Who is behind the Coronavirus Pandemic? Implications for Risk Mitigation Strategies

Who is behind the Coronavirus Pandemic? Implications for Risk Mitigation Strategies Published on May 3, 2020

Status is online Ali Mansouri Writer, Researcher, Consultant Page 1 of 23

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” -Helen Keller

Introduction The Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has shown that the world is being badly managed by powerful and influential countries. A virus disease breaks out in one powerful country and then spreads to other countries most of which are helpless, defenseless, and powerless. They do not know what to do to fight the disease nor do they have the resources for the fight. The virus spreads more rapidly than the catastrophic bush fires of Australia.

The world is bewildered and puzzled. Is this virus a really innocent and natural outbreak of disease originated in a market of wild animals in Wuhan in China? The Chinese have been eating all sorts of domestic and wild animals (cats, dogs, bats, monkeys, snakes, squirrels, weasels, boars, pangolins, crocodiles, etc.) for thousands of years and nothing has happened to them. So why now? Is there a foul play? Has it been manufactured in a lab for biological weapons somewhere in China or outside China, for a wicked purpose?! Is it related to the Trade War (or the Cold War) between China and the U.S.A.? If so, why should the rest of the world be made to pay a very heavy price for such a foul play? These are really big questions that need to be answered satisfactorily by all those who rule our world and manage it in a very bad, chaotic, and frightening way.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been disastrous for almost every nation and is having catastrophic results for businesses and education everywhere. Humanity is being savagely attacked for its very existence and its basic rights and universal values. The rich and the poor are being made to pay an unimaginable price because of a disease that we hope is a nature-made calamity, not a man-made disaster manufactured for very dirty gains.

The world after the coronavirus pandemic will never be the same. But we urgently need to know the truth in order to avoid such a vicious crisis and get better prepared for a similar one in the future.

Conspiracy Theories The US and China have been engaged in a propaganda battle over the Coronavirus: its origin, how it started, and who “has manufactured it”. This has given rise to many Conspiracy Theories and to the rumors that the Coronavirus has not started naturally in a market for wild animals in Wuhan, China as was originally claimed by the Chinese Government. There is also an anti-American conspiracy theory.

Due to the limitations of space and time, it is almost impossible to offer here all the details, allegations, and counter-allegations concerning the coronavirus conspiracy Page 2 of 23

theories as this topic has been growing very fast and huge amounts of information are being added every day. We will, therefore, offer some of the main points.

Donald Trump, the US President, has repeatedly referred to the Coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” while many Chinese officials promote a conspiracy theory that the U.S. army brought the coronavirus to China.

“Trump has repeatedly leaned into tropes that critics say are xenophobic and racist, including calling the disease “Chinese” or “foreign” and emphasizing how he enacted a China travel ban as his first decisive act to combat the coronavirus.

The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!” Trump tweeted Monday, casually referring to the coronavirus as a “Chinese Virus.” (Forbes, 16 March 2020).

On many occasions, especially at his Coronavirus Briefing conferences, President Donald Trump has repeated what he said in his many tweets that “the virus has started in China and has come from China” and “has originated in a lab in Wuhan” though I personally have not heard him say explicitly that China has manufactured the Coronavirus deliberately in order to control the world as some of his followers and other conspiracy theory advocates have said.

The Chinese officials have been furious about these suggestions and have put forward an Anti-American Conspiracy Theory: “A Chinese government spokesman said on Thursday that the US Army might have “brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” fuelling a coronavirus conspiracy theory.

Chinese officials have been trying to reshape the narrative about the coronavirus, suggesting that it might have originated outside of China, even though the center of the outbreak was the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Amid this push, a conspiracy theory that US athletes participating in the Military World Games in Wuhan last fall brought the coronavirus into China has emerged.

There is no evidence supporting this claim.

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called attention to a comment on Wednesday from Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledging that some Americans who were said to have died from influenza may have actually died from COVID-19.” (Pickrell: 14 March 2020, Business Insider).

As China has faced criticism, Chinese authorities have pushed back, suggesting that the virus may have originated somewhere else. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a leading Chinese Page 3 of 23

epidemiologist, said in late February that “though the COVID-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China.”

The Trump administration has laid the blame firmly at China’s feet. “Unfortunately, rather than using best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up,” the White House national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, told reporters.

Geng Shuang, another Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said O’Brien’s “immoral and irresponsible” comments denigrated China’s efforts to fight the virus. He added that the US should focus on “international cooperation instead of trying to shift the blame.”

