Wood House 76

Revisions made for republication on 23 January 2026.¹

A Department of Defense report about illness experienced by U.S. athletes at the 2019 World Military Games in Wuhan does not provide evidence of early “spread” of SARS-CoV-2 or incidence of COVID-19.²

Released on 10 April 2020, but published in December 2022 under the Biden administration, Report to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives, 2019 World Military Games³ is a response to Section 1068.of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 (Public Law 117-81) (image below), which directed the Secretary of Defense to provide a report addressing specific inquiries.

What the report says

• Of the 263 total members of the U.S. contingency, 7 (3%) “exhibited” COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms between October 18, 2019, and January 21, 2020.
• The specific symptoms were not detailed, and the report noted they “could have been caused by other respiratory infections.” All seven service members recovered within six days.
• No COVID-19-like illness outbreaks were reported at the military facilities to which these individuals returned.
• None of the U.S. service members who participated in the Games were tested for COVID-19 or antibodies, because “testing was not available at this early stage of the pandemic.”
• According to data from military treatment facilities, there was “no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptom cases at installations with participating athletes compared to installations without them.” Additionally, “no significant increase in COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms” was documented from October 2019 through March 2020 through separate Army surveillance testing.
• As of December 2022, the Department of Defense had not initiated an investigation into a possible connection between the outbreak of COVID-19 and the 2019 World Military Games.

Commentary

For purposes of this reaction, it is assumed COVID-19 signs/symptoms are synonymous to those associated with respiratory illness, flu, and the common cold. There is nothing unusual whatsoever about 7 military service personnel (hereafter “the 7”) experiencing such symptoms over the course of three fall and winter months.

None of “the 7” is reported to have been hospitalized, and their symptoms resolved in less than a week. Given the speed of recovery – and the report saying the symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections – there is no reason to believe the illness(s) which befell “the 7” were remarkable.

Whether “the 7” were seen by a doctor, tested, or given any treatments or directives regarding their illness is undisclosed. The lack of testing for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is irrelevant since “the 7” apparently did not experience unusual or difficult-to-resolve illness; a test result would not have improved treatment or resolution. Antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 is non-specific and unreliable, and would not yield meaningful information.⁴

Typically, an “outbreak” is defined as two or more epidemiologically-linked cases. Because DoD has not conducted or opened an investigation into connections between the outbreak of COVID-19 and the 2019 World Military Games, it can be inferred that incidence of illness among “the 7” occurred over a longer period of time (versus two or more becoming ill at the games or 2 or more being connected enough to be considered epidemiologically linked). That there were no “outbreaks” of illness which could be retrospectively seen as COVID-19 at the facilities to which “the 7” service personnel returned challenges the hypothesis that participants in the games returned to their respective bases and “seeded” the virus.

The report also implies normal flu surveillance did not detect unusual or high incidence of activity. Assuming surveillance includes visits or hospitalizations for influenza-like illness (ILI) and influenza testing, the idea that “COVID-19” was “hiding” in the flu at certain military installations is not well-supported.

Regardless of what one believes about the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, influenza viruses, or respiratory illness, none of the information in the report supports a case for the “spread” of anything. Insofar as the report being “concealed” by the Biden administration,⁵ it is far more likely that the release was strategically timed to support the lab leak hypothesis and its variants, with the idea of it being held back contributing to an intelligence-directed plot line about the origins of a ‘global pandemic.’

Questions

The report responds to each request made of the Secretary of Defense; I see no “missing” information with respect to what Congress asked DoD to supply but am left with the following questions:

