'On November 18, 2015, the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, said in a different context during a press conference: “Some of these answers would unsettle the population.” The German government's information policy has probably not changed. The people must therefore not expect honest answers from the government if they raised uncomfortable questions. Since March 2020, questions about the role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been asked online, which the established media reflexively disqualify as a conspiracy theory. Something has changed here since May 2021.

  
In the late afternoon of May 24th, 21st the news also made the rounds in the established media:
Is Corona a laboratory accident after all?
    
https://www.rtl.de/cms/corona-ursprung-hat-doch-ein-laborunfall-das-virus-verursacht-4764473.html
   
https://www.t-online.de/gesundheit/krankheiten-symptome/id_89500308/ursprung-der-corona-pandemie-war-es-doch-ein-laborunfall-.html
   
https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/corona-als-laborunfall--uni-studie-empoert--vergleich-mit-impfluege-und-geistheilung-38084284
   
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/bericht-in-den-usa-laborunfall-in-wuhan-koennte-pandemie-ausgeloest-haben-li.160870
   
https://www.n-tv.de/politik/War-die-Corona-Pandemie-ein-Laborunfall-article21722899.html
   
https://www.businessinsider.de/wissenschaft/der-krimi-um-den-ursprung-von-sars-cov-2-enthuellungen-weisen-auf-sicherheitsluecken-in-laboren-in-wuhan-hin-in-denen-an-coronaviren-und-fledermaeusen-geforscht-wird/
   
https://www.news.de/panorama/855893428/coronavirus-news-aktuell-ursprung-von-sars-cov-2-labor-in-wuhan-virus-laut-us-regierungsmitarbeiter-bei-laborunfall-entstanden/1/
   
https://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/13956023-hinweise-verdichten-sich-laborunfall-corona-ursprung-wahrscheinlicher
   
https://www.lr-online.de/nachrichten/boulevard/corona-ursprung-deutscher-professor-spricht-von-labor-unfall-in-china-55215289.html
   
https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/coronavirus/kommt-aus-labor-in-wuhan-uni-professor-veroeffentlicht-studie-zu-corona-ursprung-und-erntet-boese-kritik_id_12998230.html
   
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/drei-forscher-erkrankten-im-november-2019-schwer-ist-doch-ein-laborunfall-der-ausgangspunkt-der-pandemie/27217676.html
   
https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/coronavirus/corona-als-laborunfall-bericht-über-erkrankte-forscher-nährt-spekulationen/ar-AAKklBp?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBqg6Q9
           
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/researchers-at-wuhan-institute-of-virology-hospitalized-in-november-2019-report/
      
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2021/05/24/china-China-Wuhan-Institute-Virology-November-2019-ill/7161621868451/
      
https://ge.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/
      
https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/covid-19_and_the_wuhan_institute_of_virology_19_may_2021.pdf
      
https://nypost.com/2020/04/29/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-studying-coronavirus/

  
https://www.futurezone.de/science/article230432538/Coronavirus-China-hat-es-absichtlich-auf-die-Welt-losgelassen-sagt-Virologin.html
   
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/252545/20200915/new-evidence-covid-19-whistleblower-dr-li-meng-yan-blames-dr-fauci-for-outbreak-coverup.htm
   
https://www.20min.ch/story/chinesische-virologin-hat-beweise-virus-stammt-aus-labor-370443643746
   
https://freedomplatform.tv/dr-li-meng-yan-coronavirus-whistleblower-how-the-chinese-government-covered-up-the-emergence-of-the-sars-cov-2-virus/
 

The President of the USA has ordered the CIA to investigate the role of this institute. If you remember the alleged evidence of the CIA for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, with which the USA justified its war of aggression, which is contrary to international law, one can probably fear a disinformation campaign from this direction.
    
So far I have thought the theories as spread by Li-Meng Yan to be inconceivable. But China was surprisingly well prepared for the situation. In an accident there should have been more chaos and perplexity. But then does Event 201 (see under "Money rules the world!" On "Corona / Politics" - scroll down a bit) from October 18, 2019 and the role of the Pfizer Group have to be viewed in a new light?
   
The US State Department published the following statement on January 15th, 21st:

https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html

2017-2021 ARCHIVED CONTENT
You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online from January 20, 2017 to January 20, 2021.
Content in this archive site is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.
For current information, go to www.state.gov.


Fact Sheet:
Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology

Fact Sheet
Office of the Spokesperson
January 15, 2021


For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.

The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus - known as SARS-CoV-2 - was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure.

