In very early 2020 there was a lot of chatter about where the virus, later named SARS-CoV-2, actually came from. In an excellent, detailed article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, former NY Times science writer Nicholas Wade describes how two short pieces published in The Lancet and Nature Medicine in Feb-March 2020 determined how this chatter would be channeled.
These two extraordinarily influential pieces, each simply titled as a "Correspondence," were parroted by the mainstream media for a year. Each was plainly intended to shut down any discussion of a possible lab origin.
I happened to read both Correspondences in March 2020 and it was immediately apparent to me that each was designed as a propaganda tool. Neither had anything to do with science. In fact, the Andersen et al. Correspondence in Nature Medicine butchered the science. Each had an unusual concatenation of authors.
I was so intrigued by these articles that I kept searching the net to understand them, and discovered that Francis Collins, the NIH Director, had blogged on March 26 about the Nature Medicine Correspondence, suggesting it should put an end to conspiracy theories about lab origin.
I further found a February 6 letter from the 3 heads of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to "help elucidate the origin and evolution" of SARS-CoV-2. This letter had been referred to by the Lancet Correspondence authors. But it had not yet been published when the Lancet correspondence was written, suggesting again some mutual effort involving the authors of this letter (the heads of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine) and the Lancet Correspondence authors.
But there exists an older email trove obtained by US Right to Know. In it, we find discussions among all the footnoted "consultants" to the National Academies regarding the wording of the letter which was to be signed by the National Academies' leadership and sent to the White House office of science and technology policy. It seems that Peter Daszak was able to refer to this letter in the Lancet letter because (we now know) he was an author of both! This shows that Daszak had a central role, as early as February 4, in constraining the origin investigation. Also note that "consultant" Ralph Baric, Shi-Zheng Li's closest US collaborator, took an active role in crafting the NAS letter.
I wondered why 5 otherwise credible (at least I thought they were at the time) scientists would sign their names to the Andersen et al. Nature Medicine Correspondence, when the arguments made in the paper were nonsensical. I concluded that they had been put up to it by a 'hidden hand,' and when I was interviewed for the film that became Plandemic 2: Indoctornation last June I said so. (The film has been banned and shadowbanned, as have many of my writings, so it is impossible to find using google or a standard search engine. Here it is on Bitchute, using the Ecosia search engine.)
Months ago, in another email drop obtained by US Right to Know, we learned that Peter Daszak, CEO of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, was the primary but hidden author of the Lancet Correspondence. He was also its primary beneficiary, since his organization had been used as the pass through to send money from the NIAID to the Wuhan coronavirus lab. (Some might consider this method of giving out grants as a fancy way of money laundering.) Daszak, like Fauci (who is the highest earner in the entire federal government) earned over $400,000/year. Daszak was also a member of the WHO Covid origins investigative team, and had been selected as the head of the Lancet Covid origins investigative task force. Six original members of the Lancet investigative task force (formed in late 2020) were co-signers of the February Lancet Correspondence described above. The WHO and the Lancet thus seem to be additional co-conspirators, choosing the fox (Daszak) to guard the henhouse (the natural origin theory of Covid).
Last year, after learning how NIH funded Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance to transfer money to Wuhan, the Trump administration, through the NIH, pulled one of Daszak's grants. Daszak responded very rudely to the President, although I am having trouble finding the quotes now. At the time, I wondered how he could be so brazen. But in no time at all, 77 US Nobel laureates in science signed a letter to the NIH demanding Daszak get his grant back. And in August, the NIH awarded Daszak a huge new grant. It seems Daszak knew his protectors were more powerful than the President.
Peter Daszak pushed a theory last year, over and over, that human interactions with wildlife, in nature, are the cause of pandemics. Let me make clear, this theory has not been established. One of Daszak's articles, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on April 2, 2020, claimed,
"We must realize that in our crowded world of 7.8 billion people, a combination of altered human behaviors, environmental changes and inadequate global public health mechanisms now easily turn obscure animal viruses into existential human threats. We have created a global, human-dominated ecosystem that serves as a playground for the emergency and host-switching of animal viruses..."
