UK Minister Gets Shut Down After Saying COVID-19 Could Be ‘Man-Made’

Minister for the Cabinet Office, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove, arrives at Downing Street on Sept. 8, 2020 in London. Leon Neal/Getty Images

A minister from the United Kingdom who suggested that COVID-19 could be a “man-made” virus was instantly silenced while testifying before an independent public inquiry into the UK’s pandemic response.

“We were not as well prepared as we should have been ideally [to counter the COVID-19 pandemic], that is true,” Michael Gove, the UK’s Levelling Up minister, said Tuesday. “Again, it’s in the nature of the fact that the virus was novel. And indeed—I think this probably goes beyond the remit of the inquiry—there is a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made. And that presents its own set of challenges as well.”

Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel of the inquiry, intervened at this point, cutting off Mr. Gove’s statements, stating that “it forms no part of the terms of reference of this inquiry … to address that somewhat divisive issue, so we’re not going to go there.”

In an interview with news platform Real America’s Voice, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that Mr. Gove’s statements were an admission that has come “about three years too late.”

“There is a mountain of evidence that is mounting here now. I just had an early copy of the RFK Jr.’s new book. He just lays out all the evidence, but it’s been out there for literally years,” he said. “To me, this has been obvious since about mid-2020, talking to computational biologists, the spike protein, the fear on cleavage site.”

“This is just obviously a man-made virus. It didn’t spring from nature. They’ve had no link whatsoever. They’ve been looking for it for three years. This was man-made, probably escaped from the Wuhan lab, and there’s been a massive cover-up by all the people who are complicit in funding this bioweapon research, this gain of function research that really, there’s no benefit whatsoever.”

Due to such research, a pandemic was unleashed that killed millions of people, which is why “they continue to cover it up,” he said.

Commenting on Mr. Gove’s statements, media personality Russell Brand slammed the inquiry, noting how when the minister began talking about the man-made nature of the COVID-19 virus, “the COVID inquiry stops in its tracks.”

“Look how it continues to be the function of the state-funded propagandist media to limit, mitigate, and diminish information that might cause you to become inspired to oppose their systems of power,” he said, according to a Nov. 29 X post.

“The reason you can never have a COVID inquiry of note is because it would reveal such a depth of corruption, such a depth of cooperation, such inefficiency in agencies like the WHO that were granted too much authority and power that it would diminish trust to the point of destabilizing democracy.”

Lab-Leak Theory

When the COVID-19 outbreak first emerged, two theories of the origin of the virus came about—that it evolved from nature or it leaked from a lab. The focus of the lab leak theory was the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, which tests bat coronaviruses.

A U.S. Senate report published in April backed the WIV leak theory, stating that “the preponderance of information supports the plausibility of an unintentional research-related incident that likely resulted from failures of biosafety containment during SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-related research.”

The report suggested there was likely an aerosol leak at WIV that resulted in lab personnel getting infected. Alternatively, the virus may have been released into the environment due to biocontainment failures. Another suggestion was that cleaning agents corroded the welded seams of the lab, per the report.

During a testimony to a congressional committee in April, former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe said that a lab leak theory of the origin of COVID-19 “is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense.” Mr. Ratcliffe was the director of national intelligence during the latter part of the Trump administration.

“In fact, were this a trial, the preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that the coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for spawning a global pandemic,” he said.

“And likewise, the Chinese Communist Party would be convicted of going to great lengths to cover up the virus’s origins—from destroying medical tests, samples, and data, to intimidating and ‘disappearing’ witnesses and journalists asking questions, to lying and coercing global health authorities, to spreading propaganda that the virus originated in the United States.”

In a recent interview with Sky News, former acting assistant Secretary of State Thomas DiNanno said that when his team uncovered evidence supporting the lab leak theory during the Trump administration, the U.S. intelligence community tried to discredit it.

“Clearly from the get-go, even when the Trump administration was still in office, the ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) was pushing out this notion it was a natural phenomenon,” he said.

In September, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence heard testimony from a CIA whistleblower who alleged that the agency offered six analysts significant financial incentives to change their opinions on the origin of COVID-19.

The six officers had concluded that the virus likely originated from a lab in Wuhan.