I wrote here about the Lockdown Files, leaked WhatsApp messages among Britain’s politicians and bureaucrats regarding that country’s covid shutdowns. The files show that Britain’s government deliberately instilled fear in order to justify lockdowns (“When do we deploy the new variant?”). But the latest revelation is among the most significant yet.
The Telegraph reports, with links in the original:
Matt Hancock was censored by the Cabinet Office over his concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic began with a lab leak in Wuhan, the Lockdown Files reveal.
The former health secretary was told to tone down claims in his book because the Government feared it would “cause problems” with China.
Mr Hancock wanted to say that the Chinese explanation – that the virus being discovered close to a government science lab in Wuhan was coincidental – “just doesn’t fly”.
But, in correspondence from late last year and leaked to the Telegraph, the Cabinet Office told him that the Government’s position was that the original outbreak’s location was “entirely coincidental”.
It is the first time that the British position has been categorically stated. Mr Hancock was warned that to differ from this narrative, which resembles China’s version of events, risked “damaging national security”.
In his book, Pandemic Diaries, Mr Hancock also wanted to write that “Global fear of the Chinese must not get in the way of a full investigation into what happened” but this too was watered down.
In the U.S., like the U.K., fear of the Chinese led government to suppress the obvious explanation for the Wuhan virus, i.e., an inadvertent escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research on bat viruses, including gain of function research, was under way. In this country, along with misleading pronouncements from the likes of Anthony Fauci, that suppression took the form of government agencies working through social media and tech companies to censor any discussion that deviated from the party line.
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