Wuhan

There is growing evidence that the Wuhan Seafood Market—the now infamous Wuhan "wet market" that we've all heard about—was not the "patient zero" source of COVID-19. Instead, it may be that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Even worse, there are indications that COVID-19 might have been a genetically modified virus in which researchers in Wuhan grafted the protein into bat corona virus that enables it to threaten humans much like SARS. The evidence to support this is circumstantial, but no less compelling. More in a moment, but first a digression.

The Democrats' trained hamsters in the mainstream media have been particularly uninterested in investigating the origins of the Wuhan virus. As has become their standard response, they treat any evidence or claim that threatens their prevailing narrative* as "conspiracy theory." They did this successfully with the soft coup attempt that was launched inside the federal government to destroy Donald Trump. Now, multiple investigations indicate that the soft coup was real, but like the crazed Japanese soldiers who wandered the jungles for years after World War II was over, the leftist ideologues in the media insist on continuing the fight.

So expect anyone who suggests that the Chinese are directly culpable for creating the virus and then covering up the growing evidence that it escaped their Wuhan lab to be labeled a 'crazy.' The left uses biased "fact checkers" to label the claims as "false" or "crazy" or "wildly speculative." It's S.O.P. on the left to resort to the politics of personal destruction and name calling when their narrative is threatened.

A recent "fact check" article in USA Today is typical:

There is no evidence to suggest that the virus was created in a Chinese laboratory. People who have claimed it started in a lab cite only the geographical proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research lab in Wuhan, and the market where some researchers believe the virus transferred from animals to humans.

Really? ... only geographic proximity? no evidence? Let's take a quick look.

I ran across a video that is an investigative report on the origins of COVID-19. Given the depth of evidence (circumstantial and factual) presented in the piece (it's pretty technical and overly dramatic), COVID-19 may very well have been genetically modified in China. It appears it was released by mistake by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which has shady bioweapons connections) and has little to do with the Huanan Seafood Market except proximity.

The video was put together by Epoch Times, an anti-communist news group, so you should consider that bias. However, the information they present is from scientific papers (e.g., in the respected medical Journal, Lancet), on-site information, and named interviews and statements (no "unnamed sources" a la the New York Times). The information is troubling — to say the least. You can argue with some of the conclusions, but based solely on the facts, it appears there's much more to COVID-19 than even our government is letting on.

Lawrence Person summarizes the video:

-- Bats were not sold in the Huanan Seafood Market.

-- A third of the early Chinese victims had no connection to the Huanan Seafood Market.

-- If we are to believe the two experts cited, evidence from the coronavirus amino acids and protein spikes suggests an artificial origin in the original SARS completely separate from the postulated bat origin.

-- In early January, the Chinese government ordered all existing Wuhan coronavirus samples to be destroyed.
Prominent mention of Shi Zhengli, AKA The Bat Lady, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as previously discussed here. She’s been researching coronavirus since 2003. “From 2010 onward, the focus of Shi and her team, was redirected to identifying the capacity for coronavirus transmission across species, specifically putting the spotlight on the S [spike] protein of coronaviruses.”

-- "In November, 2015, Shi and her team at the Wuhan lab once again published a paper, this time in the British journal, Nature Medicine. They discussed the creation of a synthetic virus, a self-replicating Chimeric virus. This virus had the SARS virus as the framework, with the key S protein replaced by the one they had found in a bat coronavirus she mentioned in her 2013 paper. This new virus demonstrated a powerful ability for cross-species infection.”

-- On January 2nd, an email from the Director-General of the Institute to all internal staff was circulated. The subject was “Notice regarding the strict prohibition of disclosure of any information related to the Wuhan unknown pneumonia.”

-- “February 3rd, Dr. Wu Xiaohua blew the whistle using his real name, that Shi Zhengli’s haphazard laboratory management may have led the Wuhan virus to leak from the lab. February 4th, Chairman of Duoyi, Xu Bo, blew the whistle using his real name, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was suspected of manufacturing and leaking the Wuhan virus. February 7th, top biochemical weapon expert of the People’s Liberation Army, Chen Wei, officially assumed control over Wuhan Institute of virology’s P4 laboratory.”

-- "February 17th, institute researcher Chen Quanjiao blew the whistle using her real name, that Director General of the institute, Wang Yanyi was suspected of leaking the virus.”

Sure, I suppose it's possible that all of this is just a big misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the evidence presented, but there's an awful lot of smoke here -- it's worth a look. The biggest questions are these:

• Why has none of this information been investigated thoroughly and then reported by outlets like NYT or WaPo, not to mention 60 Minutes or Dateline?
• Is all of the evidence presented fake?
• Are the scientific papers and the named Chinese scientists untrustworthy?
• Are the actions taken by the Chinese in early January consistent with a legitimate effort to get the word out about COVID-19 or do they smack of a cover-up?

Further, I suppose you can use Hillary Clinton's now infamous argument, "At this point, what difference does it make?"

That's a reasonable question. But millions will be infected and hundreds of thousands will die. If nothing else, it's important to understand the origins of COVID-19 so that every country can better control the research conducted on viruses around the world.

FOOTNOTE:
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* The prevailing leftist narrative is that Donald Trump was derelict in not acting sooner. And now, he is evil for suggesting that W.H.O. funding might be better spent elsewhere. The last thing any of the four constituencies want is to muddy the water with an actual account of how COVID-19 entered the human population of the planet. Even worse, the last thing they want is to demonstrate that W.H.O. was at best incompetent and at worse, complicit in covering up Chinese culpability.

UPDATE-1:
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The mainstream media's attempt to crush interest in an alternative theory of origin for COVID-19 never seems to address why the Chinese covered up its existence for 6 critical days. As those of us who want to get to the truth continue to push, even mainstream outlets like the Associated Press have begun to take a look :

In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

Why the delay? It could have been the typical communist tendency to mask less than utopian outcomes (think: Chernobyl), it could have been simple incompetence of the part of health officials, or it also could have been intended to provide time to be certain that any connection to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was obliterated. It's likely we'll never know, but it's a question well-worth asking nonetheless.

UPDATE-2:
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The president was asked about the origin of the virus and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in this evening's COVID-19 press gathering. He refused to provide any details but did not deny the thrust of the question (to their credit, asked by FOXNews).