Boris Johnson has a new book out (Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
has made the bombshell claim that he now believes the worldwide pandemic originated from a leak at a laboratory.
The former leader reveals , serialised by the , that he has discarded the once-dominant view that the virus was zoonotic – passed from animal to human – originating at a Wuhan wildlife market.
Johnson is fuelling media frenzy with explosive allegations from his book and, in a stunning turnaround from his assertions while in office, contends the pathogen responsible for claiming over seven million lives globally did not in fact make the leap from animals to humans.
The disclosures by the ousted PM could exert extra pressure on China’s reticent authorities to disclose more of what they know about the pandemic’s emergence.
The Wuhan ‘wet market’ (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
In a poignant passage, Johnson states: “The awful thing about the whole catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects. It now looks overwhelmingly likely that the mutation was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab.
“Some scientists were clearly splicing bits of virus together like the witches in Macbeth eye of bat and toe of frog and oops, the frisky little critter jumped out of the test tube and started replicating all over the world.”
Echoing remarks akin to those made by former US President , dismissed the notion that transmitted ‘zoonotically’ from infected animals, lending his voice to the lab-leak theory that, while sometimes branded a conspiracy theory, does hold some sway among some reputable circles.
Medical workers take swab samples from residents to be tested for Covid in a street in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province o (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Previously, Johnson, during his time as Prime Minister, had linked the outbreak to “demented” beliefs in parts of Asia about the medicinal power of pangolin scales, and that “if you grind up the scales of a pangolin you will somehow become more potent”, he said at the time. But now, presenting an increasingly sceptical stance, he refers to new information on experiments in Wuhan, China, hinting at human intervention in the creation of the virus.
In a further bold move, the former PM backtracks in his book on his stance regarding the stringent lockdowns implemented under his government.
The lockdowns enforced by Johnson, which are credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the UK but criticised for severely damaging the economy, are now described as “medieval in their savagery and their consequences” by the ex-PM himself.
He pens that the UK battled the virus “with an ever-growing panoply of restrictions that were literally medieval in their savagery and their consequences.”
The Chinese food market at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak has been found to have been selling live koalas, snakes, rats and wolf pups to eat before it was shut down.The Huanan Seafood Market in the central city of Wuhan is now under scrutiny after Chinese officials said the coronavirus originated for wildlife sold illegally at the food emporium now labelled as ground zero.Photos taken before its closure in December show a price list of 112 exotic animals from snakes to civet cats were available for sale, says the South China Morning Post.The list included live foxes, crocodiles, wolf puppies, giant salamanders, snakes, rats, peacocks, porcupines, koalas and game meats. (Image: WEibo)
He further comments: “In locking down our societies, we showed that we had barely progressed since early modern England, when Shakespeare and his colleagues were repeatedly compelled by law to shutter the Globe Theatre, and when they had rules on human contact no more than six to a funeral, for instance that eerily prefigured some of the arcane stuff we came up with, week after week, in the Cabinet Room.”
On September 19, it was reported how a major international study has claimed began life in a “wet market” where there were infected animals, with scientists rejecting the populist theory that was leaked from a laboratory. Genetic samples of animals that were sold at the market stalls in 2019 found traces of the virus in some species.
Author of the study, Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research, said in the document: “This adds another layer to the accumulating evidence that all points to the same scenario: that infected animals were introduced into the market in mid to late November 2019, which sparked the pandemic.”
Ministers were reportedly poring over intelligence suggesting an accident at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology, which some believed could have been the source of the virus leak.
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Scientists were allegedly engaging in high-risk experiments to enhance the transmissibility of coronaviruses sourced from bats in caves.
Despite widespread media speculation, the official stance continued to be that originated from the Wuhan animal market, with China never formally accused of causing the outbreak.
On May 1, 2023, the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, in a groundbreaking interview, suggested that a lab leak was the “most likely” beginning of the pandemic. Wray stated: “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan. Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.”
Nonetheless, the White House has announced that there is no unified US position on the virus’s possible origins.