The German virologist did not even intuit how far his words would go on COVID-19: China reacted immediately

This manipulation recalls the beginning of a pandemic outbreak in Italy, when the eyes of Italians caught in the virus were directed at tens of thousands of Chinese working in the Lombardy region.

April 26 In a talk show on the public broadcaster ZDF, Professor Kekulé made a new but less known statement to experts that the world’s current coronavirus is a modified version of the original Uhan virus.

“The virus that is now detected worldwide is the same that has spread in northern Italy. So, in principle, the global pandemic was launched there, ”he said.

When presenter Markus Lanz noted that the statement sounded like a source of Chinese state propaganda, the scientist clarified: “Understandably, the virus originated in China,” but when it was brought to northern Italy, it went unnoticed for a long time and was disturbed. genetically over time. It is a genetically modified and more contagious variant of the original SARS-CoV-2.

The last part of the German virologist’s speech was silenced by Chinese propaganda, capturing only the beginning of the statement.

“The coronavirus did not originate in Wuhan,” said a prominent German virologist, the party’s propaganda channel China Global Television Network (CCTV-News) said in a video.

The fact that Chinese propaganda so unfairly took advantage of a German virologist is nothing special: “Beijing has been working diligently since the virus began to spread around the world.” In March, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, spread the conspiracy theory that the US military had brought the virus to China without any evidence, recalled the German daily Die Welt.

Beijing points a finger at Europe

And now the People’s Republic is trying to suggest: the virus is not from China at all, but from Europe. The accusation of racism was also used to strengthen the impression.

“Wuhan was the victim of an incoming virus and a racist demonization,” Wang Hao, deputy editor-in-chief of propaganda magazine China Daily, said in a Twitter account on Monday, citing a statement by German virologist Kekulé.

A joint study by researchers from the Milan Oncology Institute and the University of Siena last month was fit for Europe’s propaganda version of the coronavirus, which found that antibodies to the coronavirus were already in the blood of four people whom they they were tested for cancer in October.

Beijing’s response did not last long: “Although China was the first country to report coronavirus cases, it does not necessarily mean that the virus originated in China,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.

The Italian authors of the study immediately rejected such an interpretation. According to them, the results of the investigation only show that the epidemic in China was not detected in time. Furthermore, experts now tend to believe that in 2019. The antibodies detected in Italy in the fall of 2006 were a reaction to cold coronaviruses, not the new SARS-Co-2 coronavirus, which began its triumphal march in China.

There have been extensive reports in the scientific literature where antibodies formed after contact with other coronaviruses also show a cross-reaction with SARS-Co-2, explained Antonella Viola, an immunologist at the University of Padua.

For example, a study by researchers at the University of London was published in the journal Science in early November, which found that antibodies to SARS-Co-2 were also found in blood samples from children taken between 2011 and 2018, even though these children had only been exposed to cold coronaviruses.

In the spring, all eyes turned to the Chinese in Italy.

The latest Chinese propaganda encourages a return to February, when at the beginning of the pandemic in the Lombardy region, there was speculation in the Italian and European media that the dangerous virus could have been brought into the country by the Chinese.

After all, according to official figures, there are 310,000 Chinese immigrants in Italy, although in reality there should be many more, many of whom work illegally, mainly in textile companies in northern Italy.

Suppose the Chinese in Prato make up about 10 percent. In Milan, according to this year’s statistics, the surname is usually not long dominated by Italian Rossi, but by Chinese Hu: 4664 Hu and 4006 Rossi are registered in the city, reported Süddeutsche Zeitung.

It is true that, according to official figures, only 40,438 Chinese currently live in Milan, which represents 1.24 percent. of the entire population of the city. There are 7,500 small and medium-sized Chinese-owned companies.

“La Cina è vicina”, China is close, – as recently said in Milan, but after the coronavirus was detected in Rome in late January for a couple of Chinese tourists, Chinese living in Italy began to avoid ugly verbal attacks, – the German weekly Die Zeit wrote in Milan for journalist Andrea Affaticati in February.

Avoid looking for a “scapegoat”

It is also worth mentioning that Italy, especially Milan and Venice in its north, is very attractive to tourists from China. 2019 up to three million visited the country. The first two cases of coronavirus recorded in Italy were a pair of Chinese tourists.

And a 38-year-old Italian manager who fell ill with COVID-19 was infected in Lombardy, but the chain of infection could not be traced.

The Italian right-wing parties then demanded special control of the coronavirus in Chinese communities, where it was done. However, finding the culprits in a situation where hostility towards Chinese immigrants began to grow in the country became uncomfortable.

The German public broadcaster ZDF commented in those days that the Italian populists had found a “scapegoat”, Chinese immigrants, and defended them using statistics on Chinese residence.

Bergamo province, where the virus has spread the most, is home to just 4,488 Chinese, while Prato, with a Chinese community accounting for a tenth of the city’s population, had a relatively low number of people infected with it. coronavirus, said the ZDF portal. According to the National Institute of Statistics of Italy.

Mr Kekulé recalled that the Chinese have not yet been admitted to the WHO

The media of the People’s Republic have no similar scruples. On the contrary, they blatantly distorted the words uttered by a German virologist on the same ZDF channel to back up their own version: China did not export the virus, but imported it.

Professor A. Kekulé, outraged by such manipulation of his words, on December 1. Once again, he stressed to the German public broadcaster that he had said something entirely different: “The virus has been circulating in China, Hubei province, for a longer period of time, and specifically south of Wuhan.” From there, even before the big outbreak in Wuhan, the pathogen was exported in isolated cases to various parts of the world.

In response to such distortions, one must consider how this should affect further cooperation with China, the researcher said.

It is extremely important to determine exactly where the virus originates in China.

“And here I can only remind you that the Chinese have so far not admitted a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the origins of the pandemic,” added the German virologist.

The WHO has been waiting for more than a month for Beijing to give its delegation the green light to know the start of the pandemic, where exactly the virus jumped from animal to human.

Dan Peter Embarek, a member of the WHO delegation, said last week that he wanted to visit the first Chinese infected with the coronavirus at the Wuhan animal market, German media reported on Thursday.

The first WHO delegation visited China as early as February, but animal market experts were unable to visit it at the time.