COVID-19/Origins

COVID-19/Origins  (Third rail topic)
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Subpage(s)	•COVID-19/Origins/Isolation
The origins of COVID-19 have become a third rail topic since about May 2020. The official narrative blames a "lone bat".

“It is unclear if SARS2 is 100 percent natural or emerged due to lab/research activities. If we walk away from this, demonstrating that we cannot effectively investigate its origins, it will pave the way for future COVIDS.”
Alina Chan (8 December 2020) 

COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus widely believed to have been engineered in a BSL-4 lab, quite possibly either Fort Detrick or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It was publicly announced in December 2019 after an outbreak in Wuhan, the city housing China's only BSL4 facility, the WIV. The official narrative put out in early 2020 was that the virus emerged spontaneously by zoonotic transmission. In April 2020, an official opposition narrative was promoted by Western commercially-controlled media that implicated the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This so-called "lab leak" thesis was strongly censored for around 10 months more, until it became the official narrative in early 2021. The ideas of deliberate release, or leak from labs other than the WIV were still third rail topics as of mid 2021. By the start of 2023, the commercially-controlled media was gradually revealing that the lab leak hypothesis was widely believed all along by a lot of insiders, who self-censored and attempted to censor or otherwise obscure the possibility.

Official narrative

The zoonotic origin theory was initially promoted as most likely, and the remarkable closeness of the WIV to the first reported case was something of a third rail for the commercially-controlled media, which consistently minimised the possibility that the virus might have been genetically modified, although it was supported by such credentialed voices such as Luc Montagnier.

In April 2020, a lot of commercially-controlled media briefly pivoted the official narrative towards an azoonotic option, termed "lab leak" to clarify that it could not have been intentional. Implicit in their reporting was the assumption that the lab in question could only have been the WIV, and Donald Trump spoke about the possibility of claiming reparations from China. After a few days^{[How many?]} the commercially-controlled media stopped these stories, and rolled back from "lab leak" to "lone bat", without explanation, so that for the remainder of the year and hint that this was incorrect was taboo. This unusual pattern is likely indicative of as yet unexplained deep political intrigue.

In January 2021 Nicholson Baker wrote the hugely popular The Lab-Leak Hypothesis for New York Magazine, which was a watershead, such that in early 2021, commercially-controlled media reluctantly seemed to accept that there was indeed a weight of evidence pointing towards "gain-of-function" research as the true source of the virus, with relatively little to support the zoonotic jump. Moreover, FOIAed emails had exposed Peter Daszak's deceitful efforts to try to stifle an open discussion on the topic.. As of 2022, in spite of the large weight of evidence supporting the possibility of planned release, the corporate media has not made a corresponding shift in its narrative - it remained a third rail.

Take 1 - Wet Market/"Lone Bat" theory

The official narrative about the origins of the virus, which Ronnie Cummins termed the "lone bat" theory was that it occurred naturally by zoonosis. It was linked this to a seafood market, although a Lancet paper reported that three out of the first four patients had no known connection to it.

Emails later gleaned through FOIA revealed that in February 2020, Peter Daszak, the director of EcoHealth Alliance secretly drafted a statement which included the assertion that "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." This was published in The Lancet, co-signed by himself and 26 co-authors he had arranged.

Through March 2020 the generally implicit assumption of Western commercially-controlled media was that the virus originated naturally in Wuhan. Alternative suggestions were pretty consistently referred to as "conspiracy theories" and Twitter censored Zero Hedge for challenging it.

The BBC claimed in October 2020 that "the vast majority of scientists agree that it crossed into humans from an animal species, most likely a bat."

Academic papers

On 3 February 2020 Nature published A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin, which stated that "2019-nCoV is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus". The corresponding author was Zheng-Li Shi, who co-conceived the study. Her 28 co-authors, all Chinese, were mostly from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In March 2020 Nature published a paper entitled The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 which concluded that "we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible" and that "SARS-CoV-2 originated via natural selection". In January 2021 Nicholson Baker termed it " most influential natural-origin paper".

As well as medical papers, researchers into "conspiracy theories" published pseudo-scientific papers such as Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories? which noted, in April 2020, that "31% [of the US respondents] agree that the virus was purposefully created and spread".

