As the world is debating on the culpability of China over the spread of Chinese virus COVID-19, a paper published by Chinese scientists suggests that the virus ‘probably’ originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. On Tuesday, American journalist Tucker Carlson aired a report on his talk show publishing the findings of the report asserting that the Chinese coronavirus most likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
Citing a report from Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao of the South China University of Technology discussing the origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus, Tucker Carlson brought attention to a raging debate that has been happening across the world lately on the possibility of COVID-19 being a human-made virus that got accidentally leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Good for @TuckerCarlson for bringing attention to a study by *Chinese* scientists about the origins of the China virus. Not what you’ll hear from MSM. pic.twitter.com/5zOJPOv2pu
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) April 1, 2020
Carlson went on to cite the paper, as he conceded that he could not independently confirm, noting that the information was at least worthy of consideration. The Fox News Anchor said, “On February 6th, scientists from the South China University of Technology uploaded a paper on the origins of coronavirus. Where did it come from? Well, this offers some clue. At the time the official death toll in China from the coronavirus was 564. The paper made a number of notable observations and claims that are worth knowing about and that’s why we are telling you. We want to be clear that we aren’t endorsing any of these conclusions, we haven’t independently confirmed them. We can’t.”
The report detailed the tracing of COVID-19 to the intermediate host Horseshoe bat, a bat that they confirmed was not available at the Wuhan wet market and did not live locally. In fact, the report noted that native populations were no closer than 900kms away from the first known cases, making a natural transmission from bat to human appear more unlikely. According to the Chinese research paper, the only place those particular bats existed locally was inside a research facility which was just several hundred yards from the Wuhan wet market. The paper strongly concluded that the coronavirus pandemic had likely been the result of a leak from the lab.
The paper observed, “The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometres away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market. There was possible natural recombination or an intermediate host of the coronavirus, yet little proof has been reported.”
The paper notes the possibility that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention played a prominent role in the outbreak of the pandemic. It stated, “Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were the source of pathogens. They were only ~280 meters from the seafood market. The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic. It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed for future study.”
The paper further added, “The second laboratory was ~12 kilometres from the seafood market and belonged to Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This laboratory reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) which caused the 2002-3 pandemic. The principal investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system and reported the potential for human emergence. A direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from the laboratory.”
The paper concluded with the words, “In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high-risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city centre and other densely populated places.”
Tucker Carlson concluded his remarks on his show with the words, “Now this paper’s been online for nearly two months and so far it has been virtually ignored in this country. Almost nobody in American journalism has dared to write about it. The few who have were immediately attacked as dangerous conspiracy theorists. Instead of assessing what seemed like the rational conclusions presented in the Chinese paper, there was a spate of American news stories and academic research designed to show that the coronavirus absolutely could not have been engineered in a Chinese lab. They sounded supremely confident of that, but do they really know it? And the answer is no they don’t. As a factual matter, it is impossible for Western scientists to settle the question either way. So instead of doing that or admitting that, they amped up the rhetoric hoping you wouldn’t notice the difference.”
The Chinese epidemic has now engulfed almost the entire world has killed more than 42,000 people across the world. More than 8.8 lakhs have been tested positive after coming in contact with Chinese virus COVID-19. The United States of America leads the tally with 188,578 active cases and 3,890 deaths. Italy has seen the highest number of deaths with 12,428 succumbing to the Chinese virus out of the 105,792 affected. Interestingly, China which is the epicentre, according to its official figures, has only lost 3,305 people to the deadly pandemic.
