After years of official denials, evidence has emerged that removes any serious doubt that the Covid-19 virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where it had been genetically modified to make it more deadly.
According to multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation by Public (journalists Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag), it has been determined the first three people infected by the virus, “patients zero,” were all employees of the laboratory.
It is now clear that American public officials, especially Dr. Anthony Fauci, lied repeatedly about the origin of the virus, promoting the false theory that the virus mutated in a pangolin and passed into the human population at a “wet market” in Wuhan. Fauci even suggested that uncovering the pandemic’s origin might not be possible. “We may never know,” said Dr. Fauci, a dog-torturing Jesuit, knowing all the while that the virus was genetically engineered and came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Now we know that the first three people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu, all employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, journalists for Public were told, “100%.”
A bill signed into law earlier this year requires the release of the names and roles of any researchers at the WIV who contracted Wuhan Flu, their symptoms and date of symptom onset, and whether these researchers had been involved with coronavirus research. As soon as Sunday, the Director of National Intelligence is expected to declassify and release documents with this information.
There is evidence that workers at the WIV did not wear appropriate protective gear. On Dec. 29, 2017, Chinese state-run television aired a video with a scene of Ben Hu watching a lab worker handle specimens. Neither are wearing protective gear.
Covid-19 Was a Bioweapon
It is clear that the virus was genetically modified to make it more deadly to humans. The three WIV scientists who came down with COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019 were, at that very time, working on WIV’s “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses. “Gain of function” research means genetically modifying a virus to make it more infectious or more harmful to humans. It can be a form of biological warfare.
Ben Hu, one of the first three to be infected, was leading out in the gain-of-function research.
Shi Zhengli, “the bat woman of China,” oversaw Wuhan Institute of Virology’s coronavirus research and engineering. “Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli,” said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and coauthor, with Matt Ridley, of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.
Ben Hu was Shi’s star pupil. He had been making chimeric [genetically engineered] SARS-like viruses and testing these in humanized mice. “If I had to guess who would be doing this risky virus research and most at risk of getting accidentally infected, it would be him,” said Chan.
Ben Hu and Yu Ping researched the novel lineage of SARS-like viruses from which SARS-CoV-2 hails, and in 2019 coauthored a paper with Shi Zhengli that described SARS-like lineages they had studied over the years. Jamie Metzl, who led an advisory committee on genome editing, and suggested early in 2020 that the pandemic originated in the lab, said, “It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with COVID-19 before anyone else. That would be the ‘smoking gun.’ Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in Shi’s lab.”
We Paid for the Bio-Warfare Attack on Us
American taxpayers were forced to subsidize the Chinese Communist Party’s biological warfare against them. In 2014, President Obama banned federal funding for gain-of-function research, the consensus being that it was too dangerous. But the NIH and NIAID, headed by Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, and a large government grantee, EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak, claimed that the work on Coronaviruses was not gain-of-function research, and continued to fund the WIV.
Remarkably, in 2018, the WIV, EcoHealth Alliance, and the University of North Carolina applied for a $14 million grant from DARPA specifically to place “furin cleavage sites” into coronaviruses to see how it would affect their ability to replicate and cause disease in humans. The furin cleavage site in COVID-19 is unique among the viruses nearest relatives, and is also the very thing that made the virus so infectious and virulent in humans.
The fact that the furin cleavage site appears in COVID-19, but in none of its nearest relatives—which, presumably, would also be its evolutionary forebears—is the smoking gun demonstrating that the Wuhan Flu did not evolve naturally, but was the product of human genetic manipulation. Moreover, the furin cleavage site is exactly what makes the Covid-19 so virulent and transmissible among human beings.
Although they were not awarded the grant they sought, the WIV went forward with the research anyway. According to The Times of London, whistleblowers have come forward to state that the Wuhan scientists placed furin cleavage sites int SARS-like viruses in 2019.
Ben Hu co-authored, with Peter Daszak, a 2017 paper on genetically modified bat coronaviruses. Data privately shared with the NIH revealed that these genetically modified viruses replicated far more quickly and caused much more severe disease in humanized laboratory mice.
