Why States Can Assert that the WHO Has No Authority Over Them: Summary of the Evidence

This is a compilation of the important info I have been dropping as individual tidbits over the past few days regarding states power over health regulation.

Why Can States Assert that the WHO Has No Authority Over Them?

•      The Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution's Bill of Rights states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This means that the regulation of healthcare falls to the states.  For example, doctors, pharmacies and hospitals are administered by the state, not by the federal government.
•       This is why Louisiana's Senate unanimously passed a bill 37 to zero telling the world that neither the WHO, the UN nor the WEF could assert any jurisdiction over health or any other matter in the state of Louisiana.
•      This is why the Florida legislature passed a bill last year allowing the WHO no authority over the state of Florida.
•      On the last full day of the Obama administration, the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Disease Control issued a Final Rule that changed the definition of a Public Health Emergency of international Concern.  It was to be defined 5 ways, but 3 of those ways relied on a WHO decision.
•      This rule was challenged in a petition to DHHS by 15 state Attorneys General in 2023.  They pointed out that, "The rule exceeds the agency's authority and infringes on US and state sovereignty by unlawfully delegating to the World Health Organization the authority to invoke health emergency powers solely based on decisions of the WHO."
•      The AGs further noted that Congress' assent would be needed to delegate such authority via treaty ratification to the WHO.  They assert that executive agreements, which "rely solely on the President's authority in foreign relations... lack any domestic effect without an act of Congress," and that the unratified WHO Constitution is not a binding treaty.
•       Furthermore, according to the AGs, Congress approved participation with the WHO "with the understanding that nothing in the Constitution of the World Health Organization in any manner commits the United States to enact any specific legislative program regarding any matters referred to in said constitution," referencing 22 U.S.C. 290d, while noting that 42 U.S.C. 264 (e) warns the federal government not to preempt state powers regarding control of infectious diseases.
•      Finally, when the US federal government signed the WHO's amended International Health Regulations in 2006, it filed a reservation acknowledging the states' rights authority over some health matters.  The reservation said, in part, "... these regulations to be implemented by the Federal Government or the state governments, as appropriate and in accordance with our Constitution, to the extent that the implementation of these obligations comes under the legal jurisdiction of the Federal Government. To the extent that such obligations come under the legal jurisdiction of the state governments, the Federal Government shall bring such obligations with a favorable recommendation to the notice of the appropriate state authorities."

Therefore, there is a strong legal basis to assert that the states not only have authority over their citizens' healthcare regulation, but that the federal government lacks the authority to delegate any such power to the WHO.

Rebutting bizarre assertions about the WHO's negotiations.

 

Hope this does not bore you but it is important to clear things up.

The following grossly wrong assertions were made 2 days ago by someone we had trusted:

“… you should realize the following:

• The WHO negotiations are NOT an attack on national sovereignty.

• The WHO negotiations are NOT about mandates or lockdowns.

• The WHO negotiations are NOT about attempting to seize control of the doctor-patient relationship.

• The WHO negotiations are NOT a plot that has been planned and is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party

• The WHO negotiations will NOT be countered by standing up for states’ rights, or by state nullification.”

But they are simply wrong and there has been no correction or clarification.

1. The WHO Treaty claims it is not an attack on sovereignty, but what else can you call it when the WHO will get to declare emergencies and then dictate to 196 nations what they must do; how much they must spend; whether to use specific drugs or vaccines, etc? I dealt with this yesterday here.

2. Article 18 of the International Health Regulations gives the WHO, once the word “binding” that has been added in an amendment has been approved, the power to order and enforce vaccine mandates and lockdowns.

   

The provisions in both the Treaty and Amendments dictate censorship of health “misinformation and disinformation” thus controlling what information your doctor can access. Article 43 paragraph 4 in the Amendments gives the WHO the right to order that certain drugs be withheld during a declared public health emergency. That seems like an uncountenanceable intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship to me.

4. I cannot comment on the role of the Chinese since I don’t know what it is

5. I just explained in the last post why standing up for the rights of states to regulate health is critically important, and pointed out that the executive branch lacks the authority to delegate any powers to the WHO over American citizens, in any event.

