Wuhan COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory and The Truth About Republicans
The Story, Same as it Always Was - The GOP Once Again Tries to Gaslight America
“Wuhan Institute of Virology is a research institute by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Jiangxia District, south of the Wuhan city, Hubei province, China” by Ureem2805 under CC BY-SA 4.0
As the news of The U.S. Energy Department concluded with “low confidence” that COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan lab leak, Republicans wasted no time in trying to rewrite the history of the pandemic - as well as the context of the Department’s report. They will try to frame themselves as the great protectors of America while attempting to villainize Democrats as being “weak on China”.
History says differently.
Let’s clarify the Department’s announcement. They DID NOT say that the leak was intentional, and they outright refuted the possibility of the virus being a bioweapon. The report was direct and clear that if COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan lab that it was an accident.
Before they try to say that Democrats always denied the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak, let’s set the record straight. A timeline of how events actually transpired:
The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses | Opinion - The Washington Post April 14, 2020
The report, dated March 27 and corroborated by two U.S. officials, reveals that U.S. intelligence revised its January assessment in which it "judged that the outbreak probably occurred naturally" to now include the possibility that the new coronavirus emerged "accidentally" due to "unsafe laboratory practices" in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pathogen was first observed late last year. The classified report, titled "China: Origins of COVID-19 Outbreak Remain Unknown," ruled out that the disease was genetically engineered or released intentionally as a biological weapon.
The Controversial Experiments and Wuhan Lab Suspected of Starting the Coronavirus Pandemic - Newsweek April 27, 2020
A few scientists have suggested it’s possible the virus accidentally infected one of the researchers in the lab, but many scientists have dismissed the theory. The New York Times reported on April 30 that some U.S. intelligence officials are worried the pressure from Trump officials could muddy any assessments about the origins of the virus and be used as fodder in an ongoing political battle with China.
A Timeline Of The COVID-19 Wuhan Lab Origin Theory - Forbes May 10, 2020
Although there’s no evidence to support the suggestion that the virus escaped from there, scientists say that completely ruling it out will be tricky and time consuming.
The lab does hold coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2, so it is possible that one could have escaped, perhaps if a lab worker accidentally became infected from a virus sample or animal in the facility and then passed it on to someone outside the facility. It is also theoretically possible that scientists at the lab tweaked the virus’s genome for research purposes before it escaped, but, again, there is no evidence that they did.
The Biggest Mystery: What It Will Take To Trace The Coronavirus Source | nature - Scientific American June 6, 2020
The WHO report also concludes that it's highly unlikely that the coronavirus escaped from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Most scientists say that evidence overwhelmingly favours SARS-CoV-2 having spilled over from animals into humans, but a few have backed the idea that the virus was intentionally or accidentally leaked from a lab.
When the report authors visited the institute, its scientists told them that no one in the lab had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, ruling out the notion that someone there had been infected in an experiment, and had spread it to others.
WHO Report on COVID Pandemic Origins Zeroes In on Animal Markets, Not Labs | nature - Scientific American March 30, 2021
Eighteen prominent scientists publish a letter in the journal Science, saying a new investigation is needed because “theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.”
Timeline: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible - The Washington Post May 25, 2021
Dr. Fauci told the Poynter Institute on May 11 that he was "not convinced" that COVID-19 had developed naturally, and said authorities needed to continue to find out "exactly what happened."
"Certainly, the people who've investigated have said it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals," he said. "But, it could have been something else, and we need to find that out."
Speaking to reporters at a Tuesday press briefing, he said that it was "more likely" that COVID-19 originated as a "natural occurrence," but said the scientific community didn't know "100 percent the answer to that."
"And since this is a question that keeps being asked, we feel strongly... that we should continue with the investigation and go to the next phase of the investigation that the [World Health Organization] has done," he later added. "So, because we don't know 100 percent what the origin is, it's imperative that we look and we do an investigation."
What Dr. Fauci Said About Wuhan Lab Theory in 2020, and What He's Saying Now - Newsweek May 27, 2021
President Biden now says he asked for a report on the origins of Covid-19 after taking office, "including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident".
Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is being taken seriously - BBC News May 27, 2021
“Regardless of what we find, whether it lends credence to a natural transmission or a lab accident, it would not vindicate the disastrous response to COVID-19 by former President Trump, including his downplaying the severity of the outbreak during the crucial early months of the pandemic,” says an official on the Democratic-controlled House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, who characterized the origins of the coronavirus and how to prepare for the next potential pandemic as “serious topics of inquiry.”
The official added that the intelligence community “is continuing to study the origins of COVID-19, and we support its efforts to conduct a thorough, objective, evidence-based investigation, without letting anyone’s preferred narrative shape that vital work.”
On May 26, President Joe Biden called for the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to collect and analyze any information that could shed light on COVID-19’s origins. He asked them to keep Congress “fully apprised” of its work, and report back to the White House within 90 days. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff issued a statement the same day saying that his committee hoped to finish its deep-dive review of the intelligence community’s response to the pandemic “in the coming months,” and warned against “any premature or politically motivated conclusions.”
Lab leak? Why Congress is split on investigating COVID’s origins. - The Christian Science Monitor June 7, 2021
Chan was one of 18 scientists who published a letter in the journal Science last month calling for a more in-depth investigation into the virus's origin that takes into account theories about both natural occurrence and laboratory spillovers. The letter helped kick-start a new round of calls to investigate the "lab leak hypothesis," including demands from President Joe Biden and several leading scientists.
The science around the lab leak theory hasn't changed. But here's why some scientists have. - NBC News June 16, 2021
In June a well-known climate scientist opined on Twitter that “I'd be more likely to believe the COVID lab-leak hypothesis if the people pushing it weren't largely the same people pushing [bogus] conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and climate change.” He has a point. Early in the pandemic, the lab-leak theory was promoted by then president Donald Trump, who was dismissive of masks and social distancing. He speculated that COVID-19 infections might be effectively treated by irradiating sensitive lung tissues with ultraviolet light, using untested and possibly unsafe drugs, or injecting dangerous household cleansers. Trump also knowingly put his own Secret Service detail at risk by riding with them in a closed car while he was fighting an active infection, misrepresented hurricane forecasts and advanced misleading ideas about vaccine safety. And—most egregiously for climate scientists—he repeated the ridiculous claim that climate change was a hoax.
The Lab-Leak Theory of COVID’s Origin Is Not Totally Irrational - Scientific American September 1, 2021
In response, President Biden called for an investigation into the pandemic’s origins. “I have now asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion,” he said. The National Counterproliferation Center, whose mission is to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, was tapped to facilitate the effort. According to an unclassified summary of the investigation’s findings, released in August, the virus was not developed as a biological weapon, its sudden emergence caught Chinese officials off guard, and it infected humans no later than November, 2019, “with the first known cluster of COVID-19 cases arising in Wuhan, China, in December.” Otherwise, all agencies agreed that two origin hypotheses remained “plausible”: a “natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.”
The Mysterious Case of the COVID-19 Lab-Leak Theory - The New Yorker October 12, 2021
The so-called lab-leak hypothesis gained sufficient rhetorical and political force that President Joe Biden instructed the U.S. intelligence services to investigate it. Although the interagency intelligence report update, declassified in October 2021, dismissed several popular laboratory-origin claims—including that the virus was a bioweapon and that the Chinese government knew about the virus before the pandemic—it was unable to unequivocally resolve the origin question.
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth - Scientific American March 1, 2022
WHO’s experts called for numerous studies to be done, including testing wild animals to find which species might host COVID-19. They also said the “cold chain” supply theory should be probed. China has previously advanced the idea that traces of COVID-19 on frozen packaging was causing outbreaks rather than any domestic source, a theory widely panned by outside scientists.
To investigate whether COVID-19 might have been the result of a lab accident, WHO’s experts said interviews should be conducted “with the staff in the laboratories tasked with managing and implementing biosafety and biosecurity.”
WHO: COVID origins unclear but lab leak theory needs study - AP News June 9, 2022
However, in the Thursday report, WHO’s expert group said “key pieces of data” to explain how the pandemic began were still missing. The scientists said the group would “remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.”
Identifying a disease’s source in animals typically takes years. It took more than a decade for scientists to pinpoint the species of bats that were the natural reservoir for SARS, a relative of COVID-19.