“Donald Trump has hit out at China after its government officials claimed the US military created coronavirus. Speaking with the coronavirus task force at the White House on Tuesday, President Trump said: ‘China was putting out information that was false, saying that our military gave it to them. ‘I had to call it where it came from, it’s a very accurate term. ‘Our military did not give it to them… I think saying our military gave it to them creates a stigma” (McCloskey: 17 March 2020, METRO) Unnamed Beijing officials previously accused the US of deliberately planting coronavirus in China in a bid to undermine their economy.

“Zhao pointed to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield’s acknowledgment in congressional testimony Wednesday that some Americans who appeared to have died from the flu may have died from the virus due to a lack of testing.

"What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! The US owes us an explanation!" Zhao said in a series of tweets. Redfield did not say the virus had originated in the U.S. in his remarks before Congress.” (Budryk:12 March 2020, The Hill).

In January 2020, the BBC published an article about coronavirus misinformation, citing two January 24, articles from The Washington Times that claimed the virus was part of a Chinese biological weapons program, based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) ( BBC News Online, 30 January 2020). The Washington Post later published an article debunking the conspiracy theory, citing US experts who explained why the WIV was unsuitable for bioweapon research, that most countries had abandoned bioweapons as fruitless, and that there was no evidence that the virus was genetically engineered. (The Washington Post, 29 January 2020) Natural Medicine published an article arguing against the conspiracy theory that the virus was created artificially. The high-affinity binding of the virus’ peplomers to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) was shown to be “most likely the Page 4 of 23

result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise”. (Andersen et al.:17 March 2020, Natural Medicine). In the case of genetic manipulation, one of the several reverse-genetic systems for beta coronaviruses would probably have been used, while the genetic data irrefutably showed that the virus is not derived from a previously used virus template.

The overall molecular structure of the virus was found to be distinct from the known coronaviruses and most closely resembles that of viruses of bats and pangolins that were little studied and never known to harm humans. (Bryner: 27 March 2020, Live Science) In February 2020, US Senator Tom Cotton and Francis Boyle, a law professor, suggested that the virus may have been a Chinese bioweapon. (Budryk: 9 February 2020, The Hill). But in the opinion of numerous medical experts, there is no evidence for this claim (Subramaniam: 18 February 2020, CNN Online). Conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh said on The Rush Limbaugh Show - one of the most popular radio shows in the US – that the virus was probably “a ChiCom laboratory experiment” and that the Chinese were using the virus and the media hysteria surrounding it to bring down Donald Trump. (Limbaugh: 29 February 2020, Media Matters for America) In February 2020, The Financial Times quoted virus expert and global co-lead coronavirus investigator Trevor Bedford: “There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find”, and “The evidence we have is that the mutations [in the virus] are completely consistent with natural evolution”. (Cookson:14 February 2020, Financial Times). Bedford further explained, "The most likely scenario, based on genetic analysis, was that the virus was transmitted by a bat to another mammal between 20–70 years ago. This intermediary animal—not yet identified—passed it on to its first human host in the city of Wuhan in late November or early December 2019" On February 6, the White House asked scientists and medical researchers to rapidly investigate the origins of the virus to address both the current spread and "to inform future outbreak preparation and better understand animal/human and environmental transmission aspects of coronaviruses." (White House, 6 February 2020). American magazine Foreign Policy said that Xi Jinping's "political agenda may turn out to be a root cause of the epidemic" and that his Belt and Road Initiative has "made it possible for a local disease to become a global menace". (Sharma: 5 March 2020, AlJazeera) Conservative commentator Josh Bernstein claimed that the Democratic Party and the “medical deep state” were collaborating with the Chinese government to create and release the coronavirus to bring down Donald Trump. (Bernstein: 12 March 2020, Wikipedia). But after fact-checking, Mathew Brown has found out that

