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FTR #1186 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Continuing discussion and analysis from FTR#1185, we present discussion of the background and context to Pentagon and USAID funding for research into bat-borne coronaviruses through EcoHealth Alliance, in and around China.
The Pentagon funding for these projects must be seen against the background of three overlapping areas of consideration:
- The fact that any virus can be synthesized or modified from scratch. As detailed in a very important article from The Guardian: “ . . . Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. . . In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, ‘enhances and expands’ opportunities to create bioweapons. . . . Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesised. ‘The technology to do this is available now,’ said [Michael] “It requires some expertise, but it’s something that’s relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list. . . .”
- Also fundamental to an understanding of the Covid “op” is the devastating nature of bat-borne viruses when introduced into the human body. “ . . . . As Boston University microbiologist Thomas Kepler explained to the Washington Post in 2018, the bat’s unique approach to viral infection explains why viruses that transfer from bats to humans are so severe. . . . ‘A virus that has co-evolved with the bat’s antiviral system is completely out of its element in the human,’ Kepler said. ‘That’s why it is so deadly — the human immune system is overwhelmed by the inflammatory response.’ The bat immune system responds very differently from ours to viral infection. Instead of attacking and killing an infected cell, which leads to a cascade of inflammatory responses, the bat immune system can starve the virus by turning down cellular metabolism. The bat origin of SARS-CoV‑2 may explain the cytokine storms that are hastening some COVID-19 deaths. . . .”
- Analysis presented in the liberal New York Magazine by Nicholson Baker takes stock of the implications of contemporary biotechnology and what we have termed (in past broadcasts) “The Magic Virus Theory.” “. . . . SARS‑2 seems almost perfectly calibrated to grab and ransack our breathing cells and choke the life out of them. . . . Perhaps viral nature hit a bull’s‑eye of airborne infectivity, with almost no mutational drift, no period of accommodation and adjustment, or perhaps some lab worker somewhere, inspired by Baric’s work with human airway tissue, took a spike protein that was specially groomed to colonize and thrive deep in the ciliated, mucosal tunnels of our inner core and cloned it onto some existing viral bat backbone. It could have happened in Wuhan, but — because anyone can now ‘print out’ a fully infectious clone of any sequenced disease — it could also have happened at Fort Detrick, or in Texas, or in Italy, or in Rotterdam, or in Wisconsin, or in some other citadel of coronaviral inquiry.. . .”
Taken together and in the context of the full-court press against China discussed in many programs including FTR#’s 1089, 1090, 1091, 1092, 1103, 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179, 1180, the Pentagon/USAID funding of EcoHealth Alliance and the research into bat-borne coronaviruses being conducted at the WIV and elsewhere in and around China, the three considerations just enumerated point ominously to the Covid-19 pandemic as an “op.”
Much of the program consists of a synopsis of key aspects of some of the above-named programs–highlighting the full-court press against China.
The People’s Liberation Army assumed control of the Wuhan Institute of Virology on January 26, 2020–roughly two weeks after the genome for the SARS Cov‑2 was published: ” . . . . The Wuhan Institute of Virology is China’s only biosafety level 4 lab. While it has always been under the control of the Chinese government, since January 26, 2020, it has been under the command of the People’s Liberation Army, specifically its top biological-weapons specialist, a major general named Chen Wei. . . .”
An article in The Asia Times provides more depth on the growing tension between the U.S. and China.
Author Pepe Escobar feels that China became aware that they had been the focal point of a biological warfare attack. This dovetails with the analysis we presented about the WIV being taken over by the People’s Liberation Army on 1/26/2020.
President Xi Jinping has dropped verbal clues as to the Chinese view of the origin of the Covid-19: ” . . . . Beijing is carefully, incrementally shaping the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronavirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack. The terminology of President Xi Jinping is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a ‘people’s war’ had to be launched. Moreover, he described the virus as a demon or devil. Xi is a Confucianist. Unlike some other ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius was loath to discuss supernatural forces and judgment in the afterlife. However, in a Chinese cultural context, devil means ‘white devils’ or ‘foreign devils’: guailo in Mandarin, gweilo in Cantonese. This was Xi delivering a powerful statement in code. . . .”
Escobar also notes Event 201, which we highlighted in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112: ” . . . . Extra questions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly virus – which happened to be coronavirus. This magnificent coincidence happened one month before the outbreak in Wuhan. Event 201 was sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hopkins Foundation and the UN. The World Military Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day. . . .”
As noted by Pepe Escobar, Event 201–which began on the same day as the Military World Games in Wuhan–helped to set the PR template for Covid-19.
We suspect that the World Military Games were, indeed, among the vectors for the Covid-19 “op.”: “. . . . Contrary to the Pentagon’s insistence, however, an investigation of COVID-19 cases in the military from official and public source materials shows that a strong correlation exists in COVID-19 cases reported at U.S. military facilities that are home bases of members of the U.S. team that went to Wuhan. Before March 31, when the Pentagon restricted the release of information about COVID-19 cases at installations for security reasons, infections occurred at a minimum of 63 military facilities where team members returned after the Wuhan games. Additionally, the U.S. team used chartered flights to and from the games via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Washington was one of the earliest states to show a spike in COVID-19. . .”
Avril Haines was a key participant in the event. Former Deputy CIA Director Avril Haines is Biden’s Director of National Intelligence.
The cognitive template for Covid-19 was also set by Peter Daszak, who has widely disseminated the supposition that “Disease X” would overtake the world.
It is our view that the efforts of Daszak, the Event 201 players and others could be compared to the propagandizing that elements of the WACCFL and the intelligence community, as well as elements of the U.S. far right did in the run-up to the JFK assassination.
That propagandizing was a key element in the “Painting of Oswald Red.”
The program concludes with rumination about the possible significance of Daszak’s Ukrainian heritage. This discussion will be fleshed out in our next program, reviewing the constellation of covert “ops” against China and the participation of elements of U.S. intelligence and Ukrainian fascism in the destabilization of Hong Kong and the propagation of the Uighur myth.
1a. An article in The Asia Times provides more depth on the growing media war between the U.S. and China.
Key points of discussion and analysis:
- China now openly views the U.S. as a threat: ” . . . . For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the U.S. as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the peak of the fight against coronavirus. . . .”
- President Xi Jinping has dropped verbal clues as to the Chinese view of the origin of the Covid-19: ” . . . . Beijing is carefully, incrementally shaping the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronavirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack. The terminology of President Xi Jinping is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a ‘people’s war’ had to be launched. Moreover, he described the virus as a demon or devil. Xi is a Confucianist. Unlike some other ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius was loath to discuss supernatural forces and judgment in the afterlife. However, in a Chinese cultural context, devil means ‘white devils’ or ‘foreign devils’: guailo in Mandarin, gweilo in Cantonese. This was Xi delivering a powerful statement in code. . . .”
- A Chinese Foreign Ministry official cited the Military World Games in Wuhan as a possible vectoring point. (We believe this is possible, although we suspect the Shincheonji cult and a USAMRIID association with a Wuhan virological institute as other possible vectors.) IF, for the sake of argument, fascist elements (CIA, Underground Reich or whatever) chose the US military athletes as a vector, it would have been altogether possible to do so without attracting attention. Military athletes are in superb condition and, if infected with one of the milder strains of Covid-19, their robust immune systems might well leave them asymptomatic, yet still contagious, or mildly ill at worst. They could then communicate the virus to other military athletes, who would then serve as a vector for other countries. ” . . . . Zhao’s explosive conclusion is that COVID-19 was already in effect in the U.S. before being identified in Wuhan – due to the by now fully documented inability of the U.S. to test and verify differences compared with the flu. . . .”
- Author Pepe Escobar reiterates the contention that the variants of the virus in Italy and Iran are different from the variants that infected Wuhan, an interpretation whose significance is debated by scientists.
- The article highlights the shuttering of Ft. Detrick, which has now been partially re-opened. ” . . . . Adding all that to the fact that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan, Chinese media are now openly asking questions and drawing a connection with the shutting down in August last year of the “unsafe” military bioweapon lab at Fort Detrick, the Military Games, and the Wuhan epidemic. Some of these questions had been asked– with no response – inside the U.S. itself. . . .”