Daszak's coauthors were two of Fauci's top lieutenants. The newly released emails show that Daszak invited Fauci to be a coauthor, but Fauci declined, which suggests Daszak was primarily responsible for the NEJM paper.
Tony Fauci pushed the same claim about humans being the cause of pandemics, in the conclusion to an article he wrote in Cell last year:
Evidence suggests that SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 are only the latest examples of a deadly barrage of coming coronavirus and other emergences. The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another reminder, added to the rapidly growing archive of historical reminders, that in a human-dominated world, in which our human activities represent aggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature, we will increasingly provoke new disease emergences. We remain at risk for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 is among the most vivid wake-up calls in over a century. It should force us to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living in more thoughtful and creative harmony with nature, even as we plan for nature’s inevitable, and always unexpected, surprises.
What were Fauci and Daszak getting at? Why were they telling the same false tale?
Today, I was sent a link by a reader (thanks!!!) to a specific one of Fauci's emails, and the mystery of why 5 well known scientists coauthored drivel, which the venerable Nature Medicine journal published, was solved.
In fact, the emails reveal that Kristian Andersen (first author of the Nature Medicine article discussed above) wrote to Fauci on January 31, informing him that Andersen and colleagues had found unusual features of the coronavirus, which "(potentially) look engineered."
Chris Martenson has uncovered some additional Fauci emails here (please watch, and I will connect more of the dots he found later) and he shows how a flurry of activity ensued. This involved Fauci, Francis Collins and Jeremy Farrar as the ringleaders, and--presto--in a week the preprint of the Nature Medicine paper was online.
On March 6 Andersen sent another email to Fauci, Francis Collins and Jeremy Farrar, thanking them for their "advice and leadership" on the paper that was about to be published in print form in Nature Medicine. This paper drew the opposite conclusion to his end January email, claiming the virus could not have been engineered.
This paper was then used as the foundation stone for the claim of Covid's natural origin. Here's the March 6 email:
The first author of the Nature Medicine paper (Andersen) thanks 3 incredibly important people for their "advice and leadership" regarding the paper. All 3 are MD researchers, and they dole out more money for medical research than anyone else in the world, perhaps excepting Bill Gates. Fauci runs the NIAID; Collins is the NIH Director (nominally Fauci's boss) and Sir Jeremy Farrar is the director of the Wellcome Trust. Sir Jeremy also signed the Lancet letter. And he is the Chair of the World Health Organization R&D Blueprint Scientific Advisory Group, which put him in the driver's seat of the WHO's Solidarity trial, in which 1000 unwitting subjects were overdosed with hydroxychloroquine in order to sink the use of the drug for Covid. Jeremy had worked in Vietnam, where there was lots of malaria, and he had also been involved with SARS-1 there. He additionally was central in setting up the UK Recovery trial, where 1600 subjects were overdosed with hydroxychloroquine. I think he had some idea of the proper dose of the chloroquine drugs from his experience in Vietnam. But even if he didn't, Farrar, Fauci and Collins would have learned about such overdoses after Brazil told the world about how they mistakenly overdosed patients in a trial of chloroquine for Covid, published in the JAMA in mid April 2020. Thirty-nine percent of the subjects in Brazil who were given high doses of chloroquine died, average age 50.
Yet the Solidarity and Recovery hydroxychloroquine trials continued into June, stopping only after their extreme doses were exposed.
Fauci made sure to control the treatment guidelines for Covid that came out of the NIAID, advising against both chloroquine drugs and ivermectin. Fauci's NIAID also cancelled the first large-scale trial of hydroxychlorquine treatment in early disease, after only 20 of the expected 2,000 subjects were enrolled.
What does all this mean?
1. There was a conspiracy between the five authors of the Nature Medicine paper and the heads of the NIH, NIAID and Wellcome Trust to cover up the lab origin of Covid.
2. There was a conspiracy involving Peter Daszak, Tony Fauci and others to push the natural origin theory.
(See other emails in the recent drop.) Fauci more than replaced the money Trump clawed back from Daszak.
3. There was a conspiracy involving Daszak to write the Lancet letter and hide its provenance, to push the natural origin theory and paint any other ideas as conspiracy theory. Collin's blog post is another piece of this story. Daszak also helped write the NAS letter advising how to investigate Covid's origin.
