{"id":5393,"date":"2021-06-17T17:50:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-17T17:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5393"},"modified":"2021-06-17T17:50:20","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T17:50:20","slug":"top-trump-officials-pushed-the-covid-19-lab-leak-theory-investigators-had-doubts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5393","title":{"rendered":"Top Trump officials pushed the Covid-19 lab-leak theory. Investigators had doubts."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“In February 2020, 27 scientists penned<\/a> an open letter in The Lancet saying \u201cscientists from multiple countries have published and analyzed genomes<\/a> of the causative agent \u2026 SARS-CoV-2, and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.\u201d \u201cWe stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin,\u201d the scientists wrote.”
…
“Several former national security and White House officials said they felt the circumstantial evidence they gathered in the spring of 2020 pushed them to believe the virus hadoriginated in the lab.
\u201cJust as a matter of common sense, the CCP destroyed virus samples, they only let the WHO investigation into the laboratory for three and a half hours, they bleached the site of the wet market, they didn\u2019t let Taiwan into the World Health Assembly, not to mention that this lab was so close to the center of the outbreak,\u201d one former senior State Department official said. \u201cTo me, I just thought right away, this came from the lab.\u201d”
…
“\u201cIt\u2019s entirely plausible this came from a lab, and it\u2019s also entirely plausible it came from nature. As an intel analyst, you look at a whole set of coincidences and you start to wonder if they\u2019re really coincidences. A lab working on this very issue as a locus for an outbreak \u2014 that\u2019s a heck of a coincidence,\u201d said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst who was deputy staff director for the Senate intelligence committee last year.”
…
“One of those reports, circulated internally in May 2020 by the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory\u2019s intelligence unit, said it pulled on genomic analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to determine that it was plausible that Covid-19 originated in the Wuhan lab, according to two individuals familiar with the classified report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another report<\/a>, published in the scientific journal Cell by Chinese and American researchers made its way to Ruggiero\u2019s NSC directorate. The authors had studied mice with humanized lungs and tracked how they responded to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Although the special mice were created years before the virus emerged, the studyled officials on Ruggiero\u2019s team to determine that the virus could have originated in the lab in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of 2020, the Trump administration gathered evidence that showed researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in November 2019 \u201cwith symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness,\u201d according to a State Department fact sheet published in January 2020 just before the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Months later, on May 23, 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported more details about that incident, including that there were three researchers \u2014 all of whom sought medical care from a hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But those reports described the researchers\u2019 symptoms as \u201cconsistent with\u201d Covid-19 and other well-known viruses such as the flu. Nor is it clear whether the scientists worked with bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan institute, a large research facility in a city bigger than New York. Many studies have suggested that Covid was already circulating in Wuhan by November 2019, so it\u2019s possible the scientists could have been infected outside of work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Last month, Biden ordered the intelligence community to redouble its efforts in studying the origins questions. It\u2019s unclear whether the Biden administration has obtained new intelligence from China or elsewhere that will help officials come to a clearer determination than the Trump administration did.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“with China refusing to share vital lab data with the U.S., the Biden officials face a similar challenge as the Trump officials who kick-started the probe in 2020. They will have to rely in part on circumstantial evidence that could prevent them from reaching a conclusion on whether the virus originated in the Wuhan lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt seems unlikely that we will get a definitive answer on Covid\u2019s origins in 90 days, or maybe ever. My guess is that if a lab leak did occur, the likelihood of gaining access to definitive evidence would be near zero. This would be among the most closely protected secrets in the history of the Communist Party,\u201d said Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that we shouldn\u2019t continue to press to get answers, but we should be realistic about the likelihood that we\u2019ll have definitive proof in 90 days.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2021\/06\/15\/wuhan-lab-trump-officials-covid-494700<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In February 2020, 27 scientists penned an open letter in The Lancet saying \u201cscientists from multiple countries have published and analyzed genomes of the causative agent \u2026 SARS-CoV-2, and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.\u201d \u201cWe stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin,\u201d the scientists wrote.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Several former national security and White House officials said they felt the circumstantial evidence they gathered in the spring of 2020 pushed them to believe the virus had originated in the lab.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as a matter of common sense, the CCP destroyed virus samples, they only let the WHO investigation into the laboratory for three and a half hours, they bleached the site of the wet market, they didn\u2019t let Taiwan into the World Health Assembly, not to mention that this lab was so close to the center of the outbreak,\u201d one former senior State Department official said. \u201cTo me, I just thought right away, this came from the lab.\u201d”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“\u201cIt\u2019s entirely plausible this came from a lab, and it\u2019s also entirely plausible it came from nature. As an intel analyst, you look at a whole set of coincidences and you start to wonder if they\u2019re really coincidences. A lab working on this very issue as a locus for an outbreak \u2014 that\u2019s a heck of a coincidence,\u201d said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst who was deputy staff director for the Senate intelligence committee last year.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“One of those reports, circulated internally in May 2020 by the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory\u2019s intelligence unit, said it pulled on genomic analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to determine that it was plausible that Covid-19 originated in the Wuhan lab, according to two individuals familiar with the classified report.
\nAnother report, published in the scientific journal Cell by Chinese and American researchers made its way to Ruggiero\u2019s NSC directorate. The authors had studied mice with humanized lungs and tracked how they responded to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Although the special mice were created years before the virus emerged, the study led officials on Ruggiero\u2019s team to determine that the virus could have originated in the lab in 2019.<\/p>\n

Over the course of 2020, the Trump administration gathered evidence that showed researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in November 2019 \u201cwith symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness,\u201d according to a State Department fact sheet published in January 2020 just before the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Months later, on May 23, 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported more details about that incident, including that there were three researchers \u2014 all of whom sought medical care from a hospital.<\/p>\n

But those reports described the researchers\u2019 symptoms as \u201cconsistent with\u201d Covid-19 and other well-known viruses such as the flu. Nor is it clear whether the scientists worked with bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan institute, a large research facility in a city bigger than New York. Many studies have suggested that Covid was already circulating in Wuhan by November 2019, so it\u2019s possible the scientists could have been infected outside of work.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Last month, Biden ordered the intelligence community to redouble its efforts in studying the origins questions. It\u2019s unclear whether the Biden administration has obtained new intelligence from China or elsewhere that will help officials come to a clearer determination than the Trump administration did.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“with China refusing to share vital lab data with the U.S., the Biden officials face a similar challenge as the Trump officials who kick-started the probe in 2020. They will have to rely in part on circumstantial evidence that could prevent them from reaching a conclusion on whether the virus originated in the Wuhan lab.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems unlikely that we will get a definitive answer on Covid\u2019s origins in 90 days, or maybe ever. My guess is that if a lab leak did occur, the likelihood of gaining access to definitive evidence would be near zero. This would be among the most closely protected secrets in the history of the Communist Party,\u201d said Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that we shouldn\u2019t continue to press to get answers, but we should be realistic about the likelihood that we\u2019ll have definitive proof in 90 days.\u201d”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[89,588,409,483,221,825],"class_list":["post-5393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-china","tag-corona","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-donald-trump","tag-labs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5394,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393\/revisions\/5394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}