“Debunked.” “Dangerous.” “Unhelpful.”
These were some of the terms heaped on the theory that COVID-19 might have spilled from a lab in China, accidentally or not. Suggesting that the virus may be linked to a Chinese lab would swiftly earn one the label of “conspiracy theorist.”
That was the case for at least 18 months after the pandemic erupted from China, where the ruling communist regime has repeatedly thwarted efforts by citizen journalists and the outside world to probe the virus’s origins, and covered up the true death toll.
Three years on, the world is still in the dark about the pandemic’s origin. But mainstream discussion has gone through an about-face on the lab leak theory. The once-maligned hypothesis has gained significant traction—so much so that the U.S. Energy Department recently sided with the FBI in assessing that COVID-19 was “likely” the result of a lab leak.
But for many who have long sounded the alarm on the Wuhan lab, the U.S. government was too late to the game.
“My initial thoughts are ‘where have they been for the last 2 1/2 years?’” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who sits on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, told The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD. “The entire world should have risen up and made China financially responsible for what had happened.”
Censorship
Concerns about the Wuhan lab arose early in the pandemic.
At the time when Beijing was still blaming a wet market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan as the virus’s source, The Epoch Times released a documentary titled “Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus,” drawing attention to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which houses a biosafety level 4 facility that had been working on coronavirus research, and—as it was later revealed—highly risky experiments that could make a virus more lethal.
Across different platforms, that video generated tens of millions of views shortly after its debut.
By Eva Fu
