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Covid-19 Mass Vaccination leading to virulent strains - Peter Myers Digest

(1) Covid-19 Mass Vaccination leading to virulent strains - Geert Vanden Bossche(2) Chinese labs were performing gain-of-function research on a much larger scale than was publicly disclosed(3) Email between Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric on Lancet & "conspiracy theories" re origin(4) WHO’s investigative commission includes Peter Daszak(5) WSJ Editorial Board: WHO needs to start over in investigating the origins of the coronavirus(6) Decorated Scientist Roland Wiesendanger Says Wuhan Lab Caused Pandemic, Contradicting WHO(1) Covid-19 Mass Vaccination leading to virulent strains - Geert Vanden Bosschehttps://dryburgh.com/geert-vanden-bossche-open-letter-to-who-halt-all-covid-19-mass-vaccination/Halt All Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Immediately (Open Letter to the WHO) — Vaccine Research ExpertPOSTED ONMAR 7, 2021Geert Vanden BosscheMarch 3 Tweet EXTREMELY ConcernedGeert Vanden Bossche, PhD, DVM, is a vaccine research expert. He has a long list of companies and organizations he's worked with on vaccine discovery and preclinical research, including GSK, Novartis, Solvay Biologicals, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Vanden Bossche also coordinated the Ebola vaccine program at GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization).He is board-certified in Virology and Microbiology, the author of over 30 publications, and inventor of a patent application for universal vaccines. He currently works as an independent vaccine research consultant.MARCH 6, 2021"One could only think of very few other strategies to achieve the same level of efficiency in turning a relatively harmless virus into a bioweapon of mass destruction."GEERT VANDEN BOSSCHVaccine Research ExpertWe're Risking Creating a Global, "Uncontrollable Monster"Dr Bossche believes that vaccinologists, clinicians, and scientists are only focusing on short-term results at the individual level and not the consequences at the global population level, which he believes will soon become evident. Evident in the form of having transformed "a quite harmless virus into an uncontrollable monster".His concern rests on 'immune escape'. For those needing an quick introduction to the topic, read Jemma Moran's article Mutant variations and the danger of lockdowns.For those needing a sweeping overview of our immunology, watch Ivor Cummins interview Creon Levit, Ep81 The Amazing Immunology of our Viral Issue – Incredible Science at Work! Many physicians would also benefit from watching this (note: the average physician receives exceptionally little training in immunology and virology). Those wishing to dig deeper into immunology in general, read for example, Roitt's Essential Immunology, Thirteenth Edition.Bossche states that the multiple emerging, "much more infectious" viral variants, are already examples of "immune escape" from our 'innate immunity', and were most-likely created by the government interventions themselves; the so-called Non-Pharmacological Interventions (NPIs) – i.e. lockdowns and cloth facial coverings. Unofficially, but also more aptly known as the Non-Scientific Interventions.He believes that:Ongoing mass vaccination deployments are "highly-likely to further enhance 'adaptive' immune escape as none of the current vaccines will prevent replication/transmission of viral variants"As such, "The more we use these vaccines for immunizing people in the midst of a pandemic, the more infectious the virus will become".And "With increasing infectiousness comes an increased likelihood of viral resistance to the vaccines".He claims his beliefs are basic principles taught in a student's first vaccinology class – "One shouldn't use a prophylactic vaccine in populations exposed to high infectious pressure (which is now certainly the case as multiple highly infectious variants are currently circulating").He states that to "fully escape", the highly mutable virus, "only needs to add another few mutations in its receptor-binding domain".People Stand to Lose their Natural 'Innate' Immunity as a Consequence of the MeddlingHis real worry though, or as he puts it, "beyond worried", is that the humankind may severely damage it's own, natural 'innate' immunity, because of the mass deployment of vaccination programs at this critical juncture. Our 'innate' immunity would be lost (a rich, variant-nonspecific, form of natural immunity).It would also mean that vaccine-mediated protection would be lost.Geert Vanden Bossche Beyond Worried KeynoteScreenshot of Bossche Keynote – Vaccine Summit (Ohio), March 2ndAll whilst new, more dangerous variants would be getting actively breed by mankind. In effect, "turning a relatively harmless virus into a bioweapon of mass destruction".Further Pre-NotesVanden Bossche – Vaccine Summit Ohio, March 2nd), keynote slides PDF, 'Why should current Covid-19 vaccines not be used for mass vaccination during a pandemic?'Vanden Bossche – 'We must halt all ongoing Covid-19 mass vaccination campaigns as a temporary health benefit to the most vulnerable groups does not justify a public health disaster of international concern', summary of the manuscript PDF, February 26th. Note "In our naïve and simplistic attempt to prevent the pandemic from running its natural course, we are in fact providing the beast with an even much better opportunity to escape host immunity than natural infection does."Below is his open letter to the WHO, issued March 6th, 2021. I've only added more paragraph breaks and blue highlights, to help others be able to process faster.A PDF version is available.Join My Telegram Channelt.me/dryburghtelegramtelegramOpen Letter to the WHO: Immediately Halt All Covid-19 Mass VaccinationsGeert Vanden Bossche, DMV, PhD, independent virologist and vaccine expert, formerly employed at GAVI and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.To all authorities, scientists and experts around the world, to whom this concerns: the entre world population.I am all but an antivaxxer. As a scientist I do not usually appeal to any platform of this kind to make a stand on vaccine-related topics. As a dedicated virologist and vaccine expert I only make an exception when health authorities allow vaccines to be administered in ways that threaten public health, most certainly when scientific evidence is being ignored.The present extremely critical situation forces me to spread this emergency call. As the unprecedented extent of human intervention in the Covid-19 pandemic is now at risk of resulting in a global catastrophe without equal, this call cannot sound loudly and strongly enough.As stated, I am not against vaccination. On the contrary, I can assure you that each of the current vaccines have been designed, developed and manufactured by brilliant and competent scientists. However, this type of prophylactic vaccines are completely inappropriate, and even highly dangerous, when used in mass vaccination campaigns during a viral pandemic.Vaccinologists, scientists and clinicians are blinded by the positive short-term effects in individual patents, but don't seem to bother about the disastrous consequences for global health. Unless I am scientifically proven wrong, it is difficult to understand how current human interventions will prevent circulating variants from turning into a wild monster.Racing against the clock, I am completing my scientific manuscript, the publication of which is, unfortunately, likely to come too late given the ever increasing threat from rapidly spreading, highly infectious variants. This is why I decided to already post a summary of my findings as well as my keynote speech at the recent Vaccine Summit in Ohio on LinkedIn.Last Monday, I provided international health organizations, including the WHO, with my analysis of the current pandemic as based on scientifically informed insights in the immune biology of Covid-19. Given the level of emergency, I urged them to consider my concerns and to initiate a debate on the detrimental consequences of further 'viral immune escape'.For those who are no experts in this field, I am attaching