The issue of where power lies and who has the power to delegate it to the WHO is critically important for us all. This is the reason why the EU suddenly asserted that its competence in health is high and the WHO asserted that it had the authority to negotiate with the EU, despite the fact the EU is not a member of the WHO: it is an attempt to supercede individual European nations’ authority and negotiate a transfer of power from all 27 member nations to the WHO. Precisely what our federal government is doing.

This was a very important week, in which the legal issues came into sharp focus and we the people felt hopeful that we could evade the legal traps that have been set.

And that was when the “Red Herrings” post appeared on March 29, throwing large numbers of people into a tizzy of confusion. Was our movement getting too strong, and was long-established trust risked to finally try and derail us?

The March 7, 2024 version of the Treaty is the same repackaged tyranny that was found in the 6 earlier versions. Don’t get confused and don’t give up.

This is the real message of the red herrings:  

We are over the target.

A hundred globalist flunkies (including mostly has-been politicians) signed a totally misleading letter about the pandemic treaty last week. I set the record straight

My comments on the letter are in italics. A preponderance of signers are from former Soviet countries. Kerry Kennedy, on a mission to embarrass her older brother, is an outlier.

 

Mar 30, 2024

Joint letter to leaders of WHO member states calling for an urgent agreement on a pandemic accord

https://gordonandsarahbrown.com/2024/03/pandemic-accord-joint-letter/

 

20 March, 2024 5 MIN READ

 

To Leaders of WHO Member States,

The overwhelming lesson we learned from COVID-19 is that no one is safe anywhere until everyone is safe —no, the lesson we learned is that all media and public health officials were handed the identical script and it was all a lie. It was designed to make us feel guilty about not taking a deadly so-called vaccine.

everywhere – and that can only happen through collaboration. — The WHO is not asking for collaboration. It is asking to be the arbiter of supplies, deciding who gets what. The world must obey its commands. That is not collaboration.

In response, the 194 countries which are members of the World Health Organization decided in December 2021 to launch negotiations for a new international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, a Pandemic Accord, as a “global framework”  to work together to prepare for and stem any new pandemic threat, including by achieving equitable access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.—because what the globalists want is for no one else, anywhere, to be left behind when the toxic, liability-free “vaccines” are rolled out next time.

Negotiation of an effective pandemic accord is a much needed opportunity to safeguard the world we live in. Countries themselves have proposed this instrument, individual countries are negotiating it, and only countries will ultimately be responsible for its requirements and its success or failure.—Then why do the WHO’s funders like Bill Gates’ BMGF and GAVI have a seat at the negotiating table? Why are hand-picked committees doing the negotiating? Why is the WHO bureaucracy writing much of the documents? Why is it Tedros who will issue the orders? Why are we always lied to about this?

Establishing a strong global pact on pandemics will protect future generations from a repeat of the millions of deaths and the social and economic devastation which resulted from a lack of collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. — Actually, the response (lockdowns, closing businesses and sending people home without jobs, forcing ventilators and bad drugs and vaccines on the world) killed many more than the disease did, and it was the WHO decisions that determined this response.

All countries need what the accord can offer: the capacity to detect and share pathogens presenting a risk, and timely access to tests, treatments and vaccines.—timely access to tests, treatments and vaccines that were accurate and effective was blocked by the WHO which supported unreliable tests, bad treatments, and awful vaccines. If the WHO gains the power to impose its will on the world and there is no competition within the marketplace, nor liability for the products, we can expect the tests and treatments to be of even worse quality next time.

An agreement is meant to be reached just two and a half months from now – countries imposed a deadline of May 2024, in time for the 77th World Health Assembly.

As countries now enter what should be the final stages of the negotiations, they must ensure that they are agreeing on actions which will do the job required: to prevent and mitigate pandemic threats. —No one has produced a shred of evidence that anything suggested in the treaty or amendments has any chance of preventing a pandemic. Do tell us how that is supposed to happen, when the WHO is proliferating potential pandemic pathogens and greatly increasing the laboratories that study them while it suggested that “administrative impediments” to GOF research be removed in its June 2023 treaty draft.  This is a way to incentivize lab accidents and leaks.

