This article contains claims that many will consider incendiary and anti-science. It therefore requires context and if you indulge me for a minute or two, I’d like, at length, to provide background before we address the large mammal. Words have power and we use them to record our history, describe the world around us, create narratives and chart the future. We use words to communicate our deepest thoughts, describe our fears and share our joys. And then, in some instances we use words to lie, both to others and ourselves.

I understand fully the responsibility that comes with the gift of being able to convey complex ideas to others, more importantly however, I also grasp the moral obligation attached to the gift. It should only ever be used for truth, or in the pursuit thereof. Science isn’t that different. It relies on words to describe complex concepts, often utilizing its own specific language, one that for most laypeople, places much of what is discussed beyond reach.

I am, for the record, a disciple of science. I believe. I always have. The logical purity of numbers and the wonders of the natural world are intertwined in an almost mystical fashion and our salvation, as a species will undoubtedly depend on science. Much like the Spiderman character however, the ability to wield an understanding and control over the natural world grants the scientist almost unlimited power. Power that, you guessed it, requires responsibility. Responsibility, morals and a strong sense of ethics.

That it what this article is about. It is not about science per se, but rather about the consequences we now face from the abuse and corruption of the discipline, morphing it into a tool whose primary focus is profit and control, rather than the betterment of our species. That, unfortunately, makes the brand of science currently being practiced, a danger to you and I. A fact the pandemic has highlighted with stunning clarity.

mRNA is the Pandora’s box of science, one of many advancing technology has uncovered. Make no mistake, mRNA holds huge promise for medicine, potentially even rivalling the discovery of penicillin. You can read an article I wrote on that exact topic in 2021, exploring the promise the technology holds.

So no, I am clearly not anti-science, at least not when the science being practiced is honest, ethical and cautious science, science that is aware of the potential impact of its actions on society and our wellbeing. That is not the science we have endured for the last three years, and we need to speak up. We have been systematically and intentionally lied to, misled and chemically abused for the last two years of the pandemic, potentially even right from the outset. Misled with words, scientific phrases couched in ambiguity and force-fed fear by the mass media, at the behest of politicians and scientists.

Now, when the dust settles, we need to face uncomfortable truths and a world that has changed, in ways we have yet to fully grasp. So, to the article, and if you should find yourself at odds with it, please, at least consider the questions it raises.

The Viral Elephant

If, and the “if” is looking more and more likely, the entire human race was just exposed to the first genetically engineered virus, we need to be urgently addressing the elephant in the room. The effects of the SARS-COV2 virus on our physiology are widespread and complex and it is critical more time is spent reverse engineering exactly how the virus was altered to increase its transmissibility.

I came across an incredibly interesting article while writing this piece from one of Medika’s contributors, William Haseltine, that describes in detail one of the unique tools this novel virus utilizes to evade and suppress our immune system. The article may prove heavy going for some, but it is an excellent read and provides insight on just how well adapted the virus is at exploiting our defenses.

Far more than being a one trick pony, SARS-COV2 is the Swiss army knife of viruses and we, unfortunately, are the can of baked beans.

You may notice how I refer to the above tool as unique. Its a term used all the time when discussing this virus. It is unique and the more we discover about it, the more likely it becomes that it was intentionally weaponized (for whatever purpose) to exploit our physiology. Simply put, the virus that has killed millions across the globe was likely released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It is a product of science, American science, it is worth adding, practiced at a safe distance, on foreign soil and funded by American taxpayers.

For the first time in the history of humanity, over the course of the next two generations, this genetically manipulated virus will have infected the entire global population. For those who escaped the virus itself, there is no escaping the engineered bits (or spike protein) that have been artificially stimulated in your system by the mRNA vaccines. So the extent of the damage caused by the SARS-COV2 virus and its ability to access our entire physiology is not surprising, given it was designed for exactly that purpose.

We now face a new kind of threat, unknown medical risk by intentional design, a threat for which we are physiologically unprepared. This new world is filled with unknowns. Future mutations, revisited on us by livestock as we infect a host of animals that live in close proximity to us, or a reversion to the original SARS strain, far more deadly than SARS-COV2. How the virus and the vaccines impact our immune system’s response to future viral attacks is also up in the air. These are the issue’s we should be addressing now, with a sense of immediacy.

It is not melodramatic to suggest our species survival may depend on it, and if you think this is being melodramatic, then you still haven’t grasped the gravity of what has just unfolded.

The first step in this process requires accountability from the players involved, most notably EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, Anthony Fauci, Kristian G. Andersen, Dr. Ralph S. Baric, Dr. Shi Zhengli, et al. must be made to cooperate with a view to establishing the exact nature of their Gain of Function research on coronaviruses. Exactly what did they cook up in the lab in Wuhan and what else resides there on ice, patiently waiting for the next breach in safety protocols.?

It is also worth pausing a moment to consider the irony of the last three years, of looking to those who created the SARS-COV2 virus for our salvation.

The pandemic is rapidly transitioning from a global viral infection to chronic, long-term complications, with a range of symptoms so broad, doctors are at a loss as to how to define and treat them. Covid vaccines may play a significant, but as yet, unquantified role in many of these chronic and often fatal conditions, further muddying the waters. To truly understand which actor, the vaccine or the virus, both manufactured, may be to blame for the afflictions faced by millions, we need reliable, unbiased research and securing that is proving increasingly difficult.

Sifting Quicksand

Every corner of science and the politics that governs it has skin in the Covid game. The pharma industry, perhaps best positioned to carry out large-scale clinical research, can no longer be trusted. Any data released by pharma relating to anything pandemic related – especially in the absence of critical, independent third party review, cannot and must not be taken at face value.

The original Covid mRNA vaccine trials are evidence of this. The trials (170 people, in case you were not aware) were subjected to the most appalling “management” of candidates and data to validate the vaccine’s safety. Rapid development of a vaccine or treatment was of the essence to alleviate a collapsing medical infrastructure that was buckling under the pressure of the pandemic. Moderna took 28 days to solve the problem. 28 days. I’d say it again, but you can draw your own conclusions.

After nearly two decades, we hadn’t managed to develop a vaccine for the original SARS virus and yet, 28 days later, we had a working SARS-COV2 vaccine ready for clinical trials. The absurdity of this and the euphoric acceptance of this break with scientific reality go a long way to illustrating the desperation felt by many in the early days of the pandemic. Logic would rather suggest the virus was familiar to both Moderna and Pfizer prior to 2019.

Government agencies within the U.S. have been deeply complicit, providing funding via the NIH and the NIAID for developing and effectively weaponizing coronaviruses, ostensibly for the purposes of “further research.” Their ability to provide unbiased opinion on what poses a danger to the public they serve has been compromised. It is essential, moving forward, that both the FDA and CDC are overhauled, effectively preventing their pursuit of policies that place the public directly in harms way. Take their latest unanimous advice on vaccinating children as young as six months with mRNA vaccines.

Possibly the greatest indictment of the CDC is their mismanagement of VAERS. The CDC took 15 months before it finally evaluated data from the VAERS system in June of 2022. VAERS is a dedicated tool for collecting reports on vaccine side effects. So why wait 15 months? No sense in checking data for safety signals to simply verify what you already know, is there? Once you’ve checked that data, you can also no longer ignore it.

Every academic medical institution capable of performing the required research we so desperately need is at the same time beholden to outside funding. Research grants and future employment are dependent on not rocking the boat. To produce data that conflicts with, compromises or exposes funding sources (for the most part, pharma) is the equivalent of professional suicide and banishment to the land of the unfunded.

That leaves us with the politicians, whose agendas are rarely fueled by the best interests of the public. Although elected by us, they are all cling to the purse strings that enable them to reach their lofty heights. We will probably never know who orchestrated the official pandemic narrative, but it was the politicians who enforced it. In 2023, despite irrefutable evidence that disputes this narrative, most still repeat it ad nauseam.

To understand just how interwoven this has all become, take Peter Daszak, appointed by the WHO to head up a team to investigate the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan, effectively policing his own research. In record time he appeared on camera, stating that his investigation had turned up no evidence of a breach in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Lie upon lie, layer upon layer of deceit and deception. Little wonder then that trust is science is at an all time low.

Given the above, where do we then turn for reliable, agenda free research that is motivated only by the pursuit of the truth? We need to overcome this seemingly insurmountable obstacle before we can even consider unpacking the plethora of virus related questions that require answers. Some would suggest, the World Health Organization is best placed to oversee an investigation, but they too, possibly more than any other health body, are riddled with conflicts of interest on every level.

One thing is glaringly apparent though. There is large and growing body of evidence supporting the fact Covid vaccines are harming some, in many instances, fatally, which begs the following question.

WHY DO WE CONTINUE TO USE THEM? Why have we extended vaccination to healthy children and why does the CDC support this and promote it? How, in good conscience and with the safety of the public in mind, can governments and regulatory bodies allow the current narrative to continue? The study I have linked to above, references post vaccine induced myocarditis. Myocarditis post the Pfizer-Moderna combo was 28 times more common than post-Covid in 16-24 year old males in this massive Nordic study.

Impunity and the Point of No Return

No one is coming to save us and any hands that reach out from the medical and scientific community must, in light of the last three years, be considered tainted by default, until proven otherwise. This is the sad reality of where we currently find ourselves. Everyone in a position to put an end to the current pandemic narrative is compromised. They have passed the point of no return and although many may be racked by feelings or remorse, there is no world in which anyone admits fault, in particular to the virus’s origin and the efficacy of the vaccines.

That wonderful phrase “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is absolutely applicable. Everyone sold the narrative and no one institutes an investigation in which they are also likely to be held accountable. Add to this, a growing number of individuals, intimately involved in the pandemic, who act with absolute impunity and concern only for shareholder and personal profit – or glory – and we seem to find ourselves in a spot of bother.

Realistically, no one in a position of power or acting from within the industry is going to the sound the alarm. Our only hope of getting to the truth lies in picking at the edges of the tapestry until it frays and pulls apart. It is left to fringe reporters to harass individuals like Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, who was accosted recently in Davos by two reporters from Rebel News. He was peppered with questions about their vaccine, its efficacy and more. Understandably, he diplomatically kept silent .

An eminent British cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra has also taken a stance against the vaccines and their manufacturers after the death of his father from a vaccine related illness. He is among a rising number of influential voices now starting to speak out publicly to call for an end to the mRNA vaccination campaign.

It is by no means a simple task or one for the feint of heart. Censorship is still frequently applied to any information that questions the ongoing Covid narrative, and on many social media platforms, content and users are still frequently de-platformed and often professionally sanctioned. Many have turned to Twitter, which, in recent months, since it’s acquisition by Elon Musk, has stopped censoring information that conflicts with the official narrative on the pandemic.

