Where did the lab leak theory come from? Who first promoted the idea and why? The answer to this question is surprising – and may be the key to unlocking the mystery of the origin of COVID-19.
The first known mention of the idea that the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese lab appeared on January 9th 2020 in a report by Radio Free Asia (RFA). This was just days after the virus had first entered public consciousness, and at the time, no deaths had yet been reported and few people were worrying about the virus – including, it seems, the Chinese, who were claiming it wasn’t even clear whether it was spreading between humans.
Seemingly unhappy about the lack of alarm, RFA ran a comment from Ren Ruihong, former head of the medical assistance department at the Chinese Red Cross, who said she was confident it was spreading between humans. She also asserted it was a “new type of mutant coronavirus”, and immediately, without pausing for breath, raised the possibility it was a result of a Chinese biological attack on Hong Kong using a virus developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Bear in mind this was before a single person had been reported as dying from the virus, and no solid evidence was presented for the claim. It is the first time the WIV and the idea of a lab origin of the virus are mentioned in the media. The report then implies the WIV is hiding its involvement – though the basis for this insinuation is tenuous, to say the least.
Ren said. “They haven’t made public the genetic sequence, because it is highly contagious. From what I can tell, the patients caught it from other people. I have thought that all along.”
She said the lack of fatalities didn’t indicate that the virus was less deadly than SARS, just that antiviral medications have improved in the past 10 years or so.
Ren said she also regarded the relatively high number of infections in Hong Kong with suspicion, given that there had been no reports of cases anywhere in between the two cities, in the southern province of Guangdong, for example.
“Genetic engineering technology has gotten to such a point now, and Wuhan is home to a viral research center that is under the aegis of the China Academy of Sciences, which is the highest level of research facility in China,” she said.
Repeated calls to various numbers listed for the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences rang unanswered.
However, an employee who identified herself as a senior engineer said she knew nothing about the virus.
“Sorry, I… I don’t know about this,” the employee said.
Over the following two weeks RFA pushed hard on the idea of a Chinese biowarfare lab origin, and its reporting was picked up by the Washington Times on January 24th, which quoted Dany Shoham, an “Israeli biological warfare expert”.
The deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s covert biological weapons programme, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert.
Radio Free Asia this week rebroadcast a local Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory known [as] the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Radio Free Asia reported.
The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.
Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biowarfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert biological weapons programme.
“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese [biological weapons] alignment,” Mr. Shoham told the Washington Times.
Why did Radio Free Asia and the Washington Times introduce and promote the idea of Covid as a Chinese bioweapon? RFA appears to have done so in order to counter the Chinese lack of concern about the virus, hence the heading: “Experts Cast Doubts on Chinese Official Claims Around ‘New’ Wuhan Coronavirus.” The Washington Times report indicates at one point it is in response to rumours “circulating on the Chinese Internet claiming the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons”, citing an unnamed “U.S. official”.
One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that false rumours since the outbreak began several weeks ago have begun circulating on the Chinese Internet claiming the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons.
That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter future charges the new virus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defence research laboratories.
Why is the report anticipating “future charges” of a lab leak – particularly when it is in the process of making such charges?
The words of the anonymous U.S. official appear to state the Chinese rumours began “several weeks ago”, right back at the beginning of January or end of December; however, oddly, the article was soon updated to delete the words “since the outbreak began several weeks ago”, for reasons that are unclear.
In any case, the really strange thing about these “rumours circulating on the Chinese Internet” is that no evidence of them has ever been produced or found. Indeed, all the places you might expect to mention them do not. For instance, in February 2021 the DFRLab of the Atlantic Council published a lengthy document in conjunction with the Associated Press summarising all the “false rumours” and “hoaxes” regarding the origins of Covid. Its large research team scoured the internet for all rumours connected with Covid origins – yet the section on China doesn’t mention anything about these alleged January rumours of U.S bioweapons.
Another example is Larry Romanoff, an activist who writes on various ‘conspiracy theories’ and who has lived in China for many years. His columns in early 2020 on the Global Research website attacking the American position were tweeted out by senior Chinese figures, but he never mentions anything about these alleged early rumours on the “Chinese Internet”, which he surely would have done.
In addition, the rumours claim has never been repeated by any intelligence sources; this was the only time it was made.
Why then did RFA introduce the lab-engineered virus narrative, even before the first death? Why was it trying to ratchet up alarm? And why did the unnamed U.S. official claim to be responding to Chinese rumours that turned out not to exist?
The plot thickens when you realise that Radio Free Asia is a U.S.-Government-funded media outlet that is essentially a CIA front, once named by the New York Times as a key part in the agency’s “worldwide propaganda network”. As Whitney Webb pointed out right back in January 2020, though RFA is no longer run directly by the CIA, it is managed by the Government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which answers directly to the Secretary of State – who, at the outset of the pandemic was Mike Pompeo, whose previous job was as CIA Director.