We urge solutions which ensure both speed in reporting and sharing pathogens, and in access – in every country – to sufficient tools like tests and vaccines to protect lives and minimise harm. The public and private sectors must work together towards the public good. This global effort is being threatened by misinformation and disinformation. Among the falsehoods circulating are allegations that the WHO intends to monitor people’s movements through digital passports;— Then why did the WHO take over the digital health passports obtained by the EU last June and start rolling them out already? Is it the monitoring of movements or the monitoring of finances and vaccine/health data the WHO wants to obtain? Maybe the “monitoring peoples’ movements” claim is a red herring to conceal the other monitoring going on?

that it will take away the national sovereignty of countries;—which it will of course do when the WHO can give orders to nations, require nations to pass laws to enact the WHO’s directives, and the WHO can commandeer supplies in one country and move them to another. But don’t take my word for it. Here is the evidence:

David Bell and Van Dinh explored this issue in depth. Their article is titled, " Why Does the WHO Make False Claims Regarding Proposals to Seize States’ Sovereignty?"

https://brownstone.org/articles/why-does-the-who-make-false-claims-regarding-proposals-to-seize-states-sovereignty/

and that it will have the ability to deploy armed troops to enforce mandatory vaccinations and lockdowns.—More straw man arguments, like the “monitoring movements” argument above. Straw man arguments create a false assertion so the person doing the arguing can effectively argue against it, when the person is unable to argue against the actual proposal in play. No one said the WHO has its own troops and will use them. It doesn’t. But nations do have armies and police, and they were used during COVID to impose lockdowns and in some nations mandatory vaccinations. The nations are being told they must obey the WHO, and the WHO is giving itself the right, in the IHR amendments, to impose lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations.

All of these claims are wholly false and governments must work to disavow them with clear facts.—I just provided you the clear facts, flunkies.

It is imperative now to build an effective, multisectoral and multilateral approach to pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response marked by a spirit of openness and inclusiveness. In doing so we can send a message that even in this fractured and fragmented world, cross-border co-operation can deliver global solutions to global problems.— These virtuosos write in a way that is not understandable (what do they mean by multisectoral and multilateral approach to PPPR? What do they mean by a spirit of openness and inclusiveness?) and the use of flowery language makes it appear as if they are saying something noble, when the opposite is true.

We call on leaders of all countries to step up their efforts and secure an effective pandemic accord by May. A new pandemic threat will emerge – except the idea of pandemic threats, if you remove COVID and HIV, is generally a fantasy. Less than 1000 people per year have been dying from pandemics, despite the fear-mongering. As David Bell notes,

“Generating the fear and compliance necessary to build this new and somewhat parasitic model of public health has been no mean feat. For decades, life expectancies have been rising globally while infectious disease deaths have plummeted.”

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-fairy-tale-of-pandemic-risk/

and there is no excuse not to be ready for it.—Again, pray tell, how will we be ready by signing this blank check for $41 billion/year to the WHO? How much is each signer of this letter getting?

We have been scammed on a scale never contemplated. We have to wake up before we are pushed off the cliff.

All you need to know about the WHO--Please use this handout

 

Tedros lies about what the WHO is trying to do--but we set the record straight

 ... Recently at the World Governments Summit Tedros said:

"Countries set themselves a deadline to complete the agreement in time for adoption at the World Health Assembly in May of this year. That’s now just 15 weeks away. However, there are currently two major obstacles to meeting that deadline.

The first is a group of issues on which countries have not yet reached consensus. They’re making progress, but there are still areas of difference that need further negotiation between countries.

None of them are insurmountable. If countries listen to each other’s concerns, I am confident they can find common ground and a common approach.

The second major barrier is the litany of lies and conspiracy theories about the agreement:

• That it’s a power grab by the World Health Organisation;
• That it will cede sovereignty to WHO;
• That it will give WHO power to impose lockdowns or vaccine mandates on countries;
• That it’s an ‘attack on freedom’;
• That WHO will not allow people to travel;
• And that WHO wants to control people’s lives.

These are some of the lies that are being spread.

If they weren’t so dangerous, these lies would be funny. But they put the health of the world’s people at risk. And that is no laughing matter.

