Marco Rubio report reinforces theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio says there’s good reason to believe the coronavirus that caused a global pandemic originated in a lab.

The Florida Republican released a 328-report laying out admittedly circumstantial evidence, but a mountain of it, pointing at China for creating the COVID-19 virus. He said world powers around the globe must hold the communist government responsible.

“The implications are impossible to ignore: Beijing hid the truth,” Rubio said. “This report reinforces the need to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.”

The report points to different conclusions than experts, including Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The report, “A Complex and Grave Situation,” sought to produce a “political chronology” of the coronavirus pandemic.

The most notable dot Rubio said too many health officials were afraid to connect involved a biosafety incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in late 2019. That’s the same year the first coronavirus infections surfaced in the same region of China where research was being conducted.

The report suggests the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) went to lengths to conceal the severity of any threat.

“In April 2019, the deputy director of the CAS inspected the WIV and stated the need for a facilities upgrade. Throughout the year, the WIV pursued costly projects on its Biosafety Level 3 lab, hazardous waste treatment system, boiler room, ambient air disinfection treatment system, virus storage system, central air conditioning system, unspecified ‘security services,’ and air incineration device,” an executive summary reads.

“In July 2019, the CCP secretary of the WIV spoke of ‘current shortcomings and foundational problems in the construction, operation, and maintenance’ of the lab complex, and the director of the WIV called staff to ‘prioritize solving the urgent problems we are currently facing.'”

In 2020, as the virus spread through the United States, Fauci dismissed the theory that the pandemic originated in a lab. Fauci told National Geographic in May 2020 a lab origin didn’t compute for him, and he said it was more likely it came from natural evolution connected to bats. The evidence, Fauci said, was “very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.”

Fauci has since been more open to the possibility, but told the Boston Globe in March “we may not ever know.”

Rubio, who has confronted Fauci about the matter repeatedly, and said U.S. health leaders refused to explore the prospect to avoid threatening relationships with Chinese researchers. The report, the Senator suggests, puts together evidence many refused to see.

“After years of censorship, there is growing evidence that some type of lab accident is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “This report, which took two years to compile, edit, and refine, is a groundbreaking look at what was happening in China during the years and months leading up to the known outbreak of the pandemic.”

The report suggests the Chinese government took active steps to conceal the truth.

“As early as January 2020, Chinese scientists determined that the Wuhan wet market was likely not the origin of SARS-CoV-2. This remains the official position of the Chinese CDC,” the report states. “Meanwhile, in February 2020, the PRC launched a campaign to strengthen biosafety at the WIV and other labs through inspections, stricter regulations, and elimination of unauthorized research.

“Just as Beijing was denying the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab on the world stage, it was warning its own officials of such risks and rolling out new measures to prevent lab accidents. Chinese scientists affiliated with the PLA filed a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine on February 24, 2020.Their research methodology indicates they began work on the vaccine no later than November 2019, nearly two months before Beijing disclosed the existence of SARS-CoV-2.”

The report also takes note of several publicly available patents filed for air pressure systems in the lab. Those hint both at the lab’s problems keeping viral research contained, and at active measures by the Chinese government to fix that.

“Any one of these problems could have allowed a pathogen to escape the lab complex,” the report states. “WIV researchers confirmed this by explaining that their inventions were designed to prevent precisely such a scenario.”

Rubio serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The research was done in conjunction with the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank focused on U.S. Asia foreign policy co-founded by former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall G. Schriver.

CD3BC3317D197A25E9FF01EBFB869357.Rubio Covid Origins Report Final by Jacob Ogles on Scribd