THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020 N ATracking an OutbreakGlobal Response
Chinese officials are hailing a
visit by a team of experts sent to
Beijing by the World Health Orga-
nization to investigate the source
of the coronavirus as evidence
that the country is a responsible
and transparent global power. But
the investigation by the W.H.O. is
likely to take many months and
could face delays.
For starters, there are logistical
headaches. China has placed the
advance team of experts who are
laying the groundwork for a
broader investigation under a
standard 14-day quarantine, forc-
ing them to do some of their detec-
tive work from a distance.
“Obviously the arrival and
quarantine of individuals and
working remotely is not the ideal
way to work, but we fully respect
the risk-management procedures
put in place,” Mike Ryan, the
W.H.O.’s chief of emergency re-
sponse, said at a news conference
on Friday. He said it would take
weeks before a full team would be
able to visit China.
The W.H.O.’s investigation
comes as China faces intense
global backlash, including from
the United States, for initially
downplaying and failing to con-
tain the virus, which emerged in
December in the central Chinese
city of Wuhan.
For weeks, China had fiercely
resisted demands from other na-
tions that it allow independent in-
vestigators onto its soil to study
the origin of the pathogen. Beijing
has also tried to deflect blame by
suggesting, without evidence,
that the virus could have origi-
nated elsewhere.
Now, officials are trumpeting
Beijing’s response to the outbreak
as a model for the world and at-
tacking the United States for
“shirking its responsibilities” in
the global fight against Covid-19.
The Trump administration,
which has repeatedly attempted
to distract from its ineffective re-
sponse to the pandemic, has criti-
cized the W.H.O.’s inquiry. Secre-
tary of State Mike Pompeo re-
cently said that he expected it to
be a “completely whitewashed in-
vestigation.”
With relations between China
and Western countries deteriorat-
ing rapidly over military, technol-
ogy, trade and human rights con-
cerns, experts worry that Beijing
will seek to limit the scope of the
research so that it does not embar-
rass the government.
“The whole political landscape
is not favorable to doing an unbi-
ased scientific investigation,” said
Wang Linfa, a virologist in Singa-
pore who took part in a similar
W.H.O. study in China during the
SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003.
“I feel sorry for the team mem-
bers.”
The Chinese government ini-
tially covered up the SARS out-
break, but Mr. Wang said it was
later eager to cooperate with the
international experts. This time,
he said, the W.H.O.’s investigation
was likely to be largely symbolic
because the broader geopolitical
climate could make Chinese ex-
perts unwilling to share valuable
research.
Chinese officials have provided
little data from samples that the
Chinese Center for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention took in De-
cember at the Huanan Seafood
Market, a sprawling market in
Wuhan that sold game meat and
live animals, where many of the
first reported infections were
traced. The market has since been
closed and scrubbed down.
The W.H.O.’s inquiry is focused
on the question of how the disease
jumped to humans from animals.
The advance team is made up of
an expert in animal health, as well
as an epidemiologist. The team
members, who arrived in mid-
July, have not yet been identified
and have not spoken publicly.
Dr. Ryan said on Friday that the
health organization was “very
pleased with the collaboration on
the ground.” He said earlier in the
month that the experts would not
do field investigations but would
meet with Chinese officials and re-
searchers to review the available
data and outline the scope of the
inquiry.
For months, China and the
United States have been locked in
a political fight over the virus,
with officials in each accusing the
other of intentionally unleashing
the virus on the world.
Despite unfounded conspiracy
theories that the virus was man-
made, experts say Covid-19 is
caused by a coronavirus that al-
most certainly originated natu-
rally in animals, most likely bats.
But they do not know where it
came from, what the exact chain
of transmission is and how many
times the spillover to humans
from animals has occurred. For a
while, pangolins were thought to
be a possible intermediate host.
More recent analysis has shown
that while they may have played a
role in the development of the vi-
rus, there is no evidence that they
were the immediate source.
While the Chinese governmenthas said it welcomes an inquiry,
officials have not yet provided de-
tails about their own efforts to
trace the origins of the virus. Re-
search into the matter has in sev-
eral cases been blocked or de-
layed, Chinese scientists say.
Chinese officials have sought to
reframe the W.H.O.’s visit as a sign
of China’s confidence and
strength, especially compared to
the United States, making the du-
bious claim that China first re-
quested it. (Countries such as
Australia had pushed for such an
inquiry.) Reports in the state-run
news media have described the
visit by the W.H.O. as a reflection
of China’s “open attitude.”
“It is our contribution to global
public health cooperation as a re-sponsible major country,” Zhao Li-
jian, a spokesman for the Chinese
foreign ministry, said this month
at a news conference.
Mr. Zhao called on the United
States to allow a similar investiga-
tion, even though there is no evi-
dence the virus originated in
America. He criticized the United
States for moving forward with
plans to withdraw from the W.H.O.
over concerns that the health
agency is too close to China.
“The U.S. has been shirking its
own responsibilities and under-
mining global solidarity in com-
bating the virus by declaring its
exit from the W.H.O., politicizing
matters related to the pandemic
and smearing others,” he said.