These claims are utterly, completely, categorically false. The pandemic agreement will not give WHO any power over any state or any individual, for that matter."

See the International Health Regulations (IHR) for yourself.  Will he have the right to restrict travel?   YES.  Quarantine you?  YES.  Require vaccinations?  Yes.  

What about sovereignty?  The proposed amendments to the IHR have added the word "shall" over 100 times, indicating that nations "must" obey the WHO's dictates.

They WHO also demands in its proposed treaty that nations pass laws in order to obey its requirements,  and there are two very bad laws the WHO demands nations put in place.

The first bad proposed law is to allow the rollout of rapidly produced and poorly tested vaccines and drugs, without these products being issued a license. They will be experimental.  A license is supposed to be a guarantee that adequate testing proved the products reasonably safe and effective--the unlicensed products will have no such guarantee. 

Under the rubric "Regulatory strengthening" in Article 14 of the proposed treaty the WHO is rolling out Regulatory weakening.

You cannot roll out untested and potentially life-threatening products if there is liability for the manufacturer, the government, the administering doctor, etc.  None of them would agree to participate.

Here's the second law:  in Article 15 the WHO has required that every nation pass laws to waive liability of these experimental products.  In other words, the recipient takes all the risk, while Pharma takes all the profit, risk-free.

This globalizes the Experimental Use Authorization or EUA and trashes the meaning of drug and vaccine regulation.

Still not convinced that Tedros is lying about WHO's sovereignty grab?  Physician scientist David Bell and attorney Thi Thuy Van Dinh (both also have Ph.D.'s) explain the multiple ways in which what WHO has proposed is an unprecedented attempt to seize nation state authority and rule health centrally, here:

https://brownstone.org/articles/why-does-the-who-make-false-claims-regarding-proposals-to-seize-states-sovereignty/

Join us at DoorToFreedom.org and the SovereigntyCoalition.org to take action against this threat to our nations' and our own autonomy.

COVID Origin: More on Munster's NIAID lab in Hamilton, Montana, far from the eyes of the oversight committees, doing GoF research and producing false narratives. Killing 2 birds with one taxpayer stone. Why does NIH have a lab in Montana anyway?

 

This post is a continuation of the article by Will Jones posted recently about the origin of COVID, adding my own spin.

From Vincent Munster’s lab page (NIAID Hamilton Montana) we find the following. It indicates that his entire career has been spent promoting the lie that pandemics arise from animal spillover (when this is a very rare event and not something we need to spend hundreds of billions to guard against when nothing works, anyway). He seems to have trained with top covid origin coverup stars Marion Koopmans and Ron Fouchier at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Both were on the 2/1/2020 Fauci call, Koopmans was on the WHO investigation trip to China that said covid came from frozen food, and Fouchier was responsible for very dangerous GOF work making bird flu transmissible by air, and for giving Fauci 6 ways to try to explain away the manmade findings in the covid genome.

I think that Will Jones is right: COVID likely was built in Munster’s lab. However, I have always suspected (and said so) that there were so many different bad epitopes stitched into the SARS-CoV-2 genome, it likely was developed from parts created in a variety of different labs. Who put all the pieces together to give it high infectivity, broadened tissue tropism, a means to damp down the immune response (or several) and the means to invoke a massive late inflammatory response? Where was it passaged through humanized mice? Is the scientist who performed the last step the only one who is guilty? Why were all these different virulence factors concocted in the first place? What was the excuse for each and how well does it hold up to examination?

One final thing: previously, scientists have been unable to anticipate all the ways their creations could be studied to determine which lab they came from. I think they failed to anticipate that the species tropism of SARS-CoV-2 for (only) humans and animals used at the Hamilton, Montana lab was an unanticipated clue to origin. [Assuming Will Jones is correct in this assertion.]. This is a major clue.

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/vincent-j-munster-phd

Munster Lab: Major Areas of Research

• Natural reservoirs of emerging viruses and elucidation of the underlying biotic and abiotic drivers of zoonotic and cross-species transmission events

• Evolutionary dynamics of emerging viruses in the context of virus-host ecology

• Modeling zoonotic and cross-species transmission of emerging viruses and the efficacy of outbreak intervention strategies

Program Description

Emerging viral diseases are a major challenge to the safety of the world in the 21st century. The emergence of Ebola virus, avian influenza H5N1, Nipah and Hendra viruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and, more recently, the novel Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) CoV, and avian influenza H7N9 has revealed the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the drivers of infectious disease outbreaks.

