U.S. political interests crippling global pandemic fight, says expert

MEXICO CITY, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Washington's crude and relentless campaign to weaponize the coronavirus against China undermines the scientific rigor needed to effectively combat COVID-19, according to Dominican economist and author Eduardo Klinger Pevida.

In an op-ed published on Monday in the Dominican daily Hoy under the headline "The campaign against China: A 'near perfect' strategy," Klinger wrote that the United States is bent on wringing political advantage from the health crisis, even if it harms global institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) in the process.

Despite U.S. insistence that the virus was fabricated in a Chinese lab and later escaped, "elite international scientists chosen by the WHO visited China and concluded that a laboratory accident was 'extremely unlikely' and identified the transmission from an animal as the 'most possible route', emphasizing that this is the subject to be investigated and was the mandate given to it," noted Klinger.

The U.S. ignores the experts' findings and continues to clamor "in a crude, humiliating way" for another investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, knowing Beijing would refuse, as any "decent government" would, said Klinger.

Washington's real intention, he added, is to accuse China of a "lack of transparency."

It is "a near perfect" strategy, except that the "trick is worn out" and "the strategy does not fundamentally dent the respect that most of humanity expresses for China," he noted, adding that the United States lacks evidence to back up its claims.

In the interest of science, not geopolitics, perhaps it is time to heed Beijing, which "asked for investigations into suspected cases registered by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Wisconsin and other states long before the first official case was diagnosed, in addition to other cases in Florida. Those who demand transparency are obliged to be transparent," Klinger said.