- Escobar also notes Event 201, which we highlighted in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112: ” . . . . Extra questions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly virus – which happened to be coronavirus. This magnificent coincidence happened one month before the outbreak in Wuhan. Event 201 was sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hopkins Foundation and the UN. The World Military Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day. . . .”
- We note that, although we have not been able to conclusively prove that CIA was one of the sponsors of the event, a former Deputy Director of the Agency was a key participant. Having reached such a level of prominence within the agency, one never “leaves” altogether. It is probable that there was Agency participation.
- Further discussion notes the possible use of a coronavirus as part of a psy-op: ” . . . . The working hypothesis of coronavirus as a very powerful but not Armageddon-provoking bio-weapon unveils it as a perfect vehicle for widespread social control — on a global scale. . . .”
- Escobar alleges that Cuba has developed an anti-viral that is promising against the virus: ” . . . . The anti-viral Heberon – or Interferon Alpha 2b – a therapeutic, not a vaccine, has been used with great success in the treatment of coronavirus. A joint venture in China is producing an inhalable version, and at least 15 nations are already interested in importing the therapeutic. . . .”
- Quoting Italian analyst Sandro Mezzadra, Escobar notes the Covid-19 outbreak as a social Darwinian psy-op: ” . . . .We are facing a choice between a Malthusian strand – inspired by social Darwinism – ‘led by the Johnson-Trump-Bolsonaro axis’ and, on the other side, a strand pointing to the “requalification of public health as a fundamental tool,’ exemplified by China, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. The stark option, Mezzadra notes, is between a ‘natural population selection,’ with thousands of dead, and ‘defending society’ by employing ‘variable degrees of authoritarianism and social control.’ . . .”
- Like many analysts, Escobar–correctly in our opinion–notes that the Covid-19 outbreak threatens the global economy and may collapse the derivative market. That this may be intended to mask an overvalued equities market seems probable to us.
“China Locked in Hybrid War with U.S.” by Pepe Escobar [Asia Times]; Consortium News; 3/18/2020.
Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the U.S. as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the peak of the fight against coronavirus.
Beijing is carefully, incrementally shaping the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronavirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack. Moreover, he described the virus as a demon or devil. Xi is a Confucianist. Unlike some other ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius was loath to discuss supernatural forces and judgment in the afterlife. However, in a Chinese cultural context, devil means “white devils” or “foreign devils”: guailo in Mandarin, gweilo in Cantonese. This was Xi delivering a powerful statement in code.
When Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, voiced in an incandescent tweet the possibility that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan” – the first blast to this effect to come from a top official – Beijing was sending up a trial balloon signaling that the gloves were finally off. Zhao Lijian made a direct connection with the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, which included a delegation of 300 U.S. military.
He directly quoted U.S. CDC Director Robert Redfield who, when asked last week whether some deaths by Coronavirus had been discovered posthumously in the U.S., replied that “some cases have actually been diagnosed this way in the U.S. today.”
Zhao’s explosive conclusion is that COVID-19 was already in effect in the U.S. before being identified in Wuhan – due to the by now fully documented inability of the U.S. to test and verify differences compared with the flu.
Adding all that to the fact that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the variety that infected
The terminology of President Xi Jinping is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a “people’s war” had to be launched. Wuhan, Chinese media are now openly asking questions and drawing a connection with the shutting down in August last year of the “unsafe” military bioweapon lab at Fort Detrick, the Military Games, and the Wuhan epidemic. Some of these questions had been asked– with no response – inside the U.S. itself.
Extra questions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly virus – which happened to be coronavirus. This magnificent coincidence happened one month before the outbreak in Wuhan.
Event 201 was sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hopkins Foundation and the UN. The World Military Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day.
Irrespective of its origin, which is still not conclusively established, as much as Trump tweets about the “Chinese virus,” COVID-19 already poses immensely serious questions about biopolitics (where’s Foucault when we need him?) and bio-terror.
The working hypothesis of coronavirus as a very powerful but not Armageddon-provoking bio-weapon unveils it as a perfect vehicle for widespread social control — on a global scale.
Cuba Rises as Biotech Power
Just as a fully masked Xi visiting the Wuhan frontline last week was a graphic demonstration to the whole planet that China, with immense sacrifice, is winning the “people‘s war” against COVID-19, Russia, in a Sun Tzu move on Riyadh whose end result was a much cheaper barrel of oil, helped for all practical purposes to kick-start the inevitable recovery of the Chinese economy. This is how a strategic partnership works.
The chessboard is changing at breakneck speed. Once Beijing identified coronavirus as a bio-weapon attack the “people’s war” was launched with the full force of the state. Methodically. On a “whatever it takes” basis. Now we are entering a new stage, which will be used by Beijing to substantially recalibrate the interaction with the West, and under very different frameworks when it comes to the U.S. and the EU.
Soft power is paramount. Beijing sent an Air China flight to Italy carrying 2,300 big boxes full of masks bearing the script, “We are waves from the same sea, leaves from the same tree, flowers from the same garden.” China also sent a hefty humanitarian package to Iran, significantly aboard eight flights from Mahan Air — an airline under illegal, unilateral Trump administration sanctions.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic could not have been more explicit: “The only country that can help us is China. By now, you all understood that European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale on paper.”
Under harsh sanctions and demonized since forever, Cuba is still able to perform breakthroughs – even on biotechnology. The anti-viral Heberon – or Interferon Alpha 2b – a therapeutic, not a vaccine, has been used with great success in the treatment of coronavirus. A joint venture in China is producing an inhalable version, and at least 15 nations are already interested in importing the therapeutic.
Now compare all of the above with the Trump administration offering $1 billion to poach German scientists working at biotech firm Curevac, based in Thuringia, on an experimental vaccine against COVID-19, to have it as a vaccine “only for the United States.”
Social Engineering Psy-Op?
Sandro Mezzadra, co-author with Brett Neilson of the seminal “The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism,” is already trying to conceptualize where we stand now in terms of fighting COVID-19.
We are facing a choice between a Malthusian strand – inspired by social Darwinism – “led by the Johnson-Trump-Bolsonaro axis” and, on the other side, a strand pointing to the “requalification of public health as a fundamental tool,” exemplified by China, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
The stark option, Mezzadra notes, is between a “natural population selection,” with thousands of dead, and “defending society” by employing “variable degrees of authoritarianism and social control.” It’s easy to imagine who stands to benefit from this social re-engineering, a 21st century remix of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.”
Amid so much doom and gloom, count on Italy to offer us Tiepolo-style shades of light. Italy chose the Wuhan option, with immensely serious consequences for its already fragile economy. Quarantined Italians remarkably reacted by singing on their balconies: a true act of metaphysical revolt. . . .
. . . . Not even trillions of dollars raining from the sky by an act of divine Fed mercy were able to cure Covid-19. G‑7 “leaders” had to resort to a videoconference to realize how clueless they are – even as China’s fight against coronavirus gave the West a head start of several weeks.
Shanghai-based Dr. Zhang Wenhong, one of China’s top infectious disease experts, whose analyses have been spot on so far, now says China has emerged from the darkest days in the “people’s war” against Covid-19. But he does not think this will be over by summer. Now extrapolate what he’s saying to the Western world.
It’s not even spring yet, and we already know it takes a virus to mercilessly shatter the Goddess of the Market. Last Friday, Goldman Sachs told no fewer than 1,500 corporations that there was no systemic risk. That was false.
New York banking sources told me the truth: systemic risk became way more severe in 2020 than in 1979, 1987 or 2008 because of the hugely heightened danger that the $1.5 quadrillion derivative market would collapse.
As the sources put it, history had never before seen anything like the Fed’s intervention via its little understood elimination of commercial bank reserve requirements, unleashing a potential unlimited expansion of credit to prevent a derivative implosion stemming from a total commodity and stock market collapse of all stocks around the world.
Those bankers thought it would work, but as we know by now all the sound and fury signified nothing. The ghost of a derivative implosion – in this case not caused by the previous possibility, the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz – remains.
We are still barely starting to understand the consequences of Covid-19 for the future of neoliberal turbo-capitalism. What’s certain is that the whole global economy has been hit by an insidious, literally invisible circuit breaker. This may be just a “coincidence.” Or this may be, as some are boldly arguing, part of a possible, massive psy-op creating the perfect geopolitlcal and social engineering environment for full-spectrum dominance.
