Three-and-a-half years late, the U.S. Government is admitting and publicizing the first victims of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China — who just so happen to be scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In a Substack article by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, we get something close to actual evidence strengthening “the case that the SARS-CoV-2 virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).”
The “patient zero” is not one but three, namely:
- Ben Hu
- Yu Ping
- Yan Zhu
The Substack authors quote Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and coauthor with Matt Ridley of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid19, who identifies Ben Hu as the “star pupil” of “the bat woman of China,” who, with Yu Ping, co-authored a paper on the coronavirus strain in question with said “bat woman.”
David Asher, who led a State Department inquiry on the virus’s origin during the Trump Administration, told The Daily Mail: “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.”
Much of the talk from officials in the U.S. and in China has stretched our credulity — but they were obviously trying to cover their foolhardy and borderline illegal gain-of-function research program.
Unfortunately, a great deal remains unclear, like “who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public.”
But on that latter point, we have a good idea.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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