Earlier it became known that the Ministry of Energy also believes similarly, but the official representatives of the White House have officially emphasized – although it is suspected that China does not want to find out the truth about the causes of the pandemic, nothing can be clearly stated yet.
It should be emphasized that in this case it is not only about science, but also about politics. Since former US President Donald Trump was one of the first high-ranking officials in the world to blame China for the creation of the covid virus from the very beginning, this completely logical assumption was automatically put on the list of “conspiracy theories” in the so-called liberal circles and considered almost politically incorrect. It should be reminded that in Latvia as late as 2021, both state institutions and media representatives widely shamed doctors or politicians who allowed themselves to agree with the hypothesis of the artificial origin of Covid-19 in a Chinese laboratory.
“According to the FBI’s assessment, it has been recognized for some time that the pandemic was likely caused by a potential laboratory accident in Wuhan,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News. This is the first time that the head of this intelligence service has made such a revelation, but CNN and other American media have previously reported that FBI experts are inclined to believe that the version long cultivated by China and accepted by the world community as the only true version that the virus mutated in animals and then migrated to human organisms. AP reminds that at one time the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly adhered to this hypothesis, but now it has also admitted that the researches so far are not enough to clearly conclude how the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, originated and spread further.
John Kirby, the White House’s chief adviser on national security issues, has similar thoughts, who emphasized this week that it has not been possible to find out the origin of the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic, but the administration of President Joe Biden, like the WHO, will make the greatest efforts to do so. However, this will only be possible if China fully cooperates, which has not been observed so far. The BBC recalls that this week US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said in an address to the US Chamber of Commerce that the Chinese authorities “should be more honest about what happened in Wuhan three years ago and how this Covid-19 crisis developed”.
FBI Director Ray has spoken much more openly, accusing the Chinese authorities of obstructing the investigation, which is one of the reasons why it is believed that the virus “escaped” from the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute. According to AFP, the institute, which is one of the world’s leading in its field and is involved in the study of coronaviruses among other things, is just a 40-minute drive from the Wuhan seafood and game market, where Chinese authorities say the naturally mutated virus originated. spread from person to person.
Just a few days before Ray’s announcement, the Wall Street Journal published an article stating that the U.S. Department of Energy’s intelligence department also believed, “with a relatively low degree of confidence,” that the virus had leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute. One could ask what the Ministry of Energy has to do with dangerous viruses, but the answer is quite simple – in the USA, this institution monitors the activity of relevant scientific laboratories, therefore it has both resources and experts who can judge what happened. However, CNN emphasizes that other American intelligence services are still more inclined to the original version about the natural origin of the virus or admit that they have too little information. The White House is doing the same, stating that when there is more clarity, it will not hesitate to inform either the US Congress or the public.
No one is claiming that China has developed biological weapons at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but even hints that something went wrong at the lab have provoked a sharp reaction from Beijing. The representative of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, has stated that such statements are perceived in China as an attempt to defame them, and emphasized that the issue of the origin of Covid-19 should not be overly politicized. She reminded of the 2021 joint report of WHO and Chinese investigators, which said that the virus leak from the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute is very, very unlikely, but forgot to add that since then the position of the WHO has changed and its experts would like to receive more information from China .
It is clear that this issue will be brought up again and again in the US. Republicans, after gaining the majority in the House of Representatives of the US Congress, have already managed to establish a subcommittee whose task will be to study the origin of Covid-19, as well as to find out why the US invested so much money in the operation of the Wuhan Institute. There is no doubt that this step will not improve the already complicated relations between the United States and China, but it would be in the interest of the entire world society to find out the truth, which, among other things, would help to develop an action plan that would reduce the possibility of similar pandemics.
