BOMBSHELL: Sunday Times reveals that COVID-19 developed by military at Wuhan lab

But the US public health establishment has been denying it for 3 years because they were partially responsible.

The UK’s Sunday Times, basically a centrist equivalent of The New York Times for Great Britain (The New York Times was actually named after the Times), has a bombshell report that COVID-19 was indeed engineered by the Chinese military using US funding. The US funding came through the EcoHealth Alliance.

The trail of money went, as we already know, from the NIH through the EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese Military became involved in the coronavirus research around 2017 when gain-of-function research started bearing fruit.

The Times’ report, which I strongly suspect is absolutely true although I have to take the Times’ word on the provenance of the evidence, is based upon confidential documents leaked to them by investigators who were sent to Wuhan to study the outbreak. It also comes directly from the United States State Department’s investigators who were sent to China to investigate the origins of the virus. There are extensive quotes from those State Department investigators.

Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world’s most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began.

Investigators who scrutinised top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.

The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons.

The US had banned funding for gain-of-function research until the decision was reversed by Dr. Fauci, and the EcoHealth Alliance was enthusiastic about restarting their research into making viruses more lethal for research purposes. The whole point of gain-of-function research is to take benign viruses and make them dangerous and virulent, theoretically for research purposes.

Apparently, the Chinese military felt the same way about gain-of-function research as the EcoHealth Alliance. Very enthusiastic indeed.

The Sunday Times has reviewed hundreds of documents, including previously confidential reports, internal memos, scientific papers and email correspondence that has been obtained through sources or by freedom of information campaigners in the three years since the pandemic started. We also interviewed the US State Department investigators — including experts on China, emerging pandemic threats, and biowarfare — who conducted the first significant US inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Note that last sentence: some of this information comes directly from US government sources. The rest were from documents that were obtained either overtly or covertly from correspondence or scientific papers. Essentially they put together pieces of a puzzle that all fit together, and those pieces are confirmed by the State Department investigators.

As you probably know, the British press is loosely divided between the ‘respectable’ broadsheet newspapers and the more lively and partisan tabloid press. The Times is of the former class, is very establishment in outlook, and was very on board with COVID lockdown policies. It has endorsed both Labour and Conservatives over the years and actually endorsed Barack Obama for president. It is more establishment than ideological.

In other words, the newspaper doesn’t have an axe to grind here and is not known for hyperbole to generate sales and clicks. This is the equivalent of the New York Times reporting that they have reviewed secret documents proving Joe Biden engaged in a bribery scandal–it would be an admission against interest.

The facility, which had started hunting the origins of the Sars virus in 2003, attracted US government funding through a New York-based charity whose president was a British-born and educated zoologist. America’s leading coronavirus scientist shared cutting-edge virus manipulation techniques.

The institute was engaged in increasingly risky experiments on coronaviruses it gathered from bat caves in southern China. Initially, it made its findings public and argued the associated risks were justified because the work might help science develop vaccines.

This changed in 2016 after researchers discovered a new type of coronavirus in a mineshaft in Mojiang in Yunnan province where people had died from symptoms similar to Sars.

Rather than warning the world, the Chinese authorities did not report the fatalities. The viruses found there are now recognised as the only members of Covid-19’s immediate family known to have been in existence pre-pandemic.

They were transported to the Wuhan institute and the work of its scientists became classified. “The trail of papers starts to go dark,” a US investigator said. “That’s exactly when the classified programme kicked off. My view is that the reason Mojiang was covered up was due to military secrecy related to [the army’s] pursuit of dual use capabilities in virological biological weapons and vaccines.”

According to the US investigators, the classified programme was to make the mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans.

None of this should be shocking, given what we already know. In fact, most Americans already believe that the virus came from a lab leak, despite desperate efforts on Anthony Fauci’s part to deny this nearly certain fact. As you may recall, when virus experts warned Dr. Fauci that the virus looked engineered, he hastily arranged a conference call that pressured them to assert that the virus was natural.

They did and were rewarded with $9 million in research grants. Fauci and co. assert the two events were unrelated.

In any case, the State Department researchers found a lot of evidence that the Wuhan lab was involved, despite Chinese interference in the investigation.

They found evidence that researchers working on these experiments were taken to hospital with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019 — a month before the West became aware of the pandemic — and one of their relatives died.

An investigator said: “We were rock-solid confident that this was likely Covid-19 because they were working on advanced coronavirus research in the laboratory. They’re trained biologists in their thirties and forties. Thirty-five-year-old scientists don’t get very sick with influenza.”

