New Report Confirms That COVID Likely Came From CCP-Run Lab

Last week, the Senate Minority Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Senator Richard Burr (NC), published its analysis of the COVID pandemic’s origins.  The new report confirms what we knew in the Trump Administration: this virus almost certainly originated in a CCP-run lab.  While Chinese Communist Party officials have responded to the report by calling its implications “fabricated,” it should now be clear to anyone with common sense that the only thing that was fabricated – or, rather, engineered – was the COVID-19 virus.

During my final days as Secretary, the State Department released a fact sheet, based upon our investigations and intelligence assessments, which stated that “the U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the (Wuhan Institute of Virology) became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”  This and other findings indicated to us that we should take seriously the possibility that the COVID virus originated not in a wet market, but in a lab under Chinese Communist Party supervision.  Crucially, we also pointed out that the secretive nature of the CCP endangered not only the Chinese people but the entire world.  A slew of mainstream media outlets was quick to oppose our findings.  But since our initial report, more and more evidence has mounted that suggests COVID-19 came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The aforementioned report, along with the joint efforts of ProPublica and Vanity Fair, delivers important new insights into the CCP’s regime of secrecy by going directly to CCP documents.  In the Wuhan Institute of Virology alone, there are 16 party branches, all made up of doctors, researchers, administrators, and officials.  These individuals were required to meet regularly and report their progress to the Party higher-ups.  The meeting reports, recorded and documented on WIV’s site, shed new light on the truly remarkable dysfunction and danger present in WIV before the outbreak.  

One report, from November 12, 2019, states that “the three no’s” of “no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining” a high-containment laboratory had finally been overcome.  This revelation alone should do more than just raise eyebrows. WIV’s lab was rated as Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4), meaning that the most dangerous pathogen research could be carried out inside its walls.  While it began this dangerous research in early 2018 (after being cleared by the Chinese Academy of Sciences), this report heavily implies that the lab lacked the standards to do so for over a year.  

It doesn’t stop there, though. The same report from November 2019, cloaked in the CCP’s typical doublespeak, refers ominously to the viruses being worked on within the lab as well as potential breaches:

“once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace. Although [we have] various preventive and protective measures, it is nevertheless necessary for lab personnel to operate very cautiously to avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers. Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4] Party Branch have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.”

That’s not exactly difficult to translate: “Researchers at WIV have already, on more than one occasion, made errors that could have mistakenly released a deadly virus into the world. And every time this has happened, Party officials have “motivated” them to keep their mouths shut.”

This is, of course, the modus operandi of every paranoid Communist regime in history.  It is right in line with how the CCP handled the pandemic once it began, by denying access to their labs, silencing any researchers who tried to come forward, and blaming the US Military for the virus.  It is in line with how the CCP continues to act, in desperate pursuit of Xi Jinping’s “zero COVID” policy despite the pandemic being over in much of the world.  We shouldn’t ever expect this regime to change – it will continue endangering and harming the world with its reckless behavior.

Over one million Americans have reportedly died from COVID.  Many of them died alone in hospital beds, unable to see their loved ones during their final moments.  Millions more Americans have suffered terribly from this disease in countless other ways – indeed, COVID has been a calamity for the entire world.  This should be enough to motivate our President to demand answers from the Chinese Communist Party and hold it accountable.  But Joe Biden has consistently put the demands of climate activists ahead of the needs of the American people in his dealings with China, and that is unlikely to change while he remains in office. Next week, we have a chance to elect individuals to the House and Senate who stand ready to hold the CCP accountable – let’s ensure we get these people to Washington, where they will do the work President Biden will not.

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