- US State Department has put out a ‘Fact Sheet’ questioning the activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, its links with China’s military and the possibility of the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic being the result of an experiment gone wrong.
- The US says that there are three elements about COVID-19’s origin that ‘deserve greater scrutiny’; Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Research at the WIV and Secret military activity at the WIV
- The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019, charges the US
- Hinting that the COVID-19 could possibly be the result of a military experiment, the US brings in the aspect of secret military activity at the WIV in its fact sheet
Did China create the Coronavirus as a biological weapon to destroy countries and economies? Was the theory of Coronavirus being originated from bats, a flaseflag floated by China? Did China very well know the consequences and planned the same to take over countries, industries and sell its products after economies dither due to the virus?
These were some of the questions being asked over the past 12 months by several countries for which there have been no concrete answers. While several countries like the US, Australia, Taiwan, Italy have questioned the role of China is hiding the origin of the virus which has caused deaths of more than a million people across the world, many investigators like Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who studied Chinese biological warfare had directly charged that Coronavirus was a result of China’s bio-warfare experiment.
Now the US State Department, just days before the new administration takes over, has put out a ‘Fact Sheet‘ questioning the activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, its links with China’s military and the possibility of the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic being the result of an experiment gone wrong. The US expresses doubts through the factsheet at a time when a team of scientists assembled by the WHO are in Wuhan to investigate into the origins of the virus.
The US State Department questions the intentions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in preventing a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. “Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one”, states the Fact Sheet.
The U.S. government does acknowledge that it “does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially to humans and has not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals” but doubts if the outbreak of the virus “was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China”.
“The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world”, says the US and puts out the three elements about COVID-19’s origin that ‘deserve greater scrutiny’:
- Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)
- Research at the WIV
- Secret military activity at the WIV
The U.S. government believes that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. “This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses”, says the factsheet.
The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness, says the US.
The US says that WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar) as the WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins. However, the US alleges that 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 US demands that the “WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bats and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses”.
Hinting that the COVID-19 could possibly be the result of a military experiment, the US brings in the aspect of secret military activity at the WIV. The US alleges that despite concerns being raised publicly about China’s past biological weapons work, Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated its biological weapons work, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
“The United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017”, it says.
The US charges that the revelations in its factsheet “just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China”. The United States will continue to do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities, it concludes.
The Lancet Papers
In January 2020, investigative journal Lancet Papers debunked the Chinese claim that the virus could have originated from bats. It put out its findings which showed that supposed patient zero was nowhere near the market and that there are no bats in the Seafood Market or anywhere close. The paper talks about the first patient onset was actually on December 1st and these patients were not related to Huanan Seafood Market.
Dr Sean Lin, Former Lab Director of the Viral Disease Branch Walter Reed Army Institute of Research says there was no epidemiological association found between the first patient and subsequent patient and they had no contact with the Huanan Seafood Market, hinting that the origin could be elsewhere, possible as an biological experiment in a lab.
According to the New England Journal, of the 425 cases confirmed before Jan. 22nd, 45 cases onset before January 1st had no history of exposure to the Seafood Market. Notably, the authors of the two Lancet papers in the New England Journal of Medicine are doctors and medical experts in mainland China.
Daniel Lucey, an epidemiologist at the University of Georgetown has said in response to The Lancet Paper that if the data were accurate, the first case would have been infected by the virus already in November, 2019 because of the incubation period between infection and symptoms. This would mean that the virus was quietly spreading between people in some parts of Wuhan before the cluster of cases with a history of exposure to the Huanan Seafood Market began on December 15.
The Secret Wuhan P4 Laboratory
The US fact sheet raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses. While Wuhan announced the lockdown of the city, Shi Zhengli and her team released a paper stating that the Wuhan coronavirus was of probable bat origin.
The outbreak occurred in Wuhan, the same location as the P4 laboratory where she was based and which housed highly similar viruses. Common sense would lead the government to first inspect the P4 laboratory for any leakage incident and potential safety concerns. Instead, they shifted public attention from the P4 laboratory to the Huanan Seafood Market that sold no bats and designated it as the origin of the disease.
At the same time, authorities sealed off all virus samples, prevented international experts from joining the investigation, and used national television to slander doctors such as Li Wenliang who disclosed the outbreak, for spreading rumors. If the Wuhan virus indeed emerged naturally, why would the CCP need to censor relevant news or block investigations? This is when scientists and other countries began to wonder if the Wuhan P4 laboratory and or the WIV have its secrets.
Aayush Pal 
Shobhil Shrivastava 
Dr. Niranjan B Poojar