The True Origin of SARS‑CoV‑2 (Covid-19)

nivek

As Above So Below
Will we ever know the true origin story of SARS‑CoV‑2 (Covid-19) ?...Will the recent revelations and accusations lead to a war with China?...If proven Covid began in a Chinese lab, could the findings powerkeg into World War 3?...

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Explosive study claims to prove Chinese scientists created COVID

A bombshell new study claims to have proof that Chinese scientists created COVID-19 in a lab and then tried to reverse-engineer versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats. British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen wrote they’ve had primary evidence "of retro-engineering in China" since last year, but were ignored by academics and major medical journals, The Daily Mail reported Saturday, citing the soon-to-be-published study.

The study concludes: "the likelihood of it being the result of natural processes is very small." The virus is still killing 12,000 people a day around the world.

Dalgleish is a London oncology professor known for breakthrough work on a vaccine for HIV. Sørensen is a virologist and chair of the pharmaceutical company Immunor, which developed a coronavirus vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19. Dalgleish also has a financial stake in that company.

It was during their COVID-19 vaccine research that the pair came across "unique fingerprints" indicating the virus didn’t come from nature, they said. The telltale clue: a rare finding in the COVID-carrying virus of a row of four amino acids, which give off a positive charge and bond to negative human cells.

"The laws of physics mean that you cannot have four positively charged amino acids in a row," Dalgleish told the Daily Mail. "The only way you can get this is if you artificially manufacture it."


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Wuhan lab was engaged in military activity alongside civilian research

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was engaged in military activity alongside its civilian research -- amid renewed scrutiny of the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic emerged from the secretive lab.

"What I can say for sure is this: we know that they were engaged in efforts connected to the People's Liberation Army inside of that laboratory, so military activity being performed alongside what they claimed was just good old civilian research," Pompeo said on "Fox & Friends Weekend."

"They refuse to tell us what it was, they refuse to describe the nature of either of those, they refused to allow access to the World Health Organization when it tried to get in there."


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(More on both links)

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nivek

As Above So Below
More interesting and terrifying revelations...

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Former FDA commissioner says lab leaks 'happen all the time' amid COVID-19 origin scrutiny

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday that accidental lab leaks "happen all the time" amid mounting concern regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gottlieb expressed concern about safety protocols at research labs in the U.S. and abroad during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation." The former commissioner said a conclusive determination on where the pandemic originated was critical to prevent deadly outbreaks in the future.

"These kinds of lab leaks happen all the time, actually," Gottlieb said. "Even here in the United States, we’ve had mishaps, and in China, the last six known outbreaks of SARS-1 have been out of labs, including the last known outbreak, which was a pretty extensive outbreak that China initially wouldn’t disclose that it came out of a lab."

(More on the link)



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August

Metanoia
A lot of people were revisiting the Bat Cave Covid origin story but now they are turning to the Wuhan Lab theory.
 

wwkirk

Divine
More interesting and terrifying revelations...

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Former FDA commissioner says lab leaks 'happen all the time' amid COVID-19 origin scrutiny

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday that accidental lab leaks "happen all the time" amid mounting concern regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gottlieb expressed concern about safety protocols at research labs in the U.S. and abroad during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation." The former commissioner said a conclusive determination on where the pandemic originated was critical to prevent deadly outbreaks in the future.

"These kinds of lab leaks happen all the time, actually," Gottlieb said. "Even here in the United States, we’ve had mishaps, and in China, the last six known outbreaks of SARS-1 have been out of labs, including the last known outbreak, which was a pretty extensive outbreak that China initially wouldn’t disclose that it came out of a lab."

(More on the link)



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Given the facts that lab leaks have been known to happen, and especially that such leaks in China have led to outbreaks before, the resistance to the lab leak theory could not possibly have been unbiased and science based. It should have been one of the main possibilities on the table from with beginning, and should certainly have not been suppressed on social media.

But the worse part is that the MSM invoked the scientific community to justify their presumptive dismissal of the lab leak theory. And as there was no widespread protest from the latter, it appears that science, at least in this country, has become politicized. This is very dangerous.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Given the facts that lab leaks have been known to happen, and especially that such leaks in China have led to outbreaks before, the resistance to the lab leak theory could not possibly have been unbiased and science based. It should have been one of the main possibilities on the table from with beginning, and should certainly have not been suppressed on social media.

