After lab leak theory, let’s try this? US senator teases ‘evidence’ China hindering Covid-19 vaccine creation… but doesn’t show it
Invoking an unwritten blame game playbook, Rick Scott, a China hawk in the US Senate, claimed there’s proof Beijing tried to frustrate the Western search for a coronavirus vaccine — but there’s also no way you could ever see it.
Scott, a senator from Florida, made the headline-grabbing remark while speaking to BBC’s Andrew Marr this Sunday, telling him that the US and the West have to roll out their Covid-19 vaccine, no matter what Beijing is up to.
Further unloading on the US’ prime opponent, Scott went as far as to claim the Chinese do not “want us … to do it first” because they “decided to be an adversary to Americans and I think to democracy around the world.”
The BBC host then pressed his interlocutor into revealing the mystery evidence. He asked him to substantiate the claim that China is trying to stop the West’s development of the sought-after vaccine.
“Sure,” Scott replied, striking quite a serious tone, “we have evidence … what they’re trying to do is sabotage or slow down our ability to get this vaccine.”
As the conversation turned slightly inconvenient, the US senator proclaimed that “whether England does [the vaccine] first or we do it first, we are going to share.” The communists in Beijing, of course, “are not going to share.”
Just as Scott spoke, China’s Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang pledged that his country — first to step into the fight against Covid-19 — would make a vaccine a “global public good” when it finally arrives.
Marr had to ask for the evidence twice until he finally got an answer, but it was nowhere near his expectations.
