ORIGINS OF COVID-19 (UPDATED!)

JUMP TO: UPDATE IIUPDATE III

Jan. 25, 2021 (15:49 minutes long) ‘The Next Revolution’ host breaks down the evidence surrounding the origins of COVID-19.


UPDATE!


AMERICAN GREATNESS has an update:

Over 450 concerned scientists signed a Cambridge Working Group “Consensus Statement on the Creation of Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” which included the following warning:

Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza, poses substantially increased risks. An accidental infection in such a setting could trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control. Historically, new strains of influenza, once they establish transmission in the human population, have infected a quarter or more of the world’s population within two years.

For any experiment, the expected net benefits should outweigh the risks. Experiments involving the creation of potential pandemic pathogens should be curtailed until there has been a quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation, as well as comparison against safer experimental approaches. A modern version of the Asilomar process, which engaged scientists in proposing rules to manage research on recombinant DNA, could be a starting point to identify the best approaches to achieve the global public health goals of defeating pandemic disease and assuring the highest level of safety. Whenever possible, safer approaches should be pursued in preference to any approach that risks an accidental pandemic.

Following a number of “bio-safety incidents” at federal research facilities, the Obama administration placed a moratorium on Gain of Function research, Hilton noted, but the moratorium was lifted in 2017.

Just before the 2014 ban, however, the Fauci-led NIAID funded the Gain of Function research at the Wuhan Lab, Hilton alleged, adding that NIAID continued to fund it for six more years, three of those during the ban.

The funding, according to Hilton, was laundered through a global health and pandemic prevention nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Dr. Peter Daszak, a British zoologist and expert on disease ecology.

Daszak subcontracted the research to Dr Shi Zhengli, head of the infectious disease unit at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Daszak, it should be noted, was behind an early effort to label any reporting on the possibility that COVID-19 could have accidentally escaped from the Wuhan lab as “conspiracy theories.”

The scientist orchestrated a statement that was published in The Lancet medical journal in February of 2020, condemning “conspiracy theories” that suggest the virus doesn’t have a natural origin.

The statement was cited by numerous news outlets — and by fact check organizations to censor investigative reporting on the true origin of the COVID-19 virus.

Nearly a year later,  Daszak admitted through a spokesman that he shot down these inquiries to protect Chinese scientists from online criticism.

“The Lancet letter was written during a time in which Chinese scientists were receiving death threats and the letter was intended as a showing of support for them as they were caught between important work trying to stop an outbreak and the crush of online harassment,” Daszak’s spokesman told The Wall Street Journal in January.

Hilton reported that a November 2017 progress report signed by Daszak and Zhengli, among others, and titled, “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus,” is tied to the grant, and seems to describe Gain of Function research.

“They made new viruses—man-made—in the lab. They infected human cells with them in the lab. And they then showed that their man-made viruses could replicate as a functional virus,” Hilton explained.

Hilton pointed out that SARS Covid-2 is 96 percent identical to the bat coronavirus the researchers were working on in the Wuhan Lab.

The only difference between that virus and the pandemic virus is how contagious it is. The pandemic virus, as we know, can be passed human-to-human. The original virus could not. And that four percent genetic difference between them is in exactly the places where Gain of Function techniques would be used to make the virus more contagious.

So while we can blame the Chinese regime for allowing the virus to leak, and especially for the cover-up afterwards, the terrifying truth may be that our own government commissioned the experiments that led to the creation of the pandemic virus in the first place.

Hilton said he has contacted the NIAID repeatedly to ask about the 2014 grant, and they have always replied that the grant in question was not for Gain of Function research, and thus not subject to the Obama administration ban……


UPDATE II


GATEWAY PUNDIT notes Judicial Watch’s getting over 300 pages of emails which included NIH, Fauci, and China communiques:

These revelations are puzzling.  Why was Fauci’s NIH bending over backwards to accommodate China’s terms for confidentiality in regards to the China coronavirus and what was in the WHO’s ‘strictly confidential’ COVID-19 epidemiological analysis?

Judicial Watch announced today that it and the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) received 301 pages of emails and other records of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showing that National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020.

Additionally, the emails reveal an independent journalist in China pointing out the inconsistent COVID numbers in China to NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Cliff Lane.

Judicial Watch continues:

The new emails include a conversation about confidentiality forms on February 14-15, 2020, between Lane and WHO Technical Officer Mansuk Daniel Han. Han writes: “The forms this time are tailored to China’s terms so we cannot use the ones from before.”

A WHO briefing package sent on February 13, 2020, to NIH officials traveling to China as part of the COVID response ask that the officials wait to share information until they have an agreement with China: “IMPORTANT: Please treat this as sensitive and not for public communications until we have agreed communications with China.” 


