According to the New York Times, on Sunday, officials at the U.S Energy Department stated that an accidental lab leak in Wuhan, China most likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic. Up until this point, the official word from the department was that while possible a lab leak was the cause of the viral spread, it was unlikely. It was reported that the energy department received new intelligence, and shared that with other agencies nationwide looking into the matter. That intelligence was not shared with the public. No other agencies have come forward since then with a change in opinion on the subject. Four other national agencies have concluded with low confidence that it was a natural viral outbreak. Research into the topic has been extremely difficult with China being uncooperative and discouraging any further investigations.
Let’s take a look at what the U.S. mediahas to say in comparison to the Chinese media through our Kudzu narrative briefs.
Key Insights:
The term “FBI director has 448 mentions in our U.S. media module, and this is likely due to his Fox News interview on Feb. 28th. In this interview, FBI director Christopher Wray stated that Covid-19 likely broke out due to a lab mishap in Wuhan, China. He went on to say “you're talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans and that's precisely what that capability was designed for. I should add that our work related to this continues”.
In our China sources module, “Mao Ning” was mentioned by 10 individual sources based in China. Mao Ning is a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman who dismissed the energy department's claims in a press conference on March 1st. According to Yahoo, Mao stated during the conference, “A laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely' is a science-based, authoritative conclusion reached by the experts of the WHO-China joint mission after field trips to the lab in Wuhan and in-depth communication with researchers”
