Horse 3353 - What Really Happened With "What Really Happened In Wuhan"?

A book review.

aka

I read this garbage so that you don't have to.

<><><><><>

I finally got around to reading Sharri Markson's 2021 book "What Really Happened In Wuhan: A Virus Like No Other, Countless Infections, Millions of Deaths"; and I have to say, I just don't get the joke here. This book, part-fantasy, part-thriller, part comedy routine, is the kind of book which wants to live at the centre of a conspiracy theory but is unable to prosecute the case at all.

The book which styles itself as some kind of expose, reads more like a penny-dreadful thriller novel, of the sort which would have been serialised in The Strand magazine in the1890s alongside Sherlock Holmes. Markson's book is not as well put together as a a Sherlock Holmes novel. Holmes used logic and deduction to try and establish what happened. Markson's book is more like Conan-Doyle's other work Commander Challenger, as it uses what amounts to magic, crystals, and half-baked spiritualism to try and establish what Markson thinks happened. Unfortunately, the story makes no sense and her logic is non-existent.

The basic premise is that in the WIV facility which is a few kilometres from the Wuhan markets, where the first big cluster of virus infections was discovered, a staffer became accidentally infected carried the virus outside. That by itself might have been plausible, except she then claims that the WIV facility was actually a bioweapons facility to engineer new weapons. That is a very bold claim; which as the book continues, writes cheques that it simply can not cash. The problem with this as a theory is that due to the nature of a virus being so small and hard to trace, the forensic ability to do so is actually impossible and any evidence is circumstantial at best.

The book starts off by claiming that Trump adviser Mike Pompeo had "enormous evidence" that there was a deliberate leak. Mike Pomepo who was then US Secretary of State commissioned Miles Yu at the Washington Times to conduct an investigation to see of there was a possibility of a leak from the WIV. Miles Yu's report actually found "no direct, smoking-gun evidence" and at best there was evidence which was circumstantial which suggested that there was a "possible leak". This is a far cry from "enormous evidence".

The book then basically goes into full-on conspiracy mode; citing that because President Trump went public and that Prime Minister Scott Morrison backed him up, then there must have been good evidence within the Five Eyes International Security Network. The problem with this is that at the time, Australian security organisations such as ASIS and ASIO, saw the Yu Report as insubstantial; and that this was a similar case to trying to find Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction; which also did not exist.

Markson then claims that the reason why the lab leak theory did not gain traction in various scientific journals, was that editors of scientific journals were toeing the company line and that they did not want to be seen as racist. Furthermore, the World Health Organization now painted as super-villain, was compromised by cooperating with China during the outbreak. Ms Markson then tries to cite the fact that because three-quarters of the scientists who she tried to line up interviews refused to speak to her, then they must also be in on the cover up. Never mind the fact that by this stage, her newspaper was already publishing articles which were based on no evidence at all.

There are reports intelligence sources, which Ms Markson will not name, who claimed that in October of 2019 which was before Patient Zero was discovered in Wuhan, that the mobile phone network was shut down and that roads in and out of the city were closed. This is of course unverifiable and her source is not named; which suggests to me that she might have made this whole story up.

Ms Markson cites a statement by the Chinese Delegation to the UN Convention On Biological And Toxin Weapons which if you follow through the citation and the links therein, the statement itself appears to date from 2011. Clearly she hadn't actually read the paper that she cited because in context, this was China condemning the Syrian Government which was in the middle of fighting a civil war, and a warning to nations like Iran that China would not tolerate the supply of Biological weapons to either side in that civil war. To then make a connection that China was working on bioweapons at Wuhan eight years later, is an extremely long bow to be drawing. Her then suggestion that there is a risk of China inventing weapons with specific race-based capability of infection, is not only idiotic but borderline racist. 

Here's the problem with the book. Just because you have politicians who make accusations of a thing, is not evidence of a thing. Scientists who do not want to speak to you, are not evidence of a cover up, but more likely to be because you have a reputation as a bad journalist. Statements from governments which exist years before a thing, which are vaguely about the same subject as the thing, are not evidence that they were doing a thing. The book is utterly replete with this kind of nonsense.

Quite frankly this book is a far cry from the kind of journalism which won Ms Markson two Walkley Awards. In the olden days when The West Australian and Fairfax newspapers still bothered to do quality journalism and hired editors and sub-editors, this would not have been approved for publication. As a piece of long form journalism, it just doesn't stand up. As a thriller/fantasy/crime novel, it doesn't really make the proper connections in logic to prove that the villain did it. As a News Corp. publication, it's fine. This is in a very long tradition going back to when Sir Keith ran the Melbourne Herald, of making up the story and then hoping that nobody notices. This book is written for the kinds of audiences who probably though that Bat-Boy was real and/or who got their daily news from Mx when that was still in print.

The front cover of the book should really have a question mark on it. "What Really Happened In Wuhan: et cetera" should read "What Really Happened In Wuhan?" and the answer, even after reading this book is "we just don't know". Certainly this book tries to preach to you what it thinks that the answer is, but it should be treated as the actual artifact that it is; which is the inane and insane ramblings of someone who was stuck in their house during lockdown and had hours and hours of time to fill. 

As for my rating of this book? I give it: *****

They are not stars. They are asterisks for everything wrong with this book and it's asterisks all the way down.