November 29, 2022
Dear Friends and Family,
Of all the segments in this series, this segment is the most important and the most frightening.
Circumstantial evidence clearly supports that Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and was man-made via gain-of-function research. Two outstanding independent journalists report similar evidence which in my judgment results in a compelling case. The first journalist is Nicholas Wade, who was schooled in England and worked as an editorial science reporter for the New York Times before becoming a freelance writer. The second is Shari Markson, an award-winning investigative journalist from Australia. Their findings and conclusions are separately reported in the excerpts. As you read them, pay particular attention to the Furin Cleavage evidence as, in my opinion, it is the most compelling evidence.
Markson also reports that the WIV is under the authority of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) the military of China. She reports that the PLA is engaged in bioterrorism and the development of bioweapons. Further, via interviews with Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State in the Trump administration, she reports that a transcript uncovered from the United Nations Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 2011 reveals the following:
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Of all the segments in this series, this segment is the most important and the most frightening.
Circumstantial evidence clearly supports that Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and was man-made via gain-of-function research. Two outstanding independent journalists report similar evidence which in my judgment results in a compelling case. The first journalist is Nicholas Wade, who was schooled in England and worked as an editorial science reporter for the New York Times before becoming a freelance writer. The second is Shari Markson, an award-winning investigative journalist from Australia. Their findings and conclusions are separately reported in the excerpts. As you read them, pay particular attention to the Furin Cleavage evidence as, in my opinion, it is the most compelling evidence.
Markson also reports that the WIV is under the authority of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) the military of China. She reports that the PLA is engaged in bioterrorism and the development of bioweapons. Further, via interviews with Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State in the Trump administration, she reports that a transcript uncovered from the United Nations Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 2011 reveals the following:
- Chinese delegates report that China can no longer comply with the international bioweapon treaty.
- Man-made pathogens, created via gain-of-function research, have the potential to be used for evil ends.
- Bioresearch has found means to design biological weapons to target specific racial groups by attacking particular susceptibilities of that group.
Happy Learning,
Harley
COVID PANDEMIC CRITIQUE – SEGMENT 16
THE ORIGIN OF THE CORONAVIRUS SARS-CoV-2 – EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: The Chinese official story which claims that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is natural as opposed to lab-engineered, is slowly but surely crumbling. A growing number of independent scientists and investigators are exposing factual errors and outright lies of the establishment narrative by analyzing a growing body of evidence and publishing their findings, in spite of widespread censorship by scientific journals, the mass media, and the internet giants. Anyone daring to challenge the official narrative, pointing to the preponderance of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a synthetic construct that was genetically engineered in a biomedical/bioweapons laboratory in Wuhan, China, and released accidentally (most probably) or deliberately, is berated and dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist” and then typically summarily censored and/or banned on their social media platforms.
THE GREAT COVERUP: The first stage of the cover-up involved trying to conceal or delay admitting that a new SARS-like epidemic had emerged in Wuhan, and that, unlike the first SARS outbreak of 2002-04 in China, this one was highly transmissible. Although the world media dutifully repeated the later-discredited explanation that COVID-19 came from a wet market in Wuhan, a number of news organization did begin to investigate and expose some of the early duplicity, stalling, and lies of the Chinese government.
These outlets began reporting the fact that the Chinese government delayed for a month or more admitting that a new, previously unknown, and serious respiratory outbreak, COVID -19 had emerged in November – December 2019. Chinese officials (and the WHO) then delayed letting the world know that this SARS-CoV-2 virus was spreading rapidly person-to-person in Wuhan until February 19, 2020, despite warnings from some of their top scientists. The Chinese government meanwhile was censoring and repressing scientists and doctors who were trying to get out the word that a serious health crisis was emerging. Little noticed by the world press, however, were growing signs of another even more insidious cover-up – that SARS-CoV-2 didn’t emerge naturally, but in fact had escaped or been released from one of Wuhan’s two biosafety research labs, where gain-of-function experiments were taking place in badly managed, accident-prone facilities.
Source: The Truth About COVID-19 by Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins (2021)
WHERE COVID ORIGINATED: There are two main theories about where SARS-CoV-2 (SARS-2) originated. One is that SARS-2 jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped. I’ll describe the two theories, explain why each is plausible, and then ask which provides the better explanation of the available facts. It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So, I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction.
