Remember the conspiracy theory going around that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in China? Nuts, right?
Not so fast..
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For months, anyone who said the new SARS coronavirus might have come out of a virology research lab in Wuhan, China was dismissed as a right wing xenophobe.
When Zero Hedge — a financial news website whose comment section certainly fits the right wing stereotype — first put out its own bombastic version of the bat-borne virus escaping a research lab, they were banned from Twitter.
FOX host Tucker Carlson starting banging this drum last week.
But on Tuesday, the narrative flipped. It’s no longer a story shared by China bears and President Trump fans. Today, Josh Rogin, who is said to be as plugged into the State Department as any Washington Post columnist, was shown documents dating back to 2015 revealing how the U.S. government was worried about safety standards at that Wuhan lab. In fact, they were worried that one day, one of these experiments — including the one on bat coronaviruses — could escape and become a global nightmare.
...
“In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.”
Worth noting, at least one young researcher from the lab —Huang Yanling — a graduate student thought to be patient zero — was scrubbed from the lab’s website.
...
The Washington Post story today brings the possibility of a lab leak into the mainstream.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapo.../#41dda721ee1f
The Washington post story is here, but it's behind a paywall.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...coronaviruses/
Not so fast..
----------------
For months, anyone who said the new SARS coronavirus might have come out of a virology research lab in Wuhan, China was dismissed as a right wing xenophobe.
When Zero Hedge — a financial news website whose comment section certainly fits the right wing stereotype — first put out its own bombastic version of the bat-borne virus escaping a research lab, they were banned from Twitter.
FOX host Tucker Carlson starting banging this drum last week.
But on Tuesday, the narrative flipped. It’s no longer a story shared by China bears and President Trump fans. Today, Josh Rogin, who is said to be as plugged into the State Department as any Washington Post columnist, was shown documents dating back to 2015 revealing how the U.S. government was worried about safety standards at that Wuhan lab. In fact, they were worried that one day, one of these experiments — including the one on bat coronaviruses — could escape and become a global nightmare.
...
“In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.”
Worth noting, at least one young researcher from the lab —Huang Yanling — a graduate student thought to be patient zero — was scrubbed from the lab’s website.
...
The Washington Post story today brings the possibility of a lab leak into the mainstream.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapo.../#41dda721ee1f
The Washington post story is here, but it's behind a paywall.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...coronaviruses/
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