Separate analysis shows the centre of the initial outbreak of Covid-19, which has killed more than seven million people, was close to the institute’s laboratory, rather than at the city’s “wet” wildlife market as had been thought.

Notice how many facts known to US investigators have been systematically denied in public. It is almost as if this is a huge coverup from the top, although that would be unthinkable. Everybody involved has had good intentions all along. Right?

The EcoHealth Alliance was known to skirt the US ban on gain-of-function research that was implemented by the Obama Administration. They worked diligently in Wuhan to engineer SARS-like viruses that did not infect humans into infectious variants, as well as manipulate a MERS virus found in camels into an infectious variant for humans.

All this work was done in Biosafety labs rated at level 2, or the level used in a dentist’s office.

By 2017, according to a paper published by Shi, her scientists had sought to create eight mutant viruses from the Sars-like coronaviruses found in the Shitou cave. Two of the mutant viruses were found to infect human cells. Most of this work was carried out in the institute’s biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) laboratories, which took only light precautions that have been compared to those used in a dental surgery.

By contrast, the US guidelines require level 3 (BSL-3) precautions for similar work, including self-closing doors, filtered air and scientists equipped with full PPE while under medical supervision.

The US embassy found out about the experiments in Wuhan and sent diplomats with scientific expertise to inspect the institute in January 2018, according to diplomatic cables leaked to The Washington Post. They observed “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory”.

Again, this has already been public knowledge, although the US government and biomedical researchers have done a lot of work to downplay the deficiencies of the Wuhan lab, and the MSM has acted like Pravda in spreading doubt about the WIV’s poor safety practices and experiments with coronaviruses. One of the reasons why doubt about the official story has grown is the steady drip drip drip of damning evidence. Why has no US paper put all the data together into a comprehensive story?

Around the same time, the Wuhan institute took another perilous leap forward with its work on the Shitou viruses. It began what Professor Richard Ebright describes as the most dangerous coronavirus experiment ever undertaken. The scientists selected three lab-grown mutant viruses, created by mixing Sars-like viruses with WIV1, which had all been shown to infect human cells. These mutants were then injected into the noses of albino mice with human lungs.

The aim was to see whether the viruses had the potential to spark a pandemic if they were fused together, as they might do naturally in a bat colony. The original WIV1 virus was injected into another group of mice as a comparison.

The mice were monitored in their cages over two weeks. The results were shocking. The mutant virus that fused WIV1 with SHC014 killed 75 per cent of the rodents and was three times as lethal as the original WIV1. In the early days of the infection, the mice’s human-like lungs were found to contain a viral load up to 10,000 times greater than the original WIV1 virus.

You might think that this data–known to the US for quite some time, might have figured into assessments made by our intelligence community and especially the CDC and NIAID regarding the origin of the virus. And, indeed, it almost certainly did factor into the analysis.

Unfortunately, their response seems to have been to panic and cover it up. Revealing that the US helped fund research that created a super-coronavirus might not sit well with the American public and our allies during a pandemic that eventually killed millions of people.

Not to mention the impact on the reputations and careers of the people involved, particularly one Anthony Fauci, who was perfectly placed to both hide the facts and steer government policies and recommendations.

The experiment’s results suggested the new lab-made virus would be more difficult to stop if it leaked into the population, according to Ebright. It appeared to be highly infectious early in the illness.

The researchers’ tests also showed vaccines and other treatments developed to combat Sars were not effective against the new virus. The results of the experiment were not shared with other scientists in any scientific journal or paper.

The experiment was part-funded by EcoHealth’s grant money, but the FOI documents show that, while the Wuhan institute’s experiments were described in Daszak’s April 2018 annual progress report to the NIH, he did not refer to the deaths of the humanised mice.

There was also no mention of the mouse deaths in the grant renewal application Daszak filed to the NIH later that year. In this account, he said the mice had experienced “mild Sars-like clinical signs” when they were infected with the mutant virus. It had actually killed six of the eight infected humanised mice.

I think we can all rest assured that a 75% death rate in humanized mice was such a minor finding that Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance just forgot to mention it when they requested more funding from the United States government. I mean, really, what’s the big deal?

Daszak eventually provided details of the experiment’s deadly results to the US authorities in a report after the Covid-19 pandemic. He now says his 2018 statement about the “mild” illness was based on preliminary results — even though the experiment in which the mice died had taken place several months before he issued the statement.

