AD1184
Celestial
The Chinese have been trying to dismiss any Chinese origin hypothesis for a long time now. They have been peddling misinformation that it originated in the US, or that it arrived in China in frozen food.
nivek
As Above So Below
Chinese Embassy urges House Republican to stop 'targeting China,' focus on 'own failure' in COVID origins hunt
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. is urging a House Republican chairing the committee investigating the origins of the coronavirus to "respect science" and stop "targeting China" just days before a hearing is scheduled.Li Xiang, the Chinese Embassy's liaison to Congress, emailed a staff member for House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup on April 14, R-Ohio, and expressed China's "perspectives" on the COVID-19 origins issue ahead of a hearing on Tuesday titled "Investigating the Origins of COVID-19, Part 2: China and the Available Intelligence."
The full email, obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, shows Xiang blasting the select committee's efforts to track down the coronavirus origins as being mostly political.
"We call on the US side to respect science and facts, refrain from targeting China in holding the above-mentioned hearings, and put a stop to the intelligence-led, politics-driven origins-tracing, and help promote international solidarity against the pandemic and global cooperation on science based origins-tracing," the 2:15 a.m. email from Xiang states.
In the email, Xiang appears to blame the United States for its so-called "failure" regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, appearing to push a conspiracy theory amplified by Chinese government officials alleging that the coronavirus may have originated in a United States military laboratory.
"The hearing just demonstrates that the US is going further and further down the wrong path. To simply blame others or find a scapegoat for its own failure and incompetence is the easiest thing to do, but it is neither responsible for the past nor helpful for the future," he wrote.
He also said in the email that origins tracing is a "complex matter of science" that should "be conducted jointly by scientists," arguing that intelligence community research isn't credible.
"Intelligence community, which is highly political in nature, cannot possibly produce anything objective or credible on such professional matter. We oppose "political tracing" or "intelligence tracing". We oppose any attempt to lable China esp. Wuhan as the origin of the virus before any concrete evidence is presented and conclusion is drawn collectively by the scientists all over the world," Xiang said.
"We oppose any political manuveur such as ‘verdict first, then comes trial,’" he added.
The Chinese Embassy liaison to Congress also said he has "grave concern" with Tuesday's hearing and "firmly" opposes it.
A spokesperson for the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic told Fox News Digital on Saturday that the Chinese Embassy's attempt to disrupt the subcommittee's work is "absurd."
The hearing on April 18 will feature testimony from Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs David Feith.
In March, Xiang sent a letter to the chief of staff for Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., stating that the Missouri senator's bill to declassify information regarding the origins of COVID-19 were an act of "political manipulation."
"I am reaching out to express our grave concern regarding the 'Covid-19 Origin Act of 2023' (S.619), which falsely claimed that the Covid-19 coronavirus originated from Wuhan Institute of Virology, accuses China of blocking international investigations, refusing to share information and lacking transparency etc. and required the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information relating to the origin of COVID–19. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this," the letter states.
.
wwkirk
Divine
Closing in, perhaps.
A newly released Senate report on the origins of COVID-19 points to two separate leaks at Chinese labs as sparking the global pandemic.
After an 18-month probe weighing the likelihood of a transfer of the virus from an animal versus spilling out of a lab, the 300-page report released Monday concludes that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the pandemic was caused by unintentional research-related incidents dating as far back as mid-October 2019.
“Epidemiological and genetic molecular analyses of the early published circulating Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 strains supported the possibility of two spillover events two or more weeks apart,” reads the report, issued by Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican and a medical doctor.
“This assessment was made based on minor genetic differences in early circulating strains suggesting that two lineages of the same virus may have emerged simultaneously and progressed on different paths or sequentially separated by some period of time,” the report continues. “One lineage showing more mutations than the other implying it had been circulated longer than the other or had potentially passed through more individuals.”
Senate report proposes COVID-19 pandemic spurred by two separate lab leaks
ExcerptA newly released Senate report on the origins of COVID-19 points to two separate leaks at Chinese labs as sparking the global pandemic.
After an 18-month probe weighing the likelihood of a transfer of the virus from an animal versus spilling out of a lab, the 300-page report released Monday concludes that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the pandemic was caused by unintentional research-related incidents dating as far back as mid-October 2019.