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the “ Coronavirus did not spread in the US because of an anti-Trump conspiracy" (Brown:29 March 2020, USA Today) Jerry Falwell Jr., the President of Liberty University in the US, promoted a conspiracy theory on Fox News that North Korea and China conspired together to create the coronavirus. He also said that people were overreacting to the coronavirus outbreak and that Democrats were trying to use the situation to harm President Trump: “It’s just strange to me how so many are overreacting,” Falwell said, comparing media coverage of the novel coronavirus to coverage of earlier epidemics. “It makes you wonder if there’s a political reason for that. Impeachment didn’t work, and the Mueller report didn’t work, and Article 25 didn’t work. And so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.” (Heim: 13 March 2020, The Washington Post) British Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, Chair of the Defence Select Committee of the House of Commons, publicly questioned the role of the Chinese Army’s Wuhan Institute for Biological Products and called for the “greater transparency over the origins of the coronavirus”. (Ellwood: 29 February 2020, The Telegraph). It has also been reported that a member of COBRA, a government committee tasked with dealing with the crisis, has stated while government intelligence does not dispute that the virus has a zoonotic origin, it also does not discount the idea of a leak from a Wuhan laboratory, saying that "Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan." (Makichuk: 6 April 2020, Asia Times) According to The Economist, there are many conspiracy theories on the Chinese media about the coronavirus being the CIA’s creation to keep China down. (The Economist, 8 February 2020). NBC News, however; has noted that there have also been debunking efforts of US-related conspiracy theories posted online, with a WeChat search of "Coronavirus is from the U.S." reported to mostly yield articles explaining why such claims are unreasonable (NBC News, 31 March 2020). According to an investigation by ProPublica, such conspiracy theories and disinformation have been propagated under the direction of China News Service, the country’s second-largest state-owned media outlet controlled by the United Front Work Department (Kao and Li: 26 March 2020, ProPublica) Global Times and Xinhua News Agency have similarly been implicated in propagating disinformation about the COVID-19 origins. (Dodds: 5 April 2020, The Telegraph).

Multiple conspiracy articles in Chinese from the SARS era resurfaced during the outbreak with altered details, claiming that SARS is biological warfare conducted by the US against China. Some of these articles claim that BGI Group from China sold genetic information of the Chinese people to the US, with the US then being able to deploy the virus specifically targeting the genome of Chinese individuals.

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Some articles on popular sites in China have also cast suspicion on US military athletes participating in the Wuhan 2019 Military World Games, which lasted until the end of October 2019, and have suggested that they deployed the virus. They claim the inattentive attitude and disproportionately below-average results of American athletes in the games indicate they might have been there for other purposes and they might actually be bio-warfare operatives. Such posts stated that their place of residence during their stay in Wuhan was also close to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first known cluster of cases occurred.

In March 2020, this conspiracy theory was endorsed by Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China. (Tang: 13 March 2020, The Times) “A group of 27 prominent public health scientists from outside China is pushing back against a steady stream of stories and even a scientific paper suggesting a laboratory in Wuhan, China, maybe the origin of the outbreak of COVID-19, writes Jon Cohen for Science.

“The rapid, open and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins,” the scientists, from nine countries, wrote in a statement published online by The Lancet. The letter does not criticise any specific assertions about the origin of the outbreak, but many posts on social media have singled out the Wuhan Institute of Virology for intense scrutiny because it has a laboratory at the highest security level – biosafety level 4 – and its researchers study coronaviruses from bats, including the one that is closest to SARSCoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.” (Cohen: 22 February 2020, Science) “We are public health scientists who have closely followed the emergence of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and are deeply concerned about its impact on global health and wellbeing. We have watched as the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China, in particular, have worked diligently and effectively to rapidly identify the pathogen behind this outbreak, put in place significant measures to reduce its impact and share their results transparently with the global health community. This effort has been remarkable.

We sign this statement in solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak. We are all in this together, with our Chinese counterparts in the forefront, against this new viral threat.

We invite others to join us in supporting the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of Wuhan and across China. Stand with our colleagues on the frontline!” (Calisher et al.: 7 March 2020, The Lancet)

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Another peculiar conspiracy linking 5G and coronavirus has taken hold in the UK and being peddled by conspiracy theorists and celebrities on social media.

The theory runs roughly like this: the rollout of faster 5G internet is either causing or accelerating the spread of the coronavirus. It is difficult to pinpoint the source of the theory, but a variant of the rumor was heard in early March, then it picked up steam during the first week of April. (Hamilton: 6 April 2020, Business Insider) The British Foreign Secretary and temporary UK leader, Dominic Raab, warned that China faces ‘hard questions’ the source of the coronavirus pandemic. He said there would have to be a 'deep dive' into the facts around the coronavirus outbreak: “So we ought to look at all sides of this and do it in a balanced way, but there is no doubt we can't have business as usual after this crisis, and we will have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn't have been stopped earlier.”

(Wilcock: 16 April 2020, Mail Online) It came after scrutiny of Wuhan's Institute of Virology after The Washington Post published leaked State Department cables warning of the lab's safety standards in 2015.

