A military report, recently unearthed, suggests that seven American military personnel may have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in October 2019, months before the pandemic was officially declared.
This revelation, which contradicts previous public statements by the Biden administration, was hidden from the public eye, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The report, dated December 2022, was legally mandated to be released to the public over two years ago. It discloses that these seven military service members exhibited symptoms akin to COVID-19 during or after their participation in the World Military Games in Wuhan. This contradicts the Biden administration's 2021 claims that there was no evidence of any American participants contracting the virus during the games.
This revelation strengthens the growing body of evidence suggesting that the virus was present in Wuhan months before China officially reported it in December 2019. It also supports the increasingly accepted theory that the virus could have leaked from a Chinese lab into the human population.
The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act required the Biden administration to make its report on the 2019 Wuhan World Military Games publicly available online in a searchable format by the summer of 2022. However, the report only saw the light of day in late March when it was quietly uploaded to a Defense Department website by the Trump administration, despite copies of the report being transmitted to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in December 2022.
The Defense Department has been tight-lipped about the potential COVID-19 illnesses among the American participants in the Wuhan World Military Games. Chinese authorities have suggested since as early as February 2020 that America could have introduced COVID-19 into Wuhan through their participation in the World Military Games. John Kirby, former Biden Defense Department spokesman, told the Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had "no knowledge" of any COVID-19 infections among the troops that participated in those games.
Similar statements were issued by the first Trump administration regarding the Wuhan games. In June 2020, the Pentagon told the Prospect that it did not test any of the American troops that participated in the games because they were held "prior to the reported outbreak."
The games took place near the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Chinese scientists, funded by U.S. taxpayers, conducted risky gain-of-function research on the same type of bat coronaviruses that caused the pandemic. This research, supported by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, "almost certainly caused COVID-19," according to Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University professor of chemical biology.
The American military athletes traveled to and from Wuhan via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a fact noted by the Prospect, given that Washington was one of the earliest COVID-19 hotspots in the country.
The report suggests that other respiratory infections could have caused the COVID-like symptoms exhibited by the seven service members. It also states that there was no "statistically significant difference" in COVID-like cases at the military bases where these soldiers were stationed compared to those without them. All seven soldiers recovered from their symptoms within six days.
The Pentagon has not disclosed when it discovered the potential illnesses and declined to comment on the matter.
The revelation that U.S. troops may have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan during the October 2019 games could have been welcomed by U.S. allies. Military athletes from Germany, France, Italy, and Luxembourg who competed in the October 2019 games also reported experiencing COVID-19-like symptoms during their stay in Wuhan, which they described as a "ghost town," according to the Daily Mail.
Ebright, a prominent academic proponent of the theory that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, expressed his outrage that the Biden administration concealed crucial information about the first potential American cases of the virus from the public amid the ongoing debate over the pandemics origins.
"It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information when it became available in 2022, but, instead, withheld this information for the duration of their terms," Ebright stated.
"This new information strengthens U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that COVID-19 was circulating in Wuhan in October-November 2019, U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that researchers working with genetically enhanced SARS viruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology contracted COVID-19 in October-November 2019, and phylogenomic data indicating that the virus that causes COVID-19 entered humans in July-November 2019."
Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) echoed Ebright's sentiment, stating that the reports findings discredit the theory that COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan wet market in December 2019.
"Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years," Ernst said. "This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders. If Americans visiting Wuhan were potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus in October 2019, those claiming the pandemic began in a wet market just two months later would be completely off base."
Congressional Republicans have long since concluded that the 2019 Wuhan World Military Games served as "one of the earliest super spreader events" of the pandemic, with House Foreign Affairs Republicans issuing its findings on the matter in August 2021.
The Defense Department uploaded the report in late March to a section of its website dedicated to "quality-of-life" issues for military service members and their families. The Wuhan World Military Games report is sandwiched between two separate reports on military spouses obtaining occupational licenses.
Several federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, and Energy Department, suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This report, and the subsequent revelations it contains, only serve to strengthen this belief, casting a shadow over the Biden administration's handling of the pandemic's origins.
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