UPDATE III


Wow! JUST THE NEWS has a follow up to this exchange

RAND PAUL vs. FAUCI

POST INTERVIEW

To Wit:

A prominent Columbia University virologist claims that in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic a U.S. nonprofit funded coronavirus experiments in Wuhan, China the results of which were used in “gain-of-function” virology research at the University of North Carolina.

Dr. Vincent Racaniello made the claim amid ongoing controversy over a recently resurfaced interview between himself and Peter Daszak, the president of the U.S. infectious disease nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.

Both EcoHealth Alliance and the scientist leading the research at UNC have been heavily funded over the years by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which has been directed since 1984 by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic under Presidents Trump and Biden.

Fauci categorically and repeatedly denied that NIAID has funded gain-of-function research in a tense exchange Tuesday with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at a Senate hearing.

Racianello’s half-hour interview with Daszak took place in early December 2019 at the Nipah Virus International Conference in Singapore. Significant attention has been given to a segment in which Daszak appears to allude to having participated in “gain-of-function” experiments, a type of procedure in which scientists increase a virus’s pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in order to study its potential for human infection. 

“You can manipulate [coronaviruses] in the lab pretty easily,” Daszak says in the interview. “Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus, zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein — and we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this — insert into the backbone of another virus, and do, do some work in the lab.”

Those remarks, when they resurfaced this week, caused considerable controversy due to Daszak’s role in funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars through his EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to bankroll coronavirus experiments there. The Wuhan lab sits just a few miles from where the first detected outbreak of COVID-19 occurred.

[….]

Experiments ‘confer a new property to the original virus’

Racaniello said that Daszak in the December 2019 interview was indeed describing gain-of-function experiments. 

“Here is the idea,” he said in an email exchange this week. “You go into caves in China and sample bats for CoVs. You collect bat guano and sequence it to find the viruses. You don’t actually have the viruses, just their genome sequences. You want to know if these viruses have the ability to infect human cells.”

“Since you don’t have the viruses,” he continued, “you just take the spike sequence from all these viruses and put it into a coronavirus that you work with in the lab. Then you see if that recombinant coronavirus can infect human cells. It’s all done under containment to prevent any release. If the spikes of the bat CoV can allow the CoV to infect human cells, then they have the potential to infect humans and we should be making antivirals against them to prevent a pandemic.”

Those kinds of experiments, Racaniello said, “are considered ‘gain of function’ because they would confer a new property to the original virus.”

That research, Racaniello said, “was done in the laboratory of Dr. Ralph Baric in [the University of] North Carolina and was not funded by EcoHealth Alliance.” When pressed, Racaniello revealed that EcoHealth did have an indirect role in the funding of Baric’s work. 

“EcoHealth Alliance provided funds to Zengli Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct bat surveillance for SARS-like CoVs,” he said. “Baric then received the spike sequences from Wuhan to do his experiments independently.”

“Daszak and Baric did not work together on this project,” he added. 

Anna Marie Skalka, a professor emerita at the Fox Chase Cancer Center and one of the authors of the bestselling textbook “Principles of Virology,” did not expressly deny that Baric’s research constituted gain-of-function, though she claimed that the overall issue was more complex than that. 

“I prefer to describe the research in broader terms, as gain-of-function seems too narrow and has acquired negative connotations,” she said. “The aim of such research is to learn as much as possible about the gene/protein in question so that one can begin to develop possible therapeutic or vaccine-related approaches.” 

Queries to Daszak and Baric on Racaniello’s claims went unanswered. 

The assertions from Racaniello — a four-decade veteran of academic virology who along with Skalka is also an author of “Principles of Virology” — constitute the sharpest allegations yet that both EcoHealth and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were involved, even if adjacently, with gain-of-function research prior to the pandemic.

Baric’s research, meanwhile, has been the recipient of millions of dollars in funding from the NIAID over the years, much of it focused on coronaviruses, including experiments in the “replication and pathogenesis” of those viruses. 

Racaniello himself forcefully defended such research. “There is a very clear reason to do these experiments and if we had done them even more we could have prevented the current pandemic,” he said. 

EcoHealth, meanwhile, has been the focus of controversy for the past year due not merely to its alleged association with  coronavirus experiments but also to the fact that its work was for years heavily funded by the federal government, specifically the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

EcoHealth routed hundreds of thousands of NIAID dollars to the Wuhan lab in the years leading up to the pandemic to conduct coronavirus research there. Experts and commentators alike have called for a major investigation into the lab to determine if SARS-Cov-2 may have accidentally leaked from the facility and launched the pandemic. 

