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Prime Suspects Emerge in Lab Leak Cover-Up

by Will Jones
25 July 2023 6:28 PM

Who was behind the lab leak cover-up? I asked this question on Saturday, noting that the cover-up began, not at the Fauci teleconference on February 1st 2020, as is usually supposed – after that meeting Fauci wrote to his Government colleagues to say he was initiating a neutral investigation to see “where that leads” – but at the February 3rd teleconference convened by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM).

I’ve since been reminded that, although the first draft of the NASEM letter was anti-lab-origin, the final version actually sent to the White House (below) was neutral on the matter.

“The experts informed us that additional genomic sequence data from geographically- and temporally-diverse viral samples are needed to determine the origin and evolution of the virus,” the National Academy Presidents wrote.

The initial draft circulated following the teleconference had stated: “The initial views of the experts is [sic] that the available genomic data are consistent with natural evolution and that there is currently no evidence that the virus was engineered to spread more quickly among humans.” But this strong statement was gone from the final version.

It appears that the anti-lab-origin language was shot down by some of the scientists in the group, who were much more open to the possibility. Dr. Trevor Bedford in particular said in his feedback that there was a “lot” of evidence favouring a lab origin. “I wouldn’t mention binding sites here. If you start weighing evidence there’s a lot to consider for both scenarios,” he wrote.

The erasure of anti-lab-origin statements from the final letter indicates that this meeting as such was not the source of the lab leak cover-up. Equally, there were people involved in that meeting who plainly did want to suppress any discussion of the possibility.

Most notably, shortly after the teleconference, one participant, EcoHealth Alliance Director Peter Daszak, emailed another, Ralph Baric, the U.S. virologist who had collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on coronavirus gain-of-function work, to begin to organise the infamous Lancet statement, published February 19th, that condemned “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”.

Was it the failure to carry the day with the NASEM letter that led Daszak and Baric to initiate the Lancet statement? Or would they have done that anyway? It’s hard to say. But either way it becomes clear who in that meeting was most desirous of pushing this agenda forward.

Based on these backroom goings-on, it would appear that the cover-up wasn’t ordered by anyone as such. Rather, it seems to have been driven by some well-connected scientists like Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric who were personally connected to the scientific work at the centre of suspicions. Others not directly implicated went along with the suppression to varying degrees, some of their statements differing in public and private.

Kristian Andersen is a particularly fascinating case study. The Scripps microbiology professor’s worry that the new virus looked engineered was what had brought about the Fauci teleconference in the first place. He got in touch with Farrar, who got in touch with Fauci, leading Fauci to ask Farrar to convene the group. Eddie Holmes, one of the group, later said they excluded Baric from this group because they wanted a “proper investigation”. “We decided not to invite Ralph Baric just because he was too close to the WIV. … We wanted to make it a proper investigation.” During their discussions Fauci told Andersen that if he thought it came from a lab he should write a paper. Andersen drafted Proximal Origin and included the possibility of a lab origin (albeit via serial passage rather than direct engineering, which Andersen was dismissive of) and submitted it to Nature; Fauci, Collins and Farrar notably all signed off on this paper. When it was rejected by Nature (courtesy of an unnamed reviewer who seems to have been of the Daszak and Baric persuasion) for not rejecting lab origin firmly enough, Andersen robustly defended the inclusion of the possibility. Yet he then wrote it out of the final version published in Nature Medicine, and since then has not publicly defended a lab origin, though privately emails have shown his suspicions continued at least for several more months. Nonetheless, by 2022 he was putting his name to studies claiming (spuriously) to show “dispositive” evidence that the Huanan wet market was the source of the (natural) outbreak.

Farrar is another intriguing case. Initially writing that he was “50-50” between natural and lab origin, at around the same point in mid-February he managed to both sign off on the first version of Proximal Origin, which allowed for a lab origin, and sign the Lancet letter condemning a non-natural origin as a conspiracy theory! 50-50 indeed.

The Lancet statement and ‘de-labbed’ Proximal Origin then became the go-to basis on which the suppression of all lab-origin talk was justified.