This guy is a total sweetheart. A genuine humanitarian. And one of Anthony Fauci’s pet projects. Fauci was deeply connected to the EcoHealth Alliance and was one of its great fans.

In fact, when the Alliance looked for funding from the US government that didn’t come from NIAID, they weren’t so lucky. DARPA turned them down when they requested a bigger chunk of change than the NIH could easily provide. Not everybody shared Fauci’s good opinion of the organization.

By March 2018, the Wuhan institute was keen to press ahead with more experiments. Daszak applied for more funding from the US. He made a pitch for $14 million over three years from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which is responsible for emerging technology for use by the military.

The application, entitled Defuse — which names Daszak, Shi and Baric — proposed the Wuhan laboratory find large numbers of new Sars viruses and mix some of them with their two deadly strains from the Shitou cave — WIV1 and SHC014 — to see what would happen. Darpa declined to fund the research.

One specific experiment involved inserting a furin cleavage site, a tiny section of a virus’s genetic order that makes them more infectious, into the pathogens. Daszak and the Wuhan laboratory say they did not go ahead with the work. But when Covid-19 emerged the following year, it was notable for being the first Sars-like coronavirus with a furin cleavage site.

Remember the furin cleavage site? It was the main reason why the original virologists who argued that the virus looked engineered made that assessment. Their observation is what led to that original panicked conference call and the apparent bribes to change their stories. It seems quite the coincidence that COVID-19 is the only coronavirus with such a site and that the EcoHealth Alliance’s goal was to create a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site.

This next part comes directly from the US State Department investigators who were sent to Wuhan to investigate the origins of COVID. Their research revealed how the virus was created:

The investigators spoke to two researchers working at a US laboratory who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute at the time of the outbreak. They said the Wuhan scientists had inserted furin cleavage sites into viruses in 2019 in exactly the way proposed in Daszak’s failed funding application to Darpa.

The investigators also saw evidence that the institute was conducting “serial passaging” experiments on at least one of the mine viruses. This is a process in which lab animals are infected with viruses and monitored to see which strain is harmful to their health. The most damaging strain is selected for repeat experiments to encourage the pathogens to mutate into something more deadly.

The investigators spoke to a Wuhan institute insider who alleged serial passaging experiments were being carried out on RaTG13. “Humanised mice with the serial passaging is a toxic combination,” said a source. “It speeds up the natural mutation process. So instead of taking years to mutate, it can take weeks or months. It guarantees that you accelerate the natural process.”

This, by the way, is similar to the (apparent) revelations about the work Pfizer was supposedly doing to develop new vaccines, if you believe the bragging of the researcher that Project Veritas caught on camera. He claims he was lying to impress a possible lover, and Pfizer claims they were not mutating the virus. I have my doubts about their honesty, but the evidence is from this one source.

Quay believes Covid-19 was created by inserting a furin cleavage site into one of the mine viruses and then serial passaging it through humanised mice. He submitted a statement to the US Senate explaining the process. “You infect the mice, wait a week or so, and then recover the virus from the sickest mice. Then you repeat. In a matter of weeks this directed evolution will produce a virus that can kill every humanised mouse.”

This explains why from the beginning of the outbreak, he says, the pandemic virus was so remarkably well adapted to infect humans.

Why was China so aggressive about doing research on coronaviruses? Their explanation makes sense, of course: SARS hit Asia hard, and finding a vaccine to combat it would be a massive benefit to mankind. How, exactly, creating a deadlier variant of the virus makes this more likely is beyond me, but I am no biologist. What I do know is that the US and other Western scientists were worried enough about gain-of-function research to push for and to successfully ban it for years.

There is, though, strong evidence for a more plausible explanation: the military wanted a bioweapon.

One of the reasons there is no published information on such work, according to all three investigators, is because the shadow project on the mine viruses at the Wuhan institute was being funded by the Chinese military.

The State Department investigators wrote in their report: “Despite presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”

One of the investigator sources said the secret military-funded experiments on the mine virus, RaTG13, began in 2016.

But let’s sum up: the evidence that COVID was engineered in Wuhan with funds from the United States and the Chinese military is overwhelming. The US has known this for years, and there is plenty of documentation to build a clear line from the discovery of bat coronaviruses in a mine–viruses that were similar to SARS, but didn’t infect humans. A furin cleavage site was inserted, and then a program to mutate the virus into a deadly form.

All were done in a lab with biosafety level 2. The State Department investigators sent to determine what happened were stonewalled by China, but developed a chain of evidence that pretty conclusively demonstrates that this was done. There is no animal reservoir for the virus as it exists now, despite lots of smoke and mirrors suggesting otherwise.