Chinese officials and expertshave continued to call on the
W.H.O. to widen its analysis to in-
clude other countries.
Wang Guangfa, a top govern-
ment health adviser, has said that
the W.H.O. should also go to Spain.
Mr. Wang, speaking this month
with The Global Times, a national-
istic Chinese tabloid, cited an un-
published study by researchers at
the University of Barcelona that
suggested the virus was present
in Spain’s wastewater as early as
March 2019. Independent experts
have said that the study was
flawed and that other lines of evi-
dence strongly suggest the virus
broke out in China late last year.
Officials from the W.H.O. have
said that Wuhan is the best start-
ing point for scrutinizing the ani-
mal origin of the virus because it
was where the first clusters of the
outbreak emerged in humans. But
they remained open to other lines
of study, as well.
“We have to keep an open
mind,” Dr. Ryan said at a news
briefing this month. “Science
must stay open to all possibilities.”
The W.H.O.’s research could
take months, if not longer. Scien-
tists took several years to con-
clude that horseshoe bats were
the most likely hosts in nature for
the coronavirus that caused SARS
in 2002. Before that, researchershad identified masked palm civets
as one of the primary intermedi-
ate hosts after the virus was iden-
tified in several civets that were
being sold in markets in Guang-
dong.
The inquiry also offers an op-
portunity for the W.H.O. to re-
habilitate its own image. While the
agency has been praised for its ef-
forts to coordinate treatment and
vaccine development, it has also
been assailed for being too trust-
ing of China and for not pushing
Chinese health officials on their
early missteps.
Yanzhong Huang, an expert on
public health in China at the Coun-
cil on Foreign Relations, said both
China and the W.H.O. faced grow-
ing pressure for a comprehensive
examination of what happened,
but that it was unclear if they
could deliver.
He noted that it was still uncer-
tain if the team of experts allowed
to visit China would include repre-
sentatives from countries that
have rebuked China, including the
United States and Australia, and
whether they would have full ac-
cess to records, sites and laborato-
ries.
“In a nutshell,” he said, “it re-
mains unclear whether a thor-
ough and objective investigation
is possible.”WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
China Uses Investigation
To Promote Its Response
Above, a testing center in Beijing last month. A team of experts
from the World Health Organization has arrived in China to con-
duct an investigation on the source of the outbreak. Left, a pan-
golin. They were once thought to be a possible intermediate host.KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGESBy JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ
and AMY QINLINH PHAM/GETTY IMAGESat dawn. “A very special construct
of 27 countries of different back-
grounds is actually able to act to-
gether, and it has proven it.”
But the negotiations in Brussels
— the E.U.’s longest summit meet-
ing in 20 years — were notable for
their exceptional rancor. And the
compromises that allowed Ms.
Merkel, whose country holds the
E.U.’s rotating presidency, to
guide 27 nations toward consen-
sus became all the more apparent,
and none were too pretty.
Ms. Merkel needed to bridge
fissures that ran up, down and
sideways. There were divides be-
tween the frugal north and a
needy, hard-hit south; but they
also split west and east, between
Brussels and budding autocracies
like Poland and Hungary that
have tested the limits of the bloc’s
democratic values.
The compromise that got the
most attention was between Pres-
ident Macron of France, who
pushed for large-scale grants to
southern European countries like
Italy and Spain hit hardest by the
pandemic, and Prime Minister
Mark Rutte of the Netherlands,
who pressed for more loans and
structured reforms.
But it was how Ms. Merkel mol-
lified the prime ministers of Hun-
gary and Poland, Viktor Orban
and Mateusz Morawiecki, that
may prove more consequential.
Not only was their money from
Brussels increased, despite regu-
lar questions about the misuse of
those funds and efforts to condi-
tion the aid on adherence to the
rule of law, but Ms. Merkel prom-
ised to help resolve disciplinary
measures against their countries
for anti-democratic behavior.
Critics denounced what they
saw as a dangerous capitulation
that could foreshadow further
testing of E.U. principles. The con-
cessions to Hungary and Poland
also could face new challenges be-
cause the package must be ap-
proved by the European Parlia-
ment.
The agreement “looks like a dis-
aster for the rule of law,’’ said R.
Daniel Kelemen, a scholar of Eu-
rope at Rutgers University.
“Merkel and Macron were deter-
mined to reach a deal demonstrat-
ing the E.U.’s ability to respond to
the crisis, and they proved willing
to keep E.U. funds flowing to auto-
cratic governments in order to
close the deal.”
A strange kind of political the-
ater, never visited upon European
Union summits before, punctuat-
ed the meeting when it began Fri-
day — their first person-to-person
exchange in the five months since
the virus struck. Leaders donned
masks and bumped elbows. They
were safely spaced in a vast hall,
their entourages trimmed to only
the most essential members.
As the weekend wore on, how-
ever, the talks grew heated, the
diplomatic gloves came off, and so
did the masks.
The talks were defined by shift-
ing roles among members now
jostling to make their voices heard
and for leadership in the absence
of Britain, which had often played
the part of the thrifty contrarian,
fastidious about rules, in past
summits.
