US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that there was “enormous evidence” that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in Wuhan.
“There’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began. ’ve said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China,” Pompeo said on ABC’s This Week. “We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now. Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories,” he added. In fact, the US’ claims date back to 2018, when American diplomats and scientists raised concerns in state department cables about safety standards in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
At one point, the secretary of state appeared confused over whether he was claiming that the Sars-CoV-2 virus–which causes the Covid-19 disease–was deliberately engineered or that it escaped as the result of a lab accident. “Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point,” he said. But, when he was reminded that US intelligence had issued a formal statement noting the opposite, saying that the scientific consensus was that the virus was not manmade or genetically modified, Pompeo replied, “That’s right. I agree with that.”
On Tuesday, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, said “the weight of evidence” pointed to natural transmission, but was not conclusive. Beijing has rejected the suggestion the virus could have escaped from a laboratory. However, Chinese authorities have not allowed foreign experts, including investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO), to investigate the origins of the virus. Nor have they shared samples taken from wild animals at the Wuhan livestock market, where they claim the outbreak began.
The WHO’s emergencies chief has said that it has received no evidence from the US government to back up allegations by President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the coronavirus could have originated at a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “From our perspective, this remains speculative,” Michael Ryan told reporters in Geneva. “We have not received any data or specific evidence from the US government relating to the purported origin of the virus.”
Despite the lack of evidence surrounding American claims that the coronavirus originated in a lab, given the WHO’s unwillingness to criticize China’s demonstrably lacking response to the coronavirus crisis, Ryan’s comments must also be viewed with a layer of scrutiny. On January 30, moments before announcing that the coronavirus was a global health emergency, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said China was “setting a new standard for outbreak response”. He praised the speed with which China detected the outbreak, sequenced the genome, and shared that information with WHO.
China’s state broadcaster CCTV has attacked recent remarks from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, calling them “insane”, “evasive”, and “poisonous” lies. In fact, the CCTV report cites WHO executive director Michael Ryan and Columbia University virologist W. Ian Lipkin, who both claim that the virus is natural in origin and was not man-made or leaked from a laboratory, to corroborate China’s position.
In the past week, CCTV has repeatedly slammed Pompeo as the “common enemy of mankind” and accused him of “spreading a political virus” for his repeated claims that the pandemic originated in a lab. In March, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian pushed the conspiracy theory that the US military may have brought the virus to China.
While there are serious questions about China’s transparency, the Trump administration has escalated its efforts to blame China for the global spread of the virus as criticism of its own handling of the pandemic has increased. President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat of the novel coronavirus and suggested that it would not be a problem for the US at a time when it was clearly already spreading around the world. In the early days of the crisis, Trump also repeatedly showered Chinese President Xi Jinping with praise for his management of the crisis as he sought to safeguard a trade deal with the Chinese. Now, however, Trump seeks to malign China at every turn.
Image Source: Reuters
US Secretary of State Says ‘Enormous Evidence’ Coronavirus Came From Wuhan Lab
May 5, 2020