“Epidemiological and genetic molecular analyses of the early published circulating Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 strains supported the possibility of two spillover events two or more weeks apart,” reads the report, issued by Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican and a medical doctor.
“This assessment was made based on minor genetic differences in early circulating strains suggesting that two lineages of the same virus may have emerged simultaneously and progressed on different paths or sequentially separated by some period of time,” the report continues. “One lineage showing more mutations than the other implying it had been circulated longer than the other or had potentially passed through more individuals.”
nivek
As Above So Below
Wuhan lab experienced a 'serious biocontainment' incident in 2019 and first COVID death in China was two months EARLIER than first thought: New Senate report shares more evidence on leak theory and Beijing's cover-up
The Wuhan Institute of Virology had a 'serious biocontainment' incident' in 2019, was understaffed and marred by safety concerns, according to a Senate report on COVID origins.The 329-page report on two years of work also states that the first death of COVID in China was in September 2019 - two months earlier than first thought - and that Beijing tried to keep the outbreak from the rest of the world.
The findings included more circumstantial evidence the virus leaked from the lab - but didn't contain a smoking gun.
'A careful reading of reports from the WIV spanning more than a three-year period yielded a picture of a struggling institution: underfunded, underregulated, and understaffed,' the report, led by Senate Intel ranking member Marco Rubio, read.
The report admits that it does not contain any one ''smoking gun' – which matters most when assessing the origin question.'
The report traces back to July 2019 when an official at the Wuhan Institute of Virology warned of the 'current shortcomings and foundational problems in the construction, operation, and maintenance' of the lab complex and directed staff to 'prioritize solving the urgent problems we are facing.'
(More on the link)
.
wwkirk
Divine
nivek
As Above So Below
Scientists working at Wuhan Institute of Virology alongside Chinese military 'were combining world's most deadly coronaviruses to create mutant strain capable of sparking a pandemic just before the Covid outbreak began'
Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were running risky experiments to create deadly mutant coronaviruses by fusing newly discovered strains - just before the outbreak of Covid-19.US investigators believe Covid-19 was created by scientists at the Wuhan lab through experiments on a similar coronavirus discovered in a mineshaft in southern China.
Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were fusing deadly coronaviruses to create highly-infectious mutant strains, that were then used to infect albino mice, the US investigators claim.
The research programme was kept secret and covered up due to it being funded by the Chinese military with the aim of developing bioweapons, the investigators believe.
The secret initiative in turn led to the creation of Covid-19, which was then leaked into the city of Wuhan through a lab accident, before it spread across the globe, the US investigators claim.
(More on the link)
.
michael59
Celestial
Pfizer Caught Funnelling $12 Million to Anderson Cooper To Promote mRNA Jabs to Americans
“Anderson Cooper has a $12 million a year annual salary,” Kennedy revealed during the segment. “Well, $10 million of that is coming from Pfizer.”
“So, his boss is not CNN. His boss is Pfizer. And they’re unashamed about it. They’re unabashed about it. They say on his program ‘brought to you by Pfizer.’ Of course, he’s not going to tell you the truth about Pfizer’s product. He’s going to try to sell it to you. He’s going to try to scare the hell out of you saying ‘if you don’t take this, you’re going to die.’”
(More on the link)
Pfizer Caught Funnelling $12 Million to Anderson Cooper To Promote mRNA Jabs to Americans
Pfizer has funnelled a whopping $12 million dollars into the bank account of CNN host Anderson Cooper as part of a deal to promote the company's toxic mRNA jabs to the American public.
thepeoplesvoice.tv
nivek
As Above So Below
The real patient zero? Three Wuhan lab scientists genetically altering Covid were the FIRST to contract the virus, claims report
Three Wuhan lab scientists who were genetically altering the Covid virus were the first to fall sick with it, a new investigation has claimed.According to multiple US government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy inquiry by independent news outlet Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus are allegedly Ben Hu, Ping Yu, and Yan Zhu.
They were all members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus and were partaking in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) on SARS-like coronaviruses.
Gain-of-function research involves altering animal viruses in a lab to make them more infectious.
(More on the link)
.
wwkirk
Divine
I think they permit reading this one for free. Just in case, I'm including the full text.
Oh, I’m sure he was just checking out the view and leaned over too far. I would say that this Russian habit of important people falling out of windows must be contagious, but as we know, the Chinese government is habitually reluctant to label anything as contagious.
