By AFP Staff
Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee released a provocative report on the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19. According to the report, the evidence points to a lab leak from the Wuhan virology lab in the fall of 2019 following genetic modification of the virus. The Republicans also documented an extensive cover-up on the part of the Chinese.
“The preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to Sept. 12, 2019,” notes the report. “The virus, or the viral sequence that was genetically manipulated, was likely collected in a cave in Yunnan province, PRC, between 2012 and 2015.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, has denied that the virus was came from the same Chinese lab his agency has been funding, claiming the virus most likely jumped naturally from bats to people.
The Republican report, however, makes a strong case for the lab leak theory, noting that all of the evidence that has been gathered so far points directly at this. Even the fact that the Chinese government has been working to quash credible claims that its own scientists engaged in risky research which led to the leak signals that the Chinese have something to hide. Otherwise, they would be forthcoming with information and provide access to outside scientists to study the various theories on the origins of Covid-19.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) issued a lengthy statement following the release of the report, saying:
As we continue to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe it’s time to completely dismiss the wet market as the source of the outbreak. Instead, as this report lays out, a preponderance of the evidence proves that all roads lead to the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology]. We know gain-of-function research was happening at the WIV and we know it was being done in unsafe conditions. We also now know the head of the Chinese CDC and the director of the WIV’s BSL-4 lab publicly expressed concerns about safety at PRC labs in the summer of 2019. It is our belief the virus leaked sometime in late August or early September 2019. When they realized what happened, Chinese Communist Party officials and scientists at the WIV began frantically covering up the leak, including taking their virus database offline in the middle of the night and requesting more than $1 million for additional security.
But their coverup was too late—the virus was already spreading throughout the megacity of Wuhan. Within a month, satellite images show a significant uptick in the number of people at hospitals around the WIV with symptoms similar to COVID-19. At the same time, athletes at the Military World Games became sick with symptoms similar to COVID-19. Some of them carried the virus back to their home countries – creating one of the earliest super spreader events in the world, and explaining how countries who participated in the games had reported cases as early as November 2019.
It is also concerning the scientific community told the American people for more than a year it was impossible to modify a virus without leaving a trace when this technology existed more than 14 years before the pandemic began. As this report lays out, researchers at the WIV were also able to successfully modify coronaviruses without leaving a trace as early as 2016. Therefore it is no longer appropriate for anyone to dismiss the notion this virus could have been genetically modified before it leaked from the WIV.
Now is the time to use all of the tools the U.S. government has to continue to root out the full truth of how this virus came to be. That includes subpoenaing Peter Daszak to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to answer the many questions his inconsistent—and in some instances outright and knowingly inaccurate—statements have raised. It also includes Congress passing legislation to sanction scientists at the WIV and CCP officials who participated in this coverup. This was the greatest coverup of all time and has caused the deaths of more than four million people around world, and people must be held responsible.
You can read the report by clicking here.
Go further upstream to bat coronavirus ‘gain of function’ research being performed at Level IV virus lab in Chappell Hill, North Carolina until it was stopped in 2014.