Thomas Fazi, who has a book on The Covid Consensus coming out shortly with Toby Green, has written an excellent summary in UnHerd of the evidence of a cover-up of the possible lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 by those behind the kind of research that would have produced it.
Much of the work on SARS-like CoVs performed in Wuhan was part of an active and highly collaborative U.S.-China scientific research programme funded by the U.S. Government – primarily through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), directed by Anthony Fauci, which is part of the NIH – and coordinated by the U.S.-based non-governmental organisation EcoHealth Alliance (EHA). The group’s research work went beyond the simple analysis of existing coronaviruses, and actually involved the engineering of ‘chimeric’ bat coronaviruses, some of which proved to be potentially more infectious to humans – a highly risky technique known as gain-of-function.
In 2018, EcoHealth and the WIV (in collaboration with other institutions) sent a grant proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which included a plan to insert furin cleavage sites into existing bat coronaviruses – spots in the surface protein of a virus that can boost its entry into human cells. The DARPA proposal was rejected – and yet the presence of a furin cleavage site is precisely what sets SARS-CoV-2 apart from all known SARS-like coronaviruses. Did the researchers carry out the research anyway, possibly using other sources of funding? Nobel Prize-winning virologist David Baltimore stated that he considered this to be “the smoking gun for the origin of the virus”.
In light of all this, it’s hardly surprising that in the early days of the pandemic, at the highest levels of the U.S. establishment, the question of whether the virus might have been engineered at the WIV, possibly through research part-funded by the U.S. Government, was taken very seriously. As a result of an FoIA request, we know that on February 1st 2020, Anthony Fauci convened a “totally confidential” conference call with at least a dozen high-level experts from around the world, many of whom privately admitted that there was a very high probability that the virus had been artificially engineered and had then “escaped” from the Wuhan lab.
Yet not only did the NIH fail to disclose this to the public or to Congress, but the emails released under the FoIA suggest that it took an early and active role in promoting the ‘zoonotic hypothesis’ and the rejection of the laboratory-associated hypothesis. Indeed, within days of the February 1st call, a group of virologists, including some who were on it and had endorsed the ‘artificial origin’ theory, prepared the first draft of a hugely influential paper on The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 – subsequently published in Nature – that argued for the exact opposite.
Moreover, the NIH has resisted the release of important evidence, such as the grant proposals and project reports of EHA, and has continued to redact materials released under FoIA, including a remarkable 290-page redaction in a recent release. Even more incredibly, at some point after March 2020 a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences were deleted from the NIH’s own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan.
The strangeness doesn’t end here. In February 2020, an influential letter signed by 27 global experts was published in the Lancet, strongly condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”. The letter proved crucial, alongside the aforementioned Nature paper, in nipping in the bud the lab-leak hypothesis and giving the illusion of scientific consensus. In late 2020, however, emails released following a FoIA request showed that the Lancet statement had been orchestrated by one of the 27 co-authors – none other than Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance. It was also revealed that all but one of the other 26 scientists were linked to the Wuhan lab, their colleagues or funders.
Daszak was first appointed in late 2020 as Chair of the task force created by the Lancet COVID-19 Commission with the aim of establishing none other than “the origins of COVID-19”; and shortly thereafter as the only U.S. representative to a WHO fact-finding mission to China tasked with the same goal. Unsurprisingly, both task forces found that the virus was most likely zoonotic (i.e., natural) in origin, and that transmission through a laboratory incident was extremely unlikely.
The WHO report, in particular, came under heavy criticism, leading to the establishment of a specific work group tasked with ascertaining the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens, which published its first preliminary report in June 2022. The results were inconclusive, largely because “key pieces of data” from China were missing, leading the WHO to recommend in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe was required into whether a lab accident may be to blame. As we have seen, however, it’s not only the Chinese government that is covering up its tracks about its possible involvement in the engineering of SARS-CoV-2 – but the American one as well.
Thomas notes that a new campaign is now underway to try to finally discredit the lab-leak theory, with two new studies that purport to provide more evidence that SARS-CoV-2 came from the Huanan Seafood Market leading several outlets to claim that “the Covid lab leak theory is dead” – a claim to which the Daily Sceptic‘s Dr. Noah Carl has responded here.
The question is, with those involved having closed ranks and refusing to speak or cooperate, who can force them to reveal their secrets, or must we accept that their cover-up has succeeded?
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
For my money, the lab leak is the only thing that convincingly explains the lunatic reaction to covid.
I think the western governments overreacted the way they did because they knew exactly what was kind of work was going on in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I am sure they feared that much worse GM viruses could have been unleashed.
This is extremely likely IMHO, and following on from this we then need to ask the question about just what was being done inside the US-funded bio-labs in Ukraine that had been exercising the Russian government before their decision to invade? I’m no Putin-apologist but maybe there is something that tipped the balance in favour of an action that he knew would be very bad for Russia in the eyes of the world.
The people in government don’t have a clue of what is going on anywhere.
They’re incompetent and are mostly reacting to things. Their main decision making criteria is: what will keep me in my job tomorrow.
