Tucker Carlson: Chinese conceal source of coronavirus

Tucker Carlson (Screenshot Fox News)

The Chinese government is claiming the coronavirus is an American invention and that it might even have been the U.S. Army that brought it to China.

But Fox News host Tucker Carlson points out Chinese officials previously acknowledged the origin of the virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan, possibly from a science lab.

Zhao Lijian, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, charged Wednesday it was "extremely irresponsible" for media to say the virus originated in China, saying his government "is still tracing the origin of the virus and there is no conclusion yet."

Thursday he doubled down, with the claim it came from the the U.S. Army.

Carlson reminded viewers it was China that first claimed the virus originated at an animal lab in Wuhan:

"As the death toll rises, it's important never to forget how we got here. This pandemic came out of China and it came out of China for a reason. It's a country with poor health practices. It's a country where government officials deliberately covered up the early stages of the virus when it could have been stopped before it spread out of control. In fact the outbreak may have begun not in a public meat market, but in a poorly run Chinese laboratory. That's not our theory. Anyone who raises that theory on American television is attacked as a conspiracy monger. But this is a theory from a now-censored Chinese paper. In a draft paper posted in mid-February, scientists at the South China University of Technology suggested the virus outbreak, coronavirus outbreak, began at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, where an animal may have infected a researcher, who then spread the virus outside the facility."

He quoted from the paper, "The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan."

See his comments:

Carlson said, "We have no idea if that's actually true, but again those were Chinese researchers, making an evidence-based argument about the origin of this virus.

"That paper's since been taken down, no explanation has been offered for that but you can guess," he said.

He said that instead, China now is blaming the U.S. and making threats about withholding components used for medicines.

He said the American media also is to blame for claiming "xenophobia" for calling it the Wuhan or Chinese coronavirus.

Zhao Lijian made his latest claims on Twitter Thursday:

1/2 CDC Director Robert Redfield admitted some Americans who seemingly died from influenza were tested positive for novel #coronavirus in the posthumous diagnosis, during the House Oversight Committee Wednesday. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 12, 2020

2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 12, 2020

A top Trump adviser charged the Chinese Communist Party's initial efforts to cover-up and minimize the outbreak may have contributed to its global spread, the Washington Examiner reported.

"This outbreak in Wuhan was covered up. It probably cost the world community two months [during which officials could have been working to contain it]," said National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien.

"If we'd had those [two months] and been able to sequence the virus, and had the cooperation necessary from the Chinese, had a WHO team been on the ground, had a CDC team, which we'd offered, been on the ground, I think we could have dramatically curtailed what happened both in China and what's now happening across the world," O'Brien said.