Additionally, along the hard slog down the road, with immense, inbuilt human and economic sacrifice, with or without a reboot of the world-system, a more pressing question remains: will imperial elites still choose to keep waging full-spectrum-dominance hybrid war against China?
2. Other broadcasts have explored the Wuhan Military World Games–a military sports competition–as a possible vectoring vehicle. We update that path of inquiry with discussion of the U.S. delegation as a possible vectoring agent for the spread of the disease in the U.S. We also note that the U.S. delegation contained: ” . . . . nine public-affairs officers . . . and two State Department personnel, according to DOD documents. . . .” “Public affairs officer” is a common cover for CIA personnel.
. . . . Contrary to the Pentagon’s insistence, however, an investigation of COVID-19 cases in the military from official and public source materials shows that a strong correlation exists in COVID-19 cases reported at U.S. military facilities that are home bases of members of the U.S. team that went to Wuhan. Before March 31, when the Pentagon restricted the release of information about COVID-19 cases at installations for security reasons, infections occurred at a minimum of 63 military facilities where team members returned after the Wuhan games. Additionally, the U.S. team used chartered flights to and from the games via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Washington was one of the earliest states to show a spike in COVID-19. . . .
3. In early November of last year, there was an international workshop about managing and operating Biosafety labs, held at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At this workshop there were invitees who included personnel who might have served as vectoring agents. Bear in mind, again, that biological warfare requires a very small number of operational personnel to do some very effective and destructive work. ” . . . . The workshop is designed for laboratory managers and directors, research and laboratory staffs mainly from developing countries who plan to carry out infectious disease research in biosafety facilities. The workshop will address key aspects of biosafety and provide practical training in high level biosafety laboratories (BSL). This workshop will invite a group of well-known scholars and experts from related fields at home and abroad to provide the theoretical and practical courses. . . .”
With the development of globalization, industrialization and modernization, and the changes in the environment and climate, different infectious diseases and various public health emergencies are posing serious threats to human health. In addition, as the global pace of building laboratories has been accelerated significantly, laboratory safety issues have become increasingly prominent. Thus, the global community is facing new challenges in public health. Two sessions of the International Workshop on Biosafety Laboratory Management and Techniques were successfully held in 2017 and 2018. The series of workshops, as the first offer submitted by China to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Assistance and Cooperation Database, constitutes China’s major contribution to the implementation of BWC.
In 2019, the workshop will be hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and organized by Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), CAS, and will be held from November 03–09, 2019 in Wuhan, China.
The workshop is designed for laboratory managers and directors, research and laboratory staffs mainly from developing countries who plan to carry out infectious disease research in biosafety facilities. The workshop will address key aspects of biosafety and provide practical training in high level biosafety laboratories (BSL). This workshop will invite a group of well-known scholars and experts from related fields at home and abroad to provide the theoretical and practical courses. The participants will be supposed to discuss bioethics and biosafety policies, understand key components (risk recognition, risk assessment and risk mitigation) of a biorisk management system, acquire hands-on experience of safe operations in biosafety laboratories and know basic design principles of biosafety laboratories.
4a. As noted by Pepe Escobar, Event 201–which began on the same day as the Military World Games in Wuhan–helped to set the PR template for Covid-19.
Avril Haines (see below) was a key participant in the event.
“Event 201 Players: Avril Haines;” centerforhealthsecurity.org
Avril Haines is a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University; a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; a member of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service; and a principal at WestExec Advisors.
During the last administration, Dr. Haines served as Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor. She also served as the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council.
Dr. Haines received her bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. She serves on a number of boards and advisory groups, including the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Bio Advisory Group, the Board of Trustees for the Vodafone Foundation, and the Refugees International Advisory Council.
4b. A key participant in Even 201, former Deputy CIA Director Avril Haines is Biden’s director of national intelligence.
The new director of national intelligence [Avril Haines] has been reshaping the office, installing a new official to lead President Biden’s daily briefings by tapping a veteran of the last Bush administration, according to current and former government officials. . . .
5. Peter Daszak voiced the (self-fulfilling?) opinion/prophecy that Covid-19 is indeed “Disease X.”
The cognitive template for Covid-19 was partially set by Peter Daszak, who has widely disseminated the supposition that “Disease X” would overtake the world.
It is our view that the efforts of Daszak, the Event 201 players and others could be compared to the propagandizing that elements of the WACCFL and the intelligence community, as well as elements of the U.S. far right did in the run-up to the JFK assassination.
That propagandizing was a key element in the “Painting of Oswald Red.”
“We Knew Disease X Was Coming. It’s Here Now.” by Peter Daszak; The New York Times; 02/27/2020
In early 2018, during a meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva, a group of experts I belong to (the R&D Blueprint) coined the term “Disease X”: We were referring to the next pandemic, which would be caused by an unknown, novel pathogen that hadn’t yet entered the human population. As the world stands today on the edge of the pandemic precipice, it’s worth taking a moment to consider whether Covid-19 is the disease our group was warning about.
Disease X, we said back then, would likely result from a virus originating in animals and would emerge somewhere on the planet where economic development drives people and wildlife together. Disease X would probably be confused with other diseases early in the outbreak and would spread quickly and silently; exploiting networks of human travel and trade, it would reach multiple countries and thwart containment. Disease X would have a mortality rate higher than a seasonal flu but would spread as easily as the flu. It would shake financial markets even before it achieved pandemic status.
In a nutshell, Covid-19 is Disease X. . . .
6. We present an obviously speculative–but very important–element of discussion.
In FTR #‘s 1157, 1158, 1159, 1170, 1183 and 1184 we examined Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, which looks disturbingly like a biological warfare front. (Daszak’s last name is pronounced “Daysh-ak,” BTW.)
The EcoHealth Alliance–financed by USAID–partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to research bat-borne coronaviruses. A “chimeric” virus was created by Baric under this program in 2015, and Baric was subsequently selected to create the SARS Cov‑2 virus from scratch.
We have learned that Daszak is of Ukrainian heritage, with his father Bohdan having (apparently) been born in Ukraine and being 19 years old in 1945.
“Parents — Father is Bohdan Daszak (born March 21, 1926)
Mother’s maiden name was “Walton” — [HL0043][GDrive] , born in England (Ashton district)
Siblings — John Daszak”
We wonder if Daszak, Sr. might be part of the OUN/B diaspora which we have covered extensively, and which is at the foundation of a global resurrection of fascism?
Looking Back from 1984
This next Daily Mail article by Megan Sheets and Geoff Earle, on May 23 2021 is very important because the Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made a very important statement response to a question from the managing editor of PolitiFact, Katie Sanders at a May 11, 2021 event on May 11 entitled: United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking. Dr. Fauci was asked a about SARS-CoV‑2 (the disease that causes COVID-19) ‘are you still confident that it developed naturally?’ to which he replied ‘I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out.’ Fauci continued ‘Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out.’
This answer is astonishing given that the main stream press and reporting has discredited people who believe that SARS-CoV‑2 is manmade are conspiracy theorists and has strongly emphasized that it is not likely due to something other than natural causes.
Dr. Fauci emphatically denied that ‘the NIH and NIAD categorically has not funded gain of function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute.’ Dr. Fauci’s statement may be true if he is claiming that the NIH funded gain of function research elsewhere and that did not include the Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, the article reports that USA Today found that “In 2014, NIH approved a grant to EcoHealth Alliance designated for research into ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.’ The project involved collaborating with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses in bats and the risk of potential transfer to humans.” Based on this information, it involved coronaviruses in bats but not gain of function research.
It is also surprising that this is being published in the News media almost 2 weeks after the May 11 event. I added an article confirming this from CNN at the bottom and demonstrating Fauci’s change in original position that “is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated”.
For the entire article see below:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9610069/Dr-Fauci-says-hes-not-convinced-COVID-19-formed-naturally.html
Three Wuhan lab researchers were hospitalized in November 2019
By MEGAN SHEETS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE
PUBLISHED: 13:37 EDT, 23 May 2021 | UPDATED: 23:24 EDT, 23 May 2021
Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sought hospital care in November 2019, months before China disclosed the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.
The newspaper said the report — which provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits — may add weight to calls for a broader probe of whether the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from the laboratory.
The report came on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
Photo Caption: Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sought hospital care in November 2019, months before China disclosed the COVID-19 pandemic
Photo Caption: A previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report adds weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory
A National Security Council spokeswoman had no comment on the Journal’s report but said the Biden administration continued to have ‘serious questions about the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, including its origins within the Peoples Republic of China.’
