W.H.O. Will Announce New Team to Study Coronavirus Origins
The New York Times
“This new group can do all the fancy footwork it wants, but China’s not going to cooperate,” one expert said.
The position is unpaid. The world’s scientists and internet sleuths will scrutinize every move. Completing the first assignment with the available tools, and to everyone’s satisfaction, will be nearly impossible.
Despite those considerable obstacles, more than 700 people have applied for spots on a new committee charged with breathing life into the World Health Organization’s stalled inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
The committee, expected to be announced this week, represents an attempt by the embattled global health body to reset its approach to determining how the pandemic began. Nine months after sending a team of international experts to China, only for its findings to become entangled in geopolitics and trailed by concerns over Beijing’s influence, the W.H.O. is trying to inoculate its latest efforts from the slightest hints of undue deference toward China.
