What are we to make of the new claims from the Sunday Times, sourced from unnamed “U.S. investigators”, that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were secretly working with China’s military on bioweapons and vaccines that led to the creation – and inadvertent leaking – of the COVID-19 virus?
The U.S. investigators admit there is no published information on this WIV work, but say that’s because it was secret military research. The Sunday Times claims that the lab stopped making its findings public in 2016 after it discovered a new type of coronavirus in a mineshaft in Mojiang in Yunnan province where people had died from symptoms similar to SARS.
“The trail of papers starts to go dark,” one of the U.S. investigators told the newspaper. “That’s exactly when the classified programme kicked off. My view is that the reason Mojiang was covered up was due to military secrecy related to [the army’s] pursuit of dual-use capabilities in virological biological weapons and vaccines.”
The investigators are said to believe the classified programme was to make the mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans and may have led to the creation of the COVID-19 virus, which then leaked.
“It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation and cover-up of the COVID-19 pandemic,” one of the investigators said.
Despite the big fanfare over this report there doesn’t appear to be anything new in it. The heavy reliance on mysterious “U.S. investigators” also tells us we should expect U.S. intelligence to be behind this information, and that it is likely to be a ‘limited hangout’ telling us what (and only what) U.S. security services want us to hear.
It is of course possible, in theory, that the WIV and Chinese military were secretly working on these viruses, and that one leaked – there is nothing inherently implausible about such a scenario. But here’s why I’m not convinced.
The biggest problem is the behaviour of WIV personnel and Chinese officials in January 2020, which was completely at odds with the idea that they were aware that one of their secret ‘bioweapon’ viruses had escaped into the human population.
For a start, China infamously spent those first weeks playing down the threat from the new virus, censuring anyone who tried to spread alarm and saying it wasn’t even sure if it was spreading between humans. Its officials only acknowledged human-to-human transmission and started implementing countermeasures on or around January 23rd 2020, when they locked down Wuhan. If they actually knew that this virus was one of their escaped bioweapons, why would they do that? It makes little sense.
China and the WIV are often accused of covering up the virus. And indeed, since February 2020 the Chinese have been largely uncooperative with investigations into the origin of COVID-19 (though they have released some studies, on their own terms). But back in January 2020 it was a different story. In particular, senior WIV researcher Shi Zhengli and colleagues published on January 23rd a paper which included the genetic sequence of the new virus alongside that of its closest known relative, RaTG13 – the Mojiang mine virus referred to by the U.S. investigators – which was held by the WIV. They did not hide the closeness of the relationship between the two viruses:
We then found [that] a short [RNA-dependent RNA polymerase] region from a bat coronavirus termed BatCoV RaTG13 which we previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan Province showed high sequence identity to [the new coronavirus] nCoV-2019. We did full-length sequencing to this RNA sample. Simplot analysis showed that nCoV-2019 was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 with 96.2% overall genome sequence identity. The phylogenetic analysis also showed that RaTG13 is the closest relative of the nCoV-2019 and form a distinct lineage from other [SARS-like coronaviruses]. The receptor binding protein spike (S) gene was highly divergent to other [coronaviruses], with less than 75% [nucleotide] sequence identity to all previously described [SARS-like coronaviruses] except a 93.1% [nucleotide] identity to RaTG13.
In its peer-reviewed form, published in Nature about a week later, the paper stated clearly that it did not appear that the new virus had emerged naturally from RaTG13: “No evidence for recombination events was detected in the genome.”
If this is supposed to be a cover-up of the close but non-natural relationship between the new virus and the sample held by the WIV then it has to be the worst one ever. I just cannot see what part this paper is supposed to have played in a cover-up, or how it fits with the idea that the WIV was aware that the new virus was one of its escaped bioweapons.
We should also note that the WIV and China did not continue to try to claim the virus originated from the Huanan wet market beyond a brief period in January 2020 when it looked like a possibility. It was U.S. scientists and officials who pushed that theory well past its sell-by-date, as part of their efforts to suppress the lab leak theory.
The nub of it is this. Nothing that has yet been released by Western intelligence proves that the Chinese secretly knew that SARS-CoV-2 was one of their escaped bioweapons. Meanwhile, Chinese actions in January 2020 imply the opposite, that they did not secretly know this was one of their leaked bioweapons. If they did, they would never have published ‘Discovery of a novel coronavirus associated with the recent pneumonia outbreak in humans and its potential bat origin‘.