The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world. The previously undisclosed information in this fact sheet, combined with open-source reporting, highlights three elements about COVID-19’s origin that deserve greater scrutiny:

1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):

• The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
• Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.
• The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.

2. Research at the WIV:

• Starting in at least 2016 – and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak – WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.
• The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
• WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses.

3. Secret military activity at the WIV:

• Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
• Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.
• The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.

Today’s revelations just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China. Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records.

As the world continues to battle this pandemic – and as WHO investigators begin their work, after more than a year of delays – the virus’s origin remains uncertain. The United States will continue to do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities.

Now is the time to ask the right questions instead of giving hasty answers. The various clues must be carefully sorted. Three possible scenarios are conceivable:

• The zoonosis theory is quite conceivable, but has been shaken by the current publications.
• The suspicion of an accident in the biological weapons laboratory in which the virus would have been unintentionally released is currently gaining in importance.
• Li-Meng Yan's claim that the virus was deliberately spread seems inconceivable, but it is possible.

Even without knowing the details, these three possibilities can be examined for plausibility or contradictions. A few days before May 24th, 21, I put the following text on China's geopolitical goals on this page. My assessment of the information available is based on this assessment. Therefore, the sorting of the pros and cons arguments should be placed after this text.
 

Peter C Gøtzsche from the Institute for Scientific Freedom in Copenhagen comes to the conclusion in his essay “Made in China: the coronavirus that killed millions of people”: “It is very likely that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID 19 pandemic, escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology due to sloppy security procedures. ”(https://www.scientificfreedom.dk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Made-in-China-the-coronavirus -that-killed-millions-of-people.pdf, May 19, 2021) He quotes Nicolas Wade: “The natural emergence was the preferred story of the media until the failed WHO commission in China. The public discourse is finally changing. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN on March 26, 2021 that the 'most likely' cause of the epidemic came 'from a laboratory' because he doubted a bat virus would become an extreme human pathogen could go overnight without taking time to develop. (N. Wade, Origin of Covid - following the clues: Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan? 3 May 2021 - https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 )

On the role of China, you should also refer to the guest contribution by Olaf Opitz from November 17, 2020 on the page https://reitschuster.de/post/corona-china-und-das-schweigen-der-laemmer/, Corona, China and the Silence of the lambs - virus normality in China? Of course, this post had to consist largely of speculation, which I do not endorse. The unclear role of China must also provoke speculation.

It is legitimate to ask about the role of the Chinese government in the corona hysteria. China is the only country to have a government representative for Event 201 (on October 18, 2019 in New York, the Pfizer headquarters of the Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University and the World Economic Forum - more in the text “Money rules the World!” at “Corona / Politik”). And China is undoubtedly the winner of the crisis. Europe and North America have ruined their economies for fear of the virus, and China has filled the void. The assumption that China had deliberately spread the virus could only be based on the quick discovery of a suitable virus, just a short time after Event 201. The country was also well prepared and, for example, was able to open an emergency hospital in Wuhan within two weeks to build, while in Germany it is not possible to build airports (Berlin), train stations (Stuttgart) or opera houses (Hamburg). The hospital's plans must have been in the drawers and the materials ready. The concrete proposals of the event to flood the people with propaganda and to suppress criticism (Matthew Harrington of the public relations agency Edelman put it more softly), were entirely in line with the Chinese policy of suppressing free expression of opinion.

What speaks against the thesis of the origin of the virus from a bio-weapons laboratory is that COVID-19 threatens almost only old and sick people, while bio-weapons are supposed to affect healthy people. Developing such a warfare agent would make no sense. It would be macabre to assume that China wanted to free its aging society from the old people who were a burden on the social system. Even if the Chinese government went over dead bodies in the Tian'anmen massacre on June 3 and 4, 1989 (2,400 deaths) and in the Cultural Revolution (between 85,000 and 240,000 deaths), this approach to solving the demographic problem would be a new dimension.

The preparation of the corona policy by the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer also speaks against this thesis. The Chinese government would not submit to the direction of a US company. At most you would try to use the company for your own goals. China's geopolitical goal is to oust the US from its dominant position. One military route to this end would be suicide. A promising way would be to attack the economy of the West. The economic self-mutilation of Europe and the USA through the lockdown is in China's interests, while the pandemic was well prepared and quickly got under control. Accidental release of the virus would have created more chaos in China as well. This finding is not to suggest that the virus was deliberately spread to hit the economies of Europe and the United States.

