{"id":1868867,"date":"2023-03-06T05:11:09","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T10:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/china-continues-to-block-us-probe-into-origins-of-covid-19-lawmakers-say\/"},"modified":"2023-03-06T05:15:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T10:15:17","slug":"china-continues-to-block-us-probe-into-origins-of-covid-19-lawmakers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/china-continues-to-block-us-probe-into-origins-of-covid-19-lawmakers-say\/","title":{"rendered":"China Continues to Block US Probe Into Origins of COVID-19, Lawmakers Say"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchina-continues-to-block-us-probe-into-origins-of-covid-19-lawmakers-say%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1868867&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<div>\n<p>The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to hamper U.S. efforts to determine the origin of\u00a0COVID-19, according to Reps. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and\u00a0Mike Turner (R-Ohio).<\/p>\n<p>These comments were made by the lawmakers during an appearance.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/meet-the-press\/video\/march-5-reps-mike-turner-and-jim-himes-gov-chris-sununu-164507205672\">NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221;<\/a> Himes reported it on March 5. &#8220;may be forever&#8221; Washington didn&#8217;t know exactly from where the virus was born.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have so few facts because the Chinese regime has obfuscated,&#8221; said Himes,\u00a0the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday&#8217;s interview came after reports last month that the\u00a0Department of Energy (DOE) had allegedly concluded in a\u00a0classified document\u00a0sent to the White House that a\u00a0lab leak was the likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>The Wall Street Journal\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/amp\/articles\/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a\">reported<\/a>\u00a0On February 26, a classified document was released and intelligence personnel informed the publication that they were aware of the existence. &#8220;low confidence&#8221; In the conclusion it is stated that there are no absolute guarantees in the laboratory leak theory.<\/p>\n<p>Turner stated during Sunday&#8217;s NBC interview (Sunday, NBC) that no official statement from the DOE confirmed or denied the alleged classified documents.<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018No Direct Evidence&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;But let&#8217;s assume that they did,&#8221; Turner stated. &#8220;In all of this, because there&#8217;s no direct evidence, we don&#8217;t have China admitting it, we don&#8217;t have [the] Wuhan lab handing these things over, all this is being assessed by looking at other aspects of the release.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wuhan is the capital of central China&#8217;s Hubei Province and home to multiple laboratories, including the\u00a0Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). COVID-19 was first\u00a0identified in an outbreak in\u00a0the city in December 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Some U.S. intelligence officers have suggested that COVID-19 may have originated from Wuhan, but others believe it is natural.<\/p>\n<p>In February,\u00a0FBI Director Christopher Wray <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/fbi-assessed-covid-19-pandemic-likely-spread-from-wuhan-lab-fbi-director_5090477.html\">confirmed<\/a> According to the bureau, the probable origin of the virus is likely to be from Africa. &#8220;lab incident&#8221; in Wuhan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origin of the pandemic are [sic] most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,&#8221; Fox News interviewed Wray, who added that &#8220;work related to this continues and there are not a whole lot [of] details that are unclassified.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wray, like Himes and\u00a0Turner, also noted that the Chinese regime has been\u00a0&#8220;doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate&#8221; U.S. and other\u00a0foreign nations&#8217; efforts to probe the origins of COVID-19.<\/p>\n<h2>There is a debate over COVID-19 origins<\/h2>\n<p>However, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has\u00a0said\u00a0that it &#8220;was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus\u2014a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the Chinese regime has long\u00a0dismissed the possibility of a lab leak and has accused Washington of &#8220;disregarding science,&#8221; Fake news and a propaganda campaign to attack Beijing.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the CCP\u00a0has also not allowed an\u00a0independent investigation of\u00a0WIV.<\/p>\n<p>This is despite the fact that there are many other ways to do it.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/2017-2021.state.gov\/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fact sheet<\/a>\u00a0released by the U.S. State Department on Jan. 15 stating that several researchers at the facility\u00a0fell ill with symptoms similar to those caused by COVID-19\u00a0in the autumn of 2019. The same fact sheet also noted that WIV has\u00a0worked on secret projects with the Chinese military, including classified animal experiments since at least early 2017.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have so few facts that inevitably different agencies are going to arrive at different conclusions,&#8221; Himes spoke on Sunday. &#8220;And when an agency slightly adjusts its interpretation as the Department of Energy may have done, that doesn&#8217;t mean that all of a sudden the government has a firm view. It may be forever before we actually know exactly what happened.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> &#8230;..<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p> Continue reading more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/china-continues-to-block-us-probe-into-origins-of-covid-19-lawmakers-say_5101780.html?utm_source=partner&#038;utm_campaign=conservnewsd\">China Continues to Block US Probe Into Origins of COVID-19, Lawmakers Say<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:11px\"><em>&#8220;The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author of the article and not necessarily shared or endorsed by Conservative News Daily&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to hamper U.S. efforts to determine the origin of\u00a0COVID-19, according to Reps. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and\u00a0Mike Turner (R-Ohio). These comments were made by the lawmakers during an appearance.\u00a0NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; Himes reported it on March 5. &#8220;may be forever&#8221; Washington didn&#8217;t know exactly from where the virus was &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":1895429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[543],"tags":[4728,4501,7046,3774,3673,6702,4083],"class_list":["post-1868867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-epoch-times","tag-block","tag-china","tag-continues","tag-covid-19","tag-lawmakers","tag-origins","tag-probe"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1868867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1895429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1868867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1868867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1868867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}