below a more accessible and comprehensible version of the science behind this insidious phenomenon.While there is no time to spare, I have not received any feedback thus far. Experts and politicians have remained silent while obviously still eager to talk about relaxing infection prevention rules and 'springtime freedom'. My statements are based on nothing else but science. They shall only be contradicted by science.While one can barely make any incorrect scientific statements without being criticized by peers, it seems like the elite of scientists who are currently advising our world leaders prefer to stay silent. Sufficient scientific evidence has been brought to the table.Unfortunately, it remains untouched by those who have the power to act. How long can one ignore the problem when there is at present massive evidence that viral immune escape is now threatening humanity? We can hardly say we didn't know – or were not warned.In this agonizing letter I put all of my reputation and credibility at stake. I expect from you, guardians of mankind, at least the same. It is of utmost urgency. Do open the debate. By all means: turn the tide!Why mass vaccination amidst a pandemic creates an irrepressible monsterTHE key question is: why does nobody seem to bother about viral immune escape? Let me try to explain this by means of a more easily understood phenomenon: Antimicrobial resistance. One can easily extrapolate this scourge to resistance to our self-made 'antiviral antibiotics'. Indeed, antibodies (Abs) produced by our own immune system can be considered self-made antiviral antibiotics, regardless of whether they are part of our innate immune system (so-called 'natural' Abs') or elicited in response to specific pathogens (resulting in so-called 'acquired' Abs).Natural Abs are not germ-specific whereas acquired Abs are specifically directed at the invading pathogen. At birth, our innate immune system is 'unexperienced' but well-established. It protects us from a multitude of pathogens, thereby preventing these pathogens from causing disease.As the innate immune system cannot remember the pathogens it encountered (innate immunity has no so-called 'immunological memory'), we can only continue to rely on it provided we keep it 'trained' well enough.Training is achieved by regular exposure to a myriad of environmental agents, including pathogens. However, as we age, we will increasingly face situations where our innate immunity (often called 'the first line of immune defense') is not strong enough to halt the pathogen at the portal of entry (mostly mucosal barriers like respiratory or intestinal epithelia).When this happens, the immune system has to rely on more specialized effectors of our immune system (i.e., antigen-specific Abs and T cells) to fight the pathogen. So, as we grow up, we increasingly mount pathogen-specific immunity, including highly specific Abs. As those have stronger affinity for the pathogen (e.g., virus) and can reach high concentrations, they can quite easily outcompete our natural Abs for binding to the pathogen/virus.It is precisely this type of highly specific, high affinity Abs that current Covid-19 vaccines are inducing. Of course, the noble purpose of these Abs is to protect us against Covid-19. So, why then should there be a major concern using these vaccines to fight Covid-19?Well, similar to the rules applying to classical antimicrobial antibiotics, it is paramount that our self-made 'antiviral antibiotics' are made available in sufficient concentration and are tailored at the specific features of our enemy.This is why in case of bacterial disease it is critical to not only chose the right type of antibiotic (based on the results from an antibiogram) but to also take the antibiotic for long enough (according to the prescription).Failure to comply with these requirements is at risk of granting microbes a chance to survive and hence, may cause the disease to fare up. A very similar mechanism may also apply to viruses, especially to viruses that can easily and rapidly mutate (which is, for example, the case with Coronaviruses); when the pressure exerted by the army's (read: population's) immune defense starts to threaten viral replication and transmission, the virus will take on another coat so that it can no longer be easily recognized and, therefore, attacked by the host immune system. The virus is now able to escape immunity (so-called: 'immune escape').However, the virus can only rely on this strategy provided it still has room enough to replicate. Viruses, in contrast to the majority of bacteria, must rely on living host cells to replicate. This is why the occurrence of 'escape mutants' isn't too worrisome as long as the likelihood for these variants to rapidly find another host is quite remote. However, that's not particularly the case during a viral pandemic!During a pandemic, the virus is spreading all over the globe with many subjects shedding and transmitting the virus (even including asymptomatic 'carriers'). The higher the viral load, the higher the likelihood for the virus to bump into subjects who haven't been infected yet or who were infected but didn't develop symptoms. Unless they are sufficiently protected by their innate immune defense (through natural Abs), they will catch Covid-19 disease as they cannot rely on other, i.e., acquired Abs.It has been extensively reported, indeed, that the increase in S (spike)-specific Abs in asymptomatically infected people is rather limited and only short-lived. Furthermore, these Abs have not achieved full maturity.The combination of viral infection on a background of suboptimal Ab maturity and concentration enables the virus to select mutations allowing it to escape the immune pressure. The selection of those mutations preferably occurs in the S protein as this is the viral protein that is responsible for viral infectiousness.As the selected mutations endow the virus with increased infectious capacity, it now becomes much easier for the virus to cause severe disease in infected subjects. The more people develop symptomatic disease, the better the virus can secure its propagation and perpetuation (people who get severe disease will shed more virus and for a longer period of time than asymptomatically infected subjects do).Unfortunately, enough, the short-lived rise in S-specific Abs does, however, surface to bypass people's innate/natural Ab. Those are put out of business as their affinity for S is lower than the affinity of S-specific Abs. This is to say that with an increasing rate of infection in the population, the number of subjects who get infected while experiencing a momentary increase in S-specific Abs will steadily increase.Consequently, the number of subjects who get infected while experiencing a momentary decrease in their innate immunity will increase. As a result, a steadily increasing number of subjects will become more susceptible to getting severe disease instead of showing only mild symptoms (i.e., limited to the upper respiratory tract) or no symptoms at all.During a pandemic, especially youngsters will be affected by this evolution as their natural Abs are not yet largely suppressed by a panoply of 'acquired', antigen-specific Abs. Natural Abs, and natural immunity in general, play a critical role in protecting us from pathogens as they constitute our first line of immune defense. In contrast to acquired immunity, innate immune responses protect against a large spectrum of pathogens (so don't compromise or sacrifice your innate immune defense!).Because natural Abs and innate immune cells recognize a diversified spectrum of foreign (i.e., non-self) agents (only some of which have pathogenic potential), it's important, indeed, to keep it sufficiently exposed to environmental challenges.By keeping the innate immune system (which, unfortunately, has no memory!) TRAINED, we can much more easily resist germs which have real pathogenic potential. It has, for example, been reported and scientifically proven that exposure to other, quite harmless Coronaviruses causing a 'common cold' can provide protection, although short-lived, against Covid-19 and its loyal henchmen (i.e., the more infectious