Response

ZeroHedge carried a response by 'Harvard2TheBigHouse' that criticised it as discounting the possibility of unnatural selection, i.e. not gene editing but gain-of-function research by passaging through ferrets.

2012 Yunnan mineshaft outbreak

In 2012, 6 Chinese miners were infected by a hitherto unknown coronavirus in Yunnan province, China. This was dubbed RaTG13 by the lab of Zheng-li Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In July 2020, Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson suggested that the virus may have evolved from their samples, and that its high efficacy at infecting humans may have evolved from the months of natural selection in the lungs of the miners, 3 of whom died.

Take 2 - Accidental "lab leak"

On 24 January 2020, the Washington Times published Coronavirus may have originated in a lab linked to China’s biowarfare program, citing Danny Shoham, a former lieutenant colonel in an Israeli military intelligence unit. This idea was labelled a "conspiracy theory" by commercially-controlled media until early April 2020, when a sharp pivot embraced it as a real possibility.

"Evidence" emerged that suggested the virus may in fact have a connection to the WIV.A report in Fox News in April 2020 claimed that "There is increasing confidence that COVID-19 likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon".

"Evidence" cited included the claim that "China’s rate of occupational accidents is about ten-times higher than America’s, and some twenty-times more than Europe’s – the only other regions with high-level virology labs." In January 2018, "the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)", warning of inadequate safety procedures.

Timing

A story in the Daily Mail in April 2020 cited research suggesting that the virus may have emerged as early as September 2019, not in Wuhan, and have been circulating in Europe before the official narrative said it was introduced from China.

Late 2019

In May 2020, reports suggested that the virus was in Europe by November 2019 and spreading slowly until it sped up in 2020 A French case from December 2019 was reported who had no known connection with Wuhan. In May 2020, Anders Tegnell said he thought it was probably in Sweden by November or December 2019. Genetic research was suggesting that it emerged towards the end of 2019 and spread worldwide, unnoticed, extremely fast.

US origin??

In January 2020 Zhong Nanshan challenged the assumption that the disease began in China and Chinese spokesman Lijian Zhao accused the US in a twitter post: "It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!"

July 2019 - Fort Detrick shutdown

In July 2019 the CDC issued Fort Detrick (which the FBI concluded was the source of the anthrax used for the Amerithrax event) with a “cease and desist order” which shut it down for ^{[How many?]} months.

August 2019 - EVALI

In August 2019, an new illness was reported in the US which was named "vape lung" or EVALI (E-cigarette/Vaping -Associated Lung Injury). "The EVALI and other respiratory viruses share similar symptoms, including shortness of breath, night sweats, low oxygen levels, and hazy spots on a lung X-ray, statnews.com reported, quoting experts, who mentioned the difficulty to "tease apart a bad flu case and a vaping case.""

The illness was reported as "a U.S.-specific phenomenon” that began in Illinois and Wisconsin in April 2019. "The first death from a vaping-related illness was reported Aug 23 in Illinois."

“Patients, mostly otherwise healthy and in their late teens and 20s, are showing up with severe shortness of breath, often after suffering for several days with vomiting, fever and fatigue. Some have wound up in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks. Treatment has been complicated by patients’ lack of knowledge — and sometimes outright denial — about the actual substances they might have used or inhaled.”
'

It "sharply increasing in August 2019 and peaking in September". It was blamed on illicit vaping products, especially those containing cannabis. As of October 15, 2019, the CDC had reported on 1,358 sufferers of EVALI, of whom about 2/3 were male. The median age was 24 and although the median age of fatality was around 50 years.

A comparison between EVALI cases and COVID taken from [this paper] (April 2020)

2019 - CEO resignations

An NBC News story from 6 November 2019. It began: "Chief executives are leaving in record numbers this year, with more than 1,332 stepping aside in the period from January through the end of October, according to new data released on Wednesday. While it's not unusual to see CEOs fleeing in the middle of a recession, it is noteworthy to see such a rash of executive exits amid robust corporate earnings and record stock market highs."

