The "Investigate Fort Detrick" Petition

I consider it a counterattack when China on Friday turned the tables on the US pertaining to the Covid virus origins issue. 

The former has now challenged the latter to demonstrate transparency, by disclosing data on early Covid-19 cases* in the US, inviting the World Health Organization to probe Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina, and publishing data on sick soldiers who attended the Wuhan Military World Games, amid mounting calls from China and the international community to investigate the country on Covid-19 origins and growing outrage on Joe Biden administration's political maneuver which aimed to turn the global virus tracing task into an anti-China attack.

*This includes the unexplained respiratory disease in Virginia, vaping-related lung disease in Wisconsin in July 2019 and flu patients in the winter of 2019.

Just so you know, Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland is not a random pick and it is definitely not above suspicion. It is home to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. And in August 2019, Fort Detrick’s deadly germ research operations were abruptly shut down following serious safety violations. Many people don't buy the story that the temporary shutdown was due to ongoing infrastructure issues related to wastewater decontamination because the explanation was just not persuasive enough.  

Anyway, the US, it seems, is good at deflecting blame from itself. Plus the fact that it has a hankering to fault China for its role in the spread of Covid-19. 

To me, it is pretty clear that it wants to transfer responsibility from its own failed Covid-19 response and at the same time, achieve its political goal of slandering and demeaning China. 

From its hostile rhetoric as well as subsequent belligerent actions, the US is determined to politicize the pandemic, stigmatize the virus and weaponize the subject of Covid-19 origins to antagonize China.  

Already, an online petition is making its rounds to urge the WHO to investigate the Fort Detrick lab. It has garnered at least 20 million signatures within fifteen days. 

In fact, a band of Chinese netizens had started the initiative when they drafted the petition and entrusted the Global Times to post the petition on WeChat and Weibo on July 17 to solicit public support. This week, the petition also opened channels for overseas participants.

But of course, the US is keeping quiet on the matter and so is WHO. 

Then there is the mystery surrounding another deadly, previously unseen respiratory illness in the US in the late summer of 2019 – months before Covid-19 was on anyone's radar – that dominated the headlines in that country. 

By mid-December, the vaping-related lung disease named EVALI by the CDC had hospitalized 2,500 people across the US and killed 54 – weeks before the first case of the novel coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, China. 

By late February of 2020, as the first Covid-19-related deaths were being reported in the US, cases of EVALI had been reported in all 50 states, and the death toll had climbed to 68. 

But by the end of March, as Covid raged in New York City and the nation locked down, EVALI had largely disappeared from the news and new cases were rare in hospital emergency departments. More than half of patients hospitalized with EVALI during the outbreak peak in the fall of 2019 were teens and young adults under age 25. Not so for Covid, which has hospitalized and killed mostly older adults. 

But the many similarities between the two illnesses have some questioning whether they are related, and if some cases of EVALI might have actually been very early, unrecognized cases of Covid-19.

Obviously, further investigation is needed but again, you don't hear a peep from the Americans. Or WHO for that matter.