Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, touted a report Wednesday that alleges the Chinese government created COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Flynn shared an article on Twitter about an interview that aired the night before on Fox News in which Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan called COVID-19 a “man-made virus created in the lab.”
“When something is so vital to America’s survival…’Everyone needs to know the truth,’ ” Flynn said in the tweet. “China has no other intention than to be THE single global super power.”
Prominent scientists in the U.S. and elsewhere have assessed that COVID-19 originated naturally in wildlife and was not created in a lab as alleged in the article Flynn shared on social media.
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of more than two dozen public health scientists said in February.
Indeed, the U.S. intelligence community which Flynn was previously a part of has said it “concurs with the scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”
Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, left the Trump administration within weeks of the president taking office. He later pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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