A Tale of Two Theories: From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in The Lancet on February 19, 2020. Contrary to the writer’s assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It later turned out that The Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS – 2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially at fault. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to The Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”
Virologists like Dr. Daszak had much at stake in assigning blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS -2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China.
Doubts about Natural Emergence: Natural emergence was the media’s preferred theory until about February 2021 and the visit by a WHO commission to China. What became clear was that the Chinese had no evidence to offer the commission in support of the natural emergence theory. This was surprising because both the SARS -1 and MERS viruses had left copious traces in the environment. The intermediary host species of SARS -1 was identified within four months of the epidemic’s outbreak, and the host of MERS within nine months. Yet some fifteen months after the SARS – 2 pandemic began, and a presumably intensive search, Chinese researchers had failed to find either the original bat population, or the intermediate species to which SARS – 2 might have jumped. Natural emergence remained a conjecture which, however plausible to begin with, had gained not a shred of supporting evidence in over a year.
Gain of Function Research: Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), led by China’s leading expert on bat viruses, Dr. Shi Zheng-li teamed up with Ralph S. Baric, and eminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina. In November 2015 they created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS-1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus. This manufactured virus was able to infect the cells of the human airway, at least when tested against a lab culture. The potential danger of the novel entity concerned many observers. From the hindsight of 2021, one can say that the value of gain-of-function studies in preventing the SARS – 2 epidemic was zero. The risk was catastrophic, if indeed the SARS -2 virus was generated in a gain-of-function experiment.
The Safety Arrangements at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV): There is a long history of viruses escaping from even the best-run laboratories. The smallpox virus escaped three times for labs in England in the 1960s and 70s. Dangerous viruses have leaked out of labs almost every year since. In recent times, the SARS – 1 virus has proved a true escape artist, leaking from laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and four times from the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing.
There are four degrees of safety, designated BSL1 to BSL4, with BSL4 being the most restrictive and designed for deadly pathogens like the Ebola virus. Much of Dr. Shi’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses was performed at the BSL2 safety level. “A biosafety level of BSL2 is the level of a standard U.S. dentist’s office – that would pose an unacceptably high risk of infection of a laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoiV-2,” says Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and leading expert on biosafety at Rutgers University.
Comparing the Rival Scenarios: The evidence adds up to a serious case that the SARS-2 virus was created in a lab, from which it then escaped. But the case falls short of proof. Another approach is to take certain salient facts about the SARS -2virus and ask how well each is explained by the two rival scenarios. Here are three tests of the two hypotheses.
In Conclusion. If the case that SARS -2 originated in lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As may now be obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it. The list is led by the Chinese authorities. But virologists in the U.S. and Europe also have no great interest in igniting a public debate about the gain-of-function experiments that their community has been pursuing for years. Government research funds are distributed on the advice of committees of scientific experts drawn from universities. Anyone who rocks the boat by raising awkward political issues runs the risk that their grant will not be renewed and that their research career will be ended.
Source: Where Covid Came from by Nicholas Wade (2021).
THE CASE FOR A LAB LEAK: Given the concern from some imminent scientists that SARS-CoV-2 seems almost perfectly designed to infect humans, combined with an intense period of unusual and unexplained activity that points to an incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the lead-up to the coronavirus pandemic, it is reasonable to suspect the virus was the subject of laboratory research. The coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was often conducted in conjunction with senior military scientists. A PLA colonel even sat on the board, while military scientists at a defense university, classified as high-risk by China analysts for its level of defense research, publicly boasted coronaviruses could be weaponized, while teaching PhD students how to unleash a bioweapon.
And Anthony Fauci can’t walk back from his own published words. He acknowledged in a 2012 paper published in a scientific journal that gain-of-function research is a form of “bioterrorism” and an accident could spark a pandemic. But he forged on regardless, allowing funding to flow from the NIH through to the WIV. He knew virus research could spark a pandemic. But he took the risk anyway, claiming it was “important research” and that the chance of a pandemic was “remote.”