This time, Ms. Merkel, unusual-
ly for a German leader, put her fin-
ger on the scale on behalf of hard-
hit southern countries and battled
the nations she once had champi-
oned, the northern members that
have been less affected by the vi-
rus and are wary of the vast sums
being thrown around.
Where Friday’s meeting was
marked by joyful greetings and
even celebrations of the birthdays
of two leaders — Ms. Merkel, now
66, and Prime Minister Antonio
Costa of Portugal, who turned 59
— Sunday night’s dinner (a “cold
dish” after several sumptuous
meals, socially spaced but un-
masked) was marked by shouting
matches.
Mr. Macron, for example, yelled
at Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of
Austria for not only being a tight-
fisted impediment but for leavingthe room to take a call. To some
leaders’ shock, the French presi-
dent slapped the table. Mr. Kurz
attributed Mr. Macron’s temper
tantrum to sleep deprivation, dip-
lomats said.
As that meeting broke up with-
out a deal around 6 a.m. Monday,
Mr. Rutte, the Dutch prime min-
ister, told his country’s media that
he didn’t care if other leaders
mockingly called him “Mr. No” for
blocking the agreement. (They
did.)
“We’re here because everyone
is taking care of their own country,
not to go to each other’s birthdays
for the rest of our lives,” he said
bluntly.
It was Mr. Rutte who stepped
into the vacuum left by Germany’s
shift and Britain’s departure to
lead the so-called Frugal Four:
the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden
and Denmark. Occasionally, the
“frugals” became five with the
support of Finland.
In the end, with a unanimous
decision needed for a plan, a bittercompromise prevailed. The over-
all figure of €750 billion remained,
but an original proposal to offer
€500 billion of that in the form of
grants was trimmed to €390 bil-
lion, with €360 billion earmarked
for loans.
Besides raising cash and ex-
tending grants, the package will
increase lending and deploy other,
more traditional stimulus meth-
ods to reverse the economic free-
fall that threatens the E.U.’s stabil-
ity.
Economists predict a recession
far worse than anything since
World War II. France, Italy and
Spain, the bloc’s second-, third-
and fourth-largest economies, are
expected to suffer the most, clock-
ing in contractions of around 10
percent this year.
Greece and other smaller econ-
omies that are still recovering
from the last recession will also be
badly affected by the downturn.
But heavy debt loads in many of
these nations make them reluc-
tant to amass yet more debt, andtheir budgets aren’t sufficient to
self-fund their recoveries. That
led them to turn to the European
Union for help.
Together with the vast bond-
buying program by the European
Central Bank, national stimulus
plans worth trillions of euros, and
other, smaller E.U. support
schemes for banks, businesses
and workers, European leaders
hope to reverse the recession in
2021 and spend their way into a
rapid and powerful recovery.
They also agreed on Tuesday on
the bloc’s regular budget for the
next seven years: €1.1 trillion eu-
ros to finance the normal E.U. poli-
cies on agriculture, migration and
hundreds of other programs.
But to gain the approval of Hun-
gary and Poland, E.U. leaders wa-
tered down the caveat making
funding conditional on the rule-of-
law benchmarks that the two na-
tions’ illiberal governments are
violating.
In another concession to Po-
land, the bloc’s most coal-depend-ent nation, a requirement was
dropped that would have commit-
ted the country to carbon neutral-
ity by 2050 to draw on parts of the
funds.
Since its inception, the E.U. has
struggled between maintaining
nation-state sovereignty and de-
veloping joint federal-style struc-
tures.
The deal reached on Tuesday is
significant in that more creditwor-
thy E.U. nations will be underwrit-
ing loans to fund the recoveries of
countries that would otherwise
face onerous borrowing costs.
The Netherlands and Austria
were hostile to the very idea of
borrowing money and simply giv-
ing much of it to benefit mostly
southern, weaker economies.
Under significant pressure at
home as elections approach next
March, Mr. Rutte advocated
loudly for fewer handouts to those
nations, among them Italy and
Spain, that have been hardest hit
by the pandemic but that also
have structurally weak econo-
mies.
The Netherlands and other na-
tions with healthier public fi-
nances are concerned that the
commonly funded aid would sim-
ply go into a bottomless pit of
spending — one that doesn’t truly
help those economies without re-
forms to reduce bureaucracy, cre-
ate jobs and stimulate growth.
A key argument in favor of of-
fering grants rather than loans
has been that Italy and other
countries likely to take the aid are
already over-indebted, and piling
on yet more loans would just wors-
en their positions.
Mr. Rutte fought successfully
for bigger-than-usual rebates, or
reimbursements, for his own and
other nations that are net contrib-
utors to the E.U. budget.
The package will go to the Euro-
pean Parliament for ratification,
and is expected to face a serious
challenge on the grounds that it
does not tackle concerns about
how Poland and Hungary’s gov-
ernments violate the bloc’s stand-
ards for democracy and the rule of
law.$857 BILLION DEAL
Stimulus Plan Displays Divisions and Rancor in E.U., Despite Agreement
President Emmanuel Macron of France, left, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Tuesday.POOL PHOTO BY JOHN THYSFrom Page AMonika Pronczuk contributed re-
porting.