the escape from the lab as a conspiracy theory. Koopmans thereby sinned against the basic principles of science.
Read the full article: How Zembla and Koopmans got into trouble with a virus from Wuhan
Reading time: 6 minutes
If in the future there is ever a virtual museum about the state of confusion (to put it euphemistically) of the Dutch media in Corona times, a Zembla broadcast from November 2021 will certainly be in the top 3. It is about the possible origin of the virus.
With the knowledge of that time it is already an astonishing broadcast, and with the knowledge of today that is even more the case squared. You can watch the entire 35-minute broadcast here, but read this article first. Contains text and image fragments from this episode.
How did Covid-19 originate?
Zembla addresses the question of how the pandemic in Wuhan originated in the broadcast. Talks about this with various experts and uses various sources. Before I go through the broadcast, the central issue:
The wave of infection started in December 2019 in Wuhan. How did it start?
The following points are important to know and these are in themselves undisputed:
In China there are groups of bats where various types of Coronaviruses are circulating. There is a lab in Wuhan where extensive research has been conducted into the Coronavirus for many years. Research methods were also used to create new variants. High safety regulations apply in that lab. Americans are involved in the research in that lab. There is a large market 10 kilometers from the lab, where a variety of live animals are also traded, mainly for consumption.
In January 2020, it was suggested that Covid-19 had “escaped” from the lab (for example, due to employees becoming infected and infecting family members). But soon after in March 2020, a group of scientists stated via an article in The Lancet that the virus on the market in Wuhan had “jumped” from animals to humans. And that it was very unlikely that the virus came from the lab.
From then on, the escape from the lab was treated as a “conspiracy theory” in most media outlets.
In the past week I have written a number of articles on this topic. The translation of an extensive article in The Sunday Times and a fictional story about an outbreak of Ebola in Amsterdam. (Emerged in a lab in the Science Park or a pet shop on the Albert Cuyp).
The Zembla documentary
The fascinating thing about the Zembla documentary is that various scientists are given the opportunity to speak, which gives you serious doubts about the theory that the virus has jumped to the Wuhan market. But the central person in Zembla is Marion Koopmans and people follow her lecture about what happened, so that someone who has not been paying attention at the end of Zembla will still think that the escape of the virus from the lab is a conspiracy theory.
These are some literal texts from the documentary:
08:20 “To nip the escape from the lab in the bud, 27 scientists publish a statement in The Lancet. Their message: the virus jumped over from nature. They write: We strongly condemn conspiracy theories that suggest COVID-19 has no natural origin.”
09:20 (one English professor of virology): “The conclusions were drawn much too quickly. It was based on ideas and not on facts… If you decide too quickly, you have a hidden agenda”.
10:00 (a Dutch professor of biophysics): “There was no scientific basis at all for making such a firm claim. Because there was a group of experts who campaigned quite aggressively to squash the idea of a lab accident.”
The article in The Lancet is then shown and the 27 writers’ statement that they had no “other interests”. But then the program zooms in on one of the signatories, “Peter Daszak”, who works in America. A number of experts in the program have established that he collaborated intensively with the researchers from the laboratory in Wuhan. And an email from him is shown from February 5, 2020, in which he writes about that statement that they are preparing. With the addition that the statement will be released in such a way that it cannot be traced back to our collaboration and therefore an independent voice is maximized.
The program then continues showing that accusations are made from the US to the lab in Wuhan and that the Chinese claim that the virus came from abroad. It was also indicated that there would be little willingness on the part of the Chinese to be open about matters, especially if the blame were placed on the Chinese side.
Chinese scientists who were approached by colleagues or journalists from abroad indicated that they were not allowed to say anything about the subject.
The WHO Commission of Inquiry
Then Zembla is about the WHO mission that will go to Wuhan in early 2021 to conduct research there. Participants include Marion Koopmans, but also the aforementioned Peter Daszak.
The Dutch professor says about this “If it were a laboratory accident, Peter Daszak would be one of the most responsible persons in the world for this accident. You can hardly think of a person who has a greater conflict of interest.”
The program then elaborates on the problems of that delegation. Because they had only received a limited amount of information from the Chinese. Not enough to draw conclusions about any of the possible causes.
The head of the delegation, a senior WHO official, a Dane, is negotiating with the Chinese about the investigation and also about the press conference at the end. There he declares to the world press about the hypothesis that the virus had escaped from the lab, that this was extremely unlikely.
But it is clear from the program, also from the explanation of Marion Koopmans, that that statement at that press conference in China had been negotiated between the Chinese and that delegation leader. He was only allowed to comment on the escape from the lab if he added “extremely unlikely”.
In May 2021, when the report was not yet finalized, the US and the WHO themselves already distanced themselves from it. This is what WHO President Tedros Ghebreyesus stated at the time:
“I am an immunologist and I have worked in the lab. Accidents in the lab do happen. And we need information about what the situation was like in those labs before the outbreak and at the beginning of the pandemic.”
Marion Koopmans then says that she was very angry about this.
And then the program takes a fascinating turn in the last 5 minutes. First, an English journalist indicates that it is of course always more interesting when a man bites a dog than a dog bites a man. And then a Dutch professor comes to England to explain how conspiracy theories arise. And it is explained that in talk shows the easy story is always more likely to be followed by the audience.
It is abundantly clear that the viewer of Zembla must end with the feeling that the escape of the virus from the lab is a conspiracy theory and that there is only one explanation shared by almost all scientists “the virus has jumped to humans on the market in Wuhan”.
While the most revealing fragment was the justified question to Marion Koopmans after about 7 minutes in the program how she initially viewed the possibility that the virus had escaped from the lab in Wuhan. I’ll write it out verbatim below and let you hear and see it too.
Ask: “Was such a lab theory such a crazy idea in the beginning?”
Marion Koopmans: “Well, very unlikely, so I mainly thought it was. It was well, just because it was in an area where there is also a lab working on Corona virus, was no association for me, because yes, that is no association for me.
Before I show you the excerpt, here is an excerpt from an email from Marion Koopmans dated February 7 to a number of colleagues:
“I am not in favor of publishing anything specific about the hypothesis that the virus escaped from the lab, because otherwise it could backfire. Yes, there is public domain speculation, spawned by a number of papers, including crappy ones. By going into specific points, which are not in the public domain at this point, it will give rise to its own conspiracy theories.”
And now for the fragment in which Marion Koopmans is asked the (logical) question in Zembla whether she herself initially considered the possibility that the virus had escaped from the lab.
Finally
The “smoking gun” has now been found. In various media, such as Forbes, it is reported that patient Zero has been found with Covid-19. In November, some employees of the virus lab in Wuhan became infected with one of the viruses they were investigating. The American intelligence services had known their names for a long time. One of them was Ben Hu, who led the research in the lab that attempted to modify the virus that originally came from bats.
These three employees apparently ignited their roommates and that was the starting point of the pandemic, which took off in December in Wuhan.
A scenario that was much more likely from the start than the jump from an animal to a human in a market that is 10 km away from the virus lab in question.
If you watch the entire Zembla broadcast from November 2021 with this knowledge, you will realize how much people like Koopmans and Daszak and others were concerned about denying / ignoring the possibility of the virus escaping from the lab. But also how Zembla, while they do allow experts to express their serious doubts, still go along with Koopmans’ story and the viewer must be left with the feeling that the lableak is also one of the many conspiracy theories of the wappies.
That is why I nominate this Zembla broadcast for a place of honor in that museum about the media’s actions in the three Corona years.
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