variants).Suppression of innate immunity, especially in the younger age groups, can, therefore, become very problematic. There can be no doubt that lack of exposure due to stringent containment measures implemented as of the beginning of the pandemic has not been beneficial to keeping people's innate immune system well trained.As if this was not already heavily compromising innate immune defense in this population segment, there comes yet another force into play that will dramatically enhance morbidity and mortality rates in the younger age groups: MASS VACCINATION of the ELDERLY.The more extensively the later age group will be vaccinated and hence, protected, the more the virus is forced to continue causing disease in younger age groups.This is only going to be possible provided it escapes to the S-specific Abs that are momentarily raised in previously asymptomatically infected subjects. If the virus manages to do so, it can benefit from the (momentarily) suppressed innate immunity, thereby causing disease in an increasing number of these subjects and ensuring its own propagation.Selecting targeted mutations in the S protein is, therefore, the way to go in order for the virus to enhance its infectiousness in candidates that are prone to getting the disease because of a transient weakness of their innate immune defense.But in the meantime, we're also facing a huge problem in vaccinated people as they're now more and more confronted with infectious variants displaying a type of S protein that is increasingly different from the S edition comprised with the vaccine (the later edition originates from the original, much less infectious strain at the beginning of the pandemic).The more variants become infectious (i.e., as a result of blocking access of the virus to the vaccinated segment of the population), the less vaccinal Abs will protect. Already now, lack of protection is leading to viral shedding and transmission in vaccine recipients who are exposed to these more infectious strains (which, by the way, increasingly dominate the field).This is how we are currently turning vaccines into asymptomatic carriers shedding infectious variants.At some point, in a likely very near future, it's going to become more profitable (in term of 'return on selection investment') for the virus to just add another few mutations (maybe just one or two) to the S protein of viral variants (already endowed with multiple mutations enhancing infectiousness) in an attempt to further strengthen its binding to the receptor (ACE-2) expressed on the surface of permissive epithelial cells.This will now allow the new variant to outcompete vaccinal Abs for binding to the ACE receptor. This is to say that at this stage, it would only take very few additional targeted mutations within the viral receptor-binding domain to fully resist S-specific ant-Covid-19 Abs, regardless whether the later are elicited by the vaccine or by natural infection.At that stage, the virus will, indeed, have managed to gain access to a huge reservoir of subjects who have now become highly susceptible to disease as their S-specific Abs have now become useless in terms of protection but still manage to provide for long-lived suppression of their innate immunity (i.e., natural infection, and especially vaccination, elicit relatively long-lived specific Ab titers). The susceptible reservoir comprises both, vaccinated people and those who're left with sufficient S-specific Abs due to previous Covid-19 disease).So, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED for Covid-19 but a DISASTROUS SITUATION for all vaccinated subjects and Covid-19 seropositive people as they've now lost both, their acquired and innate immune defense against Covid-19 (while highly infectious strains are circulating!).That's 'one small step for the virus, one giant catastrophe for mankind', which is to say that we'll have whipped up the virus in the younger population up to a level that it now takes little effort for Covid-19 to transform into a highly infectious virus that completely ignores both the innate arm of our immune system as well as the adaptive/acquired one (regardless of whether the acquired Abs resulted from vaccination or natural infection).The effort for the virus is now becoming even more negligible given that many vaccine recipients are now exposed to highly infectious viral variants while having received only a single shot of the vaccine.Hence, they are endowed with Abs that have not yet acquired optimal functionality. There is no need to explain that this is just going to further enhance immune escape. Basically, we'll very soon be confronted with a super-infectious virus that completely resists our most precious defense mechanism: The human immune system. From all of the above, it's becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how the consequences of the extensive and erroneous human intervention in this pandemic are not going to wipe out large parts of our human population.One could only think of very few other strategies to achieve the same level of efficiency in turning a relatively harmless virus into a bioweapon of mass destruction.It's certainly also worth mentioning that mutations in the S protein (i.e., exactly the same protein that is subject to selection of escape mutations) are known to enable Coronaviruses to cross species barriers.This is to say that the risk that vaccine-mediated immune escape could allow the virus to jump to other animal species, especially industrial livestock (e.g., pig and poultry farms), is not negligible. These species are already known to host several different Coronaviruses and are usually housed in farms with high stocking density.Similar to the situation with influenza virus, these species could than serve as an additional reservoir for SARS-COVID-2 virus.As pathogens have co-evolved with the host immune system, natural pandemics of acute self-limiting viral infections have been shaped such as to take a toll on human lives that is not higher than strictly required.Due to human intervention, the course of this pandemic has been thoroughly disturbed as of the very beginning. Widespread and stringent infection prevention measures combined with mass vaccination campaigns using inadequate vaccines will undoubtedly lead to a situation where the pandemic is getting increasingly 'out of control'.Paradoxically, the only intervention that could offer a perspective to end this pandemic (other than to let it run its disastrous course) is …VACCINATION. Of course, the type of vaccines to be used would be completely different of conventional vaccines in that they're not inducing the usual suspects, i.e., B and T cells, but NK cells.There is, indeed, compelling scientific evidence that these cells play a key role in facilitating complete elimination of Covid-19 at an early stage of infection in asymptomatically infected subjects.NK cells are part of the cellular arm of our innate immune system and, alike natural Abs, they are capable of recognizing and attacking a broad and diversified spectrum of pathogenic agents.There is a sound scientific rationale to assume that it is possible to 'prime' NK cells in ways for them to recognize and kill Coronaviruses at large (include all their variants) at an early stage of infection. NK cells have increasingly been described to be endowed with the capacity to acquire immunological memory.By educating these cells in ways that enable them to durably recognize and target Coronavirus-infected cells, our immune system could be perfectly armed for a targeted attack to the universe of Coronaviruses prior to exposure.As NK cell-based immune defense provides sterilizing immunity and allows for broad-spectrum and fast protection, it is reasonable to assume that harnessing our innate immune cells is going to be the only type of human intervention left to halt the dangerous spread of highly infectious Covid-19 variants.If we, human beings, are committed to perpetuating our species, we have no choice left but to eradicate these highly infectious viral variants. This will, indeed, require large vaccination campaigns. However, NK cell-based vaccines will primarily enable our natural immunity to be better