JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
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- #41
And now the Washington Compost joins in the Conspiracy Theory Corner.
China Lab In Focus Of Coronavirus Outbreak
There are more knowns about this unknown virus than we think.
www.forbes.com
āI had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,ā she was quoted as saying by Scientific American on March 11. Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan had the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animalsāparticularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If bat coronaviruses were the culprit, she recalled to Scientific American, ācould they have come from our lab?ā
She has since promised the world that it did not come from her lab, though how she would know that for sure is unknown. We donāt know where she is. If she is making the media rounds on Chinese television, few in the U.S. would believe her at this point.
Her research on bat coronaviruses goes back to 2015. Here is one published in 2015 in Nature magazine. There is a lot of information about this new SARS, yet the world still seems stuck in the unknowns.
The U.S. government helped build and fund Wuhan virology labs. The thinking was that it was important for China to get up to par in the global life sciences. It was already a known center of previous outbreaks. Investing there and educating them on international safety standards was just preventative medicine.
Roginās reporting suggests that government officials were well aware of the research being conducted in the lab on bat coronaviruses and were worried that the lab still had sub-par safety standards.
Rogin writes that, āWhat the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the labās work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.ā
Roginās article probably stemmed from conversations with someone inside the State Department boiling at the rim over many weeks as the U.S. faces a āstop the worldā moment because of this pandemic.
Over the weekend, the Chinese government banned academic and other research institutions from publishing its research on coronaviruses on their websites....
The Washington Post story today brings the possibility of a lab leak into the mainstream.
In a best case scenario, Roginās reveal may ultimately get China to cooperate more in regards to the origins of the virus, setting the table for better drugs to mitigate or even cure the deadly COVID-19.