This means we can see that the Covid lab origin narrative originated with the U.S. Government’s security services, and did so very early, prior to the first death, as part of a deliberate effort to increase alarm in China and elsewhere. It was also designed to counter the anticipated claims, which had not yet been made (though the anonymous U.S. official falsely claimed they had been), that the virus was a U.S. biological attack.
That the U.S. Government would be the source of the lab origin theory is no doubt surprising to many people, given that within weeks the same theory would be dismissed by Government officials as a ‘conspiracy theory’ and forcibly suppressed. In its place, official U.S. channels would endorse the wet market natural origin theory and seek to close down further debate and investigation. So what’s going on?
Here’s one possible explanation, which makes sense of all the known facts – though is admittedly highly disturbing. It may not be correct, but I confess I cannot currently think of a better one. Perhaps someone else can.
The explanation is that the Chinese lab origin narrative was put out by U.S. intelligence in early January as a cover story. A cover story for what? For a U.S. biological attack on China. As a cover story for an attack, it serves four key purposes. First, it preempts allegations of a U.S. attack (and indeed the anonymous U.S. official falsely claimed these had already been made). Second, it anticipates the need to explain the non-natural origin of the virus, which would be expected to be discovered, as a natural origin manifests differently to a non-natural origin – a natural origin should have animal reservoirs, early genetic diversity and evidence of adaptation to humans, which are lacking for SARS-CoV-2. Third, it spreads alarm in China – one of the purposes of the attack. And fourth, it justifies the U.S. and other countries activating biodefence protocols to defend themselves from any blowback – which we know is exactly what they did, treating it as a matter of national security, not public health.
The idea that the U.S. might deliberately release a virus in China might seem far-fetched to some. However, it’s well known that the Pentagon intensified its research into bat-borne viruses in the years approaching the pandemic. Though it said this was solely for defensive purposes given the supposed risk of bats being used as “bioweapons”, scientists have previously warned, in the journal Science, that another supposedly defensive Pentagon programme, DARPA’s “Insect Allies” programme, appeared really to be aimed at creating and delivering a “new class of biological weapon” and that it revealed “an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes”. In addition, the Iranian Government was so convinced that its early COVID-19 outbreak in February 2020, which killed a significant number of its senior leaders, was due to a U.S. biological attack that it lodged a formal complaint with the UN. Such allegations don’t prove anything of course. But together these concerns do suggest that such an attack is not outside the realm of possibility and should at least be considered as an explanation for the origin of the virus.
But if the lab leak was the intended cover story, why was it shortly afterwards suppressed as a ‘conspiracy theory’? It is a matter of public record that this occurred largely due to the efforts of Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar and other Western scientists, who organised a scientific cover-up of evidence that might implicate their complicity in the gain-of-function research that they suspected may have created the virus. Did they know about the attack? There’s no evidence they did. Which means they would also have been in the dark about the intended cover story. Indeed, one of the conspirators, Christian Drosten, in one of the disclosed emails directly asks the group where the “conspiracy theory” of a lab origin has come from. Farrar and Fauci, for their part, appear to be genuinely exploring the origin questions in their emails (while clearly aiming for a particular answer).
The fears of this group of scientists about being implicated in the creation of the virus led them to organise a highly effective effort to dismiss and suppress the lab origin theory. This intervention greatly complexified the cover story, with the result that the output from the U.S. intelligence community (IC) became confused and inconsistent. In what follows I enumerate the six main interventions of the U.S. intelligence community during the pandemic and suggest what likely lay behind them. They are:
- The November 2019 secret intelligence report claiming to show a large respiratory outbreak in Wuhan that was used to brief the U.S. Government, NATO and Israel. Importantly, the alleged evidence for this outbreak has never been produced, and what evidence there is suggests that in reality there was no detectable outbreak in Wuhan in November 2019, meaning the report appears to have been largely a work of fiction.
- The January 2020 introduction and promotion of the Chinese lab origin story, as set out above.
- The early April 2020 media briefings from unnamed intelligence sources about the November intelligence reports noted in (1) above. These briefings were particularly odd because by that point the main origin story being pushed by official U.S. channels was the wet market theory, which this information contradicted because it implied a large outbreak (an “out of control” epidemic and “cataclysmic event”) well before the wet market outbreak in December.
- The late April and early May 2020 public endorsement by the U.S. intelligence community of the wet market natural origin theory. This contradicted both the early April anonymous media briefings in (3) and the lab origin story in (2), while at the same time embarrassing Mike Pompeo and President Trump who were at the time strongly pushing the lab leak theory.
- The August 2021 declassified intelligence report on Covid origins, which gave a somewhat mixed picture of how the intelligence community assessed the lab leak theory. What the report was sure to make clear on the first page, however, is that the virus was “not developed as a biological weapon” and it was “not genetically engineered”. The report says that a small number of IC elements thought the virus might have escaped from a lab (though as a natural, not engineered, virus); in particular the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), which was responsible for the November 2019 secret intelligence report and (presumably) the April 2020 anonymous media briefings, endorsed this theory with “moderate confidence”. Note that by this point the lab leak theory was back in play following the WHO origins investigation in February 2021.