From the full Senate report into Covid’s origin, released in April:
It is extremely likely that Zhou Yusen knew a lot of state secrets about what was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, how the Chinese government learned about Covid-19, and perhaps how the whole pandemic started. The country’s internal security services had an enormous incentive to make sure he never publicly disclosed anything he shouldn’t; dead men tell no tales.
Here’s what that Senate report stated about what was known about Zhou Yusen’s death:
If Yusen Zhou died under normal circumstances – hit by a car, was diagnosed with cancer, etc. — there wouldn’t be much need for such secrecy about his death, now would there?
Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.
Do Wuhan Institute of Virology Scientists Often Fall from the Building’s Roof?
I’m on vacation, supposedly keeping my mind away from all the troubles in the world, but the Daily Mail offers an eye-popping scoop, relating to the Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist who began work on a vaccine for Covid-19 in November 2019, before almost anyone else on the planet had even heard of the virus.Oh, I’m sure he was just checking out the view and leaned over too far. I would say that this Russian habit of important people falling out of windows must be contagious, but as we know, the Chinese government is habitually reluctant to label anything as contagious.
From the full Senate report into Covid’s origin, released in April:
It is extremely likely that Zhou Yusen knew a lot of state secrets about what was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, how the Chinese government learned about Covid-19, and perhaps how the whole pandemic started. The country’s internal security services had an enormous incentive to make sure he never publicly disclosed anything he shouldn’t; dead men tell no tales.
Here’s what that Senate report stated about what was known about Zhou Yusen’s death:
If Yusen Zhou died under normal circumstances – hit by a car, was diagnosed with cancer, etc. — there wouldn’t be much need for such secrecy about his death, now would there?
Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.
AD1184
Celestial
Put archive.is/ in front of any paywall url in the address bar to get around the paywall. If your page is not already archived, you can archive it in the service. (It might take a couple of minutes if you are the first to archive the page.)
Last edited:
AD1184
Celestial
There's a good article here on the deliberate poisoning of the well of debate by a cabal of western scientists (we know most of their names, as they have been discussed previously here), which shows conclusively that their private thoughts do not square with their public statements (or, in particular, one particularly influential scientific paper that they authored):
I include a paywall-bypassing link as Unherd imposes a monthly article limit for non-subscribed users:
I include a paywall-bypassing link as Unherd imposes a monthly article limit for non-subscribed users:
nivek
As Above So Below
New evidence of Beijing's Covid cover-up and possible Wuhan lab leak revealed: China's public health authorities cracked virus' genetic code five DAYS before the world knew about the disease, scientist claims
China's public health authorities cracked the genetic code of the Covid virus five days before the rest of the world even learned about the existence of the disease, according to a prominent British scientist.The revelation, confirmed by independent investigators, exposes the scale of Beijing's cover-up of the outbreak in Wuhan – which experts fear inflamed the pandemic's spread with disastrous consequences.
The genome sequence, vital for developing diagnostic tests and vaccines, was finally shared with the rest of the world more than two weeks later by a Chinese scientist defying the Beijing government – by which time the sequence had been assembled by several of the country's private and public laboratories.
'As more information about the early stages of the pandemic emerges, we see a disturbing pattern of efforts to hide critical information,' said Bryce Nickels, co-founder of campaign group Biosafety Now.
The professor of genetics at Rutgers University in New Jersey added that attempts to manipulate public opinion began in China but were later echoed in the US and other Western countries.
(More on the link)
.
nivek
As Above So Below
CIA whistleblower claims agency 'BRIBED' their own analysts to say COVID did NOT come from Wuhan: Bombshell Republican report exposes alleged virus origins cover-up
A CIA whistleblower has told Congress the agency bribed its own analysts to say Covid-19 did not originate in a Wuhan lab.According to a veteran 'senior-level' serving agency officer, the CIA assigned seven officers to a Covid Discovery Team.
At the end of their investigation six of the seven believed the intelligence pointed to a low-confidence assessment that Covid-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.
The seventh member, the most senior on the team, believed it evolved naturally. The other six were then given a 'significant monetary incentive to change their position,' according to the whistleblower.
The CIA ultimately refused to make an assessment even with low confidence.
'Both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,' according to the agency.
