I am not a scientist or a doctor, but occasionally I have a grasp of the obvious. There are two very interesting articles about the coronavirus on the internet right now concerning the beginnings of the virus.
Scott Johnson posted the following at Power Line Blog today:
It will not come as a great shock to Power Line readers to learn, as the Wall Street Journal reports from previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence: “Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin.” Subhead: “Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab.”
With a New York Times-style byline listing three reporters, the story relates from previously undisclosed intelligence that the reporters themselves have not seen: “Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care[.]”
Alright, it may shock you that U.S. intelligence has the information, but the substance of it will shock only the willfully blind, whose numbers should not be underestimated.
The Power Line Blog article continues:
The Journal story is laughable with its gingerly handling of the sensitivities involved. We don’t want to be too rash. However, we do have this from happier days:
David Asher, a former U.S. official who led a State Department task force on the origins of the virus for then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told a Hudson Institute seminar in March that he doubted that the lab researchers became sick because of the ordinary flu.
“I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” he said, adding that the researchers’ illness may represent “the first known cluster” of Covid-19 cases.
Long characterized by skeptics as a conspiracy theory, the hypothesis that the pandemic could have begun with a lab accident has attracted more interest from scientists who have complained about the lack of transparency by Chinese authorities or conclusive proof for the alternate hypothesis: that the virus was contracted by humans from a bat or other infected animal outside a lab.
Meanwhile The New York Post reported yesterday:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top adviser to President Biden on the coronavirus pandemic, said he’s “not convinced” the deadly virus developed naturally and has called for further investigations into where it emerged.
Fauci was asked during a Poynter event, “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking,” earlier this month about whether he was confident that COVID-19 developed naturally.
“No actually. I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said, according to Fox News.
“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” he added.
I guess the facts change (even about diseases) when you get a new President.