On the other hand, there have been multiple reports from U.S. intelligence sources – though these have now been denied – that they were following the outbreak in China as early as November 2019 and were already concerned then.
Why were U.S. officials concerned in November about an outbreak that the Chinese did not appear concerned about even in January? Why have U.S. scientists always refused to reveal their own involvement in working with viruses like SARS-CoV-2, while the WIV, at least in January 2020, published detailed information about the new virus’s relationship to its sampled viruses?
These are the questions I’d really like answers to. But somehow I doubt a report originating from “U.S. investigators” is going to tell me.
Stop Press: We asked Matt Ridley, co-author with Alina Chan of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, to respond to some of the points Will made and he sent us this:
Will makes some decent points but I think he is attacking a straw man mostly – namely that the WIV staff knew they had leaked a bioweapon, which is not quite what the Sunday Times story says. The stronger argument is that they were working on a group of viruses that they had not published – they even removed a mention of them from a thesis by Ping Yu when they published it in 2019 – but which had been in their possession since 2013 – 4991/RaTG13 being one of them. When they realised that the cause of the outbreak was from this group, they had no option but to admit that the group existed because a part of 4991’s genome had been uploaded to international databases already, so they changed the name and made no mention of where it had been found or the furin cleavage site, etc. Damage control at a time when it looked like it would be a short outbreak of no global significance. It’s also possible that Shi was unaware of other work – possibly with military involvement – so she innocently said: “Oh look, this new virus is close to one we found a few years back.” So she kind of blew the secrecy unintentionally. WIV was definitely dual-use, by the way.
In other words, the evidence for a lab leak is very strong. The evidence it came out of an unpublished project: strong. The evidence that it was a secret military project: fairly weak. The evidence that it was a bioweapon, very weak.
This is why in our book we were so careful not to get into speculation but just lay out what we knew. These kind of arguments based on partial information can be frustrating.
The other key point is that these U.S. leaks came just before the deadline (next Sunday) for the release of the intelligence that the U.S. Government holds about this whole issue, as ordered by a recent act of congress. So it’s probable that there’s a Sinophile rearguard action within the administration to try to redact more stuff, and this is from disgruntled agents who disagree… Next week could be interesting.
Stop Press 2: Will responds:
I’m grateful to Matt for addressing my arguments, though I’m not fully convinced by what he says (while agreeing that arguments based on partial information are frustrating). He suggests the Discovery paper may be “Damage control at a time when it looked like it would be a short outbreak of no global significance”, yet this was the same moment they locked down Wuhan, suggesting they were now highly concerned. He also suggests, instead, that “[Shi Zhengli] kind of blew the secrecy unintentionally”, though this does not seem plausible as her paper would have been military and Government vetted.
I think there is an implication from many that the Chinese knew it was an escaped bioweapon all along, as per the quote from the U.S. investigator: “My view is that the reason Mojiang was covered up was due to military secrecy related to [the army’s] pursuit of dual-use capabilities in virological biological weapons and vaccines. … It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation and cover-up of the COVID-19 pandemic.” So I don’t think my argument is a straw man. The point about the publication of the Discovery paper being the worst cover-up ever also applies whether the claim is that they knew all along or only spotted the link with their bioweapon research during January.
I agree that next week’s releases should be interesting.
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Tomorrow’s dry tinder… and reason to lock down again.
And not changing the fact that each NPI and restriction will have had only one, most desired by them, effect: reducing the average life expectancy of the people over time.
And the effect of the big one on that, the gene therapies, is still outstanding and totally up in the air.
The ‘dry tinder’ issue is one of the reasons that I kick against short-term baselines and analysis timescales, because mortality rates work in longer periods than single years.
It’s a massively important analytical issue.
Fon and MTF would disagree……
Yes, mostly some people’s deaths were brought forward first by the virus then by the panic response, then by the “vaccines”.
However this will be interpreted as how well the lockdowns have worked, and of course the success of the vaccines. So I don’t expect anything to change any time soon.
But not outstanding for those it killed, or up in the air for those harmed!