Forbes reported on 2 October 2019 on a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas that CEOs Are Leaving At A Record Pace, Report Finds

18-27 October 2019 - Military World Games

Full article: 2019 Military World Games

The 7th Military World Games was held in late October 2019 in Wuhan, China. Nearly 10,000 athletes took part from over 100 countries. In March 2020 China's foreign ministry spokesperson Lijian Zhao suggested that the “patient zero” of the COVID outbreak in Wuhan may have been a member of the US team. "The Chinese claim, something censored in the US, that the inattentive attitude and disproportionately below average results of American athletes in the game indicates they might have been in for other purposes and they might actually be bio-warfare operatives, and that their place of residence during their stay in Wuhan was also close to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first known cluster of cases occurred."

18 October - Event 201

Full article: Event 201

Event 201, co-funded by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation simulated a global coronavirus pandemic. The final presentation was held in front of an audience on 18 October 2019 and included participants who later played important roles in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

November 2019

According to an ABC News report of April 2020 that the National Center for Medical Intelligence (based in Fort Detrick) had warned the White House in November 2019 that "a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting." The NCMI took the unusual step of denying it.

Italian researchers are looking at whether a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 may be a signal that the new coronavirus might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought was the headline of a March 2020 report by Reuters.

January 2020 - CDC & FBI prohibit contact testing for COVID-19

The CDC explicitly prohibited epidemiologist Helen Chu from testing contacts of the first known case in Washington state. A paper in the New England Journal of Medicine dates the first US COVID-19 cases as a man who arrived there from Wuhan on 19 January 2020.

February 2020 Haplotype research

In February 2020 research indicated that the US was the only location with all 5 different haplotypes, suggesting that it may have been the origin of the virus. RT reported in April 2020 that "autopsies performed on two people who died at home on February 6 and February 17 show that their tissues were infected with Covid-19, Santa Clara health authorities said".

Miscategorisation of flu deaths

On 13 March 2020, CDC Director, Robert Redfield testified to the US Congress that COVID-19 deaths had been miscategorised as the flu. This inspired questions from China, which were not answered.

Bioweapon?

Francis Boyle on Coronavirus Bioweapon

Various factors have been cited as suggestive that the event may have been a bioweapon, i.e. a false flag attack. Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of endocrinology at Flinders University College of Medicine in Adelaide, Australia, is reported as stating that, “There are indeed many unexplained features of this virus that are hard if not impossible to explain based on a completely natural origin.”

Brian T. Kennedy, chair of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, has tweeted and re-tweeted a large number of Tweets, (some from corporate media with connections to the Committee), claiming the virus originates from a Chinese biological weapons program.

Francis Boyle stated in an interview for GreatGameIndia in February 2020 that he believed the virus is a bioweapon. In a March 2020 update, Prof Boyle said he believes COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan BSL-4 lab. He believes the virus is a biowarfare agent produced by "gain-of-function" research, which is why the Chinese government originally tried to cover it up. The Wuhan facility is also a specially designated World Health Organization (WHO) research lab and Dr Boyle contends that the WHO knows full well what is occurring.

The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus

On 6 February 2020 ResearchGate published a brief article by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao from Guangzhou’s South China University of Technology. It noted that “In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.” Botao Xiao told the Wall Street Journal in February that he had withdrawn the paper because it “was not supported by direct proofs.”

Economic war

Full article: COVID-19/Economy

Accusations on both sides are used as part of the ongoing economic war between the US empire and its upcoming rival China.

Cover-up

Scientists were cautions about investigating the origins of the virus, subject to “very intense, very subtle pressures”. Publication of non-zoonic origin after about May 2020 was strongly discouraged. After initial interest in the origin of the virus, the "Chinese government has also restricted their own scholars and scientists from looking into the origins of SARS-CoV-2".

"Investigation"

The WHO appointed Peter Daszak of EcoHealth to head an "investigation" of the origins of the virus. It had already become knwn at that point that in 2020 he had anonymously organised a denial of the lab leak hypothesis, which was published in The Lancet, but had declined to present evidence..

