Sources believe coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan lab as part of China's efforts to compete with US
By: Bret Baier, Gregg Re
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
EXCLUSIVE: There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China's attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China's government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.
The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus – a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there – was bat-to-human and that "patient zero" worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.
The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly. Sources emphasized -- as is often the case with intelligence -- that it’s not definitive and should not be characterized as such. Some inside the administration and the intelligence and epidemiological communities are more skeptical, and the investigation is continuing.
What all of the sources agree about is the extensive cover-up of data and information about COVID-19 orchestrated by the Chinese government.
Asked by Fox News' John Roberts about the reporting, President Trump remarked at Wednesday's coronavirus press briefing, "More and more we're hearing the story...we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation."
Documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment. The Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and the sources tell Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country's propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy.
U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020, photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP)
Responding to the report, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday afternoon: "It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that and we've had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that. I would just say at this point, it's inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we don't know for certain."
“Even today, I see them withholding information and I think we need to do more to continue to press them to share,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told “ America’s Newsroom " on Wednesday, referring to China. Esper added that he wouldn't speak to "intelligence reporting," but that "most people believe it began naturally — it was organic, if you will. I think in due course, once we get through the pandemic we're in right now, there'll be time to look back and really ascertain what happened and make sure we have a better understanding so we can prevent this in the future."
Sources point to the structure of the virus, in saying the genome mapping specifically shows it was not genetically altered.
Speaking to " The Story " Wednesday evening, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remarked: "What we do know is we know that this virus originated in Wuhan, China. We know there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was. There is still lots to learn. You should know that the United States government is working diligently to figure it out."
Concerning the State Department cables warning about the Wuhan laboratory, Pompeo said the installation "contained highly contagious materials — we knew that, we knew that they were working on this program, many countries have programs like this. In countries that are open and transparent, they have the ability to control them and keep them safe, and they allow outside observers in to make sure all the processes and procedures are right. I only wish that that had happened in this place."
On Thursday, China's foreign ministry pushed back on the suspicion that the virus escaped from the facility, by citing statements from the World Health Organization that there is no evidence the coronavirus came from a laboratory.
Americans were originally helping train the Chinese in a program called PREVENT well before the Chinese started working on this virus. The French government helped the Chinese set up the Wuhan lab.
China "100 percent" suppressed data and changed data, the sources tell Fox News. Samples were destroyed, contaminated areas scrubbed, some early reports erased, and academic articles stifled.
There were doctors and journalists who were "disappeared" warning of the spread of the virus and its contagious nature and human to human transmission. China moved quickly to shut down travel domestically from Wuhan to the rest of China, but did not stop international flights from Wuhan.
Additionally, the sources tell Fox News the World Health Organization (WHO) was complicit from the beginning in helping China cover its tracks.
Commuters wear face masks to protect against the spread of new coronavirus as they walk through a subway station in Beijing, Thursday, April 9, 2020. China's National Health Commission on Thursday reported dozens of new COVID-19 cases, including most of which it says are imported infections in recent arrivals from abroad and two "native" cases in the southern province of Guangdong. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Trump announced at the White House coronavirus news briefing in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the WHO , saying it had put "political correctness over lifesaving measures." The United States is the WHO's largest single donor , and the State Department had previously planned to provide the agency $893 million in the current two-year funding period.
Senior administrations separately tell Fox News the rollout of the president’s “blueprint for reopening the U.S. economy” will happen Thursday afternoon, first for governors and then briefed to the press.
Meanwhile, Trump's own handling of the crisis has come into focus. On January 24, for example, Trump tweeted in praise of China’s “ transparency " on coronavirus.
Though they were not speaking for the president, the sources ventured an explanation, saying it was diplomatic talk to make the Chinese "feel good". while the investigation was ongoing, with trade and other talks happening simultaneously.
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.
President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data .
“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”
Bret Baier is the chief political anchor of Fox News Channel, and the anchor and executive editor of "Special Report with Bret Baier.” He is the author of “Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission,” and “Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire.” His third presidential book, “Three Days at the Brink: FDR’s Daring Gamble to win World War II,” will be released on Oct. 22, 2019.
Fox News' Barnini Chakraborty and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This is the story that Brian Williams and other members of the resistance once called "a conspiracy theory."
