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Friday, March 29, 2024

They started a joke

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" So when was COVID-19 first detected in the United States? "

As the world battles with the highly contagious Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus, the United States is once again reviving discussions on the possible origin of the virus, insisting it could have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

According to an article posted on the website of the People’s Daily Online, shared by the Chinese Embassy in its social media page, the White House, last May, reportedly ordered the US intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to investigate the origin of Covid-19, and asked for a report in 90 days. 

The article adds that the New York Times even reported that US politicians, including former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had imposed pressure on the intelligence departments, urging them to find evidence for the claim that “the novel coronavirus was leaked from a laboratory in China.”

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The article furthers that “researchers with the Hudson Institute suggested they put up a reward of 10 to 15 million US dollars to entice researchers with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to ‘tell the truth.’” 

In fact, the article even lifted a report from the Wall Street Journal dated May 23, 2021, citing a US intelligence report saying that in November 2019, three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology with the Chinese Academy of Sciences sought hospital care due to illnesses, which claims their symptoms to be seemingly “consistent with COVID-19,” which further proved that the novel coronavirus was “leaked from the lab.” 

However, despite repeated requests from China to disclose the names of the three researchers, the US refused to do so. 

Interestingly, the US revival of the discussions with regard to the possible origin of the COVID-19 virus comes a couple of months after the World Health Organization released a report on March this year, on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins, following a joint research with China, which clearly stated that the virus leaking from a laboratory is “extremely unlikely.”

Another article dated July 5, coming from 24 medical experts that was published in The Lancet, declared that there is currently no scientific evidence to support the claim that Covid-19 was “leaked from a Chinese laboratory.”

This was supported by scientists from the US, the UK, Australia, and other countries when they published a preprinted paper on July 7, the open scientific data platform Zenodo, stating that there is currently no evidence that any early COVID-19 cases are related with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

So, why does the US still insist on hyping the claim that "the virus originated from a Chinese laboratory" and on launching another round of virus origin tracing? Who is politicizing the source of the virus?

Well, maybe because the more it is being established the virus did not originate from a Wuhan laboratory, the more it seems it is following the trail of the Spanish Flu which devastated the world a hundred years ago today. Just like the Spanish flu, it seems COVID-19 might trace its origin to US soil.

The People’s Daily Online article alleges that in July 2019, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order to halt research at Fort Detrick, when about that time, “a respiratory disease of unknown cause was reported at a retiree community about one hour's drive from the research base, and several thousand cases of pneumonia with symptoms extremely similar to those of the Covid-19 pneumonia were reported in several states in the US.”

Interestingly, the article claims that from January to August 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ran a scenario called “Crimson Contagion” that simulated a fictional outbreak involving a group of tourists visiting China. They then became infected and flew to various countries, including the U.S.

Then, in October 2019, a high-level pandemic exercise named Event 201 was reportedly hosted by a couple of US organizations, which simulated a scenario in which a fictional virus that caused more severe symptoms than SARS and transmitted via the respiratory route like the common flu resulted in a pandemic. 

Additionally, between Dec 13, 2019, and Jan 17, 2020, even before the first case of Covid-19 was reported in China, researchers from the CDC reportedly tested more than 7,000 blood samples collected from 9 states in the US, 106 of which contained antibodies to the novel coronavirus.

Hence the question: When did COVID-19 really break out in the US?

This one’s on record. On January 11, 2020, former US President Donald Trump said that the US had started developing a vaccine against the dreaded virus. And on March 16, 2020, the NIH announced that the first human testing of Moderna Inc.’s experimental vaccine against Covid-19 had already begun.

Quite a feat. But when, where and how did they get the strain to work with?

It would seem they are more than efficient. Unless they already have the strain beforehand. 

Thus, the reason to insist on pursuing an investigation to show it really originated from a Wuhan laboratory, as they cannot afford to have it traced back to them in the event it was really them that developed the virus. After all, circumstantial evidence points to them as the ones being the first to toy with the said virus.

Unfortunately, it had hit them heavily. The joke, it turned out, was really on them.

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