The federal funding for the Wuhan project was pulled last year near the outset of the pandemic. Daszak himself told NPR last year that the Wuhan experiments were “funded entirely through the NIH grant,” as the news service put it. ….

(READ IT ALL)

And THE NATIONAL PULSE likewise discusses a letter in SCEINCE MAGAZINE/JOURNAL

Published in Science magazine, the report also slams the recent World Health Organization investigation for basing itself on faulty evidence and not sufficiently debunking the theory that the virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology:

“The information, data, and samples for the study’s first phase were collected and summarized by the Chinese half of the team; the rest of the team built on this analysis. Although there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident, the team assessed a zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host as “likely to very likely,” and a laboratory incident as “extremely unlikely.” Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident.”

“We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” the letter posits. “Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public,” it continues.

Among the signatories are professors from institutions including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. Dr. Ralph Baric – whose gain-of-function research record and ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology were recently discussed in an exchange between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Senator Rand Paul – also signed the letter…..

LINK IN PIC

The Failure of Russian Collusion (Includes Judicial Watch’s Commentary)

A caller notes the Left leaning [anti-Trump] publications saying there is no valid evidence or proof regarding “Russian Collusion.” Prager names some of these very anti-Trump orgs, and the possible real motive behind it all – obviously JUST political.

BONUS

More information is slowly being revealed regarding Department of Justice employees associated with Fusion GPS and the Clinton campaign, including a former associate deputy attorney general.

The Case Against James Comey | Jonathan Turley & Jay Sekulow

ruh roh shaggy! When Sekulow and Turley are on the same page, it has to bad!

Jonathan Turley comes out swinging! This is with a h-t to POWERLINE, and comes from THE HILL:

As a threshold matter, Comey asked a question with regard to Trump that he should now answer with regard to his own conduct. Comey asked why Trump would ask everyone to leave the Oval Office to speak with Comey unless he was doing something improper. Yet, Trump could ask why Comey would use a third party to leak these memos if they were his property and there was nothing improper in their public release.

In fact, there was a great deal wrong with their release, and Comey likely knew it. These were documents prepared on an FBI computer addressing a highly sensitive investigation on facts that he considered material to that investigation. Indeed, he conveyed that information confidentially to his top aides and later said that he wanted the information to be given to the special counsel because it was important to the investigation.

Many in the media have tried to spin this as not a “leak” because leaks by definition only involve classified information. That is entirely untrue as shown by history. Leaks involve the release of unauthorized information — not only classified information. Many of the most important leaks historically have involved pictures and facts not classified but embarrassing to a government. More importantly, federal regulations refer to unauthorized disclosures not just classified information.

Comey’s position would effectively gut a host of federal rules and regulations. He is suggesting that any federal employee effectively owns documents created during federal employment in relation to an ongoing investigation so long as they address the information to themselves. FBI agents routinely write such memos in investigations. They are called 302s to memorialize field interviews or fact acquisitions. They are treated as FBI information.

The Justice Department routinely claims such memos as privileged and covered by the deliberative process privilege and other privileges. Indeed, if this information were sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) it would likely have been denied. Among other things, the Justice Department and FBI routinely claim privilege “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.”

Of course, Comey did not know if there was a privilege or classification claim by either the Justice Department or the White House because he never asked for review. He just woke up in the middle of night upset about Trump’s name calling and released the damaging information. In doing so, he used these memos not as a shield but a sword.

Besides being subject to nondisclosure agreements, Comey falls under federal laws governing the disclosure of classified and unclassified information. Assuming that the memos were not classified (though it seems odd that it would not be classified even on the confidential level), there is 18 U.S.C. § 641, which makes it a crime to steal, sell, or convey “any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof.”

The above video and the below is with thanks to POLITISTICK:

Appearing on Lou Dobbs Tonight on Fox Business, Farrell said that the memos Comey admitted to leaking were “property of the U.S. government” and that he “absconded with them.”

About Comey’s admitted leaking and the bombshell announcement that then-Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch ordered Comey to downplay the FBI’s “criminal investigation” against Hillary Clinton to only just being a “matter,” as to sound more innocent with American voters, Chris Farrell told Lou Dobbs:

“It’s clear the FBI director was taking instructions from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Clearly, the attorney general was giving him talking points and he literally adopted them. 

This admission today is stunning. I would argue that Mr. Comey’s notes are the property of the United States government and that he absconded with them. 

Frankly, if I were the attorney general, about 20 minutes after his confession today in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Deputy U.S. Marshals would have raided his home and office, as well as Mr. Richman at Columbia Law School.” 

