The same Dr. Embarek who led the WHO experts to Wuhan and dismissed the theory now says in a shocking interview that he has changed his mind.
by Massimo Introvigne
It was August 12, and the government-owned Danish television TV2 dropped a bomb whose shockwaves China immediately tried to stop.
Readers of Bitter Winter may remember our criticism of the Danish World Health Organization (WHO) chief expert Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, who led the ill-fated WHO expedition to Wuhan and announced to the world in a press conference that the WHO team believed that the origin in a Chinese laboratory of the COVID-19 virus was “extremely unlikely”—because the CCP scientists told them so.
We treated Dr. Embarek harshly. In the interest of fairness, we are now applauding him for having admitted to his national TV that he was wrong, or rather accepted a diktat by the Chinese.
Embarek told TV2 that the pandemic “may well have been started by an employee at one of the city’s laboratories who has been infected by a bat either during fieldwork or at one of the laboratories in Wuhan.”
While the WHO Wuhan report describes the theory of laboratory origin as “extremely unlikely,” now Embarek called it “probable” and “a likely scenario.”
Embarek maintained that he was not wrong when he told the world that the virus originated with bats. However, now he believes that a “laboratory employee” working with bats was the probable “Patient Zero” of COVID-19.
It is important to note that Embarek did not say (nor did Bitter Winter ever argued) that the virus was deliberately produced and spread by the CCP. What Embarek (and Bitter Winter) argue is that it was a mistake made by one or more employees of a Wuhan laboratory—but one that created at least four million victims, destroyed entire national economies, and changed all our lives in a dramatic way. What was and remains deliberate is the extraordinary effort made by the CCP to hide the truth.
Embarek now argues (as others did well before his Wuhan trip) that the bat that is known to have transmitted the coronavirus to humans is the so-called horseshoe bat, and that the problem is that “none of that type of horseshoe bat live outdoors in the Wuhan area, and the only people who are known to have been close to horseshoe bats are employees of the city’s laboratories.”
Embarek revealed that the WHO experts visited two laboratories in Wuhan, and believe both had worked with horseshoe bats. “We did not get to look at laboratory books or documents directly from the laboratory. We got a presentation, and then we talked about and asked the questions we wanted to ask, but we did not get to look at any documentation at all,” Embarek told TV2.
Although the laboratory at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology has received the most attention, Embarek said that the second laboratory, operated by the Chinese Disease Control Center, should also be considered. “Their last publication about working with bats was from 2013, but that does not mean that they have not worked with bats since. As far as we understand, they work mostly with parasites, and not so much with viruses, but that also means they work with parasites from bats,” Embarek said.
He reported that during the visit, he asked the Chinese “How old is this laboratory?” They answered, “It’s from December 2019. There, we moved to these new laboratories on December 2, 2019.” “It is interesting that the laboratory moved on December 2, 2019, commented Embarek. This is the period when it all started, and you know that when you move a laboratory, it is disruptive to everything. You also have to move the virus collection, sample collection, and other collections from one place to another. The whole procedure is always a disruptive element in a laboratory’s daily workflow, so at some point it will also be interesting to look at that period and this laboratory.”
But that may prove impossible, because the Chinese did not allow then and will likely not allow in the future a real “investigation.” “In the beginning, added Embarek, they did not want that we write anything about the laboratory theory. They say a laboratory origin was impossible, and therefore one should not waste time on it,” added Embarek. In the end, they were allowed by the Chinese to include a reference to the laboratory theory, but only by declaring it “extremely unlikely.” This conclusion was reached after hours of negotiations, Embarek said. “It’s probably because it means that there is a human error behind such an incident, and they are not very happy to admit it. There is partly the traditional Asian feeling that you should not lose face, and then the whole system also focuses a lot on the fact that China is infallible and that everything must be perfect. It could also be that someone wants to hide something. Who knows?”
What we know about the origins of COVID-19, the Danish scientist said, is that it originated with bats in Wuhan, and that the particular bats identified as responsible do not roam free in Wuhan outside of the laboratories.
To conclusively prove, but also to disprove, the laboratory theory, the WHO should receive “a completely different level of cooperation on the part of the Chinese,” the scientist said. “One should check safety books, laboratory books, research plans and bio collections. You go through it all and interview all the employees separately.”
The WHO is now requesting a second mission to Wuhan, and full access to these data. China has already answered negatively, and has intensified propaganda claiming that the COVID-19 was artificially produced by the U.S. in the Fort Detrick military laboratory.
The bomb thrown by Embarek has exploded. Its implications are enormous. Even the China-friendly WHO now recognizes that the laboratory origin theory is “likely” and “probable.” This is tantamount to admit that the slogan “China lied, millions died” “likely” reflected the truth. What is unbelievable, rather than the laboratory theory, is that the world seems to be busy with things less important than making China accountable for more than four million victims and the worst disaster that affected our lives and our economies in the last century.