To: ggersh who wrote (63241 ) 2/22/2020 6:19:15 PM From: Elroy Jetson Respond to of 71426 On Saturday, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology issued a directive mandating more stringent handling of viruses and bioagents by all labs and research institutes . - asiatimes.com The document alluded to the slack oversight and management rampant at some facilities, and stressed that protection and decontamination must be beefed up. Richard Ebright, a biology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told the BBC that the coronavirus was a cousin of one found in bats captured by the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory in caves in the southwestern province of Yunnan in 2003, and that samples had been kept in the Wuhan lab since 2013. A paper published in 'The Lancet' at the end of last month quoted seven doctors at Wuhan’s Jinyintan Hospital saying the first patient admitted on December 1 had “never been to the wet market,” nor had there been any epidemiological link between the first patient and subsequent infection cases, based on the data from the first 41 patients treated there. In fact, China has specifically rejected claims by Republican US Senator Tom Cotton that Covid-19 is a weaponized virus which escaped from the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory. , and good communists should always trust China's Deep State. Hong Kong’s Ming Pao daily reported on Monday the China's CDC had sounded the alarm in a report on the emerging SARS-like outbreak submitted to the top leadership in early January. Curbing the spread of the pandemic was not at the top of the agenda when Xi and other members of the party’s upper echelon sat down for a Politburo meeting on January 7. They in fact prohibited disease control measures that would place the Party in disrespect.Gao Fu , chief of China’s CCDC, warned Xi and Party leaders about the pandemic but was told to keep quiet