(Reversing an earlier position, President Joe Biden is now asking the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to investigate the origins of COVID-19, including the possibility that it originated in a Chinese lab.
Under former President Trump, the U.S. State Department had put together a special investigation team looking into the origins of COVID-19. Nevertheless, the Biden administration shut it down over concerns with the quality of its work, according to inside sources reported first by CNN.
Biden Orders a Conclusion Within 90 Days
But now, through a statement released Thursday, President Biden has ordered the U.S. intelligence community to reach a “definitive conclusion” within 90 days.
The intelligence community has “coalesced around two likely scenarios” but has not reached a definitive conclusion, President Biden said. Those two scenarios suggest that the coronavirus emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.
The renewed investigation comes on the heels of an intelligence report from the Wall Street Journal according to which several researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019 after getting sick at the laboratory. This development put more pressure on Biden to dig deeper into the virus’s origin.
“As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China. I have also asked that this effort include work by our National Labs and other agencies of our government to augment the Intelligence Community’s efforts. And I have asked the Intelligence Community to keep Congress fully apprised of its work,” President Biden added in his statement.
China Shifts Blame on COVID-19’s Origins
China has not cooperated with international inquiries on the origins of COVID-19. And now it is resorting to the old adage, “admit nothing, deny everything, demand proof, and make counter-accusations.”
China countered Biden’s message with its ridiculous assessment that the virus began in the U.S. and originated from the United States’ biomedical research facility at Ft. Detrick, MD.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said, “The U.S. doesn’t care about facts or truth at all, neither is it interested in a serious scientific study on the origins. Its only aim is to use the pandemic for stigmatization and political manipulation to shift the blame.”
The Chinese first pointed fingers at the U.S. when questions about the virus had first surfaced.
Zhao now doubled down on his Ft. Detrick theory stating, “What secrets are hidden in the suspicion-shrouded Fort Detrick and the over 200 U.S. bio-labs all over the world?” Yet, he neglected to add how Chinese researchers at the Wuhan facility could have contracted the disease inside their lab a month before it spread out to the population.
China Handicapped World Health Organization’s Investigation
After the World Health Organization’s chief Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, admitted that investigators faced problems during their four-week mission to the epicenter of the virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
“In my discussions with the team, they expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data. I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing,” said Tedros. Instead, the WHO investigators had to rely on data supplied by 17 Chinese scientists, most of whom work for state-run agencies.
The Chinese government has made it clear that it has no intention of working with the World Health Organization or any other investigation on the origins of COVID-19.
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