The State Department issued a fact sheet that provides evidence suggesting COVID-19 may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Laboratory (WIV) in China.
The report reveals U.S. intelligence claims researchers at the WIV developed a COVID-19 type illness in the fall of 2019.
Moreover, researches at the WIV were conducting experiments with a coronavirus called RaTG13 derived from bats that shares a 96.2 percent similarity to the genetic makeup of COVID-19 scientifically known as SARS-CoV-2.
The two data points – illness of lab workers and experiments with a similar coronavirus at WIV – coupled with past documented cases of accidental releases of viruses in China suggests but does not prove COVID-19 origin was from the WIV and not a result of mother nature.
The fact that WIV engages in “gain-of-function” research including RaTG13, which caused the 2013 death of miners, adds support to the concern that COVID-19 was lab-based.
From the fact sheet:
The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
The release from the State Department correlates with the start of the World Health Organization (WHO) investigation of the origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan.
Fox News reports:
This week, the World Health Organization sent scientists to Wuhan to carry out an investigation into the origins and spread of COVID-19, after months of back-and-forth discussions with Beijing.
In addition, China is being accused of deleting scientific papers and virus databases.
A truly extraordinary situation.
The lab working on SARS-like viruses in Wuhan has deleted 300 papers.
It previously deleted a database of 20,000 samples of bats, rats and viruses.
And WHO investigation team is still not allowed into the country. https://t.co/9qmltiP5vN
— Matt Ridley (@mattwridley) January 11, 2021
The WHO team is one of two outside groups investigating the origins of COVID-19.
Making matters worse, one of the individuals on both teams, Dr. Peter Daszak, has a significant conflict of interest since he has worked with and funded the WIV.
My Newsmax Insider commentary last year discussed Daszak’s role with one of the investigative teams:
Daszak is leading the investigation of the origin of COVID-19 but he has a significant conflict of interest.
The problem is Daszak runs the EcoHealth Alliance — the organization that received NIH funding to conduct bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology.
Clearly, it’s in Daszak professional interest if the virus was naturally occurring since he would have a reason to seek more grant money to study bat coronaviruses in China.
With China’s history of hiding information coupled with an investigator with a conflict of interest, it’s extremely doubtful the lab origin theory will be fairly investigated.
The bottom line is the fix is in.