- The October 2022 Senate minority report, which for the first time set out the evidence in favour an engineered virus and a lab leak. U.S. biodefence bigwig Robert Kadlec was behind this report and it notably did not mention the November 2019 secret U.S. intelligence report, which appears to have been entirely ‘forgotten’ (indeed, it has never been officially acknowledged). It also made no reference to the United States’ considerable involvement in bat coronavirus research in the years prior to the pandemic. We should also note that the evidence presented in the report of an alleged safety breach at the WIV in November 2019 was all assembled retrospectively – there is no suggestion that such evidence was known at the time, and the report makes clear that all its information comes from publicly available sources, stating: “This report has reviewed open source, publicly available information relevant to the origins of the virus.”
So here’s what I suggest was really going on with these often curious and clashing IC interventions.
The November 2019 secret intelligence report (1) was intended to forewarn the U.S. Government and its allies of the potential need for epidemic countermeasures given the risk of blowback from the attack. While blowback was probably not expected (after all, SARS and MERS never troubled Europe and America), it was obviously a risk. Note that those responsible for the November 2019 report had to know there wasn’t really any evidence of an outbreak in Wuhan at that time, and thus that their report was based on fabrication. This appears to implicate the NCMI, which produced the report, in the attack.
The early April 2020 anonymous media briefings (3) about the November 2019 intelligence report were most likely an attempt by the intelligence community (or, rather, the NCMI) to point out that they did try to warn everyone about the virus and the need to prepare. This would explain why they went ahead with the anonymous briefings despite, by that point, those briefings contradicting the new ‘official narrative’ that the virus came from the wet market.
The official endorsement by the intelligence community in late April and early May 2020 of the wet market theory (4) would then have occurred because of a switch amongst most of the intelligence community to the narrative created and endorsed by Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar etc. Those in the IC not involved in the attack (likely the vast majority) had probably figured out what was going on, i.e., the lab leak theory was a cover story put out by reckless colleagues, and would be very aware of the terrible fallout should the truth become known. Hence also the suppression around this time within the U.S. Government of all Covid origins investigations, which a senior Government official said would only “open a can of worms“.
This tension between IC elements then continued with the 2021 declassified intelligence report (5), with most of the IC claiming not to know anything, but the NCMI still believing the lab leak was the best cover story and wanting it back in play.
By the time of the October 2022 Senate report (6) the natural origin theory was clearly collapsing. This report then represents an effort by some within the intelligence community to bring back the lab leak as the cover story, while directing all attention to China and the WIV and away from the U.S.
How plausible is all this? It certainly fits the evidence, though perhaps there is another, more innocent way of explaining it all.
However, those who would like to exclude the possibility of a U.S. biological attack – and indeed, I would like to exclude this – need to answer at least two key questions:
1. Why was the U.S. concerned about and following an outbreak in Wuhan in November 2019 which all the available evidence shows was not detectable at the time? Why did the U.S. falsely claim there was a signal of a large, worrying outbreak and brief allies about it?
2. Why did U.S. security services begin spreading rumours about the virus being engineered in China at the beginning of January, even before the first death had been reported, when they had no evidence of this (at least, they have never explained how they knew it) and no one else was worried about it, and based on the false claim that rumours were already being spread in China about a U.S. bioweapon?
Let’s be honest: it’s not looking good.
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So, if it was an a biowarfare attack by elements of the US IC, how do you think they think it has worked out? But of a Pyrrhic victory I’d say.
By removing Trump and scuppering Brexit it aleviated the imminent yet maverick anti-globalist threat to uniparty actors that may have slowed the implementation of a NWO/Great Reset/power consolidation.
By releasing it in China you plant an incendiary narrative within the borders of a strategic rival, whats not to like. If they were really clever they might have banked on China’s collective totalitarianism to lead to a, shall we say, abundance of caution or perhaps over reaction, but it wasn’t neccessary.
It increased the power elite/ruling classes/oligarchy etc etc wealth between 50%-200%, which is nice.
Like 9/11 and the Patriot Act it justified further erosion to our concept of inalienable human rights and the expansion of indiscriminate omni-surveillance.
It allowed for the successful birth of a medical product range in mRNA that would otherwise still be consigned to drawing boards due to inefficiency and safety concerns and holds untold promise for future situations (see point 2.)
It reinforced social conditioning, increased the size and scope of bureaucracy/mandarins/civil service, expanded previous boundaries of fiscal and monetary restraints etc etc all playing into political hands and a toxic opportunity almost none could resist. And all this is before we consider back-handers, under the table gifts, uncontested contracts or board positions for friends and family etc etc.
Theres been many other complimentary ‘rewards’ to seeding the Wuhan games with a somewhat novel pathogen by American actors(if it actually occurred), and all for the ‘risk’ of maybe, accidentally, infecting people around the world with a mild and unremarkable virus, one only as deadly as others freely circulating, which is to say, all done for no risk at all.
Oh no, its been an unbridled success on all accounts and I expect Jeremy Farrar is getting a Spike tattoo as we speak.
