On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” journalist Michael Shellenberger discussed his report with Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag citing multiple American government officials that the first people sickened with COVID-19 symptoms were scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who were working on gain-of-function research on coronaviruses similar to SARS when they fell ill and stated that the story is confirmation the story came from the lab.
Shellenberger also stated that “It’s outrageous that we didn’t know this until now, that it had to be leaked to reporters” rather than being disclosed by the government despite “many people in the U.S. government” knowing about it and that he finds it difficult to believe that “senior members of the American medical establishment did not know” about the scientists falling ill.
Shellenberger said, “Well, it’s very exciting, obviously, to be able to break a story this big. Not only did we confirm that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, we also were able to name the first three people sickened by the virus. These were the three scientists that were working with the closest relative of the coronavirus that was ultimately modified through what’s called gain-of-function research, which makes it more infectious. So, it’s — this is conclusive in our view. We have it from multiple sources. It’s outrageous that we didn’t know this until now, that it had to be leaked to reporters rather than having the government, U.S. government, which has apparently known this for quite some time, come clean about this. But at least it’s come out now. But nonetheless, I think we can see that there was censorship. There was disinformation spread about this issue. We now can confirm definitively it came from a lab and the first three scientists sickened by it were the ones who were working to engineer the virus in the first place.”
He added that we need to know exactly who in the government knew this information and when they knew it, but “It’s very hard to believe that these three scientists got sick and that senior members of the American medical establishment did not know that. This is information that now many people in the U.S. government know.”
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