Birds, mammals, and arthropods are the principal source of most emerging viruses in the human population. (Is this because of the lab work being done?—Nass) Very little is known about the interaction of the viruses and their respective natural hosts and the changes in virus-host ecology resulting in cross-species transmission events, such as outbreaks in humans.

The main objectives of our research program aim to identify the underlying biotic or abiotic changes in virus-host ecology that allow these emerging viral pathogens to cross the species barrier. Recognizing both the strengths and weaknesses of a unilateral focus on field research on one hand and experimental research on the other, we set out to combine the best of both approaches in one research program, where we aim to identify drivers of cross-species transmission from data gathered in the field and model these drivers under experimental conditions in the lab.

Experimental modeling of zoonotic and cross-species transmission of emerging viruses and the efficacy of outbreak intervention strategies

For a wide variety of novel emerging infectious viruses (e.g., Nipah virus, Ebola virus, MERS-CoV), no prophylactic or therapeutic intervention measures are currently available to prevent or contain outbreak events. (There is a US-licensed Ebola vaccine and there are monoclonal antibodies; why are they omitted?—Nass) In addition, very limited information is available on the route of zoonotic and human-to-human transmission for most of these viruses. Currently, our best hope to prevent or intervene in future outbreaks of these viruses lies in the potential to efficiently block transmission and thereby spread of the outbreak. In order to efficiently establish prevention strategies, detailed knowledge on mechanisms of pathogenicity and transmission (contact transmission, fomite transmission, aerosol transmission, or foodborne or vertical transmission) in the context of abiotic (temperature, humidity, airflow) and biotic (routes of transmission, immune status, receptor distribution, amount of shed virus) factors is needed. (In order to prevent transmission we must do gain of function research, justified by lying about the absence of a vaccine—Nass) The newly developed transmission models (We can now cause transmission in the lab, making the viruses more dangerous—Nass) will be used to evaluate the efficacy of current outbreak intervention strategies, such as vaccination and antiviral therapies. A more comprehensive understanding of transmission events is likely to make an important contribution to the control of emerging zoonotic infections (and also could be used to enhance spread—Nass).

Is This the Man Who Created COVID-19 in Fauci’s U.S. Lab?/ Daily Skeptic

 

This is a very important dive into the origin of COVID--another MUST-READ. The Montana NIAID lab that could have been associated with the origin of Lyme Disease is where Munster studied SARS viruses.

by Will Jones. 30 January 2024

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/01/30/is-this-the-man-who-created-covid-19-in-faucis-u-s-lab/

Top U.S. virologist Ralph Baric engineered the COVID-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 in his lab at the University of North Carolina as part of his work in connection with the 2018 DEFUSE funding proposal. That’s the story that’s been going round the internet for some months now (and not just in alternative media) and it all looks very damning for Baric and those connected with his research. Details of the DEFUSE project were first leaked by Major Joseph Murphy, an employee of U.S. military research agency DARPA, in the summer of 2021 and further details of earlier drafts have come to light this month thanks to public record requests from U.S. Right to Know (USRTK).

In DEFUSE, Baric proposed to create a virus that was, to most intents and purposes, SARS-CoV-2. The proposal included inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus spike protein, an order for the restriction enzyme BsmBI, the search for a binding domain that would infect ACE2 human receptors and a requirement for a viral genome around 25% different to SARS.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus contains a furin cleavage site in its spike protein, its genome includes the restriction enzyme BsmBI, it has a receptor binding domain finely tuned to infect the ACE2 human receptor and its genome is around 25% different to SARS. A number of virologists have said that such features make SARS-CoV-2 a smoking gun for an engineered virus.

Baric obtained a patent for such novel viruses in 2018, just as he was putting DEFUSE together. In DEFUSE he proposed to infect wild Chinese bats with his newly patented viruses.

Many regard this as case closed for the lab leak.