I watched Fox the other night, with equal parts dismay and amusement as Shannon Breame tried to get Dr Marc Siegel to
admit to this new/old theory from 2014 on the lack of standards at one particular Wuhan laboratory.
The Doctor insisted that the bat virus is only an 88% RNA match to COVID19. And he went on & on to dispel any possibility
of human intervention in "creating" the "19" virus.
On the other hand while insisting that there needs to be at least one other bridge mammal involved, the Doctor never mentioned,
what I thought was already commonly accepted, the theory that the bridge animal was the farm raised pangolins.
It was curious why he never addressed it. Almost like the elephant in the corner curious.
The Coronavirus now plaguing the world was most likely not created in a lab. That is much different than saying that a Chinese lab was studying the virus and it escaped the lab. Why wouldn't China study these viruses? God only knows, China has been the source of so many of them. I see a new narrative here where some people are trying to conflate a virus being studied in a lab with a virus being created in a lab. This virus was not man made - we can dispense with that. The qestion before the house is whether it escaped from a lab.
Dr Fauci should have answered that question a few days ago.
I'm glad you were able to catch Shannon Breame.
It would be an amazimg coincidece if the outbreak just happened to happen on the doorstep of a shoddily run lab experimenting with the same virus. Or a non native bat would have to have been brought to a market hundreds of miles away to make the jump across species in Wuhan. That's possible, but which is more likely?
It's more likely that the Chinese, who lack the safety standards required for such experimentation, allowed a super virus to escape. They obviously lacked the American exceptionalism, which Obama didn't believe in.
12 monkeys coronavirus.
All we need to know is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, and spread as the the result of unsafe practices.
Whether or not the virus originated in a laboratory or in an open air meat and fish market is really immaterial. The real problem is that the Chinese government did not take appropriate steps to control spread of the virus. And the Chinese government was apparently more concerned over the political implications of the spreading disease rather than acting responsibly to warn others.
The Chinese government has demonstrated it is too immature to be allowed a leadership role in world affairs. Allowing the Chinese government to impose itself on the process of international cooperation would be unwise and unsafe. China would be an unreliable partner in international affairs.
The global economy allowing itself to become dependent upon Chinese entrepreneurship would be extraordinarily dangerous. The results speak for themselves.
And yet they may come out of this completely unscathed.
What did Stalin once say? “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
Well, there does seem to be an intense propaganda effort underway to influence public opinion. But disruptions in supply chains are a little more difficult to overlook. Only stock markets are guided by opinion; the producing segments of the economy pay more attention to the bottom line.
Businesses have already begun fleeing China. Funny how off-shoring works, isn't it?
The whim of business in pursuit of profit? Capitalism!
The whims of profiteers exploiting resources while avoiding risk. Profiteers have no loyalty. A profiteer will gut their own business to obtain personal gain. That's not capitalism.
Keeping costs down is one of the essential elements of Capitalism. Thus, UPS beats the Post Office in every way, but government needs a dependable postal system to get the mail delivered to wherever it needs to go. Wall Street works with Main Street and with government too.
Really? Kinda difficult to explain why Rolls Royce is still making automobiles then.
The Post Office is a pubic service. United Parcel Service is not.
State owned businesses need not depend on a closed market. And state owned businesses are not required to make a profit.
See how China has an advantage?
While profiteers have raced to China, it's really not clear who is exploiting who in that relationship. I suppose both are relying on ability to exploit American consumers. And our politicians are protecting both China and profiteers more than American consumers.
What does Wall Street produce? Wall Street is the gold standard for not having to work for a living. Wall Street can't even manage risk; the results speak for themselves.
Capital - the thing that makes the world go round.
Wall Street can't even manage risk; the results speak for themselves.
It has done fine when government doesn't interfere. Having lending standards was a good thing.
Wall Street does not produce capital. Wall Street is not a magic money tree. Wall Street occupies a middleman position in the economy. And middlemen add cost without adding tangible value.
Some claim that Wall Street allocates capital according to market signals. That's a middleman activity. But Wall Street is influenced as much (or more) by opinion as by market data. And middlemen introduce inefficiency into economic activities.
An inefficient economic activity exerting opinion driven influence on capital decision making results in malinvestments. That is why we have a euphemistically named 'business cycle'. Inefficiencies and malinvestments cause recessions.
We experience more recessions simply because there is a Wall Street.
Wall Street fuels development and as long as the conditions are right for economic development, there will be no shortage of Capital.