She said the U.S. government was working with the WHO and other member states to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic’s origins ‘that is free from interference or politicization.’
‘We’re not going to make pronouncements that prejudge an ongoing WHO study into the source of SARS-CoV‑2, but we’ve been clear that sound and technically credible theories should be thoroughly evaluated by international experts,’ she said.
The Journal said current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed a range of views about the strength of the report’s supporting evidence, with one unnamed person saying it needed ‘further investigation and additional corroboration.’
Photo Caption: China’s foreign ministry noted that a WHO-led team had concluded a lab leak was extremely unlikely after a visit in February to the virology institute. Pictured, an aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province
The United States, Norway, Canada, Britain and other countries in March expressed concerns about the WHO-led COVID-19 origins study, and called for further investigation and full access to all pertinent human, animal and other data about the early stages of the outbreak.
Washington is keen to ensure greater cooperation and transparency by China, according to a source familiar with the effort.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
On Sunday, China’s foreign ministry noted that a WHO-led team had concluded a lab leak was extremely unlikely after a visit in February to the virology institute. ‘The U.S. continues to hype the lab leak theory,’ the ministry said in response to a request for comment by the Journal. ‘Is it actually concerned about tracing the source or trying to divert attention?’
The Trump administration had said it suspected the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab, which Beijing denies.
A State Department fact sheet released near the end of the Trump administration had said ‘the U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.’ It did not say how many researchers.
China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, according to one of the team´s investigators, Reuters reported in February, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.
Photo Caption: The World Health Organization’s decision-making body is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 at a meeting later this week
Earlier on Sunday, Dr Anthony Fauci revealed he is ‘not convinced’ that COVID-19 developed naturally and called for an open investigation into its origins as China faces mounting pressure to provide transparency on the issue.
Fauci, the nation’s leading expert in infectious diseases, explained his uncertainty during a PolitiFact event on May 11 entitled: United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.
‘There’s a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still, so I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?’ PolitiFact managing editor Katie Sanders asked Fauci.
‘No actually,’ he replied. ‘I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.’
Photo Caption: Dr Anthony Fauci revealed he is ‘not convinced’ the novel coronavirus developed naturally during a PolitiFact event on May 11 (pictured)
Fauci continued: ‘Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out.
‘So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.’
Fauci’s appearance at the event came hours after he was grilled on the same topic during a tense Senate hearing.
‘Will you in front of this group categorically say that the COVID-19 virus could not have occurred by serial passage in a laboratory?’ Sen Rand Paul (R — Kentucky) had asked Fauci.
The NIH director replied: ‘I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China.’
Fauci also unequivocally refuted Paul’s suggestion that the NIH had funneled money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the Chinese lab accused of playing a role in the COVID-19 outbreak.
Photo Caption: Republicans have claimed to have ‘significant circumstantial evidence’ linking COVID-19 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured). Senator Rand Paul clashed with Fauci over the origins of COVID-19 at a hearing a Senate hearing on May 11. Paul accuses Dr Fauci of funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology
During his segment at the PolitiFact event Fauci slammed Paul for ‘conflating… in a way that’s almost irresponsible’ Chinese scientists with collaborative research into Sars-Cov‑1, which emerged in China in the early 2000s.
Fauci’s appearance at the event received little media attention at the time but was pulled back into the spotlight over the weekend after the White House renewed its call for an independent and ‘transparent’ investigation into the origins of the COVID.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday called for exploring the ‘root causes’ of the pandemic after Republicans issued an interim report saying there was ‘significant circumstantial evidence’ that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
‘I would caution you against disproving a negative there which is never the responsible approach in our view when it comes to getting to the bottom of the root causes of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States,’ she said in response to a question about the report.
Photo Caption: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called for a transparent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus
White House calls for transparent investigation into origins of COVID
‘Our view continues to be that there needs to be an independent, transparent investigation,’ she said.
She said the investigation required the ‘cooperation and data provided from the Chinese government’ – which has denied administration requests to fully share it.
‘We don’t have enough info at this point to make an assessment,’ she continued.
Fact check on funding for Wuhan lab
USA Today found it ‘false’ that any US funding led to the COVID outbreak.
In 2014, NIH approved a grant to EcoHealth Alliance designated for research into ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.’ The project involved collaborating with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses in bats and the risk of potential transfer to humans.
In total, $3,378,896 in NIH funding was directed from the government to the project.
Over the course of the two grants approved by the NIH for EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute received about $600,000 from the NIH, according to Robert Kessler, a spokesperson for EcoHealth Alliance.
The funding was a fee for the collection and analysis of viral samples, the group said. It was directed toward SARS research.
In the grant approved in 2014, about $133,000 was sent to the institute in the first four years and about $66,000 in the past year. In the second grant approved in 2019, about $76,000 was budgeted for the Wuhan Institute, though no money was sent before the grant’s termination.
The grant was terminated in April 2020.
— USA Today fact check
Asked when Biden would call Chinese President Xi Jinping, Psaki responded that ‘We have made that call publicly many times’ and ‘conveyed that privately. And we have certainly communicated that they were not transparent from the beginning.’
The Republicans on the panel made their claim after infectious Fauci clashed with Sen Paul over his claims about a Chinese lab leak – and statements about a conspiracy theory that US backing was involved.
Many top scientists, while not ruling out the possibility of a human-caused event, point to the likelihood of the virus mutating and jumping form animals to humans, as has happened with numerous previous coronaviruses.
The report says U.S. agencies and academic institutions ‘may have funded or collaborated in’ gain of function research – after Fauci specifically denied government backing.
‘Based on publicly available information, the possibility that the outbreak originated from an accidental exposure at the WIV has not been disproven,’ it says.
It cites competing theories – including the virus originating from a Chinese wet market, jumping over from human contact with a bat or other species, or even through handling of imported frozen food – but then says it focuses on just one.
‘While Committee Republicans acknowledge there are differing theories on the origins of COVID-19, this review focuses on the WIV as a possible origin source,’ it says, referencing the Wuhan lab.
The report was released publicly Wednesday after first being obtained by Fox News.
The report, though cites ‘significant circumstantial evidence raises serious concerns that the COVID-19 outbreak may have been a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’ without providing any direct evidence that it did.
It says China has a ‘history of research lab leaks resulting in infections’ and says the lab conducts ‘dangerous research,’ which risks the ‘accidental outbreak of a pandemic.’
The report follows repeated attacks by President Donald Trump on China after the virus outbreak. He frequently called covid-19 the ‘China virus’ in the run-up to the election and called it the ‘kung flu.’
It cites public reporting that Chinese researchers were sickened in the fall of 2019 with ‘COVID-10-like symptoms.’
‘By contrast, little circumstantial evidence has emerged to support the PRC’s claim that COVID-19 was a natural occurrence, having jumped from some other species to human’ according to the report, although it is not just the Chinese Communist Party making the claim.
Photo Caption: Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (L) is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province on February 23, 2017. Two Chinese labs are located close by a wet market in Wuhan that scientists believe allowed covid-19 to proliferate
CDC Director says it is ‘possible’ COVID escaped from Wuhan Lab
Earlier this month, Paul and Fauci got in a tense exchange during a Senate hearing, where Paul accused the US of potentially funding ‘gain-of-function’ research bats that could have gone awry.
‘This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH. … Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?’
‘Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not never and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’ shot back Fauci.
‘Could you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not. Will you in front of this group categorically say that the COVID-19 could not have occurred through serial passage in a laboratory,’ Paul asked Fauci.
‘I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China,’ Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded.
‘However I will repeat again, the NIH and NIAD categorically has not funded gain of function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute.’
Fauci also told him: ‘I fully agree that you should investigate where the virus came from. But again, we have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.’
A report by the World Health Organization with the collaboration from China called a ‘zoonotic transmission’ from animals to humans ‘likely to very likely’ as the cause, although the administration has faulted the report as incomplete.
CNN offers the explanation as to how Dr. Fauci’s position changed from May 2020 where he stated to National Geographic “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated ... Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
The CNN article concludes “The origins of the virus remain not fully known. Tracing that is, at root, a medical and public health question — not a political one.”