As the next step in the economic war, China could attack the dominant position of the US dollar. As the largest creditor in the United States, China should be able to sell its US bonds in a coordinated and covert way, with the preparation of the staff, until the dollar's rate falls. After that, the rest would have to be clearly visible and repelled with considerable loss. The signal that China no longer trusts the dollar would prompt many other investors to flee the dollar as well. With the Biden administration's debt-financed spending programs, the US is making itself even more vulnerable at this point than it already was. The Trump administration defended this front with its approach of protecting the economy first, even under corona conditions. Biden opens his flank here.

If their currency were no longer accepted as a means of payment in world markets, the US would be economically ruined. In contrast, the euro would be saved in this scenario, because the Chinese currency would not be an alternative to the dollar due to its susceptibility to state manipulation, and Japan, Great Britain or Switzerland would be too small for a world reserve currency. It is not certain that China will attack the US in this way. Beijing will also think twice about whether the US and its military might run amok in such a situation. With Presidents Donald Trump or George Bush Jr. that would have been a real danger. China could therefore use the option to destroy the dollar more as a deterrent to increase the US's willingness to compromise. The destabilization of the USA by the corona hysteria was certainly not inconvenient for China. The pretext used to strengthen government support and control over its own people was also welcome.

The defense strategy of the USA is to move the euro zone, Japan and Great Britain to align their indebtedness and thus to keep the risks of all currency areas the same for investors. In the event of an attack on China, however, the ECB in particular would have to buy up the dollar bonds that China would throw on the market. After Lehman and Greece, with the resulting significantly increased money supply, the financing of the corona policy by the ECB was irresponsible. Should she also want to save the US dollar from a Chinese attack soon, the bow would probably be completely overstretched. It is therefore doubtful that China is very impressed with this line of defense.
 
see also:
Attack on the US dollar:
China wants to make the yuan the new world currency
https://www.businessinsider.de/wirtschaft/finanzen/yuan-vs-dollar-china-usa-waehrung-weltwirtschaft-handelskrieg/
 
Against this background, Europe should ask itself whether the Atlantic Alliance still has a future under the changed global conditions. The politics of the USA is to a large extent dependent on the person of the president, who could also act irrationally. There is a real danger that the US will be drawn into military adventures with which it could respond to economic defeat. However, this risk could be countered with a geostrategic realignment.

The goal of foreign policy must be the maintenance of peace. The basic condition for peace in Europe is a constructive and peaceful relationship with Russia. A new Cold War with two enemy camps from the USA with its vassals on the one hand and China with its junior partner Russia on the other must be prevented. If, on the other hand, a Europe-Russia tandem were to take on the international leadership role, China would remain isolated. The euro could replace the US dollar as the reserve currency before China would destroy it. The then inevitable drop in the rate of the dollar would also devalue the Chinese currency reserves (those of the Gulf states as well) and allow the USA a relatively soft landing. The Chinese attack on the global economy could thus be repulsed. After that, however, the USA would have to be content with the role of Europe's junior partner.
 

Now is the time to ask the right questions instead of giving hasty answers. The various clues must be carefully sorted. Even without knowing the details, these three possibilities can be examined for plausibility or contradictions. Three possible scenarios are conceivable:

• The zoonosis theory is quite conceivable, but has been shaken by the current publications.

Per:
In the past (Asian Flu 1957, Hong Kong Flu 1968, Bird Flu 2006, Swine Flu 2009), China has often been the starting point for global waves of infections for which no bioweapons background was previously suspected. The assumption is then that it was the same again at the end of 2019.

Cons:
Nicolas Wade's statements about the too tight time frame in which the bat virus would have to mutate into a pathogen dangerous to humans via a previously unknown intermediate host are plausible. Furthermore, the chain of infection would have to have taken place at the location of a biological weapons laboratory and not via another of the many Chinese wildlife markets; a very strange coincidence.

• The suspicion of an accident in the biological weapons laboratory in which the virus would have been unintentionally released is currently gaining in importance.

Per:
The pro-accident thesis could be supported by the fact that the governments assumed the general harmlessness of corona viruses by the end of February and came to a completely opposite risk assessment within a few days. During this period of time they may have come across intelligence reports about the origin from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but which they have kept secret from people for political reasons. A genetically modified corona virus (actually harmless) could potentially have resulted in a killer virus. The statistics from 2020 should have dispelled this concern.

The US State Department fact sheet dated 1/15/21 (https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html) has in a subordinate clause acknowledged that the institute in Wuhan was also funded from the US and other countries. So contract research will have been carried out here that was too risky for the Americans and Europeans. It is understandable that the governments did not want to disclose this entanglement.