prepared (memory!) and to induce herd immunity (which is exactly the opposite of what current Covid-19 vaccines do as those increasingly turn vaccine recipients into asymptomatic carriers who are shedding virus).So, there is not one second left for gears to be switched and to replace the current killer vaccines by life-saving vaccines.I am appealing to the WHO and all stakeholders involved, no matter their conviction, to immediately declare such action as THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY OF INTERNATIONAL CONCERN.Join Me On Mindsminds.com/dryburghmindsmindsMore Resources:Apocalypse 2020: Draconian Censorship, Non-Scientific Lockdowns, Media Deception, Rise of Technocracy — Jay W. Richards"I would probably prefer to have natural immunity" — Dr Byram Bridle (Viral Immunologist)Request for Expedited Federal Investigation Into Scientific Fraud in Public Health Policies — Open Letter(2) Chinese labs were performing gain-of-function research on a much larger scale than was publicly disclosedhttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322In 2018, Diplomats Warned of Risky Coronavirus Experiments in a Wuhan Lab. No One Listened.After seeing a risky lab, they wrote a cable warning to Washington. But it was ignored.By JOSH ROGIN03/08/2021 04:30 AM ESTJosh Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section at the Washington Post. He is the author of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century, from which this is adapted.On January 15, in its last days, President Donald Trump's State Department put out a statement with serious claims about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. The statement said the U.S. intelligence community had evidence that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory were sick with Covid-like symptoms in autumn 2019—implying the Chinese government had hidden crucial information about the outbreak for months—and that the WIV lab, despite "presenting itself as a civilian institution," was conducting secret research projects with the Chinese military. The State Department alleged a Chinese government cover-up and asserted that "Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the world from this deadly virus, and the next one."The exact origin of the new coronavirus remains a mystery to this day, but the search for answers is not just about assigning blame. Unless the source is located, the true path of the virus can't be traced, and scientists can't properly study the best ways to prevent future outbreaks.The original Chinese government story, that the pandemic spread from a seafood market in Wuhan, was the first and therefore most widely accepted theory. But cracks in that theory slowly emerged throughout the late winter and spring of 2020. The first known case of Covid-19 in Wuhan, it was revealed in February, had no connection to the market. The Chinese government closed the market in January and sanitized it before proper samples could be taken. It wouldn't be until May that the Chinese Centers for Disease Control disavowed the market theory, admitting it had no idea how the outbreak began, but by then it had become the story of record, in China and internationally.In the spring of 2020, inside the U.S. government, some officials began to see and collect evidence of a different, perhaps more troubling theory—that the outbreak had a connection to one of the laboratories in Wuhan, among them the WIV, a world leading center of research on bat coronaviruses.To some inside the government, the name of the laboratory was familiar. Its research on bat viruses had already drawn the attention of U.S. diplomats and officials at the Beijing Embassy in late 2017, prompting them to alert Washington that the lab's own scientists had reported "a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory."But their cables to Washington were ignored.When I published the warnings from these cables in April 2020, they added fuel to a debate that had already gone from a scientific and forensic question to a hot-button political issue, as the previously internal U.S. government debate over the lab's possible connection spilled into public view. The next day, Trump said he was "investigating," and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Beijing to "come clean" about the origin of the outbreak. Two weeks later, Pompeo said there was "enormous evidence" pointing to the lab, but he didn't provide any of said evidence. As Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping's relationship unraveled and administration officials openly blamed the Wuhan lab, the U.S.-China relationship only went further downhill.As the pandemic set in worldwide, the origin story was largely set aside in the public coverage of the crisis. But the internal government debate continued, now over whether the United States should release more information about what it knew about the lab and its possible connection to the outbreak. The January 15 statement was cleared by the intelligence community, but the underlying data was still held secret. Likely changing no minds, it was meant as a signal—showing that circumstantial evidence did exist, and that the theory deserved further investigation.Now, the new Joe Biden team is walking a tightrope, calling on Beijing to release more data, while declining to endorse or dispute the Trump administration's controversial claims. The origin story remains entangled both in domestic politics and U.S.-China relations. Last month, National security adviser Jake Sullivan issued a statement expressing "deep concerns" about a forthcoming report from a team assembled by the World Health Organization that toured Wuhan—even visiting the lab—but was denied crucial data by the Chinese authorities.But more than four years ago, long before this question blew up into an international point of tension between China and the United States, the story started with a simple warning.***In late 2017, top health and science officials at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing attended a conference in the Chinese capital. There, they saw a presentation on a new study put out by a group of Chinese scientists, including several from the Wuhan lab, in conjunction with the U.S. National Institutes of Health.Since the 2002 outbreak of SARS—the deadly disease caused by a coronavirus transmitted by bats in China—scientists around the world had been looking for ways to predict and limit future outbreaks of similar diseases. To aid the effort, the NIH had funded a number of projects that involved the WIV scientists, including much of the Wuhan lab's work with bat coronaviruses. The new study was entitled "Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat SARS-Related Coronaviruses Provides New Insights into the Origin of SARS Coronavirus."These researchers, the American officials learned, had found a population of bats from caves in Yunnan province that gave them insight into how SARS coronaviruses originated and spread. The researchers boasted that they may have found the cave where the original SARS coronavirus originated. But all the U.S. diplomats cared about was that these scientists had discovered three new viruses that had a unique characteristic: they contained a "spike protein" that was particularly good at grabbing on to a specific receptor in human lung cells known as an ACE2 receptor. That means the viruses were potentially very dangerous for humans—and that these viruses were now in a lab with which they, the U.S. diplomats, were largely unfamiliar.Knowing the significance of the Wuhan virologists' discovery, and knowing that the WIV's top-level biosafety laboratory (BSL-4) was relatively new, the U.S. Embassy health and science officials in Beijing decided to go to Wuhan and check it out. In total, the embassy sent three teams of experts in late 2017 and early 2018 to meet with the WIV scientists, among them Shi Zhengli, often referred to as the "bat woman" because of her extensive experience studying coronaviruses found in bats.When they sat down with the scientists at the WIV, the American diplomats were shocked by what they heard. The Chinese researchers told them they didn't have enough properly trained technicians to safely operate their BSL-4 lab. The Wuhan scientists were asking for more support to get the lab up to top standards.The diplomats wrote two cables to Washington reporting on their visits to the Wuhan lab. More should be done to help the lab meet top safety standards, they said, and they urged Washington to get on it. They also warned that the WIV researchers had found new bat coronaviruses could easily infect human cells, and which used the same cellular route that had been used by the original SARS coronavirus.Taken together, those two points—a particularly dangerous groups of viruses being studied in a lab with real safety problems—were intended as a warning about a potential public-health crisis, one of the cable writers told me. They kept the cables unclassified because they wanted more people back home to be able to read and share them, according to the cable writer. But there was no response from State Department headquarters and they were never made public. And as U.S.