A new report prepared about the possible origin of the novel coronavirus causing the covid pandemic was recently released, summarizing key findings from the investigation by the Republican leadership of the US Senate health committee.
The report, released in full by Axios, says: “The Covid-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”
- It argues that scientists haven’t found any naturally occurring viruses with the same composition of the coronavirus, and that there’s evidence the virus was circulating in Wuhan before the first known cases connected to the wet market were reported.
- It also argues that it appears Chinese researchers began development of at least two COVID vaccines in November 2019, including at the WIV, which “means SARS-CoV-2 would have been present at the WIV before the known outbreak of the pandemic.”
- It also documents numerous instances of lab safety concerns throughout 2019, including around the time when the virus may have first appeared.
As I have noted previously, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has long been known to have poor biosafety conditions and risky sample-handling procedures, which normally require enhanced containment measures. The report aligns with that assessment and indicates there may have been multiple leak incidents.
The document says an initial leak may have occurred “sometime before September 2019” and began circulating in Wuhan. Then, once WIV and Chinese government authorities realized what had happened, officials scrambled to quickly and quietly develop a vaccine that could be deployed to contain the outbreak — all before the world could learn the truth, according to the authors.That rush to develop a vaccine may have led to a second accidental lab leak — one which, in turn, would lead to the global pandemic, the investigators believe.No definitive conclusion has yet been reached on the origins of COVID but the intelligence and scientific communities remain split on whether the most likely scenario is a natural spillover or an accidental lab leak.
I’m so old that I remember when the lab leak theory was dismissed as “misinformation,” and accounts were suspended or throttled when they asserted otherwise.
The Marshall report adds momentum to the lab leak theory, which the political left initially discredited as disinformation. The theory has been bolstered by evidence that some workers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized for flulike illness before the coronavirus spread across the city.Dr. Robert Redfield, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and others said the virus had properties not found in other coronaviruses, adding to the likelihood that it was engineered.John L. Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during the first year of the pandemic, said Tuesday that the intelligence community should be more aggressive with its conclusion.He told Congress that the bank of evidence indicating a spillover from nature is “nearly empty and tenuous.” For instance, no one has been able to confirm a reservoir species or animal through which the virus jumped to humans.
If there is any “fact” originally labeled as “undisputed science” that remains true after the full history of covid is finally written, it will be purely coincidental.
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