"Fact checking"

Danielle Anderson, who worked Wuhan Institute of Virology for 2 years on bat coronaviruses later became a Facebook "Fact Checker" who claimed that there was no possibility that the virus could have originated there.

Blocking of the COVID Origins Declassification Bill

In July 2021, the US House blocked the COVID Origins Declassification Bill, which would require the Director of National Intelligence to declassify the US government's investigations into the origins of COVID-19. The bill had passed unanimously in the US Senate.

CIA Admission and Cover Up

Although ex-aides of the Biden administration such as Raj Panjabi voiced serious concerns calling the lab theory "plausible", US Congress and the CIA released a statement still denying any link. This was deemed more suspicious after the US Representative Brad Wenstrup claimed to possess a written testimony under oath that the virus was artificially created in a lab and released under unclear and nefarious circumstances.

“A majority of U.S. intelligence agencies has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has received intense attention from researchers as the potential source. But the Department of Energy and FBI so far have favored the so-called lab-leak hypothesis, even though none of the agencies has expressed high confidence in their conclusions on COVID-19’s origin. CIA, for example, had reportedly said it was “unable to determine” whether SARS-CoV-2 made a direct jump from animals to humans—or came from a lab. Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), who chairs the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says his panel and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower “who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer.” According to the press release, the whistleblower testified that only the most senior analyst of a seven-member CIA team investigating the origin of COVID-19 supported the zoonotic transmission theory. The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received “a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” wrote Wenstrup and Representative Mike Turner (R–OH), who chairs the intelligence panel.”
Jon Cohen (September 2023) 

