[International researchers say some
Chinese theories, such as cold-chain packaging carrying the virus to
China, could be possible, if unlikely. And most experts say that the side
effects of new vaccines — and the definitive story of how and where the pandemic
emerged — indeed require further investigation.]
By Gerry Shih
One year after the coronavirus was
first widely reported in China, the country’s state
media and officials are again pitching a flood of theories about
its origins (not China) and which vaccines are safe (not American).
The reports, claims by officials
and unchecked online speculation this month appear to be part of a renewed Chinese
push to cast blame for the pandemic elsewhere and undermine public confidence
in Western vaccines.
International researchers say some
Chinese theories, such as cold-chain packaging carrying the virus to
China, could be possible, if unlikely. And most experts say that the side
effects of new vaccines — and the definitive story of how and where the
pandemic emerged — indeed require further investigation.
But China’s aggressive promotion of
its narratives is muddying the waters precisely when a World Health
Organization team in Wuhan is seeking to investigate the virus’s origins.
The drumbeat of Chinese skepticism toward Western vaccines — one a joint
production between U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German biotech firm
BioNTech, another from U.S. biotech company Moderna — ramped up in recent weeks
as clinical data showed vaccines from Chinese pharmaceutical firms potentially
lagging U.S. rivals.
[Politics
frustrate WHO mission to search for origins of coronavirus in China]
“This defensiveness is all
certainly against the background of the WHO investigation and a return of China
to the media spotlight,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health
at the Council on Foreign Relations.
After Chinese officials and
researchers spent months telling the public that China’s vaccines would win the
global development race, Huang added, “there’s now a gap between expectation
and reality that needed to be addressed, so you see this effort to disparage
Western vaccines.”
Since early in the pandemic,
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has avoided discussion of China’s role in the
contagion and cast China as a world leader that would help others —
particularly developing nations — recover. In speeches, including at the World
Health Assembly, Xi has pledged that China would promote global vaccine cooperation.
In state media, the tone has been
decidedly less lofty.
After one of China’s leading
vaccine contenders, CoronaVac from Beijing-based Sinovac, made headlines last
week after Brazilian researchers reported new findings that its efficacy reached only about 50 percent, several state media
personalities questioned why the side effects and dangers of Pfizer-BioNTech’s
vaccine were not also scrutinized.
The nationalist Global Times
newspaper ran stories that seized on the deaths of 23 elderly Norwegians who
had taken the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and quoted Chinese experts who urged
countries from Norway to Australia to halt its use.
Hu Xijin, the Global Times editor,
wrote this week that the Western media was “out to destroy” the reputation of
Chinese vaccines and that China needed to fight back. Days later, state
outlets published photos of leaders, including
Indonesia’s Joko Widodo and Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum,
receiving Chinese vaccines.
[Coronavirus-ravaged
Brazil places hopes on Chinese vaccine that works only half the time]
In many ways, the Chinese rhetoric
mirrors that of state media in Russia, which has touted its homegrown vaccine.
Sputnik V, like the Chinese offerings, is traditionally developed with
inactivated dead viruses, unlike the messenger-RNA vaccines made by
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
For months, Russian officials such
as Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct sovereign wealth fund, have
suggested that mRNA-based vaccines could damage fertility. Russian state media
has bemoaned how Pfizer-BioNTech’s shot has been “imposed on literally
everyone.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention says studies on mRNA vaccine side effects are ongoing,
but experts do not believe they pose a specific risk to recipients who are
pregnant. Clinical trials suggest side effects of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
include fevers, chills, tiredness and headache in about 9 percent of
recipients. About 0.6 percent reported severe adverse events, results
show.
Concerns about mRNA vaccines have
sometimes been voiced by the West, but in China, they have been a running
theme. As U.S. firms have released early results in recent months, warnings
from prominent Chinese experts have grown to a degree that has surprised
observers.
