Nearly 1,000 mice were found alongside improperly stored disease samples, and human blood and tissue, in a warehouse equipped with research equipment.
    • @LexiconDexicon@lemmy.world
      43•2 years ago

      Well, because it is actually

      The county also discovered nearly 1,000 bioengineered mice. Wang Zhaolin, a representative of Prestige Biotech – the company operating the lab – told county investigators that the mice were genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus

      I mean if you don’t want conspiracy theories to spread then don’t make them true to begin with

      • LUHG
        2•2 years ago

        Pretty sure one of the Chinese ran USA labs were caught sending samples of contagious diseases back to China via standard DHL type packages. This was before COVID.

    • takeda
      16•2 years ago

      I actually noticed that when searching for “prestige biotech” (the name of the company) pretty much all the conservative media already state that it is Chinese linked. The weird thing is that they state it as a fact without explaining how they arrived to this conclusion.

      I mean, it very well might be, but tell me how you arrived to that conclusion.

      • wahming
        19•2 years ago

        Chinese listed owner. Chinese representative. Mysterious purpose with unknown source of funds. Not too hard to connect the dots.

        Edit: Apparently people don’t realise Chinese can refer to ethnicity as well as nationality. Yes, it would be ideal if we had different terms for the two.

      • @30mag@lemmy.world
        15•2 years ago

        An investigation found the tenant was Prestige BioTech, a company registered in Nevada and unlicensed for business in California. City officials spoke with Xiuquin Yao, who was identified as the company president, through emails included in the court documents. Yao told officials that Prestige BioTech moved assets belonging to a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., to the Reedley warehouse from Fresno after UMI went under. Prestige Biotech was a creditor to UMI and identified as its successor, according to court documents. Officials were unable to get any California-based address for either company except for the previous Fresno location from which UMI had been evicted. “The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified,” court documents said.

        https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officials-believe-fresno-warehouse-was-site-illegal-laboratory-rcna96756

    • wahming
      10•2 years ago

      Both the owner and representative of the company are Chinese, so why wouldn’t she think that?

      Also, how many other countries would be interested in maintaining a bioweapons facility in the US?

      • @june@lemmy.world
        2•2 years ago

        Because being Chinese doesn’t mean you are a Chinese nationalist. It’s a pretty racist jump to make.

        • wahming
          5•2 years ago

          Buddy, see my username? Yeah, that’s a Chinese name. I of all people know exactly what the difference is between Chinese ethnicity and Chinese nationality.

          With that said, the majority of Chinese business people have some connection or other to China, be it family, business, or otherwise. Combine that with the context here of mysterious purpose (but probably bioweapons), unknown funding source and complete lack of any commercial purpose, etc etc, and it’s not a hard conclusion to draw.