On Wednesday afternoon, in a rare act of real journalism, CNN reported that Biden’s team shut down a State Department effort launched late in the Trump administration to prove the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.
The existence of the State Department inquiry and its termination this spring by the Biden administration — neither of which has been previously reported — comes to light amid renewed interest in whether the virus could have leaked out of a Wuhan lab with links to the Chinese military. The Biden administration is also facing scrutiny of its own efforts to determine if the Chinese government was responsible for the virus.Those involved in the previously undisclosed inquiry, which was launched last fall by allies of then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, say it was an honest effort to probe what many initially dismissed: that China’s biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, according to two additional sources.
In an astonishing reversal, and less than 24 hours after the CNN story broke, the occupants of the Oval Office are scrambling to relaunch the investigation. A report is due out in 90 days.
President Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies on Wednesday to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, indicating that his administration takes seriously the possibility that the deadly virus was accidentally leaked from a lab, in addition to the prevailing theory that it was transmitted by an animal to humans outside a lab.In a statement, Mr. Biden made it clear that the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies had not yet reached a consensus on how the virus, which prompted a pandemic and has killed almost 600,000 Americans, originated in China. But he directed them to conduct a deeper investigation and report back to him in 90 days.“I have now asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion,” the president said.
And while President Donald Trump reminds everyone that his term “China virus” was accurate, leaders of the anti-Trump #Resistance movement are also calling for further investigation.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he “was right” all along to pin the COVID-19 pandemic on China as the Biden administration called on the World Health Organization to begin a “transparent, science-based” investigation of the virus’ origins.US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Tuesday urged the WHO to launch a second investigation into the origins of the pandemic as the “lab leak” theory gains traction.Becerra said in a video message that the international organization must conduct a “transparent” probe after a widely panned initial WHO review controlled by China, which said the virus likely emerged naturally from animals.“Phase 2 of the COVID origins study must be launched with terms of reference that are transparent, science-based and give international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak,” Becerra said.
As a scientist, the data is in, and the consensus is that both the media and the current administration are in full damage control mode. So the only question I have is: Why now?
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