Top Chinese Scientist doesn’t rule out lab leak theory
Covid lab leak theory should not be ruled out, top Chinese scientist says
The former director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) has said the lab leak theory for the origins of Covid-19 should not be discounted.
George Gao, an internationally respected virologist, also said another branch of the Chinese government had investigated the lab leak theory – the first such acknowledgment that some kind of official investigation took place. “They haven’t found wrongdoing,” he said.
Speaking to the BBC, Gao said: “You can always suspect anything. That’s science. Don’t rule out anything.”
Gao is now vice-president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, a government funding body.
The investigation into the origins of Covid have been frustrated by the Chinese government’s lack of cooperation with international fact-finding efforts and the politicisation of the issue. In the west, questions about a possible lab leak have become linked to the idea that the virus was deliberately and maliciously released into the world, which has fuelled conspiracy theories.
But since Joe Biden became US president, authorities in the US have started to take the accidental leak theory more seriously. In May 2021 Biden ordered an intelligence investigation into the hypothesis. Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal reported that an updated and classified 2021 US energy department report had concluded with “low confidence” that the virus most likely emerged from a lab leak – a conclusion that runs counter to reports by a number of other US intelligence agencies.
In March 2021 a team of researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded, after a research visit to Wuhan, that the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely”. But that visit had been hampered by the Chinese government and phase two of the investigation has since been abandoned. Speaking to Nature in February, Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist, said: “The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins.”
The Chinese government has called the lab leak theory “false and erroneous”.
But in his BBC interview Gao said: “We really don’t know where the virus came from … the question is still open.”
Last years Vanity Fair expose on the machinations of China, the Wuhan Lab, Fauci and the insanely incompetent EcoHealth Alliance forces all rational minds to re-examine the Wuhan Lab Leak theory…
“This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy
Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a V.F. investigation shows how an organization dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.
…the deep suspicion of China is legitimate.
We know there were embassy cables warning Trump that the Wuhan Lab was a safety risk.
We know US Intelligence picks up a pandemic in November.
We know the lab was experimenting on the virus and that scientists have now cast suspicion on the virus having been tampered with.
Because of the prevalence of these types of labs and with human error factored in, there is an 80 percent chance of a a dangerous pathogen escape every 12.8 years.
We know lab staff suffered symptoms exactly like Covid a month before the first case in December.
The lack of a definitive answer however is politically dangerous and cultural damaging.
The Vanity Fair expose clearly points to funding Fauci green lighted For EcoHealth Alliance to research the very Covid virus that is then released near a lab at the centre of the outbreak.
That at the very least demands some examination and not the usual screams of xenophobia from the usual and predictable defenders of China OR America!
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Lab leak or not, intentional or not, China paid the price along with the rest of us.
I personally believe that it is most likely that Coid-19 originated from the Wuhan Lab, however, I don’t think we really want to know. If we assume for a minute that it was 100% proven that the Wuhan Lab was the origin point the immediate next question would be “Was it deliberate or accidental?”.
If we take the best-case scenario of it being found to have been released accidentally then the demand for financial reparations to the global economy in addition to the victims of those killed or injured as a result would be deafening and likely to be completely destabilising on a level never seen before in human history.
If we take the worst-case scenario of it being found to have been released deliberately then the calls for military action would be un-deniable and the first argument would be that the “First Strike” barrier has already been breached through the deployment of a Biological Weapon of Mass Destruction.