Supporting the likelihood of a laboratory leak is the weight of circumstantial evidence pointing to a series of incidents around October and potentially as early as mid-September 2019. The decision to wipe the Institute’s virus database and take it offline is highly suspicious and significant. This discovery that the database was taken offline – never to be uploaded again – suggests an initial incident around September 12. This was followed by a series of unusual incidents in October, including a blackout period with no cell-phone activity inside the building, indicating no one was on the premises except for a security guard. It’s likely the WIV shut down the facility for a mass sterilization, as per protocol, then, thinking it was on top of the accident, moved back in, only to realize the highly infectious virus had already spread beyond their control. We know Covid-19 has a long incubation period.
In early November, the Institute ordered a PCR machine to test for coronaviruses and boosted its security system. At the same time, three workers from the Institute fell sick, even requiring hospitalization with Covid-19 like symptoms. Yet Shi Zhengli lied when asked if anyone at the facility had been unwell. China’s cover-up was aggressive. Multiple people who claimed to have information about the origin of the virus disappeared (now feared dead), or have been silenced, under house arrest, living like tortured prisoners.
In January 2020, the military took over WIV silencing, controlling, and surveilling anyone in the facility. Disturbingly, a senior PLA scientist working with Dr. Shi filed a patent for a coronavirus vaccine on February 23, 2020 – very early – only to die by May of mysterious circumstances.
The scientific evidence is equally as compelling. As many scientists have noted, SARS-CoV-2 has highly unusual features that point to a laboratory origin. The genetic code for a Furin cleavage site – which has never been seen before in beta-coronaviruses – appears in the precise spot in the S gene where scientists genetically tweak viruses to make them more infectious to humans. And the spike protein the S gene makes has a higher binding affinity to the human ACE2 receptor than that of any other animal.
Does this circumstantial and scientific evidence amount to an overwhelming case that Covid-19 leaked from a laboratory? To answer this question, former intelligence agency leaders at the CIA, NSA, M16 and Five Eyes intelligence network offered their unparalleled insights.
A LATENT THREAT TO MANKIND: One discovery Miles Yu made while investigating the Wuhan laboratories was more eye-opening than the other. Hard at work preparing his report for Mike Pomeo, he happened upon documents relating to the United Nations Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It’s a conference held every five years, dating back to the 1980s, to ensure the international biological weapons treaty is upheld globally. Yu stumbled across a document that had some details from China’s submission to the 2011 Convention.
It starts by noting that modern biological sciences play an “important role in helping mankind combat disease.” In the sentences that follow, China makes two unnerving admissions. Firstly, that it can’t comply with the international treaty and secondly, that new biological technology poses a threat to the very existence of mankind. “At the same time, the use of new kinds of biotechnology for hostile purposes, posing a latent threat to human society, is also growing.”
The document then discusses “synthetic biology enabling the creation of man-made pathogens.” Man-made pathogens are created through gain-of-function research, in which the WIV was engaging in, and the United States was at the time funding. The document states that these “have the potential to be used for evil ends.” Theoretically speaking, synthetic biotechnology poses a huge latent threat to mankind, as it could be used in the future to create pathogens of even greater toxicity and infectiousness than those currently known, and which are resistant to traditional vaccines and drugs as well as hard to isolate and identify with current technology.”
China’s submission to the convention then gets even more terrifying. Its third subheading is “Systems biology further revealing population-specific genetic markers.” This is about targeting viruses to specific races as weapons. A shocking and grotesque area of bioresearch. “It can create the potential for biological weapons based on genetic differences between races. Once hostile elements grasp that different ethnic groups harbor intrinsically different genetic susceptibilities to particular pathogens, they can put that knowledge into practice and create genetic weapons targeted at a racial group with a particular susceptibility.”
China’s Biological Weapons Convention submission then discusses the potential for bioweapons to be released as aerosols. Aerosol technology can be used effectively to spread pathogenic microbes, infecting humans through the respiratory tract. And viral vectors can very easily carry special genes into the body, thereby causing damage. Further, there is potential for the effects of aerosol delivery, specifically targeted viral vectors, transfection and gene expression to combine, greatly increasing the overall effect. Both technologies can be used by certain States and terrorist groups for malicious purposes, efficiently spreading pathogens and disease-causing genes.”
