As we continues to search for a definitive treatment for COVID-19, the global pandemic continues.
As it stands today, our only weapon against the virus is social distancing, in which we remain as isolated as we can in order to starve the virus of hosts. While this is undeniably effective in terms of health and safety, the lack of recreation that we are experiencing has hit the economy like an asteroid, decimating just about any business that relies on our disposable income to stay afloat.
In order to reopen the world, we need to know that we’ll be safe, and the only true path to safety lies within a cure, vaccine, or reliable treatment for COVID-19 that hasn’t yet presented itself.
As the research into the illness continues, concerns have been raised about a viral laboratory in China that specializes in just such sicknesses, and just so happens to be only a stone’s throw away from the pandemic’s original outbreak in Wuhan.
Trending: In China People Are Posting Signs Cheering Coronavirus Deaths in the U.S.A.
Now, as conspiracy theories simmer regarding a possible connection between the two, a leaked series of transmissions from deep within the State Department is adding fuel to the fire.
U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Those cables have renewed speculation inside the U.S. government about whether Wuhan-based labs were the source of the novel coronavirus, although no firm connection has been established. The theory, however, has gained traction in recent days.
Just how serious were these concerns?
In a series of diplomatic cables labeled “Sensitive But Unclassified,” U.S. Embassy officials warned that the lab had massive management weaknesses, posed severe health risks and warned Washington to get involved.
The first cable, which was obtained by the Post, also sent red flags about the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and more specifically how their potential human transmission represented the risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the Jan.19, 2018 cable, written by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists, said.
The cable argued that the United States should give Chinese researchers at the Wuhan lab more support because its research on bat coronaviruses was important and dangerous. The lab had already been receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
China’s alleged cover up of the virus was bad enough to warrant widespread criticism of the communist regime, but the possibility that COVID-19 was leaked intentionally will almost certainly spark in international row.
Looking back, we probably should have nuked china in the sixties.
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