Will, the only glitch I find in your chillingly plausible account is that there were, and had been for years, concerted attempts to get the world (not the Chinese) prepared for a Coronavirus pandemic with all the biosecurity trimmings. The last, of course, was Event 201 in October 2020.
That would suggest spread round the world was considered, at least, a strong likelihood, even if not being part of the plan. The fact that makes the perpetrators’ actions even more unspeakable is, sadly, not incredible because (a) aiming to harm 1.4 billion souls in China is genocide on an unprecedented scale, (b) the deliberately harmful campaign around vaccines and treatments shows a callous lack of concern even for one’s own people and (c) US Intelligence has “form,” from the confirmed MK Ultra to, at least in some people’s eyes, 9/11. Or if the last is conspiracy-theory, try the deliberate destruction of the European economy by destroying Nordstream.
Motive? We can’t ask, can we, because if we did National Security would be breached and we’d all be extradited for life imprisonment. But the world is rather overpopulated with parasitic people, isn’t it, especially in China.
There was also a chinwag Jan to April 2019 – on a ‘pandemic’ US DoD and other worthies involved. Like the Climate BS there seems to be a weekly panjundrum of the insiders on pandemic preparation….
You are right to remind us that the CIA has ‘form’. Not long ago I spent a couple of weeks looking into the 9/11 story and concluded – reluctantly, like Will in the present instance – that 9/11 was a false flag operation. A good starting point for exploring these issues is ae911truth.org. It is certainly not a ‘conspiracy theory’ (a term originating with the CIA incidentally).
The Real Dr Fauci lifts the lid on the Devil’s cauldron that is the CIA, the US military and Big Pharma, all interconnected. We should be under no illusions. As for Nordstream, that might have been a British operation – the culprit remains unclear as far as I know.
I still have questions relating to the Wuhan Institute – the deleting of files, the manipulation of the WHO investigation, etc. Smacks of guilty behaviour, but one could argue that it was the instinctive reaction of Chinese authority to act in this way.
Another question is, where was the ‘research’ done which culminated with SARS-CoV-2? The scenario that has emerged to date is that Peter Daszak, Fauci et al got round the US Govt’s official prohibition of such work by chanelling it through Wuhan. If it was done in the US, it is surprising that that fact has not emerged, and it would be difficult to reconcile with the close ties between the US and China in the research field.
Another question is how was the US-made virus seeded in China? You suggest the World Military Games (see also DS 22/09/21) but then how did it get from there to Wuhan, which to begin with was the epicentre of the disease in China. And Wuhan was the centre of virology research in China.
The World Military Games were held in Wuhan. Wuhan is where the World Military Games were held.
Good questions. In essence the Tards don’t care. But we do and we know Rona was planned. Tons of evidence and patents and the yearly ‘end of the world’ from some contagion starting in 2001 (ebola, south-west Nile etc etc) confirm this. Kill Gates and Fraudci the criminal, guaranteed an outbreak (2017) to get rid of Drumpf.
The only rationale for the government totalitarianism, the only excuse they could use, is that they knew it was a bio-weapon or released from a lab. Because of this they panicked. That might still be true, but the planned nature, G20 coordination with everything in lockstep to implement the Rona fascism, is all too obvious.
Biolab released? Yes. Planned? Definitely.
The terrifying thing is, if they did take the steps we strongly suspect them of taking re the release of covid, if means absolutely nothing is off the table. Pandora’s box has been glanced into fleetingly in the past 60 years or so, but, essentially, the lid has now been ripped off and hell is being unleashed. It means to me that whatever horrors you can conjure up in your mind, there’s a good chance they will happen. Sometimes I think what this world really needs is a massive natural disaster, like the super volcano under Yellowstone erupting, or another Carrington incident. Yes, the former, certainly, would kill billions, but I would rather meet my end through an act of God than an act of government.
Are you ok?
Are you aware of the 15th Jan 2022 under water eruption near Tonga? Tonga underwater volcano eruption shattered two records | Live Science Apparently it is still emitting and will have an effect on weather patterns in the Southern hemisphere and surely the Northern hemisphere too.
The BBC will probably suggest that it was climate change that caused the volcano to erupt.
I can’t answer Mr Jones’ questions but the US attacking China with a bioweapon seems implausible to me. Too risky, even for them. They must have had a pretty good idea it would spread around the world.
I agree.
What if it was already spreading inside the US in mid-2019, and the rest was an attempt to cover their tracks?
It’s possible. I’m pretty sure we’ve been lied to, just hard to say exactly how, without more evidence. GOF research followed either by an accidental leak and panic/opportunism or a deliberate leak to enable US biosecurity to be tested seem most plausible to me.
There’s pretty decent circumstancial evidence that something went wrong over the summer in the US, hence the mysterious outbreak of a sudden accute respiratory illness that swept across the country from around June 2019 – Feb 2020 (when they stopped counting).
The CDC pinned it on vaping, although the symptoms are identical to covid, and curiously only the US was affected, plus the timing directly coincides with the CDC shutting down the US military’s top BSL4 lab at Fort Detrick on July 15, 2019.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that.