-China tensions rose over the course of 2018, American diplomats lost access to labs such as the one at the WIV."The cable was a warning shot," one U.S. official said. "They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on." The world would be paying attention soon enough—but by then, it would be too late.The cables were not leaked to me by any Trump administration political official, as many in the media wrongly assumed. In fact, Secretary of State Pompeo was angry when he found out about the leak. He needed to keep up the veneer of good relations with China, and these revelations would make that job more difficult. Trump and President Xi had agreed during their March 26 phone call to halt the war of words that had erupted when a Chinese diplomat alleged on Twitter that the outbreak might have been caused by the U.S. Army. That had prompted Trump to start calling it the "China virus," deliberately blaming Beijing in a racist way. Xi had warned Trump in that call that China's level of cooperation on releasing critical equipment in America's darkest moment would be jeopardized by continued accusations.After receiving the cables from a source, I called around to get reactions from other American officials I trusted. What I found was that, just months into the pandemic, a large swath of the government already believed the virus had escaped from the WIV lab, rather than having leaped from an animal to a human at the Wuhan seafood market or some other random natural setting, as the Chinese government had claimed.Any theory of the pandemic's origins had to account for the fact that the outbreak of the novel coronavirus—or, by its official name, SARS-CoV-2—first appeared in Wuhan, on the doorstep of the lab that possessed one of the world's largest collections of bat coronaviruses and that possessed the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, a virus known as RaTG13 that Shi identified in her lab.Shi, in her March interview, said that when she was first told about the virus outbreak in her town, she thought the officials had gotten it wrong, because she would have guessed that such a virus would break out in southern China, where most of the bats live. "I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China," she said.By April, U.S. officials at the NSC and the State Department had begun to compile circumstantial evidence that the WIV lab, rather than the seafood market, was actually the source of the virus. The former explanation for the outbreak was entirely plausible, they felt, whereas the latter would be an extreme coincidence. But the officials couldn't say that out loud because there wasn't firm proof either way. And if the U.S. government accused China of lying about the outbreak without firm evidence, Beijing would surely escalate tensions even more, which meant that Americans might not get the medical supplies that were desperately needed to combat the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States.Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton seemed not to have been concerned about any of those considerations. On February 16, he had offered a totally unfounded theory of his own, claiming on Fox News that the virus might have come from China's biowarfare program—suggesting, in other words, that it had been engineered deliberately to kill humans. This wasn't supported by any known research: To this day, scientists largely agree that the virus was not "engineered" to be deadly; SARS-CoV-2 showed no evidence of direct genetic manipulation. Furthermore, the WIV lab had published some of its research about bat coronaviruses that can infect humans—not exactly the level of secrecy you would expect for a clandestine weapons program.As Cotton's speculation vaulted the origin story into the news in an incendiary new way, he undermined the ongoing effort in other parts of the U.S. government to pinpoint the exact origins and nature of the coronavirus pandemic. From then on, journalists and politicians alike would conflate the false idea of the coronavirus being a Chinese bioweapon with the plausible idea that the virus had accidentally been released from the WIV lab, making it a far more politically loaded question to pursue.***After I published a Washington Post column on the Wuhan cables on April 14, Pompeo publicly called on Beijing to "come clean" about the origin of the outbreak and weeks later declared there was "enormous evidence" to that effect beyond the Wuhan cables themselves. But he refused to produce any other proof.At the same time, some members of the intelligence community leaked to my colleagues that they had discovered "no firm evidence" that the outbreak originated in the lab. That was true in a sense. Deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger had asked the intelligence community to look for evidence of all possible scenarios for the outbreak, including the market or a lab accident, but they hadn't found any firm links to either. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There was a gap in the intelligence. And the intelligence community didn't know either way.Large parts of the scientific community also decried my report, pointing to the fact that natural spillovers have been the cause of other viral outbreaks, and that they were the culprit more often than accidents. But many of the scientists who spoke out to defend the lab were Shi's research partners and funders, like the head of the global public health nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak; their research was tied to hers, and if the Wuhan lab were implicated in the pandemic, they would have to answer a lot of tough questions.Likewise, the American scientists who knew and worked with Shi could not say for sure her lab was unconnected to the outbreak, because there's no way they could know exactly what the WIV lab was doing outside their cooperative projects. Beijing threatened Australia and the EU for even suggesting an independent investigation into the origins of the virus.In May, Chinese CDC officials declared on Chinese state media that they had ruled out the possibility that the seafood market was the origin of the virus, completely abandoning the original official story. As for the "bat woman" herself, Shi didn't think the lab accident theory was so crazy. In her March interview, she described frantically searching her own lab's records after learning of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. "Could they have come from our lab?" she recalled asking herself.Shi said she was relieved when she didn't find the new coronavirus in her files. "That really took a load off my mind," she said. "I had not slept a wink in days." Of course, if she had found the virus, she likely would not have been able to admit it, given that the Chinese government was going around the world insisting the lab had not been involved in the outbreak.