Where did the Chinese bat virus originate?

The whole world didn't grind to a halt over SARS. The last time a pandemic hit the world this hard was over a century ago, and it's a very different world than it was in 1918. The average American has access to a lot more information. We also have a lot more access to misinformation, if not outright disinformation. So it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction ... should we really close our minds to the possibility, however remote, that this real-life virus might be manmade?

On February 6, scientists from the South China University of Technology uploaded a paper on the origins of the Coronavirus. At the time, the official death toll in China from the epidemic was 564. The paper made a number of notable observations and claims that are worth knowing about. We are not endorsing any of these conclusions. We can’t. We haven’t independently confirmed them. But you should keep in mind that these findings come from Chinese scientists, who work for a university controlled by the Chinese government. Whatever else they are, these views are probably not racist anti-Chinese propaganda. Here’s what the paper says:

First, the scientists confirmed what scientists around the world have said they believe: the virus mostly likely came from an animal known as the Intermediate Horseshoe Bat. There are no known colonies of this bat within 900 kilometers of Wuhan. Nor is there evidence they were sold in the Wuhan wet market, despite many claims in American media to the contrary. Interviews with almost 60 people who frequented the market confirmed there were no horseshoe bats for sale there.

So where did the virus-carrying bats come from? The paper says this, quote: “We screened the area around the market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus.” Within a few hundred yards of the wet market was something called the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. According to public reports, the center used Intermediate Horseshoe Bats for research. About seven miles away was another facility, called the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The virology institute also conducted research on Intermediate Horseshoe Bats.

South China University scientists concluded that the Coronavirus pandemic likely came from one of these two labs. They noted that a scientist at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention had been exposed to the blood and urine of bats. They also suggested that infected tissue samples from research animals may have wound up in the Wuhan wet market. They ended their paper this way. Quote: "The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety levels may need to be reinforced in high risk, bio-hazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places." End quote.

That paper has been online for nearly two months. So far, it’s been virtually ignored. 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 rational conclusions in the Chinese paper, there was a spate of American news stories and academic research designed to show that the Coronvirus absolutely could not have been engineered in a Chinese lab as a bioweapon. They sounded supremely confident of that. But do they really know it? No, they don’t. As a factual matter, it is impossible for western scientists to settle the question either way. So they amped up the rhetoric, hoping you wouldn’t notice. A post on the National Institutes of Health website, written by NIH director Francis Collins, dismisses any such speculation as quote “outrageous.” Keep in mind, NIH is supposed to be keeping you safe from disease, not running political interference for hostile foreign governments. This is how they’re spending their time, as Americans die in the middle of a global pandemic.

And still, no one addressed the substance of the claims. The South China University paper concludes that the virus probably escaped accidentally from a lab in Wuhan. It says nothing about bioweapons. Yet the NIH, and USA Today and countless others, have devoted many thousands of words to scolding you for thinking the virus may have been a form of biological warfare. That’s a totally different claim. And it’s not accidental. One of the surest signs that people are lying to you is when they answer questions you didn’t ask. That’s exactly what the professional class is doing now, and they’re doing it on many fronts: They’re lying to you. They’re claiming to know things they don’t. They’re dismissing the obvious as impossible. They’re blaming you for their failures. The media are helping them do it. The stakes are too high to let them do this. So no matter what, stay skeptical. Remain rational. Gather your own evidence. Come to your own conclusions. At this point, you have no choice.

The only people who benefit from your reluctance to ask what's happening to you are the people whose negligence, incompetence, and dishonesty are responsible for this fiasco: the Chinese Communist Party. Anyone who tries to shut you up is doing their bidding, directly or indirectly.

Are U.S.-based media companies and journalists deliberately pushing Communist China’s propaganda and disinformation about COVID-19 to protect their Chinese media partners and profits?

Regrettably, it wouldn’t be the first time American media entities served as willing dupes for America’s strategic enemies....

The South China Morning Post—owned by Alibaba, a company with significant ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military establishment—also shares Post content and has a content-sharing agreement with Politico. Recently, the SCMP published an article that attempted to re-write the timeline of the global pandemic....

In fact, in the midst of a pandemic caused by Communist China’s malfeasance and disinformation that cost untold thousands of Chinese lives, the Post has encouraged other media outlets to cover rumors to smear the Trump Administration with claims of anti-Asian bias with little or no evidence.

Fake news is bad enough; but one would have hoped parroting Communist Chinese propaganda was beyond the pale even for them....