The trouble with Trump calling it ‘the China Virus is that it was Trump.

The trouble with Trump suggesting Covid came from the lab is it was Trump.

It’s one thing to say something but it depends who said it.

Now there are increasing reports and with them come increasing questions around China and its role in the virus.

Lab workers in Wuhan were hospitalised way earlier than originally declared, according to US intelligence just this week.

Dr Fauci, it is reported this week, is asking serious questions around the origin. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t rule out the lab, and he is happy with any investigation that chases answers.

An irony of this story is he said this weeks back, but it wasn’t widely reported.

I suspect once again it’s because Trump is gone and the conspiratorial reaction you got to anything he said is gone with him, and we’ve gone to sleep on the issue.

It wasn’t just Trump of course but anyone who said anything similar was Trump-esque and set to be cancelled.

Australia, of course, asked for an inquiry and is still paying the price to this day for doing so.

• Why scientists are suddenly more interested in the lab-leak theory of Covid's origin

$20 billion and counting and a relationship with china that has never been worse

The mistake Australia made was to ask and get the WHO who, lets be frank, given what they came up with, which was essentially what you and I could have written without leaving the house, said everything and nothing.

And in saying that, further damaged their already damaged reputation as being an organisation that is way too political and quite possibly way too in the pocket of the Chinese.

And with the new news around Wuhan and hospitals and Fauci and intelligence, their report looks more and more either pathetic or jacked up.

Either way, the Chinese haven’t covered themselves in glory with their obfuscation when it came to access and their general denial of everything.

It looks increasingly likely that the questions around Wuhan, the lab, the Chinese, honesty, timings of answers, are genuine, were always genuine and today need responses and disclosure  as much as they ever did.

The fact it hasn’t been treated more urgently given the havoc is a crime in and of itself.

Imagine how much humble pie might need to get swallowed if Trump was onto it all along, and we weren’t interested just because we didn’t like the messenger.