China’s submission concludes with a section on the extreme risks of laboratories researching these pathogens. “Accidental mistakes in biotech laboratories can place mankind in great danger,” it states. “Synthetic biology in some civilian biotechnology research and applications may unintentionally give rise to new, highly hazardous man-made pathogens with unforeseeable consequences.”
Intelligence agencies and Western governments have known for decades that China has a bioweapons program. It was rarely spoken about, kept to the domain of classified reports or intelligence files. But Chinese military-affiliated scientists were discussing the weaponization of coronaviruses publicly and openly – and they did so five years before the Covid-19 pandemic.
When I spoke to Pompeo, he said David Stilwell, Yu and Asher were the “gang that has worked on this problem.” And when it emerged the team had been disbanded by the Biden administration, Pompeo tweeted: “President Biden sides with China, WHO and the liberal media on Wuhan virus – joining the ‘nothing to see here crowd’ by shutting down State Department pandemic origin investigation I commenced.”
Source: What Really Happened in Wuhan by Sharri Markson (2021).
SEGMENT CONCLUSION: The world knows China’s Communist regime could have done more to save millions of lives. Was it caught off guard covering up a conspiracy and then cashing in on the chaos that ensued? There is virtually no evidence that this virus started in the wild. That’s not to say it didn’t. There is just no evidence to prove it, while persuasive circumstantial evidence points to a likely laboratory leak.
We could have had more definitive answers by now were it not for the scandal-plagued response from international health and US authorities. Eminent US scientists with plenty to lose – millions of dollars in funding and their reputations on the line – insisted with no evidence to support their claim that this was a natural virus. Riddled with conflicts of interest, not only because of their relationships with China, but also owing to their intimate involvement in coronavirus research, some US scientists and bureaucrats ran serious interference in favor of the Communist regime and its compromised scientists. Not just publicly but in the corridors of power, advising US government intelligence and health officials at the highest level, and then breathtakingly, as World Health Organization investigators who determined there was nothing to see; it was a natural virus.
Then, the US intelligence community was complicit in failing to properly explore the origins when it should have. Not only did the national security apparatus fail to anticipate the threat from Chinese laboratories developing synthetic viruses that even China’s official government documents had warned pose a “latent threat to mankind,” but they then declined to prove whether a global pandemic, the worst of its kind in a century, had in fact resulted from such research undertaken in lax laboratories. It was 16 months before the US government even officially asked the intelligence community to properly look at the untapped signals data and intercepts just sitting on their classified computers.
Lastly, the media is complicit in all of this, by and large failing to question or interrogate the narrative and spine that a laboratory leak was a debunked conspiracy theory. Mainstream media outlets treated those who did investigate with ridicule and contempt.
The unforgivable failures on so many levels mean the world is still in the dark about the precise turn of events that sparked this pandemic, and this of course leaves the world vulnerable to whatever comes next. There is still no evidence that the United States and other Western nations are any more prepared for a future pandemic that we were before this global catastrophe, with gain-or-function experiments still largely left unchecked. The failures of the scientific community, intelligence agencies, international bodies and large sections of the media have all left the world a less secure and less safe place to live.
Source: What Really Happened in Wuhan by Sharri Markson (2021).
THE ORIGIN OF THE CORONAVIRUS SARS-CoV-2 – EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: The Chinese official story which claims that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is natural as opposed to lab-engineered, is slowly but surely crumbling. A growing number of independent scientists and investigators are exposing factual errors and outright lies of the establishment narrative by analyzing a growing body of evidence and publishing their findings, in spite of widespread censorship by scientific journals, the mass media, and the internet giants. Anyone daring to challenge the official narrative, pointing to the preponderance of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a synthetic construct that was genetically engineered in a biomedical/bioweapons laboratory in Wuhan, China, and released accidentally (most probably) or deliberately, is berated and dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist” and then typically summarily censored and/or banned on their social media platforms.
