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In the aftermath of the disastrous international response to COVID, the World Health Assembly, which is the policymaking body of the World Health Organization, ordered an investigation into the origins of COVID. A lot of theories have been put forth by a lot of people. However, the explanation preferred by the scientific community was that somehow the virus “jumped” from a bat in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China.

The only problem is that Wuhan just happens to be the home of the People’s Liberation Army-affiliated Whuan Institute of Virology. This “institute” contains a BSL-4 lab engaged in “gain of function” research funded by EcoHealth Alliance. That company, run by a crony of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases capo di tutti capi Anthony Fauci (see Fauci’s Parting Shot: A $3.3 Million Grant to Peter Daszak and Ecohealth Alliance to Study Bat Corona Viruses and EcoHealth Alliance Raked in Over $46 Million in Government Money Since Start of Pandemic, Investigation Shows), appears to have had a partnership with Wuhan Institute of Virology. Many people thought it damned curious that when the virus broke out, China permitted international flights to and from Wuhan but prohibited domestic flights.

The purpose of the investigation was to find the cause. Still, the subtext of the whole exercise was to “debunk” the theory that COVID originated in a lab primarily managed by the Chinese military. That is to be expected as the World Health Organization acts like it is owned and operated by the Chinese government.

Though the report called the Wuhan lab an “extremely unlikely” source, the investigators found no evidence of the virus could be found in local animals.

Given that there was the same amount of evidence for a laboratory origin as there was for a “wet market” genesis, the “extremely unlikely” description handed out to the laboratory origin hypotheses seems like a political sop to curry favor with the Chinese for further studies.

A second phase of the study was planned to get to the bottom of it all. Except that is not going to happen. The journal Nature announced last week that posted this news item: WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned.

Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn’t going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. “Their hands are really tied.”

…

That July, the WHO sent a circular to member states outlining how it planned to advance origins studies. Proposed steps included assessing wild-animal markets in and around Wuhan and the farms that supplied those markets, as well as audits of labs in the area where the first cases were identified.

But Chinese officials rejected the WHO’s plans, taking particular issue with the proposal to investigate lab breaches. Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said the WHO proposal was not agreed by all member states, and that the second phase should not focus on pathways the mission report had already deemed extremely unlikely.

In short, the Chinese got the answer they wanted in the initial report and saw no purpose in a more detailed investigation. If they didn’t have something to hide, commonsense and self-interest indicates that they would want to cooperate with the studies to find the real origins of the virus. Now they look like OJ Simpson searching for the “real killer.” The fact that the Chinese are pushing the theory that COVID came from a US biolab at Fort Detrick, MD, shows they know the virus was created in a lab. Otherwise, they’d suffer a major beclowning if a natural origin was proven.

At this point, it seems like we will never know with certainty how the COVID virus came to be in a city with a virology lab run by the Chinese military that was researching “gain of function.” It will remain a mystery, much like the motive of the 9/11 hijackers.