The expert group also noted that since lab accidents in the past have triggered some outbreaks, the theory could not be discounted. They said China has not presented any studies to WHO that assessed the possibility of the coronavirus resulting from a laboratory leak.
China calls COVID ‘lab leak’ theory a lie after WHO report - AP News June 10, 2022
Many scientists believe the virus jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. But in June, the World Health Organization recommended a deeper probe into whether a lab accident may be to blame. Critics had said the WHO was too quick to dismiss the lab leak theory.
“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not,” Andersen said. “But I think what’s really important here is there are possible scenarios and there are plausible scenarios and it’s really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely.”
2 new studies bolster theory coronavirus emerged from the wild - PBS NewsHour July 26, 2022
The point, however, is that lab escapes of viruses are a very real problem, and when you get a new outbreak of a bat coronavirus in a city that contains two labs dedicated to studying bat coronaviruses, it’s a completely reasonable thing to be suspicious about. And indeed the fact that Joe Biden ordered a review of the relevant intelligence and the intelligence community came back with the finding that lab leak was just as credible as natural origins never got the attention it deserved.
Long story short, the notion of a lab leak is far from proved, but it’s also not a Trumper conspiracy theory.
The ProPublica-Vanity Fair report on Covid’s origins is explosive. Is it reliable? - The Guardian November 3, 2022
“I have a completely open mind about that, despite people saying that I don’t,” Fauci said, when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the theory that the virus may have leaked from a lab in China in 2019. Fauci acknowledged that a group of international, respected virologists has written that strong evidence shows the virus jumped from animals to humans, but said it “hasn’t been definitively proven.” “Even when there’s nothing to hide, they act in a suspicious, non-transparent way,” Fauci said of the Chinese government.
Fauci on Covid lab leak theory: ‘I have a completely open mind’ - POLITICO November 27, 2022
Whatever the conscious intentions of the proponents of a lab leak as the source of COVID-19, their arguments and their insistence on playing and replaying the debate have become dangerous. They shift responsibility for the U.S.’ disastrous handling of the pandemic away from the failures of our political system, our politicians, and our health and public health systems and to a geopolitical rival. They are a partisan political cudgel, diverting attention from the real sources of danger of future pandemics and delaying action on what could be an existential threat to humans
The Lab-Leak Theory Still Can’t Be Disproved. Should We Care? - SLATE January 30, 2023
Time and time again, the scientific community has stated that the lab leak theory couldn’t be completely ruled out without more evidence. Time and time again, the scientific community stated that COVID-19 was not a designed bioweapon. Time and time again, the scientific community indicated that COVID-19 originated naturally and if — IF - COVID-19 came from a lab, it was accidental. Just as the Energy Department concluded.
“COVID-19 Memorial Field of White Flags on the Mall 31 - White House” by Amaury Laporte under CC BY 2.
So, no. No, the GOP does not get to view this as a “win”. No, the GOP does not get to gloat and say they were right, Democrats were wrong. No, the GOP is not vindicated for “being censored by Big Tech”.
Why? I’ll give you 1,145,293 reasons why. Over 1.1 million Americans are dead. Dead from a virus that could have been mitigated. Dead from a virus that could have been snuffed out before it caught oxygen. Dead from GOP conspiracy theories and disinformation.
They lied. They lied about masks. They lied about social distancing. They lied about infection rates, death rates, and about the state of our economy. They lied about vaccines. They. Lied.
When Democrats tried to strengthen public health. When Democrats tried to provide financial support. When Democrats tried to ensure health care.
Republicans filibustered.
So next time you see them soak up TV time on FOX News or lie their way onto mainstream media access, remember.
Remember that empty seat at the table.
Remember that text that will never be returned.
Remember your partner’s eyes you will never get lost in again.
Remember the firm warm embrace of your parent you will never feel again.
Remember the hair of your child you will never brush aside again.
And remember… It was the GOP who stole them from you.
And remember what you can steal from them every opportunity you have to vote.
We survived. I don’t know if that makes us the lucky ones. But we’re here. And with the time we do have, we use it to fight for the memory of those who the GOP has taken from us.
And we fight to ensure that they can’t do it again.
We. The. People.
- Deets
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