THE GREAT COVERUP: The first stage of the cover-up involved trying to conceal or delay admitting that a new SARS-like epidemic had emerged in Wuhan, and that, unlike the first SARS outbreak of 2002-04 in China, this one was highly transmissible. Although the world media dutifully repeated the later-discredited explanation that COVID-19 came from a wet market in Wuhan, a number of news organization did begin to investigate and expose some of the early duplicity, stalling, and lies of the Chinese government.
These outlets began reporting the fact that the Chinese government delayed for a month or more admitting that a new, previously unknown, and serious respiratory outbreak, COVID -19 had emerged in November – December 2019. Chinese officials (and the WHO) then delayed letting the world know that this SARS-CoV-2 virus was spreading rapidly person-to-person in Wuhan until February 19, 2020, despite warnings from some of their top scientists. The Chinese government meanwhile was censoring and repressing scientists and doctors who were trying to get out the word that a serious health crisis was emerging. Little noticed by the world press, however, were growing signs of another even more insidious cover-up – that SARS-CoV-2 didn’t emerge naturally, but in fact had escaped or been released from one of Wuhan’s two biosafety research labs, where gain-of-function experiments were taking place in badly managed, accident-prone facilities.
Source: The Truth About COVID-19 by Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins (2021)
WHERE COVID ORIGINATED: There are two main theories about where SARS-CoV-2 (SARS-2) originated. One is that SARS-2 jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped. I’ll describe the two theories, explain why each is plausible, and then ask which provides the better explanation of the available facts. It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So, I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction.
A Tale of Two Theories: From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in The Lancet on February 19, 2020. Contrary to the writer’s assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It later turned out that The Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS – 2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially at fault. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to The Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”
Virologists like Dr. Daszak had much at stake in assigning blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS -2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China.
Doubts about Natural Emergence: Natural emergence was the media’s preferred theory until about February 2021 and the visit by a WHO commission to China. What became clear was that the Chinese had no evidence to offer the commission in support of the natural emergence theory. This was surprising because both the SARS -1 and MERS viruses had left copious traces in the environment. The intermediary host species of SARS -1 was identified within four months of the epidemic’s outbreak, and the host of MERS within nine months. Yet some fifteen months after the SARS – 2 pandemic began, and a presumably intensive search, Chinese researchers had failed to find either the original bat population, or the intermediate species to which SARS – 2 might have jumped. Natural emergence remained a conjecture which, however plausible to begin with, had gained not a shred of supporting evidence in over a year.
Gain of Function Research: Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), led by China’s leading expert on bat viruses, Dr. Shi Zheng-li teamed up with Ralph S. Baric, and eminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina. In November 2015 they created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS-1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus. This manufactured virus was able to infect the cells of the human airway, at least when tested against a lab culture. The potential danger of the novel entity concerned many observers. From the hindsight of 2021, one can say that the value of gain-of-function studies in preventing the SARS – 2 epidemic was zero. The risk was catastrophic, if indeed the SARS -2 virus was generated in a gain-of-function experiment.
The Safety Arrangements at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV): There is a long history of viruses escaping from even the best-run laboratories. The smallpox virus escaped three times for labs in England in the 1960s and 70s. Dangerous viruses have leaked out of labs almost every year since. In recent times, the SARS – 1 virus has proved a true escape artist, leaking from laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and four times from the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing.
There are four degrees of safety, designated BSL1 to BSL4, with BSL4 being the most restrictive and designed for deadly pathogens like the Ebola virus. Much of Dr. Shi’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses was performed at the BSL2 safety level. “A biosafety level of BSL2 is the level of a standard U.S. dentist’s office – that would pose an unacceptably high risk of infection of a laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoiV-2,” says Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and leading expert on biosafety at Rutgers University.
Comparing the Rival Scenarios: The evidence adds up to a serious case that the SARS-2 virus was created in a lab, from which it then escaped. But the case falls short of proof. Another approach is to take certain salient facts about the SARS -2virus and ask how well each is explained by the two rival scenarios. Here are three tests of the two hypotheses.
- The Place of Origin: The two closest relatives of the SARS – 2 virus were collected from bats living in caves in Yunnan, a province of southern China. If the SARS – 2 virus had first infected people living around the Yunnan caves, that would strongly support the idea that the virus had spilled over to people naturally. But this isn’t what happened. The pandemic broke out 1,500 kilometers away (a 20-hour drive), in Wuhan. For the lab escape scenario, a Wuhan origin for the virus is a no-brainer. Wuhan is home to China’s leading center of coronavirus research where researchers were genetically engineering bat coronaviruses to attack human cells. They were doing so under the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 lab.