I’ve shared many articles during the last three years, relying mostly on common sense to question the incredibly dubious public health decisions as they’ve unfolded on a very public platform. At this point in the pandemic, we are now confronted with a very new and real threat, in the face of which, who did what, where, when and why, become almost irrelevant.

Mankind 2.0

What legacy will SARS-COV2 leave in its wake and how does that impact us and future generations? What long term impacts will the continued boosting of a novel drug with an abysmal safety record have on our physiology? What has it done to us over the last three years?

The truth is, we really don’t know the answers, which, in some instances, will require time and separating the vaccine’s effects from those of the virus have now become a research nightmare, thanks to the billions already vaccinated. In 2021, a group of academics valiantly tried to sound warning bells, this incredibly detailed article highlighting the potential dangers of mRNA vaccines.

We are headed into troubled waters, from a public health perspective. We may yet be plagued for generations to come by the ill effects of both the virus and the vaccines, no matter their delivery methods. More so, there is swirl and mistrust in voices of influence.

Long Covid, vaccine Serious Adverse Events (SAE’s – to many to list here) and strokes and heart related damage, in many instances fatal, already blight the medical landscape. Worryingly, the younger members of society appear to be as prone, if not more so, to developing adverse reactions, perhaps because their immune responses to the vaccine are more pronounced.

Humanity may have undone humanity, only time will tell. Time is needed to sort-out fact from fiction – probability from certainty. The responsibility now rests with us (you and I) to ensure we attempt to repair the damage and prevent any further rushed science being put to trial in the public space.

What can you do, you ask? Research all sides of the conversation. Ask questions and demand answers from those you have placed into positions of accountability. The truth will out – over time. Make your own, informed decisions – balancing your personal care and risk/risk – the risk of the current virus variant alongside your health status.

I’d ask one more thing of you. Trust your instincts and try to approach public facing pandemic information with a critical mind. There is almost always an agenda, from both sides of the fence and a little digging will normally uncover it. It’s time to leave the safety of the flock. In case you hadn’t noticed they’ve appointed the wolf as shepherd.

As a parting thought, please don’t vilify science. It is as much a victim of the avarice and greed of humanity, as we are. Perhaps, while we attempt to save ourselves, we can, in the same moment, rescue science. We are going to need it.

Missed Part 5 of the Covid Files on The Origins of Covid? Catch up here.

[EDITORS NOTE: The author is pro public health, pro science and pro vaccination. In this situation, he raises important questions and concerns for readers around the Covid SARS2 virus and Covid treatment approaches. His goal is to get people thinking in the best interest of future health innovation.]

The post Covid’s Elephant in the Room. We Must Address it appeared first on Medika Life.

The answers to the origin questions matter, if not simply for accountability, then for the sake of science and allaying a growing theory that perhaps we had created a monster and unleashed it on the world. The ensuing investigation (still technically ongoing), as with everything related to Covid, became a daunting, conspiracy-laden undertaking, riddled with misinformation, coverups, disclosures, and plenty of ass-covering. No one wants to be held accountable for global chaos and a mounting body count.

Two main theories evolved, and we will examine both. The first was that the virus was artificial or engineered and leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, whether with nefarious intent or by accident. The second drew its basis from conventional science that the virus had crossed over from the animal population (a zoonotic origin), either a bat or another unfortunate animal sold in the Wuhan market and destined for dinner.

I have tried to eschew technical terms in the article in favor of plain English, and where it cannot be avoided, I have attempted to explain the science involved to the best of my limited abilities. The article is long and perhaps a tad tedious in places, but background matters if you are really looking to understand the two opposing arguments.

Before we look at the – what can only roughly be termed – “evidence” supporting both claims, a few things worth noting about any origin theory.

There is a third possible scenario related to the location of “patient zero” or the first person infected with the virus. There are research laboratories spread across the globe that engage in Gain of Function (GOF) research, something I’ll discuss further in the article. Essentially GOF is the process whereby a virus is engineered to be more deadly. For example, the virus’s ability to infect its host would be amplified with genetic manipulation. The laboratory in Wuhan would have shared its research with any of these institutions.

We only assume that Wuhan was the point of origin, but it is possible that the virus was circulating in the human population earlier than December 2019 in another location. Like either of the aforementioned scenarios, the waters surrounding this possibility are equally murky.

The real problem posed by the new Covid virus came down to one thing. How it attaches itself to its human host and exploits our ACE2 receptors. What follows is a bit technical and you can ignore it and skip on to the next paragraph, as a working understanding of the virus’s mechanism of action isn’t crucial to following the story

The SARS-CoV-2 genome contains typical coronavirus genes but the receptor binding domain (RBD) in the S protein is highly specific. The site for furin-like protease cleavage of the S protein into S1 and S2 subunits is also unique.

These specific and unique adaptations make the virus so at home in our bodies and fuel the artificial theory. They have also, to date, posed the most significant stumbling blocks to identifying a zoonotic (animal) origin.

Also, before we dive in, scientists have identified the sources for the zoonotic origin of the SARS-COV outbreak in 2002. It is a complicated and often painstakingly long process to track down a carrier, an animal providing a cross-over point from animals to humans. Similarly, MERS is passed to humans by dromedary. We live in proximity to these animals, and it is this proximity that adds to the risk of cross-over events. These viruses are the exception rather than the rule.

Theory 1. Animal infects man, man infects man, and the pandemic begins

I cannot, in all honesty, suggest that there can be many people, including leading scientists, who in 2023, still place much faith in this theory. It can only however be ruled out once a definitive answer is provided. So, let’s explore why the natural origin theory was promoted so vociferously and why, to prove the theory, an animal infected with the virus, sold in the markets in Wuhan, needed to be found.

How infectious are these new viruses that originate in animals?

What follows below may seem long winded, but it is a necessary preface for a very important point, one of transmissibility, and it’s an important point to grasp in the origin debate.

Luckily for us, novel viruses are rarely adept at person to person transmission. The process by which they escape their animal host and manage to infect a human host is usually a result of a new mutation of the virus, and most of the time, the genetic mechanisms the virus has evolved are not well enough developed to make it effective at jumping from one human host to another. Many of these terrifying new strains that pop up are self-limiting and relatively easy to contain.

That, from a public health point of view, is a huge blessing, but it is unfortunately not always the case. Take the Spanish or the Great Flu of 1918. The virus responsible for the outbreak (H1N1) originated in ducks or poultry, supposedly in the US, despite the term “Spanish Flu.” One of the first recorded cases was on March 11, 1918, at Fort Riley in Kansas. While there is some disagreement about the US as the point of origin, there is no doubt the original host was avian. This virus not only managed the cross-species jump, but it also proved a winner in the infectious stakes, moving with deadly ease from one person to another.

As an interesting aside, the H1N1 virus claimed more than 50 million lives out of an estimated 1.8 billion people alive in 1918 and disappeared as rapidly as it had emerged. Estimates vary, but figures suggest it claimed between 1 and 5% of the global population. The SARS-COV2 virus has killed 6.73 million globally out of a population of 7.7 billion, infecting, according to the WHO, 662 million, or roughly about 10 percent of the global population. Deaths only represent approximately 1% of the infected and 0.01% of the total population.

SARS-NCOV2 is very infectious and as it mutates and develops new strains, it follows a typical viral evolution, becoming less deadly in exchange for an increase in transmissibility. So, to the point. The novel virus first documented in Wuhan is immediately an outlier. Unlike most other novel viruses, it is perfectly adapted to infecting humans.

No prior recorded run-ins with the good folk of planet Earth, the virus simply appears out of the blue in 2019, perfectly adapted to infecting it’s human host and equally adept at passing from person to person, in other words, highly transmissible. Now while the odds of this occurring naturally cannot be ruled out, they are slim. Really slim. We encounter thousands of viruses in the course of our day to day lives with no ill effects.

The changes that enable a virus to cross over to humans from their animal hosts, are, as I discussed earlier, rare and often self limiting. The virus makes the jump, but is unable to spread itself effectively from human host to human host (low transmissibility). You may not be aware of this, but new pathogens emerge frequently and fortunately for us, aren’t sufficiently evolved to maintain a presence in their new hosts (us).

Also, the more deadly pathogens tend to kill off their victims before the person has the chance to spread the new disease very far., thereby also limiting the spread. There is a sweet spot for viruses that want to hit it off with mankind, and very few achieve it. From early analysis of the SARS-COV2 virus, it offered the perfect balance of transmissibility and lethalness.

A virus made for humanity, if you’ll excuse the phrase.

Tracking down the deadly courier

As members of the identified species responsible for the original SARS-COV virus outbreak in China in late 2002, bats and civets were immediately marked as prime suspects. In the 2002 outbreak, initial assessments determined that the virus crossed to human hosts from zoonotic reservoirs, including bats, Himalayan palm civets (Paguma larvata), and raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides), sold in exotic animal markets in Guangdong Province.

Initial suspicion fell on the pangolin as the original reservoir for the SARS-COV2 virus and some even suggested that the virus may have evolved by combining pangolin and bat COV strains, a theory later dismissed as the virus was subsequently shown not to be recombinant (made of of two or more strains). Then, in October 2020, the pangolin was exonerated. It could not, it was shown, have been responsible for harboring the virus that infected us.

Science dug deeper. Setting aside the pangolin, SARS-CoV-2 was also reported to bind to ACE2 from Chinese horseshoe bats, civet, cat, turtle, ferret, monkey, dog, Chinese hamster, buffalo, cow, sheep, swine and even pigeon, but none proved feasible as either a reservoir or as an intermediary between the reservoir and man.

A lot hinged on the fact that we had an established pattern with SARS-COV that appeared to be repeating itself. In 2002 it had been the wet markets in Guangdong Province and the exotic animals traded there, now it was the wet markets in Wuhan, specifically the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first cases were supposedly recorded. Appearances can however be deceptive.

What if the Huanan market had not been ground zero for Covid-19? Could that rule out a zoonotic reservoir? As early as May of 2020, papers began circulating, questioning the publicly accepted narrative of the market and pointing to earlier cases in Wuhan, unrelated to the market. The quote below is lifted directly from one such paper published in Frontiers of Medicine.

COVID-19 is officially considered to have emerged at the Huanan
seafood wholesale market (HSWM) in Wuhan in December, however, epidemiological data show that early cases of COVID-19 were not related to HSWM and thus that it is not the site of emergence. Phylogenetic studies suggest that SARS-CoV-2 might have circulated in Wuhan as early as October 2019 and that the virus then spread at low-level from person to person (the latency phase), before being imported to HSWM where it was detected in December 2019

Flaws in zoonotic theories for SARS and MERS predate SARS-COV2. Without getting into technical details (links included for those who wish to explore the topic in more depth) there are two basic models that allow a virus to jump species, the first being the spillover model and a second, referred to as the circulation model. In this model there is no requirement for zoonotic pressure or epizootic episode prior to the emergence of a human disease.