Haven’t we run out of tinder… at least for a year? (with obligatory :-()
Yes, the ‘dry-tinder’ effect is a very common sense way to look at it (sad but true). This was a driving factor in why Sweden started off worse than other Nordic countries. Those countries had had a couple of bad years (elderly deaths) previously and so stocks in ‘the wood shed’ (to continue the analogy) were pretty low compared to Sweden.
Death is the certainty of life.
So the BBC is a shyster organisation. Who knew
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57189371
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuSlK-DfUKc
Statement from the BBC regarding Martin Bashir, from Sebastian Fat-Salary, BBC Director of Marxist Cuntwaffle
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55518248
wards filling up with covid kids
For those who don’t go to the link and read this story: The wards are NOT filling up with kids suffering from severe COVID. Quite the contrary.
Kudos to this news organization doing some real journalism.
I think the BBC forgot to clarify that Ms Duffel was a labour activist.
If the Diana affair is now an example of the BBC falling below its own high standards ( ha ha, ever so ha), what will be said, twenty years from now, about its abysmal conduct over the Covviebollox?
There is a clear parallel. Both are examples of a media-led mass psychosis.
Today’s BBC home page: mostly ‘pandemic’ scare stories, tawdry ‘entertainment’ titbits, a bit of sport, a couple of recipes. “Indian variant could drive another wave, scientist warns.” Yes, another wave of bollocks and bullshit. “Kane wants ‘honest’ talk about future.” Don’t we all? “Demi Lovato is non-binary and has changed pronouns.” Who is Demi Lovato and why is this news? High standards indeed. It’s sinister and imbecilic all at the same time.
I have never heard of him but I would say that Demi Lovato should be locked away for the sake of society. Sounds a right twit
Indeed, probably another fictional minister 😀
I wish they were f.ing fictional rather than a living (well sort of) nightmare!
Jim Hacker?
Hmm, but when will he be given half a chance to do anything his bosses don’t want?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… etc
Oh FFS let’s have some data literacy rather than a mirror image of Covid zealot illiteracy:
(1) One month’s figures are an irrelevance. Just a passing footnote.
(2) Ditto a 3-5 year moving or static average. Of interest in context – but that’s all.
Postcard from the South Sandwich Islands
Day 14
Been a news blackout for the past four days
Stan got wind from the phone taps of a group of dissident penguins planning a protest
Mrs Dick kindly flew in units of her Territoriale Unterstuzungsgruppe Adolf
Hitler South London
They kicked the shit out of the protesting female penguins which seemed to do the trick
More like the South Sandreich Islands for the last few days
Thanks to the award of an advertising contract the protests were not reported by the Bouvet Broadcasting Corporation
In recent days the BBC have also done some great reports of near death Penguins on ventilators and in hospital corridors
Although they were reported to be scenes from Northern Italy they were actually all filmed on location at Penguin World Florida using out of work Penguin Porn stars
Think the islanders are really starting to warm to me. The press reports describe me as ‘loveable’
I hear that newly laid penguin eggs are now being vaccinated against Penguin Flu. Is there any truth in this statement?
There is truth in any statement if I say it is so
Pingu flu
I like it
The agenda is clear. Jabs every six month or exclusion from society
What they don’t understand is that I don’t want to be part of THEIR society.
I cancelled my membership in March 2020, but they keep sending me reminders
Indeed, the most plausible explanation for the current low level of mortality is that deaths were “brought forward” by the
pandemicvaccination programme.FIFY.
I cant work what is going on here. If we assume that the ONS Statistics are correct, then it seems to indicate that both the government and my own understanding of the world is wrong.
With lower than average deaths, the government cannot claim that there is a pandemic and has no right to restrict anyone’s freedoms. But I need to criticise myself here. There should be lockdown deaths occurring. We know that there are huge waiting lists for life threatening cases, millions of extra people now waiting. We also know that people are dying vaccine deaths. We also know that people cannot get to see a Doctor most of the time, and yet despite all of this, we have lower than expected deaths?
I understand that there is an explanation in that there is a ‘rebound’ as a result of older people previously dying from Covid. I accept that this is partly true, but we know that a lot less people really died of Covid than reported so there wasnt so much to ‘rebound’ from.