Yes I remember the vaping illness which was in the news then.
There’s also the roll out of 5G in places like Wuhan and possible side effects being discounted.
If it was spreading in the US in mid-2019 it would have taken off in an epidemic/Gompertz curve as such things do. It would also have spread anywhere where USA residents travel in the world. It would therefore have been noticed in weekly and annual all-cause death counts. Of course, if the all-cause death statistics have been fudged to obscure an epidemic in the US and elsewhere in 2019 then we’re screwed.
Analysis shows that peak exposure in the population precedes peak deaths by about 28 days. Given that in GB we went from first deaths to peak deaths in about 35 days we should assume that we went from first general exposures to peak exposure in a similar interval. I don’t buy the idea of the bug circulating anywhere unnoticed for six months or more.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe-lung-disease.html
Scroll down to hospitalizations. I’m rubbish at science but I think the bar graph would follow a classic Gompertz curve.
That chart certainly looks like a Gompertz curve but it represents far too few people (2,668).
The chart of all-cause weekly deaths in the whole USA from 2015 to the end of 2021 looks like this:
The blue is what actually happened and the red is the projected average based on 2015 to end 2018. These values are age-standardised mortality rates and so represent about 3.3 million deaths per year.
Note that through 2019 the blue is a little below the red for most of the time. In other words 2019 was a relatively low death year.
So the graph I cited was for hospitalizations in the US due to the unexplained ‘vaping illness’. From those roughly 2,700 hospital cases, around 68 people died.
Let’s call that the first wave. If there was, hypothetically, a virus on the loose that was spreading unchecked up until February, 2020, I think it’s entirely possible a larger wave of death would follow during the northern hemisphere winter, i.e., Jan-March, 2020.
Why was the U.S. concerned about and following an outbreak in Wuhan in November 2019 which all the available evidence shows was not detectable at the time?
Because they knew there had been an outbreak – probably an escape from the lab back in July/August – having been secretly informed by the lab. The virus may well have been detected in lab employees, and the well-known seasonality of coronaviruses suggested spread would take off during the winter months.
Why [Nov. 2019] did the U.S. falsely claim there was a signal of a large, worrying outbreak and brief allies about it?
Because at that time they were genuinely very worried about what was about to transpire. If the fatality rates of SARS-COV-1 were anything to go by, things were looking bad.
Why did U.S. security services begin spreading rumours about the virus being engineered in China at the beginning of January, even before the first death had been reported, when they had no evidence and no one else was worried about it, and based on the false claim that rumours were already being spread in China about a U.S. bioweapon?
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. The two main changes to occur at the beginning of January are that the virus was known to be out and about and the Chinese had belatedly realised it.
If my hypothesis (no more) that the virus escaped from the lab in July/August 2019, that only a select few individuals in the lab knew about it, that they informed their US paymasters (but not the Chinese authorities) is correct then US intelligence must have been tying itself up in knots trying to head off and cover up what was coming down the line.
One more very important thing if my hypothesis is correct: nearly all the criticism of China’s actions during the emergence of the virus (2019 to early 2020), vicious as it often has been, is unjustified. We need to think about that.
Rushed post, so apologies for any obvious mistakes. But a fascinating subject.
One more point to add (got school run now): in early January 2020 the genetic sequence of the virus was out. Anyone knowing much about these viruses would have been able to tell it was engineered. The US thus had a massive incentive to start passing the blame on to China.
My understanding is that the genetic sequence of C1984 is not out. What has been claimed as genetic sequence is actually a modelled sequence. That is why the PCR is useless because it can only identify virus sequences and a specific C1984 has not been found.
Apologies for what may be a clumsy synopsis but my understanding of science is limited.
Possibly an important point. I had imagined that the actual genetic sequence was known in January 2020, rather than a modelled one. If it is merely modelled, then how do the virus scientists get to point a things like furin sites as evidence of genetic engineering?
I’d welcome any other views on this.
I remember reading a report by a team of Greek researchers in late Jan/early Feb 2020 which had analysed the sequence, noting various inserts that could not have arisen naturally. I bookmarked the page but when I went back a day or so later it was gone, wiped off the face of the internet. Wasn’t there also a top UK army person (general or something) at the time who said it was lab-grown but who was also silenced?
I don’t recall these particulars, but they do sound about right.
My point – with regard to Will’s question about why the US authorities began spreading rumours in early January 2020 that the virus was engineered in China – is that with the genetic sequence of the virus out there, and scientists like that Greek team able to infer confidently that it was lab created, the US authorities had a massive incentive to get ahead of the game and start blaming China.
If my accidental release hypothesis is correct, this was cynically dishonest. But maybe we need to start asking more questions about how our security services behave.
About possibility that China’s response has been misrepresented. It seems relevant to consider how the US/China relationship was actually working, rather than accepting what we have been told.
So was China a scheming manipulator, aiming at slow regime change in the West with a view to world dominance, inveigling the US government into basing dangerous biosecurity research there so their Communist military could weaponise it and, owing to their incompetence, let it escape and then covering it up?