But this is not the full story. That’s because Baric’s DEFUSE proposal did not win the DARPA funding. And while it is rightly pointed out that, with or without the funding, much of the work was already in hand, it’s what happened next with the winning DARPA proposal where the story really gets interesting.

U.S. researcher Jim Haslam has done an incredible job on his Substack page Reverse engineering the origins of SARS-CoV-2 documenting all the toings and froings among the virology community in connection with the creation of this peculiar virus and the subsequent cover-up. What follows is in large part indebted to his meticulous research, though any errors are of course my own.

The winning 2018 DARPA bid – for a project called PREEMPT – included top bat virus specialist Dr. Vincent Munster (pictured above) based at Anthony Fauci’s NIH Rocky Mountain Lab. Both Munster’s PREEMPT proposal and Baric’s losing DEFUSE project had the same basic idea: to try to prevent a (hypothetical) future pandemic by using an engineered virus to vaccinate the bats from which it is believed such a virus was likely to spill over. The idea being, of course, that the vaccinated bats would no longer be a reservoir for the virus, thus ‘defusing’ or ‘preempting’ the zoonotic spillover. Sounds crazy? Too right – far too much meddling with nature and placing too much faith in the ability of vaccines to prevent infection and transmission. But crazy or not, that’s what the scientists proposed, and Munster’s PREEMPT proposal won and DEFUSE lost.

The key difference between Baric’s DEFUSE and Munster’s PREEMPT proposal – aside from Munster’s proposal coming in around $4m cheaper at $10m – is that rather than relying on spraying bat caves with a non-transmissible virus-vaccine, Munster’s plan involved making the virus-vaccine transmit between the bats via aerosols. This made it a self-spreading vaccine, able (in theory) to reach all the bats without humans having to go and find all their caves and spray them. The risks of such a plan should have been obvious. Indeed, Baric himself, who went awfully quiet after his DEFUSE project leaked in mid-2021, resurfaced in mid-2023 to say that such work involving engineering transmissible virus-vaccines was “too edgy” for him.

After the DARPA funding went to Munster, Fauci rode to Baric’s rescue with a bumper $82m programme called CREID, awarded in summer 2019, in which both Baric’s and Munster’s teams would cooperate in the research into Munster’s concept of self-spreading bat vaccines. Already in late 2018 Baric and Munster cooperated on a project trying to infect Egyptian fruit bats with a SARS-like virus.

Exactly what happened next is not publicly documented, so we do need to fill in some gaps. It appears that Munster took Baric’s patented SARS virus-vaccine and made a transmissible version at his Rocky Mountain Lab (Baric’s version was not intended to be transmissible). What is the evidence for that? Perhaps most telling is that, as Jim Haslam observes, SARS-CoV-2 transmits efficiently in only five known mammals, and those five – American deer, American deer mice, Syrian hamsters, American mink and Egyptian fruit bats – are all found in Munster’s (and Fauci’s) Rocky Mountain Lab in Montana. SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t infect lab animals common in Chinese labs or present in the WIV, such as Chinese horseshoe bats. This would suggest that SARS-CoV-2 acquired its transmissibility in an American lab context and not a Chinese one or elsewhere.

The virus-vaccine having been made transmissible in Montana, it would then have been sent to the WIV to be tested on Chinese bats, which were not available in American labs. There can be little doubt who would have done this testing at the WIV, as there was only one scientist with the necessary connections and expertise. Dr. Danielle Anderson, known as Dani to her colleagues, gained fame in June 2021 as the “last and only foreign scientist in the Wuhan lab” as she went public to make the case for a zoonotic origin. Dani was a member of the Lancet origins commission, chaired by Jeffrey Sachs and disbanded by him in October 2021 over frustrations that the Western virologists like Dani weren’t cooperating. Dani was based on and off at the WIV in the high security BSL4 lab (not Shi Zhengli’s BSL2 lab), but she didn’t work for the WIV. She worked for Duke-NUS, the Singapore-based medical school of North Carolina’s Duke University, under the virologist Dr. Linfa Wang. Linfa and Anderson were part of Baric’s DEFUSE proposal, and Duke-NUS was later a partner in Fauci’s CREID project.