Cons:
After China reported the novel virus to the WHO, very planned and apparently affective measures were taken. An emergency hospital was built within 2 weeks. So the plans must have been in the drawers. That is basically logical in a place where a bioweapons laboratory is located. But then it is illogical to assume sloppy security precautions. It is also illogical that high-risk research is said to have been carried out in a city of over a million people, and that such projects were not outsourced to a branch in a remote area. Even with a rough risk analysis, risk avoidance through outsourcing should have priority over the obviously well-planned damage limitation measures. So if the accident could happen at this location (and not in a remote branch office), then the countermeasures should have worked badly.

• Li-Meng Yan's claim that the virus was deliberately spread seems inconceivable, but it is possible.

Per:
The pro-intention thesis results from the reversal of the contra-accident thesis. If the contradictory nature of the safety measures speaks against an accident, then intent would be logical. But then one would have to ask about the content of the intention. In principle, China could have had an interest in the spread of a virus with the properties of Covid-19. The three researchers could have contracted the virus in the process of spreading rather than developing the virus in November 2019.

Domestic Policy: Demography + Oppression:
The demographic ramifications of the earlier one-child policy are evident. Caring for the many elderly people is a huge burden on the Chinese economy. A virus that is mainly life-threatening for the elderly could solve this problem.
As a totalitarian state, China has an interest in total control of its population. If this control can be justified with health protection and is then accepted by the masses, that strengthens the government. Because the government has control over the statistics, it can always justify its policy with well-dosed reports of success. But then the deliberate deaths in old people would have to be explained with other causes. That would surely be a balancing act.

Foreign policy: weakening of the USA and Europe
One could not assume that a released virus could be limited to China. The worldwide spread should then have at least been accepted as a welcome side effect. It should therefore have been estimated that at least the USA and Europe would view the accumulated fatal illnesses among the elderly not as a relief for the economy, but as a threat to society. From the preparations for Event 201 (on October 18, 2019 in New York, the Pfizer headquarters, hosted by the Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins University and the World Economic Forum), it was known from around summer 2019 that harsh lockdown measures that the economy would take should be recommended to governments in the event of a pandemic. Due to its geopolitical interests, it was in China's interest to damage the US and European economies and to come out of a pandemic declared by the WHO unscathed or even strengthened.

Cons:
Basically speaking against the intention thesis is that this thought would simply be unimaginable.

Domestic Policy: Demography + Oppression:
What speaks against the demographic target is that, according to its corona statistics, China has had deaths since May 2020, not even among old people. Of course the statistics can be controlled; however, because of the respect that Chinese society has for the elderly, increased deaths are noted. It would be expected that serious doubts about the official figures would spread on social networks. That is why this goal must at least have been abandoned, and the protection of the elderly would have succeeded differently than in the USA and Europe.

Foreign policy: weakening of the USA and Europe
If the virus had intentionally spread to weaken its political opponents, China would have concealed its origins. Before 2020, it would not have been a problem to atomize contaminated aerosols that many people would have inhaled in crowded places. Then one would only have had to wait until the unsuspecting American and European doctors noticed the accumulation. Another argument against the intention thesis is that the report to the WHO was made very soon after Event 201. The cultured viruses should have been in stock and the deployment plans should have been in the drawers. The adoption of a concerted approach by the Chinese government and the Pfizer group would be largely unlikely. Both sides could only have tried to use the other for their goals.

The weighing of the pros and cons does not show a conclusive result. You can currently only find contradictions for each thesis.

But it can be said that the governments of this world want to avoid discussion on this topic. They are afraid of citizens who ask them uncomfortable questions. Above all, they are afraid of situations in which they cannot give their citizens what they consider to be satisfactory answers. They treat citizens like underage toddlers from whom they have to withhold the truth. The truth is no secret: we will all die - one day! The only open question is whether this day is near or far. Nobody will live forever!

What politicians, regardless of whether they are Angela Merkel, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, cannot endure are dissenting opinions. In the case of a new disease or another unknown problem, one would first have to expect a controversial discussion about what to think of this threat situation and what measures should be taken. The controversial technical discussion was suppressed as well as the broad discussion in the population. Have people ever been asked whether they want to be locked up one after the other, whether they would accept the risk of premature death for their freedom? After all, people also risk a traffic accident while driving, and hardly anyone would allow themselves to be banned from driving.

Even if an artificial and dangerous virus were created on purpose, it would not be possible to hide from it forever. One would have to learn to live with it. And people have a right to know the truth.