Here is the article:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/24/politics/fauci-donald-trump-coronavirus/index.html
Why is Anthony Fauci hedging on the origins of the coronavirus?
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large Updated 12:29 PM ET, Mon May 24, 2021
(CNN) — Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted earlier this month that he is no longer convinced that the Covid-19 pandemic originated naturally.
“I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,” Fauci told PolitiFact’s managing editor Katie Sanders.
“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” he continued.
Which is, quite clearly, a change from Fauci’s previous view that the disease very likely came about after animal to human transmission. Here’s Fauci in an interview with National Geographic last May:
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated ... Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
Fauci’s dismissal of the idea that the virus originated in a lab in China’s Wuhan province followed vague assertions by then-President Donald Trump that he had a “high degree of confidence” that the virus had come from a lab. Pressed for details on that assertion, which ran counter to US intelligence on the virus’ origins, Trump offered only this: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
Given that history, conservatives leaped on Fauci’s recent hedging as proof positive that Trump was, in fact, right all along. (Worth noting: Fauci made his comments at a fact-checking symposium on May 11, but they were largely ignored at the time. Conservative publications began writing about the remarks over the weekend.)
“Fauci must answer for his role in Wuhan’s COVID lab,” tweeted former New York Rep. Nan Hayworth ®.
Fauci has become a lightning rod for conservative criticism of how the scientific community has handled the ongoing pandemic. Trump sought to villainize Fauci for his allegedly too-cautious approach to a return to normal from the virus, and the likes of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have taken up the cause; last month she tweeted a video of herself working out that included this text: “This is my Covid protection #MakeAmericaHealthyAgain It’s time to #FireFauci”
So, how much “there” is actually there? Well, on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal wrote this:
“Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory...
“...The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.”
It’s worth noting here that, according to CNN reporting, US intelligence officials are not certain what the researchers were actually sick with. And Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told Congress last month that “the intelligence community does not know exactly where, when, or how Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially.”
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, denied the WSJ report and said that the US is “hyping up the lab leak theory.”
What’s clear is that Fauci is significantly more open to the idea of the lab theory than he was a year ago. While he did leave himself some wiggle room in his statements about the origins last year (he said he was “very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,”) there was no doubt about where Fauci stood on the question.
The issue, then, is not whether Fauci has moved his position on the possible origins of the virus but rather why he is doing so. Fauci defenders will insist that he is simply evolving his view based on information that has come out over the last year. Fauci opponents will insist he knew all along that the lab theory was a possibility and downplayed it solely to make Trump look bad.
In the midst of that debate, it’s important to remember that Trump never provided any evidence for his vague claims about the origins of the virus. “Something happened,” was as far as he would go.
It’s also critical to remember that there would be a major distinction — even within the lab theory — between the virus accidentally getting out and it being purposely released as a sort of weapon. Trump and his allies have long flicked at the latter explanation but without any further explanation or proof.
As CNN wrote on Monday:
“The current intelligence reinforces the belief that the virus most likely originated naturally, from animal-human contact, the sources said. But that does not preclude the possibility that the virus was the result of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute, where coronavirus research was being conducted on bats.”
Here’s the point: The origins of the virus remain not fully known. Tracing that is, at root, a medical and public health question — not a political one.
The WSJ just put out an article that, at least on its surface, appears to indicative of an ongoing battle of narratives taking place within the US intelligence community right now regarding the origins of the SARS-CoV‑2 virus. The article is about a previously undisclosed US intelligence report about three Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers who got sick enough to be sent to the hospital with a viral respiratory illness in November of 2019. The report reportedly fleshes out what was a State Department fact sheet on the lab leak theory was issued in the final days of the Trump administration. It’s the kind of report that is obviously quite circumstantially tantalizing to the growing push in the West to formally blame the WIV with developing the virus.
We’re learning about this report because unnamed current and former US officials are now talking about it to the press. But was we’ll see, there’s disagreement about the strength of the report. Some officials describe it as compelling circumstantial evidence.
One official who is publicly making these assertions is Davis Asher, a former U.S. official who led a State Department task force on the origins of the virus for then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told a Hudson Institute seminar back in March, “I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” and characterized it as “the first known cluster” of COVID-19 cases. At the same time, as the article points out, November is the normal cold and flu season for China and it isn’t unusual for people in China to go straight to the hospital when they get sick, either for better care or better access to a general practitioner. Also note that we don’t know if the three researchers were actually working on coronaviruses or some other pathogen.
Overall, it sounds like the hunt for the origin of the virus is intensifying, but intensifying exclusively around Wuhan, with all other scenarios being preemptively tossed aside. It raises the question of how questions related to the numerous reports of military athletes arriving in Wuhan with a mysterious viral illness in the last week of October 2019. It’s already clear that there’s no real interest in meaningfully investigating this scenario. And yet, as the articles notes, the WHO-led investigative team has stated that their Chinese counterparts have identified 92 potential COVID-19 cases a month ~76,000 people who fell sick between October and early December 2019, although they haven’t yet shared the raw data that assessment is based on with the larger group. And Chinese authorities have agreed to grant access to a Wuhan blood bank to test samples from before December 2019 for antibodies. So it’s going to be interesting to see how many earlier clusters might be found from that data set, but keep in mind that if the three sick WIV researchers really were the source of the outbreak, we probably shouldn’t expect to find any evidence at all of COVID-19 outbreaks anywhere else in the world before November of 2019. So while proving this WIV origin theory — that three sick researchers were ‘Patients 0, 1, and 2’ for this disease — is quite a challenge, disproving it should be quite easy. Just find older evidence of SARS-CoV‑2. Anywhere. Recall how studies have hinted at evidence of SARS-CoV‑2 long before November of 2019, with Spanish researchers finding signs of the virus in Spanish sewage samples as far back as March 2019. Those are the kinds of studies that will need to be systematically avoided and ignored for the ‘WIV leak origin’ scenario to hold up.
Finally, while we don’t have much information on what exactly that previously undisclosed US intelligence analysis was based on, recall earlier reports about separate analyses — some commercial and some conducted by US intelligence — that suggested a surge in hospital utilization rates in the fall of 2019 based the satellite images of Wuhan area hospitals. And in on study that examined internet search results for signs of of surge in COVID-related symptoms, they found signs of some sort of viral outbreak as far back as August of 2019 in the Wuhan area. But as we saw, it wasn’t just Wuhan that was seeing signs of an unusually severe flu season. The whole world, including the US, experienced a highly unusual Fall of 2019. All of that will have to continue to not be adequately investigated for the WIV-leak narrative to take hold. That’s part of what makes this emerging narrative battle within the US intelligence community so interesting to watch play out: as the advocates for the WIV-leak theory investigation continue to grow louder, there’s an implicit call to NOT investigate a whole range of other scenarios that also grows louder. Quietly louder:
“The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.””
The symptoms of these three researchers were indeed consistent with COVID-19. But also seasonal illness. It’s far from conclusive evidence and really mostly useful as one data point in a much larger assessment of the available facts on hand. After all, note the observation from the WHO team that the fact that these three WIV workers got sick and went to the hospital isn’t actually unusual at all. Especially for China during flu season:
But it’s also the kind of evidence that can also be latched onto and repeatedly hammered to amplify a narrative...as long as the broader body of evidence is ignored. It’s part of what makes the dueling interpretations of the report we’re hearing from these sources so interesting. Because as David Asher, the US official who led the Trump administration’s State Department task force on the origins of the pandemic, characterized it, these three researchers could be the first known COVID cluster. But if these researchers are the origin of a viral leak, they shouldn’t just be the first known cluster. They should be the first actual cluster. Meaning no earlier clusters should be found anywhere:
And it’s that logical mandate to either find, or not find, earlier COVID-19 clusters that makes the ongoing retrospective search to find older undetected COVID-19 cases so fascinating to watch. There’s the obvious big question of whether or not older cases will be found in Wuhan:
And then there’s the question of whether or not older cases might be found elsewhere in the world, along with the question of whether or that question will even be asked. A lot of questions. It’s one of the more disturbing themes of the world’s investigation into the origin of this virus: the biggest question throughout this entire investigation is what questions will investigators be allowed to actually ask.