4. Farrar was intimately involved in both large HCQ overdose trials (in which about 500 subjects total died).
5. Farrar, Fauci and Collins controlled research funds that could have supported quality trials of the use of chloroquines and ivermectin and other repurposed drugs that might have turned around the pandemic.
6. Are the 4 individuals named here intimately involved in the creation of the pandemic, as well as the coverup, prolongation and improper treatments used during the pandemic?
7. The Lancet and Nature Medicine are co-conspirators. See Prof. Jacques van Helden's interview on the Lancet.
Below are my two early posts on this subject from March and April 2020, and a snippet from the Lancet Correspondence, with a list of signatories.
Dan Sirotkin noticed the Nature Medicine article before I did, and wrote lucidly about it. I did not see his article until after I too had written about it.
Thursday, March 26, 2020
There are many ways the novel coronavirus may have come about/ Nass
Nature Medicine ran a 3 page article that claimed to explain why the novel coronavirus is not a lab construct. USA Today wrote a summary piece explaining it:
“If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness,” the report said. “But the scientists found that the SARS-CoV-2 backbone differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins.”—USAT
Yet it turns out to be a specious argument, relying on the fact that the novel coronavirus backbone sequence was not already known in the open virology literature.
1. While starting from a known RNA sequence is one easy way to create a pathogen, it is certainly not necessary to do so.
I will briefly mention some of the old techniques for creating bioweapons, none of which require that a known, published RNA backbone would be required to build a novel, virulent coronavirus:
1. China has unique bats. So do other countries. Unique bats likely harbor unique viruses. Bits of these viruses can be strung together, while no outside parties are aware that these particular RNA threads exist in nature.
2. You take an already virulent RNA virus, subject it to high rates of mutation via chemical or radiological exposure, and test the viruses that survive for the acquisition of new virulence characteristics.
3. You simply passage the virus through tens, hundreds or thousands of lab animals or cell cultures and test the results for acquisition of new virulence characteristics.
4. You mix different viruses together with different virulence characteristics, allow them to grow together, and seek recombinants that have obtained the desired new mix of virulence factors.
All these possibilities result in viruses that are hard to pin on lab production. I dare the Nature Medicine scientists to dismiss these scenarios.
Still, I doubt that any national program would deliberately release this coronavirus onto the people of the earth, because it is so hard to control.
Historically, bio-weaponeers have required their creations to be controlled at all costs. In one well-documented example of biowarfare, unleashing African swine fever on a Caribbean island was associated with no spread beyond the island. In another, anthrax spores were used because they stay put-- their use did not cause anthrax cases beyond the borders of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
So why do we have a coronavirus epidemic now?
An accidental biowarfare laboratory release is the best current hypothesis, in my opinion. Such accidental releases have been documented for many decades, throughout the world. But I could certainly be wrong.
Update April 29: Newsweek has been delving into "gain of function" (which means increasing the virulence of a pathogen) coronavirus research in Wuhan, China which might have contributed to the formation of SARS-CoV-2... and the interesting fact (which I posted about here) that the US government provided financial support for this research. Newsweek's pieces were posted April 27, and 29. My other pieces questioning the origin of SARS-CoV-2 are here and here.
Nature Medicine ran a 3 page article that claimed to explain why the novel coronavirus is not a lab construct. USA Today wrote a summary piece explaining it:“If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness,” the report said. “But the scientists found that the SARS-CoV-2 backbone differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins.”—USATYet it turns out to be a specious argument, relying on the fact that the novel coronavirus backbone sequence was not already known in the open virology literature.1. While starting from a known RNA sequence is one easy way to create a pathogen, it is certainly not necessary to do so.2. Nor is it likely that biodefense/biowarfare programs share knowledge of all their creations. They never have before.3. a) Finally, it is relatively easy to detect the human hand when a chimera of known virulence factors is strung together.b) But because plausible deniability is a critical component of a bioweapons attack, I doubt that a chimera using known sequences is the path that would have been followed by a modern biowarrior.I will briefly mention some of the old techniques for creating bioweapons, none of which require that a known, published RNA backbone would be required to build a novel, virulent coronavirus:1. China has unique bats. So do other countries. Unique bats likely harbor unique viruses. Bits of these viruses can be strung together, while no outside parties are aware that these particular RNA threads exist in nature.2. You take an already virulent RNA virus, subject it to high rates of mutation via chemical or radiological exposure, and test the viruses that survive for the acquisition of new virulence characteristics.3. You simply passage the virus through tens, hundreds or thousands of lab animals or cell cultures and test the results for acquisition of new virulence characteristics.4. You mix different viruses together with different virulence characteristics, allow them to grow together, and seek recombinants that have obtained the desired new mix of virulence factors.All these possibilities result in viruses that are hard to pin on lab production. I dare the Nature Medicine scientists to dismiss these scenarios.Still, I doubt that any national program would deliberately release this coronavirus onto the people of the earth, because it is so hard to control.
