Boris Johnson: I now believe that Covid was caused by a laboratory leak. The Chinese owes us appropriate answers and our government should begin to demand them

What? I told my team in number ten because they explained the origins of Covid. What did you say they were doing?

Yuk, I say. Yuk and triple yuk. As they described practices in Wuhan, I was rabid and disgusted.

To explain the emergence of this appalling disease, it seemed only too credible.

And, as it happened, I was about to have a call with Xi Jinping, and I was lucky to ask.

It was on February 18, 2020, when it always seemed possible that COVID was mainly a Chinese phenomenon. So, I started the call by behaving with the president for the suffering of the Chinese and congratulating him for his efforts to contain the disease.

He was grateful to my sympathies and for the kindness of the United Kingdom in sending valuable personal protective equipment supplies.

I know, it seems crazy now but, as I say, we had not yet planned COVID's complete implications for the United Kingdom.

At this stage of the call, I decided to get out of the script. It was time to talk about what really happened in Wuhan.

Researchers work in a laboratory at the Wuhan Virology Institute in Wuhan in the center of China in 2017

We all knew that for many years, the Chinese do strange stuff on behalf of medicine. Why do they sell living bats on markets in China? Why do they sell pangolins? It is not that Chinese particularly like the taste of the poor animals. This is because they believe that these beautiful endangered species have unique medicinal properties and we are generally reluctant to tell the truth to the Chinese: that everything is a charge of Mumbo-Jumbo.

You do not make your wife less prone to nervous adjustments by nourishing her roasted pangolin. You will not promote its lactation.

This scaly greedy scabbard is an extraordinary creature the only mammal in the world, as far as I know, whose language is rooted in its basin.

But these are just garbage to believe that you can crush your balance, put them in a soup and transfer their old rigidity to the erections of Chinese men of middle age.

As for bats, there is no evidence for the traditional strange belief that the faeces of bat are useful for improving your view.

These ideas are not only Batsh **, but dangerous Batsh **.

So, he seemed eminently plausible, while I was talking to Xi, that my officials were right: that the Chinese habit of using so -called humid markets to massacre and sell creatures of rare animals outside the normal human food chain had something to do with the origins of Covid.

I said that I hoped he agreed with me that this epidemic was alarm. It was a clear sign, I said, that we had to stop negotiating threatened species.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks at a press conference at 10 Downing Street on March 23, 2021 in London

Well, Xi listened politely and then vaguely said that the origins of the disease were not yet clear. I now think he was moving me.

Xi was content to allow me to rave on the pangolins because he knew another Wuhan institution, where they had done something much more disgusting than the wet markets, and much more dangerous.

The Chinese chief knew everything about the Wuhan Virology Institute. To believe now that Covid did not come from this laboratory, you must believe in all kinds of scandalous coincidences. You must believe that it was a pure stroke of luck that the new coronavirus in the form of a bat emerged in Wuhan, where they had just had the largest laboratory in the world for the study of Coronavirus of the Bat type.

You should believe that it was simply a question of chance that this particular laboratory proceeds to a very controversial gain of functional experiences, which plays with the genetic composition of the virus in order to make it more contagious for human beings.

You have to close your eyes to the fact that when Covid struck us, nine of genetic parents closest to Sars-Cov-2 were in a freezer in the Wuhan laboratory.

As the journalist and scientific author Matt Ridley pointed out, this laboratory was notoriously lax in his biosecurity regime.

What they did was sufficiently risky. They took point genes from SRAS type viruses found in bats, then put them in the backbone of other viruses to make them up to 10,000 times more contagious for human cells and humanized mice.

Then they did not do enough to make sure that the premises were properly sealed, to contain the chimera inside.

When Covid struck us, nine of the genetic parents closest to Sars-Cov-2 were in a freezer in the Wuhan laboratory

To believe that the Wuhan laboratory was innocent, you need a truly gargantusen appetite for a coincidence. I'm sorry, but I can't find it credible.

During the last year, an increasing number of renowned public organizations finally came out in favor of the theory of laboratory leaks: the CIA, the FBI, the German intelligence agency and others.

I remember being surprised when I was told for the first time about the Wuhan laboratory and what he was doing.

On several occasions, I asked scientists and diplomatic experts: how can you be so sure of this wet market?

I was wondering then and I always wonder why they were so dogmatic. Why did they reject the laboratory flight theory when it was obvious that a mutant and very contagious coronavirus had arisen in the very city where they were artificially creating mutant and very contagious coronavirus?

With hindsight, I think there were a number of reasons why some British scientists were so compliance with. Overall, I expect that they did not like the theory of laboratory flight for the fundamental reason that it was bad for science.

They didn't want to be blamed to make monsters in test tubes. They did not want a long way against their experiences, especially because it would mean a reduction in their funding.

Above all, they did not like the theory of laboratory leaks because it was so offensive for the Chinese.

The wet market theory was bad enough due to the implicit criticism of Chinese customs: the habit of eating rare animals; Belief in traditional medicine and so on. But the theory of laboratory leaks was, much worse: it implied negligence, criminal negligence, on the part of an emanation of the Chinese state.

It became clear very early that the Chinese considered theory as being roughly insulting and defamatory and that the Chinese have been long -standing donors of British university research projects, and since the Chinese authorities are ruthless to reduce the financial support of those who say the bad thing or disconnect. . .

Well, I think you can see why British scientists, on the whole, have found much more practical to believe in this fatal viral romance between a bat and a pangolin.

Five years later, it's just not good enough. To prepare the next virus, we must know the origins of it. The Chinese have still not given Wuhan data sets from September 2019 and refused to cooperate properly with the World Health Organization survey.

This is contemptuous. No other country would be authorized to behave in this way.

Covid killed around 15 million worldwide, according to the UN. It costs around 16 billions of dollars. He made a great physical, moral, economic and social damage to this country. The Chinese owes us a good answer. The British government should ask for one. Until we obtain one, the scandal will increase.