- Natural History and Evolution: In the case of SARS – 1, researchers have documented the successive changes in its spike protein. The virus evolved step by step into a dangerous pathogen. After it had gotten from bats to civets, there were six further changes in its spike protein before it became a mild pathogen in people. But when one looks for the fingerprints of a similar transition in SARs – 2 you find the virus has changed hardly at all. From its first appearance, it was well adapted to human cells. The uniform structure of SAR -2 genomes gives no hint of any passage through an intermediate animal host.
- The Furin Cleavage Site: Within the SARS – 2 virus’s anatomy, there is a small region of its spike protein, called the “Furin cleavage site,” which is coded by twelve units of its genome. No other known virus in the SARS – 2’s group has this twelve-unit insert. Proponents of natural emergence argue that the virus could have acquired the insert from human cells after it had jumped to people. Maybe, but no one has yet found the human population in which the virus might have evolved this way. On the lab escape scenario, the insert is easy to explain. Since 1992 the virology community has known that the one way to make a virus deadlier is to give it a Furin cleavage site. At least eleven such experiments have been published, including one by Dr. Shi. David Baltimore, an eminent virologist and former president of California Institute of Technology says, “These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin of SARs – 2.”
In Conclusion. If the case that SARS -2 originated in lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As may now be obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it. The list is led by the Chinese authorities. But virologists in the U.S. and Europe also have no great interest in igniting a public debate about the gain-of-function experiments that their community has been pursuing for years. Government research funds are distributed on the advice of committees of scientific experts drawn from universities. Anyone who rocks the boat by raising awkward political issues runs the risk that their grant will not be renewed and that their research career will be ended.
Source: Where Covid Came from by Nicholas Wade (2021).
THE CASE FOR A LAB LEAK: Given the concern from some imminent scientists that SARS-CoV-2 seems almost perfectly designed to infect humans, combined with an intense period of unusual and unexplained activity that points to an incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the lead-up to the coronavirus pandemic, it is reasonable to suspect the virus was the subject of laboratory research. The coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was often conducted in conjunction with senior military scientists. A PLA colonel even sat on the board, while military scientists at a defense university, classified as high-risk by China analysts for its level of defense research, publicly boasted coronaviruses could be weaponized, while teaching PhD students how to unleash a bioweapon.
And Anthony Fauci can’t walk back from his own published words. He acknowledged in a 2012 paper published in a scientific journal that gain-of-function research is a form of “bioterrorism” and an accident could spark a pandemic. But he forged on regardless, allowing funding to flow from the NIH through to the WIV. He knew virus research could spark a pandemic. But he took the risk anyway, claiming it was “important research” and that the chance of a pandemic was “remote.”
Supporting the likelihood of a laboratory leak is the weight of circumstantial evidence pointing to a series of incidents around October and potentially as early as mid-September 2019. The decision to wipe the Institute’s virus database and take it offline is highly suspicious and significant. This discovery that the database was taken offline – never to be uploaded again – suggests an initial incident around September 12. This was followed by a series of unusual incidents in October, including a blackout period with no cell-phone activity inside the building, indicating no one was on the premises except for a security guard. It’s likely the WIV shut down the facility for a mass sterilization, as per protocol, then, thinking it was on top of the accident, moved back in, only to realize the highly infectious virus had already spread beyond their control. We know Covid-19 has a long incubation period.
In early November, the Institute ordered a PCR machine to test for coronaviruses and boosted its security system. At the same time, three workers from the Institute fell sick, even requiring hospitalization with Covid-19 like symptoms. Yet Shi Zhengli lied when asked if anyone at the facility had been unwell. China’s cover-up was aggressive. Multiple people who claimed to have information about the origin of the virus disappeared (now feared dead), or have been silenced, under house arrest, living like tortured prisoners.
