The Chinese government renewed its conspiracy theory blaming the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in China, on the U.S. military instead, pointing the finger at Maryland’s Fort Detrick without evidence as House Republicans ramp up Wuhan lab investigations.
Officials from both the Trump and then the Biden administrations have said that the Chinese government has now worked for years to thwart an independent investigation into the origins of the virus, and both administrations cast doubt on the manner in which a joint study between the World Health Organization and China released in early 2021 was conducted. Chinese officials, diplomats, and state-run outlets have repeatedly attempted to shift blame to the U.S. military since the pandemic began.
TRUMP SECURITY OFFICIAL CALLS LACK OF COVID-19 ORIGINS INVESTIGATION ‘INEXCUSABLE’
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin brought up Beijing’s conspiracy theory about Maryland’s U.S. military base, Fort Detrick, in back-to-back press conferences on Wednesday and Thursday.
“More and more clues from the international science community are pointing the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to sources around the world. Many have raised questions and concerns about US bio-military bases at Fort Detrick and around the world,” Wenbin said Wednesday, claiming, “We always support and participate in science-based global origins-tracing. At the same time, we firmly oppose all forms of political manipulation.”
Wenbin said Thursday that “we strongly oppose attempts to use the origins tracing as a pretext to spread disinformation and smear China.” The Beijing spokesman again pointed to alleged “questions and concerns about U.S. bio-military bases at Fort Detrick and around the world.”
The Chinese government has lashed out amid international criticism that Beijing has not been fully cooperative or transparent in global investigations into the origins of the virus. The evidence is overwhelming that the pandemic began in China, and there is no evidence it originated in the U.S. or with the U.S. military.
A spokesperson for the State Department told the Washington Examiner on Friday that “the Intelligence Community’s 2021 report on COVID-19’s origins remains the U.S. government’s most authoritative assessment to date on this issue.” The State Department then referred the Washington Examiner to prior U.S. government statements.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released that assessment in August 2021, stating that one U.S. intelligence agency assessed with “moderate confidence” that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan lab, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believe with “low confidence” that the virus most likely has a natural origin. All U.S. spy agencies agree COVID-19 originated in China.
The ODNI document, further declassified in October 2021, included a section titled “The Case for the Laboratory-Associated Incident Hypothesis” — a conclusion believed to have been reached by the FBI.
The State Department told the Washington Examiner in April 2021 that the United States “condemns the PRC’s false, baseless, and unscientific claims which undermine the spirit and purpose of an impartial origins investigation.”
A White House spokesperson, responding to China’s calls for investigating the U.S. military, told the Washington Examiner then that “if there were sound, technically credible reasons for such a step, we would of course support it — but there are none.”
This week, the World Health Organization sought to shoot down a Tuesday report in Nature that it had “abandoned” its plans for the second phase of a COVID-19 origins investigation due to Chinese intransigence.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead for the COVID-19 response at the WHO, called this “an error in reporting” on Wednesday, arguing that “we need to be perfectly clear that WHO has not abandoned studying the origins of COVID-19.” Kerkhove said that “there are suggestions of lab leaks or the release, whether deliberate or not, accidental, of a pathogen entering the human population.”
“We continue to ask for more cooperation and collaboration with our colleagues in China to advance studies that need to take place in China,” Kerkhove said. “We will continue to ask for countries to depoliticize this work but we need cooperation from our colleagues in China to advance this.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that “we are continuing to push, and as recent as seven weeks ago, I sent a letter to a top official in China asking for cooperation because we need cooperation and transparency.”
The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens assembled by the WHO said in its first report in June 2021 that “it remains important … to evaluate the possibility of the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into the human population through a laboratory incident.”
Then-Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said it was a politically motivated lie driven by “anti-China” sentiments, and he baselessly pointed to “highly suspicious laboratories such as Fort Detrick.”
That SAGO report marked a departure from a March 2021 report, in which a WHO team sent to China said a lab leak was possible but “extremely unlikely.” The WHO-China study contended that a jump from animals to humans was most likely, but the assessment was largely dismissed due to a lack of access to key data and Chinese influence over the investigation.
In July 2021, Tedros admitted there was a “premature push” to dismiss the lab escape possibility.
Scientists consulting with the U.S. government early in the pandemic in 2020 believed COVID-19 originating from a lab in Wuhan was possible or even likely, but emails indicate Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins worked to shut the hypothesis down.
EcoHealth Alliance leader Peter Daszak was a longtime collaborator with the Wuhan lab and its “bat lady” leader Shi Zhengli. Daszak steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in NIH bat coronavirus funding to the Chinese institute.
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Daszak dismissed the lab leak hypothesis in March 2021 when he admitted he took Wuhan lab workers at their word. Meeting minutes from discussions between lab scientists in Wuhan and the WHO-China team reveal lab leak concerns were referred to as “myths” and “conspiracy theories.”
Numerous former Trump officials believe COVID-19 began at the Wuhan lab, House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans concluded in 2021 that “the preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory” in 2019, and Senate Health Committee Republicans assessed last year that the coronavirus “more likely than not” came from the Chinese lab.