In layman’s terms, we (animals and humans) coexist with viruses (often shared) and are frequently infected with no ill effects. However, under the right conditions, one of these viral infections can mutate, perhaps in the presence of a host with a weakened immune system or genetic abnormality that predisposes the person to that specific virus’s genome. It is therefor possible that SARS-COV2 used a human chain as its intermediary and evolved in human hosts.

SARS-CoV2 is suggested to be one of nearly 900 zoonotic pathogens that have made the leap from nonhuman animals to human populations over millennia. Emerging evidence suggests we return the favor, according to  officially reported SARS-CoV-2 human infections in 23 nonhuman animal species, including not only big cats like tigers and lions but also domestic cats and dogs, gorillas, white-tailed deer, hamsters, farmed mink, otters, anteaters, manatees, hippopotamuses, and others, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.

There remains another issue, not frequently discussed. Technological advances in the sciences have outstripped our ability to fully comprehend what we can now observe and the intricate interdependencies of nature still elude us. A lot of what we see published is nothing more than an educated guess based on unfolding models. We may or may not be on the right track and the huge amount of conflicting opinion supports the fact that virology and its related fields are far from an exact science.

To date, no zoonotic reservoir or intermediary has been identified for the SARS-COV2 virus.

Theory 2. Man amplifies existing virus, dooms the world.

Subtitled: Wuhan, the Capital of Coincidences

I’ve written extensively on this topic during the last three years and you will find links to these articles interspersed below. For the sake of continuity, some of this older content is repeated, and has, where new information has emerged, been updated to reflect the ever evolving narrative. The information deals only with verifiable, known facts and where I digress into opinion, it will be clearly stated.

To fully understand what unfolds below, lets kick of with GOF research, as it plays an integral part of the man-made theory.

Gain of Function (GOF)

Gain-of-function research refers to the serial passaging of microorganisms to increase their transmissibility, virulence, immunogenicity, and host tropism by applying selective pressure to a culture. So in other words, in layman’s terms, it’s about creating something nastier, tougher, and more deadly than the original by manipulating it in a laboratory, for whatever purpose, military, scientific, or otherwise.

To level the playing field however, associating Gain of Function research as being mutually exclusive to influenza or coronaviruses is patently wrong. The field is immense and it is incorrect to equate GOF studies only with influenza transmission experiments. Virology is founded on adaptation approaches, and these have broad utility because they provide phenotypic evidence of a genotypic change when combined with a discriminatory biological assay.

Used responsibly, GOF is an incredibly useful and some would argue, essential tool in the virologists arsenal. Inadequate or flawed safety and ethics protocols are however commonplace in research laboratories where GOF is undertaken, particularly in countries like China. Without being dramatic, pursuing GOF research without properly ensuring its safety, could lead to an extinction-level event. Us being the species we wipe out. It’s an unlikely, but not impossible consequence.

For further reading, including the 2014 US moratorium on GOF, follow this link. Also you may be interested to know that another outbreak of the H1N1 strain in 1977 (the one that caused the Great Flu in 1918) was caused by a laboratory leak of the virus. You can read more about that here.

WIV or the Wuhan Institute of Virology

At the center of the web of coincidences surrounding the virus origin, sits the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, and one of it’s employees, a scientist affectionately known as batwoman. The WIV comes equipped with a biosafety laboratory, and of course, the facility works on coronaviruses, particularly the SARS-COV virus. That’s where batwoman comes into the picture.

Chinese virologist, Dr. Zheng-li Shi started out as a research assistant at the Wuhan Institute for Virology (WIV), with a focus on aquatic viruses. She trained in France and later pivoted to bats in 2004 after SARS broke out. She is widely recognized as a leader in the field and to facilitate her research, she has spent years collecting bats from caves across China, investigating how the coronavirus can jump from animal to human. Said bats are relocated to the Institute (where else) for further study.

Safety Levels in Laboratories handling Biohazards

SARS has not naturally recurred since 2003, but there have been six separate “escapes” from virology labs studying it: one each in Singapore and Taiwan, and in four distinct events at the same laboratory in Beijing.

Many instances involving the accidental release of pathogens have taken place in labs around the world. Hundreds of breaches have occurred in the U.S., including a 2014 release of anthrax from a U.S. government lab that exposed 84 people. The SARS virus escaped four times from the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing causing four infections and one death and also escaped facilities in Singapore and Taiwan.

Despite our best efforts, we cannot ensure viruses used in GOF remain secure. China, unfortunately, has a reputation for lax safety protocols, and the WIV is no exception. In 2014 scientists calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group urged caution on creating new viruses. In what may have been prescient words, they specified the risk of creating a dangerous virus.

“Accident risks with newly created ‘potential pandemic pathogens’ raise grave new concerns,” they wrote. “Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza, poses substantially increased risks. An accidental infection in such a setting could trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control.”

If you’re thinking we ever learn, think again. In 2021 SARS-COV2 once again escaped from a high level biosecurity laboratory in Taiwan by infecting a laboratory worker. Clearly, we do not have sufficient technical prowess to deal safely with the viruses we create and collect.

Follow the Money

Did the NIH and the NIAID fund GOF research in Wuhan, or didn’t they? Enter the EcoHealth Alliance and Dr Peter Daszak, one of the strongest proponents (naturally) for the natural origin theory. More on that later. The short answer is an absolute, resounding yes. To avoid this article turning into a novel, you can reference the hard evidence in an article I published in 2021. Ironically, if you’re an American, your tax dollars may very well have contributed directly to the pandemic.

The referenced article does not deal with Dr Anthony Fauci’s role in this sordid saga, but given the volume of evidence that has emerged recently, you are free to draw your own conclusions regarding the extent of his involvement with EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak.

That pesky Furin cleavage site

As discussed earlier, one of the most prominent features of the virus relates to its S protein, in particular, the furin cleavage site, that, and the receptor binding domain (RBD) in the S protein is highly specific. So specific in fact, that many virologists took one look at them and had the same thought. Engineered. Not by nature, but by a far more malicious entity, man.

And that brings us back nicely to our friend from EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak. What follows is possibly either the greatest attempt to cover tracks in the history of science or intentional misdirection to further an alternate agenda. We may never know the true motivation, but we know the facts. Daszak lied.

On February 19th of 2020, a group of virologists and others published a letter in the Lancet on the origin, in their professional opinions, of the virus. This extract is taken directly from said letter.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,”

The author of this letter was none other than Peter Daszak and the signatories to it included Charles Calisher, Dennis Carroll, Rita Colwell, Ronald B Corley, Christian Drosten, Luis Enjuanes, Jeremy Farrar, Hume Field, Josie Golding, Alexander Gorbalenya, Bart Haagmans, James M Hughes, William B Karesh, Gerald T Keusch, Sai Kit Lam, Juan Lubroth, John S Mackenzie, Larry Madoff, Jonna Mazet, Peter Palese, Stanley Perlman, Leo Poon, Bernard Roizman, Linda Saif, Kanta Subbarao and Mike Turner (no relation).

Now under normal circumstances, this statement of support for their poor beleaguered Chinese colleagues would have been in good form, and the strongly worded endorsement of a natural origin for the virus, well within their rights, however, on the release of emails from the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance under a Freedom of Information request, it came to light that Peter Daszak (whom you will note declared no conflicting interests) was pursuing an alternative agenda. One he had coerced other signatories to agree to, amny of whom workerd for, or were involved with EcoHealth Alliance.

An article highlighting the extent of the coercion was published in the U.S. Right to Know website on the day the statement was published in the Lancet. Titled “EcoHealth Alliance orchestrated key scientists’ statement on “natural origin” of SARS-CoV-2” the article’s introduction leaves no doubt as to its intent.

Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know show that a statement in The Lancet authored by 27 prominent public health scientists condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin” was organized by employees of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit group that has received millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funding to genetically manipulate coronaviruses with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Now, if I am not mistaken, that looks pretty conflicted to me. The extent of the funding Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance received can be viewed here. One of Dr Fauci’s last acts as director of the NIAID before retiring in late 2022 was to award one final lump sum to EcoHealth Alliance, despite dismal failures by the company to account for, or produce records relating to their involvement with WIV and the GOF research undertaken there.

Peter Daszak intentionally sought, and still seeks, to influence public and scientific opinion on the origins of the virus to deflect attention from the elephant in the room.

Since 2010, scientists, in particular, one Ralph. S Baric, had known that coronaviruses use the spike protein to gain a foothold in their human hosts. Baric published a paper in 2010 entitled “Recombination, reservoirs, and the modular spike: mechanisms of coronavirus cross-species transmission” and was widely recognized as one of the leading figures experimenting on modifying the spike protein.

No prizes for guessing where Baric found gainful employment. He has developed genetic techniques to enhance the pandemic potential of existing bat coronaviruses, working in collaboration with Dr. Zheng-li Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and with the EcoHealth Alliance. Coincidence after coincidence.

Moderna and Pfizer drive the nail home

Lest we forget, both Moderna and Pfizer produced almost identical mRNA based vaccines in record time. In fact, Moderna had theirs ready to go on the 28th of January, 2020. Impressive you say, but what does this have to do with the virus origins? Perhaps nothing and perhaps everything.

We know Moderna was heavily invested in pursuing a vaccine for coronaviruses and was intimately familiar with the SARS-COV virus. The company would no doubt have been privy to the research being carried out in Wuhan and may well have met with early success against newly engineered strains, particularly if they knew specifically how these strains interacted with our bodies. Almost a case of putting the cart before the horse.

Pure conjecture on my part, of course, but far from unlikely.

Putting the facts aside

Given the unending list of coincidences surrounding Wuhan, it would seem statistically impossible for the virus to have originated anywhere else. If I were a betting man I would also most certainly place my cash on Theory 2, as each coincidence further reduces the likelihood of natural origin. Which then raises one final question which must be broached, as unpleasant as it may be.

If the virus did indeed originate from within the WIV, was it’s release into the wild intentional or accidental?

Profiteering and Smoking Guns

Perhaps the final straw on the wobbling camel-of-natural-origins back is provided by the billionaires, new and old, that profited immensely from the death and chaos that unfolded post 2019. How profitable was/is the pandemic? Here are a few eye watering numbers to make you wish you’d followed a career path in virology.

Now while every bloke is entitled to an honest days wage, whatever their profession, profiteering from a global event you may directly, or indirectly, have initiated tends to raise an eyebrow. It provides an excellent motive for aiding and abetting the virus’s escape and while the likelihood is that the leak was unintentional and purely down to poor security protocols, if there was indeed a leak, we cannot, until proven otherwise, dismiss any of the theories swirling around Wuhan.

