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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsState Department releases cable that helped spread claims coronavirus emerged from Chinese lab
The State Department has released a 2018 diplomatic cable noting that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had "a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory."
Contents of the 2-year-old cable, which were leaked earlier this year, provided fodder for unproven allegations from members of the Trump administration and Congress that the coronavirus may have escaped from the lab at the epicenter of the virus.
The January 2018 cable, obtained by the Washington Post after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, noted that ties between the WIV and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston could help alleviate the shortage and that, reportedly, the US-based institution was training technicians to work at the WIV.
A second cable about the WIV from April 2018 cited a French official who said that "French experts have provided guidance and biosafety training to the lab, which will continue."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/state-department-releases-cable-that-helped-spread-claims-coronavirus-emerged-from-chinese-lab/ar-BB16UHTx?li=BBnb7Kz
Even if that's true it doesn't excuse their inept handling of the virus.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,011 posts)The tRump regime closed a liaison office of some kind in 2018 that was specifically about infectious diseases. They effectively fired their observer in Beijing in July 2019.
They want to blame China for a problem they were warned about but did nothing about.
Nevilledog
(51,122 posts)ProfessorGAC
(65,076 posts)If they had that cable, the last thing they would do is pull US observers/assistance out.
The only logical conclusion is that they themselves didn't believe it was a problem.
If it wasn't a problem then, it's not the cause now.