The Chinese government froze meaningful efforts to trace the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, despite publicly declaring it supported an open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation has found.
The AP drew on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents, leaked recordings, and dozens of interviews that showed the freeze began far earlier than previously known — in the first weeks of the outbreak — and involved political and scientific infighting in China as much as international finger-pointing.
Crucial initial efforts were hindered by bureaucrats in Wuhan trying to avoid blame who misled the central government; the central government, which silenced Chinese scientists and subjected visiting U.N. officials to stage-managed tours; and the World Health Organization itself, which may have compromised early opportunities to gather critical information, according to internal materials obtained by AP.
They’re being downvoted because it’s conspiracy nonsense. The lab in question was funded by the US because it was part of joint pandemic preparedness studies, and its location was near Wuhan because it was a likely place for an outbreak to occur. They studied the coronavirus because scientists have been warning us for a long time that a coronavirus strain crossing species and becoming a global pandemic is an inevitability.
Could COVID be from a lab leak? Sure, it’s possible. But it would almost certainly have been accidental, not some grand conspiracy to kill millions and devastate the global economy they rely on. The more obvious culprit is the wet markets nearby where animals and their carcasses are handled by the public, providing ample opportunity for a mutated virus to infect an unlucky someone. China cracking down on an investigation is unsurprising if you know anything about their government. It’s just China being China.