A laboratory technician working with samples from people to be tested for the coronavirus at "Fire Eye" laboratory in Wuhan, China. File photo/Getty Images
By Ken Dilanian and Courtney Kube | NBC News
WASHINGTON, DC, 16 April 2020
The US intelligence community is examining whether the coronavirus that caused the global pandemic emerged accidentally from a Chinese research lab studying diseases in bats, current and former US intelligence officials tell NBC News.
Spy agencies have ruled out that the coronavirus was man-made, the officials say. But scientists at a military and a civilian lab in Wuhan, where the virus originated, are known to have conducted ongoing research on coronaviruses, officials say. They say intelligence agencies have gathered and are weighing evidence that an employee of one of the labs could have become accidentally infected and left the facility with the virus.
“It’s a possibility, though not the most likely possibility,” one official said.
Asked about the intelligence on NBC’s “TODAY” show, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said, “this is something we’ve been watching closely now for some time,” adding that the results of the investigation are thus far “inconclusive.”
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley told reporters this week that US intelligence agencies are taking “a hard look” at whether the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab.
“We don’t know for certain,” Milley told reporters Tuesday.
President Donald Trump declined to answer a question about the intelligence during a televised briefing Wednesday.
China disputes that the virus could have originated in a Wuhan lab. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Thursday that the head of the World Health Organization has “repeatedly said there’s no evidence” the virus was made in a lab and that “well-known medical experts” believe there is “no scientific basis” for claims of “so-called laboratory leaks.”
Separately, the idea that the virus emerged at an animal market in Wuhan continues to be debated by experts. Dr Ronald Waldman, a former official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a public health expert at George Washington University, said the theory has fallen out of favour in some quarters, in part because one of the early infected persons had no connection to the market.
Two laboratories in Wuhan have been conducting research on coronaviruses found in bats.
In November 2017, the research team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology published a a paper identifying the bat population that may have harbored the virus that caused the 2015 SARS epidemic.
US officials have said repeatedly that China has not been transparent in its handling of the virus. The Chinese government has refused to turn over early samples to American researchers, and China has detained people who tried to call attention to the emerging pandemic.
Why did China destroy the lab samples?
Why did China destroy the records?
Why are the Chinese reporters and doctors who reported at the start of this disease still “disappeared”?
And why were independent reporters expelled?
China today has countries and NGOs feeding at the CCP trough, but why would the innocent fear independent reporters?
How many Tibetans did the virus from Wuhan infect?
Today the West points the finger at the East, for the origin of the Covid-19 Coronavirus that is devastating the world. History shows that highly-contagious smallpox originated in India or Egypt at least 3,000 years ago.
The indigenous peoples of Atahualpa of Peru and the Aztecs of Montezuma of Tenochtitlan of today’s Mexico City, didn’t stand a chance against the (intentional) spread of the smallpox virus by Europeans in the early 16th century. Also, many indigenous folks in North America died as a result of wearing blankets intentionally infected with germs, at the hands of Lord Jeffery Amherst of Britain. According to some historians, about 95% of the then indigenous peoples of the Americas were wiped out as a result. Even Tibet’s Panchen Palden Yeshe’s untimely demise due to smallpox complications — in Beijing in 1780 — was suspected as due to foul play by the then Qing Emperor Qianlong.
Now this Covid-19 virus pandemic is a lingering nightmare to humanity, to say the least. Hope this is not a page from the book The Art of War: The art of fighting without fighting is starkly demonstrated in a movie clip “Enter the Dragon”.
“History shows highly-contagious smallpox originated in India or Egypt at least 3,000 years ago.”
Smallpox first appeared in agricultural settlements in north-eastern Africa around 10,000 BCE. Egyptian merchants spread it from there to India.
Europe has been the origin of plagues, China of viruses. India hardly.
The reasons could be many like:
Vegetarian way of life, use of spices in food for thousands of years. Practise of Pranayama breathing techniques of the ancient yogic system helps boost immunity. Cremating, which checks the spread of such virus. Also the offering of Havan like the Tibetan fire offerings of Jinseng, Surcho, and Sangcho helps purify the environment.
When most of the world were still just hunter-gatherers, India was living a phenomenal life with the highest level of mathematics, sciences, music, etc., and lived an affluent life for those days. Don’t judge India from the image of India in the last two to three centuries. The ravages of the invasion and colonialism has taken such a toll many people can’t believe India’s glorious past.
The international scientific community haven’t yet concluded the origin of the Coronavirus, but it is absolutely one hundred percent fact that China is responsible for spreading the virus to the world by not controlling it within its borders in the initial stage and intentionally suppressing any information about the virus.
Now the international community must be resolutely united and make China accountable for the thousands of deaths and still counting and the catastrophic upheaval of the lives of billions of people around the world. This criminal negligence on China’s part could run into trillions and trillions of dollars, and make China pay for it to its last dollar. Otherwise, it is absolutely clear now, China would release yet another poisonous virus to the world and could become more deadlier and catastrophic than the present one.
So nothing to do with Wet Market or bats/pangolins?
Wet markets have existed all over south-east Asia for centuries. China has just re-opened the Wuhan Wet Market, which hints that eating exotic animals have nothing to do with coronavirus.
I think it probably escaped or was released from a bio-chemical lab somewhere in the world.