Or was America the dominant partner, promising financial and technical investment in China as a cover for undermining it and, perhaps, ultimately finding some excuse like Taiwanese independence to bring about regime change and world dominance?
Those alternatives seem to guide one’s thinking on events that are being kept secret. Both might be true, of course, if Eastasia is organised like Ingsoc.
I suspect that China’s response has indeed been unfairly represented in the West, perhaps grossly so. If Will’s article of 21 December is correct in it’s suppositions – and I tend to think that it is – then China didn’t know about the emergence of the virus until late in the day, possibly until not long before they announced it to the world in early January 2020. If this is correct, then much of the vitriol thrown by the West is unfair and damaging to international relations, and even world order.
As far as explanations for what has happened – in this case I prefer to go Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation which fits the known facts is by far the more likely to be correct.
Given the debacle over Ukraine and sanctions, it is clear that US agencies don’t think through the consequences of their actions for self-inflicted damage, such is their hubris.
I think it is entirely plausible that it was intended to destabilise China and got out of hand.
Oh what a tangled Web we weave!
It was about using the fear of a bogey virus to engineer lockdowns so as to coerce vaccine and passport acceptance. Saying it had leaked out of a Chinese lab would help with the fear. The actual lethality of the virus wasn’t that essential. Flu deaths could be repurposed with a midazolam boost anyway.
The virus was already circulating in the UK in 2019.
Great article again Mr Jones.
Let us not forget a few prominent parties invloved may be of the opinion a few million deaths, from a mild virus or from the policies in its name, are helpful to lower numbers of pesky humans.
Its a troubling notion for non-sociopaths, but one expressed over the years by several powerful malthusians who may consider them collateral damage, for the greater good you see.
And the virus discriminates, only seeking out the old and unhealthy, aka uneconomic liabilities, which is handy.
Did SARS-CoV2 originate in Winnipeg?
https://scoopsmcgoo.substack.com/p/pierre-poilievre-must-get-us-the
The timing does not support a Chinese lab leak hypothesis, though its does support one in the USA, a known biowarfare practitioner.
The CDC has given us two key dates:
*Serologic testing of US. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: 1-4% seropositive in December 2019 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472
CHART:
Nice chart, and I agree, timing wise the evidence leans more towards a US outbreak than a Chinese.
One thing that has been bothering me though is China seemed to pick up on an outbreak around September 2019, which is when they began stockpiling PPE gear for some unknown reason. If they knew it was a US outbreak, why allow the blame for the pandemic to fall on their shoulders? What would they hope to gain?
If released in Wuhan, the first assumption might be that it was their own leak – and the reflex of governments is to cover their own incompetence.
I’ve forgotten when the Chinese began to blame the US at the sports event, but once one’s suspicions of the official narrative begin, might it not be as simple as working through all their samples and finding it wasn’t an exact sequence match to any?
On the other hand, finding it was close enough to some of them to attract blame might help explain why they took their databases down.
It’s all speculative when you have two governments with less than transparent ethics. But the possibility of “deliberate” fits a lot better with the US deep state than the CPC.
WIV took their virus database down ~ Sept 11 ostensibly due to cyber attacks. Yes, it could be a coverup, but it could also be the US or a partner snooping around their virus library, looking for something they can use to frame the Chinese for the outbreak. (The Chinese start hoarding PPE at this time also).
That period around September 11 is actually a very active period in this whole story. The US launched a media blitz on the vaping ‘crisis’ around then, while Johns Hopkins University published a couple of earnest pandemic research papers which all but reads like a guidebook for what’s about to happen. There’s also some very shrewd investment plays made in September by some promiment investors.
*Serologic testing of US. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: 1-4% seropositive in December 2019 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472
I’ve just scan-read that paper quickly, so pardon me if I’ve missed important stuff. But my understanding is that it concludes only that the virus was present in the US in December 2019. Even if large numbers of people had been infected by then I don’t understand your statement that the virus must have been circulating since early 2019. Under the right conditions such a virus can spread very quickly indeed – so my interpretation would be a seeding of perhaps only as far back as September or so.
Will discusses this paper in his article of 30 Dec., in his survey of the evidence for the emergence of the virus in 2019:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/12/30/the-evidence-covid-19-was-spreading-silently-around-the-world-in-late-2019/
Based on this paper he writes:
A 2% antibody prevalence in mid-December suggests significant community spread across America during November 2019. However, there were no earlier samples for comparison and no testing or sequencing of viral RNA for confirmation.
In overall conclusion, citing the world-wide evidence, he writes:
On this evidence it seems we can definitively rule out both an emergence before July 2019 (too many negatives and just one questionable positive) and after November 2019 (too many positives in a number of countries). The evidence is not currently consistent or robust enough to be able to pin it down more definitively than that.
I tend to agree with him on this. although I’d definitely tend to the early emergence date, and perhaps even a little earlier than July if we consider the likely extremely slow spread under summer conditions.
Come on, TJN. Say it. Say what your heart desires!