Now that the Biden administration has ordered the US intelligence community to provide a new assessment on the lab leak hypothesis in the wake of the WSJ report on the three Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) employees who got sick enough to go the hospital in November 2019, it’s worth noting that this also comes less than two weeks after a group of scientists published a letter in Science demanding a more vigorous investigation into the lab leak possibility. The signers of the letter include some names we should expect at this point, like Alina Chan. But it notably also includes Ralph Baric, the figure who could be seen as the global grand master of coronavirus ‘gain-of-function’ experimental techniques. When asked about his signature appearing on this letter, Baric said that while he “personally believe[s] in the natural origin hypothesis,” the World Health Organization (WHO) should arrange for a rigorous, open investigation.
Overall, the lab leak hypothesis is clearly being given a new look globally. Of course, that growing global speculation around a lab leak scenario is still exclusively speculation around a leak from the WIV, without any consideration of the other obvious possibilities or the global context of the the West’s ongoing China destabilization campaign. So it’s worth noting a few very interesting updates regarding what the globe knew about the closest known coronavirus cousin to SARS-CoV‑2, RaTG13. First, recall how Alina Chan observed how Shi Zhengli’s lab at the the WIV had accessed the RaTG13 viral sample multiple times throughout 2017–2018, contrary to Shi’s initial statements, based on the date timestamps in the viral genomic sequence files Shi uploaded to the NIH’s databases in May of 2020. It raised the question of why Shi didn’t remove that timestamp information information in the sequence files.
Well, here’s what is perhaps at least a partial answer for why Shi didn’t bother obscuring the timestamps in those sequence files: It turns out RaTG13 was already partially sequenced and included in a 2016 study published by Shi’s lab that compared the relative evolutionary relationship of 150 bat coronaviruses found in a cave in Yunnan Province during surveillance missions conducted in 2012–2013. Importantly, these surveillance missions to collect biological samples were conducted after three men working in the cave got sick and died with a pneumonia-like illness. So these 150 bat coronaviruses surveyed in this 2016 paper were top candidates for a potentially SARS-like virus that could jump to humans. Crucially, of all the viruses sampled, only two were betacoronaviruses: RaTG13 (which was called Ra4991 at that time) and HpBtCoV/3740–2. These two viruses clearly stand out as the evolutionary outliers in the study, with the authors characterize Ra4991 as arguably a new strain of the bat Sars-Like coronaviruses (SL-CoVs) and part of what could be a novel betacoronavirus species. Recall that SARS-CoV‑2 is a member of the betacoronavirus family. So this 2016 study informed the world that what is now the closest known viral cousin to SARS-CoV‑2, RaTG13/Ra4991, was at that point a member of a novel betacoronavirus family. In other words, this 2016 paper told anyone in the world interested in designing new human SARS-like viruses that RaTG13/Ra4991 is potentially a really great candidate for consideration.
Note that the entire viral sequence didn’t need to be obtained for this 2016 paper. They were instead just comparing the sequences of one specific gene, but it’s a gene for a ubiquitous protein that is highly stable from an evolutionary perspective, making it a useful gene for constructing phylogenetic trees of genetic relatedness. Recall how the study of the phylogenetic trees of SARS-CoV‑2 has been a basic tool for understanding where the virus came from and how it’s evolving. This 2016 study relies on similar techniques, but was comparing more distantly related coronavirus samples to each other instead. The fact that they only needed to sequence a single gene is noteworthy in the context of Alina Chan’s observation that date timestamps of the sequence files suggested the sequencing was taking place from 2017–2018. It’s possible just a single RaTG14/Ra4991 gene was published in 2016 and the rest of the sequencing was done later. But, importantly in the context of the hunt for the origins of SARS-CoV‑2, the publication of this 2016 paper informed the world that the sequencing of RaTG14/Ra4991 has already begun. As we’ll see, the sequence for the gene used in this study was actually submitted to the NIH’s databases in 2015, so technically the world learned the sequencing began on this virus at that point. But the sequencing of this gene for Ra4991 was actually first mentioned in a May 2014 paper that appears to be an earlier attempt to survey the viruses from the Yunnan cave. So the world actually officially learned about the sequencing of Ra4991/RaTG13 in May of 2014, but didn’t really learn about the evolutionary significance of the virus until 2016.
And, lo and behold, when we look at the acknowledgements for this 2016 paper, we find them citing Peter Daszak’s USNIAID grant (R01AI110964). So, like much of Shi’s lab’s work on bat coronaviruses, this paper was funded, in part, by the US government. This fun fact of the USNIAID grant financing this study actually came up during congressional hearings last year. As we’ll see below, when pressed about his grant’s funding of this 2016 paper in August of 2020, Peter Daszak replied that, yes, his grant likely paid the salaries of the people who wrote that paper, but insisted that the NIH has no control over the actual sample or how it was used or sequenced. Which is probably technically true, but kind of beside the point. You don’t expect collaborators to necessarily share control over everything in their collaboration.
Finally, it’s also been discovered in recent weeks that students in Shi Zhengi’s lab have been publishing dissertations with references to RaTG13, including a dissertation published in June of 2019 that appears to have been relied on the entire sequenced RaTG13 genome. That genome doesn’t appear to have been published along with the dissertation but, at a minimum, the dissertation informed the world that the entire genome for the virus had been sequenced by Shi’s lab.
Ok, first, here’s the paragraph from that 2016 paper describing Ra4991 (RaTG13) as representing a new strain of the Sars-like betacoronaviruses, with acknowledgements thanking Peter Daszak’s USNIAID grant:
Be sure to view Figure 2 in the paper and notice how Ra4991 is a clear evolutionary outlier in the phylogenetic plot. That plot, combined with the paragraph describing Ra4991/RaTG13 as a new strain of this viral lineage, had to be quite an intriguing piece of information to the biowarfare research community. The global biowarfare research community. Which raises the obvious question of who else may have had access to that biological sample and/or the sequencing information when it became available. It’s part of what makes the funding of Daszak’s grant on this paper potentially so significant. Did any of Shi’s collaborators privately get access to that sequence data? We don’t know, although was force to address this in a Twitter thread he started back in August 20, 2020, where he lamented the White House’s cancellation of his grant in the wake of the congressional uproar over his work’s potential connection to WIV’s coronavirus research. Daszak finally admitted that, yes, his grant paid for the research but insisted that he and the NIH had no authority over the actual biological sample. Which is likely technically true, but it doesn’t really address the question of whether or not the sequence for Ra4991/RaTG13 was ever shared with Shi’s collaborators like Daszak:
Now here is where someone interrupts Daszak and and mentions that Daszak’s grant was cited in the paper. Daszak responds by pointing out that the collection date for the samples preceding his team’s collaboration with Shi (which started in Jun of 2014), making the case that his grant had nothing to do with the collection of the sample:
Now this person mentions that the sequence for the gene used in the 2016 study was actually submitted to the NIH’s MCBI databases in March of 2015, which would suggest the sequencing of this gene in the Ra4991/RaTG13 sample was done at least in part under Daszak’s grant. Daszak acknowledges that the grant did support the staff salaries as they wrote up the paper, but returns to his point that the NIH has no control over the biological sample:
So Daszak’s ultimate explanation for question about the relationship between his long-standing working relationship with Shi’s lab and the work on Ra4991/RaTG13 is that the NIH didn’t control the biological sample the work was based on...it merely funded the work on that sample. It’s an distinction of questionable relevance.
Now here’s a twitter thread by a “TruthSeeker268” from a couple weeks ago that Alina Chan has been promoting. This appears to be where the June 2019 dissertation thesis out of Shi’s lab indicating the full sequencing of Ra4991/RaTG13 was first noticed. The twitter thread starts off by pointing out a May 2014 study published by Shi’s lab that appears to be similar an earlier version of the 2016 survey of viral samples obtained from the Yunnan cave. It’s in that paper where we first see the sequencing of the single gene for Ra4991 mentioned in publication. So by May of 2014, the sequencing of Ra4991/RaTG13 had begun.