The theory has been pushed by supporters of the President, including some congressional Republicans, who are eager to deflect criticisms of Trump's handling of the pandemic.

An intelligence official familiar with the government analysis said a theory US intelligence officials are investigating is that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and was accidentally released to the public. Other sources told CNN that US intelligence hasn't been able to corroborate the theory but is trying to discern whether someone was infected in the lab through an accident or poor handling of materials and may have then infected others.”

The theory is one of multiple being pursued by investigators as they attempt to determine the origin of the coronavirus that has resulted in a pandemic and killed hundreds of thousands. The US does not believe the virus was associated with bioweapons research and the sources indicated there is currently no indication the virus was man-made. Officials noted that the intelligence community is also exploring a range of other theories regarding the origination of the virus, as would typically be the case for high-profile incidents, according to an intelligence source.

(Campbell, et al.: 16 April 2020, CNN Online)

Lack of Transparency There has been a noticeable lack of transparency in China and elsewhere regarding the Coronavirus pandemic since the virus outbreak in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei in Page 8 of 23

central China. The Chinese officials have been accused of “hiding” vital information about the coronavirus: its origin, the possibility of transmission from human to human, the number of infected cases, and the number of deaths. They have also been accused of suppressing any information from reaching the World Health Organization (WHO) and the world from doctors and health workers who encountered the first invested cases of the virus.

The story of Dr. Li Wenliang is often cited to show that the Chinese authorities were not transparent in dealing with the Coronavirus outbreak. Dr. Li Wenliang was a Chinese ophthalmologist who sent out a warning to fellow medics on 30 December but police told him to stop "making false comments". Then he contracted the virus while working at Wuhan Central Hospital. The 34-year-old had noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like SARS - the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003 and killed hundreds of people.

On 30 December he sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them to wear protective clothing to avoid infection.

Four days later he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau where he was told to sign a letter. In the letter, he was accused of "making false comments" that had "severely disturbed the social order".

He was one of eight people who police said were being investigated for "spreading rumours" Local authorities later apologised to Dr. Li. In his Weibo post he describes how on 10 January he started coughing, the next day he had a fever and two days later he was in the hospital. He was diagnosed with the coronavirus on 30 January.”

“A wave of anger and grief flooded Chinese social media site Weibo when news of Dr. Li's death broke late on Thursday.

The top two trending hashtags on the website were "Wuhan government owes Dr. Li Wenliang an apology" and "We want freedom of speech".

Both hashtags were quickly censored. When the BBC searched Weibo on Friday morning, hundreds of thousands of comments had already been wiped.

The truth will always be treated as a rumour. How long are you going to lie? Are you still lying? What else do you have to hide?" another said. (BBC News Online, 7 February 2020) “On the one hand, officials have expressed their sorrow over his death and encouraged people to tell the truth about the outbreak. On the other hand, government Page 9 of 23

censors are hard at work scrubbing online posts that call for freedom of speech in the wake of Li's death.

When millions of people are denied the opportunity to grieve collectively over someone widely regarded as a hero, their trust in government can only further erode.

As Li recently told the Chinese magazine Caixin before his death: "I think a healthy society should not only have one kind of voice."

Li was later called to a police station, reprimanded for spreading rumors online, and forced to sign a statement acknowledging his "misdemeanor" before he was allowed to leave. Weeks later, China's Supreme Court vindicated him and other "rumormongers" by saying, "It might have been a fortunate thing ... if the public had listened to this 'rumor' at the time..." (Bociurkiw: 11 February 2020, CNN Online).

And to many Chinese people, it was a tipping point, given that manipulation and suppression of information are what allowed the widespread of the novel coronavirus in the first place. Anger expressed on online forums is intense, with even prominent officials, academics, and executives expressing grief and outrage. In online posts and in open letters, demands range from an official apology and admission that the government had made a mistake, to a state funeral for Li and even a US-style whistleblower protection law.

In an apparent effort to appease the masses and quell the backlash, central authorities announced they are dispatching a team from the country's top anti-corruption agency to Wuhan to look into "issues related to Dr. Li Wenliang."

Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, has accused China of not allowing American scientists to visit the country and investigate the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, delivering yet another attack on Beijing's handling of the crisis. “Pompeo told Fox News' The Ingraham Angle on Wednesday that China is not allowing "the transparency and openness we need" regarding the pandemic, which originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and has now spread worldwide. Pompeo has been among the most vocal critics of China over COVID-19, echoing President Donald Trump's attacks on Beijing and peddling a conspiracy theory suggesting the virus' may have originated in a scientific research lab in Wuhan. There is currently no evidence to support the theory, but this has not stopped Pompeo and Trump from alluding to it.� (Brennan: 23 April 2020, NEWSWEEK) China has also been accused of lacking transparency by underreporting the number of Coronavirus deaths.

