by WorldTribune Staff, April 18, 2023
Two separate leaks from a Chinese lab conducting gain of function research may have started the Covid pandemic, a Republican senator said on Monday.
A 301-page report issued by Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas “concludes most likely this was two leaks [including] a lab leak in the September-October [2019] timeframe, even as early as July or August.”
Marshall, a medical doctor turned senator, added: “We’ve concluded that [China] started vaccine development in November 2019. And then another lab leak seems to be the most sensible explanation. There are key data points that are being held back that could help us prove that.”
According to the report, the first lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology went unrecognized by the global community as the Chinese government raced ahead with early vaccine development. The theory of an earlier lab leak, Marshall said, is unproven but the senator says he welcomes debate and the exploration of other possibilities.
The theory of two lab leaks relies on scientific conjecture on previously reported details, including an assessment of the amount of work that would have had to predate a Feb. 24, 2020, vaccine patent filed by Dr. Zhou Yusen, a Chinese military scientist who later died under mysterious circumstances. Investigators concluded that China’s vaccine development would have had to start in November 2019, using the U.S.’s Operation Warp Speed’s course as a benchmark.
A pre-November series of additional events adds weight to the theory, Marshall said, including the deaths of 11 Iranian athletes, publicly reported in 2020. Some of the athletes reportedly attended the Olympics-style World Military Games held in Wuhan in October 2019.
There are additional scientific clues, according to the report.
“Epidemiological and genetic molecular analyses of the early published circulating Wuhan [Covid] strains supported the possibility of two spillover events two or more weeks apart,” the report says.
“This assessment was made based on minor genetic differences in early circulating strains suggesting that two lineages of the same virus may have emerged simultaneously and progressed on different paths or sequentially separated by some period of time. One lineage showing more mutations than the other implying it had been circulated longer than the other or had potentially passed through more individuals.”
The report continues: “A recently published study analyzed data from existing WHO global influenza surveillance networks early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Their analysis could identify outliers in influenza-negative influenza-like illness (ILI) that served as potential early indicator of COVID-19 community transmission.”
The report noted “[a] noticeable increase of Wuhan adult ILI cases during week 46 (November 11-17, 2019) corresponded to negative influenza testing that same week. This occurrence is similar to the epidemiological outlier identified in the published study. It occurs approximately 13 weeks before the recorded surge of COVID-19 cases in Wuhan in late January, early February 2020.”
The Wuhan Institute of Virology deleted an online database of coronavirus samples on Sept. 12, 2019, which Marshall said likely would have shown “cousins” of the virus if it was indeed from nature.
“There are a lot of events around this timeline, then it gets a little quiet, and then — boom, something else happens,” Marshall said.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, a co-founder of the Operation Warp Speed program, drafted the report titled “Muddy Waters: The Origins of COVID-19” with about a dozen Republican aides on the Senate Health Committee and additional outside consultants.
The report raises the prospect that millions of lives could have been saved, including more than 1 million Americans, if not for a “coverup” by the communist government in China during what is believed to be the initial outbreak.
Marshall said he hopes the report will build momentum to establish a 9/11 Commission-style investigation of the origins of the virus to understand the reason for the devastating pandemic and to prevent a recurrence.
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