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. China hindering Covid-19 vaccination is a very serious allegation that has been levelled by the Senatro, but he has been unable to back it up with solid evidence.
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.
We have got to get this vaccine done. Unfortunately we have evidence that communist China is trying to sabotage us or slow it down.
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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.”
Florida senator Rick Scott – Communist China is actively trying to sabotage the development of a vaccine by western countries#Marr – What evidence do you have for that?
Rick Scott – Our intelligence community has evidence, but I can't discuss that.. #Ridge pic.twitter.com/ydUPob7zKf
— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) June 7, 2020
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.”
China hindering Covid-19 vaccination: China will share vaccine with world
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.
Read more: Chinese lab released Coronavirus by accident: ex MI6 chief
Communist China’s lies and misinformation cost American lives.
We cannot allow them to steal or sabotage our efforts to end this pandemic. If Americans create a vaccine we will share with the world. I doubt China would do the same. https://t.co/VuFZ4lJ3QT
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) June 8, 2020
It came through our intelligence community, I’m on armed services [committee], so these are the things that I cannot discuss … but there’s evidence that they’ve been trying to either sabotage or slow it down.
China hasn’t shown that it could be “a great partner” to the rest of the world as its government “decided they just want to dominate the rest of the world,” the American senator finished with no trace of irony.
Protection of US research to prevent stealing of research
Previously in May, Scott teamed up with other senators, unveiling a plan to protect against “stealing or sabotaging American Covid-19 vaccine research.” Among other measures, the proposal obliges the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the FBI to scrutinize all Chinese student visa holders contributing to developing an antidote to the virus.
Also that month, the Florida lawmaker said he believes the US is in “Cold War 2” with China. “Understand you have an enemy,” he bluntly told the media. “They’re an adversary.”
Read more: Coronavirus was a ‘creation of CIA biological weapon lab of the US’?
Earlier, Beijing’s white paper on coronavirus also assured that it will carry on supplying the world with “anti-epidemic materials, pharmaceutical ingredients, daily necessities, and other supplies.”
Coronavirus was released accidentally into the world by China
Earlier, the ex-head of MI6 said that a new peer-reviewed study shows that the Covid-19 outbreak started as a faulty experiment in China. The paper he cited was reportedly “watered down” to remove accusations against Beijing. This was the latest in a slew of allegations by Western nations against China, who claim that the coronavirus was a biological weapon being developed by China in a laboratory near Wuhan.
“I do think that this started as an accident,” Sir Richard Dearlove, who led Britain’s top spy agency, MI6, from 1999 until 2004, told the Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast.
“It raises the issue, if China ever were to admit responsibility, does it pay reparations? I think it will make every country in the world rethink how it treats its relationship with China and how the international community behaves towards the Chinese leadership.”
RT with additional input by GVS News Desk