You keep framing your timeline earlier and earlier. First August – so hot and tantalising. Then July – oh man, you’re burning me up. Now, potentially June, or maybe earlier! I can’t stand this suspense!! Just let it out, TJN. Let the truth be known to all!
Of course I can’t give a date. I think Will made a pretty convincing argument:
On this evidence it seems we can definitively rule out both an emergence before July 2019 (too many negatives and just one questionable positive) and after November 2019 (too many positives in a number of countries). The evidence is not currently consistent or robust enough to be able to pin it down more definitively than that.
But if you add in the call for Event 201 (21 August 2019), the Gates investment in Biontech (30 August) and the taking down of the Wuhan virus data base (12 September) – which together I think form persuasive evidence that something was going on by August – then I tend to an escape happening by early to mid-August at the latest, possibly July, or maybe at a push going back into June.
If anyone can pick holes in this or add some other interpretation I’m all ears.
I’m not sure how you release a highly transmissible virus as a bioweapon and expect it to stay exactly where you released it.
The COVID 19 pandemic was almost certainly the result of lab work organised by Peter Daszak in his roles as president of EcoHealth Alliance, and carried out by Ralph Baric of Univ. N. Carolina.
The Sars-Cov-2 virus is very similar to other bat coronaviruses, except it has four distinct insertions on its spike protein. A 2018 grant proposal by EcoHealth Alliance described exactly how to put them there.
In the proposal the spike protein was to be manipulated by Ralph Baric, “building on his two-decade track record of reverse engineering CoV and other virus spike proteins.”
Three of the inserts are on binding domains allowing entry to different human cell types. The fourth codes for the now infamous furin cleavage site, which allows much more efficient entry to cells.
The EcoHealth proposal states on page 11 “we will analyse spike gene sequences for the presence of potential furin cleavage sites… and we will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites.”
All four of these insertions derive from the HIV-1 (AIDS) virus. In nature this would have to happen as a result of recombination of HIV-1 virus with a bat coronavirus. The chances of this happening outside a lab are virtually zero, especially with the binding domains inserted in exactly the right locations to infect humans.
In the lab this relatively easy. Ralph Baric has been working with Shi Zhengli (Batwoman) of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In 2013 Baric took the spike protein sequence from a close relation of the original 2003 Sars-Cov virus provided by Zhengli and put it on a SARS virus he already had in his lab, using a process he called “reverse genetics”. The resultant chimera was introduced to a Petri-dish of human airway cells and produced “robust replication.”
The EcoHealth proposal carries on this work, but with more manipulation to the spike proteins. These manipulations could allow the virus infect human T_Cells and macrophages. The stated aim of the work was to provide attenuated virus as a live vaccine, either for people or directly to the bats in China. However an un-attenuated version of the virus almost certainly escaped the Wuhan lab.
Privately most scientists thought that Sars-CoV-2 looked manipulated. It is suspicious that EcoHealth boss Peter Daszak refused to hand over their lab books, and most damning of all the Wuhan Institute of Virology authorities shut down outside access to its virus database back in September 2019.
Although the EcoHealth proposal to DARPA was rejected, it is assumed that those involved found funding somewhere else. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID is the biodefence arm of the US Government. He approved of, and has previously funded gain-of-function research. Did he fund this proposal? or did EcoHealth founder Bill gates fund the work.
Just looked closer at the posts above and the evidence is strong for a US leak, not Wuhan. Again Ralph Baric was manipulating SARS virus at University of North Carolina
Umm. Food for thought. What exactly is. the evidence for it actually emerging in Wuhan?
Other than the lab of course.
Good synopsis on a tricky technical subject thanks.
There is an argument for standing back and asking are these virologists merely modern day alchemists or Emperors’ New Clothes salesmen (and women)? They say they can great gold from lead, just give them more time and money and believe their story and they would say that wouldn’t they?
typo should read “create gold”
Does anyone else find it interesting that if you hover over the ‘Share’ icon that appears at the top of each comment, the three sharing options are Twitter (US), VKontakte (Russia) and Odnoklassniki (Russia).
I mean, I’m all for global conversations etc, but isn’t this a bit odd for such an anglophonic website…
Привет to all my friends across the world!
This article would benefit from taking into account information from other published sources. Sherri Markson’s updated What Really Happened in Wuhan, for example.
The evidence for a significant incident in Wuhan between 7th and 19th October 2019, for example. Or the extensive accounts of the debates (or some of them) within the US intelligence community and the US Govt. Pompeo’s retrospectives comments are instructive.
Whilst not telling the whole story there are other accounts which, if considered, would put a quite different slant on the speculation here.
Any links to some of the most important?
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2021/03/05/uncovering-the-origins-of-covid-19/
Ok thanks.
About the main thing I took from this was:
“The other main question in our minds was whether there was evidence of transmission occurring more widely at the time of the outbreak at the Huanan market? We believe that the answer to this is yes. The market might therefore have acted as an amplification event rather than the origin.”
Which is certainly plausible (although I don’t see how Will’s article would benefit from it, as Cameron suggests).