The CIA denied engaging in bribery and said it would investigate the allegations.
'At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed,' CIA director of public affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp said in a statement.
Republican congressmen Mike Turner and Brad Wenstrup, both from Ohio, who lead the Intelligence and Covid committees respectively, wrote a letter to CIA Director William Burns on Tuesday demanding all documents on the matter.
The lawmakers set a September 26 deadline for the CIA to turn over all records involving the COVID Discovery Team and all communications with the FBI, State Department, Health and Human Services and Energy Department about the matter.
They threatened to slap the agencies with subpoenas if they do not comply.
(More on the link)
.
nivek
As Above So Below
World Health Organization demands 'full access' to China for inquiry into origins of Covid
Pressure is mounting on Beijing to offer up information on the origins of the Covid pandemic.The World Health Organization (WHO) warned it is ready to send a team of scientists to China to probe how the virus spread to humans and plunge the world into crisis.
An initial investigation by the UN health agency in 2021, which saw a group of scientists travel to Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, concluded that Covid emerged naturally.
It was criticised due to a lack of cooperation from Beijing, which allegedly refused to discuss the lab leak theory unless the final report stated no further investigation was needed, and withheld key data and samples.
Now, WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has written to Beijing asking for 'full access' and that it was ready to send investigators.
(More on the link)
.
nivek
As Above So Below
US researchers found 'serious safety concerns' at Wuhan's COVID lab in 2017 - three years BEFORE pandemic - but were censored to shield China from criticism, shock new documents show
Warnings from US researchers about genetically engineered viruses at China's bat lab were raised years before the Covid-19 pandemic, but were ignored or censored. Newly obtained records show how an NIH official raised serious concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology's plan to engineer Ebola strains in 2017.The lab - where the FBI believes Covid leaked from - was found to have a 'serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate'. The unnamed official, from the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was run by Anthony Fauci at the time, was instructed to erase the safety failures in her report to avoid angering China.
And this was not the first time concerns over engineered viruses was dismissed.
A year prior US energy officials warned the NIAID of the dangers of genetically engineered and altered pathogens. However, longtime head of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, called the claims 'science fiction.'
In 2017, the NIAID official visited the lab in Wuhan. That year, China was establishing its first biosafety level 4 lab at the WIV in hopes to study some of the world's most lethal pathogens with funding from France, Canada and the US's National Institutes of Health.
The US was indirectly funding the WIV research through grants awarded to EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), a controversial research group at the center of the Covid lab leak theory, which then sent money to the WIV. The NIAID official later wrote in emails to her superiors she was alarmed after learning the WIV researchers were planning on studying Ebola.
However, because China prohibited importing the lethal virus, the team was going to use a technique called reverse genetics to engineer it in their lab. While preparing her official report on the lab tour to be submitted to the US embassy in Beijing, the NIAID employee sent emails to colleagues about her worries of divulging the Ebola detail.
In the emails, obtained by Vanity Fair, she wrote: 'I don’t want the information particularly using reverse genetics to create viruses to get out,' which she believed would impair the collaboration between NIAID and the WIV. She added: 'I was shocked to hear what [the WIV technician] said [about reverse engineering Ebola]. I also worry the reaction of people in Washington when they read this.
'I don’t feel comfortable for broader audience within the government circle. It could be very sensitive.'
F. Gray Handley, then NIAID’s associate director for international research affairs, responded to the email agreeing with the official. His response included: 'As we discussed. Delete that comment.'
(More on the link)
.
nivek
As Above So Below
Covid WAS clearly the result of genetic engineering in China. If the inquiry refuses to consider this, the hearings are pointless, says leading scientist PROF ANGUS DALGLEISH
The phrase is straight out of Yes Minister. Michael Gove's evidence to the Covid Inquiry on Tuesday was cut off for straying into what a smooth-talking Government lawyer deemed 'a somewhat divisive issue'.Gove, a Cabinet minister for most of the past 13 years, ventured to state that 'there is a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made'.
This goes further than any British official has previously dared. Gove is an exceptionally clever man - and I have no doubt his intervention was deliberate. He has been long aware of the overwhelming evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, was genetically engineered to become a human pathogen in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan in China.
As Yes Minister's Sir Humphrey might put it, the Secretary of State apparently forgot what it was he wasn't supposed to know. In fact, what Gove called the 'significant body of judgment' is overwhelming.