Profit, of course is not the only motivating factor, as conspiracy theorists will be quick to point out. Population control on a global scale requires mass vaccination, which, of course is easily justified in the face of a global viral threat. Who would engage in such monstrous evils? Why the elites of course, with fingers pointing towards the likes of Klaus Schwab (chairman of the World Economic Forum, currently meeting in Davos as I write this, to plan their next move), Bill Gates and others.

There may very well be a “smoking gun” that will inadvertently turn up somewhere in the years that follow, a shooter emerging from the grassy knoll, that confirms finally, one way or another where SARS-COV2 originated. I suspect the virus itself will offer up the final answers. As our technology improves, definitively identifying natural and engineered viral sequences in minutes will become a reality. It will also make detailed analysis of the “vaccines” possible, essential for restoring trust in medicines we use to treat billions.

So to return to the original pandemic question. Where did our current coronavirus originate? We may never know with certainty, our best bet being an educated guess based on snippets we’re told are facts, buried in the shifting sands of political opinion and scientific agendas. I made a choice in 2021, to believe that when presented with coincidence upon coincidence, we’d be fools to try and disprove the obvious conclusions these coincidences point to. Let’s disprove the obvious first and then look to natural origin.

Perhaps after evaluating the history of the last three years, you’ll join me on that side of the wall.

Missed Part 4 of the Covid Files on When is a vaccine not a vaccine? Catch up here.

The post On the Origin of Covid. With Apologies to Darwin appeared first on Medika Life.

In a recent interview, the so-called “Batwoman” as she is referred to, Chinese virologist, Dr. Shi Zhengli, spoke to a New York Times reporter to offer her side of the story. We think she should have maintained her silence as it is doubtful she will be given a fair hearing by a largely illiterate press. Figure out that oxymoron!

The story of the moment becomes the narrative the press promotes and we suggest, based on their dubious track record over the last year, that they should keep their opinions and let science get on with what it does best. They are ill-placed and apparently ill-equipped to distinguish fact from fiction or engage in simple reporting.

Who is Dr. Shi Zhengli, and what does she have to say?

She started out as a research assistant at the Wuhan Institute for Virology (WIV), with a focus on aquatic viruses. She trained in France and later pivoted to bats in 2004 after SARS broke out. She is widely recognized as a leader in the field and is a generous collaborator. She is not a Chinese Communist Party member.

To facilitate her research, she has spent years collecting bats from caves across China, investigating how the coronavirus can jump from animal to human, and she embraces the term many now use to refer to her, “Batwoman”. She is driven, highly educated, and passionate about her work.

“In all the work we do, if just once you can prevent the outbreak of an illness, then what we’ve done will be very meaningful”

Here are some of the statements she made to New York Times reporter, Amy Qin, in their recent telephone conversation.

• She has denied reports that three workers at the WIV were sick with flulike symptoms in Nov 2019 and she asked for their names.

“We were sitting in a meeting and wondering who these people could be,” she said.

• On Gain-of-Function (GOF) research, she said her research did not count as GOF because she did not set out to make a virus more dangerous, but to understand how it might jump across species.
• She also addressed concerns about biosafety and said she would publish more about an incident relating to the Yunnan miners soon.

What emerges from the interview, according to Qin, is that Dr. Shi Zhengli is now feeling angered and anguished. She is drawing a clear line in the sand, identifying science and the rest of the word as two distinct entities. She states that any future engagement will be with her colleagues and the field of science.

It’s not difficult to see why she feels let down or why the world may view her opinions as suspect.

The Covid pandemic has become many things over the last year and a half. It has been politicized and weaponized by almost every segment of our global communities, appropriated for their own agendas, none of which recognize or respect science. In fact, few even begin to understand the complex issues that lie at the heart of the virus’s origins, but that matters little.

In Shi’s own words;

“This is no longer a question of science. It is speculation rooted in utter distrust.”

Can we believe her?

It’s impossible to say, for a number of reasons. Firstly and most troubling, is China itself. They’re not known for their transparency and have closed ranks over Wuhan, the laboratory, and its research. Dr. Zhengli may very well want to share additional research with her international colleagues but that would undoubtedly require Beijing’s consent.

It’s doubtful at this point if they would be accommodating. Pandemic relationships with China became immensely strained under the Trump regime and haven’t improved under Biden. Under normal circumstances, the flow of scientific information between China and its Western counterparts is actually remarkably transparent.

The second issue revolves around science itself. It’s a tedious and painstaking process to track down the source of any virus. While well-documented evidence from renowned virologists tends to suggest that the SARS-CoV2 virus is natural, there is also evidence that suggests it has been with us for a lot longer than we previously thought.

So most of the valid virology voices seem to support Dr. Zhengli’s statements. The simple fact is this. We just don’t know enough or have access to sufficient evidence to be able to make any claims relating to a laboratory leak or any other theory. More time is required and more research, based on real science, needs to be performed.

This takes time, sometimes years, and into the black void, created by a lack of information, step the press. If they cannot report news, well then, why not create it. That is not the role of any responsible or ethical journalist. Sadly, the media industry has proven itself to be utterly bereft of any morals and they will continue to muddy the waters with unsubstantiated and misinterpreted data.

Watch this space as the press, quacks, hacks, and pseudo-scientists set about the word by dissection and dismemberment of Dr. Shi Zhengli and her statements.

The post Dr. Shi Zhengli, Wuhan’s Batwoman Speaks Out on Covid and Lab Leak Theory appeared first on Medika Life.

In his analysis, Dr. Quay concludes that it is beyond a reasonable doubt the virus came from a laboratory accident, a so-called “laboratory-acquired infection”, in Wuhan, China.

Dr. Steven C. Quay, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician-scientist and CEO of Atossa Therapeutics and has been asked to brief the elected members and staff of the United States Congress on his work on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virtual meeting will take place from 2:00 to 3:30 pm EDT, Monday, May 24, 2021.

Dr. Quay will speak about his research on the origin of the pandemic, which he published in January 2021 and which is available here. In this analysis, he concludes that it is beyond a reasonable doubt the virus came from a laboratory accident, a so-called “laboratory-acquired infection”, in Wuhan, China.

The briefing will also include a discussion by David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, about his work at the U.S. State Department looking into the origins of COVID-19 and the role of the Chinese government. According to Dr. Quay;

“While it would be a positive step for China to be open and transparent with records from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that were not shared with the WHO Committee during their field work in China earlier this year, there already exists more than enough data and evidence to conclude with high certainty that the COVID pandemic did not arise from a natural zoonosis,”

“The purpose of this briefing is to supply relevant congressional staff and members with the facts that are not in dispute with respect to the pandemic, to show how these facts are different from any prior zoonosis, to show these facts are completely consistent with a lab-leak, and finally, to document the genetic signatures that are consistent with ‘gain-of-function’ laboratory manipulation.”

Who is Steven Quay, M.D., Ph.D.?

According to his press release, Dr. Steven Quay has 360+ published contributions to medicine and has been cited over 10,000 times, placing him in the top 1% of scientists worldwide. He holds 87 US patents and has invented seven FDA-approved pharmaceuticals which have helped over 80 million people.

He is the author of a book on surviving the pandemic, “Stay Safe: A Physician’s Guide to Survive Coronavirus”. He has seen his fair share of controversy during the pandemic. His book, published in June of 2020 was removed from Kindle by Amazon, hours after its launch. His outspoken views on treatments for Covid-19 have often conflicted with the official narrative.

For instance, in his book, he offers the following advice for dealing with Covid-19, and it’s not difficult to see why the book was removed by Amazon.

• One 2-minute step you can take every time you come home to kill coronavirus before it enters your lungs
• A quick, free home test for COVID-19 that is as good as the FDA-approved nasal swab
• The one exercise you won’t learn in the gym that can save your life
• How NOT to die of COVID-19 (Make your lungs younger)
• What to do if you have early-stage COVID-19 so that you can stay out of the hospital
• The #1 most effective way to prevent the spread of coronavirus as we reopen society (Hint: it’s the one thing the CDC said was “NOT effective” when coronavirus hit the U.S.)
• Why a vaccine won’t be the solution, and what YOU can do to protect yourself, now and in the future
• What to eat and drink (and what to avoid), so you can prevent and beat this coronavirus
• The best supplements I have found from clinical trial research for immune health during this pandemic
• The coronavirus’ “Diabolic Trait” and how it helped the virus spread so fast
• An easy DIY step that takes your face mask from a viral barrier to a virus killer, giving you over 100-times the protection of an untreated mask
• The one blood test to ask for if you are hospitalized that can keep you off a ventilator
• Three steps to take to thrive during the next epidemic
• Learn about gain-of-function research and why we must ban it to prevent future pandemics

He has made the following statement on why he feels it is so important to address the issue of origin.

“For over a year there has been a reticence to consider a lab-leak as the source of this pandemic despite the fact that most of the evidence I will present has been in the public domain all this time. It is clear to me that only a grassroots effort directed to the federal government will bring the urgency to help uncover the cause of the pandemic and set the stage to put in place the safeguards to prevent the next. You can help in this fight by inviting your Representative and Senators to this briefing on the leading COVID origin hypothesis, the possibility of a laboratory-acquired infection at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

“We owe it to the three million people who have died to get to the bottom of this.”

If you would like to make your congressional representatives aware of the briefing, please use this link: Briefing Invitation

The post Dr. Steven Quay to Brief U.S. Congress On Origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on Medika Life.

There is a strong likelihood that U.S. taxpayers helped to fund the creation of a virus that has killed nearly 600 000 Americans. In this article, we will show you, how, since 2015, the National Institute for Health (NIH) and the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious disease (NIAID), knowingly provided funding to a specific group of American scientists and their institutions and businesses despite a moratorium. The publically stated intent of these scientists was to develop a more infectious version of the coronavirus and to achieve their ends they chose a Chinese scientist working out of a laboratory in Wuhan in China. 

We will also highlight post-pandemic responses from the same individuals. A concerted and well-orchestrated effort to deny any possibility of this novel coronavirus being manufactured in a laboratory. If we, in point of fact, accept as truth their very public disclaimers on the impossibility of producing the pandemic’s coronavirus strain in the Wuhan laboratory or elsewhere then, at best, the scientists are guilty of defrauding the US government and the NIH by claiming funding for fictitious research.

In August of 2020, fully eight months into the pandemic and with American deaths climbing rapidly, the NIH announced publicly their intention to fund further research into viruses, again selecting many of the same actors for grants. 

It was our discovery of this 2020 announcement that prompted Medika to publish this piece. Clearly, no lessons have been learned from the pandemic and despite the huge loss of life, both in the U.S.and globally, America will continue to fund gain-of-function research on viruses. An end must be put to this research, by any and all means, or the next pandemic could make Covid look like a cold by comparison. If that means exposing hard truths and holding America’s lofty healthcare institutions to account for their involvement in what can only be described as deadly research, then so be it.