I think it is well established that the WHO investigation has zero credibility. They were managed all the way. The terms of reference were so limited as well.
Yes, the WHO ‘investigation’ was an absolute farce, childish in its ineptitude. So bad in fact that it actually points to an active cover up, by incompetents.
You are correct.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/what-really-happened-in-wuhan-sharri-markson?variant=39686732316706
Thanks for link. I haven’t read this book, but am taking a look into it. Bits of it available on Amazon ‘see inside’, and the comments are illuminating. Seems to be pointing finger at Chinese.
But how to align with Will’s highly plausible (imo) article of 21 December suggesting that China didn’t know of the utbreak until December 2019?
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/12/21/how-suspicious-is-it-that-u-s-intelligence-spotted-the-coronavirus-in-wuhan-weeks-before-china-did/
Does it really matter when and where it was released and whether it was accidental or deliberate?
What we do know is that there was a globally co-ordinated decision in March 2020 to use a virus which posed a trivial threat to most people to justify the massive economic, social and health costs of the lockdowns and the accompanying huge restrictions on freedoms AND to justify injecting as many people as possible as many times as possible with gunk clearly designed to, at best, significantly reduce life expectancy and fertility.
That the UK government initially said it intended to follow the existing plans suggests to me two alternatives:
1) An accidental release that their owners later decided to weaponise; or
2) An accidental release that was intended to be weaponised from the very beginning with the pretence of following the initial plans essentially about neutralising Parliamentary opposition: once they had agreed to Labour demands for lockdowns the only place Labour could go was to demand even harsher lockdowns.
I entirely take your point about how the pandemic was and still is being exploited, but investigating the original leak is important. Those responsible should be made accountable. As I understand it scientists are playing with other viruses like Nipah which has a 50-75% death rate. Probably not a good idea!
Is anyone else here concerned that we seem to be approaching “Peak Distrust”?
And let me emphasise that I am not for a moment suggesting that Distrust is not the rational response to the constant swirl of partly apparently contradictory but essentially accumulative diagnoses of this monumental firkup.
CCP? CIA? Fauci? Biden? NIAID? Farrar?
Ferguson? WHO? Gates? [Add your favourite psychopath / psycho group here]
Anyone care to say which of these is a “straight arrow” that must be trusted?
I’m not worried. These last 3 years have taught us just how incompetent all governments are. Sunak, Biden, Macron…really?…..all supported by law enforcement akin to the Keystone Cops.
One fact that seems quite reliable is that the WIV took down its database of related bat viruses in September 2019. How would you fit this into the above hypothesis?
Not how, but why.
You need to take the timeline further back. The research that led to Covid was started in America and then outsourced to China. The lab leak theory originated in America because they knew at the outset what was being developed and where the final phases were completed.
Look into the Wuhan military games in October 2019. One clear way to introduce the virus and blame the Wuhan lab…
What do you know?
I thought of that too. Either a participant from the US was already infected and could pass it on, or they spread it somehow e.g. by infecting a door handle or piece of equipment etc. It was after this event that the US seemed to start monitoring Chinese hospitals via satellite.
I have read most of the comments and really appreciate the interaction and the insight. Here is my comment for your input. There is evidence that elements of the US and Chinese governments coordinated the release of the C19 virus. 1. There is evidence that the Wuhan lab performed gain of function research on bat viruses. 2. There is evidence that the US funded that research. 3. China shut down internal air traffic from Wuhan while international flights were allowed to depart. (If this pandemic was real, you don’t allow those flights to enter your country. 4. There is evidence of high level communication between top military leaders of the US with their counterparts in China. (The unauthorized conversation that occurred during Trump’s presidency.)
One objection to the intentional bioweapon release hypothesis was always “but why did they release such a low fatality virus instead of a more powerful one?”
The answer is that the US was well aware of blowback. They do not want to cripple the US economy and society as a whole with blowback from a virus that kills large portion of their population. They want a weapon that harms the enemy far more. That’s the whole idea of warfare including biowarfare. So a low lethality virus with particular characteristics that is more specific to certain societies will more likely do far more damage to them than us (at least that was the initial reasoning).
What might those characteristics be?
Say a virus that has a hockeystick shaped mortality curve that harms the older far more than the younger generation would be perfect as a weapon to cause mass economic and social chaos in some East Asia societies that have an unusually high regard for their older generation.
This virus kills off hundreds of thousands of old people in the States but leaves its younger more economically productive population intact. While in China it causes near mass hysteria and massive economic lockdowns. That was the plan. What the IC did not foresee was the economic lockdowns and other policies that were also implemented causing havoc here as well. The IC ran simulations months before the release of their virus and they seemed confident the healthcare capacities of the US and public reaction would be able to handle the blowback without crippling society. But they were wrong.
As a side note, there is a video of Dr. Baric (one of if not main designers of Sars-CoV-2) in 2018 (available on YouTube) saying that some respiratory viruses including coronaviruses function effectively as a kind of population control to weed out older people.
Just watching that video. Its quite chilling – the host mentioned his latest big grant for SARs research!