Judicial Watch vs. NOAA

We know in order to get the temperatures NASA and NOAA wish to promote…. they do not use the data from satellites when they state such things as 2015 was the warmest year on record. Whereas a 100% of satellites agree that temperature has been steady, a 100% of the modeling has been wrong.

Instead, they use readings from places like these that they can then add an addition algorythm to to “fix” the data:

In fact, since NASA/NOAA changed the temps due to McIntyre’s work, had the hottest years listed as: 1998, 1934, 2006, 1921 and 1931. NASA then changed them to…

  1. 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006 and then 1931;
  2. then again to, 1998, 2006, 1934, 1921, 1999.

These government, taxpayer associations that should make data for such “corrections” available to the public representatives, instead, they refused to hand over what should have been easy info to give. This obfuscation by these public institutions are summed up well by McIntyre:

…“Fixing” bad data with software is by no means an easy thing to do (as witness Mann’s unreported modification of principal components methodology on tree ring networks.) The GISS adjustment schemes (despite protestations from Schmidt that they are “clearly outlined”) are not at all easy to replicate using the existing opaque descriptions. For example, there is nothing in the methodological description that hints at the change in data provenance before and after 2000 that caused the Hansen error. Because many sites are affected by climate change, a general urban heat island effect and local microsite changes, adjustment for heat island effects and local microsite changes raises some complicated statistical questions, that are nowhere discussed in the underlying references (Hansen et al 1999, 2001). In particular, the adjustment methods are not techniques that can be looked up in statistical literature, where their properties and biases might be discerned. They are rather ad hoc and local techniques that may or may not be equal to the task of “fixing” the bad data.

Making readers run the gauntlet of trying to guess the precise data sets and precise methodologies obviously makes it very difficult to achieve any assessment of the statistical properties. In order to test the GISS adjustments, I requested that GISS provide me with details on their adjustment code. They refused. Nevertheless, there are enough different versions of U.S. station data (USHCN raw, USHCN time-of-observation adjusted, USHCN adjusted, GHCN raw, GHCN adjusted) that one can compare GISS raw and GISS adjusted data to other versions to get some idea of what they did….

He then goes on to explain the lack of detail from the GISS numbers via the U.S. compared to the global temps:

does_h2

…These differences are attributed to “regional” differences and it is quite possible that this is a complete explanation. However, this conclusion is complicated by a number of important methodological differences between the U.S. and the ROW. In the U.S., despite the criticisms being rendered at surfacestations.org, there are many rural stations that have been in existence over a relatively long period of time; while one may cavil at how NOAA and/or GISS have carried out adjustments, they have collected metadata for many stations and made a concerted effort to adjust for such metadata. On the other hand, many of the stations in China, Indonesia, Brazil and elsewhere are in urban areas (such as Shanghai or Beijing). In some of the major indexes (CRU,NOAA), there appears to be no attempt whatever to adjust for urbanization. GISS does report an effort to adjust for urbanization in some cases, but their ability to do so depends on the existence of nearby rural stations, which are not always available. Thus, ithere is a real concern that the need for urban adjustment is most severe in the very areas where adjustments are either not made or not accurately made.

In its consideration of possible urbanization and/or microsite effects, IPCC has taken the position that urban effects are negligible, relying on a very few studies (Jones et al 1990, Peterson et al 2003, Parker 2005, 2006), each of which has been discussed at length at this site. In my opinion, none of these studies can be relied on for concluding that urbanization impacts have been avoided in the ROW sites contributing to the overall history….

This led to some interesting bullet points I note over at another recent post about 1934:

  • According to data on the NOAA website, 1997 was truly the hottest year on record at 62.45 oF. The average global temperature in 2015 was 58.62 oF or 3.83 oF below the 1997 temperature.
  • According to data on the NOAA website, the temperatures such as the 20thcentury average temperature and annual temperature anomalies, which must be fixed, have different values in the annual global analyses.
  • NOAA and NASA corrected historical temperature data and fabricated temperature data in areas without temperature record systematically, widely, and uni-directionally to “cool” the past in an attempt to prove the soaring temperature trend.
  • NOAA and NASA made efforts to discredit their own satellite data – which is consistent with the balloon data – because it suggests a global warming hiatus since 1998 contradicting with the NOAA and NASA preferred narrative.
  • NOAA and NASA refused to give data and information requested by the US House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology committee. There is no reason for them to withhold the data and information, which are public domain, unless they have something to hide.

This caused people to wonder if NASA/NOAA were doing the same thing as the Europeans had been caught doing. So the requests for the records started being made. Here is the WASHINGTON TIMES talking about it in 2009:

…The center’s chief has stepped down pending an investigation into the e-mails.