Here’s is the tweet introducing the 2014 paper were Ra4991 is first mentioned:
And here’s the tweet that identifies where in the 2014 paper we see the first ever reference to Ra4991, which had at least one gene sequenced for this comparison study:
Now they point out a 2017 thesis out of Shi’s lab that describes a number of methods that sure sound a lot like ‘gain-of-function’ methodologies:
And here’s the tweet that identifies the June 2019 dissertation thesis that involved the full sequencing of 170 coronaviruses, including Ra4991:
Here’s the tweet where they point out the whole genome of Ra4991 was sequenced for this dissertation:
Once this dissertation was published in June of 2019, there could be no denying that Shi’s lab at the WIV had entirely sequenced RaTG13/Ra4991 before the outbreak of the pandemic. About 6 months before the outbreak was first recognized. And yet we can be confident that groups around the world with an interest in biowarfare had to be at least interested in RaTG13/Ra4991 since at least the publication of that 2016 paper. These are some of the key contours of this history that should be investigated if there’s any genuine interest in investigating the origins of this virus. Key contours that will likely be systematically ignored. With that likely outcome in mind, here’s a report on the recent publication of a letter in Science calling for a new lab leak investigation. Signed by none other than Ralph Baric:
“Baric told KHN he does not believe covid resulted from gain-of-function research. But he signed the Science letter calling for a more thorough investigation of his Chinese colleagues’ laboratory, he said in an email, because while he “personally believe[s] in the natural origin hypothesis,” WHO should arrange for a rigorous, open investigation. It should review the biosafety level under which bat coronavirus research was conducted at the Wuhan Institute, obtaining detailed information on the training and safety procedures and efforts to monitor possible infections among lab personnel.”
You have to wonder if, when Baric called for an investigation into the lab leak hypothesis, he was including an investigation of his own lab in that call. Because it would be a nonsense investigation if it wasn’t included, and yet there’s no indication at all that any future lab leak investigations will include the investigation of any labs outside of the WIV. So when Alina Chan points out that evidence suggests that Shi’s lab has COVID-like viruses in its collection that it hasn’t deposited in global databases and laments that “we don’t have access to that data”, we really have to ask and answer the question: did anyone else on the planet get access to this private collection of virus sequences? Global collaborators perhaps?
It’s also worth taking a step back and noting that the big scandal here, if it is a scandal, is that Shi’s lab wasn’t readily publicly releasing the viral sequences of viruses like Ra4991/RaTG13 with the world and only did so belatedly in 2020. It raises the question: so would we prefer that Shi’s lab had just gone ahead and published every viral genomeic sample it comes across? Is that actually a good idea in an era when anyone can take a viral sequence and turn it into a live virus? After all, as the 2016 paper demonstrated, it wasn’t a huge challenge to identify Ra4991/RaTG13 as a tempting candidate for something nasty. It stuck out from the rest. Should they have just immediately published it?
Keep in mind that these are the exact same debates that resulted in the EcoHealth Alliance’s collaboration with Shi’s lab and the ‘gain-of-function’ approach to virus hunting. The whole idea behind the ‘gain-of-function’ approach to this type of research is to determine whether or not a virus is close to becoming dangerous to humans is to take those candidate viruses, like Ra4991/RaTG13, modify them, and test their new virulence. So if we learn that Shi’s lab was conducting ‘gain-of-function’ experiments on Ra4991, keep in mind that this would be exactly what they are expected to do as part of their EcoHealth Alliance collaboration. Which, again, raises the question of whether or not any of this information on Ra4991/RaTG13 or other yet-to-be-published coronaviruses has been privately shared with Daszak or any of Shi’s other international collaborators. It’s arguably one of the most important questions in the context of a lab leak investigation, which is why it probably won’t be asked.
@Pterrafractyl–
Good Job!
Note, in passing, that there is NO discussion by ANY of the people about the state-of-the-art in BW and synthesizing microorganisms.
Once the genome is public–and you have illustrated that that is indeed the case–the organism can be recreated and/or tweaked at will.
That is why the context I will be discussing in the next program is so fundamental to an understanding of what is going on.
Best,
Dave
@Dave: It turns out there was a very recent write up in a Norwegian publication, Minerva, about the thesis dissertation by a student in Shi Zhengli’s lab published in June of 2019 that involved the closest known viral cousin to SARS-CoV‑2, RaTG13/Ra4991. And this write up includes a rather significant detail about this thesis work: The thesis involved the creation of chimeric viruses and testing how these chimeric viruses infected human cells. In other words, the thesis was describing gain-of-function work on the closest known viral cousin to SARS-CoV‑2. So that confirms that, yes, gain-of-function work on the RaTG13/R4991 was being conducted at the WIV in the period leading up to the pandemic.
But it also confirms another rather crucial fact related to this whole investigation of the origins of the virus: this gain-of-function work was not a secret. They published about it in a #@%& dissertation! Beyond that, it sounds like some of the work in this dissertation was published in a 2017 paper in PLOS. Guess who is a co-author on that paper: Peter Daszak. The study was funded in part by his USNIAID grant. So we can be pretty confident that the work that went into these dissertations was work the EcoHealth Alliance was familiar with.
And as we already saw, a 2017 thesis published by another one of Shi’s students sure sounded like it was employing gain-of-function techniques on these bat coronaviruses. So there was gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses taking place in Shi’s lab since at least 2017 and it was not at all a secret to the world. And why would it be? Recall the now-notorious 2015 paper co-authored by Shi Zhengli and Ralph Baric involving the creation of chimeric coronaviruses. This is just how this research was conducted by the global research community. Not just in China. Granted, the US temporarily banned gain-of-function work in 2014 before President Trump restarted the work, so there was a pause on this kind of research in the US due to the broader controversy of gain-of-function methods. But within the coronavirus research community, these have become standard techniques. That’s what what makes the admissions of gain-of-function methodologies in the June 2019 thesis, or the early 2017 thesis, so significant. The reporting of these techniques in these theses is significant because it highlights how ultimately insignificant these techniques are within the research community.
And sure, the global public is unlikely to take note of the contents of a dissertation published in a Chinese research lab. But in terms of the biowarfare research community, what are the odds that a student is going to publish a thesis from Shi Zhengli’s lab and NOT have this dissertation read by biowarfare experts around the world. Shi’s lab isn’t your normal lab. She’s the ‘bat woman’ of China and the global fear of bat coronaviruses triggering a pandemic has only been growing since the original SARS outbreak.
So while we can’t say who exactly was aware of this gain-of-function research being conducted at the WIV, we should be able to conclude with pretty high confidence that someone around the globe in the biowarfare research community was taking note of the content of these dissertations. It would almost be scandalous if someone wasn’t paying attention.
And that’s also part of why the other main point in the following article made by critics of the WIV needs to be considered within the context of this global awareness of the gain-of-function research taking place at the WIV: evidence in the dissertations suggests this work was being done under BSL‑2 conditions. If so, that’s certainly a lapse in standard safety protocols. But lets not forget that the WIV’s BSL‑4 status was an international project. The WIV was only accredited as China’s first BSL‑4 lab in 2017, with most of their staff having been trained in France. So if researchers there were conducted gain-of-function experiments under BSL‑2 conditions, when that kind of work calls for at least BSL‑3 conditions, that probably wasn’t a secret to the WIV’s international partners either.
So as we hear all the global outrage over the gain-of-function methods published in the June 2019 thesis or BSL‑2 conditions these experiments were conducted under, keep in mind that if these are considered outrageous then it’s even more outrageous that none of this was likely a secret:
“Lipkin refers to articles published by researchers at WIV that describe work on coronaviruses that were conducted at a safety level below what is recommended: “It shouldn’t have happened. People should not be looking at bat viruses in BSL‑2 labs. My view has changed”, he told Donald G. McNeil Jr., a former science journalist at the New York Times.”
Yes, experts who were previously skeptical of a lab origin of the virus are starting to come around to the idea, including Ian Lipkin an expert in tick-borne diseases who was also one of the authors of that April 2020 letter to Nature by a group of prominent biologists who insists there was no evidence at all of a lab origin. As Lipkin sees it, it’s the fact that the research published by the WIV has indicated BSL‑2 conditions is what changed his mind. As Lipkin told former Times science journalist Donald G. McNeil Jr, it was seeing publications like this 2016 publication showing dangerous work in BSL‑2 conditions that changed his mind. And who do we find co-authoring that 2016 publication alongside Shi Zhengli? Peter Daszak, also citing his USNIAID grant. So Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance were presumably at least somewhat aware of the safety protocols that went into that work.