But the worse part is that the MSM invoked the scientific community to justify their presumptive dismissal of the lab leak theory. And as there was no widespread protest from the latter, it appears that science, at least in this country, has become politicized. This is very dangerous.

Yes, the media are nothing more than liars and con artists in my opinion, the scientific community should have more balls to stand up to known lies but they can't because they are influenced by political agendas and movements contrary to what the facts may be...We've seen this with the climate change movements which are completely politicized and change the facts to suit their agendas...

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nivek

As Above So Below
Reporters admit dismissing Wuhan lab leak theory in part because Republicans proposed it

Journalists continued to acknowledge Sunday that the media's longstanding dismissal of the Wuhan "lab-leak" theory was in part due to Republicans pitching it.

Once widely cast aside as a racist "conspiracy theory" and "fringe" nonsense, the possibility that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has gained increasing credence in recent weeks. The saga has led to yet another reckoning for mainstream media journalists about groupthink and bias in the industry. Faced with criticism that they blasted the theory last year for political reasons, some reporters have admitted its Republican origins with figures like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., former President Donald Trump, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played into why they disparaged it.



ABC News Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl suggested on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that figures like Trump and Pompeo were not taken seriously by members of the media, saying "now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."

"Yes, I think a lot of people have egg on their face," Karl said. "This was an idea that was first put forward by Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, Donald Trump, and look some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them. Because Trump was saying so much else, that was just out of control, and because he was, you know, making a frankly racist appeal talking about Kung Flu, and the China virus, he said flatly this came from that lab, and it was widely dismissed ... but now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."



New York Times reporter David Leonhardt also conceded Sunday many journalists dismissed the lab-leak theory solely because Cotton, a Trump ally and longtime critic of China, proposed it.

"I think people made this mistake. I think a lot of people on the political left and a lot of people in the media made the mistake. They said, ‘wow if Tom Cotton is saying something, it can’t be true.' Or they assumed that. And that's not right," he said on CNN.

NBC's Chuck Todd addressed the issue on "Meet The Press" Sunday, saying that "for many," the lab leak theory got "tangled up in politics" and was conflated with one theory that the Chinese released the virus deliberately.



While interviewing former Trump Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, Todd repeatedly suggested anti-China rhetoric was to blame for media dismissals of the virus. "Did in some ways, the sort of irrational attacks on China, did that slow down efforts of the intelligence community to actually do some fact-finding?" Todd asked.

"Well, look, I think what slowed down efforts more than anything else were the early statements that were published by a few scientists dismissing the idea that it could have come out of a lab," Pottinger said. "And in fact, caricaturing people who thought that it might have come out of a lab."

"Do you think your former boss' statements contributed to that a little bit?" Todd asked. "Well, you know, there are political mistakes that lead to, to, you know, trouble in government. And then there are institutional shortcomings," Pottinger said.

The language mirrored that of figures like the New York Times' Maggie Haberman and the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler last week. "I think it is important to remember that part of the issue is when this was first being reported on and discussed back a few months after the pandemic had begun, was that then President Trump and Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, suggested they’ve seen evidence that this was formed in a lab and they also suggested that is was not released on purpose. But they refused to release the evidence showing what it was and so because of that made this instantly political," Haberman said on CNN last week.

In a new fact-check timeline that declared the lab theory was "suddenly" credible, Kessler wrote, "The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims."

Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake wrote an analysis titled, "The vexing ‘lab leak’ theory on China and the coronavirus," in which he defended reporters dismissing the Trump administration claims that there was a high probability the virus originated in a lab.

"Given everything we know about how Trump handled such things, caution and skepticism were invited. That (very much warranted) caution and skepticism spilled over into some oversimplification, particularly when it came to summarizing the often more circumspect reporting," Blake wrote.

The Washington Post's Josh Rogin blasted reporters on Saturday for their sudden about-face, saying the facts on the ground had not changed out of the blue, and accusing them of bias, "general incompetence" and even "TDS," short for Trump Derangement Syndrome.




Outlets from the Washington Post and New York Times to CNN and NPR have gone from outright mockery of the idea to taking it seriously, and "fact checks" have been updated with editor's notes about why the theory is no longer necessarily "debunked." Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield is among the proponents of the theory, pointing to the virus' efficient transmission among humans and the "gain of function" research at the Wuhan lab.