The center has also had to acknowledge in response to a freedom of information request under British law that it tossed out much of the raw data that it used to draw up the temperature models that have underpinned much of the science behind global warming.

Mr. Horner suspects the same sort of data-shaving has happened at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), another leading global warming research center.

Mark Hess, public affairs director for the Goddard Space Flight Center which runs the GISS laboratory, said they are working on Mr. Horner’s request, though he couldn’t say why they have taken so long.

[….]

NASA’s GISS was forced to update its data in 2007 after questions were raised by Steve McIntyre, who runs ClimateAudit.com.

GISS had initially listed the warmest years as 1998, 1934, 2006, 1921 and 1931. After Mr. McIntyre’s questions GISS rejiggered the list and 1934 was warmest, followed by 1998, 1921, 2006 and then 1931. But since then, the list has been rewritten again so it now runs 1998, 2006, 1934, 1921, 1999.

The institute blamed a “minor data processing error” for the changes but says it doesn’t make much difference since the top three years remain in a “statistical tie” either way.

Mr. Horner said he’s seeking the data itself, but he also wants to see the chain of e-mails from scientists discussing the changes.

The Freedom of Information Act requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 days. Mr. Horner says he’s never received an official acknowledgement of his three separate FOIA requests, but has received e-mails showing the agency is aware of them.

He said he has provided NASA with a notice of intent to sue under FOIA, but said he also hopes members of Congress get involved and demand the information be released.

NASA and CRU data are considered the backbone of much of the science that suggests the earth is warming due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. NASA argues its data suggests this decade has been the warmest on record.

On the other hand, data from the University of Alabama-Huntsville suggests temperatures have been relatively flat for most of this decade.

In fact, JUDICIAL WATCH has had to get involved as of late 2015:

…Judicial Watch sued the Department of Commerce after the agency failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted on October 30, 2015 – NOAA is a component of the Department of Commerce.  The timeframe for the requested records is October 30, 2014, through October 30, 2015, and requests all documents and records of communications between NOAA officials, employees, and contractors regarding:

  • The methodology and utilization of night marine air temperatures to adjust ship and buoy temperature data;
  • The use of other global temperature datasets for both NOAA’s in-house dataset improvements and monthly press releases conveying information to the public about global temperatures;
  • The utilization and consideration of satellite bulk atmospheric temperature readings for use in global temperature datasets; and
  • A subpoena issued for the aforementioned information by Congressman Lamar Smith on October 13, 2015.

[….]

On November 26, Smith published an opinion editorial in The Washington Times, which accused NOAA of tampering with data to help promote global warming alarmism:

NOAA often fails to consider all available data in its determinations and climate change reports to the public. A recent study by NOAA, published in the journal Science, made “adjustments” to historical temperature records and NOAA trumpeted the findings as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in global warming. The study’s authors claimed these adjustments were supposedly based on new data and new methodology. But the study failed to include satellite data.

“We have little doubt that our lawsuit helped to pry these scandalous climate change report documents from the Obama administration.  The Obama administration seems to care not one whit for a congressional subpoena but knows from prior experience that a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit cannot be ignored,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “Given the lawless refusal to comply with our FOIA request and a congressional subpoena, we have little doubt that the documents will show the Obama administration put politics before science to advance global warming alarmism.”

Judicial Watch previously investigated alleged data manipulation by global warming advocates in the Obama administration.  In 2010, Judicial Watch obtained internal documents from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) related to a controversy that erupted in 2007 when Canadian blogger Stephen McIntyre exposed an error in NASA’s handling of raw temperature data from 2000-2006 that exaggerated the reported rise in temperature readings in the United States. According to multiple press reports, when NASA corrected the error, the new data apparently caused a reshuffling of NASA’s rankings for the hottest years on record in the United States, with 1934 replacing 1998 at the top of the list….

I have a feeling this will end badly for NASA/NOAA. Why do I say that? Because if they have nothing to hide then there is no reason for them to withhold the data and information, which are public domain.

Here is the DAILY CALLER discussing the issue:

The documents revealed a “new climate data scandal,” Judicial Watch said in announcing the suit.

“Information provided to the committee by whistleblowers appears to show that the study was rushed to publication despite the concerns and objections of a number of NOAA employees,” according to the committee.

Committee Chairman Lamar Smith wrote recently that “NOAA often fails to consider all available data in its determinations and climate change reports to the public.”

The Texas Republican also noted that a recent NOAA study made adjustments to historical temperature records, which led the findings to refute a nearly two-decade pause to global warming….

Whistleblowers are never a good sign.