The U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C) has revealed that the Chinese government not only knew of the COVID-19 virus weeks before admitting its existence, but that Chinese researchers had already sequenced the virus's genome. The genome, of course, not only yields clues as to the origins of the virus but may also show genetic relationships to known viruses.

The genetic work was done in the late fall/early winter of 2019, two weeks before the Chinese government admitted the existence of the virus.

House Republicans said Thursday that the genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was isolated and mapped by researchers in China in late December 2019, two weeks before Beijing revealed the existence of the deadly virus to global public health authorities.

The revelation does not settle the debate on whether the virus originated from nature or was the result of a laboratory accident. It adds to suspicions, though, that China’s government knew more details about the virus in the earlier stages of the pandemic than it has let on. 

“This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that released the documents. McMorris Rodgers said the new information proves the need for improved oversight of grant research funding and biosecurity practices.

This finding comes at a time when Dr. Anthony Fauci is being (rightly) grilled by Congress over the United States' COVID lockdowns, and while some in government are again floating the idea of mask mandates.

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The viruses' genome mapping and other initial research work, the House E&C Committee has learned, took place in a research lab near Beijing that has ties to the Chinese Communist Party. 

The sequence was submitted by Dr. Lili Ren, an accomplished virologist at the Institute of Pathogen Biology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army. She is also a current subgrantee of non-profit EcoHealth Alliance on the same National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) grant as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has been debarred from receiving NIH grants for ten years for failing to provide laboratory records requested by NIH and for conducting research that “did lead or could lead to health issues or other unacceptable outcomes.” 

And again, the Wuhan Institute of Virology rears its head.

Bottom line: The Chinese government has shown, time and again, that it cannot be trusted to deal honestly with other nations. In a pandemic, no matter what the origin of the pathogen in question, the necessary immediate action is to spread information on the virus and treatments as far and as quickly as possible; China failed in this, and it's hard to see their actions as anything but an attempt to conceal the possible origins of the COVID-19 virus. And it's not just the Chinese government that is implicated; the E&C Committee's own "Key Takeaways" implicate the Biden administration as well:

• The existence of a SARS-CoV-2 sequence days before the CCP acknowledged an outbreak, and more than two weeks before the China CDC release their sequence, calls into question how early the CCP knew about the virus and how long they withheld this information from the world, resulting in more deaths and wasting critical time to develop vaccines and treatments.
• The NIH’s system for monitoring GenBank submissions is insufficient as the United States had an early SARS-CoV-2 sequence in our possession and apparently had no idea. 
• The Biden administration, the NIH, and HHS have obstructed and delayed Congressional investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, refused to produce this sequence for over seven months, and only released it to the Committee after the Committee threatened to subpoena the sequence.

Everything around the COVID outbreak, it seems, has been a tissue of whoppers from not only the Chinese Communist Party but from the United States government, and all over a virus that is less lethal than the 1918 flu that killed an estimated 25 million, or the Black Death, which likewise killed an estimated 25 million.

The COVID-19 virus, while it can cause more severe symptoms, especially in the elderly and the immuno-compromised, is similar in structure to the COVID viruses that cause about 20 percent of the syndrome known as the "common cold," although a type called the rhinovirus is more commonly the cause of that syndrome.