Exposure

Dilbert from September 2022

In 2022, as large numbers of people emerged from COVID panic, public doubts about the zoonotic origin were increasingly aired. Jeffrey Sachs publicly stated he believed the virus came out of a lab.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
2023	“A majority of U.S. intelligence agencies has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has received intense attention from researchers as the potential source. But the Department of Energy and FBI so far have favored the so-called lab-leak hypothesis, even though none of the agencies has expressed high confidence in their conclusions on COVID-19’s origin. CIA, for example, had reportedly said it was “unable to determine” whether SARS-CoV-2 made a direct jump from animals to humans—or came from a lab. Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), who chairs the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says his panel and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower “who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer.” According to the press release, the whistleblower testified that only the most senior analyst of a seven-member CIA team investigating the origin of COVID-19 supported the zoonotic transmission theory. The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received “a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” wrote Wenstrup and Representative Mike Turner (R–OH), who chairs the intelligence panel.”	Jon Cohen	September 2023
David Baltimore	“When I first saw the furin cleavage site <a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a> in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. (...) These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.”	David Baltimore
Biological weapon	“The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus features a so-called furin cleavage site (FCS), which makes the virus more infectious and virulent than it would otherwise be. Such an FCS is not known in any other SARS-like coronavirus, but it is often inserted as part of gain-of-function studies in virus research. However, similar FCS are known to occur in non-SARS-like coronaviruses, hence a natural origin cannot be excluded based on this. The furin cleavage site found in SARS-CoV-2 uses an arginine (amino acid) double codon, which is rather rare in natural coronaviruses, but quite common in engineered viruses used in lab experiments (...)”
CIA	“A majority of U.S. intelligence agencies has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has received intense attention from researchers as the potential source. But the Department of Energy and FBI so far have favored the so-called lab-leak hypothesis, even though none of the agencies has expressed high confidence in their conclusions on COVID-19’s origin. CIA, for example, had reportedly said it was “unable to determine” whether SARS-CoV-2 made a direct jump from animals to humans—or came from a lab. Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), who chairs the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says his panel and the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower “who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer.” According to the press release, the whistleblower testified that only the most senior analyst of a seven-member CIA team investigating the origin of COVID-19 supported the zoonotic transmission theory. The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received “a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” wrote Wenstrup and Representative Mike Turner (R–OH), who chairs the intelligence panel.”	Jon Cohen	September 2023
COVID-19/Censorship	“If one of the first thoughts that goes through the head of a lab director at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is that the new coronavirus could have come from her lab, then we are obliged to entertain the scientific possibility that it could indeed have come from her lab. Right then, there should have been a comprehensive, pockets-inside-out, fully public investigation of the Virology Institute, along with the other important virus labs in Wuhan, including the one close by the seafood market, headquarters of the Wuhan CDC. There should have been interviews with scientists, interviews with biosafety teams, close parsings of laboratory notebooks, freezer and plumbing and decontamination systems checks — everything. It didn’t happen. The Wuhan Institute of Virology closed down its databases of viral genomes, and the Chinese Ministry of Education sent out a directive: “Any paper that traces the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed.””	Nicholson Baker	4 January 2021
Marie-Eve Carignan	“Early findings show that there really is a rapid uptake of different conspiracy theories, particularly in the United States and France. Similar theories about other diseases that took years to establish themselves only took a few weeks to take hold, super quickly, because people are absorbing so much information! That’s what’s alarming.”	Marie-Eve Carignan	5 April 2020
Francis Collins	“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... 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. It may not have all the answers to your questions, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction in helping to distinguish rumors from facts.”	Francis Collins	8 April 2020
Jonathan Jay Couey	“I think that the origins of the virus was a lab leak drama. Probably there was a bioweapon in the beginning to seed everything because that would be necessary, but I don't think there is any evidence for a virus that has gone around the world for 3 years. And the PCR tests and the sequences are not evidence of that... we don't have any of that data from pre 2020, so you don't know whether those sequences could have been found in 2019, 18, 17, 16 because no one was looking.”	Jonathan Jay Couey	8 February 2023
Peter Daszak	“The point is that, let’s look at a balance of probability. That’s what you have to do. We have a few hundred technicians and scientists working in these labs. They do not have a problem with staff or with security or with loose controls. These are very well-run labs. They’ve been inspected by the U.S. CDC, by people working in BSL-4 labs, high-security labs, in the U.S., in France and internationally. They’re accredited by the U.S. So, it’s ironic that now we’re saying they’re not very well organized. We actually inspected them properly and allowed them to open. You know, the cables that were reported in the — [interrupted]”	Peter Daszak	16 April 2020
Peter Daszak	<nowiki>“Instead of providing public health authorities with the plentiful information at his disposal, [[[Peter Daszak]]] immediately launched a public relations campaign to persuade the world that the epidemic couldn’t possibly have been caused by one of the institute’s souped-up viruses.”</nowiki>	Peter Daszak	2021
Peter Daszak	“Well I think... coronaviruses — you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happen with coronavirus, in zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work a lot with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this. Insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab.”	Peter Daszak	9 December 2019
EcoHealth Alliance	“Once we’ve got a good group of around 20 well-known people, I will then circulate this via social media and email, with a link to a webserver for others in the greater science community (and interested public) to sign on to this statement. I will then present this to the ISID meeting in KL, Malaysia in 2 weeks and I think we’ll get a big impact from that community and it should then take off. Please note that this statement will not have EcoHealth Alliance logo on it and will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person, the idea is to have this as a community supporting our colleagues.”	Peter Daszak	6 February 2020
Event 201	“My team has been monitoring the public response. And on various social media channels and cable networks, there's been some conspiracy theories that are around about the potential that pharmaceutical companies or the UN have released this for their own benefit. So as we move forward, obviously, trust in pharmaceuticals and government is very important at this moment. And so as we move forward with developing the right scenarios, we have to make sure that the public communication is a major part of that because of these conspiracy theories.”		18 October 2019
Muammar Gaddafi	“They will create the viruses themselves and sell you the antidotes. Thereafter, they will pretend to take time to find the solution when they already have it.”	Muammar Gaddafi	September 2009
Zhengli Shi	“The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory. I advise those who believe and spread rumors from harmful media sources, as well as those who believe the unreliable so-called academic analysis of Indian scholars, to shut their stinking mouths.”	Zhengli Shi	February 2020

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US	Article	4 March 2020	Larry Romanoff	The varieties of COVID-19 in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere.
Document:The Spartacus COVID-19 Letter	Article	28 September 2021	Institute for Coronavirus Emergence Nonprofit Intelligence	The Spartacus Letter - Rev. 2 (2021-09-28) Spartacus

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