So what on earth is really going on? I suppose that one explanation could be that the ONS statistics are just fiddled. But suppose that the figures are good and true, what does that mean?
One explanation is that by avoiding hospital people are living longer. That would be a remarkable fact if it is the explanation.
Another explanation is that lockdown isnt costing lives at all, but is extending them. I dont know why that would be, but it could be an explanation. Odd though with these two effects is that they have only kicked in for the last few months.
Can anyone else come up with an explanation as to why there are less deaths than expected.
Meanwhile, there is a great great interview with Nina, a receptionist at a practice, talking to James Delingpole on the Delingpod. Listening to it I wonder how the death figures can be so with this report telling us of ‘thousands’ of vaccine injuries at a practice of 20 – 30k.
I had the same thought on the interview with Nina. She referenced 20k patients and “hundreds” of women reporting menstrual issues. Presumably the practice has 10k female patients, and the number of post menopausal women in their 50s who would report bleeding would be at most 2k, if demographic spread is normal. And only 90pct of those at most vaccinated, again if normal uptake. So it seems high.
“Hundreds” would suggest at least 200, which would be around 10pct or more. Which seems like we would have heard more about it? Maybe she’s prone to hyperbole and isn’t great at estimating numbers
On your other Q on deaths, just because the earlier people didn’t die of COVID, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a high degree of excess death to rebound from. All those old people kicked out into care homes will have had their deaths accelerated- whether they died from COVID or from neglect and trauma from the weird dystopian world they went back into. Especially if they already had dementia…and we did see dementia and cardiovascular deaths plummet in Spring 2020 (largely reclassified as COVID, but whatever they died of, it was lockdown related).
On the other hand, fewer medical interventions will lead to fewer near term deaths (fewer medical cock ups), but more longer term death and disability as conditions remain untreated. So I think we are yet to see the wave of death from lockdown related denial of medical treatment.
Maybe there are a lot of deaths which haven’t been reported, either because the family don’t want the expirant to risk going to a mortuary in case they catch Covid or because they are waiting for a lifting of lockdon so that all th family can attend the wake and not just the favoured 30.
Perhaps there will be a sudden upsurge in reported deaths come June 21st (or whatever subsequent date Bozo decides on).
The Treasury and various pension schemes will be interested in that. All the more so due to the economic damage made worse by ‘lockdown’. It’s entirely possible that the Chancellor will join the ‘circular argument’ club to justify delaying the age for state pensioners to avoid paying too much.
In other words, COVID expedited the passing of the very frail and elderly.
Very important to look at the figures in historical perspective. Here are the figures from 1942 to 2020 for England and Wales.
All done in order to set the stage for disease and depopulation in the years to come. To prime citizens to expect a gene therapy jab each year and then full population control. How very naive and indeed stupid so many are.
“Age-Standardised Mortality Rate Falls To Lowest Level on Record “
“In April, the age-standardised mortality rate was 12% lower than in March…”
So… Perpetual Lockdowns clearly work then!
We can exist without any deaths whatsoever if only we stay locked down hard enough and long enough.
Careful what you publish LS. I’m sure Ferguson and his cabal will use this to create another ‘Model‘ to prove that over a period of x months we can indeed achieve zero death rate. A death-free society. Bojo and his circus will be all over that like a rash, the MSM will be at a loss what to tell people…what no holocaust anywhere in the world today? Worst of all, the vast majority, the DD’s, will comply with whatever is needed to achieve it and ferociously attack anyone who questions the ‘logic’.
LS, please stop encouraging them It’s not good for them!.
Yep. It couldn’t possibly be anything to do with herd immunity so it must mean that face rags work and we must all keep wearing them.
I ask you if you’ve time to listen to or watch any of the interviews I’ve given in the last few weeks.
It’s taken me longer than it should have to appreciate that there isn’t just the odd mismatch of what Govt & their advisors say and the reality, but that literally EVERYTHING we’re told is a lie.
Specifically, every one of the main narrative points around this virus is a lie.
Further, that all round the world, the same “mistakes” were made & continue to be made, in the face of increasing evidence contradicting the official narrative.
That’s either the mother of all Coincidence Theories or it’s evidence at least of international coordination. It’s cannot all be follow the leader because in many cases, the lies were brought in close in time.