According to the MailOnline, “Wuhan locals claim coronavirus has killed 42,000 people in the city alone, more than ten times the national figure claimed by Chinese authorities.

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The killer bug, which originated in Wuhan in China's Hubei Province has claimed the lives of 3,300 people and infected more than 81,000. Of those, 3,182 deaths were reported in Hubei Province.

But residents in Wuhan claim 500 urns have been handed out to grieving families every day from seven separate funeral homes all serving the city.

This means the ashes of 3,500 people are distributed every 24 hours.” (Carr: 29 March 2020 MailOnline).

WHO: Wrong Decision President Donald Trump has halted $500 million of funding to the WHO and slammed the international organization that it had “failed in its basic duties” in its response to coronavirus by being China-centric and by failing to stand up to China.

He said his government was “doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation,” while US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Chinese “need to come clean” and reveal all the information they have been hiding about the Coronavirus pandemic.

Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which is the WHO's parent organization, described the pandemic as unprecedented and acknowledged that there would be "lessons learned" for the future.

"Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis," he said in an official statement.

"But now is not that time ... it is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus," he said, urging unity in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

In the 70 years since its founding, the WHO has had its share of successes: it helped eradicate smallpox, reduced polio cases by 99%, and has been on the front lines of the battle against vicious outbreaks like Ebola.

More recently, it is helping countries battle the dengue outbreak in South and Southeast Asia, providing local clinics and health ministries with training, equipment, financial aid, and community resources.

“But the WHO has also faced criticism for being overly bureaucratic, politicized, and dependent on a few major donors.”

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Recently, the same skepticism has been aimed toward the WHO's relationship with China; critics have questioned whether the WHO is independent enough, given China's rising wealth and power. They point to the WHO's effusive praise of China's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump and his administration alluded to the alleged Chinese increase in influence in regard to the pandemic on Tuesday.

"Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China's lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death," Trump said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was more blunt, claiming that the WHO "declined to call this a pandemic for an awfully long time because frankly, the Chinese Communist Party didn't want that to happen."

The WHO has responded to these accusations by urging member countries not to politicize the pandemic.

"The United States and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy," said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in an official statement.

(Yeung: 16 April 2020, CNN Online) Taking into account the vicious nature of COVID-19 pandemic and the huge suffering and losses everywhere and the very important role the WHO. plays in fighting this disease and other diseases, especially in Africa, and in poor countries, Trump’s decision is completely wrong. It is a distraction and it hinders the vital role of the WHO. This is what Bill Gates says about it in a tweet on 15 April 2020: “Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds. Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs WHO now more than ever.�

It is critical to understand that WHO officials, including their Chief, can be held to account by the international community for any mistakes, blunders, or errors of judgment but the organization itself should be empowered and strengthened in order to be able to continue its vital operations, especially in Africa and poor countries.

National and Global Responsibility Individuals, companies, organizations, and governments have a national responsibility towards their own nation and a global responsibility towards other nations. They cannot do whatever they want to harm other individuals, their communities, and the world. We do not live in a jungle.

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Unfortunately, there are many corrupt businessmen and officials in some countries who do not have any sense of national responsibility towards their own citizens nor do they have a sense of global responsibility towards their fellow human beings. They are self-centric, self-conceited, merciless, and indifferent to human suffering and losses. They are real monsters who should not be trusted with public duty in any way.

Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) and Hamed Al-Hajri (Assistant VC) at A’Sharqiyah University in Oman are flagrant examples of such corrupt officials. They used to do whatever they want to harm anyone who stands on their way of corruption, thievery, fraud, and deception. They do not care about any laws, bylaws, charters, or regulations in any public or private institution. They always put themselves “above the law” because they have a bizarre immunity from prosecution! They are not held to account by anyone for anything illegal or harmful they have done to the company or institution or even the country. Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri do not care about what is honest and what is dishonest, what is legal and what is illegal.

Whenever I used to draw their attention to the necessity of getting permission and approval for any serious academic changes from the Ministry of Higher Education or the appropriate educational or government authorities, they used to laugh and point to their pockets meaning the Ministry and the Government are there in their pockets!

