- The Wuhan Institute of Virology is the only biosafety lab in China that studies human coronaviruses. These viruses include RaTG13, the closest known ancestor to SARS-CoV-2, obtained from miners who fell ill with severe respiratory illness after working in a Mojiang mine in 2012
- The World Health Organization’s investigative team charged with identifying the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has issued a highly-criticized report in which it dismisses the lab-accident theory offhand
- Molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee of Rutgers University and the Working Group on Pathogen Security of the state of New Jersey, recently called out the members of the WHO-instigated investigative team as “participants in disinformation”
- In response to growing critique, WHO director general and 13 other world leaders have joined the U.S. government in expressing “frustration with the level of access China granted an international mission to Wuhan,” and agree additional collaborative studies that include more comprehensive data sharing are needed
- A number of U.S. officials have admitted that the lab-accident theory either remains the most credible, or needs to remain an option open for inquiry. These include former CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, former lead investigator for the U.S. State Department’s COVID-19 task force David Asher and an assessment report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
While the mainstream media has, by and large, dismissed the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was created and leaked from a high-security biocontainment lab in Wuhan, China, a number of high-ranking U.S. officials are sticking to it, and there’s probably good reason for this.
On the whole, if the virus was actually a natural occurrence, a series of improbable coincidences would have had to transpire. Meanwhile, a series of highly probable “coincidences” point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) being the most likely source, and to dismiss them as a whole simply doesn’t make sense.
Media Struggle to Prop Up Unproven Zoonotic Theory
I first mentioned that the outbreak had the hallmarks of a laboratory escape in an
article we posted well over a year ago, February 4, 2020. On the upside, some members of the media are now finally starting to inch toward more honest reporting on this — probably because U.S. officials keep leaning that way.
That doesn’t mean some aren’t still trying to defend the official narrative. Take The New York Times, for example. The original headline of its March 26, 2021, article about Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, read: "Ex-CDC Director Favors Debunked Covid-19 Origin Theory."1
Three days later, that headline was toned down to: “The CDC’s Ex-Director Offers No Evidence in Favoring Speculation That the Coronavirus Originated in a Lab,”2 with a correction notice noting that the earlier headline “referred incorrectly to a theory on the origins of the coronavirus. The theory is unproven, not debunked.”
Well, the truth is, all other theories are equally unproven — and are riddled with far more holes. The theory that the virus arose through natural mutation, for example, looks like Swiss cheese in comparison to the lab-leak theory.
In a February 16, 2021, article3 in Independent Science News, molecular biologist and virologist Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., and Allison Wilson, Ph.D., a molecular biologist, reviewed the evidence for a laboratory origin and the reasons why a zoonotic origin “will never be found.” I also summarized their review in “
How We Know SARS-CoV-2 Leaked From a Chinese Lab.”
The half-baked idea brought forth by the World Health Organization’s investigative team, that the virus somehow naturally evolved in some unknown part of the world and then piggy-backed into Wuhan on top of frozen food, is held together by even fewer facts.
Among the more compelling “coincidences” that hint at lab-origin are the facts that the WIV has admitted storing and working with bat coronaviruses collected significant distances away from the lab, and that it’s the only biosafety lab in China that studies human coronaviruses. These viruses include RaTG13,4 the closest known ancestor to SARS-CoV-2, obtained from miners who fell ill with severe respiratory illness after working in a Mojiang mine in 2012.
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