One last thing: there is an additional reason to cover this up in addition to bureaucratic ass-covering. If, in 2020, it had come out that China engineered the virus as it was causing panic, what do you think would have been the fallout?

It wouldn’t have been pretty for anybody concerned. Fauci would be toast, but so would US-China relations. And what do you think the chances are that anybody at State or the DoD would have told Trump, whom the bureaucrats hated with a passion?

I have often commented that the chaotic and inconsistent decision making by politicians who were “following the science” didn’t make sense, and neither did a “warp speed” development of a new immunization technology, certainly not after the Diamond Princess and USS Theodore Roosevelt outbreaks in February and March 2020 told us almost all we needed to know about epidemiology, morbidity, and mortality of the novel coronavirus.

It WAS necessary to practice reasonable containment measures, and it was a good idea to work on a vaccine - but not to do either as if the world was ending.

The only reason that rapid termination of the pandemic became of critical importance to US and European leadership was if they knew something we didn’t - and now we know what they knew. And it’s a tell that countries not locked into an incestuous relationship with Western Big Science did not, for the most part, act as if the sky was falling. India and Brazil are two prominent examples.

If the pandemic could have been ended by “social distancing”, or by “masks”, or “lockdowns”, or mRNA vaccines - over by the Summer of 2021 - then no one would ever find out what really happened, and by June 2023 the Times would be publishing wry commentary along the lines of “Oh yes, that COVID thing in the Spring of 2020! Amusing! Wonder what it was all about?”

It’s true that political leaders became drunk with power, and some of them - Arden (NZ) and Trudeau (Canada), and others liked it much too much - but they were responding to inputs from the Wellcome Trust in the UK and the NIAID in the US, and those people, some of whom I know personally, do not panic and do not scare easily. They don’t, that is, unless they misunderstand the situation (unlikely) or unless there’s something that’s scaring them that’s not known to their political leaders or to the public at large.

If you know the inner workings of Big Science - the power that its leaders have over tens of thousands of scientists and billions of pounds/dollars - an admission or a discovery that this was the result of lawbreaking (moving recombinant viruses overseas to escape the GOF ban) and then organized deception to cover it up would SERIOUSLY change the lives of the people involved.

The simple explanations are the best ones - pride goeth before a fall, and all that.

I was 54 when it hit and in excellent shape; 5’8” tall, weighed 135 lbs., was able to walk all 14 floors of the building I was managing (including the stairwells) every week without a problem.

Spent 2 weeks the summer before trekking across Italy.

Busy, active working wife and mom, ate healthy, lived clean.

Now I’m an incapacitated mess who can’t go around the block without being winded or at risk of passing out from POTS and will not live long enough to see grandchildren.

These scumbags took years off my life.

Infectious Disease ping - Confirming what we all knew about Covid and Wuhan (Wuhan Institute of Virology)
Which was more dangerous ? The Covid virus, .. or the vaxxine ?

DeweyCA (From the article):" Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world’s most deadly coronaviruses
to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began.

"Investigators who scrutinised top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments,
which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak."

"The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military,
which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons . (Emphasis mine)

"The US had banned funding for gain-of-function research until the decision was reversed by Dr. Fauci,
and the EcoHealth Alliance was enthusiastic about restarting their research into making viruses more lethal for research purposes.
The whole point of gain-of-function research is to take benign viruses and make them dangerous and virulent,
theoretically for research purposes."
Apparently, the Chinese military felt the same way about gain-of-function research as the EcoHealth Alliance.
Very enthusiastic indeed."

Is this evidence of them playing catch-up, or is it them
wiggling to present the information in a way that will not
be so unfavorable to them?

I’m going with the latter. They knew all along.

I’m shocked that MSM players aren’t being targeted by the
general public at this point.

If the MSM was favoring the Right to this same degree, there’s
no doubt a number of them would have been killed by now.

Our side does not want to play that game.

I do think I understand why the government tries to paint
us as terrorists, so they can say, “See, we told you, if
someone goes rogue.”

Developed?

Maybe.

Released?

For sure.

Invented in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 2014.

Published in Nature 9 November, 2015.

Two of the team were from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985.pdf (downloadable PDF)

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

Article web page that gives information on authors (click on author's name to find out affiliation)

This is a deflection of blame for funding the research that invented the damned bug.

Note the article includes the following disclaimer:

"30 March 2020 Editors’ note, March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus." That didn't age well...

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