Anderson’s role in DEFUSE was to test the virus-vaccines on “wild-caught captive” Chinese horseshoe bats at the WIV. It is thus reasonable to assume it is her who would be responsible for testing Munster’s self-spreading virus-vaccine on the same Chinese bats. This would explain how the virus got to Wuhan.

It would explain, in other words, how a non-transmissible virus-vaccine designed by Ralph Baric at UNC as per the DEFUSE proposal became a transmissible virus and ended up on the loose in Wuhan. Namely, because it escaped via a laboratory-acquired infection during Anderson’s testing of it on Chinese horseshoe bats in her WIV BSL4 lab, with Dani herself or a colleague as patient zero.

Admittedly, we don’t have direct evidence of this – we don’t have direct evidence that a Munster-Baric SARS-2 virus-vaccine was being tested on Chinese bats in the WIV in 2019, nor that Dr. Anderson or a colleague was infected by it in the lab. But there is a heap of evidence that points to it as a likely scenario.

We know, for instance, that both Baric and Munster were proposing to vaccinate Chinese bats using an engineered virus, in Baric’s case with a furin cleavage site inserted to increase infectivity. We know that Munster’s PREEMPT proposal, in which the virus-vaccine was to be self-spreading, won the DARPA funding, beating Baric’s DEFUSE proposal for a non-self-spreading virus-vaccine, and that in 2019 both teams were brought together in an $82m grant from Fauci’s NIAID.

We know that SARS-CoV-2 readily transmits in the lab animals found in Munster’s Rocky Mountain Lab but not in the lab animals found in the WIV. From this we can further conclude that Dr. Anderson’s experiment to infect Chinese horseshoe bats with the new virus at the WIV presumably failed. This may be why she left Wuhan at the end of November, which was the deadline for the ‘scientific merit review’ for CREID.

We also know that where Dani and her colleagues lived in central Wuhan was an early epicentre for the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, based on social media data.

It also appears that Dani’s supervisor Linfa Wang may have quickly realised that SARS-CoV-2 was one of his viruses. This would explain why he resigned from his post as Director of Duke’s Emerging Infectious Disease programme, a position he had held for nearly a decade, on the same day that the genome was published, January 10th 2020. The reason for his abrupt resignation has never been disclosed. Four days earlier he had told the New York Times he was frustrated that scientists in China were not allowed to speak to him about the outbreak. He cautioned against panic, arguing the virus was likely not spreading between humans because health workers had not contracted the disease. But privately was he fretting that it was from his lab – is that why he immediately resigned when the genome was published? It is hard to understand what else could have led him to quit so suddenly at that point, and the lack of explanation adds to the suspicion. He later called January 10th “the most important day in the COVID-19 outbreak” because it was when the genome was published.

If Linfa was anticipating the bad news, it could have been because he and Dani had been aware of the leak at the time it happened. Analysis of mobile phone records discovered an apparent shutdown of Dr. Anderson’s BSL4 lab between October 7th and 24th 2019 (identified by the lack of mobile phone usage in the vicinity). Nothing further has come to light about this incident and what lay behind it, but if it does denote a laboratory-acquired infection that Anderson and Linfa (and presumably others) were aware of, it would explain a lot.

The realisation that it was an engineered virus from the U.S. may also have driven the panic that pushed the Chinese Government to lock Wuhan down shortly after the genome was published.

Since 2021, Ralph Baric has thrown himself into developing vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses, even entertaining fantasies of “ring vaccination”, as is done with Ebola, to try to stop the outbreak in its tracks. Is this his way of trying to make amends, however misguided? I wonder if we are also able to detect a hint of him pointing to who he thinks is really to blame for the debacle, when he remarks that “governments, rather than scientists” are primarily responsible for choosing which risky gain-of-function experiments to fund and run – a reference perhaps to how Munster’s “edgy” engineering of transmissible virus-vaccines was picked over his non-transmissible version.

“It looks like American science is going to get shredded for a pandemic that started in China,” he told Time‘s Dan Werb, reverting to denial. When Werb suggested to him that despite the “conspiracy theories” there are many people happy that he became a scientist in the first place, he replied: “A fair number that probably wished I hadn’t. Let’s be honest.”

Is that the closest we’ll get to a confession?