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wwkirk

Divine
Reporters admit dismissing Wuhan lab leak theory in part because Republicans proposed it

Journalists continued to acknowledge Sunday that the media's longstanding dismissal of the Wuhan "lab-leak" theory was in part due to Republicans pitching it.

Once widely cast aside as a racist "conspiracy theory" and "fringe" nonsense, the possibility that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has gained increasing credence in recent weeks. The saga has led to yet another reckoning for mainstream media journalists about groupthink and bias in the industry. Faced with criticism that they blasted the theory last year for political reasons, some reporters have admitted its Republican origins with figures like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., former President Donald Trump, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played into why they disparaged it.



ABC News Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl suggested on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that figures like Trump and Pompeo were not taken seriously by members of the media, saying "now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."

"Yes, I think a lot of people have egg on their face," Karl said. "This was an idea that was first put forward by Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, Donald Trump, and look some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them. Because Trump was saying so much else, that was just out of control, and because he was, you know, making a frankly racist appeal talking about Kung Flu, and the China virus, he said flatly this came from that lab, and it was widely dismissed ... but now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."



New York Times reporter David Leonhardt also conceded Sunday many journalists dismissed the lab-leak theory solely because Cotton, a Trump ally and longtime critic of China, proposed it.

"I think people made this mistake. I think a lot of people on the political left and a lot of people in the media made the mistake. They said, ‘wow if Tom Cotton is saying something, it can’t be true.' Or they assumed that. And that's not right," he said on CNN.

NBC's Chuck Todd addressed the issue on "Meet The Press" Sunday, saying that "for many," the lab leak theory got "tangled up in politics" and was conflated with one theory that the Chinese released the virus deliberately.



While interviewing former Trump Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, Todd repeatedly suggested anti-China rhetoric was to blame for media dismissals of the virus. "Did in some ways, the sort of irrational attacks on China, did that slow down efforts of the intelligence community to actually do some fact-finding?" Todd asked.

"Well, look, I think what slowed down efforts more than anything else were the early statements that were published by a few scientists dismissing the idea that it could have come out of a lab," Pottinger said. "And in fact, caricaturing people who thought that it might have come out of a lab."

"Do you think your former boss' statements contributed to that a little bit?" Todd asked. "Well, you know, there are political mistakes that lead to, to, you know, trouble in government. And then there are institutional shortcomings," Pottinger said.

The language mirrored that of figures like the New York Times' Maggie Haberman and the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler last week. "I think it is important to remember that part of the issue is when this was first being reported on and discussed back a few months after the pandemic had begun, was that then President Trump and Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, suggested they’ve seen evidence that this was formed in a lab and they also suggested that is was not released on purpose. But they refused to release the evidence showing what it was and so because of that made this instantly political," Haberman said on CNN last week.

In a new fact-check timeline that declared the lab theory was "suddenly" credible, Kessler wrote, "The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims."

Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake wrote an analysis titled, "The vexing ‘lab leak’ theory on China and the coronavirus," in which he defended reporters dismissing the Trump administration claims that there was a high probability the virus originated in a lab.

"Given everything we know about how Trump handled such things, caution and skepticism were invited. That (very much warranted) caution and skepticism spilled over into some oversimplification, particularly when it came to summarizing the often more circumspect reporting," Blake wrote.

The Washington Post's Josh Rogin blasted reporters on Saturday for their sudden about-face, saying the facts on the ground had not changed out of the blue, and accusing them of bias, "general incompetence" and even "TDS," short for Trump Derangement Syndrome.




Outlets from the Washington Post and New York Times to CNN and NPR have gone from outright mockery of the idea to taking it seriously, and "fact checks" have been updated with editor's notes about why the theory is no longer necessarily "debunked." Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield is among the proponents of the theory, pointing to the virus' efficient transmission among humans and the "gain of function" research at the Wuhan lab.

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No doubt, if someone you don't like or respect says something, it is natural to view what they say with skepticism. But how about doing one's own independent investigation? I have to assume past lab leaks are a matter of historical record, so curiosity and critical thinking should have kicked in.

Do today's journalists realize how far they've departed from being objective? Do they even care?
 

nivek

As Above So Below
UK intelligence reassesses COVID lab leak theory, now says its ‘feasible’

British intelligence services are now reportedly reassessing their position on the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A Sunday report from the Sunday Times of London quotes British spies who initially dismissed the lab leak theory, but now say it is "feasible."

