[Firebot]

I don't like bumping such threads that haven't had updates in nearly a year, but I think considering the topic it's really the best one, and it's quite a major revelation worthy of a bump, from a traditionally reputable trustworthy news source.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chin...-show-9bca8865

EXCLUSIVE
CHINA
Chinese Lab Mapped Deadly Coronavirus Two Weeks Before Beijing Told the World, Documents Show
The lead time could have proved critical in combating pandemic, specialists say
By
Warren P. Strobel
Updated Jan. 17, 2024 4:14 pm ET

WASHINGTON—Chinese researchers isolated and mapped the virus that causes Covid-19 in late December 2019, at least two weeks before Beijing revealed details of the deadly virus to the world, congressional investigators said, raising questions anew about what China knew in the pandemic’s crucial early days.

Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by a House committee and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus’s structure to a U.S. government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019. Chinese officials at that time were still publicly describing the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, as a viral pneumonia “of unknown cause” and had yet to close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, site of one of the initial Covid-19 outbreaks.

If this is accurate, China government officials thus deliberately withheld crucial information on covid-19 that could have been vital on potentially stopping it, and had even nearly fully sequenced it in late December, 2 weeks before handing it to the WHO. The key error and slip up seems to be uploading the sequence to a database that the US had access to, that would have otherwise been covered up.

It also puts further scrutiny on its origins and the closing of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market as being potentially theatre

Note the WHO timeline

https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html.

December 31, 2019
The World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in China is informed of several cases of a pneumonia of unknown etiology (cause) with symptoms including shortness of breath and fever occurring in Wuhan, China. All initial cases seem connected to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

January1, 2020
The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan is closed amid worries in China of a reprise of the 2002–2004 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus or SARS-CoV-1) outbreak.

January 3, 2020
China informs WHO that they have identified over 40 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology.

January 7, 2020
Public health officials in China identify a novel coronavirus as the causative agent of the outbreak.

CDC establishes an incident management structure to guide their response to the novel coronavirus by following the preparedness plan for developing tests and managing cases made for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

January 11, 2020
WHO tweets that it has received the genetic sequences of the novel coronavirus from China and expects that the information will shortly become publicly available.

CDC updates its Travel Health Notice (THN) system for persons traveling to Wuhan, China to Level 1 or “practice usual precautions.”

China reports the first death from the novel coronavirus and publishes a draft genome of the newly discovered coronavirus suspected of causing the outbreak. By January 12, 2020, four other genomes have been uploaded to the viral sequence database curated by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID).