China blasts Joe Biden's call to determine origins of coronavirus, dismisses Wuhan lab leak theory as a 'conspiracy' and claims it is a bid to detract from 'botched' US response
- President on Wednesday ordered spies to 'redouble' probe on Covid origins
- This included looking at Wuhan lab - previously deemed 'misinformation'
- China lashed out today calling it a 'smear campaign and blame shifting'
- Beijing cited WHO's white wash report which it claims dashes the lab theory
China has blasted Joe Biden's calls to determine the origins of coronavirus and dismissed theories about its Wuhan laboratory as a 'conspiracy.'
The President on Wednesday ordered US intelligence officials to 'redouble' their efforts in probing the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, including any leads regarding the lab.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington accused unnamed political forces of being fixated on a blame game while ignoring the urgent need to combat the pandemic.
'Smear campaign and blame shifting are making a comeback, and the conspiracy theory of "lab leak" is resurfacing,' the embassy said in a statement.
It also called for a 'comprehensive study of all early cases of Covid-19 found worldwide.'
Beijing's spokesman Zhao Lijian, who has previously claimed the virus originated in the US, said Biden's order showed Washington 'does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.'
Chinese President Xi Jinping makes an address during the Global Health Summit on May 21
The Biden administration, after months of minimising the lab theory as a fringe point of view, yesterday did an about-face. It was swiftly followed by Facebook, which said it would no longer penalise users who dared to make the suggestion which was previously considered 'misinformation
Zhao cited the World Health Organisation report from March which said it was 'extremely unlikely' that the virus originated from a Wuhan lab.
The report is widely considered to be a white wash and was criticised by the British and US governments which said that China had withheld data from the experts.
The WHO rapporteurs were chaperoned around Wuhan by the Communist apparatchik who provided information which had been approved by Beijing.
The Biden administration, after months of minimising the lab theory as a fringe point of view, yesterday did an about-face.
It was swiftly followed by Facebook, which said it would no longer penalise users who dared to suggest that Covid-19 had leaked from a lab which was previously considered 'harmful misinformation.'
The liberal media establishment in the US, including CNN and MSNBC, have also completely backtracked after claiming that Donald Trump was making outlandish claims when he put forward the theory last year.
Biden asked his intelligence agencies to report back in 90 days.
He directed US national laboratories to assist with the investigation and the intelligence community to prepare a list of specific queries for the Chinese government.
He called on China to co-operate with international probes into the origins of the pandemic.
Biden in a statement said the majority of the intelligence community had 'coalesced' around those two scenarios but 'do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.'
He revealed that two agencies lean toward the animal link and 'one leans more toward' the lab theory, 'each with low or moderate confidence.'
In April of last year, Facebook had announced that it was imposing limits on 'harmful misinformation about COVID-19', and in February this year this was extended to the lab theory spoken about widely by Donald Trump
On May 1, 2020, CNN reported that Trump had 'contradicted' the intel community by claiming to have seen evidence the virus came from a lab.
CNN this week seemed to give credence to the 'misinformation'
'The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence,' said Biden.
His statement came after weeks of the administration endeavouring to avoid public discussion of the lab leak theory and privately suggesting it was far-fetched.
As for the origin of pandemic, Fauci, a White House coronavirus adviser, said Wednesday that he and most others in the scientific community 'believe that the most likely scenario is that this was a natural occurrence, but no one knows that 100% for sure.'
'And since there's a lot of concern, a lot of speculation and since no one absolutely knows that, I believe we do need the kind of investigation where there's open transparency and all the information that's available, to be made available, to scrutinise,' Fauci said at a Senate hearing.
Pictured: The Huanan seafood market on February 9, 2021 in Wuhan, China, long believed to have been the site where the pandemic began
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that workers at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with an illness that resembled COVID-19 – weeks before the coronavirus would begin ravaging China and the world. Researchers at the lab are seen in this February 2017 file photo
Pictured: The Wuhan lab where some have claimed Covid-19 originated from, which was disputed by WHO researchers on February 9
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the White House supports a new World Health Organization investigation in China, but she added that an effective probe 'would require China finally stepping up and allowing access needed to determine the origins.'
Biden still held out the possibility that a firm conclusion may never be reached, given the Chinese government's refusal to fully cooperate with international investigations.
'The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19,' he said.
Privately, administration officials say the end result, if ever known, won't change anything, but note China's stonewalling is now on display for the world to see.
How the MoS has been probing if the virus stemmed from a Wuhan lab since April 2020
APRIL 4, 2020:
Ministers fear that the coronavirus pandemic might have been caused by a leak from a Chinese laboratory, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Senior Government sources say that while 'the balance of scientific advice' is still that the deadly virus was first transmitted to humans from a live animal market in Wuhan, a leak from a laboratory in the Chinese city is 'no longer being discounted'.
One member of Cobra, the emergency committee led by Boris Johnson, said last night that while the latest intelligence did not dispute the virus was 'zoonotic' – originating in animals – it did not rule out that the virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory.
APRIL 15, 2020:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has demanded that China 'come clean' following reports that coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, not as a bioweapon, but as part of bungling experiments to prove that Chinese scientists were superior to Americans in identifying emerging virus threats.
It comes after President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the U.S. is trying to determine whether the coronavirus first crossed to humans accidentally during experiments with bats at the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab.
MAY 2, 2020:
Pictures which appear to show slack safety standards at the Chinese laboratory at the centre of international suspicion over Covid-19 have been systematically deleted from its website – as Donald Trump continues to ramp up the pressure on Beijing over its potential role in the outbreak.
US President Donald Trump announced that he had seen intelligence that gave him a 'high degree of confidence' that the global crisis had its origins in the institute – a month after The Mail on Sunday first revealed that British Cabinet Ministers had received classified briefings raising the possibility of a leak from the institute.
JANUARY 2, 2021:
One of America's most senior government officials says the most 'credible' theory about the origin of coronavirus is that it escaped from a laboratory in China.
Matthew Pottinger, who is President Donald Trump's respected Deputy National Security Adviser, told politicians from around the world that even China's leaders now openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false.
Mr Pottinger said that the latest intelligence points to the virus leaking from the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology, 11 miles from the market, saying: 'There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus.'
JANUARY 9, 2021:
The Chinese government is facing fresh accusations of a cover-up after officials deleted crucial online data about the laboratory suspected of being the source of Covid-19.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that hundreds of pages of information relating to studies carried out by the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology have been wiped.
Details of more than 300 studies, including many investigating diseases that pass from animals to humans, published online by the state-run National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) are no longer available.
APRIL 24, 2021:
Scientists studying bat diseases at China's maximum-security laboratory in Wuhan were engaged in a massive project to investigate animal viruses alongside leading military officials – despite their denials of any such links.
Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that a nationwide scheme, directed by a leading state body, was launched nine years ago to discover new viruses and detect the 'dark matter' of biology involved in spreading diseases.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmRhaWx5bWFpbC5jby51ay9uZXdzL2FydGljbGUtOTYyNjI4Ny9DaGluYS1ibGFzdHMtSm9lLUJpZGVucy1jYWxsLWRldGVybWluZS1vcmlnaW5zLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLmh0bWzSAXRodHRwczovL3d3dy5kYWlseW1haWwuY28udWsvbmV3cy9hcnRpY2xlLTk2MjYyODcvYW1wL0NoaW5hLWJsYXN0cy1Kb2UtQmlkZW5zLWNhbGwtZGV0ZXJtaW5lLW9yaWdpbnMtY29yb25hdmlydXMuaHRtbA?oc=5
2021-05-27 16:03:21Z
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