In January 2020, the military took over WIV silencing, controlling, and surveilling anyone in the facility. Disturbingly, a senior PLA scientist working with Dr. Shi filed a patent for a coronavirus vaccine on February 23, 2020 – very early – only to die by May of mysterious circumstances.
The scientific evidence is equally as compelling. As many scientists have noted, SARS-CoV-2 has highly unusual features that point to a laboratory origin. The genetic code for a Furin cleavage site – which has never been seen before in beta-coronaviruses – appears in the precise spot in the S gene where scientists genetically tweak viruses to make them more infectious to humans. And the spike protein the S gene makes has a higher binding affinity to the human ACE2 receptor than that of any other animal.
Does this circumstantial and scientific evidence amount to an overwhelming case that Covid-19 leaked from a laboratory? To answer this question, former intelligence agency leaders at the CIA, NSA, M16 and Five Eyes intelligence network offered their unparalleled insights.
- Former head of British spy agency M16 Sir Richard Dearlove said the evidence supports a laboratory leak. “The weight of evidence is on the escapee side and it’s strongly on the escapee side.”
- Mike Rogers, a highly decorated former US Navy Admiral, a member of the military’s Joint Staff, and director of the NSA, says the circumstantial evidence points to a laboratory origin for Covid-19. “I think clearly this happened well before the timeline that the Chinese government has officially acknowledged. Why? What are you trying to hide? It’s in your best interest to show documentation that puts this issue to bed. They are clearly not thinking along those lines, or they don’t want to think along those lines, because the evidence would reveal that it did come from the lab.”
- A high-level Five Eyes intelligence source describes the evidence that the virus came from the laboratory as “compelling” and says there had been “active Chinese disinformation.”
- Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo had access to the top-secret intelligence on the origins of the virus during his time as US Secretary of State. Pompeo stresses the significance of the cover-up and the active effort by China to direct attention away from the laboratories. “The evidence leads one to believe that this was a leak that came from the WIV,” he says. “The other hypotheses that have been raised have either been knocked down or have been unable to be substantiated.” “You launch a full-scale cover-up only when there is something you very much want to make sure doesn’t become the factual narrative. I must say this was a comprehensive well-thought-out, Beijing-centered, constant ongoing effort to obfuscate any capacity for the WHO, any Western country, or any scientist to determine patient zero and the origination of this virus. And it’s ongoing.”
- Former Deputy Secretary of Australia’s Defense Department Peter Jennings says there is a huge among to evidence pointing to China’s interests in biological weapons and the WIV’s classified research program, and their “biosecurity standards were sloppy.”
- America’s former top diplomat in East Asia David Stilwell says the demand for “perfect evidence” of a laboratory leak before the West demands answers from China is nonsensical. “This isn’t a legal case; we are not looking for indisputable evidence; there is enough circumstantial evidence.” Of the failure by the United States government and intelligence agencies to properly investigate a lab leak, Stilwell is ropeable. “This is the cover-up of the century. This makes Watergate look easy,” he tells me.
A LATENT THREAT TO MANKIND: One discovery Miles Yu made while investigating the Wuhan laboratories was more eye-opening than the other. Hard at work preparing his report for Mike Pomeo, he happened upon documents relating to the United Nations Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It’s a conference held every five years, dating back to the 1980s, to ensure the international biological weapons treaty is upheld globally. Yu stumbled across a document that had some details from China’s submission to the 2011 Convention.
It starts by noting that modern biological sciences play an “important role in helping mankind combat disease.” In the sentences that follow, China makes two unnerving admissions. Firstly, that it can’t comply with the international treaty and secondly, that new biological technology poses a threat to the very existence of mankind. “At the same time, the use of new kinds of biotechnology for hostile purposes, posing a latent threat to human society, is also growing.”
The document then discusses “synthetic biology enabling the creation of man-made pathogens.” Man-made pathogens are created through gain-of-function research, in which the WIV was engaging in, and the United States was at the time funding. The document states that these “have the potential to be used for evil ends.” Theoretically speaking, synthetic biotechnology poses a huge latent threat to mankind, as it could be used in the future to create pathogens of even greater toxicity and infectiousness than those currently known, and which are resistant to traditional vaccines and drugs as well as hard to isolate and identify with current technology.”
