In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, medical personnel wearing protective suits work in the department of infectious diseases at Wuhan Union Hospital in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020. Hong Kong’s leader announced Tuesday that all rail links to mainland China will be cut starting Friday as fears grow about the spread of a new virus. (Xiao Yijiu/Xinhua via AP)

The Daily Mail has published photos from inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology which show a broken seal on one of the refrigerators used to store 1,500 virus strains including the bat coronavirus. The Mail reports that one of the comments on Twitter read: “I have seen better seals on my refrigerator in my kitchen.”

According to The Mail, these photos were originally published by the China Daily, a state media outlet, two years ago and were briefly available on Twitter last month, but they have since been deleted. When you view the photos, it becomes all too easy to understand how human error could have caused the virus to be accidentally transmitted to a lab employee.

😷🦠 Pictures from inside the secretive #Wuhan Institute Of Virology show a broken door seal on a refrigerator used to hold 1,500 different strains of virus – including the bat #coronavirus which has jumped to humans with such devastating effect.
https://t.co/2S0iUPlQDk

— Ϯஐ รครรคfгครร Ϯஐ (@SassafrasSassy) April 19, 2020

The Mail published a letter sent from the Chinese embassy in London written in response to a recent unflattering article about China’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. It shows that the Chinese are digging in on the CCP’s narrative.

The letter accuses the Mail of making “groundless accusations, speculations and vicious slanders against China. This constitutes a serious breach of the professional ethics of journalism. We strongly deplore it.”

It says the Chinese government “always regards people’s lives and health as the top priority.” We’ve noticed.

Ridiculously, they repeat all of the praise the WHO has lavished on their response to the outbreak.

The letter claims that the Chinese government has released information “in the most open, transparent and responsible manner, publicising relevant data since the early days of the outbreak.”

And on it goes continuing  to defend and justify all of their deceptive behavior. Surely, they must realize that nobody believes them.

On Friday, Fox News reported that U.S. intelligence officials confirmed they are “conducting a full-scale investigation” to determine if the coronavirus “escaped” from the Wuhan lab. According to Fox:

Intelligence operatives are said to be gathering information about the laboratory and the initial outbreak of the virus. Intelligence analysts are piecing together a timeline of what the government knew and “creating an accurate picture of what happened,” the sources said.

Once that investigation is complete — something that is expected to happen in the near-term — the findings will be presented to the Trump administration. At that point White House policymakers and President Trump will use the findings to determine how to hold the country accountable for the pandemic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday. He told Hewitt the Chinese government had prevented scientists from visiting the facility in Wuhan. Pompeo said,

We know that the first sightings of this occurred within miles of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We know that this – the history of the facility, the first BSL-4 lab where there’s high-end virus research being conducted, took place at that site. We know that the Chinese Communist Party, when it began to evaluate what to do inside of Wuhan, considered whether the WIV was, in fact, the place where this came from.

And most importantly, we know they’ve not permitted the world’s scientists to go into that laboratory to evaluate what took place there, what’s happening there, what’s happening there even as we speak.

A study from the South China University of Technology conducted in February concluded: “In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

During a press briefing at China’s foreign ministry, spokesperson Zhao Lijian, doubled down one claims that there is no evidence the virus originated from the lab. Zhao, you may recall accused U.S. soldiers of transporting the virus to Wuhan when they traveled to China for an athletic competition. Following a meeting with Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai, at the State Department, Zhao backed off of that narrative.

Zhao told reporters on Thursday. “The head of the WHO has stated many times that there is no evidence that the new coronavirus originated in the laboratory. Many prominent medical experts in the world also believe that the so-called laboratory leaks have no scientific basis.”

When will the Chinese learn that the mention of the WHO to lend legitimacy to their claims not only doesn’t help, but makes them look even guiltier?