***A key argument of those Chinese and American scientists disputing the lab accident theory is that Chinese researchers had performed their work out in the open and had disclosed the coronavirus research they were performing. This argument was used to attack anyone who didn't believe the Chinese scientists' firm denials their labs could possibly have been responsible for the outbreak.But one senior administration official told me that many officials in various parts of the U.S. government, especially the NSC and the State Department, came to believe that these researchers had not been as forthcoming as had been claimed.What they were worried about was something called "gain-of-function" research, in which the virulence or transmissibility of dangerous pathogens is deliberately increased. The purpose is to help scientists predict how viruses might evolve in ways that hurt humans before it happens in nature. But by bypassing pathogens' natural evolutionary cycles, these experiments create risks of a human-made outbreak if a lab accident were to occur. For this reason, the Obama administration issued a moratorium on gain-of-function experiments in October 2014.The Wuhan Institute of Virology had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions. But the official told me the U.S. government had evidence that Chinese labs were performing gain-of-function research on a much larger scale than was publicly disclosed, meaning they were taking more risks in more labs than anyone outside China was aware of. This insight, in turn, fed into the lab-accident hypothesis in a new and troubling way.A little-noticed study was released in early July 2020 by a group of Chinese researchers in Beijing, including several affiliated with the Academy of Military Medical Science. These scientists said they had created a new model for studying SARS-CoV-2 by creating mice with human-like lung characteristics by using the CRISPR gene-editing technology to give the mice lung cells with the human ACE2 receptor — the cell receptor that allowed coronaviruses to so easily infect human lungs.After consultations with experts, some U.S. officials came to believe this Beijing lab was likely conducting coronavirus experiments on mice fitted with ACE2 receptors well before the coronavirus outbreak—research they hadn't disclosed and continued not to admit to. In its January 15 statement, the State Department alleged that although the Wuhan Institute of Virology disclosed some of its participation in gain-of-function research, it has not disclosed its work on RaTG13 and "has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017." That, by itself, did not help to explain how SARS-CoV-2 originated. But it was clear that officials believed there was a lot of risky coronavirus research going on in Chinese labs that the rest of the world was simply not aware of."This was just a peek under a curtain of an entire galaxy of activity, including labs and military labs in Beijing and Wuhan playing around with coronaviruses in ACE2 mice in unsafe labs," the senior administration official said. "It suggests we are getting a peek at a body of activity that isn't understood in the West or even has precedent here."This pattern of deception and obfuscation, combined with the new revelations about how Chinese labs were handling dangerous coronaviruses in ways their Western counterparts didn't know about, led some U.S. officials to become increasingly convinced that Chinese authorities were manipulating scientific information to fit their narrative. But there was so little transparency, it was impossible for the U.S. government to prove, one way or the other. "If there was a smoking gun, the CCP [Communist Party of China] buried it along with anyone who would dare speak up about it," one U.S. official told me. "We'll probably never be able to prove it one way or the other, which was Beijing's goal all along."Back in 2017, the U.S. diplomats who had visited the lab in Wuhan had foreseen these very events, but nobody had listened and nothing had been done. "We were trying to warn that that lab was a serious danger," one of the cable writers who had visited the lab told me. "I have to admit, I thought it would be maybe a SARS-like outbreak again. If I knew it would turn out to be the greatest pandemic in human history, I would have made a bigger stink about it."(3) Email between Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric on Lancet & "conspiracy theories" re originFrom: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>@garyruskinEmail between Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric:2:19 AM · Feb 16, 2021·Twitter Web AppGary Ruskin@garyruskin"No need for you to sign the ‘Statement’ Ralph!!" New emails showmotives behind key scientists’ statement in @TheLancet condemning"conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a naturalorigin."  Via @USRightToKnow @sai_suryan http://bit.ly/3jPtrDzhttps://twitter.com/garyruskin/status/1361364446031962113(4) WHO’s investigative commission includes Peter Daszakhttps://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/02/26/origin-of-coronavirus-who.aspxWHO Investigation Into COVID-19 Origin Is Blatantly CorruptAnalysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola02/26/2021STORY AT-A-GLANCEFebruary 9, 2021, the World Health Organization’s investigative commission, tasked with identifying the origin of SARS-CoV-2, announced the Wuhan Institute of Virology and two other biosafety level 4 laboratories in Wuhan, China, had nothing to do with the COVID-19 outbreak, and that the lab-escape theory would no longer be part of the team’s investigationAccording to the WHO team and its Chinese counterparts, SARS-CoV-2 may have piggybacked its way into the Wuhan market in shipments of frozen food from other areas of China where coronavirus-carrying bats are known to reside, or another countryWHO has declared its China investigation completed, and is considering expanding its scope to look into other countries as the potential source of the virusChina was allowed to hand pick the members of the WHO’s investigative team, which includes Peter Daszak, Ph.D., who has close professional ties to the WIV and has gone on record dismissing the lab-origin theory as "pure baloney." He was also the mastermind behind the publication of a scientific statement condemning such inquiries as "conspiracy theory"Meanwhile, a Bayesian analysis study claims to show "beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived." According to the author, "It is a 99.8% probability SARS-CoV-2 came from a laboratory and only a 0.2% likelihood it came from nature"When an investigation is led by individuals with financial and professional stakes in the outcome, what happens? Nothing. And that’s where we’re at with the World Health Organization’s investigative team1 tasked with getting to the bottom of SARS-CoV-2’s origin.The WHO’s investigative commission includes Peter Daszak, Ph.D.,2 the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that has a close working relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), having outsourced several gain-of-function research projects to it. When SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in Wuhan, China, the EcoHealth Alliance was actually funding the WIV to collect and study novel bat coronaviruses.Not only has Daszak gone on public record dismissing the possibility of the pandemic being the result of a lab leak,3 calling the notion "crackpot," "preposterous" and "pure baloney,"4 he was also the mastermind behind the publication of a scientific statement, published in The Lancet and signed by 26 additional scientists, condemning such inquiries as "conspiracy theory."5,6This manufactured "scientific consensus" was then relied on by the media to "debunk" theories and evidence showing the pandemic virus most likely originated from a laboratory.WHO’s Investigative Team Dismisses Lab Origin TheoryConsidering Daszak’s personal involvement with gain-of-function research in general, and research efforts at WIV in particular, he has plenty of motivation to make sure the blame for the COVID-19 pandemic is not laid at the feet of researchers such as himself, especially those at WIV.So, it was no surprise whatsoever when the WHO, February 9, 2021, announced its investigators had concluded the WIV and two other biosafety level 4 laboratories in Wuhan had nothing to do with the COVID-19 outbreak, and that the lab-escape theory would no longer be part