When the WIV published their first paper on the pandemic virus, they failed to point out, or even mention, the novel furin cleavage site, despite having done research that included placing a furin cleavage site into a SARs-like Coronavirus.
The Coverup
The U.S. Government has known at least since January, 2021, some two and a half years ago, about the three WIV staffers who came down with the illness. That is when they announced it. It is very likely, however, that the government knew at least several months before that.
The evidence immediately available to researchers indicated that the virus had been genetically modified. But Anthony Fauci, who controlled some $50 billion in research money, was able to throw a net over that emerging story and impose the hive narrative that the virus had emerged from a pangolin and jumped to humans at a wet market.
On January 31, 2020, even before the lockdowns began, researchers told Dr. Anthony Fauci that the Covid-19 virus looked like something that had been genetically engineered, not something that had evolved naturally. In a January 31, 2020 email, leading infectious disease expert, Kristian Andersen, who had been examining the virus, wrote to Fauci:
“The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” Andersen wrote in the email. “I should mention,” he added, “that after discussions earlier today, Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Farzan] and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.”
Reportedly, Michael Farzan was “bothered by the furin site and has a hard time explaining that as an event outside the lab (though, there are possible ways in nature, but highly unlikely).” Robert Garry — was also surprised by the presence of a furin cleavage site in this virus: “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. . . . it’s stunning.”
But Fauci, through a conference call on February 1st and a series of follow up emails and telephone calls, was able to wrangle the skeptical scientists into agreeing to the pangolin/wet market natural origins theory; their mission soon became to disprove the lab leak hypothesis. No doubt the fact that Anthony Fauci controlled the purse-strings on $50 billion in scientific research money made him very persuasive.
Fauci also conspired with Peter Daszak to promote the false narrative. In February, 2020, Daszak wrote a statement for the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, rejecting the lab-leak hypothesis and condemning those who discussed it. The statement was signed by 27 scientists, who stated, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
Needless to say, Daszak did not disclose that he had provided government grants to facilities, including the WIV, that were conducting gain-of-function research on Coronaviruses, specifically including transferring a furin cleavage site into those viruses.
In an April, 2020, email, Daszak thanked Fauci for publicly attacking the lab leak theory in a White House press briefing:
“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Of course, the “scientific evidence” supported no such thing, but it did not matter. The Hive had its narrative and its marching orders, and the media fell in line behind the false narrative, the lie, that Covid had originated in a wet market. The tech lords and their enormous army of censors and narrative engineers memory-holed any social media discussion that the virus might have been genetically engineered.
By April, 2020, President Trump knew otherwise, but was prevailed upon by the deep state not to disclose the truth. A story in the Guardian (UK) stated that Trump was claiming to have seen evidence that the virus originated from the WIV:
Donald Trump claims to have seen evidence to substantiate the unproven theory that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, despite US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that the virus was “not manmade or genetically modified”.
“We’re going to see where it comes from,” Trump said at a White House event on Thursday. “We have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people, intelligence people, and others. We’re going to put it all together. I think we will have a very good answer eventually. And China might even tell us.”
Pressed to explain what evidence he had seen that the virus originated in a Chinese lab, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
Trump was often ill-served by his “intelligence people,” who in this case convinced him that he was “not allowed to tell you that.” But under our constitution, classification and secrecy is for the benefit of the elected president, who can declassify at will, not for the benefit of a permanent, unelected deep state that keeps secrets from the people. (Even Trump’s lawyers in the bogus documents case do not seem to understand that.) In this case, it appears that President Trump knew about the three WIV staffers who became sick, but was prevailed upon by the “intelligence community” not to share that information with the public.
But if it was okay to disclose that we knew about the three sick WIV staffers in January 15, five days before President Trump left office, why wouldn’t it have been fine for Trump to disclose that the previous April? If there were a genuine “sources and methods” objection to disclosure, why was it announced nine months later, and indeed why are the names of the staffers being officially acknowledged now?