On the topic of safety, viruses, and laboratories, since the SARS outbreak, many instances involving the accidental release of pathogens have taken place in labs around the world. Hundreds of breaches have occurred in the U.S., including a 2014 release of anthrax from a U.S. government lab that exposed 84 people. The SARS virus escaped four times from the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing causing four infections and one death and also escaped facilities in Singapore and Taiwan.

Accidental release remains a constant danger and doesn’t require malicious intent. All it takes is for a lab worker to get sick, go home for the night, and unwittingly spread the virus to others.

This topic gets complicated really quickly, so we’ve decided to try and simplify it as best we can. First, we’ll introduce you to the players, the scientists at the heart of all of this and their organizations. Then we’ll explain a few of the terms and finally expand on the evidence. After that, you’re on your own. You will know at least part of the truth.

The Players

Peter Daszak, Ph.D., EcoHealth Alliance, Inc., New York City

Emerging Infectious Diseases-South East Asia Research Collaboration Hub 
Southeast Asia

“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

Peter Daszak was in fact the author of this letter. An illuminating article recently published on the website U.S. Right to Know points to the web of deception surrounding this letter, issued in February by EcoHealth Alliance, at a point in the pandemic where any same scientists would have been more than a little hesitant to make any categorical statements on the origin of the virus. It was simply too early to discredit any theories. The article states;

Emails obtained by the U.S. Right to Know show that a statement in The Lancet authored by 27 prominent public health scientists condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin” was organized by employees of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit group that has received millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funding to genetically manipulate coronaviruses with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

He continued his tirade against laboratory synthesized viruses a few months later in June of 2020, this time resorting to the Guardian, a UK-based news publication.

Peter Daszak is listed as the third beneficiary on the August 2020 NIH grant for viral research referenced above. His project is shown below for further reference. His initial round of funding for a five-year project is $1.5 million.

Peter Daszak, Ph.D., EcoHealth Alliance, Inc., New York City
Emerging Infectious Diseases-South East Asia Research Collaboration Hub 
Southeast Asia; 1 U01 AI151797–01

Kristian G. Andersen, Scripps Research

On the 17th of March Andersen published a letter in the journal Nature Magazine. As a letter, rather than a paper, the document would escape the rigors of peer review. It is, was, and remains an opinion piece, published by Andersen with the intent of discrediting attempts to suggest the SARS-CoV2 virus was of mand made origin. Its authors were a group of virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute. 

“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the five virologists declared in the second paragraph of their letter.

Andersen is listed as the second beneficiary on the August 2020 NIH grant for viral research referenced above. His project is shown below for further reference.

Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California
West African Emerging Infectious Disease Research Center (WAEIDRC)
West Africa; 1 U01 AI151812–01

Ralph S. Baric, Coronavirus Researcher, University of North Carolina

Dr. Baric is a coronavirus expert at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC). He has developed genetic techniques to enhance the pandemic potential of existing bat coronaviruses, working in collaboration with Dr. Zheng-li Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and with the EcoHealth Alliance.

Dr. Shi Zhengli, Lead researcher, Wuhan Institute of Technology

Dr. Shi is a Frech trained virologist and a frequent visitor to the U.S. was mentored by Dr. Ralph S. Baricat at the University of North Carolina, where he shared his work with her on coronaviruses, in particular a technique he had developed to amplify the pathogenicity (danger) of the coronavirus. Their work focused on enhancing the ability of bat viruses to attack humans so as to “examine the emergence potential (that is, the potential to infect humans) of circulating bat CoVs [coronaviruses].” 

In November of 2015, they created a novel coronavirus by taking the backbone of the SARS1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus (known as SHC014-CoV). This manufactured virus was able to infect the cells of the human airway, established by in vitro tests performed on cell cultures of airway tissue.

The SHC014-CoV/SARS1 virus is known as a chimera because its genome contains genetic material from two different viruses. If the SARS-CoV2 virus did originate in Dr. Shi’s lab, then the SHC014-CoV/SARS1 chimera would have served as the prototype. The potential danger of this concerned many observers and prompted intense discussion. Dr. Baric and Dr. Shi referred to the obvious risks in their paper but argued they should be weighed against the benefit of foreshadowing future spillovers. 

Nerd Speak (terms explained)

Understanding Gain-of-Function

Essentially, in simple English, Gain-of-Function (GOF) is the act of enhancing a virus in a laboratory with a singular goal; to make it more deadly to humans. In its simplest form, GOF is about “weaponizing” one of the most dangerous and least understood things on the planet. Viruses. As biologists embarked on this path, the scientific community was divided on the matter, Ethics and safety were the two obvious primary concerns.

Scientists have since recreated the 1918 flu virus, shown how the almost extinct poliovirus can be synthesized from its published DNA sequence, and introduced a smallpox gene into a related virus. Chimeras (a new hybrid microorganism created by joining nucleic acid fragments from two or more different microorganisms) are now commonplace.

These enhancements of a virus’s capabilities are known as gain-of-function experiments and we’ve been at it for decades. Coronaviruses elicited particular interest because of their spike proteins, (we all know the image by now) which jut out all around the spherical surface of the virus and determine which species of animal the virus will target. Reprogram that spike and you open a whole new world of possibilities for the virus. In 2000 Dutch researchers earned the gratitude of rodents everywhere by genetically engineering the spike protein of a mouse coronavirus so that it would attack only cats.

Applications for GOF experimentation are varied and include vaccine development and creating bioweapons, so interest in the technology extends from scientific circles to the military and government agencies. Historically, it has been one of the best-funded fields in scientific research in the last decade.

In a perfect world, the scientific benefits of research from GOF experimentation would be unquestionable. We don’t however live in a perfect world. Complete, or inadequate lack of oversight with regards to safety protocols and the ensuing risk of these viruses escaping into the wild, and ethical abuse of research by military agents and governments are only two of a long list of reasons why we cannot be trusted to engage in this research.

This excellent 2013 article from the Federation of American Scientists entitled Science and Security: The Moratorium on H5N1 “Gain-of-Function” Experiments takes a closer look at the risks.

GOF Moratorium in the US

On the 17th of December 2017, the NIH announced an end to the moratorium on funding GOF research that had been introduced in 2014. To be clear, between the dates of October 2014 and effectively January 2018, it was illegal in the United States to provide funding for any Gain-of-Function research. Remember this, as we’ll refer to this point later. According to the 2017 statement by the NIH, published in Nature;

The US government has lifted its controversial ban on funding experiments that make certain pathogens more deadly or transmissible. On 19 December, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that scientists can once again use federal money to conduct ‘gain-of-function’ research on pathogens such as influenza viruses. But the agency also said that researchers’ grant applications will undergo greater scrutiny than in the past.

As to the why? In 2016, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) — an independent panel that advises the NIH’s parent, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — concluded that very few government-funded gain-of-function experiments posed a significant threat to public health. With the hindsight of 2020, this was possibly the most flawed conclusion ever drawn.

The new safety guidelines recommended were a cop-out of epic proportions. The new policy outlined a framework that the HHS would use to assess proposed research that would create pathogens with pandemic potential. Such work might involve modifying a virus to infect more species, or recreating a pathogen that had been eradicated in the wild, such as smallpox. There were some exceptions, however: vaccine development and epidemiological surveillance did not automatically trigger a review.

The plan included an assessment of a project’s risks and benefits, and a determination of whether the investigator and institution were capable of conducting the work safely. It also said that an experiment should proceed only if there was no safer alternative method of achieving the same results. As you will see below, few if any of these new protocols were applied to the projects funded by the NIH that involved Peter Daszak, Ph.D., and his company EcoHealth Alliance, Inc, his appointed research surrogate, Dr. Shi Zhengli, or her Wuhan laboratory. 

Projects appear to have simply been rubberstamped.

Laboratory Safety

There are four degrees of safety in a laboratory. The first is BSL1, followed by another three up to BSL4. BSL4 is the most restrictive and is designed for deadly pathogens like the Ebola virus. Wuhan is in possession of a BSL4 laboratory, and despite inspectors questioning its state of preparedness in a 2018 inspection, it remains in active use. Its safety was also never in contention with the coronavirus, however.

Prior to the pandemic, rules followed by virologists in China and elsewhere required that experiments with the SARS1 and MERS viruses be conducted in BSL3 conditions. All the other bat coronaviruses, however, could be studied in BSL2, the next level down. 

BSL2 requires minimal safety precautions, including;

• wearing lab coats and gloves, 
• not sucking up liquids in a pipette, 
• putting up biohazard warning signs

Hardly the environment in which to be performing GOF experiments on a potentially deadly virus. Assuming success, you’d be dealing with a virus that was far more infectious than either SARS1 or MERS. A virus against which laboratory workers had not been vaccinated and which was bred with the sole intention of being transmissible in humans. This was also in direct violation of the NIH’s self-proclaimed rules dictating funding restrictions for GOF experimentation.

Following the money

What follows has been drawn in part from Nicholas Wade’s recent article on the Origins of The SARS-CoV2 virus, a link to which you will find in the footer.

A little background first to bring you up to speed and connect the dots and the people above. Dr. Baric had developed, and taught Dr. Shi, a general method for engineering bat coronaviruses to attack other species. The specific targets were human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice. These laboratory mice, a cheap and ethical stand-in for human subjects, are genetically engineered to carry the human version of a protein called ACE2 that studs the surface of cells that line the airways.

Dr. Shi returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells. You may well ask how this known? It’s a matter of public record. Her work was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). And grant proposals that funded her work, which are a matter of public record, specify exactly what she planned to do with the money.

Total funding under this project, dating from 2014 to 2019 is $3,748,715. This page provides a clearer overview

The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, Dr. Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Dr. Shi. Here are extracts from the grants for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. “CoV” stands for coronavirus and “S protein” refers to the virus’s spike protein.

“Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.”

and, in the 2019 project;

“We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”

We will sequence receptor binding domains (spike proteins) to identify viruses with the highest potential for spillover which we will include in our experimental investigations (Aim 3).

What this means, in non-technical language, is that Dr. Shi set out to create novel coronaviruses with the highest possible infectivity for human cells. Her plan was to take genes that coded for spike proteins possessing a variety of measured affinities for human cells, ranging from high to low. She would insert these spike genes one by one into the backbone of a number of viral genomes (“reverse genetics” and “infectious clone technology”), creating a series of chimeric viruses. These chimeric viruses would then be tested for their ability to attack human cell cultures (“in vitro”) and humanized mice (“in vivo”). And this information would help predict the likelihood of “spillover,” the jump of a coronavirus from bats to people.

The methodical approach was designed to find the best combination of coronavirus backbone and spike protein for infecting human cells. The approach could have generated SARS-CoV2-like viruses, and may well have created the SARS-CoV2 virus itself with the right combination of virus backbone and spike protein.