Flash forward to 2019, and we have the dissertation published describing clear gain-of-function research on human cell lines and in that dissertation it clearly states these experiments were conducted under BSL‑2 conditions. It’s as if Shi’s lab felt like it had nothing to hide...because it hadn’t been hiding this all along to its international partners and no one complained:
Finally, note how this 2019 dissertation work was previously published in a PLOS article in 2017. A PLOS article that once again had Peter Daszak as a co-author and his USNIAID grant as a co-funder of the study:
So was this gain-of-function research at the WIV being carried out in a dangerous manner without proper precautions that violated international standards? It sounds like that’s quite possibly the case, which would be pretty scandalous if true. Scandalous for the WIV. And scandalous for all of the WIV’s many international partners who were clearly working closely with Shi Zhengli’s lab this entire time on this dangerous research for years now. But also keep in mind that we are talking about revelations that were published to the world years ago. It’s only now that people are recognizing the research published in 2016 or 2017 was conducted under dangerous conditions?! What took so long?
@Pterrafractyl–
Notice that none of the commentators appear to be up to speed on contemporary technology.
Once the genome is published–away we go.
“Escape” and “unsafe” are ante-chambers to the “lab-leak/China did it” meme.
Given the Pentagon/USAID funding of EcoHealth Alliance and given that former Ft. Detrick commander David Franz is an adviser to Daszak, it can be safely assumed that U.S. BW elements were absolutely up to speed on this.
“Gain-of-Function” experiments were certainly being performed. It is the ones we don’t know about that are most important.
Best,
Dave
Here’s a pair of articles about a SkyNews documentary about the COVID pandemic origins. The documentary was based on a newly published book ‘What Really Happened in Wuhan’ by Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson. The book features explosive claims by Chinese defector Wei Jingsheng, who was at one point the highest ranking Chinese defector to the US when he defected two decades ago.
Wei’s go beyond just claiming that the pandemic was already underway in Wuhan when the Military World Games took place in late October, and speculates the Chinese Communist Party was intentionally allowing the virus to spread to the world at the games, possibly as part of a biowarfare experiment. And we’re told Wei shared these concerns with US officials, including an unnamed high-ranking US politician. But those concerns fell on deaf ears.
As we’ll see, while the following two articles are both based on excerpts from Markson’s book, there are some differences or unresolved details in the two narratives. In the first article below, we’re told that Wei first informed US officials of his concerns during a November 2019, dinner party in DC at the home of his old friend Dimon Liu and her husband, Bob Suettinger, the CIA agent who had secured his deportation to the United States 20 years earlier. It was during this dinner party where Wei told them about chat room talk he was hearing from friends in Wuhan about a virus going around. In a fun bit of historic resonance in the context of the ‘Oswald Institute of Virology’ theme, this dinner was held on November 22, making it the 56th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.
It’s in the second article below where we find that Wei claims he also told US authorities and one high-ranking politician of the escalating pandemic in October 2019. We’re also told in this article that Wei shared his concerns about a Chinese bioweapon experiment during that dinner party. Wei asserts that athletes were never tested for a novel virus even though, by that stage, he already knew something was very wrong in Wuhan, based on intelligence he had received as a former Chinese Communist Party insider. As Wei told Markson, “I thought that the Chinese government would take this opportunity to spread the virus during the Military Games, as many foreigners would show up there.” Wei added, “I learned there was an unusual exercise by the Chinese government during the Military Games,” confiding in Dimon Liu about his fears “of the possibility of the Chinese government using some strange weapons, including biological weapons, because I knew they were doing experiments of that sort”.
So we have some explosive claims coming out on the origins of the pandemic, seemingly based entirely on the claims of Wei Jingsheng, a high-level Communist Party defector who has apparently maintained extensive high-level contacts in the Chinese Communist Party. It’s those connections as a former former Chinese Communist Party insider that are presumed to be the basis for Wei’s insider knowledge, suggesting the ‘chatter’ Wei was hearing from all those chatrooms about a Wuhan outbreak were chatrooms of Communist Party dissidents. And yet, if true, this would be the earliest indication we have so far of anyone inside the Chinese government being aware of a viral outbreak. So at this point, based on Wei’s claims, it was likely Chinese Communist Party dissident networks in Wuhan that were talking about a virtual outbreak in October, during the World Military Games. Keep in mind those games were in the last week of October, so it was really only the last half of October where the virus had an opportunity to become noticeable. Those dissident networks were apparently quite observant of this emerging pandemic back in October of 2019, and now those observations are the basis for Wei’s biowarfare claims, which is a pretty interesting sequence of events given the circumstances:
“That night they would become among the first in the world to discover a deadly new virus was spreading stealthily in Wuhan. It was November 22, 2019 – six weeks before China would reluctantly confirm to the World Health Organization (WHO) there was a mystery virus, and a full two months before they would confirm human-to-human transmission.”
November 22, 2019. That’s the date of this dinner party where Wei Jingsheng reportedly first shared with CIA agent Bob Suettinger concerns about a virus spreading in Wuhan. What the basis of these concerns? Wei apparently has “impeccable” networks still inside in the Chinese Communist Party. But that doesn’t appear to be the basis for his concerns. Instead, it was the talk in chatrooms. “There’s a lot of fuss about this virus. The chatrooms are filled with it.” People from Wuhan in particular were all talking about some virus, according to Wei. Who are these people? Well, at least some of them are his friends, raising the question of whether or not the ‘chatter’ these claims are based on were primarily emanating for Chinese dissident networks:
So according to that excerpt from Sharri Markson’s book ‘What Really Happened in Wuhan’ book, it was November 22 when CIA agent Bob Suettinger was first told by this high-level Chinese defector about chatter in chat rooms from Wuhan residents about a virus.
Now here’s another excerpt from the book that gives us more info on the nature of the allegations Wei was making at the time. Specifically, Wei was alleging that the virus was being intentionally allowed to circulate in Wuhan in October as part of a plot by the Chinese Communist Party to spread the virus to visiting military teams during the Wuhan Military World Games. Beyond that, the excerpt suggests Wei first told US authorities and one high-ranking politician of the escalating pandemic in October, but claims his warning fell on deaf ears. So part of the challenge in assessing the allegations made by Wei Jingsheng is determining when he actually made these claims
“He claims he also told US authorities and one high-ranking politician of the escalating pandemic in October, but that his warning fell on deaf ears.”
Did Wei first go to US authorities in October? Or is the article merely indicating that when Wei eventually approached US authorities in November 2019, he was referring back to a pandemic that started the month earlier? It’s unclear, although the fact that he claims that he told a high-ranking US politician suggests he had other meetings with US authorities to discuss the outbreak in Wuhan beyond the November 22 meeting with CIA agent Bob Suettinger. Who was this high-ranking US politician?
Also note the source of Wei’s concerns. In the above article, it was chatter in chat rooms from Wei’s friends and associates in Wuhan that appeared to tip him on. In this account, Wei received intelligence as a former Chinese Communist Party insider that something was very wrong in Wuhan. Beyond that, Wei thought that the Chinese Communist Party would take this opportunity to intentionally spread the virus to foreigners. So it appears that Wei’s suspicions of an intentionally spread virus were based heavily on his suspicions about what the CCP might do. And he confided these fears of “the possibility of the Chinese government using some strange weapons, including biological weapons,” to his friend Dimon Liu, a reference to that November 22 dinner party. So Wei wasn’t just talking about chatroom chatter during that dinner party. He was alleging an intentional biowarfare Chinese campaign being waged against the world:
Who did Wei first bring these Wuhan outbreak concerns to in the US government? Was it that November 22 dinner party with an old friend CIA agent? Or weeks earlier in October? And, again, who was this high-ranking US politician? And were these claims based primarily on the chatter from Wei’s friends? Were these dissident friends? Are these dissident friends still operating inside the Communist Party? If so, that would make active dissident networks inside the Chinese Communist Party the sources for these claims extremely early warnings of an outbreak. Warnings that seem to precede all other warnings we’ve heard about so far. As we can see, these are explosive claims for a lot of reasons.
@Pterrafractyl–
Your comment fails to take appropriate stock of Ms. Markson–News Editor of a Murdoch Newscorp Australian tabloid.
The usual suspects are the roster of “experts”–Pompeo, David Asher etc.
It is rather like Alina Chan–the “go-to” source for info on coronaviruses being researched/modified at the WIV.
She goes on and on and on and on about interest in the Shcov-14 in Wuhan but glosses over the fact that EcoHealth Alliance and Baric were modifying that virus in North Carolina.
Last time I checked, North Carolina was not in China.
Dave Emory