Two things for you tonight. First, an exclusive from Fox’s Brett Baier who reported on how the Wuhan Coronavirus was born in a lab as part of communist China’s efforts to compete with the United States and China blamed it on a wet market to deflect responsibility:
COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China’s effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.
This may be the “costliest government coverup of all time,” one of the sources said.
The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.
[…]
Documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment. The Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and the sources tell Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country’s propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy.
Second, revisit this story from earlier this month:
Niall Ferguson's latest column (paywall) notes that on Jan. 23 the Chinese cut off Hubei province from the rest of China — but they didn't cut it off from the rest of the world. Direct flights out continued. Trump's travel restrictions kicked in only a week later. pic.twitter.com/8a2FV0oxri
— Mike (@Doranimated) April 7, 2020
Plus, this deep dive timeline from the AP:
“The risk of transmission and spread is high,” the Chinese government concluded in internal documents. The next day, a top official downplayed the risk on national television.
Hoo boy. It’s looking more and more like Senator Tom Cotton was right.
