
It is “extremely unlikely” that the virus causing Covid-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), but for the World Health Organization there’s more to the story. According to WHO mouthpiece Peter Ben Emerek, the issue does not even warrant further study.
“Phew. That’s China off the hook, then,” wrote Miranda Devine of the New York Post.
Contrary to Emerek, a food safety and nutrition specialist, not a virologist, the WIV warrants plenty of further study. Consider, for example, recent revelations from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.





But for a few days, it became something else: a tiny gap in Beijing’s “great firewall”, allowing millions in China a glimpse of an unfiltered, uncensored internet. A place where people could openly discuss issues like the treatment of the Uighur minority, the crackdown in Hong Kong, and relations with Taiwan, which Beijing considers a