They all locked down because everyone was locking down and it became politically suicidal to not copy everyone else.
In the UK at least the lockdown was driven by threats from the public sector unions to shut the economy down completely, this happened 3 times in total.
Yes, there may have been other factors, but until mid-March 2020 the government was talking about herd immunity and they shifted the rhetoric quite suddenly in the 3rd week of March.
The public sector unions that now want someone else to pay for the cost of lockdown crisis? Baskets.
Don’t you think the more likely primary motivation was just Boris’s innate weakness and lack of conviction about anything? To follow through on the correct strategy – herd immunity and focused protection – would have required just an immense level of fortitude that I don’t think he possesses. I do think the British people could have gone along with it if he’d been strong enough, though, and it would have been an unprecedented opportunity to make the UK far stronger relative to its neighbours.
The people in government don’t have a clue of what is going on anywhere …
Yep, I’d go along with that.
The people behind the scenes ‘advising’ them likely knew though, but as they were likely involved in the research in the first place they had every incentive not to make too much noise about it.
If they feared it might be a 21st century Black Death, why did they make it much easier to overcount deaths from it?
Quite.
If an engineered virus gets out, and it turns out to be not too dangerous, why would they go nuts trying to pretend it’s the next plague? Surely the logical thing would be to downplay rather than exaggerate the risk.
I don’t buy the lab leak theory. It is precisely what you would want to sell if you wanted to scare the planet witless.
The idea that Wuhan was a unique source doesn’t really fit in with various stories of it being found elsewhere a few months or so earlier on, such as Brazil and other places, either.
When major incidents occur, it is quite common for a degree of “something must be done” psychology, such as nasty aviation events, industrial explosions, bad weather etc. “Experts” are somewhat exposed, and least try to maintain their reputation, a cynic might observe.
I understand (correct me if wrong) that some of the very early tracings of the virus are of doubtful legitimacy.
But being found in various places a few months earlier (than January 2020)? Answer: the virus got out of Wuhan in August 2019.
Why because it’s a lunatic reaction?
What about the lunatic climate policies?
Or the lunatic gender theories?
Or the lunacy of printing money at an unprecedented scale?
Or the lunacy of not hiring male fighter pilots?
I’m not sure the lunacy of the policy says anything. Pretty much every major government policy these days is basically insane.
True enough, but it just seemed/seems unusually extreme, violent, pointless, desperate in a way that the other stuff doesn’t.
There certainly seems to be a desire to hide exactly what was being done in Wuhan, though that isn’t necessarily proof of a leak.
It seems to be clear evidence that dangerous virus research is being done in a number of places around the world that most of us have only recently become aware of. And it seems that some of it may not be 100% above board.
However, it is also quite plausible that nothing escaped from the Wuhan lab and it’s just being pinned on them. Or maybe it did. I really don’t think we will ever know.
I don’t like the preoccupation with the origins and the desire to pin it on a lab. It helps to perpetuate the idea that we had a super lethal virus unleashed on us.It just wasn’t that dangerous.
The danger I’ve felt over the last two years hasn’t been of catching a disease but the madness of our society, the overreach of our government and the power grab of our bureacrats and institutions. That’s what I’ve feared and still do.
Naah..The Timing was just too convenient (For the purposes of 1. Emasculating #Brexit, 2.Deposing #Trump (And retaining US commitment to #NATO) 3. Decarbonising #TheWest 4. Perpetuating US hegemony .. 5. Kickstarting #TheFourthIndustrialRevolution 6.Instigating the #WEF #FourthReich … Perhaps it is all just a coincidence ..
See comments by John Ratcliffe, exUS Director of National Intelligence in an Aug2 report at https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/02/former-dni-john-ratcliffe-coronavirus-lab-leak-very-close-certainty/ on this.
Director of National Intelligence.
Yeah, I trust him completely…
The question is, with those involved having closed ranks and refusing to speak or cooperate, who can force them to reveal their secrets …?
US mid-term results?
As far as I’m concerned, the extreme reaction by Fauci to the Covid virus, is evidence that he knew full well what the WIV was engaged in (because he was supporting/funding it) and he feared that the chimeric virus would be far more lethal than it turned out to be.
Then the Globalists exploited the opportunity the Chinese had given them ……
I have been told that some very dodgy work was carried out at Exeter University in the UK and funded by America, which was ended and packaged off to China. I can’t prove that this was preliminary work that led to Covid, but the lab technician who told me about it believes it may well have been. If the lab leak is not the source why is Ameria and China making so much effort to cover it up? That for me is sufficient proof that it was.
Aside from the specifics of the virus, a key lesson from this story is that the US Government, the claimed leader of the free world, collaborated extensively with one of the most brutal Communist dictatorships in history to develop bioweapons. And indeed, there is nothing new in this: Anthony Sutton wrote extensively about US support for the Communist regime in the USSR from the Bolschevik Revolution to the 1970s and ’80s’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTDvLmEBESY. Is humanity thus the victim of a hundred year old protection racket on a truly global scale whereby the same people offering to protect us from Communist tyranny are also the ones enabling it?