Did Dr. Shi succeed? According to Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and leading expert on biosafety;

“It is clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was systematically constructing novel chimeric coronaviruses and was assessing their ability to infect human cells and human-ACE2-expressing mice. It is also clear that, depending on the constant genomic contexts chosen for analysis, this work could have produced SARS-CoV-2 or a proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.” 

“Genomic context” refers to the particular viral backbone used as the testbed for the spike protein. 

Peter Daszak has spent the last year and a half vociferously denying science’s ability to produce a coronavirus in a laboratory. He’s even published the Lancet letter we referenced above, ably supported by his fellow GOF colleagues. This despite the clear, published intention of his company, as per the NIH project above, of doing exactly that. In an almost prescient, ill-timed interview at a scientific conference in December of 2019. Daszak put his foot in it. Forward to around minute 28 of the interview.

He talks in glowing terms of how researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been reprogramming the spike protein and generating chimeric coronaviruses capable of infecting humanized mice.

“And we have now found, you know, after 6 or 7 years of doing this, over 100 new sars-related coronaviruses, very close to SARS. Some of them get into human cells in the lab, some of them can cause SARS disease in humanized mice models and are untreatable with therapeutic monoclonals and you can’t vaccinate against them with a vaccine. So, these are a clear and present danger….”

Obviously, that danger was neither clear enough nor obvious enough to Peter Daszak.

Daszak mentions in the interview above, the Wuhan researchers had been unable to develop vaccines against the coronaviruses they had designed to infect human cells. They would have left the researchers as defenseless against the SARS-CoV2 virus if it were generated in their lab as their Beijing colleagues had been against SARS.

“Since 1992 the virology community has known that the one sure way to make a virus deadlier is to give it a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 junction in the laboratory,” writes Dr. Steven Quay, a biotech entrepreneur interested in the origins of SARS2. “At least eleven gain-of-function experiments, adding a furin site to make a virus more infective, are published in the open literature, including [by] Dr. Zhengli Shi, head of coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

and finally, on the topic of origin, from David Baltimore, an eminent virologist and former president of CalTech.

“When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.” 

What should at this point be glaringly apparent is that an unnatural origin theory(i.e. a laboratory gain-of-function engineered virus) for SARS-C0V2 is far more probable than you’ve been led to believe. In early January of 2021, the American government spoke out, releasing a “Fact Sheet” pointing a finger at Dr. Shi and her colleagues in Wuhan. They blamed Chinese authorities for stonewalling the WHO investigators, but we would argue that answers to questions relating to research in Wuhan can be answered far more accurately by those most trying to evade them, and it’s not the Chinese.

These individuals are far closer to home and were intimately involved in Dr. Shi’s work. The American scientists who through the NIH, bankrolled Wuhan’s research, notable individuals like Peter Daszak and his company Ecohealth Alliance, Dr. Ralph Baric and his colleagues at UNC, and other colleagues tied to the GOF research and funding grants referenced above.

The case for laboratory origin is far more substantive than a mere wild conspiracy and there has been a concerted effort by GOF scientists globally to ensure the possibility of engineering is dismissed out of hand. We have just shown you a cohesive digital paper trail spanning years, as outlined above, funded by the NIH and NIAID, managed by the same American scientists, and deployed on foreign soil (China). This is not a fabrication, nor is it a wild rumor or conspiracy. There is strong reason to suggest that Chinese authorities may have been as much in the dark as their foreign colleagues, but we now know who really holds the answers,

The choice of a China-based facility for research mattered, for a number of reasons.

• There would have been minimal to no oversight of the project. 
• In the event of any unfortunate incidents, the virus was on foreign soil.
• The restrictive conditions of BSL4 safety protocols could easily be ignored in favor of a more lax NSL2 environment. 
• If the proverbial doo-doo ever hit the fan, deniability and accompanying accountability would be far easier to address.

 Viruses are notorious escape artists as we’ve already shown and possibly no one is more aware of this than the scientists themselves. Given the incredibly sensitive nature of the work the scientists were undertaking and the harmful potential of the bioweapons they were intent on developing, no government in its right mind would endorse performing these tasks in their mortal enemy’s basement? Was Washington simply asleep and blissfully unaware or was the decision intentional? 

In theory, the CCP could have appropriated Dr. Shi’s project at any point during development, affording them a weapon of devastating effect that was funded by America. Irony anyone?

The NIH continues its funding

So who benefited from the latest round of virus research funding from the NIH in 2020? Sadly, very few surprises. Ecohealth Alliance is at the forefront again, Daszak was awarded a little over $1.5 million, a 2020 downpayment on a five-year project. For interest, you can see the full list of grants he has been awarded here, in a relationship with the NIH stretching back to 2004 that has netted his company millions.

The stated goals of their new project are as ambiguous and concerning as the 2014–2019 project. One of the listed goals,

1) Identify, characterize and rank spillover risk of high zoonotic potential viruses from wildlife, by analyzing previously-archived wildlife samples, conducting targeted wildlife surveillance, and using serology & PCR assays to identify novel viruses. These will be characterized to assess risk of spillover to people, and a series of in vitro (receptor binding, cell culture) and in vivo (humanized mouse and collaborative cross models) assays used to assess their potential to infect people and cause disease;

Sound familiar? Gain-of-function continues unabated and the NIH continues to fund it. Rather than waiting about for round 2 of the careless scientists unleashing death on the planet, we feel now may be the time to act. Allowing for the possibility, and the evidence strongly suggests its a possibility that cannot be ignored, that Dr. Shi, Daszak, Baric, and colleagues cooked up the SARS-CoV2 virus between them, any further research funding involving any of the names linked to the projects listed above should be terminated with extreme prejudice pending a very transparent review of the facts.

Our concern here is not to their guilt or innocence, but to their cumulative knowledge and ability to repeat the disaster that led to the outbreak in 2019, this time with more deadly consequences. The genie is truly out of the bottle, it has been for well over two decades, ever since the scientific community turned a collective blind eye to the pursuit of gain-of-function research. The entire community bears responsibility in part for the pandemic, should the virus prove to be engineered.

We should also point out in fairness to the scientists in Wuhan that it is common practice among scientists working across borders to share both data and samples. Any developments in the Wuhan lab would undoubtedly have been shared, certainly with EcoHealth Alliance, with UNC (Ralph Baric), and possibly with Andersen from Scripps Research. Leaks may not only have occurred in Wuhan.

In fact, and we’ve no way of determining this, the fruits of Dr. Shi’s labor could have gone global, long before December of 2019. As noted in an earlier article, traces of the SARS-CoV2 footprint have turned up in places like Italy and France, predating the January pandemic announcement by months. Gain of Function scientists are all too well aware of the ramifications of their work, and much of it occurs behind closed doors, away from prying eyes and oversight.

Are there benefits to GOF Research?

Unquestionably. However, the flawed argument of GOF for vaccine development doesn’t hold water in our opinion. Nature is capable of producing billions of possible variants of a virus, given the time and right conditions. For each possible version we can cook up in our far from secure laboratories, nature has a million alternatives. The only use of a vaccine developed to combat a manufactured virus is if that virus is unleashed, whether by accident or intentionally, on the public. The vaccine would, in all likelihood prove useless against a natural version of a virus that follows its own evolutionary curve.

GOF presents us with all the risks and almost no benefit. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) got it spectacularly wrong in 2018, their recommendations no doubt coerced by lobbyists from within pharma, military, and other pressure groups. There’s a lot of money to be made in this field if you’re willing to gloss over the risk. We were happy to do so in 2018 and now in 2020, armed with hindsight, we still pursue the same foolish policy, expecting a different result. The very definition of madness.

Remember earlier in this article we alluded to the GOF moratorium? How was the NIH able to continue funding this research during the moratorium? The first three questionable grant payments made to the EcoHealth Alliance project between 2015-2018 fell under the moratorium. How were the payments justified?

The water gets murky

Really murky, really quickly. To save you scrolling back up, here is the link again for the moratorium document. Keep in mind that the moratorium had specifically identified three types of viruses as being of particular concern when GOF was involved, namely influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses. A footnote appears on p2 and it was this escape clause that was used to justify the payments. The clause reads as follows;

“An exception from the research pause may be obtained if the head of the USG funding agency determines that the research is urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.”

By interpretation, whoever was in charge of the money at that point, had to authorize these payments. Either the director of the NIAID, Dr. Anthony Fauci, or the director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, or maybe both, would have invoked the footnote in order to keep the money flowing to Dr. Shi’s gain-of-function research. Interestingly, Dr. Fauci is listed as one of the members of the NSABB. In an interview with Independent Science News, Dr. Richard Ebright was quoted as making the following statement;

“Unfortunately, the NIAID Director and the NIH Director exploited this loophole to issue exemptions to projects subject to the Pause –preposterously asserting the exempted research was ‘urgently necessary to protect public health or national security’ — thereby nullifying the Pause,”

The Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight (P3CO) Framework, which required agencies to report for review any dangerous gain-of-function work they wished to fund, was created when the Moratorium was ended in 2017 to ensure the public would remain protected. 

Again, according to Dr. Ebright, both Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci; 

“have declined to flag and forward proposals for risk-benefit review, thereby nullifying the P3CO Framework. They have systematically thwarted efforts by the White House, the Congress, scientists, and science policy specialists to regulate GoF [gain-of-function] research of concern.”

Whatever the reasons, and there could be many including national security, for Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins’s lack of transparency regarding GOF research the conclusion of their actions is incontestable. The National Institutes of Health was supporting gain-of-function research, of a kind that may have generated the SARS-CoV2 virus, in an unsupervised foreign lab that was doing work in BSL2 biosafety conditions.

GOF research should be halted immediately, and its scientists and funding mechanisms subjected to intense scrutiny with regards to their activities and involvement in events leading up to Wuhan in 2019. The only world in which the pursuit of this branch of science could be pursued doesn’t exist. Safety, real safety, would require the following.

• Complete transparency with regards to projects
• Restricting research to BSL4 facilities only
• Insections and policing of any facilities engaged in GOF

All the above are simply a wishlist of impossible conditions. Restrictive and unenforceable, particularly with increasing military involvement in research, both the scientific community and their regulators would be unable or unwilling to comply or enforce any of these conditions. Simply put, GOF is how we create the next pandemic. It may very well have created this one, so can we seriously run the risk of another?

In 2014 scientists calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group urged caution on creating new viruses. In prescient words, they specified the risk of creating a SARS2-like virus. 

“Accident risks with newly created ‘potential pandemic pathogens’ raise grave new concerns,” they wrote. “Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza, poses substantially increased risks. An accidental infection in such a setting could trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control.”

