Cryptic messages could prove Wuhan lab leak after scientists refer to ‘opening Pandora’s box’ weeks before outbreak
CRYPTIC messages hidden in official documents could prove Covid escaped from a lab in Wuhan, a new report says.
An expert on language used by China’s officials believes he has found clues in phrases such as scientists talking about opening a “Pandora’s box”.
Toy Reid was part of a team of researchers who worked on a US Senate investigation into the idea that Covid leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The Chinese initially pointed to a market in the Covid epicentre as being a possible source of the pandemic, which has killed 6.5 million people across the globe.
But the presence of the lab that researched viruses such as Covid inevitably led to accusations about it being the ‘ground zero’.
The senate report concluded that Covid was “most likely the result of a research-related incident”.
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Now more details have emerged about what the Senate researcher team found.
The 44-year-old Reid is a fluent Chinese speaker and former diplomat but he explained even native speakers struggle to understand the language of China’s bureaucrats.
“It’s not meant to be easily understood. It’s almost like a secret language of Chinese officialdom,” he investigative website.
“When they’re talking about anything potentially embarrassing, they speak of it in innuendo and hushed tones, and there’s a certain acceptable way to allude to something.”
He was able find a way to access messages archived on the website of the WIV and began decoding the language.
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Reid began probing into the messages to he found scientists under intense pressure to produce breakthroughs.
But then he came across one message lamented a lack of “equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining” such a lab.
Then in November 2019, as the world was blissfully unaware of Covid, reports began to surface about a biosecurity breach.
One massage read “once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box” adding “these viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace”.
The message says that “every time this has happened” the lab’s Communist Party members “have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel”.
Reid said that according to his interpretation, they were concerned officials would arrive from Beijing “to scream at them” – which in fact happened next.
A high ranking official arrived claiming to have “important oral remarks and written instructions” from China’s President Xi Jinping himself as well as from Prime Minister Li Keqiang.
What do we know about the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
THE WUHAN Institute of Virology is the highest security lab of its kind in all of China - and can be found right at the heart of the origins of the global pandemic
Various theories have been swirling about the lab, which is headed up by Chinese scientist Dr Shi Zhengli, known as 'bat woman'.
Most scientists do not believe the virus leaked from the lab, and the lab itself has categorically denied the claims.
The lab specialised in bat-borne viruses and had been carrying out experiences on them since 2015.
Airlocks, full body suits, and chemical showers are required before entering and leaving the lab - the first in China to be accredited with biosafety level 4 (BSL-4).
BSL-4 labs are the only places in the world where scientists can study diseases that have no cure.
Scientists from the lab even tested mysterious
virus which killed three miners 1,000 miles away in Yunnan province back in 2012.
It has been suggested this fatal mystery bug may have been the true origin of Covid-19.
Experts at the lab also engineered a new type of hybrid 'super-virus' that can infect humans in 2015, according to medical journal
Despite fears surrounding the research, the study was designed to show the risk of viruses carried by bats which could be transmitted to humans.
There is no suggestion the facility's 2015 work is linked to the pandemic.
The lab was also recruiting new scientists to probe coronaviruses in bats just seven days before the outbreak.
China has began tightening security around its biolabs with President Xi Jinping saying it was a “national security” issue to improve scientific safety at a meeting last February.
The official said the instructions came in the form of writing in margins of documents.
This is often used by China’s senior officials use to ensure orders are carried out by lower officials, says Reid.
ProPublica says it and Vanity Fair magazine examined research on these margin notes asked three experts on Chinese Communist Party Communications to look at the WIV meeting summary.
All said it related to some sort of biosafety emergency – and two also agreed that it appeared Xi himself had issued an order written in the margins.
Others believe the senior official may just have been trying to invoke the name of Xi Jinping.
But ProPublica and Toy Reid have come in for criticism for their translation and interpretation of the documents.
China -based science writer that the documents show the problems surrounding the "three nos" were in fact raised at the time construction started on the lab but went on to be fixed.
Other Mandarin translators also questioned other aspects of Reid's interpretation.
ProPublica has now contacted other Mandarin translators to check over the documents, reports.
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China lashed out at the Senate report which it said with Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian saying: “US politicians are rehashing the lab-leak theory to smear China in disregard of facts.
“Such acts are driven by ill-intentions. This will only hamper science-based origins tracing and undermine international anti-Covid cooperation.”