President Biden on Wednesday ordered U.S. intelligence to dig deeper into the origins of Covid-19, a reversal after reportedly ordering the closure of a State Department investigative unit. Mr Biden is trying to cover his embarrassing conclusion of the investigation as the dam eventually broke on evidence that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The shame is it took so long because the suspicious facts were obvious from the start.
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In January 2020, international media reported the spread of a virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “The coronavirus could lead to a global pandemic,” Senator Tom Cotton said on January 30, 2020., Coronavirus. “
The world would learn more about Covid-19 and the WIV. However, it was always reasonable to ask if the virus came from a nearby laboratory that handles dangerous viruses. On February 6, 2020, Botao Xiao of the South China University of Technology published a paper stating that the virus “likely came from a laboratory in Wuhan”. However, the Chinese government tightly controls research into the origins of Covid-19, and the molecular biomechanics researcher withdrew its publication.
The Communist Party went on the offensive when Beijing’s ambassador to the US declared that laboratory leak theories were “absolutely insane” and could “promote racial discrimination and xenophobia.” After Mr. Cotton urged China to “open up to competent international scientists”, the media decided to reject it: “Tom Cotton repeats an already exposed coronavirus conspiracy theory” (Washington Post) and “Senator Tom Cotton repeats Fringe” Coronavirus origins theory “(
).
Public health workers also set limits to allowable discussion. On February 19, 2020, the Lancet published a statement from scientists “condemning conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 was not of natural origin”. Although some scientists tacitly disagreed, the document was advertised as evidence that the laboratory possibility was “debunked”.
The Lancet Declaration was organized by Peter Daszak, whose non-profit organization funded research at the WIV. He had a clear interest in discarding laboratory theory, which could jeopardize future research funds. The zoologist was a member of the World Health Organization’s investigation team that was dispatched to Wuhan earlier this year. Mr Daszak still insists that the laboratory leak theory is absurd – although three of the Lancet signatories have since said it deserves more attention.
In May 2020, Dr. Fauci discussed laboratory theory in an interview with National Geographic. But his National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases had funded the WIV through Mr. Daszak’s non-profit organization. Even if the US funds were not used directly for research purposes that may have caused the pandemic, it is still problematic.
Prominent Republican officials like Mike Pompeo and
began to support the theory, but they were accused of trying to deflect attention from the government’s pandemic missteps. The dismissal of Dr. Fauci also came as news reports enjoyed the divisions between the White House and scientific advisors. CNN stated that “Anthony Fauci has just crushed Donald Trump’s theory about the origins of the coronavirus”.
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This dominant narrative eventually ran into a problem: Nobody discovered a natural origin for Covid-19, and new information makes a blanket rejection of a laboratory leak unacceptable. The main disclosure came in January from Mr. Trump’s State Department.
“The US government has reason to believe that several researchers within the WIV fell ill in the fall of 2019, before the first case of the outbreak was identified, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses,” it says in the fact sheet. It found that WIV has ties to the Chinese military and has not been transparent or consistent in its work on viruses similar to Covid-19. However, the Biden administration largely accepted these results in public, and even Dr. Fauci recognized the possibility of a laboratory leak this week.
The WHO’s Wuhan visit that year produced little new information, but decided that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely”. National security adviser Jake Sullivan criticized the investigation. Even the director general of the WHO, Tedros Ghebreyesus, called for a “further investigation” to determine whether the virus came from a laboratory. This month a group of scientists published a letter in Science magazine stating that “theories about accidental release from a laboratory and zoonotic spills remain viable”.
This review should have started a year ago, but the media bias resulted in a fair discussion. Many “experts” made political calculations and fell victim to group thinking rather than following science.
This is not just a score exercise. The history of Wuhan’s origins is crucial to understanding how the next pandemic can be prevented. how to run dangerous laboratories better; and how to defend humanity. The world still needs an honest and open investigation.
Wonderland: The January 6th Pelosi-Schumer Commission will do nothing about America’s time bomb of political violence. Images: Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly
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