Chinese molecular biologists took a coronavirus that occurs naturally in bats and altered its genes - to an extent that cannot occur naturally - so as to make it exceptionally contagious in humans.
Any notion that this novel coronavirus arose from contaminated bat meat sold in the wet market at Wuhan is a fairytale for the credulous, a juvenile explanation that insults the intelligence of every serious virologist.
The Chinese are to blame for the Covid pandemic and the deaths (estimated at seven million globally) and long-term illnesses it caused, as well as the incalculable damage to the world's economy - to the extent that it would not be inappropriate for nations to demand substantial reparations from Beijing.
The mere fact that this disease arose in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Biology, China's premier top-level 'biosafety' laboratory, should be enough to make any investigator suspicious.
Yet shamefully, the Covid Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith KC slapped down Mr Gove for even beginning to approach the subject.
Gove's point ought to be central to the Inquiry. He was admitting that the Government was 'not as well prepared as we should have been' because 'the virus was novel'. In other words, the medical establishment was blindsided. This virus was unprecedented because it was in part created by man.
All this I can say with certainty because I was the co-author of a scientific paper that first made Government officials aware of the facts, in March 2020.
Working with my colleague in Norway, Dr Birger Sorensen (with whom I had collaborated to improve his pioneering therapeutic HIV vaccine in 2006), we realised that the Covid virus was simply incompatible with natural evolution.
(More on the link)
.
nivek
As Above So Below
Is this the smoking gun for the Covid lab leak? Blueprint for creating a 'SARS-CoV' virus with an altered spike protein in Wuhan was published in 2018, bombshell new records show
A newly-uncovered trove of documents detailing plans to create a Covid-like virus in China months before the pandemic make the 'lab leak almost certain', experts say.The records - obtained now by FOIA requests - lay out a plan to 'engineer spike proteins' to infect human cells that would then be 'inserted into SARS-Covid backbones' at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018.
Just a year later, in late 2019, the Covid-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic.
The proposal was made by the now-notorious EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit that channels US government grants abroad to fund these types of experiments.
Ultimately, the application was denied by the US Department of Defense, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a 'blueprint' for how to create Covid, and inadvertently start a pandemic.
(More on the link)
.
nivek
As Above So Below
The conspiracy of silence around Covid even four years on betrays our values
It is more than four years since the World Health Organisation was tipped off about a mysterious new disease that had emerged in Wuhan. This proved to be the start of a deadly pandemic as the virus hurtled round the planet, sparking the most serious public health catastrophe for a century.Now, it is beyond dispute that China’s dictatorship covered up Covid’s eruption in Wuhan – with disastrous consequences. The regime’s officials hid the initial outbreak, silenced whistleblowers and censored data that could have saved millions of lives.
Yet, last year, when Michael Gove told the UK Covid-19 inquiry there was ‘a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made’ he was slapped down as the lead counsel, Hugo Keith, told him: ‘We’re not going to go there.’
So this bloated, costly inquiry is happy to admonish British politicians while ignoring the much bigger issue of whether the pandemic was sparked by cutting-edge scientific research or if there was ‘natural’ transmission from infected animals.
Keith’s hasty response reflected the desperate efforts of Western political, scientific and media establishments to stifle such discussion as they kowtow to China’s bullying rulers and cover up funding ties to risky research outsourced to Wuhan labs.
Zero reliable evidence has emerged to back claims of zoonotic (animal to animal) transmission. But there has been a steady trickle of evidence to suggest that it may be no coincidence that Covid emerged in the city with China’s maximum bio-safety lab, the biggest repository of bat coronaviruses in Asia.
I have reported on these issues since early 2020 – and it has been deeply disturbing to witness systemic attempts to shackle debate for it corrodes public confidence in science, politics and the media.
Obstruction has been led by heads of key American and British funding bodies. Yet last month a study disclosed 309 laboratory-acquired infections between 2000 and 2021 – along with 16 cases of pathogens escaping a laboratory.
Alarming details about the work in Wuhan and China’s cover-up have been exposed along with concerns over ‘Wild West’ safety and details of secret schemes to boost the infectivity of coronaviruses.
Today, there is growing acceptance that a laboratory incident might have caused the pandemic.
