Wuhan lab leaks more than likely kicked off the pandemic, and the resultant Chinese cover-up helped guarantee millions would die: Senate report

The extended version of the Senate GOP report concerning the Wuhan origins of the COVID-19 virus went public this week, emphasizing both that at least one Chinese lab leak is "more likely than not" responsible for the pandemic and "the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy."

The report released Monday by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) further indicates that the Chinese regime's attempted cover-up ultimately got millions of people killed.

What's the background?

Former Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) announced a bipartisan Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) effort in 2021 to explore the origins of COVID-19.

After reviewing hundreds of studies, interviewing various experts, and analyzing numerous reports concerning the source of the virus, Republicans on the committee released an abbreviated 35-page minority report in October.

The report underscored the untenability of the claim that COVID-19 had natural origins, concluding instead that the "COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident."

The report also reaffirmed that China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, where coronavirus gain-of-function experiments had been conducted for years, was the likely "high-risk" source of the virus. Numerous biosafety failures at the WIV were detailed, all "relevant to the containment of an aerosolized respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2."

TheBlaze reported that while much of the report restated with greater confidence claims and evidence previously reported on, Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, noted that Senate Republicans broke new ground with their discussion of communist China's rapid vaccine development.

The report stated that "it is unusual" that communist Chinese researchers were able to hit early milestones in COVID-19 vaccine development quicker than the United States.

In the exhibits provided and the questions asked, HELP Republicans intimated that China had access to the full genomic sequence of the virus well in advance of January 11, 2020, when a professor in China uploaded it to a global virus database in violation of communist Chinese restrictions on sharing information relevant to the novel virus.

A lab-grown catastrophe

The 302-page Senate GOP report, entitled "Muddy Waters: The Origin of COVID-19," was released on April 17 by Marshall and prepared by Dr. Robert Kadlec, cofounder of the Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, Dr. Bob Foster, and 117th Republican HELP Committee staff.

The report concludes that the "preponderance of information affirms the plausibility of a research-related incident that was likely unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment during vaccine-related research."

The Chinese regime's efforts to destroy any evidence of its culpability, particularly regarding its likely hand in the manufacture and spread of a virus that killed over 15 million people worldwide and its requirement that People's Republic of China officials not share or publish COVID-19 intelligence without state review and approval, have so far prevented investigators from securing definitive proofs.

However, Burr noted in a statement that the report is "credible and worthy of inclusion in the international effort to determine how the pandemic started so that steps can be taken to prevent, or mitigate against, future pandemics."

As was the case in the October interim report, this more detailed version undermines the natural origins claim once peddled simultaneously by the communist Chinese regime and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Whereas in recent natural zoonotic spillovers of respiratory viruses with pandemic potential there was evidence left behind of where and how they occurred, the same cannot be said of COVID-19, says the report.

The species for the virus has yet to be identified and unlike SARS, "the genomes of early COVID-19 cases from the first months of the pandemic do not show genetic evidence of SARS-CoV-2 having circulated in another animal species other than humans."

Additionally, the report indicates that the "low genetic diversity of the earliest SARS-CoV-2 samples suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is most likely the result of a single successful spillover of SARS-CoV-2."

The investigators now suspect that epidemiological and genetic models "indicate that the likely earliest incidence of SARS-CoV-2 human infections occurred mid-October to early, mid-November 2019," by which time there were already "firsthand accounts from westerners living in Wuhan, leaked PRC government documents, declassified U.S. intelligence assessments, and public statements by prominent western virologists recounting discussions with Chinese counterparts regarding a new disease outbreak."

An October outbreak might explain why many of the roughly 9,000 international athletes from 109 countries who convened in Wuhan from Oct. 18 to Oct. 27, 2019, for the Military World Games fell sick with symptoms "consistent with COVID-19" and why over a dozen Iranian participants ended up dead.

Hospital traffic and online searches for COVID-19 symptoms spiked during October and November 2019, which might also suggest the virus may have been in circulation earlier than Beijing would like to admit.

The minority report cites the following as reasons to suspect a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology kicked off the pandemic:

• there were numerous biosafety issues at the WIV, including flawed lab design, an absence of certain safety features, and documented biocontainment failures;
• there was a a deficit in remedial biosafety training at the lab;
• gain-of-function research on coronaviruses was executed and documented at the WIV, including experiments on humanized mice;
• the lab is at the geographic epicenter of the initial outbreak;
• the presence of a furin cleavage site suggests human meddling;
• there was a "high degree of genetic homology of initial strains";
• animal cases were secondary to human exposure; and
• there were early reports of WIV researchers becoming ill with relevant symptoms.

Sen. Marshall said in a statement, "A preponderance of evidence in this report suggests there were two separate unintentional lab leaks dating back to fall of 2019 in Wuhan, China with significant evidence supporting that COVID-19 was a lab-created and altered virus."

"This report also concludes that the CCP was responding to the coronavirus months before the rest of the world was even aware of its existence, yet China failed to inform the global community of the unfolding disaster," added Marshall.

A deadly cover-up

According to the report, Chinese regime began mitigation and vaccine development efforts no later than November-December 2019.

Despite taking efforts to cover up the outbreak and curb the spread domestically, Beijing lied to the world, waiting until Dec. 31 to alert the World Health Organization, then claimed, "The disease is preventable and controllable."

A Five Eyes intelligence dossier accused the CCP in May 2020 of engaging in an "assault on international transparency" to the "endangerment of other countries," reported the New York Post.

Beijing kept downplaying the virus as it continued to spread into 2020.

"We assess the Chinese Government intentionally concealed the severity of COVID-19 from the International community in early January while it stockpiled medical supplies by both increasing imports and decreasing exports," said a May 1, 2020, Department of Homeland Security report.

Despite stating that "it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident," the Senate GOP report concludes "more information is needed to arrive at a more precise, if not a definitive understanding of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how the COVID-19 pandemic."

The investigators behind the GOP Senate report are left with three outstanding questions that "would need to be addressed to be able to more definitively conclude the origins of SARS-CoV-2":

• What is the intermediate host species for SARS-CoV-2? Where did it first infect humans?
• Where is SARS-CoV-2's viral reservoir?
• How did SARS-CoV-2 acquire its unique genetic features, such as its furin cleavage site?