Please read the sentence again more carefully. I’m not talking about the lab leak theory. I’m talking about the fact that the Chinese authorities knew about the outbreak with an unknown respiratory virus for a long time and decided not to inform the WHO until the cat – or the bat, if you will – was already out of the bag and across the planet.

That has nothing to do with FB / MAGA conspiracy theories. It’s the official position of the WHO and US Congress. In fact, the Chinese didn’t even inform the WHO. The WHO had to find out through unofficial back channels and had to ask the Chinese government for verification themselves.

December 31: A machine translation of a Chinese media report about the outbreak is posted to ProMED, a U.S.-based open-access platform for early intelligence about infectious disease outbreaks. WHO headquarters in Geneva sees the ProMED post and instructs the WHO China Country Office to request verification of the outbreak from China's government. | The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issues its first public statement on the outbreak, saying it has identified 27 cases.^1^

Patient 0 got sick on the 1st of December. And later the first known case was traced back to the 17th of November.^2^