Resources

1. Nicholas Wade: Medika Life would like to extend our thanks to Nicholas Wade for his thorough and illuminating article on the origins of the SARS-CoV2 virus. We have leaned heavily on his work to create this article and would highly recommend you read his piece for a far more detailed examination of the arguments for and against a laboratory origin for the virus. Nicholas Wade is a science writer, editor, and author who has worked on the staff of Nature, Science, and, for many years, the New York Times. His credentials are beyond reproach and his arguments balanced and weighted.
2. NIH RePORT: Managed by the NIH,a treasure trove of searchable information relating to funding, grants, and research stretching back years.

The post How The NIH Funded Wuhan Coronavirus Research with U.S. Taxpayers Money appeared first on Medika Life.

Not everyone was out celebrating though. A handful of Asian epidemiologists had identified a potential viral pandemic in the making and their attention was firmly focused on China. As new year’s day unfolded, frantic emails were being exchanged between Taiwanese epidemiologists based in Asia, the WHO, and their colleagues in the West, describing worrying pneumonia of unknown origin that was rapidly getting out of hand in a city in China. Human to human transmission was strongly suspected and these experts recognized the danger signals. Many harbored well-founded concerns of an impending disaster and decided to yell, “Houston, we have a problem”. 

Houston, or in this instance the World Health Organization (WHO) dragged their feet. We may never know the real chain of events that unfolded in the WHO offices between the receipt of those first Taiwanese emails sounding the alarm in early January and the initial acknowledgment and warning they issued in late January, directed at the global community. Whatever the politics, it was too little, too late.

The biggest threat that was to emerge over December 2019 and January 2020 wasn’t Wuhan itself or the virus. Wuhan is a transportation hub of China, a densely populated city with a population of more than 14 million in 2019. Enter the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport (IATA: WUH, ICAO), a large airport on the outskirts of Wuhan. Tianhe is an international airport and serves the area of Hubei, China. Most importantly, this airport serves non-stop passenger flights to 103 destinations in 8 countries and 92 domestic flights inside China.

Had the coronavirus outbreak occurred elsewhere, not in close proximity to an international airport, we wouldn’t, in all likelihood, be having this discussion right now. Mankind would have dodged another viral bullet. Or would we?

Having this international airport located at the center of a potential pandemic outbreak with confirmed cases of human to human transmission shouldn’t just have sounded a warning bell, it should have set off every siren the medical world possessed.

Instead, the world was offered a watered-down warning, written in typical medical parlance, language we call medi-speak, that avoids any specifics and remains as vague as possible to allow for wiggle room. The WHO, who was called on seriously, in a way their services had never been called on before, failed miserably to fulfill their basic mandate to humanity. They failed to warn us and they failed to protect us. 

Vague, non-specific, and indecisive warnings and advisories were issued. In the early weeks of January 2020, as the world tried to figure out what the WHO was actually saying, the coronavirus quietly and unobtrusively did what viruses do best. It continued to spread, making its way to almost every corner of the globe, carried invisibly across borders by its hosts. Us.

Wuhan earns its place in pandemic history. or does it?

Wuhan had just cemented its place in pandemic history and rumors quickly began circulating online that sought to explain the origins of the virus in various ways. Experts and virologists initially pointed to the wet markets in Wuhan, specifically the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as the most likely source of infection. It didn’t take long for the wheels to come off this theory, as only environmental contamination was found at the market. Horseshoe bats breathed a cumulative sigh of relief and then the blame game kicked off, big time.

China blamed America for introducing the virus to Wuhan during the October 2019 World Military Games. Americans responded by developing a promoting their own crazed theories, the favored one suggesting that the new novel coronavirus was in actual fact a Chinese manufactured pathogen, created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) lab in China relatively close (25 to 35 kilometers [15 to 22 miles]) to the Wuhan live-animal market at the epicenter of China’s outbreak. The only common thread shared by all the theories, crazed or otherwise, that emerged as the coronavirus continued to spread in early 2020 was this one single and apparently immutable fact. Wuhan was ground zero.

While we were all at odds to decide exactly how it had happened, we were all certain of one fact,. Wuhan was the source of SARS-CoV2. 

But was it?

Research begins to paint another picture

On the 13th of January, 2020, South Cina Morning Post confirmed Thailand had recorded the first case of coronavirus outside of China, a Chinese individual, not attached to the Huanan Seafood market. The woman, 61, was identified as a Chinese tourist from the city in central Hubei province. She received treatment in a hospital in Nonthaburi near Bangkok, where she was first admitted on January 8. This appeared to be the first known publicly recorded case of the virus escaping China’s borders. Many followed in short succession.

Data, in the first year of the pandemic, was dealt with in real-time as scientists battled to combat the virus. Almost without exception, data were drawn from patients infected with the coronavirus, post-January 2020. We had no reason or driving motivation to examine cases that predated this or to even consider the quesion. We were overwhelmed with too much real-time information flowing from pandemic hotspots across the globe to bother with 2019.

Scientists and researchers are, however, by nature, inquisitive creatures and it was only a question of time before people started to ask questions. One of these was a simple, but controversial one. What if the coronavirus had been around for a lot longer than we originally surmised? To confirm the presence of the virus in the population you need serological samples taken from a broad swathe of people, Samples that you can easily test for markers associated with the coronavirus. 

Italy and France were in possession of just such samples and exhibited sufficient scientific curiosity to pursue the question.

Was the Genie already out of the bottle?

By January of 2020, according to emerging data, the coronavirus had already made its way around the globe. Now, research in the West indicates confirmed infections in Europe that predate the Wuhan outbreak by months. Patients in Italy and France had contracted the virus as early as September, October, and November of 2019. France provides an interesting perspective on this, with blood samples taken from pneumonia patients in December of 2020. One of the cases was identified as being Covid. The particulars of this case and the timing are of interest.

Paris, France

The Paris-based hospital collected samples from 24 patients (over December 2019 and January 2020) presenting with pneumonia. to detect influenza using PCR tests, the same genetic screening process used to detect the presence of the novel coronavirus in patients infected at the time the sample is collected. One was identified as being Covid positive. 

The patient, a man, had been admitted on the 27th of November and had not traveled to China. The man’s wife worked alongside a Sushi stand, close to colleagues of Chinese origin and although the man had infected both his children, the wife remained asymptomatic. Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, where the patient was hospitalized was quoted at the time in an interview.

“Of the 24, we had one who was positive for COVID-19 on Dec. 27. Each sample was retested several times to ensure there were no errors.”

It may be easy to dismiss this article and the hospital’s findings as an anomaly perhaps attributable to cross-contamination of samples. It happens as we’re far from perfect. The desire to pinpoint China as the source of the epidemic has also been overwhelming and any evidence to the contrary tends to be dismissed out of hand. 

An article published in The French magazine, The Connexion, highlights the findings of another French study. National health research body Inserm said:

 “The first identified cases of COVID-19 were detected on December 8, 2019, in Wuhan, China; and the first documented case in Europe was reported retrospectively in France… on December 27”.

But, it added, new research “suggests early circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in Europe” going back to at least November 2019 in France, and even earlier in Italy. You can read the paper which highlights later retesting from the CONSTANCE cohort here. It validates findings that suggest infections of coronavirus in France as early as November of 2019. According to the original article;

In the study, scientists analysed 9,144 blood samples taken from a pool of 200,000 male and female adult participants, living in all regions of mainland France. The samples had been collected between November 4, 2019, and March 16, 2020. They were first analysed using a rapid Elisa test to detect Covid-19 antibodies and the virus was found in 353 participants.

To discount false positives, a second highly specific test was then done on these samples. This showed 13 of the samples taken between November 5, 2019 and January 30, 2020 came back “SN positive” meaning the Covid-19 virus had been detected.

Professor Fabrice Carrat, director of the study, told Le Monde:

“These results suggest that as early as November and December of 2019, the rate of contamination among people in France was already around one case per 1,000 people. We seem to have found cases sporadically, all over the country.”

What really caught our eye though was a newer article that examined blood samples taken from a cancer cohort in late 2019 in Italy.

Italy sees France and raises the stakes

Entitled “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy,” the paper was published in November of 2020. You can read the entire paper by following the link. We’ll provide a basic overview below.

First, a little context. The first laboratory-confirmed Italian COVID-19 case was identified in Lombardy on February 20, 2020, in a 38-year-old man who had no history of possible contacts with positive cases in Italy or abroad. Within a few days, additional cases of COVID-19 and critically ill patients were recorded in the surrounding area. Soon several cases were identified in other Italian regions, mostly in the northern area. Lockdowns were first applied in 2 critical areas of Lombardy and Veneto and were rapidly enforced regionally and nationwide starting on March 8.

Italy’s first two known cases of COVID-19 disease were recorded on January 30, 2020, when two tourists from China tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in Rome.

On the basis of the first case identification, it was hypothesized that the virus had been circulating in Italy since January 2020. However, the rapid spread, the large number of patients requiring hospital admission and treatment in intensive care units, as well as the duration of the pandemic suggest that the arrival of the virus and its circulation in Italy in a less symptomatic form could be anticipated by several months.

What the authors of the paper needed was a serological sample to test from earlier in 2019. They were in luck. Their eventual cohort was a population enrolled from September 2019 to March 2020 through the SMILE trial (Screening and Multiple Intervention on Lung Epidemics; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03654105), a prospective lung cancer screening study using low-dose computed tomography and blood biomarkers. They had their samples and set about testing them. What they found verified their suspicions.

The first surge of positive cases was identified in September–October 2019, a full three months before the Wuhan cluster. Evaluation of anti–SARS-CoV-2 functional NAbs identified positive samples in CPE-based microneutralization tests already collected in October 2019. Given the temporal delay between infection and antibody synthesis, these results indicate that the virus circulated in Italy well before the detection of the declared index patient in February 2020. In addition, most of the first antibody-positive individuals lived in regions where the pandemic started.

Reviving an old conspiracy

It’s time to wheel out one of the rumor mill’s favorite conspiracies, the World Military Games. We’re left with little choice at this point as the confirmed presence of the SARS-CoV2 virus in Europe in September of 2019 casts serious doubt on Wuhan being the center of origin. As insufficient data exists at this stage, hopefully, a situation that will be remedied in the coming months as we attempt to track down the real ground zero for the virus, we are going to make a few reasonably safe assumptions.

1. Italy and France were not the only countries infected with the novel coronavirus in late 2019. Logic dictates that if it was present in two large and well-traveled European populations, that it had already spread globally as early as September or October of 2019.
2. Testing has only been performed retroactively on samples collected from September of 2020. It is very likely that the presence of the SARS-CoV2 virus in our populations may predate this period by months,escaping detection as it gradually evolved to develop its current strains.
3. Wuhan, was almost certainly not the point of origin, merely the first population to develop an infectious cluster of the mutated virus, establishing a pattern soon to be repeated across the globe.

