On Sunday, Pompeo said: “There is enormous evidence that that’s where this began,” later adding: “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.”
Donald Trump made a similar unsupported claim on Thursday, saying he was privy to evidence of the pandemic began in a Chinese lab but was not permitted to share it.
NOT SO FAST:
Fauci on Chinese lab origin theory: I don’t get what they’re talking about
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this (virus) could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” Fauci said in an article published Monday. “A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
The 79-year-old Brooklyn native also dismissed the conspiracy theory that the virus was brought into a lab by Chinese scientists, then somehow spun out of control.
“But that means it was in the wild to begin with,” Fauci said. “That’s why I don’t get what they’re talking about (and) why I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.”
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman says evidence suggests coronavirus was not man-made or released from lab
“The weight of evidence — nothing’s conclusive — the weight of evidence is that it was natural and not man-made,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley said of the coronavirus.
“The second issue is, was it accidentally released, did it release naturally into the environment or was it intentional? We don’t have conclusive evidence in any of that, but the weight of evidence is that it was probably not intentional,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.
Five Eyes network contradicts theory Covid-19 leaked from lab
There is no current evidence to suggest that coronavirus leaked from a Chinese research laboratory, intelligence sources have told the Guardian, contradicting recent White House claims that there is growing proof this is how the pandemic began.
The sources also insisted that a “15-page dossier” highlighted by the Australian Daily Telegraph which accused China of a deadly cover up was not culled from intelligence from the Five Eyes network, an alliance between the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