The things you described above are indicative of communist/totalitarian regimes in general.
I'm not denying what the insinuations in that article MAY have indicated - supposed facts from SOURCES (Sources??? What sources???) but having majored in English Literature and serving almost 2 years as Editor-in-Chief of the university newspaper, then having practised a profession for 37 years where absolute accuracy in the use of the English language was a necessity, and then teaching English for a number of years, I understand how implications (maybe true, maybe false) can manipulate beliefs from the use of words and expressions such as "may be" and "likely" and "the sources believe" and "increasing confidence" and "...that it’s not definitive and should not be characterized as such. Some inside the administration and the intelligence and epidemiological communities are more skeptical,..."
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said..."I would just say at this point, it's inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we don't know for certain." and "there'll be time to look back and really ascertain what happened and make sure we have a better understanding."
The use of language that is NOT DEFINITE. but only "suggests" is cleverly used to mislead those who are unable to distinguish whether the language used relates to absolute facts, probabilities, possibilities or even as far-fetched as falsehoods. Besides those who don't understand the difference, there are also those whose prejudices guarantee their misunderstanding. In the circumstances, with respect to this article, as I've said, maybe the suggestions will be proven one day, and maybe they will not. But it is too soon to make up one's mind.
By the way, a competition? Well, okay, that's ONE opinion. Any more?
It will be tough. The Chinese government would have long ago destroyed all lab records. The type of bat responsible for the virus was not sold at wet markets. Was it used in the Wuhan lab experiments?
They also destroyed all the records, so we may never know.
Now I see why you said China's culpability in the greatest crime against humanity ever perpetrated.
As you know, Vic, I can't open YouTube so I'm unable to point out misconceptions and misinformation, but what I cannot believe is that anyone considers this pandemic to be "the greatest crime against humanity ever perpetrated", rather than The Holocaust. I would even consider Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be more so.
It would be tough to top those. Only Mao & Stalin have killed more.
I believe that accusing Mao of killing millions is just ant-Communist propaganda. What actually happened back then was that there was an extreme famine, and millions died of starvation, due to mismanagement by the Communist government. Although there may have been many who were killed in the conflict, more most likely died from hunger.
One more thing. I had thought that the civil rights movement in the USA pretty well brought an end to lynching before a trial to establish guilt took place. I thought it was NOW more American to at least await a trial to present actual evidence to prove guilt before the hanging. It is not because of my residence, but because of my profession, that I feel that a proper investigation should take place and evidence be presented that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before a hanging takes place. The vigilantes on NT screaming for punishment without proven guilt are the ones who are not civillized.
As we reach Holocaust Denial level of propaganda.
You're not happy enough that I said mismanagement, which was STILL the fault of the government you despise. So yes, Sean, IT WAS ALL THE FAULT OF THE COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT. Are you happy now?
The cultural revolution, to name one decade long slaughter of innocents, was just "mismanagment?" Orwell was right about language.
" Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification."
Okay Sean, then please do me this favour, since you know that it is unlikely that I would be able from here to find a respected unbiased source with proof of such a "massacre", please copy the paragraphs in the Encyclopedia Britannica that outline the extent of the Cultural Revolution "massacre" and paste them on a Private Note to me.
I have given you the last word. Now it's up to the unbiased reader of this seed.
Never mind Sean. I have researched it myself, and it is a tragedy that was mostly caused by Mao and his "Great Leap Forward" as part of the Cultural Revolution. This is a summary from the source I used:
The largest famine in human history took place in China during 1959-61
Although drought was a contributory factor, this was largely a manmade catastrophe for which Mao Zedong bears the greatest responsibility
We will never know the precise number of casualties, but the best demographic reconstructions indicate about 30 million dead
Two generations later China is yet to openly examine the causes and consequences of the famine
This happened half a century ago. IMO there are very few countries where you cannot look back into their histories and see events and circumstances that their goverments would not regret today.
Dr. Fauci throws cold water on conspiracy theory that coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab
It's time for Trump and the NT conservatives to come up with a new conspiracy theory.
Butt, Butt, Butt "sources say"..........
/s
How many times have you heard certain conservative posters blast anything quoting "sources" that put the current POTUS in a bad light?
Is Yahoo not considered an acceptable news site? Well, I guess that if they ever post something that is negative about trump it loses its credibility with the conservatives.