Historically, bio-weaponeers have required their creations to be controlled at all costs. In one well-documented example of biowarfare, unleashing African swine fever on a Caribbean island was associated with no spread beyond the island. In another, anthrax spores were used because they stay put-- their use did not cause anthrax cases beyond the borders of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).So why do we have a coronavirus epidemic now?An accidental biowarfare laboratory release is the best current hypothesis, in my opinion. Such accidental releases have been documented for many decades, throughout the world. But I could certainly be wrong.
Update April 29: Newsweek has been delving into "gain of function" (which means increasing the virulence of a pathogen) coronavirus research in Wuhan, China which might have contributed to the formation of SARS-CoV-2... and the interesting fact (which I posted about here) that the US government provided financial support for this research. Newsweek's pieces were posted April 27, and 29. My other pieces questioning the origin of SARS-CoV-2 are here and here.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Why are some of the US' top scientists making a specious argument about the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2?
1. I know about biological warfare/biodefense. I am the first person in the world (according to publicly available literature) to have analyzed an epidemic and demonstrated that the epidemic was due to biological warfare. (1992 study of the 1978-1980 Rhodesian anthrax outbreak, published in Medicine and Global Survival, aka Physicians for Social Responsibility Quarterly (name changed), hosted by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War).
2. Prior to genetic engineering techniques being developed (1973) and widely used (since late 1970s), more ‘primitive’ means of causing mutations, with the intention of developing biological weapons, were employed. Such methods were used by the Japanese beginning in the 1930s, by the US beginning in the 1940s, and by a number of other countries. They resulted in biological weapons that were tested, well-described, and in some cases, used. Such methods were also used subsequent to the 1970s.
3. These methods can result in biowarfare agents that lack the identifiable signature of a microbial agent constructed in a lab from known RNA or DNA sequences. In fact, it would be desirable to produce such agents, since it would be difficult to prove they were deliberately constructed in a lab. Here are just a few possibilities for how one might create new, virulent mutants:
a) exposing microorganisms to chemical or radiological agents that cause high mutation rates and selecting for desired characteristics
b) passaging virus through a number of lab animals or tissue cultures
c) mixing viruses together and seeking recombinants with a new mix of virulence factors
4. Top scientists circled their wagons to protest against “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” in a statement published in the Lancet March 7. (It was published earlier online.) Their reported aim was to "stand with" public health professionals and scientists in China. Many who signed the statement have worked in biodefense. Signers include Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation, and James Hughes, former director of CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases and former assistant Surgeon General.
Science magazine wrote an article in support of these scientists, which included the following:
The authors of The Lancet statement note that scientists from several countries who have studied SARS-CoV-2 “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” just like many other viruses that have recently emerged in humans. “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus,” the statement says.
Five additional scientists soon provided the "scientific evidence" to back up the natural origin claim. These 5 scientists have been affiliated with signers of the statement above, they too have worked in biodefense, and their article was published in Nature Medicine (in the print version) on March 17, 2020.
These scientists set up a straw man to knock down: they claimed that had the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 is the official name of the virus) been created in a lab: “if genetic manipulation had been performed,” then a known coronavirus backbone would have been used. But because no known backbone forms part of SARS-CoV-2, “the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus.”
“If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness,” the report said. “But the scientists found that the SARS-CoV-2 backbone differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins.”