Never have I seen before such reckless and rogue senior managers in any company or a higher education institution. These corrupt officials and senior executives can do whatever they like and can steal money in different ways from the public sector or the private sector companies and institutions without being held accountable to anyone.

They control almost everything in their companies and organization as they control the two most important functions: administration and finance; though these two functions differ from one institution to another in terms of size and scope. They also control, to a surprising degree, the public prosecutors everywhere in the country.

These prosecutors would turn against anyone who submits any corruption documents or try to file complaints against corrupt figures in the public or private sector. This is the case of many top officials and businessmen in many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East. They are “rogue officials” in every sense of the word.

There are also “rogue states”, big and small, who do not adhere to any international law, international standards of behavior, or universal human values.

China is a great nation with a great civilization and we do not want it to be another “rogue” state in the world. It should adhere to international laws and contribute positively to the safety and security of all nations. It has to demonstrate the highest level of national responsibility towards its citizens and global responsibility towards other nations. It cannot be allowed to do whatever it wants and spread coronaviruses now and then from its illegal markets of wild animals.

Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, has been among the most vocal critics of China over COVID-19 pandemic, echoing President Donald Trump's attacks on

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Beijing and peddling a conspiracy theory “suggesting the virus may have originated in a scientific research lab in Wuhan.” (Brennan: 23 April 2020, NEWSWEEK).

Pompeo has also demanded an end to the wild animals’ markets in China: “Given the strong link between illegal wildlife sold in wet markets and zoonotic diseases, the United States has called on the People’s Republic of China to permanently close its wildlife wet markets and all markets that sell illegal wildlife,” Pompeo said in a statement late on Wednesday.” (Reuters, 23 April 2020). This is a very reasonable demand shared by all civilized people all over the world. However, this should apply not only to the wet markets in China but also to every wet market in the world: in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, and all other countries.

According to the BBC, a top Chinese diplomat in the U.K., Ms. Chen Wen told the BBC that the demands of an international probe into the origins of the virus and how it has spread very rapidly into the world are politically motivated and would divert China's attention from fighting the pandemic. She said, “We are fighting the virus at the moment, we are concentrating all our efforts on fighting against the virus. Why talk about an investigation into this? This will divert not only attention; it will divert resources.

"This is a politically motivated initiative; I think no-one can agree on this... It would serve nobody any good." (BBC Online, 24 April 2020). This is a peculiar argument and I am very surprised that it has come from a top Chinese diplomat. There is no conflict between an international probe to be conducted by a respectable and independent team of scientists, virologists, and health specialists selected by the U.N. from outside the WHO into all the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic. These are not American demands. They are international demands as the whole world wants to know exactly how the COVID-19 pandemic has originated and how to avoid another pandemic- similar to it or deadlier. If China has nothing to hide, then the best position is to accept the probe. In fact, this may help China fight the pandemic in a more efficient way instead of this “trial and error” approach which has not been fully effective.

On 29 April 2020, Steven Sackur of the BBC’s HARDtalk interviewed Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese Ambassador to the UK. The questions were revolving around the same points of the Conspiracy Theories we are discussing above. The answers were very diplomatic, as we should expect from a Chinese ambassador. There was nothing new in the interview, but Mr. Liu Xiaoming has emphasized that “China and the US will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation”. This is fine, but the world wants to know the truth about how the novel Coronavirus has originated and spread to all the world very rapidly.

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It does not seem that China understands the gravity of the situation globally. There has been so much anger against China nowadays and the innocent Chinese people are paying a very heavy price for this “narrow-mindedness” of their Government. They are being singled out for racist attacks and discrimination all over the world. I met a large number of them in the U.K. during my higher education studies which lasted for many years and some of them have become friends of mine. The Chinese people do not deserve what is happening to them; they are very intelligent and hard-working people.

To understand the gravity of the situation now against China we need to mention the lawsuit being launched by the US Missouri state against the Chinese Government as it “lied to the world” and for “not doing enough” to stop the Coronavirus spread: “Eric Schmitt, the state’s Republican attorney general, said in a written statement that the Chinese government lied about the dangers of the virus and did not do enough to slow its spread.

“The Chinese government lied to the world about the danger and contagious nature of Covid-19, silenced whistleblowers, and did little to stop the spread of the disease,” he said. “They must be held accountable for their actions.” (The Guardian, 22 April 2020). This is only the beginning and we may see many states, companies, organizations, or even countries, suing China for suffering and economic losses.

