Made in Lab | The Republic Report

THE FOCUS (2/18/2021)

The Coronavirus was Made in Lab?

The Coronavirus was highly likely made in laboratory. But whose lab? And who was funding it?

The WHO team went to Wuhan, China in January to do the investigation of the origin of the coronavirus that has been wrecking the world. Before the visit, there was little expectation that they would come up with a conclusive finding. But it is even less so after their visit. As we wrote before, we will likely never know how the virus spread out to the open world. Just like the 2020 presidential election in which the media just ignored the massive evidence and just parroting the Democratic Party's talking points, the media has largely spreading propaganda on the origin of this virus as well. The origin and the true danger of virus as well as the necessary public policies to combat the virus have become ideological issues. Little common ground to find the truth regarding this virus. But one thing is more certain, the virus was made in laboratory.

Along with the other sources posted on this page, below is a good reading on this issue.

The World Health Organization officials investigating the origins of the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, otherwise known as COVID-19, were finally let into China on Jan. 14, and spent two weeks “investigating.” The most contentious question was, did the virus that supposedly first infected people in a Wuhan wet market originate in one of the two virology labs close to the markets, at least one of which specialized in such viruses?

The delegation discounted that, saying it was “extremely unlikely”—so unlikely that the WHO would end additional study of the matter. But the delegation revealed no evidence, or explanation, as to why they were so certain the case must be closed. The idea of a lab leak wasn’t wild speculation, it was proposed in February 2020 by two Chinese researchers when they saw that one of the Chinese virus labs was eight miles from the wet market, and another, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a mere 300 yards away. Mysteriously, their article “disappeared” from the internet (though it was retrieved using the Wayback Machine.)

The other leading hypothesis was that the virus (the nearest relatives of which were known to be in bat caves about 1,000 miles away from Wuhan) jumped from an animal to human. To these two possibilities, the WHO added two more favored by the Chinese government: That it was introduced into China by people from outside the country, or that it arrived in frozen food from elsewhere, but provided little evidence for these.

Thus, the investigation went well for the Chinese government, and they made sure it did: It was delayed for a year, during which time viral evidence and witnesses disappeared. It only lasted two weeks (the committee was in quarantine two weeks), only several hours were spent in the lab in question, asking questions, not looking at samples or doing forensics, and the itinerary was controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, as, for that matter, was the committee composition, which included 17 Chinese members. Even “international members,” including the very high profile researcher Peter Daszak, who himself closely collaborated with, and passed funding to, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and who was thus basically investigating and absolving himself. He praised those there for being a “Frank, open discussion.”

The Chinese participants were of course aware of what happened to physicians and researchers who spoke their minds on the issue. Chinese physicians who had sounded the alarm during the original outbreak were threatened with prison for sharing information with medical colleagues and the world. They were not interviewed. Dr. Ai Fen, head of the Emergency Department at Wuhan Central Hospital, saw many of the first cases and would have known where her patients might have been prior to getting sick. She dared to publish an article on the topic in China’s People. But the article disappeared, within hours, and then she disappeared.

Censoring speech, and erasing brave people often go hand in hand. On news of the outbreak, public health officials in other countries wanted access to the original virus samples to develop therapeutics. But key samples from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were also “disappeared” over a year ago. Chinese officials even admitted to destroying some of them—as a precaution to protect the public, of course—lest the coronavirus escape from the lab. (Was there ever a more superfluous precaution taken, considering the virus was already out and about in China and had infected tens of thousands?)

The WHO committee made no comment on these forensic mysteries. All this raises two questions: Why would a government eliminate evidence and witnesses, stall for a year, curate every detail, and stack the WHO investigating delegation, if a fair investigation would have shown the virus had an innocent, “natural” origin, had been introduced into China by a foreigner, or had arrived in a package of frozen food from another country? And why would the WHO go along?

Gain-of-Function Research

There is, arguably, another way to approach this matter, which involves sorting through some of the most likely reasons the samples were destroyed and witnesses to the origins were silenced; an approach which may also help explain the WHO’s aiding and abetting such an obvious sham. It is to take into account that, among other things, the WIV lab was performing a form of research called “gain-of-function.”

If you can’t quite figure out what the term means, that is intended, because, GoF is a euphemism for a practice that might seem rather Dr. Strangelovian, and the furthest thing from forethought or prudence, or preventative medicine. It involves deliberately making viruses much more dangerous, to the point that they will cause a pandemic. “Gain-of-function” is the perfect term if you need a grant from a scientifically illiterate public composed of nervous types who, for some reason, don’t like or trust the idea of experts making invincible killer germs. “Viral-deadliness enhancement” would be a turnoff, but gain-of-function sounds like the title of a promising self-help fad. To call it a “euphemism” is a euphemism, because it is really doublespeak, like those military obfuscations such as “pacification,” which mean almost the opposite of what they appear to.

Know thine enemy is the premise underlying GoF research. Thus, in the case of viruses, it involves taking a relatively but not totally deadly one, and augmenting its lethality and its contagiousness, not just between humans, but also increasing the number of animals that might carry it and then pass it on to humans. The point is to increase its deadliness by a quantum leap, so that it could cause a pandemic. Then one studies the deadly monster in a flask, to discover its molecular Achilles heel, and get a head start, in the lab, on developing therapeutics or vaccines should a microbe “out there” mutate to become like the monstrous microbe one has created.

GoF goes on in many “advanced” countries. Science, after all, is often a collaborative effort. Thus, Newsweek reported, “The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.” The United States was not the only other donor that funded or collaborated with the civilian research going on at the lab.

Once the pandemic broke out in the very same city as that lab, the obvious question was whether or not that lab, which specialized in coronaviruses, somehow leaked, or through GoF, created the SARS-Cov-2 virus that was causing the catastrophe? That lab had already been cited by the U.S. State Department for its inadequate biosafety.

Once it became known that the United States, through Daszak’s New York-based organization, EcoHealth Alliance, which he heads, was funding WIV research, the Trump administration cut the funding. 60 Minutes ran a segment called “Pandemic Politics,” critical of the administration for cutting off his funding. It interviewed Daszak, emphasized that he was a heroic virus hunter, and made no mention that he was involved in supporting GoF research. He is also a co-author of a paper on it with Shi Zhengli, chief virologist of the WIV.

A paper by Shi Zhengli and GoF researcher Dr. Ralph Baric described how they were the first to create a GoF “chimera”—i.e., an engineered bat SARS virus that could infect a human; something many scientists criticized as very dangerous. Daszak has described doing GoF research with Baric, and how it can be done “pretty easily.” That means that these scientists have also made biowarfare easier.

There indeed seems to be an intimate link between the WIV and the People’s Liberation Army as well, and according to The Wall Street Journal, when talk of leakage occurred, China’s chief bioweapons specialist, Major General Chen Wei, was dispatched there to investigate. For obvious reasons, there is a major crossover between GoF and bioweapons research throughout the world, and some of the “experts” who comment on it are actually “bioweapons” experts. The first GoF research appears to have been done for various militaries (more below). Daszak, for instance, is funded not only by the NIH, but the U.S. Department of Defense as well.

The complete article can be read at Tablet "A Plague on Both Our House".

THE FOCUS (2/18/2021)

The Coronavirus was Made in Lab?

The Coronavirus was highly likely made in laboratory. But whose lab? And who was funding it?

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