A new theory floating around about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic coming from raccoon dogs at a wet market lacks "science" in its reasoning, says Rep. Dr. Rich McCormick, R-Ga.
"These 'scientists,' these virologists, these people from big universities who want to believe something, they're the true deniers," Rep. McCormick said during an appearance on "Wake Up America" Saturday.
"If you want to look at the Democrats right now, and all things are denying whether we have a banking crisis, whether we have a border crisis, where this virus came from, how we treat it, what they do with our businesses, they are truly deniers. I was asking the scientists in our hearings why he thought that was the most likely case, and he just started starting some garbage about something that had no substance in science."
The New York Times reported Thursday that virus experts found DNA data from a Wuhan, China, wet market linking raccoon dogs sold there with the coronavirus.
According to the report, the data could prove the worldwide pandemic started with an infected animal being sold to a human.
The genetic data was taken through swabbing the floors and cages at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in January 2020, right at the start of the outbreak.
Rep. McCormick, however, said that if the theory had any footing, animals would have also been found with the virus in the wild, something that has not yet happened.
"If you have this coming from a species, you don't just find it in a wet market," he said. "You find it in the wild. It had to come from something that didn't develop in a wet market around people. It came from the wild species that you captured, and then fed to people, but they can't find one single animal in the wild that has this this virus, so therefore it doesn't exist in the world outside of the human species."
The reports about the new wet market data go against both the U.S. Energy Department and FBI's assesment that the pandemic likely started at the Wuhan Institute of Virology where coronavirus was being studied and experimented with, the Times reported.
According to the report, a lack of hard evidence for any of the theories is keeping the debate alive between many agencies and institutions, leaving the question open with opinions divided among the main theories.
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