Their work was then discussed by Francis Collins, the current director of the NIH.
Dr. Collins says,
“Some folks are even making outrageous claims that the new coronavirus causing the pandemic was engineered in a lab and deliberately released to make people sick. A new study debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally...
this study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19...
Finally, next time you come across something about COVID-19 online that disturbs or puzzles you, I suggest going to FEMA’s new Coronavirus Rumor Control web site..."
I know that the groups of scientists who wrote these pieces in the Lancet and Nature Medicine, as well as NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, know that you don't need genetic engineering methods to create a bioweapon. Like me, they are old, they recall a world before genetic engineering, they know the history of biowarfare, and they know the score. Why then are they participating in this charade?
published online February 19, 2020
Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19
... The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,, , , , , , , , as have so many other emerging pathogens., This is further supported by a letter from the presidents of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and by the scientific communities they represent. Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.
7 comments:
There is a piece of the Covid debacle that is right under our noses but is seldom discussed.
I am talking about the fact that a small percentage of the population are psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists. These people are usually very intelligent, and they can often be found in managerial and leadership positions.
What drives a guy like Anthony Fauci? Certainly, he is not interested in improving public health. He is driven by power and he wants to control who gets what grant money and for what purposes.
Fauci is a dangerous man. His actions have adversely affected society. They were never intentioned otherwise.
The founders of this country created a system of checks and balances in our government. What more can be done to protect society from these dangerous individuals?
Jun 2, 2021 The Dr. Fauci Emails
Truly jaw dropping.
https://youtu.be/ZFntTtPgpEU
Here is another piece of the COVID debacle that is right under our noses but is seldom discussed: most people who first encounter this virus are only mildly or moderately affected, and they recover completely and uneventfully; some even remain unaffected (asymptomatic). And here's yet another piece: natural immunity occurs on exposure to this virus, and it appears to be highly protective against subsequent exposure. That's how our bodies are supposed to work, so it's been good to see that SARS-CoV-2 is not exceptional in that regard.
Let's all keep our hair on as this thing plays out. Refusing to buy in to the fear and panic is all we need to do in order to flout any nefarious plans and to protect ourselves from the gross incompetence that I believe is at the root of this pandemic and the bungled response by governments and public health officials.
... and here is another piece of the COVID debacle that is right under our noses but is seldom discussed: prior to the emergence of COVID-19, the annual death rate globally was around 0.77%, which is around 60 million deaths per year for a global population of around 7.8 billion people. (The WHO recorded 55.4 million deaths in 2019, so my maths are a little off in using such broad brushstrokes, but the magnitude of the annual death rate globally is clear: in any given year this century, pre-COVID-19, it was well north of 55 million deaths per year.) The current global death rate attributed to COVID-19 is 3.7 million, and that's likely to be a gross overestimation, given the fuzzy definitions of what constitutes a COVID case and a COVID death. If a deliberate goal of this pandemic is a significant reduction in the human population, then it's been a laughably poor show!
Dr. King, your comment about "gross incompetence" is too kind. This debacle is more on the level of malfeasance.
"Malfeasance" is too kind. This is about premeditated mass murder.
Hi, Dr. Nass. Not sure if the Daszak comment on "60 Minutes" would be considered “rude,” but saying that (the grant) “was canceled for convenience” seems a bit cheeky. From https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-coronavirus-vaccine-researcher-covid-19-cure-60-minutes/:
Peter Daszak: They said it was canceled for convenience and it doesn't fit within the scope of NIH's priorities right now.
There’s also this one: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-60-minutes-coronavirus-peter-daszak-ecohealth-alliance_n_5eb90fd7c5b6d34558af9ce4:
“In peoples’ imaginations there might be this image of one person in a lab in China who drops a petri dish and that somehow leads to a massive outbreak,” Daszak continued.
and
“This politicization of science is really damaging,” he said. “You know, the conspiracy theories out there have essentially closed down communication between scientists in China and scientists in the U.S. …”
Then there’s the “pure baloney” comment re. the origin of the virus: https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/16/peter_daszak_coronavirus
Thank you as always for your marvelous writeup and amazing work overall!
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