China has to put an end to all this and exonerate itself before the world instead of sticking to “outdated arguments” about “political agenda” and “political motivations” from its enemies. This is a very unreasonable stand and will cost China and the Chinese people a great deal.

China: The Factory of the World They say, “even the American flag flying over the White House is made in China.”! Whether this is true or mere exaggeration is beside the point. The point is that China has become the factory of the world and in many countries all over the globe, the only goods available on the market are made in China. So China is a great superpower in trade and commerce in addition to being a political superpower. But China has to behave in a reasonable and responsible way towards the world; it should not assume that the world will forever be silent about the viruses that originate in its territories from time to time. It cannot just claim that it has “sovereign immunity” just like other countries. There are severe limitations to this concept of “sovereign immunity” nowadays. There is no country in the world which can do harm to its citizens and to other nations or to the whole world and get away with it. The sooner the nations of the world understand this concept, the better.

The impact of COVID-19 on China’s economy has been enormous and disastrous.

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“In newly reported figures, China’s industrial output plummeted 13.5% over the first two months of 2020—the most precipitous downfall on record—and exports dropped to 2008 global financial crisis levels, with China actually experiencing a trade deficit.

Combined with vast declines in retail sales and fixed asset investment, this was China’s worst financial report since opening up to foreign investment in 1978.”

(Shepard: 26 March 2020, Forbes) According to James Palmer, the author of the Death of Mao and the upcoming Heaven’s Empires, it is going to be very costly for China because the U.S. companies will come under huge pressure to pull out manufacturing and other things, both to diversify to avoid high risks and for political pressure.

“Exports from China have declined to all regions across the world. This decline has been severe across the globe, with the exception of North America, where trade was already in decline for more than a year due to the ongoing trade disputes between the US and China. The picture of a steep decline in goods received from China is similar when looking at numerous individual European countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The collapse in production activity at the heart of many GVCs [global value chains] necessarily has implications for producers and consumers in countries further up and down the products’ value chains.” (UNIDO, 27 April 2020) The end of China’s role as the factory of the world has already started.

Implications for Risk Mitigation Strategies The foregoing arguments about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic may seem irrelevant to most people, businesses, and countries in the world. Most people, businesses, and countries are afraid of both China and the USA and do not wish to be dragged into a battle or a wrangle against either one of them. They just want to avoid troubles and save their skins!

The best approach for these businesses and countries is to adopt effective Risk Mitigation Strategies for their survival and success. These strategies should be included in the long-term policies of any firm or a country (Grant 1996). Almost all countries are full of high-risk projects and programs creating an environment of great uncertainty in a time of crisis like that of COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially true about businesses and projects in the developing world. The sector is vulnerable to a large number of financial, economic, social, political, cultural, and other factors. As a consequence, the senior management responsible for these businesses and projects all over the world has been facing different sorts of acute problems and bitter failures such as the failure to pay the salaries and wages of their employees to keep them alive, failure in operational requirements, cost overruns and many delays in the completion of certain programs due to shortages of vital supplies. In the light of this Page 16 of 23

situation, it can be said that the private sector in different countries is in urgent need of a system of risk mitigation strategies that ensure the survival of the industries and saves them from collapse here and there. This is a great challenge for any senior management in the private sector. The senior management in any business should undertake rigorous research to identify and evaluate the current risks and uncertainties in the organization to help enhance the effectiveness of the risk mitigation strategies.

This has become the best way for survival and success instead of resorting to primitive and damaging measures like making severe cuts in the salaries of their employees or illegally laying them off temporarily or getting rid of them.

Risks are the events that constitute potential hazards and can lead to the failure of the project (Gido and Clements 2009:87); (Manalu and Lestari 2015). Such hazards may be related to a number of factors: financial, economic, political, environmental, cultural, as well as extreme bad weather conditions, destruction of equipment, drastic changes to the project scope, severe problems in coordinating work and schedules and other events of the same nature (Mantel et al. 2011:81); now we can add to the list an acute global crisis like that of COVID-19 pandemic.

Risk management includes the identification of potential hazards before they occur and developing a contingency plan to be used in emergencies. This includes the close observation of the implementation process by the team members and asking them to submit periodical reports to reduce the negative impacts of potential risks.

Projects revolve around uncertainty; so it is very necessary for the project management to develop the ability to deal with any uncertainty associated with the project and take action to minimize uncertainty (Mantel et al 2011: 21). Responsible budgeting suggests that setting a contingency plan for a risk’s occurrence is useful; additionally, contingency plans should appear on the budget itself to avoid a loss that could cripple the project (Gido and Clements 2009: 90).

Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks usually defined “as the effect of uncertainty on objectives” followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events (Hubbard 2009:46) or to maximize the realization of opportunities. Risk management’s objective to deal with uncertainty does not deflect the endeavor from the business goals (Antunes and Vicente 2015:209).

Risks can come from various sources including uncertainty in financial markets, threats from project failures, legal liabilities, credit risk, accidents, natural causes and disasters, deliberate attack from a rival, or events related to changes in the political situation in the country. Risk sources are identified and located in human factor variables, mental states, and decision making as well as infrastructural or technological assets and tangible variables. The interaction between human factors and tangible aspects of risk highlights the need to focus closely on human factors as Page 17 of 23

one of the main drivers for risk management, a "change driver" that comes first of all from the need to know how humans perform in challenging environments and in the face of risks.

Strategies to manage threats (uncertainties with negative consequences) typically include avoiding the threat, reducing the negative effect or probability of the threat, transferring all or part of the threat to another party, and even retaining some or all of the potential or actual consequences of a particular threat, and the opposites for opportunities (uncertain future states with benefits).

It is regrettable that many senior managers and top executives like Abood Al-Sawafi, Hamed Al-Hajri, and Abdallah Al-Harthy of A’Sharqiyah University in Oman do not know nor are they aware of the concept of risk mitigation strategies. They are just woodcutters and camels’ breeders. They have crept into their senior management positions through personal relationships with the investors rather than through academic qualifications or leadership qualities. It is no surprise then they take primitive and short-sighted measures on the mistaken belief that these measures will make profits for them or save their organization or university. When you look at the whole picture, you will be shocked to see them act like the drivers of horse-driven carts or the managers of a factory for toilet paper! Because they are incompetent and unqualified, they take stupid and awkward measures creating a very unhealthy work environment where work ethics are non-existent and where most, if not all, employees are treated like slaves or puppets.

For more details, read my article: “Risk Mitigation Strategies for Businesses and Higher Education Institutions” published on LinkedIn on September 26, 2016.

Conclusions The Coronavirus pandemic is having enormous and disastrous impacts on the whole world. It has been destroying the social fabrics of nations everywhere. It has led to unimaginable human suffering, huge financial losses, and deep economic wounds that will take years to heal. The world may not recover from all this even after a long time.

So it is a matter of paramount importance that an unbiased and independent team selected from the world’s respectable virologists, physicians, health specialists, and others, away from the WHO, should be allowed to investigate how this vicious virus has originated and how it has spread so rapidly all over the globe. We do not live in a jungle. The world needs to understand everything about the COVID-19 outbreak in order to better prepared for another outbreak which may be as deadly, if not deadlier.

These are not American demands. They are the demands of all civilized and peaceloving people and nations.

For businesses, colleges, universities, and organizations, the best approach to follow is to adopt effective Risk Mitigation Strategies as the arguments for and against an Page 18 of 23

international probe into the Coronavirus pandemic may not seem very relevant to them. Most, if not all, countries are afraid of both the US and China and will try their best to be neutral, with few exceptions.

Risk Mitigation Strategies have been there in the Management Sciences for a long time but it is surprising why companies, corporations, and even governments rarely take them into account or adopt very short-term strategies. When there is a financial crisis like that of 2008 or a global pandemic like that of COVID-19, you see many businesses, after just a month or two, collapse or desperately seek governments’ aids, bailouts, or loans. This also applies to the oil-rich countries that always seek loans from the IMF or the World Bank to compensate for the deficits in their national budgets. This is a very short-sighted approach to strategic planning and risk mitigation strategies.

It is regrettable that many senior managers like Abood Al-Sawafi, Hamed Al-Hajri, and Abdallah Al-Harthy of A’Sharqiyah University in Oman do not know nor are they aware of the concept of risk mitigation strategies. They do not care whether the university they are supposed to run will disappear because of the Coronavirus pandemic or will go to hell. They care only about their selfish personal gains and how to exploit such a crisis to steal more money and accumulate their illegitimate (haram) wealth. They have crept into their senior management positions through personal relationships with the investors rather than through academic qualifications or leadership qualities.

Following the science of logic and mathematical calculations, businesses, colleges, and universities without proper risk mitigation strategies will sink down very fast – like the Titanic!

This is what we see happening now all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Are we going to learn useful lessons from this crisis?

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