America's Talking - Report: China Showed Its Hand, Unwittingly Verified Wuhan Lab Leak

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

A new report released Wednesday shows how Chinese researchers and government officials provide evidence that the virology lab in Wuhan, China, could be the origin point of COVID-19. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who serves on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Foreign Relations, released the report, which marks another federal-level source backing the Wuhan origins theory, which was once “debunked” as a conspiracy, mocked by news outlets and censored by social media companies. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulam, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is the Center Square, Washington, D.C.'s bureau chief, Casey, how are you? I'm good, Dan. How are you? You have any big plans for your three-day weekend? I'm working this weekend, but I know that you're taking some time off. I know you've been away for about a month on vacation, but this weekend is not Memorial Day weekend. Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend. So you don't get a three-day weekend this weekend coming off your month-long vacation to South America. Gotcha. Yeah. Sorry, I'm just so deep in these articles. I don't even remember what day it is. Right. Yeah. Well, I'm here to help you. We are recording this on Friday, May 19. Casey, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio released some information this week regarding the origins of COVID-19 and the very real possibility that it began in the Wuhan China lab, where they were testing and experimenting.

on coronaviruses. Tell us what Marco Rubio's report revealed. Yeah, this is a really interesting report. Of course, Rubio is, he's in the Senate and he's on, you know, he works with the intelligence community pretty closely more than most lawmakers because of his committee positions. He's on the select committee on intelligence and the committee on foreign relations. So he is well, he is a well placed lawmaker to be looking into this kind of thing. There's been a few senators who have been particularly interested. Some have tried to kind of sweep the center of the rug where did did the virus comfort. from a Wuhan lab.

But it's important to know because, well, one, U.S. tax dollars helped fund this lab, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. And two, there's a lot of questions about China's role in this virus and how much they knew and how much they hid from the rest of the world. And a lot of the evidence shows that, and this is what gets into the report that I thought was most interesting, is that China knew what was happening well before they really alerted the world to the seriousness of it, probably because they didn't want to get blamed for the virus, right?

So I can go into some of the evidence right here that was laid out. So Chinese scientists have been studying these coronaviruses for a while. That's not really a new thing. There is a question about how we study them and the way that we may be actually creating new deadly viruses that are worse than previous ones in some of these labs and how that could be a risk. And that's its own issue. But according to the report, officials in China were aware that the lab already was

vulnerable to an accident like this. So in 2019, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, they did it in special. of the Wuhan facility and said that it needed a security upgrade. They pointed out some flaws with the lab. The Chinese Communist Party secretary of the lab said it had shortcomings and foundational problems. That's a quote, foundational problems in the construction, operation, and maintenance. That's pretty serious. And so there's other similar evaluations. Another data point here is that from December of 2019, beginning in December of 2019, October 2021, researchers from that same lab have filed patents for inventions that would have prevented a lab leak. So the lab leak, remember, everything really in America just went down the drain

in February or March of 2020, right? But now we know that four months before that, Wuhan researchers were filing patents for inventions to prevent lab leaks. Okay. Now, that could be a coincidence. But at that point, you know, the virus had begun to spread in China. The Wuhan researchers were clearly very concerned about lab leaks around that same time and actually filed new patents to deal with it. So that's another really interesting data point. And also, we just know for a fact that China knew that this virus is really deadly, that they were doing everything domestically to prevent it from being spread and really freaking out. But they didn't tell the rest of the world and they were denying, then they still denied that the virus could have come from a laugh. But if you look at the paper

trail of scientists in that who are connected to this project, they seem to be acting really suspiciously. And one more point before I handed off to you, Dan, is that Chinese scientists filed a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine on February 24th of 2020. So Chinese scientists were already working on a vaccine for this virus, also working on technology to prevent lab leaks before had really even exploded in the United States. So I think some pretty interesting data points there to show you what was going on behind the scenes with these Chinese scientists. Of course, in 2020 and into 2021, with the virus known to have been started in Wuhan,

there was plenty of people wondering, saying, hey, this might have started in the Wuhan. The federal government tried to debunk, remember Anthony Fauci who was tied to the Wuhan lab because he gave federal grant dollars, taxpayer dollars, to the Wuhan lab to push this research forward. But many in the federal government, including Dr. Anthony Fauci himself, and the mainstream media went along debunk that, even mocked those who said, hey, this very well could have started in the Wuhan lab. But now that is just another story that I guess we don't know for sure yet the virus was started in the lab, but there's plenty of evidence to conclude that. The FBI has even come out and said that they believe that's where the origin of COVID-19 began.

And now you have this new information that China was worried about it. So I don't know, it just seems like another one of those stories that the mainstream media got wrong early on by siding with essentially Democrats who were insisting it did not start at the Wuhan lab. Right. And the Department of Energy also to their own investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported this a little while back, and they reported to the White House that they also believed it came from a lab. So you had the DOE and the FBI saying the same thing, but you're absolutely right about the media, totally missing this. And it's really sad because I hate the conspiracy theory strain that has really infiltrated a lot of modern American politics. I think it's not good, generally. It's not healthy. But the sad thing is it's gotten to the

point where a lot of these things that were once called conspiracy theories have just been either become verified truth like the Hunter Biden laptop or they've become from conspiracy theory to very plausible. And we may never know for sure where this virus came from. But for example, now we know there's plenty of evidence to say it could have come from the Wuhan lab. And it's not at all a conspiracy to say that that's a real possibility. But if you initially said that, the media mocked you called a conspiracy theory.

It's the same with Hunter Biden's laptop. Same when Trump said that his campaign was being spied on. It's same if you disbelieve the steel dossier. It's the same if you didn't believe in Russian collusion with all these things have pretty much been debunked in which if you disagree with it there, you call the conspiracy theorist. And now it's either verified or it seems very plausible to be true. At a minimum, it seems like there's more evidence that it did start within the Wuhan lab than it did in the open markets surrounding the Wuhan lab. And that's where the Dr. Anthony Fauci's of the world were pushing this storyline that, no, it didn't happen in the American taxpayer-funded Wuhan. lab. It started in these markets surrounding the lab. So what's next, Casey, on this? I mean,

is there a next? Do we know? Yeah, I mean, I hope, I can tell you what I hope's next, which is more scrutiny of funding for this kind of research, you know, already EcoHealth Alliance, which is the group that was really doing a lot of this research and did receive federal funding, although it's not quite the same research as what the Chinese scientists were doing. They've already requested more money. I think that we really need to take a hard look at what, you know, we talk a lot about the taxpayer perspective. How much and what kind of research is being done at taxpayer expense that is is so vulnerable. And why are we paying to research such deadly viruses in places? We're clearly, like in this lab, the standards of the facility were not, not up to par. And even if a lab leak didn't

happen, it could have, could have happened because all the local workers there were very concerned that a lab leak could have happened and did happen. Thank you for that, Casey, but we're out of time. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com or Casey Harbor. I'm Dan McAulb. Thank you for listening and please subscribe.