"There might be pockets of evidence that take us one way, and evidence that takes us another way," the paper quoted a source as saying. "The Chinese will lie either way. I don’t think we will ever know."

(More on the link)

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AD1184

Celestial
ABC News Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl suggested on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that figures like Trump and Pompeo were not taken seriously by members of the media, saying "now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."

"Yes, I think a lot of people have egg on their face," Karl said. "This was an idea that was first put forward by Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, Donald Trump, and look some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them.

But this isn't even true. Pompeo and Trump were not the first. Trump and Pompeo latching onto the idea made it easier for left wing media to dismiss, but they had already dismissed it even before either had said anything. The problem with the lab leak hypothesis is that it sounds like a conspiracy theory on the face of it. The left wing media associates anything that sounds like a conspiracy theory with "the right" (even though there are plenty of fringe leftists who believe in irrational conspiracy theories). On these grounds it was dismissed.

Despite having carried articles before the pandemic warning about the dangers of the world's biolabs that study harmful pathogens, those warnings would apply only to a country where, if an accident occurred, it would be owned up to, so there would be no conspiracy theory necessary. In a totalitarian and secretive country like China, where such accidents are likely to be covered up, then a lab leak story, even if true, would necessarily involve a conspiracy. Conspiracies, especially ones with such damaging outcomes as the Covid pandemic, cannot be true by default under their prejudice.
 

AD1184

Celestial
In this piece by Mattew Flynn, financial columnist for the Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, and others, he reckons that if it were shown conclusively that China did in fact make SARS-CoV-2, then it would lead to a collapse in global trade and an even greater financial crisis.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/customer/subscribe/?ICID=default_paywall_v-standard_monthly-offer&redirectTo=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/31/wuhan-lab-leak-may-biggest-economic-shock-decades/

In which case, there probably is no great global appetite for the hypothesis to be investigated too closely.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
In this piece by Mattew Flynn, financial columnist for the Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, and others, he reckons that if it were shown conclusively that China did in fact make SARS-CoV-2, then it would lead to a collapse in global trade and an even greater financial crisis.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/customer/subscribe/?ICID=default_paywall_v-standard_monthly-offer&redirectTo=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/31/wuhan-lab-leak-may-biggest-economic-shock-decades/

In which case, there probably is no great global appetite for the hypothesis to be investigated too closely.

The flip side to that is if we don't find out the truth and hold the proper people or country accountable then its likely to happen again and maybe next time even more deadlier...

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Leading Baylor scientist demands full investigation of Wuhan lab leak theory or else the world will face 'COVID-26 and COVID-32'

A top microbiologist believes a full investigation into the origins of COVID-19 is the only way to avoid repeat pandemics in the coming years and must be done with China's full cooperation.

Peter Hotez, a professor of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, added his weight to calls for a thorough and transparent probe to determine whether the virus leaked from a lab or came from animals.

'There's going to be COVID-26 and COVID-32 unless we fully understand the origins of COVID-19,' Hotez said on Meet The Press Sunday.


(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
I changed the thread title to reflect more accurately the discussion, I was going to use just the SARS-COV-2 name but most people identify the virus as Covid-19, so perhaps best to leave both names in the title...

Maybe it should have been called the Wuhan Flu...lol

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nivek

As Above So Below
State Department leaders were warned not to pursue COVID origin investigation

State Department leaders were warned not to pursue an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, former department officials confirmed to Fox News on Thursday, amid fears that it would bring attention to U.S. funding of research at the Wuhan Institute where the virus may have escaped.

Vanity Fair reported that officials calling for transparency from the Chinese government were told not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s "gain of function" research, because it would bring what the outlet described as "unwelcome" attention of U.S. government funding into that research.

The outlet reported that Thomas DiNanno, a former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote in a January memo that staff from two bureaus "warned" leaders within his office not to probe the origins of the virus because it risked opening "a can of worms."

Multiple former State Department officials told Fox News that the reported memo accurately describes what was happening at State at the time and that there was an effort among some officials at the department to oppose an extensive investigation into a possible lab leak.

However, a State Department spokesperson told Fox News on Thursday that "no-one prevented the disclosure of accurate, properly contextualized information" and that "no effort was made at any time to suppress or withhold information from senior policymakers or the public."


