Joseph Simonson of the Washington Free Beacon reports interesting developments in the search for COVID-19’s origins.
COVID-19 most likely emerged from a Chinese lab, according to a report from Florida senator Marco Rubio (R.) obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The 328-page report details how systemic negligence from scientists and pressure from Chinese Communist Party officials left the Wuhan Institute of Virology uniquely susceptible to a lab leak. Rubio also reports that senior Chinese Communist Party officials were aware of a “serious biocontainment failure or accident” at the Wuhan Institute more than a month before disclosing it to the public, but worked to hide that information from outside observers.
“Just as Beijing was dismissing the lab leak theory of the origin of COVID-19 in international settings, internally, Beijing was warning its officials that the risk of laboratory-acquired infections with SARS-CoV-2 was significant,” the report states.
Rubio’s report is the latest evidence that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan lab. While public health officials early in the pandemic dismissed the “lab leak” theory as a conspiracy, a growing number of virologists and federal officials have concluded that the virus was man-made. The Department of Energy and the FBI have each released reports corroborating the lab leak theory, and Dr. Anthony Fauci—an early critic of the theory—said last December that he initially dismissed the lab leak theory out of fear of increasing “tensions” with China.
Rubio’s report was compiled over two years and is based on a tranche of information, including an array of Chinese-language sources never before translated into English. The document tells a story of China’s reckless push for biotechnology dominance and the CCP’s fight to conceal the humiliating missteps that led to the deadliest pandemic in nearly a century.
The state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology is an integral part of the Chinese Communist Party’s broader biotechnology strategy, which aims to modernize China’s economy.
