The Patriot Post® · Leftmedia Reversal: Wuhan Lab Origin Maybe Not Conspiracy Theory
The Leftmedia has finally begun to admit that the theory of the China Virus pandemic having originated from a bio-research lab in Wuhan rather than a wet market is more than the musing of tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nuts. On Tuesday, The Washington Post ran a story titled, “State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses.” Talk about a 180-degree turn. Back in mid-February, the Post lambasted GOP Sen. Tom Cotton for “repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.” And what was Cotton’s “conspiracy theory”? Well, as the Post then reported, it was “a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”
Well, evidently Cotton’s not quite the nutter the Post smeared him as. If anything, Cotton is looking downright prescient. However, as the Post notes in its Tuesday story, the evidence supporting Cotton’s suspicions were easily available for any diligent investigative journalist to uncover. As the Post reports:
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. … The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable … also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
Furthermore, suspicion of the novel coronavirus’s Wuhan lab origins were far from dispelled Tuesday by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. In response to a question as to whether evidence exists supporting the lab-origin theory, Milley stated, “There’s a lot of rumor and speculation in a wide variety of media, the blog sites, etc. It should be no surprise to you that we’ve take a keen interest in that and we’ve had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that. I would say at this point it’s inconclusive although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural. But we don’t know for certain.”
Translation: If U.S. intelligence is taking this theory seriously enough to “take a hard look,” that means they are seeing something there, even if Milley’s still using the term “inconclusive.” The fact that this virus appears to be of natural origin in no way precludes the possibility or probability that it originated from the Wuhan lab. Indeed, the lab in question was engaged in the study of bat coronaviruses — a fact Beijing has gone to great lengths to cover up.
One thing’s for certain — the Post owes Cotton an apology, though we’re not holding our breath.
Update 4/16: Fox News now reports, “There is increasing confidence that COVID-19 likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China’s effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.
"This may be the ‘costliest government coverup of all time,’ one of the sources said.
"The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that ‘patient zero’ worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.”