While no one knows for sure the answer to this scientific riddle, one thing is clear. There has been a toxic conspiracy of silence in collusion with China over Covid’s origins that has betrayed the values of democracy and science.
This undermines all efforts to prepare for the next pandemic.
.
nivek
As Above So Below
US scientists held secret talks with Covid 'Batwoman' amid drive to make coronaviruses more deadly... just before pandemic
The Chinese scientist who ran controversial experiments at the laboratory suspected of triggering Covid held a secret meeting with the US government to seek backing for a project that would go on to supercharge coronaviruses – shortly before the devastating outbreak started in her native Wuhan.The June 2017 meeting at America's National Institutes of Health (NIH) held by Shi Zhengli – known as 'Batwoman' because of her work on sampling and sequencing the animals' viruses – will bolster fears of Western collusion in a Chinese cover-up after Covid resulted from a reckless laboratory experiment.
A new cache of documents, obtained by Freedom of Information campaigners and seen by The Mail on Sunday, reveal the extent to which the controversial work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was supported, and often funded, by America.
They show that US researchers seeking funding for work to engineer 'spike proteins' – making it easier for the bat viruses to infect human cells – misled the authorities about the risks of the experiments in order to maximise the chance of receiving grants.
The documents, obtained by US Right To Know, a non-profit public health research group, include an order made by Chinese intelligence on January 3, 2020 – two days after the world was first told about Covid – which decreed that its scientists should either share their samples with the government or destroy them 'on the spot'.
Western intelligence agencies increasingly regard a lab leak in Wuhan as the most likely explanation for Covid, rather then the original theory that it was somehow spawned in a wildlife market in the city. The bombshell documents include emails sent by staff at EcoHealth Alliance – a now notorious health agency that has used US government money to sponsor bat virus experiments – ahead of the visit by Professor Zhengli.
Using the subject heading: 'Potential visit ... by our Chinese co-investigator', Peter Daszak, the $460,000-a-year head of EcoHealth, writes: 'Zhengli and I will do a double act, and we'll cover the work we're doing ... as well as the broadscale surveillance of bats for novel viruses'. Professor Zhengli became known as 'Batwoman' because of her virus-hunting trips to the bat caves of southern China, hundreds of miles from Wuhan, where her team collected more than 10,000 animal samples.
The sequencing of Covid-19 closely matched that found in those caves. Also invited to the meeting was Peng Zhou, an associate professor at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
After the meeting, Mr Daszak thanked the hosts by writing in an email that it was 'nice to have a chance to introduce our collaborators to you personally'.
EcoHealth also lobbied the Pentagon for funding for Zhengli to engineer high-risk coronaviruses by synthesising spike proteins with furin cleavage sites, that had been designed to bind to human receptors more easily, at the Wuhan Institute from December 2018, a year before the Covid-19 virus emerged.
In an email, Dr Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert at the centre of concerns over gain-of-function studies, acknowledged that US researchers would 'freak out' if they knew novel coronavirus engineering and testing was being done in low-security Chinese laboratories, but disguised it to make the US government more 'comfortable' with the plan, which was intended to help with pandemic prevention.
That proposal was turned down by the US government, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a 'blueprint' for how to create Covid. Professor Zhengli has denounced the idea of a lab leak as baseless, including claims by US intelligence that several of her colleagues at the institute were infected before the outbreak emerged.
'How on earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?' she said when confronted with the claims. 'I don't know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist.'
Last year, the World Health Organisation announced that research into the source of the virus had been stalled owing to difficulties in conducting crucial studies in China.
In April 2020, The Mail on Sunday became the first mainstream media outlet in the world to reveal fears the virus had leaked from a Chinese laboratory, reporting that Cobra – the Government's secret emergency committee – was looking into intelligence on an alleged accident at Wuhan's Institute of Virology.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is among a growing number of senior Conservatives who believe that the UK Government's official Covid inquiry should be examining whether the virus's origins were natural or as a result of an accidental leak from Wuhan. A source close to Mr Johnson told the MoS last month: 'Boris thinks it is legitimate to ask how the virus spread and whether it was made or manipulated by humans.'
EcoHealth says the documents are incomplete and the 'allegations are false based on misunderstanding of edits and comments on the document, and based on misleading out-of-context quotations and a lack of understanding the process by which federal grants are awarded'.
.
