Joe Biden directed the agencies to report on whether the Covid-19 virus that first emerged in China was from an animal source or from a laboratory accident
U.S President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered US intelligence agencies to submit a report on the origin of Covid-19 in the next three months. Biden directed the agencies to report on whether the Covid-19 virus that first emerged in China was from an animal source or from a laboratory accident. US President Joe Biden said that the majority of the intelligence community “do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.”
Joe Biden asked U.S. intelligence agencies to report back on their findings within 90 days. He directed U.S. national laboratories to assist with the investigation and called on China to cooperate with international probes into the origins of the pandemic.
Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal.
Biden in a statement said the majority of the intelligence community had “coalesced” around those two likely 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, adding, “each with low or moderate confidence.”
“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.
Dr. Fauci Acknowledges U.S Funded the Wuhan Lab
On the other side of the story is the admission of the United States top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci who told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Wuhan Institute of Virology received money from the National Institutes of Health amid rising concerns over coronavirus origins. According to Fauci, $600,000 were earmarked for the institute in Wuhan over a period of five years to study zoonotic viruses and whether bat coronaviruses could jump onto human beings.
Fauci told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the funds were being sent to the lab in China through the non-profit alliance called EcoHealth. The virus expert told lawmakers that it was “a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus”, New York Post reported. Conspiracy theories claiming that the virus originated in a lab and that the ongoing pandemic is a result of a leak from the Wuhan lab have gained traction online over the last few weeks amid increasing calls to initiate deep probes into virus origins.
Many on the internet believe Americans and Chinese jointly developed the virus, which may have accidentally leaked into Wuhan and then the rest of the world. But Fauci told that the funds were not employed in research focussed on “gain of function”, essentially suggesting that holistic scientific work was facilitated through the money.
Joe Biden added that the funds were not used to enhance a virus’ capability to infect humans. “That categorically was not done,” Fauci said.
Fauci further explained the decision to fund research in China, saying that the SARS scare back in early 2000s compelled researchers to take research of zoonotic viruses more seriously. “It would have been almost a dereliction of our duty if we didn’t study this, and the only way you can study these things is you’ve got to go where the action is”, New York Post cited Fauci as telling lawmakers.
A report by The Wall Street Journal released on Monday alleges that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sick with Covid-like symptoms before the outbreak in November 2019, for which they sought medical care. Fauci, too, has urged further probe into the virus’ origins.
While the entire globe has been engulfed by the deadly SARS COVID-19 virus and world economy has taken a devastating hit, it remains to be seen whether there is any material in the fact that the U.S and China were responsible for the virus. Notably, the United States has itself been the worst sufferer in the pandemic with a total of 33,972,055 cases till now and a death count of 606,188.
If the U.S is indeed a participant in this virus manufacture, has the modern state degraded to such an extent that the mecca of freedom of speech funded the slaughter of its own people?
