By Mario Cavolo

W hen we look at the situation right now， in terms of COVID-19 origin investigations， we have a state of affairs that is tainted black by the geopolitical narrative. That narrative first took hold with the Donald Trump administration and today still exudes very strongly from the Joe Biden administration.

In February， Peter Ben Embarek， head of an expert team dispatched by the World Health Organization（WHO） to Wuhan to conduct COVID-19 origin tracing， said the mission was “successful in many ways.” There was no widespread nor large cluster of COVID-19 in or around Chinas Wuhan in months prior to December 2019， according to the Danish scientist. “We still are far away from understanding the origin and identifying the animal species and the pathways via which the virus could have entered the human body in December，” he added.

Thats what WHO told the world. And for telling the world just that， the U.S. declared WHO persona non grata. Much like China， one might argue.

The U.S. still calls for further investigation in China， but never for any type of exploration into its own archives. This constitutes geopolitical hypocrisy.

Scientific evidence has shown that the virus had been circulating in certain areas of the U.S. many months before the epidemic in Wuhan. The Chinese city is where the virus was first identified， not where it began.

Robert Redfield， former Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention （CDC）， in his congressional testimony last year said “the coronavirus at the time hadnt been identified， but many cases of this unknown type of pneumonia in the U.S. were certainly of the coronavirusCOVID-19 variant.”

In June， a study of blood samples taken by the National Institutes of Health showed that people in at least five states across the U.S. had been infected with the coronavirus in December 2019 and early January 2020， providing more evidence that the virus first appeared in the country far earlier than previously believed.

But why， then， have the investigations not circled back there yet？ Contact all the people who were sick and test their antibodies. Why isnt the evidence being gathered in the struggle to trace the actual origins of the virus？

Bio-laboratories operated by the U.S. worldwide have seen their fair share of safety breaches and other accidents. The issues at hand are clear and these labs should thus be thoroughly checked. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been examined， and the WHO expert conclusion was that a leak would have been highly unlikely. So when will its U.S. counterparts number be up？