George Gao, head of China’s Center
for Disease Control and Prevention, recently pondered publicly whether the
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines could cause cancer. Zhong Nanshan, who is
considered a national hero for his work on the SARS and covid-19 outbreaks
and sometimes speaks on behalf of the government, dismissed Pfizer-BioNTech’s
and Moderna’s clinical trials as “very insufficient” in November. China’s
vaccines, Zhong added, “are developed with rigor.”
[China
bars two members of WHO coronavirus mission as depleted team reaches Wuhan]
Dali Yang, a political science
professor at the University of Chicago who researches China’s health system,
said that he was surprised a prominent health official like Gao would cast
doubt on U.S. vaccines but that it was not clear whether such comments
represented a concerted government strategy. Chinese factories, after all, have
been contracted to produce millions of doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, and
it’s still possible that China could buy the vaccine to inoculate elderly
citizens because the Chinese vaccines have not been tested on people over 59,
he said.
“If they really played this up,
they could make it very difficult for themselves,” Yang said.
The Chinese experts’ warnings have
been mild compared with state and influential social media, where ominous
reports and theories have gained traction.
The Chinese Internet lit up this
month after Jin Canrong, a foreign policy adviser to the government, posted an
essay by Xiong Lei, a senior state media editor, pointing out that Rumsfeld,
through his shareholding as the former chairman of Gilead Sciences, has profited from Gilead selling
antiviral drugs for outbreaks that have struck China.
“It’s not right that we ignore
this,” Xiong wrote. “The United States is not without a record of biological
warfare.”
On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Hua Chunying pushed speculation about a U.S. Army biological
warfare program. “If the United States truly respects facts, it should open the
biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its
200-plus overseas bio labs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the
United States, and respond to the concerns from the international community,”
she said in a briefing.
Some government agencies have
appeared happy to stoke nationalism. Officials in Changzhou, in eastern China,
claimed last month that a survey they conducted showed that 78 percent of
respondents would prefer to take a Chinese vaccine. Just 7 percent said
they would prefer a foreign one.
In the minority are those who have
tried to lower the temperature.
[Conspiracy
theorists blame U.S. for coronavirus. China is happy to encourage them.]
Zhou Yebin, a senior researcher at
Chicago-based AbbVie who has a large following in China as a science writer,
urged Chinese to stop viewing the vaccine race as a “zero-sum game” and
worrying whether the Chinese vaccines can compete with Western options. At a
forum this week, the chief of Shanghai’s pandemic response, Zhang Wenhong, was
asked whether Chinese should opt for a U.S. or Chinese vaccine.
Zhang dismissed the question and
said he only wants to get 80 percent of the population inoculated. “It’s
all good as long as you get it,” he said.
Jennifer Huang Bouey, a Peking
University-trained epidemiologist who is now a senior policy researcher at the
Rand Corp. in Washington, said that in the past week she has anecdotally
observed an uptick even in her WeChat circles — comprising highly educated
Chinese researchers — of articles, including one on the British Medical
Journal’s website, questioning the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s efficacy.
Some Chinese researchers felt that
Chinese vaccines were being unfairly criticized, Bouey said.
“So many people are watching
China’s push to reach global standards, and it’s so high-stakes,” she said.
“The pushback and generally the negative views from Western countries make them
very insecure.”
Clarification: This story has been
updated to more precisely describe the Pfizer-BioNTech clinical trial
data published by the CDC. “Severe local and systemic adverse
reactions” — including fevers, chills, fatigue, headache and muscle pain that
interfered with daily activity — were reported in 8.8 percent of recipients.
About 0.6 percent, a similar figure to that seen in placebo data, reported
“serious adverse events” — untoward medical occurrences resulting in
hospitalization, persistent incapacity, threat to life, prolonging of existing
hospitalization, or death. These encompassed medical events occurring at a
frequency similar to that within the general population.
Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow
contributed to this report.
Read more
Politics
frustrate WHO mission to search for origins of coronavirus in China
Coronavirus-ravaged
Brazil places hopes on Chinese vaccine that works only half the time
Conspiracy
theorists blame U.S. for coronavirus. China is happy to encourage them.