(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
Fauci Claims It’s ‘in China’s Interest’ to Expose COVID Origins, Urges Americans to Avoid ‘Pointing Fingers’

Dr. Anthony Fauci urged Americans to avoid “pointing fingers” at China while searching for the origins of the coronavirus pandemic — and suggested that Beijing would be a willing willing partner in the investigation — during a Thursday interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“It’s obviously in China’s interest to find out exactly” how the pandemic began, Fauci said. “Obviously you want openness and cooperation. One of the ways you can get it is, don’t be accusatory….I think the accusatory part about it is only going to get them to pull back even more.”



Fauci’s comments come amid renewed scrutiny into the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan. However, Fauci said Americans should refrain from looking to immediately blame anyone for the initial outbreak.

We should investigate this “in a way that the people of good faith, not who want to do blame, but people [of] good faith are really trying to find out what the origin is,” Fauci said. “And we’re seeing a lot of, I don’t even want to describe it, a lot of pointing of fingers and things like that.”

Host Willie Geist then asked Fauci whether it would in fact be in China’s interests to hide the origins of the pandemic, if the coronavirus indeed leaked from a lab. “You know, I don’t want to be speculating on that because every time I say something like that—and you know it as well as I—it will get completely taken out of context and go into the Twitter world like crazy,” Fauci replied.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the laboratory considered as a potential point of origin for the pandemic, has not granted public access to the raw data on the earliest COVID cases. The WIV received $3.4 million in U.S. grants between 2014 and 2019 for the purpose of researching bat coronaviruses.

A researcher whose non-profit organization funneled the grants to the WIV thanked Fauci in April 2020 for publicly dismissing the lab-leak theory.

“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance, wrote to Fauci in an email.

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AD1184

Celestial
Fauci Claims It’s ‘in China’s Interest’ to Expose COVID Origins, Urges Americans to Avoid ‘Pointing Fingers’

A researcher whose non-profit organization funneled the grants to the WIV thanked Fauci in April 2020 for publicly dismissing the lab-leak theory.

“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance, wrote to Fauci in an email.
The article doesn't mention another couple of interesting facts about Peter Daszak:

1. In early 2020 Daszak organized an open letter, published in the Lancet medical journal, condeming speculation that SARS-CoV-2 may have an unnatural origin as a baseless conspiracy theory. He collected 26 other signatures to the letter. The letter was published on the 7th of March:

DEFINE_ME

2. Peter Daszak was a member of the WHO team that "investigated" the virus' origins in Wuhan in early 2021 and which concluded that a lab leak origin of the outbreak was "extremely unlikely", despite his clear conflict of interest.

Virus origin / Origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
The article doesn't mention another couple of interesting facts about Peter Daszak:

1. In early 2020 Daszak organized an open letter, published in the Lancet medical journal, condeming speculation that SARS-CoV-2 may have an unnatural origin as a baseless conspiracy theory. He collected 26 other signatures to the letter. The letter was published on the 7th of March:

DEFINE_ME

2. Peter Daszak was a member of the WHO team that "investigated" the virus' origins in Wuhan in early 2021 and which concluded that a lab leak origin of the outbreak was "extremely unlikely", despite his clear conflict of interest.

Virus origin / Origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

This article below brings out some interesting tidbits on Peter Daszak...Its a slightly lengthy...

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Media fact-checkers, Facebook cited Wuhan lab-linked scientist to knock down lab leak theory

Despite relationship with Wuhan lab, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak repeatedly cited over rejection of lab-leak theory.

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, whose nonprofit has funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for years, appeared in multiple media fact-checks and reports over the past year dispelling the notion the coronavirus accidentally emerged from the lab.

Dr. Daszak's organization sent $3.4 million in National Institutes of Health grants to the Wuhan lab between 2014 and 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal, but his involvement with it didn't prevent him from playing a key role in early media dismissals of the lab-leak idea.

The British scientist appeared in a Washington Post fact-check video published last May, where he discussed his work with the Wuhan Institute researching viruses in bats that could cause "the next pandemic." The video outlined circumstantial evidence around the leak, such as its proximity to the outbreak, its work with coronaviruses, and its known security concerns, but still concluded it likely didn't happen.



After the narrator repeated the lab's denial that it was the source of the virus, Daszak said "China's been incredibly open, and I believe it's because it's been a scientific collaboration."

