Coronavirus: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Wed Mar 17 00:48:08 PDT 2021


> the 'it came from China" claim

https://www.foxnews.com/world/top-state-official-coronavirus-bioweapon-accident

Former State Dept Lead Investigator Says COVID-19 Escaped From Wuhan
Lab, May Have Been Bioweapons Accident

The US State Department's former lead investigator who oversaw the
COVID-19 task force into the origins of the virus believes SARS-CoV-2
escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and may have been the
product of bioweapons research, according to Fox News.

"The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of
Health," David Asher - now a senior fellow at the Hudson institute -
told Fox News in an interview, adding: "It was operating a secret,
classified program. In my view, and I’m just one person, my view is it
was a biological weapons program."

    Asher has long been a "follow the money" guy who has worked on
some of the most classified intelligence investigations for the State
Department and Treasury under both Democratic and Republican
administrations. He led the team that uncovered the international
nuclear procurement network run by the father of Pakistan's nuclear
program, AQ Khan, and uncovered key parts of North Korea's secret
uranium enrichment. He believes the Chinese Communist Party has been
involved in a massive cover-up during the past 14 months. -Fox News

"And if you believe, as I do, that this might have been a weapons
vector gone awry, not deliberately released, but in development and
then somehow leaked, this has turned out to be the greatest weapon in
history," Asher told a Hudson Institute panel discussing the origins
of the pandemic. "You've taken out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP.
You've killed millions of people. The Chinese population has been
barely affected. Their economies roared back to being number one in
the entire G20."

According to Asher - who interfaced with the Chinese government as the
State Department's lead representative during the 2003 SARS outbreak -
the CCP's behavior surrounding COVID-19 reminds him of criminal
investigations he's overseen.

"Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are
associated with this. And the fact that the initial cluster of victims
surrounded the very institute that was doing the highly dangerous, if
not dubious research is significant," he said.

    At first, China said the COVID19 virus originated in the Wuhan
Seafood Market – but the problem with China's theory: the first case
had no connection to the market. Last fall the US obtained
intelligence that indicates there was an outbreak among several Wuhan
lab scientists with flu-like symptoms that left them hospitalized in
November of 2019 - before China reported its first case. Asher and the
other Hudson Institute panel experts said that in 2007, China
announced it would begin work on genetic bioweapons using
controversial "gain of function" research to make the viruses more
lethal. -Fox News

In 2016, China stopped talking about their research at the Wuhan Lab -
which Asher believes is when the CCP went form biodefense research to
offense - in the same year as a Chinese state television commentator
claimed: "We have entered into an area of Chinese biowarfare, and
including using things like viruses. I mean, they made a public
statement to their people that this is a new priority under the Xi
national security policy," according to Asher.

When China began funding research at the WIV in 2017, they stopped
talking about their research into COVID "disease vectors which could
be used for weapons."

"I doubt that's a coincidence," said Asher.

According to State Department official Miles Yu, who co-wrote a recent
WSJ op-ed with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the virus'
origins, "China has been involved in this type of virus research since
2003, the SARS outbreak," adding "China's biosafety standard is really
low and is very dangerous. So this is an accident waiting to happen."


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