There’s no sign, then, that the cover-up was a directive from the top, at least not originally. Rather there was a well-connected group of conflicted and implicated scientists who carried off an extraordinarily successful effort to convince others that there is nothing to see here, and even if there is we should ignore it for the greater good – to avoid “great potential harm to science and international harmony”, as NIH Director Francis Collins put it. This, it is worth adding, was despite, not because of, the efforts of U.S. security services to promote a lab origin from January 2020 onwards, probably as a way of implicating China, raising public alarm and justifying emergency measures.

This doesn’t excuse those who conspired in the cover-up of course. It doesn’t mean that none of them are guilty; to the contrary, it means they all are.

Stop Press: Sign the petition to retract Proximal Origin.

Tags: CensorshipChinaCover-upCovid originsCOVID-19EcoHealth AllianceLab leakLab Leak TheoryPropagandaUnited StatesWuhan Institute of Virology

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9 Comments
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Tyrbiter
Tyrbiter
1 year ago

Well, we know that Daszak was paid by Fauci to move gain-of-function research somewhere outside the US where it would not be overseen by US organisations. Therefore it seems obvious that Daszak and Baric, plus probably Fauci, decided that some shade needed to be thrown.

More people who are utterly untrustworthy.

60
-1
JeremyP99
JeremyP99
1 year ago
Reply to  Tyrbiter

I’d say they were above all, evil, in the Biblical sense.

5
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

Nest of vipers.

32
-1
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

It came about because mass consciousness understood that the Anglo-American western system was about to go down in late 2019. The interconnectedness of countries meant that this was the only way out and it did keep things going a little while longer. But there was no end goal or pay off. We are in the time afterwards. We have simply left all of the old systems and antagonisms intact and somehow hoped that things would resolve themselves. The cry from our moment is that things can’t help themselves rather they need the intervention of human will and love.

6
-5
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

Are you serious this stuff has been leaking out for twenty years, even ‘novel Conronaviruses’. This has been an ongoing agenda of esposure, damage and cover up. Either you feel like looking into it or you don’t just be aware of the entire situation. It has resulted in a massive diminution in the quality of life for billions of people.

16
-1
Mark Thornton
Mark Thornton
1 year ago

I wonder what their next surprise for us will be?
They sure haven’t shut up shop
+ nobodys gone to prison

25
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago

My money has always been on Daszak. They’re all to blame, but it’s the slimebag Daszak who has the most of that aura of cock-suredness and clever-clever about him.

Last edited 1 year ago by Marcus Aurelius knew
17
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

A new peer-reviewed paper confirming that these Covid injections do meet the legal definition of ‘genetically modified organism’. And so this is another area that we heretics were censored or scoffed at, for saying that the jabs were gene therapies and that the material can get into the cell and change human DNA. Vindication is ours. The paper is written by a lawyer so is not the easiest read in places, but going to pages 16 and 17 gives a good explanation of the crux of the matter.

”Decades of sophisticated and detailed legislation created to safeguard humanity from exposure to genetically modified organisms was ignored or legislated away in an instant when SARS-CoV-2 arrived. It seems this banishment was done with intention and not for the good of humanity. The lipid nanoparticles containing modified RNAs, the so-called “vaccines”, from the beginning fulfilled the legal definitions for being categorized as genetically modified organisms. Pfizer, Moderna, and regulators all knew this.

The claims by Pfizer and Moderna repeated by regulators and complicit politicians that modified RNAs do not enter the cell nucleus and reverse transcribe into the human genome were lies constructed knowingly. Over four decades of scientific knowledge marked with Nobel Prizes pointed to modified RNAs integrating into the human genome. The knowledge of retroposition preceded the use of modified RNAs in response to the pandemic, but the WHO and regulatory experts did not inform the global population about these facts.”

https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/83/218

29
0
BurlingtonBertie
BurlingtonBertie
1 year ago

Does it matter? This is just another limited hangout to distract our attention from the real agenda – installation of a global tyrannical regime to remove all of our freedoms.
As I’ve posted before – the evidence for a virus existing outside of a computer model is absent. The toxic spike protein is present in the bioweapon injections. Otherwise, a gain of function wild, natural virus??? That is just used to stoke fear & compliance.

3
0

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