New congressional report claims that the Coronavirus did escape from the Wuhan lab in China

 

The Wuhan Institute of Virology. New York Post/Reuters.

A new congressional report claims that the Coronavirus did escape from the Wuhan lab in China. New York Post. The report was commissioned by Republicans in Congress. They claim that by the preponderance of the evidence standard that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They believed that the virus leaked in August or September of 2019. When the Chinese found out the virus had leaked they deleted databases of data and increased security. The report also found a request for a new waste treatment system that includes an air disinfection system and hazard waste treatment system. They also cited search engine results in China that showed a spike in people inquiring about symptoms in September of 2019. The PLA also took over the lab in January of 2020.

My Comment:

I thought that the circumstantial case for the Coronavirus being a lab leak was already very strong. After all, from what I understand the odds of the virus having the spike protein that it does is statistically impossible. Plus, we have already heard reports of some of the people working at these labs getting sick before the virus was officially discovered. 

But some of this evidence is new. I hadn't heard that they had to replace the waste treatment systems at the lab or the fact that the army took over the lab in 2020. Both of those suggest that the leak could have come from these labs, and with the other evidence I think it's pretty obvious that the lab was the cause of the Coronavirus. 

Some people will dismiss the report because it came from Republicans but the lab leak hypothesis is now widely accepted throughout the political spectrum. The GOP is anti-China but it's not just anti-China folks that agree that the lab leak hypothesis is fairly sound. 

Is it possible that the Coronavirus is in fact a natural virus? It's not impossible but like I said it is extremely unlikely. The infamous spike protein would be very unlikely to develop the way it did naturally.

The only other possibility is that this virus leaked from another lab somewhere else in the world. China claims that it came from Fort Detrick but that seems unlikely, if for no other reason that gain of function research is illegal in the United States. Plus you would have to explain how a lab leak in another country caused a major outbreak in China. 

Unfortunately, I don't see China paying a price. Even if the virus was natural, and I don't believe it is, China would still be responsible for the virus spreading as they didn't lock down international travel immediately. And regardless of if they made the virus or not they did not share everything they knew with the world back when it might have mattered. 

I personally would be ok with anything we could do to China for this blunder. I would love to see the Communist government run out of power and its leadership tried and executed. That seems extremely unlikely and not worth a potential nuclear war over. With that being said I would fully support crippling tariffs and sanctions against China by all other nations on earth...