COVID: Top Chinese Scientist Doesn't Rule Out Lab Leak

Facts

• In a BBC interview, George Gao, the former director of China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the theory that COVID originated from a lab leak shouldn't yet be excluded due to a lack of evidence.¹
• He also acknowledged for the first time that the Chinese government had conducted an investigation into the lab leak hypothesis, though he said that "they haven’t found wrongdoing."¹
• The BBC also spoke to two bat coronavirus specialists, Duke professor Dr. Wang Linfa and Dr. Shi Zhengli, who worked at the Wuhan laboratory in 2020. Linfa said Zhengli had told him she was worried that "there's a sample in her lab that she did not know of, but has a virus, contaminated something, and got out."²
• Wang believes COVID originated from a wet market, citing the fact that Shi and her colleagues tested negative for antibodies in January 2020. However, Columbia University epidemiologist Ian Lipkin said the virus could have jumped from a second nearby Wuhan lab to the market.³
• While the Chinese government maintains that the lab leak theory is "politically motivated and has no scientific basis," the FBI said in February that COVID "most likely" originated in a lab, though other US agencies still say it emerged naturally.⁴
• As Gao, who led the CDC through the pandemic before retiring last year, seems to be at odds with his government's strict anti-lab leak stance, Beijing has offered a third theory: That it may have been brought into the country on frozen food packaging.³

Sources: ¹Guardian, ²Newsmax, ³BBC News, and ⁴Sky News.

Narratives

• Pro-China narrative, as provided by Global Times. As opposed to the politicized, disingenuous debate over COVID in the US, China has followed the science. Allowing intelligence agencies — which are political in nature — to investigate the origins of a virus should tell you everything you need to know about the US agenda. Washington is now trying to use COVID to demonize Beijing and gain the upper hand on the global stage. Reports on the so-called lab leak are nothing but Western propaganda.
• Anti-China narrative, as provided by CNN. If China wanted to claim ethical superiority surrounding the COVID origin debate, it should have allowed for a completely independent World Health Organization investigation when it finally allowed the agency to investigate in 2021 rather than hovering over it under the pretense of safety. Since the beginning, China has blocked outside investigators from its laboratories and even its borders, which shows it has no interest in getting to the truth of the matter.
• Cynical narrative, as provided by Valuetainment. COVID and its deadly impact on the world may have been in the making for much longer than anyone could imagine. The US government began testing coronaviruses in dogs and pigs in 1965, then Pfizer patented its first COVID spike protein vaccine in 1990. The US public health establishment, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been researching COVID — and its potential profitability — for decades, but we've been led to believe that it all mysteriously appeared out of nowhere in 2019.