The Post's Glenn Kessler taunted Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at the time after Cruz criticized the Post's video, saying it showed it was "virtually impossible" the virus jumped from a lab. A little more than a year later, Kessler published a timeline about how the lab-leak theory "suddenly" became credible.



Daszak was also cited by Facebook fact-checking partner Science Feedback in a February 2020 post headlined, "Scientific evidence indicates virus that causes COVID-19 infection is of natural origin, not the result of human engineering." Last June, he penned a Guardian op-ed assailing "conspiracy theorists" for blaming a lab leak.

Last April, Daszak was cited in a CNN article headlined, "How did coronavirus break out? Theories abound as researchers race to solve genetic detective story," where he said he was "very confident" that the virus originated naturally. He was also quoted in an NBC News story about "conspiracy theories" involving the lab.

"The fact that they published the sequence so quickly suggests to me that they weren't trying to cover up anything," he told NBC News. A Chinese state media outlet also cited him saying there was "absolutely no evidence" for the lab theory.

Widely dismissed in the press for more than a year, the theory the virus escaped the Wuhan lab is being considered anew. President Biden ordered the intelligence community last week to assess the virus' origins and report back in 90 days, after outlets ranging from the Washington Post and New York Times to CNN and NPR once disparaged the idea as a fringe conspiracy theory.

Published emails showed Daszak orchestrated the widely cited February 2020 letter in The Lancet from 27 scientists who "strongly condemn[ed] conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin." it did not disclose to readers that Daszak's group had funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab, and at least three of those signers have since said a laboratory accident merits consideration.

The letter stated at the time, "We declare no competing interests." Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier said Friday Daszak had a clear conflict of interest.

"It would really be bad optics for his company if it was a lab accident, whereas if it was natural spillover, that validates their entire company's work," Saphier told "America Reports."

In one email asking someone to sign on to the letter, Daszak said "conspiracy theorists" had targeted some of EcoHealth's Chinese collaborators and needed support.

"I hope you are willing to sign on to this - your voice will be very influential, particularly in keeping these critical bridges open between the USA and China. You should know that the conspiracy theorists have been very active, targeting our collaborators with some extremely unpleasant web pages in China, and some have now received death threats to themselves and their families. They have asked for any show of support we can give them," he wrote.

Last year, after the Trump administration yanked the NIH's grant to EcoHealth, CBS News' "60 Minutes" profiled Daszak and lamented that he had been undercut by "pandemic politics."



"I'm a scientist. And what I do is I look at the evidence around a hypothesis," Daszak told CBS News. "There is a huge amount of evidence that these viruses repeatedly emerge into people from wild animals in rural areas through things like hunting and eating wildlife. There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China."

Daszak was also the lone U.S.-based representative on the World Health Organization's investigative team in China that said in February a lab leak was "extremely unlikely," while conceding its probe was limited in scope.

Daszak's NGO funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Both Daszak and NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci have flatly denied any monies went to "gain of function" studies, a controversial technique which involves manipulating viruses to make them more infectious for research.

Daszak is quoted in a 2015 Nature report discussing the benefits of such research, however. In a 2019 interview with virologist Vincent Racaniello, Daszak discussed the ease of manipulating coronaviruses for the purposes of vaccine development. Racaniello told Just The News he believed Daszak was describing gain-of-function research.

"Coronaviruses — you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily," he said. "Spike protein drives a lot of what happen with coronavirus, in zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work a lot with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this. Insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab. So you can get more predictive when you find a sequence. You’ve got this diversity. Now the logical progression for vaccines is, if you are going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use pandemic SARS, but let’s insert some of these other things and get a better vaccine."



Published emails this week showed Daszak thanking Fauci in April 2020 for dispelling the lab-leak theory.

"I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab from the Wuhan Insitute of Virology," he wrote.

That same month, Daszak told CNN's Fareed Zakaria, "It may be that we'll never really know the answers to where this virus actually originated," while adding he still believed the pandemic originated in nature.

The true origin of the virus that has killed millions around the globe remains unknown.

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nivek

As Above So Below
China's 'massive cover-up' on COVID still happening: WHO advisory board member

An advisory board member to the World Health Organization told Fox News, Monday, that China's COVID-19 is still happening today as the Wuhan lab-leak origin theory gains credibility.

"The Chinese have engaged in a massive cover-up that is going on until this day, involving destroying samples, hiding records, placing a universal gag order on Chinese scientists and imprisoning Chinese citizen journalists asking the most basic questions," Jamie Metzl told "America's Newsroom."

