Covid-19 > Were there two lab leaks at Wuhan triggering the Covid pandemic?

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Senate GOP report raises possibility of two lab leaks triggering COVID

By Steven Nelson, NYPost

April 17, 2023 6:04pm  Updated

WASHINGTON — The COVID-19 pandemic may have started with two separate leaks at Chinese labs doing risky “gain of function” research, a Republican senator said Monday.

A report released by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) raises the prospect that millions of lives could have been saved — including those of more than 1 million Americans — if not for a “coverup” by the Chinese government during a theorized initial outbreak.

“This report concludes most likely this was two leaks [including] a lab leak in the September-October [2019] timeframe, even as early as July or August,” the medical doctor turned senator told a small group of journalists ahead of the release of the 301-page document.

“We’ve concluded that [China] started vaccine development in November 2019. And then another lab leak seems to be most sensible explanation,” he said. “There are key data points that are being held back that could help us prove that.”

Dr. Robert Kadlec, a cofounder of the Operation Warp Speed program that rapidly developed US COVID-19 vaccines in 2020, drafted the report titled “Muddy Waters: The Origins of COVID-19” with about a dozen Republican aides on the Senate Health Committee and additional outside consultants.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

AFP via Getty Images

The theory that there were two lab leaks, with the first one’s effect going unrecognized by the global community as the Chinese government raced ahead with early vaccine development, is unproven and Marshall says he welcomes debate and the exploration of other possibilities.

The theory rests on scientific conjecture about some previously reported details — including an assessment of the amount of work that would have had to predate a Feb. 24, 2020, vaccine patent filed by Dr. Zhou Yusen, a Chinese military scientist who later died under mysterious circumstances. Investigators concluded that the vaccine development would have had to start in November 2019, using Operation Warp Speed’s course as a benchmark.

A pre-November series of additional events adds weight to the theory, Marshall said, including the deaths of 11 Iranian athletes, publicly reported in 2020. Some of the athletes reportedly attended the Olympics-style World Military Games in held Wuhan, China, in October 2019.

There are additional scientific clues, according to the report.

There is much more on this story at the NY Post.