This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers from the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019 with “symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.” That report followed hard on a series of investigative pieces from journalists such as Nicholas Wade and Donald McNeil, formerly of The New York Times, who revived the media-dismissed theory that the institute had generated COVID-19 in a laboratory and then accidentally allowed it to leak. “The argument that it could have leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology or a sister lab in Wuhan has become considerably stronger,” McNeil wrote. “And China’s lack of candor is disturbing.”
It now seems highly credible that COVID-19 originated inside a Chinese state laboratory — and that China knew about it as early as November. In mid-January, the World Health Organization reported, based on Chinese information, that “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus.” China censured its own Dr. Li Wenliang for attempting to spread the news of COVID-19’s danger. It took until the end of January for China to lock down Wuhan.