of the team’s investigation.7,8,9Interestingly, Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, points out that SARS-related work has also been done in BSL2 and BSL3 labs, which were excluded from the investigation.10 The team also was not equipped or designed to conduct a forensic examination of laboratory practices.11 Rather, they relied on information obtained directly from the Chinese team.According to the WHO team leader, Danish food safety and zoonosis scientist Ben Embarek, the officials at WIV "are the best ones to dismiss the claims and provide answers" about the potential for a lab leak. However, that line of reasoning hardly passes the smell test.As noted by GM Watch, it "defies common sense: Suspects in an investigation should clearly not be treated as ‘the best ones’ to dismiss any possible charges against them."12 Embarek further insisted that lab accidents are "extremely rare," hence it’s "very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place."13 Yet this is another entirely unconvincing argument.According to the Cambridge Working Group in 2014, "biosafety incidents involving regulated pathogens have been occurring on average over twice a week" in the U.S. alone,14,15 and a Beijing virology lab accidentally released the original SARS virus on no less than four separate occasions.16 Three of those four instances led to outbreaks.17Experts Condemn Conflicted WHO InquiryMany experts are now condemning the WHO’s inquiry as a sham and a political stunt to exonerate the Chinese government.18 And, at the front of this sham investigation is Daszak himself, who was hand selected by Chinese authorities to be on the WHO’s investigative team in the first place. As reported by GM Watch:19"The lengths that China is going to in order to control the WHO’s narrative was highlighted in John Sudworth’s report20 on the press conference for the BBC. It showed Chinese officials preventing him from interviewing a WHO team member after the press conference.Nobody tried to prevent him interviewing Peter Daszak, however. In fact, Daszak has given so many media interviews during the WHO team’s time in China that he has, in the words of one commentator, established himself as ‘the public voice of the WHO team.’" ...Suspicious Activity at WIV in Fall of 2019At the same time, more evidence of "suspicious activity" at the WIV just before the official announcement of the COVID-19 outbreak has also emerged. As mentioned, there are suspicions that WIV laboratory staff may have gotten sick as early as August 2019. According to a January 24, 2021, report by Australian Sky News,36 a January 16, 2021, fact sheet released by the U.S. State Department states:"The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses."The fact sheet further accuses the Chinese Communist Party of "systematically" preventing "a transparent and thorough investigation of the origin of the pandemic, instead choosing to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation," while stressing that the U.S. government still does not know where, when or how SARS-CoV-2 initially infected humans.They do not rule out a lab accident, however. The fact sheet also noted that China has a biological weapons program, and that the WIV has collaborated with the Chinese military on "secret projects."Scientific Hubris Is a Serious Threat to Us AllDecember 18, 2020, Colin David Butler,37 Ph.D., of the Australian National University, published an editorial38 in the Journal of Human Security in which he reviews the history of pandemics from antiquity through COVID-19, along with evidence supporting the natural origin and lab escape theories respectively. As noted by Butler:"If the first theory is correct then it is a powerful warning, from nature, that our species is running a great risk. If the second theory is proven then it should be considered an equally powerful, indeed frightening, signal that we are in danger, from hubris as much as from ignorance."Indeed, scientific hubris may well be at the heart of our current problem. Why are certain scientists so reluctant to admit there’s evidence of human interference? Why do they try to shut down discussion? Could it be because they’re trying to ensure the continuation of gain-of-function research, despite the risks?We’re often told that this kind of research is "necessary" in order to stay ahead of the natural evolution of viruses, and that the risks associated with such research are minimal due to stringent safety protocols.Yet the evidence shows a very different picture. For the past decade, red flags have repeatedly been raised within the scientific community as biosecurity breaches in high containment biological labs in the U.S. and around the world have occurred with surprising frequency.39,40,41,42,43As recently as 2019, the BSL 4 lab in Fort Detrick was temporarily shut down after several protocol violations were noted.44 Asia Times45 lists several other examples of safety breaches at BSL3 and BSL4 labs, as does a May 28, 2015, article in USA Today,46 an April 11, 2014, article in Slate magazine47 and a November 16, 2020, article in Medium.48Is Gain-of-Function Research Justifiable?Clearly, getting to the bottom of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is crucial if we are to prevent a similar pandemic from erupting in the future. If gain-of-function research was in fact involved, we need to know, so that steps can either be taken to prevent another leak (which is not likely possible) or to dismantle and ban such research altogether for the common good.As long as we are creating the risk, the benefit will be secondary. Any scientific or medical gains made from this kind of research pales in comparison to the incredible risks involved if weaponized pathogens are released, and it doesn’t matter if it’s by accident or on purpose. This sentiment has been echoed by others in a variety of scientific publications.49,50,51,52Considering the potential for a massively lethal pandemic, I believe it’s safe to say that BSL 3 and 4 laboratories pose a very real and serious existential threat to humanity.Historical facts tell us accidental exposures and releases have already happened, and we only have our lucky stars to thank that none have turned into pandemics taking the lives of tens of millions, as was predicted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.Seeing how scientists have already figured out a way to mutate SARS-CoV-2 such that it evades human antibodies, as detailed in "Lab Just Made a More Dangerous COVID Virus," having a frank, open discussion about the scientific merits of this kind of work is more pertinent than ever before, and we shouldn’t allow the WHO’s dismissal of the lab origin theory dissuade us from such discussion.- Sources and References1, 2 WHO.int Origins of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus3 GM Watch September 23, 20204 GM Watch June 17, 20205 USRTK November 18, 20206 GM Watch November 19, 20207 The Washington Post February 9, 20218, 30 The Washington Post February 9, 2021 (Archived)9, 12, 13, 15, 19, 26 GM Watch February 10, 202110 Twitter Alina Chan February 10, 202111, 27 Nature February 10, 202114 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists August 14, 201416 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists March 31, 201417, 48 Medium November 16, 202018 Ian Birrell February 14, 202120 YouTube John Sudworth February 9, 202134 Bayesian.org36 Sky News January 24, 202137 Colin Butler Bio38 Journal of Human Security December 18, 2020; 16(1)39 Institute of Medicine. Biosecurity Challenges of the Global Expansion of High-Containment Biological Laboratories 201140 The Guardian December 4, 201441 CIDRAP July 1, 201642 Reuters February 15, 201243 CIDRAP June 20, 201444 WJLA January 22, 202045 Asia Times April 6, 202046 USA Today May 28, 201547 Slate April 11, 201449 mBio 2012 Sep-Oct; 3(5): e00360-1250 The Human Fatality Burden of Gain of Function Flu Research: A Risk Assessment by Lynn Klotz (PDF)51 BMC Medicine 2013; 11, Article number 25252 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists February 25, 2019(5) WSJ Editorial Board: WHO needs to start over in investigating the origins of the coronavirushttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-who-needs-to-start-over-in-investigating-the-origins-of-the-coronavirus/2021/03/05/6f3d5a0e-7de9-11eb-a976-c028a4215c78_story.htmlOpinion: The WHO needs to start over in investigating the origins of the coronavirusOpinion by Editorial BoardMarch 7, 2021 at 12:00 a.m. GMT+10MORE THAN a year after the coronavirus pandemic began, its origins are mysterious. The truth may take years to discover, but now is a good time to relaunch the search for it. A joint inquiry by the World Health Organization and China has run into trouble, as a group of 26 scientists pointed out this week in an open letter to the WHO. Both the possibility of a zoonotic spillover from animal hosts and that of a laboratory accident need independent, expert investigation — and it is time for a new team to seriously tackle the laboratory hypothesis.Why is the issue of the virus origins so important? Because the source and method by which the virus made the leap to people are critical to prepare for any future pandemic. Too much political heat has already been spent on this issue, some generated by China, where the first major outbreak began, and some by Donald Trump in his attempt to distract attention from his catastrophic pandemic response as president. The blame-throwing must not impede finding the truth.The WHO-China investigation team, focused on zoonotic spillover, is writing a report, which the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says will be released the week of March 15.Another hypothesis, that the pandemic was ignited by some kind of laboratory leak or accident, is denied by China. However, a senior researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli, was working on "gain of function" experiments, which involve modifying viral genomes to give them new properties, including the ability to infect lung cells of laboratory mice that had been genetically modified to respond as human respiratory cells would. She was working with bat coronaviruses that were genetically very similar to the one that caused the pandemic. Could a worker have gotten infected or inadvertent leakage have touched off the outbreak in Wuhan?The joint WHO-China team said in its Feb. 9 news conference in Wuhan that the laboratory hypothesis was "extremely unlikely" and would not be further studied; later, Dr. Tedros said that nothing was off the table. As the 26 scientists point out in their letter, the team lacked the training and forensic skills required to investigate this possibility. They were under strong pressure from China to steer clear of the subject altogether.What's needed is an independent, multidisciplinary and unfettered investigation into the origins of the outbreak, both the zoonotic and laboratory hypotheses. China's obduracy is not going away. The WHO, a membership organization, lacks the powers to pry open closed doors in China, and there is not another good alternative. However, Dr. Tedros could appoint a new team of highly qualified international experts, including forensic specialists, to investigate the laboratory-leak hypothesis, and forcefully insist that China not stand in its way. If he openly challenged China on this matter, he would have the support of a world wanting to know how this nightmare began and how to prevent another.(6) Decorated Scientist Roland Wiesendanger Says Wuhan Lab Caused Pandemic, Contradicting WHOhttps://thenewamerican.com/decorated-scientist-says-wuhan-lab-caused-pandemic-contradicting-who/Decorated Scientist Says Wuhan Lab Caused Pandemic, Contradicting WHOby Luis Miguel February 19, 2021In contradiction to claims by the World Health Organization, a recent study conducted by University of Hamburg researcher Roland Wiesendanger determined that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology was, in fact, the "cause" of COVID-19.Wiesendanger, a three-time recipient of the European Research Council grant, asked in his 105-page report: "Is the current global crisis actually the result of a coincidence in nature — a coincidental mutation of a coronavirus in a bat with the assistance of an intermediate host — or the result of a scientist’s carelessness when carrying out the project in high-risk research with global pandemic potential?"He cited 600 facts that support his theory that "the number and the quality of evidence clearly indicate a laboratory accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."Among the evidence Wiesendanger cites are the following facts: The host has still not been identified; the virus can "couple surprisingly well to human cell receptors," the Wuhan lab "carried out genetic manipulations on coronaviruses for many years with the aim of making them more contagious, dangerous and deadly for humans," and that the facility had "significant safety deficiencies.""In contrast to earlier coronavirus-related epidemics such as SARS and MERS, until today, i.e. well over a year after the outbreak of the current pandemic, no intermediate host has been identified that has enabled the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 pathogens from bats to humans," Wiesendanger’s report reads. "The zoonosis theory as a possible explanation for the pandemic therefore has no sound scientific basis."He goes on to note:A research group at the virological institute in the city of Wuhan has carried out genetic manipulations on coronaviruses for many years with the aim of making them more contagious, dangerous and deadly for humans. This is proven by numerous publications in the scientific specialist literature.There were significant safety deficiencies in the virological institute in the city of Wuhan even before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which are documented.There are numerous direct indications of a laboratory origin for the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. A young scientist from the virological institute in Wuhan is said to have been infected first. There are also numerous indications that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen spread from the virological institute in the city of Wuhan and beyond as early as October 2019. There are also indications of a corresponding investigation of the virological institute by the Chinese authorities in the first half of October 2019.Moreover, Wiesendanger’s research asserts that the Wuhan Institute performed a coverup:There is ample independent evidence that a young researcher from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the first to deal with the novel coronavirus and was thus at the beginning of the COVID-19 infection chain. The entry on the website of the institute has been deleted and has been considered as disappeared.Wiesendanger is not just anyone; he’s a widely respected member of the scientific community. Since 1986, his work has been cited over 35,000 times. He has reviewed proposals for over 30 national and international funding agencies, has written two textbooks and written for 620 publications, and either sits on or advises 130 international conferences.Additionally, Wiesendanger is the recipient of more than 20 awards. For example, he is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and has won the Hamburg Science Prize of the Hamburg Academy of Sciences.The World Health Organization (WHO), an outfit of the United Nations, concluded last week that it is "extremely unlikely" that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.Yet their research is shrouded in doubt due to the fact that one of the top members on the WHO’s team investigating the origins of COVID-19, Peter Daszak, was awarded a $3.7 million grant for bat coronavirus surveillance and bat coronavirus gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).Can a man who gladly took money from the Chinese Communist Party be expected to serve as an honest investigator in this case?The WHO’s response to the pandemic shows just how much the "global community" is dominated by Communist China, further highlighting the need for the United States to cut all ties with these entities.After all, how can Americans truly consider themselves free if our national policy is beholden to unelected foreign socialists?