US Govt Report: China Began Working on COVID Vaccine Before Official Outbreak

Facts

• A US Senate report on the origin of COVID has found that the pandemic was most likely the result of a "research-related incident" in Wuhan, China, adding that Chinese researchers may have begun developing vaccines in November 2019.¹
• The 300-page report, an expanded version of an interim report released last October, claims the SARS-CoV-2 virus likely first emerged between Oct. 28 and Nov. 10, 2019 — weeks earlier than the Chinese government’s timeline. It says that around that time, the Wuhan Institute of Virology put unusual emphasis on raising its biological safety protocols.²
• Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) also suggested the possibility of a July or August 2019 lab leak, which would call into question the amount of time it took to predate a Feb. 24, 2020, vaccine patent filed by Chinese military scientist Dr. Zhou Yusen, who later died from unknown causes.³
• The report claims Dr. Zhou's patent included data from blood tests on mice done for vaccine-related experiments and, based on interviews with US vaccine developers, "represents at least two to three months of vaccine development work."²
• Former GOP Sen. Richard Burr, who led the original investigation last year, said the report is "credible and worthy of inclusion in the international effort to determine how the pandemic started." It does, however, call the evidence "circumstantial."⁴
• The report also noted that the type of bats carrying the closest virus to COVID lived over 1K miles away from Wuhan and that the lab had collected over 200 coronaviruses and employees had been photographed handling bats with inadequate protective gear.¹

Sources: ¹The Telegraph, ²Wall Street Journal, ³New York Post, and ⁴Axios.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Washington Post. There's still no conclusive answer or new evidence as to the origins of COVID. Even the Republican leaders of this investigation — who are anything but sympathetic to China or the public health industry — have acknowledged that if this was a lab leak, which is just one theory, it was unintentional. While biomedical accidents occur in both China and the US, and any potential mistakes made in Wuhan must be thoroughly investigated, the COVID origin debate is still ongoing. It's important to gather bipartisan opinions and data from both politicians and medical experts before drawing a final conclusion.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by FOX News. The lab leak theory is the only viable explanation at this point, and blame should be cast on the elites of both China and the US. Scientists who suggested the validity of the lab leak theory early in the pandemic were immediately labeled "conspiracy theorists" by US tech companies, corporate media, and intelligence agencies. The CIA, which draws conclusions about thousands of issues every year with a fraction of the evidence, still claims it's unsure about the virus' origins. This was, and still is, a major coverup, and Americans deserve to know who in their government has been lying to them on behalf of the PRC.
• Cynical narrative, as provided by Reason. The government and its media allies have always lied to the public, so we shouldn't be surprised that they did it with COVID. This trend of gaslighting the public and then fessing up once a new story makes the headlines have gone on for too long. This is how American politics works: those in power wield their power to their own advantage and the powerless public has no say in the matter.