China is reportedly planning to build dozens of biosafety level three labs and one biosafety level four lab over the next five years, as investigators take another look at the possibility that the coronavirus could have leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

"The more that China stonewalls, the more suspicious that it looks," Metzl said. "We can't give China a veto over whether or not we investigate the world's worst pandemic in a century and then do everything we can to make everybody safe."

Metzl stressed the importance of doing everything possible to have a "full investigation" into the pandemic, including the U.S. working with allies to have a "parallel" process if China does not cooperate.

(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
Why did US government lab sit on explosive COVID origins report for five months? Secret study concluding Wuhan lab leak WAS possible came out last May but not delivered to the State Department until October

Questions are mounting about whether officials intentionally suppressed a top secret government report concluding COVID-19 could have originated in a lab leak, after it emerged that the study took five months to reach the State Department.

Lawrence Livermore National Lab's secretive 'Z Division' intelligence unit produced the report on May 27, 2020, but it did not reach the State Department until last October, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Dr. David J. Rakestraw, a senior science adviser who formerly ran LLNL's biodefense programs and coordinated the lab’s COVID-19 technical response, was reportedly intimately involved in the preparation of the Z Division report.

The classified study weighed the lab leak possibility as well as the theory that the pandemic crossed over naturally from an animal, and concluded that both scenarios were plausible and could not be ruled out.

This explosive conclusion, which came at a time when many experts were loudly clamoring that a lab leak origin was impossible, could have significantly impacted the debate if the study had been more widely circulated.

'We will not be commenting on this issue,' Livermore Public Affairs Director Lynda Seaver told DailyMail.com on Tuesday when asked about the delay in the report's distribution to other government departments.

(More on the link)

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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I think the man is right but the reason I am posting this article is more about the traction this story is getting, which is to say very little except for a few outlets. I took it from Newsweek because the NY Post etc. is automatically disqualified about much of anything - and not without justification at times.

Lindsey Graham asks if 'deep-state science department' shot down COVID lab theory

News
Lindsey Graham Asks if 'Deep-State Science Department' Shot Down COVID Lab Theory
By Zoe Strozewski On 6/7/21 at 4:58 PM EDT

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham asked if there was a "deep state science department" that rejected the theory that COVID-19 came from a Wuhan lab during a press conference Monday.

Speaking from a lab in Greenville, South Carolina, Graham began the press conference lauding improvements in COVID-19 testing, the impact of vaccines on the severity of the infection, and the lab's work in testing COVID-19 variants for the country. However, the senator's speech quickly veered into the virus's origins.

"Right now I think the big story with COVID, is where did it come from? And does it matter where it came from?" he asked.

Graham stated that the World Health Organization was shown "what China wanted them to see" and that they weren't able to conduct an investigation in Wuhan to determine whether it had originated there.

"It was a dog and pony show. But first I want to know, how did our government potentially get it so wrong?"

Graham then spoke about a group of scientists who wrote a letter in the earlier days of the virus alleging that the concept of COVID-19 originating in a lab leak was a right-wing conspiracy.

"How did they know? Is there a deep state science department?" he asked. "Is the NIH and the State Department--were people in those two organizations trying to tamp down the idea that it may have come from the lab because they support the lab?"

Graham also said there were people in the state department "raising the alarm" that the coronavirus came from a lab in China instead of the alternative speculations that it came from a bat, but those people were silenced.

"Seems to me that people at NIH had curiosity and their curiosity was stopped. I want to find out, who are the people involved in stopping asking the questions about--could it come from a lab? Because those people did this country a great disservice."

Graham then defended former President Trump, who had received backlash after suggesting that the virus was the product of a lab leak while still in office. The senator claimed the negative response came from people who didn't want Trump to be right.

"Trump suggested this may have come from a lab and he was called a xenophobic racist by suggesting it came from the lab in China," he said. "Well, some people just don't want Trump to ever be right and those same people are stakeholders in the grant program where their livelihood is on the line."

He proceeded to say that the former president's comments were weaponized against by people who "blame everything on Trump and to marginalize his theory of the case" during his failed 2020 election bid.

"I think part of the motivations were political, not scientific," he added.

Newsweek reached out to Graham for comment but the senator was not available by publication time.




 
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