West still barking up the conspiracy tree
China DailyCai Meng/China Daily Many in the United States administration and the private sector, in cooperation with their mainstream media partners, are once again playing up the issue of the novel coronavirus' origin, suggesting that the virus might have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, Hubei province. In the words of virologist Paul Bieniasz, winner of The Rockefeller University Distinguished Teaching Award in 2017: "For the lab leak theory to be true, a Chinese virologist of previously impeccable reputation would have had to lie, lie again, screw up and then lie again." Unfortunately, a central claim in his article is based on a false report published in The Wall Street Journal claiming an "undisclosed U.S. intelligence report" as the source: that three researchers at the Wuhan lab became severely ill and were hospitalized. When the old, dead lab-leak theory suddenly made a comeback in mainstream media headlines, Daszak said: "What's missing from all this reexamination& soul-searching is a fundamental fact: There's no evidence-not a smidgen-for the claim that COVID-19 originated in a lab in China or anywhere else, or that the China lab ever had the virus in its inventory." My search on Google of "US virus laboratory leaks" returned an endless list of articles referring to Wuhan, lab leaks and China and previous US president Donald Trump.