China’s submission to the convention then gets even more terrifying. Its third subheading is “Systems biology further revealing population-specific genetic markers.” This is about targeting viruses to specific races as weapons. A shocking and grotesque area of bioresearch. “It can create the potential for biological weapons based on genetic differences between races. Once hostile elements grasp that different ethnic groups harbor intrinsically different genetic susceptibilities to particular pathogens, they can put that knowledge into practice and create genetic weapons targeted at a racial group with a particular susceptibility.”
China’s Biological Weapons Convention submission then discusses the potential for bioweapons to be released as aerosols. Aerosol technology can be used effectively to spread pathogenic microbes, infecting humans through the respiratory tract. And viral vectors can very easily carry special genes into the body, thereby causing damage. Further, there is potential for the effects of aerosol delivery, specifically targeted viral vectors, transfection and gene expression to combine, greatly increasing the overall effect. Both technologies can be used by certain States and terrorist groups for malicious purposes, efficiently spreading pathogens and disease-causing genes.”
China’s submission concludes with a section on the extreme risks of laboratories researching these pathogens. “Accidental mistakes in biotech laboratories can place mankind in great danger,” it states. “Synthetic biology in some civilian biotechnology research and applications may unintentionally give rise to new, highly hazardous man-made pathogens with unforeseeable consequences.”
Intelligence agencies and Western governments have known for decades that China has a bioweapons program. It was rarely spoken about, kept to the domain of classified reports or intelligence files. But Chinese military-affiliated scientists were discussing the weaponization of coronaviruses publicly and openly – and they did so five years before the Covid-19 pandemic.
When I spoke to Pompeo, he said David Stilwell, Yu and Asher were the “gang that has worked on this problem.” And when it emerged the team had been disbanded by the Biden administration, Pompeo tweeted: “President Biden sides with China, WHO and the liberal media on Wuhan virus – joining the ‘nothing to see here crowd’ by shutting down State Department pandemic origin investigation I commenced.”
Source: What Really Happened in Wuhan by Sharri Markson (2021).
SEGMENT CONCLUSION: The world knows China’s Communist regime could have done more to save millions of lives. Was it caught off guard covering up a conspiracy and then cashing in on the chaos that ensued? There is virtually no evidence that this virus started in the wild. That’s not to say it didn’t. There is just no evidence to prove it, while persuasive circumstantial evidence points to a likely laboratory leak.
We could have had more definitive answers by now were it not for the scandal-plagued response from international health and US authorities. Eminent US scientists with plenty to lose – millions of dollars in funding and their reputations on the line – insisted with no evidence to support their claim that this was a natural virus. Riddled with conflicts of interest, not only because of their relationships with China, but also owing to their intimate involvement in coronavirus research, some US scientists and bureaucrats ran serious interference in favor of the Communist regime and its compromised scientists. Not just publicly but in the corridors of power, advising US government intelligence and health officials at the highest level, and then breathtakingly, as World Health Organization investigators who determined there was nothing to see; it was a natural virus.
Then, the US intelligence community was complicit in failing to properly explore the origins when it should have. Not only did the national security apparatus fail to anticipate the threat from Chinese laboratories developing synthetic viruses that even China’s official government documents had warned pose a “latent threat to mankind,” but they then declined to prove whether a global pandemic, the worst of its kind in a century, had in fact resulted from such research undertaken in lax laboratories. It was 16 months before the US government even officially asked the intelligence community to properly look at the untapped signals data and intercepts just sitting on their classified computers.
Lastly, the media is complicit in all of this, by and large failing to question or interrogate the narrative and spine that a laboratory leak was a debunked conspiracy theory. Mainstream media outlets treated those who did investigate with ridicule and contempt.
The unforgivable failures on so many levels mean the world is still in the dark about the precise turn of events that sparked this pandemic, and this of course leaves the world vulnerable to whatever comes next. There is still no evidence that the United States and other Western nations are any more prepared for a future pandemic that we were before this global catastrophe, with gain-or-function experiments still largely left unchecked. The failures of the scientific community, intelligence agencies, international bodies and large sections of the media have all left the world a less secure and less safe place to live.
Source: What Really Happened in Wuhan by Sharri Markson (2021).
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