A leak from the U.S. Intelligence states that in November 2019 three researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) manifested symptoms similar to COVID-19. What we know for sure is that the Chinese government held back on releasing all information about—or related to—the status of the contagion.
On December 10th Wei Guixian started to show the first symptoms of COVID-19 and checked in a small clinic in Wuhan, only to receive some treatment and then go back to work in Hua’nan market.
After Wei Guixian there were thousands of cases that were poorly reported because of the small and meagerly resourced clinics. This, plus the reluctance of the patients to be transferred to bigger hospitals delayed the diagnosis, giving the virus a chance to infect others.
Even though there are differing opinions about the legitimacy of the evidence in the report.
The Chinese government denied all possibilities that the virus has escaped their laboratory, accusing the U.S. government to be diverting attention from the real problem, tracing of the origin of the virus.
“We continue to have serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins within the People’s Republic of China,” said a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Beijing fights back with a request to assert if other labs around the world might have been the cause of COVID-19 by pointing the finger to Fort Detrick military base in Maryland.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist told NBC News “There were occasional illnesses because that’s normal. There was nothing that stood out,” she said. “Maybe one or two. It’s certainly not a big, big thing.”
Proof of China’s involvement in keeping all information from spreading comes from Dr. Li Wenliang the first to warn about the virus and consequently muzzled by the police and accused of spreading false information and forcing a statement declaring “illegal behaviour.”
While all this information might still seem like the plot of a 007 movie, the best is yet to come.
On December 31, a team in biohazard suits breaks into Hua’nan market disinfecting every carcass, dead animal, feces, sewers, and stalls. China’s team collected samples of fur, excrements, and animals (dead and alive) and sealing them for further studies. All sorts of animals were present in the market, from bats to snakes, badgers, dogs, and more.
Five months after this episode, no sample nor data were shared with the world.
David Asher, former U.S. official who led a State Department task force to investigate the origins of the virus for then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, declared “I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” he said, adding that the researchers’ illness may represent “the first known cluster” of Covid-19 cases.
This statement begins to shift the needle away from the bat-to-human theory toward the lab outbreak theory, and now even the Biden administration is pursuing this possibility.
Members of the WHO-led team said Chinese counterparts had identified 92 potential Covid-19 cases among some 76,000 people who fell sick between October and early December 2019, but turned down requests to share raw data on the larger group. That data would help the WHO-led team understand why China sought to only test those 92 people for antibodies.
Team members also said they asked for access to a Wuhan blood bank to test samples from before December 2019 for antibodies. Chinese authorities declined at first, citing privacy concerns, then agreed, but have yet to provide that access.
The plot of this spy movie gets even more intriguing when we discover that Dr. Anthony Fauci,—medical advisor for the White House—approved funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology through NIH.
We are certain that there will be more to come.
