WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

Edit: link has changed to ap news (didn't know that was even a thing you could do after posting to HN?)

This story seems like more idle speculation with the backing of a semi-official source (but not in his official capacity).

Absolutely no new evidence is presented in the story, it's just one person's opinion. Also, this source is a right-wing media org, and in comments to the Washington Post later he walked the story back[1]:

> Asked for comment, Ben Embarek initially said the interview had been mistranslated in English-language media coverage. “It is a wrong translation from a Danish article,” he wrote, declining to comment further and referring The Washington Post to the WHO. He did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-...

Thanks for the link, very useful site.

Tangentially related: there are no antifa burnings or endless videos of cops acting badly either. It’s not as though criminals stopped being criminals and cops stopped policing…

It is important to consider the context within which these suggestions were initially put forth. We had a president that claimed to have Coronavirus under control, that it was no worse than the flu and who openly and frequently cast doubt upon the only expert in the room. Perhaps had his behavior been a bit more tempered, he would have been taken more seriously.

We've changed the URL from https://summit.news/2021/08/12/danish-who-chief-says-covid-p... as flaggers and commenters seemed to be reacting particularly strongly to that site.

The story itself is arguably significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), so I've turned off the flags after changing the URL.

Generally on HN we go by article quality rather than site quality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) but in this case I think it is less distracting simply to change the URL. Actually the original domain is banned on HN, the same way most highly politicized sites are (regardless of which politics they practice) but users vouched for this submission, no doubt because they felt the story to be significant.

If anyone comes up with a better URL, we can change it again.

Edit: users in the thread have pointed out these other links (thanks!):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/head-of-who-team-investigating-...

Every one of these articles is presenting a somewhat different story and I'm not sure what a good title would be. According to the WaPo and WSJ articles, Ben Embarek wasn't just a WHO official but the leader of the investigation ("Ben Embarek led a team of international scientists on a mission to China") - that seems particularly significant so I've added it to the title above. If anyone comes up with a better (i.e. more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.