1. The directive for the report says it “may contain a classified annex.” No annex is referenced in the body of the report; was an annex produced?
2. The report mentions “separate surveillance testing” by the U.S. Army but no such testing by any other military branch. Why? Does the timeframe for that testing end with March 2020 (March 31, 2020) versus the normal end of flu surveillance testing (~May) due to the advent of mass testing for SARS-CoV-2?
3. What is the significance of the October 18, 2019 and January 21, 2020 timeframe, i.e., why does the timeframe end with January 21, 2020, which is the same day that the first “case” of COVID in the U.S. was announced?
4. U.S. military service personnel are required to take the flu shot before a certain date. (Some exemptions apply.) Travel to the military games would have compelled vaccination prior to departure. What was the flu shot status of the U.S. contingency?
5. Did any members of the U.S. contingency experience illness or adverse health events at the Games or in the months thereafter not classified as COVID-19 symptoms?
6. Per a WHO-China joint report issued in February 2021, there were 9,308 participants at the Games.⁶ Regarding illness, the report says, “Four African participants were diagnosed and treated for malaria, and one U.S. citizen presented with gastroenteritis. The Jinyintan Hospital provided medical support for the games, including on-site clinics (data from these clinics have not yet been evaluated by the joint team)” and concluded that “no appreciable signals of clusters of fever or severe respiratory disease requiring hospitalization were identified during review of these events.” There was a recommendation to conduct “further joint review of the data on respiratory illness from the on-site clinics at the Military Games in October 2019.” Was this review conducted? If so, what did it reveal?
7. The Wuhan location of the 2019 World Military Games was announced in November 2017. How strategic was this choice? Why was this location chosen?
8. At the very end of a Department of Defense press briefing on 14 April 2020,⁷ a reporter asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Mille about the team that went to Wuhan for the games. (Excerpt below). Esper and Mille’s non-verbal reactions are open to interpretation; both seem genuinely perplexed. Mille lifts his eyebrows in a manner suggestive of intrigue. Was there “essential screening”? What did it involve?

Reporter: THE ESSENTIAL SCREENING FOR THE MILITARY TEAM THAT WENT TO WUHAN IN NOVEMBER, IN WUHAN?

Esper: I’M NOT AWARE.

Planted Scene in the Storyline?

Based on available information, and assuming the DoD’s findings in its report statements are not false and don’t exclude contradictory or indicting evidence, there is little to no reason to view the 2019 World Military Games in Wuhan as a “seeding” event for a novel, transmitting, disease-causing coronavirus.

Unless deleted from social media in the moment or ex post facto, there are no contemporaneous reports of unusual illness or high incidence of respiratory illness during the Games —only retrospective accounts from athletes in various countries and obvious propaganda threads like eleven athletes from Iran dying from coronavirus.⁸ 

The “first” report of a possible connection between the Games and the “coronavirus outbreak” appears to have come from a tweet by a Chinese official, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, on 12 March 2020.⁹ A few months later, The American Prospect published a story promoting the idea that the Military Games were “a vector for spreading disease in the U.S. and around the world.” 

2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 12, 2020

“Something is spreading,” not “there is a virus,” was the core sales pitch of the pandemic story. Take away “spread” and the narrative falls apart.

Years later, it’s reasonable to wonder if the 2019 World Military Games sub-plot was (and remains) a ruse: one devised and planted long before a pandemic was declared.

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References and Footnotes

1. Few substantive changes to content made from April 2025 version. Certain points expanded, post-publication additions integrated, explicit conclusion . ↩︎
2. These are not synonymous. SARS-CoV-2 is the name given to a coronavirus said to cause
   a disease the WHO called COVID-19. It’s possible SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 have different “origins” that may or may not be related. See this article for explanation. ↩︎
3. U.S. Department of Defense. (2022). 2019 World Military Games: Report to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives (Dec. 2022). https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2019-World-Military-Games-Report-1.pdf ↩︎
4. Neil, M., Engler, J., Fenton, N., & Hockett, J. (2025, April 9). “The Fallacy of Trust: Revisiting the Reliability of SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Testing Methods.” Where Are the Numbers? https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-fallacy-of-trust-revisiting-the ↩︎
5. Kerr, A. (2025, April 8). “Biden administration concealed congressionally mandated report on earliest suspected American COVID cases.” Washington Free Beacon. https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-administration-concealed-congressionally-mandated-report-on-earliest-suspected-american-covid-cases/ ↩︎
6. World Health Organization. 2021. WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part — Final Joint Report: Origins Studies (6 April). Geneva: World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/final-joint-report_origins-studies-6-april-201.pdf ↩︎
7. C-SPAN. (2020, April 14). Defense Secretary Esper and General Milley coronavirus news conference [Video]. C-SPAN. https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/defense-secretary-esper-and-general-milley-coronavirus-news-conference/544757 ↩︎
8. “Eleven athletes in Iran have died of coronavirus infection.” (2020, March 22). Radio Farda. https://en.radiofarda.com/a/eleven-athletes-in-iran-have-died-of-coronavirus-infection/30502659.html Although not explicitly tied to the World Military Games, the unverified story about these athletes’ deaths assisted the “spreading virus from afar” plot line, and the idea that young and otherwise healthy people were at risk. ↩︎
9. Sourced from Westcott, B., & Jiang, S. (2020, March 13). “Chinese diplomat promotes conspiracy theory that US military brought coronavirus to Wuhan.” CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lijian-zhao-intl-hnk/index.html ↩︎