Here is a case study in how President Trump was sabotaged at every step by an executive branch filled with unelected bureaucrats pursuing their own agenda, ignoring the elected president who theoretically runs the executive branch. No president in history has ever had to deal with this level resistance, insubordination, and rebellion.
Meanwhile the intelligence community was participating in the coverup, issuing official lies, despite likely know the truth of the matter. The Guardian article states:
“Prior to the White House event, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of US spy agencies, issued a statement asserting that the intelligence community ‘concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified’.”
Here is the deep state, firmly ensconced in the hive, telling a blatant lie for political purposes.
On January 15, 2021, five days before President Joe Biden took office, the U.S. State Department published a fact sheet that included these statements:
“The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.”
“The WIV has a published record of conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research to engineer chimeric viruses.”
“For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.”
“Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”
“The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.”
This was a bombshell disclosure: Three WIV staffers got sick with a covid-like illness in November, 2019, the WIV was doing gain of function research and might have been doing biological weapons research, and the United States taxpayer was helping to pay for it.
The government knew all this and disclosed it in January, 2021. Did you hear anything about this? I cannot recall having heard anything of this amazing disclosure.
Looking back on this, I believe President Trump wanted the truth to come out before he left office, so he insisted on this disclosure. But the deep state and the hive did everything in their power to neutralize the announcement, first by surrounding the key facts noted above with equivocating, mealy-mouth disclaimers like this:
“The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic.”
And, second, by the Hive media minimizing the media coverage (although a few reporters at the Wall Street Journal and NBC News did cover the January 15 disclosure and its aftermath).
But it is much worse than that. It is overwhelmingly likely that the government already knew the names of the WIV researchers, knew that Ben Hu was leading the research, knew that he was putting furin cleavage sites in Coronaviruses, and hence knew that the lab leak was not “hypothesis” or “theory,” but undeniable fact. Hence, the January 15, 2021, State Department Fact Sheet has to be viewed as part of the coverup.
The Consequences of the Coverup
Alina Chan published a paper in May, 2020, showing that a natural evolutionary origin for Covid-19 was not likely, and that the virus was likely brought to the Wuhan wet market by an already infected person, not picked up at the market from an animal host.
“Ever since I put out my preprint saying that an accidental lab origin was possible, I was criticized as a conspiracy theorist,” said Chan. “If this info had been made public in May of 2020, I doubt that many in the scientific community and the media would have spent the last three years raving about a raccoon dog or pangolin in a wet market.”
Had the information come out earlier, governments may have responded to the pandemic differently. After Public shared the information with Chan, she said, “I feel vindicated, but I’m frustrated. If you knew that this was likely a lab-enhanced pathogen, there are so many things you could have done differently. This whole pandemic could have been reshaped.”
UPDATE 6/21/23:
The Wall Street Journal has now confirmed the story released by Public (Taibbi, Shellenberger, Gutentag):
The current and former U.S. officials told the Journal the three who fell ill were Hu; Yu Ping, a Chinese scientist who wrote a 2019 thesis on SARS-related coronaviruses found in bats; and another scientist named Yan Zhu.
November 2019 is roughly when many epidemiologists and virologists think SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the Covid-19 pandemic, first began circulating around Wuhan, a city in central China. China has said that the first confirmed case was a man who fell ill on Dec. 8, 2019.
Hu is a leading researcher on coronaviruses who worked closely with Shi Zhengli, the leading expert on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Much of Hu’s research focused on modifying coronaviruses so they could bind to human cells.
The stated purpose of the research was to identify viruses that could lead to a pandemic and facilitate the development of a vaccine. Critics say that such research requires stringent precautions because such work can make the viruses in the lab more infections for humans.
Yu Ping, who also worked for the institute along with Zhu, is an expert on the geographic spread of coronaviruses and wrote a thesis that was the first to describe a new family of SARS-like coronaviruses that are most closely related to SARS-CoV-2.
Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out. Prov. 10:9
For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Luke 8:17