All of which brings us back to the question of the World Military Games, officially known as the 7th CISM Military World Games. Almost every country was in attendance at the event hosted in Wuhan in October of 2019. Stretching from the 18th to the 27th of October, it was the largest military sports event ever to be held in China, with nearly 10,000 athletes from over 100 countries competing in 27 sports.

Many of the athletes complained of Covid like symptoms during their stay in Wuhan, among them French athlete Élodie Clouvel, who speculated that an illness she and her fellow athlete, Valentin Belaud experienced, may have been COVID-19. Around 230,000 volunteers were recruited for the event and with so many potential global carriers of the virus assembled together, this event may very well have served as the catalyst for the subsequent outbreak seen in Wuhan in December of 2019.

Given what we know and with the promise of emerging data from research currently underway, every single nation on the planet is a suspect. Any could potentially have served as the source of origin for the SARS-CoV2 virus. We will have absolutely no way of determining this until further research is done. We do however know enough now to be able to safely say that Wuhan is looking less and less likely by the day. Its population of 14 million merely served as the first large petri dish for the virus’s more ambitious plans.

Keep in mind that one of the major sources of the outbreak of the Great Flu was a military encampment in the US. Poor hygiene in the camp and proximity to animals, in particular waterfowl and swine, had been suggested as the possible catalyst for animal-to-human transition in the 1918 pandemic. 

The longer we continue to allow massive encampments of impoverished, homeless seas of humanity to persist globally, we encourage the opportunity for new viral crossover events. Refugee and migrant camps aren’t merely an afront to a civilized world, they may also spell our end. These camp cities house hundreds of thousands of people in squalid conditions with no sanitation or freshwater. It is a recipe for future disasters.

So where does that leave us?

Aah, the million-dollar question. This new data is potentially far more worrying than any version of scaremongering the world could dream up over Wuhan. What it tells us is this.

We have no defense mechanisms that can function effectively against new, highly infectious, emergent viral strains and we may never develop any. These data tell us that new viral strains can move about freely in our populations, undetected for extended periods, offering the virus the time and opportunity needed to hone its attack. To mutate. Our responses will always be too little, too late. It is the nature of the combatant we are engaged with.

Viruses predate man and they will most certainly outlive us. In our self-induced technological arrogance, we assume mastery of everything we survey. The actual truth is far removed from this fictional view of our reality. We are as much a part of nature as any other organism on the planet and our species poses a very real threat to the ecosystem we inhabit. Nature has a way of ensuring balance and we lose sight of this at our own peril.

While you digest that you may consider issuing an apology to your Chinese friends. They are merely victims of an unpleasant pandemic, affected in exactly the same way we’ve all been.

The post Wuhan Was Not the Source of the Coronavirus, According to Research appeared first on Medika Life.

Two days ago, the professor who teaches at the University of Hamburg, released a 100-page report that he personally prepared on the alleged origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In the report he makes the following claims, claims that he openly states are not based on scientific certainty, but rather deductive logic and circumstantial evidence. 

According to Prof. Wiesendanger and the 100-page report (available here on Research Gate) he has released, he has come to the following conclusion.

“both the number and quality of the circumstantial evidence point to a laboratory accident at the virological institute in the city of Wuhan as the cause of the current pandemic.”

He bases this claim on the following statements. (the statements below are reproduced from swprs.org)

No intermediate host animal has been identified that could have facilitated the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 pathogens from bats to humans. ergo, the zoonotic theory as a possible explanation for the pandemic has no sound scientific basis.

The SARS-CoV-2 viruses possess special cell receptor binding domains combined with a special (furin) cleavage site of the coronavirus spike protein. Both properties together were previously unknown in coronaviruses and indicate a non-natural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen.

Bats were not offered for sale at the suspected fish market in the center of Wuhan city. However, the Wuhan City Virological Institute has one of the world’s largest collections of bat pathogens, which originated from distant caves in southern Chinese provinces. It is extremely unlikely that bats from this distance of nearly 2,000 km would have naturally made their way to Wuhan, only to cause a global pandemic in close proximity to this virological institute.

A research group at the Wuhan City Virological Institute has been genetically manipulating coronaviruses for many years with the goal of making them more contagious, dangerous, and deadly to humans. This has been documented in the scientific literature by numerous publications.

Significant safety deficiencies existed at the Wuhan City Virological Institute even before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which have been documented.

There are numerous direct references to a laboratory origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. For example, a young female scientist at the virology institute in Wuhan is believed to have been the first to become infected. There are also numerous indications that as early as October 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen spread from the virological institute to the city of Wuhan and beyond. Furthermore, there are indications that the virological institute was investigated by the Chinese authorities in the first half of October 2019.

Taken on their own, these claims would be easy to dismiss, but bundled together they make a very convincing case for pointing to the laboratory in Wuhan as the most likely source of the outbreak. It’s a very serious allegation with far-reaching implications if it is true and it, therefore, warrants serious attention.

As to Motivation

Why would a respected nanotechnology expert with an incredibly long and illustrious career suddenly branch out into a field he openly admits to having no experience in? Why would he risk his career by publishing a controversial report that is clearly not evidence-based on a hugely controversial topic he knows nothing about? It’s the first and most obvious question and one that we cannot answer with certainty, but we can speculate.

There has been growing concern in medical and scientific circles about “Gain-of-Function (GOF)” research. Essentially, this research focuses on weaponizing viruses or exploiting the virus to make it more lethal to its human hosts. In scientific terms, the research seeks to increase the pathogenicity of a virus. There are elements within the scientific community who are almost militant in their desperation to stop this type of research and with good reason.

Arguably, being able to pin a pandemic on this type of research would stop it in its tracks, but to achieve that you would need to conclusively prove that the Wuhan laboratory was engaged in GOF research, that they had access to a coronavirus, that they were able to successfully increase its pathogenicity, and finally, that they accidentally or otherwise, released the virus into the human population.

That’s a tall order, particularly after the WHO inspectors on the ground in China released a statement just ten days ago in which they urged scientists to dismiss theories about a laboratory as the origin, stating the possibility was ‘extremely unlikely’. Our professor has however apparently been working on his report for over a year, so the timing of the WHO advisory may simply have been an unfortunate coincidence.

Let’s look now to the claims made, and examine them individually.

Fact or Fallacy

‘the zoonotic theory as a possible explanation for the pandemic has no sound scientific basis.’

We won’t waste much time on this. Suggesting that simply because an agent has not yet been located for the transmission, that one does not exist, is simply flawed logic. The theory of animal to human transmission does have precedence and that is why it must be explored to its conclusion. We are a long way from that point.

a special (furin) cleavage site of the coronavirus spike protein indicates a non-natural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen

Again, flawed logic, from someone who should know not to confuse correlation with causation. Simply because no previous instance exists doesn’t imply the virus was manufactured by humans, nor does this allow us to make any other inferences. You could argue aliens developed it, based on the same logic, so sorry, but no. Strike 2.

It is extremely unlikely that bats from this distance of nearly 2,000 km would have naturally made their way to Wuhan

In 2012 a coronavirus was discovered in bats living in a mine in Mojiang in China, some 1200 km’s (not 2000 as claimed) from Wuhan. Labeled RaTG13 by scientists, the virus was the closest know version of a coronavirus to be discovered in animals. It wasn’t, and still isn’t, the SAR-CoV2 virus. We still haven’t found the carrier, if it originated in animals, as is currently suspected by the majority of scientists.

WHO scientists have also highlighted in their recent report that contact between bats and people in the Wuhan area is uncommon.

The fact this is the currently preferred theory doesn’t preclude all others and science has been known to be wrong before, ask Galileo. So while we can agree that bats may be ruled out at a later date, it still doesn’t point conclusively to the laboratory as the source. It merely rules out bats as the likely source.

The Wuhan City Virological Institute has been genetically manipulating coronaviruses for many years with the goal of making them more contagious, dangerous, and deadly to humans

It’s interesting that the publication lists no links to the ‘numerous reports documented in the medical literature that it refers to. The Wuhan Institute of Virology did in fact have access to the coronavirus and it would have engaged in research on the virus. Given the purpose behind the Institute, it would be foolish to claim otherwise and the Institute has never denied possession of the coronavirus (not the SARS-CoV2 strain). 

They have however repeatedly insisted that there were no safety lapses that could have resulted in any virus escaping from the laboratory. The institute is home to the China Center for Virus Culture Collection, the largest virus bank in Asia and which preserves more than 1,500 strains, according to its website.

Are there occasional safety issues at the laboratory? Probably, but it is unlikely they occur in the P4 wing of the institute. Safety protocols are extremely high and adhered to meticulously in areas where many of the highly lethal viruses scientists are working with, are potentially fatal if contracted. These institutes are also subject to international oversight and there is a regular presence of foreign scientists at this, and other similar institutes.

The takeaway

There is no substance to any of the professors claims and it is our opinion that he should retract his conjectural report.

Scientists are highly skeptical of Dr. Roland Wiesendanger’s, and he openly admitted to ZDF, a German newspaper, that the report was not based on science, but merely designed to spark public debate. While no one can, at this point, claim with complete certainty that the laboratory in Wuhan was not involved in the origins of the pandemic, the opposite is equally true, and to engage in this kind of false news is professionally disingenuous and suggest alternate motives.

We’d like to suggest to the professor, that abusing scientific publications for the purposes of “sparking public debate” is in fact highly questionable. We would further argue that accusing a foreign power and your foreign compatriots of unleashing a pandemic they “engineered” is both irresponsible and dangerous, particularly if your allegations are based on circumstantial evidence. Allegations, that are, in effect, baseless.

We were under the impression the professor dealt with science and evidence-based conclusions. Clearly, this is no longer the case. May we respectfully remind him, that if he continues to attempt to emulate Sherlock Holmes, he has not yet exhausted the impossible, and so, cannot begin to claim the improbable. His current course of action does a disservice to both science and his profession and will serve only as fuel for future conspiracy theories.

Not happy with our simplistic public-facing breakdown. Let’s see what an expert in Covid research says on the topic. A Medika Life author and SARS-CoV2 researcher, Julian Willett, MD adds his voice.

Dr. Roland Wiesendanger is a PhD physicist and lacks medical qualifications. His personal research is not medical related (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=roland+wiesendanger). Expert opinions on topics tend to be from those who have extensive experience in a given discipline. His claims make being an expert even more important (especially firm scientific evidence is further required). The WHO and its health team, made up of physicians, physician-scientists, and scientists all specializing in medical topics and often virology have deemed that it is extremely unlikely that the virus came from a lab.

I personally am a physician-scientist investigating COVID-19 genetics, for my Ph.D., both the virus’s genetics and the human genetics associated with the virus. I trust the WHO’s findings and agree with the responses to Dr. Wiesendanger’s points by the author of this article. There are already increased hate crimes done against those of Asian ancestry due to it publicly arising first in Asia. Such a work by Dr. Wiesendanger utilizing baseless claims only provides fuel to such hate.

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