Is COVID-19 Lab Leak a Conspiracy Theory?

Over the last few years there have been an inordinate number of silly conspiracy theories covering everything from the 2016 US Presidential election to Ted Cruz’s Father being involved in the JFK assassination.

At PartisanIssues we stick to facts and avoid opinion so let us state unequivocally it is our formal position that in todays world of instant communication and cameras everywhere, it is virtually impossible to keep all but the smallest conspiracies private.  There are just too many prying eyes and big ego’s to keep large scale secrets between more than a few people.

As such, when COVID conspiracy nonsense started to gain traction in the spring of 2020, we ignored it as just more bored, sad, people trying to either gain attention or make sense of a world seemingly gone mad.  In fact, to help keep the facts straight we created an a timeline of the first 50 days of COVID as the facts were understood in February of 2020.

CLICK TO EXPAND GRAPHIC:

However, we keep hearing from reasonable people that it is unlikely (some say VERY unlikely) that COVID19 came out of the Wuhan wet market for a number of good reasons; the most compelling of which is that to date, there has not been a single animal found with COVID in or near that market.

Further, there are reasonable actual scientists with real Western credentials saying that it makes more sense that COVID was accidentally released from the Level 4 (i.e. most high risk) Viral Infection lab in Wuhan because:

1. that lab was PUBLICLY working on Corona “gain of function” research since at least 2015 SOURCE: The Journal Nature
   • scientists try to boost a virus’ ability to infect human cells so that they can figure out how to combat potential future mutations
2. the World Health Organization determined that COVID-19 was most effective on humans which is very very unusual as normally animal to human virus transmissions occur in viruses that are most effective on animals SOURCE: BBC
3. that lab has the largest number of Corona viruses in the world
4. China PUBLICLY destroyed large amounts of lab samples and data SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
5. China has refused to allow investigators access to the virology database used by that lab  SOURCE: BBC
6. in 2017 the United States became aware that lab was “… doing classified research for the Chinese Military” SOURCE: Washington Post
7. China has now admitted that several researchers in the lab “…became sick with flu like symptoms in the fall of 2019…”, weeks before the public outbreak. SOURCE: NBC News & US Department of State
   • China has apparently refused to clarify what virus infected those researchers

Recently there have been articles from reputable sources including the BBC, Forbes, NPR, CNN, CTV and many many more explaining the Lab Leak theory, but we recently found the following interview with Jamie Metzl who is a member of the World Health Organization and does an excellent job of explaining the indicators that COVID19 was LIKELY accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

What we find useful about Mr Metzl, is his rational non-inflamitory statements, that he is a reputed scientist and is NOT saying that the leak definitiviely came from the lab.  He is simply saying the leak LIKELY came from the lab, so given the global devastation, we NEED to have a full unfettered investigation of the matter.

If you have access to Spotify, click HERE and listen to the first 50 minutes of a longer, wider interview.  If you don’t have access to Spotify, here is a 15 minute excerpt on YouTube:

To be clear, like Jamie Metzl, we are NOT saying that the source of COVID19 was the Wuhan lab.  We are simply asking for calm, non-partisan scientists to rationally consider all of the facts and make a reasoned determination.