Chinese have finally admitted Covid may have come from a lab – shame on the liberals that labelled it ‘wacky’
IT is only three years since the world shut down.
And we still don’t know for sure where Covid came from or what can be done to stop it from happening again.
But a startling comment today should interest everyone.
One of China’s top scientists finally said what many have long suspected.
For more than three years the Chinese Communist Party has fiercely denied the virus came from its lab in Wuhan.
It has always preferred the claim that it came from a wet market that just happened to be near the laboratory where work on Covid-like viruses was going on.
Now, in an interview, Prof George Gao, from China’s Centre for Disease Control, finally said that the lab theory cannot be ruled out.
That might sound like a small admission. But it isn’t.
The fact that someone so central to China’s pandemic response has said this makes it a major event.
And it suggests that China knows it has to pivot on its ridiculous claims about the virus.
Because ever since Covid first emerged there have been claims and counter-claims.
Early in the pandemic, before lockdowns came, senior officials in the US and other countries said the fact the virus had come from Wuhan could not be a coincidence.
I wrote as much in these pages and well remember some of the fury this common sense provoked.
But the official story soon changed. Or rather what was acceptable to say about the story changed.
And that was because Donald Trump was in the White House and a section of the world would agree with anything so long as Trump did not say it.
Early in 2020 Trump kept referring to the fact that the virus had come from China.
“The China virus” was one way in which he referred to it.
He wanted to show simply that the virus and its results were not his fault and were beyond his control.
That included keeping open the possibility that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan and that the question was whether it was deliberate or accidental.
By the time Trump shut down the American economy, members of his administration were openly saying that the lab-leak theory might be true. They were right to say so.
But the reaction from Trump’s political opponents was predictable.
If Trump said something then it could not possibly be true.
When Trump connected the virus to China his opponents said that this was “anti-Asian” language and likely to cause “hate crimes”.
Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats ended up telling people they should go to their local Chinatown areas to show they opposed Trump.
In Italy, one left-wing politician even told people to go and hug the nearest person from China.
Not a piece of advice that turned out to do much good.
But that was how people responded to Trump.
So when he and members of his administration said the lab-leak theory was still on the table, activists and politicians who opposed him said it was a “conspiracy theory”.
Every effort was put into pretending the lab leak was a wacky, way-out-there claim.
They even said it was something only raised by bigots and racists.
It was one of the most idiotic and hopeless reactions of our time.
All the while, the Chinese Communist Party found this incredibly helpful.
While America and Britain were arguing about whether the lab leak could remain a possible explanation for the virus, the CCP got on with its work.
This included a massive cover-up.
Because while we were distracted, the CCP vanished leading scientists and journalists who were looking into the theory.
Soon critics of the lab-leak theory talked about a lack of evidence.
Almost always failing to say that one reason the evidence might not be lying around was because the Chinese authorities had wiped it away.
And that is why today’s comments matter.
They matter firstly because it is important that someone so close to China’s official response accepts that the reason for the virus remains open.
Second, it matters because it suggests the CCP might have to allow for the fact that the idea the virus came from a wet market does not hold up.
Perhaps they know that the truth about the virus must one day come out.
But most of all it matters because the world has to remain focused on stopping this from ever happening again.
It is so easy to get distracted by local political hatreds or big bogey-men figures such as Trump.
But on the question of the virus, we can’t afford to be distracted. We never could be.
We need to know where it came from. We need to know how on earth it came out.
We need to know what the CCP has in place, if anything, to stop it from happening again.
Because the world cannot afford to again go through what we went through in 2020.
To avoid it we need answers. Perhaps we just inched closer to one.
OH BOY, WHAT A MESS
PERHAPS the stupidest argument of our time just got stupider still.
The first thing we recognise as a species is “boy or girl”.
Yet in recent years, because of a tiny number of people who identify as “trans”, we have to pretend that we don’t know what a boy or a girl is.
Or, to use the idiotic language being pushed on us, there is no such thing as sex, only “sex assigned at birth”.
As though bigoted, “transphobic” nurses and doctors just pluck a sexual identity from the air and force it on to the blank slate of a child.
Now a GP’s surgery in Birmingham has allowed parents to decide the sex of their baby.
The options include “male (including trans man), female (including trans woman), non-binary” and “other (not listed)”.
What is the point?
Apart from a tiny number of cases, the sex of a child is obvious as soon as they are born.
The other sexes on the list are either non-existent (such as “non-binary”) or an identity decision for an adult to make.
No child is simply born in the wrong body. Much less is this fact obvious at birth.
All this will cause is a great amount of confusion among most parents.
Plus an even bigger confusion among parents who are already deeply confused and who think they can make a child whatever they want it to be.
You wanted a boy but you got a girl? No problem. Let’s all pretend it’s a “trans man”.
The fact we are even having this discussion tells me we must be off our collective heads.
DEAD SEXY?
A NEW study in America has found that one in eight men under 35 have taken a condom to a funeral “just in case”.
US condom brand Trojan released the research this week, suggesting a significant number of young men like to keep their options open whatever the circumstances.
Just when you thought that an answer to a “How did you meet” question couldn’t be more embarrassing . . .
Time to ’dile down the adventuring
AN Australian man has survived an attack in open water by a crocodile.
Marcus McGowan, 51, says he thought at first he had been bitten by a shark.
“But when I reached up I realised it was a crocodile. I was able to lever its jaws open just far enough to get my head out,” he said.
Geez. Not the sort of holiday snap most people are looking for.
NO ONE IS THAT LOVELY
THE ITV This Morning scandal just keeps rolling on.
But one thing people haven’t noted is that it is more proof of a fairly reliable rule.
Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby have both been attacked by lots of their colleagues in recent days for being rude, aloof and more.
And I must say this confirms something I have long noticed.
Which is that most people who have a reputation for being absolutely adorable on TV are anything but in real life.
There are too many examples to cite, but it is a reliable rule.
Whenever an adult is too chirpy and goody-goody and spotless it’s usually the case that it’s an on-air act.
And all the normal human feelings they suppress come out in torrents whenever they are off air.
Whenever someone seems too good to be true, it’s a pretty reliable rule they are.
BANKS OWE US ..AGAIN
IS your bank short-changing you? A new study from Which? suggests it might be.
According to the consumer bible, high street banks such as Barclays are not keeping their savers accounts in line with increasing interest rates.
That means you might be missing out on hundreds of pounds a year.
All because the banks aren’t passing on rate changes to their savers.
I wonder whether someone in the Government or Bank of England could remind certain of our banks that we all bailed them out 15 years ago.
And that it was their dodgy practices that almost crashed the world economy.
In other words, they should remember they owe us. Certainly they should not be short-changing us.