By the AFP Staff
New video released by an online citizen investigation group to Australian media proves that China and a top Western virologist linked to a Chinese virus lab lied in the past when asked if the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) kept live bats in its labs.
The video, given to Australian journalist Sharri Markson, shows multiple bats in cages in the WIV as well as a Chinese scientist feeding a bat a worm.
The video is important because Chinese officials along with a Western virologist linked to the lab have both denied the institution ever kept lives bats. The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the human disease Covid-19 is closely related to a virus that occurs naturally in bats.
Last year, Peter Daszak, the head of Ecohealth, who has secured millions of dollars in funding for the WIV over the years, issued a statement calling the claim that the WIV held live bats for research purposes a “conspiracy theory.”
At the time, Daszak tweeted:
Daszak added that he was been in the field for 15 years and worked closely with WIV scientists, so he would know.
With the release of the video evidence, he has now deleted that tweet, saying that he never actually asked if WIV kept bats—even though he had previously excoriated the claims in no uncertain terms.
The world would never know of this video evidence were it not for the independent citizen research group DRASTIC, which stands for Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating Covid-19. DRASTIC’s website is a treasure trove of information on the origins of Covid-19 including a forensic analysis of the WIV’s virus database as well as detailed information on how the natural origin theory of the virus is “undermined by issues with genome sequences of its relative strains.”
Equally important, the names of three past employees at the WIV, who disappeared around the time that multiple employees supposedly contracted Covid-like symptoms and were hospitalized, is getting greater scrutiny. One of those individuals, Huang Yanling, who worked at the WIV, has been named in multiple reports.
“During the early weeks of the outbreak last February, rumors swirled on Chinese social media that the graduate student was ‘patient zero,’ creating a direct link between the controversial lab and the virus outbreak,” reported “News.com.” out of Australia. “Chinese officials quickly stepped in to censor the reports from the internet. The Wuhan Institute of Virology denied she was patient zero and insisted, without evidence, that she was alive and well elsewhere in the country—while scrubbing her biography and image from its website.”
Two others, who were identified as Wang Mengyue and Wei Cuihua by “National Review,” have also disappeared from the WIV’s website without a trace, leading some to speculate that these three are the individuals who first contracted Covid-like symptoms in the months preceding the outbreak in December 2019, as cited by Western intelligence.
Australian journalist Sharri Markson’s informative 16-minute video can be seen below.
