The United States is guilty until it proves itself innocent, according to a Chinese scientist who continues to push a communist conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus actually originated in a U.S. Army facility in Maryland.
Shi Yi, a microbiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, spoke at a press conference on Thursday and complained that the United States had “not given any public response” to Chinese accusations that the coronavirus pandemic now raging throughout the world did not actually begin in Wuhan, China, but at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Shi’s remarks were reported in the the Global Times, a subsidiary of the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
“Figuring out the origin of the virus will help prevent a similar pandemic and protect human society, and provide scientific support for humans to take targeted protective measures against the virus,” Shi reportedly said. “Scientists from various countries around the world have been committed to the work.… However, the research requires mutual corroboration of the abundant biological information and epidemiological evidence available, which will take a long time and is full of uncertainty.”
The Global Times also advanced the theory that patient zero in Wuhan was actually an American athlete who was in the city last October for the Military World Games: “Some other posts on social media platforms also alleged that a US armed diplomatic driver and cyclist who was in Wuhan in October 2019 for the cycling competition in the Military World Games, could be patient zero for COVID-19 in Wuhan.”
The accusation that the coronavirus, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, in November of last year, was actually an American virus appears to have originated on Chinese social media prior to being picked up by Chinese government news outlets.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian took the fallacious assertions global by sharing them on Twitter — a social-media platform denied to ordinary Chinese citizens.
“CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
The Chinese then had their propaganda tool the Global Times push the story about the origin of the virus being a laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
“The Fort Detrick laboratory that handles high-level disease-causing material, such as Ebola, in Fredrick, Maryland was shut after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a cease and desist order to the organization in July, 2019 according to local media,” the communist propaganda site explained.
Thus far, neither the Chinese government nor any of its scientists have shown one iota of evidence of an American origin of COVID-19. They are simply attempting to sow doubt in the minds of their citizens and anyone else in the world who find their actions in response to the pandemic wanting.
The Chinese government has done nothing but hide the true nature of the virus, under-report the number of people infected and the number of people who died from it, and issue false proclamations about it, which their comrades in the World Health Organization parroted to the world.
Now, they are attempting even more obfuscation — this time as to the source of the virus.
Whether the original source was the wet market in Wuhan or the virus research facility in the city, it originated in China. That’s where the outbreak began, and because of Chinese intransigence and incompetence, it has devastated the world.
Evading blame is not a uniquely Chinese problem, of course. But they seem to be especially good at it, to the point of boasting about their own incompetence as a reason that the virus hasn’t been much worse than it is.
“Were it not for the unique institutional advantages of the Chinese system, the world might be battling a devastating pandemic,” a February article in China Daily — an English language daily newspaper also run by the Communist Party — had the audacity to claim.
Except that those “unique institutional advantages” probably were a major reason that the pandemic became as bad as it ultimately did. This attempt by China to cast doubt as to the coronavirus’ true source doesn’t do anything to hide the People’s Republic’s culpability; it magnifies it.
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James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects, with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached a [email protected]
