Covid absolutely, positively, HAD to be a lab leak. There is no evidence for natural origin, which would have near zero likelihood. Why? The furin cleavage site. A standard gain of function process, specifically targeting humans, that is almost never found in nature. You think covid breaking out two miles from the Wuhan lab where precisely that work was being performed is just a coincidence? If so, I've got a bridge you might like to buy.
Does anyone else recall a mention early on of the US military in the Chinese province "war gaming" or some such & the speculation that it was a DARPA weapon dropped off to deter suspicion this was a US developed bioweapon. Apologies for the faulty memory of specifics but this was the general perspective. I am just curious if that was mere speculation or has some validity.
I don't recall that, but your post brings to mind the case of Charles Lieber, a Harvard chemistry professor who was arrested in January 2020 for lying about his links to another Chinese lab in Wuhan while accepting grant money from the Department of Defense. Naturally, before much was known, I suspected he (and the DoD) might be somehow connected with weaponizing the COVID virus, but his specialty was nanotechnology so I more or less forgot about it . . . until I read your post. Nanotechnology? Hmmm. I never thought the US had clean hands in any of this, but it's starting to look like too many Americans happily cooperated with our Chinese frenemies way more than anyone cares to admit.
I remember a case beginning to build in my brain for potential US involvement when reading about Lieber's nanotechnology ... a seed had already been planted in a prior article about Zhengli bat doctor in late 2019, but blowing it off as my mind wasn't ready to accept the magnitude of the charade ...
The allegation at the time was it was some kind of US military sports team visit. The more tinfoil version was that this team seeded the virus either from the US to China or vice versa. I don’t think it’s significant.
The 7th CISM Military World Games — officially known as the 2019 Military World Games — were held in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China from October 18 to 27, 2019 Wikipedia. This was the first time China hosted the event, marking its largest-ever military sports gathering.
Event Overview
Host city: Wuhan, Hubei, China
Dates: October 18–27, 2019
Organizers: Military Sports Commission of China, Ministry of National Defense, and military commands (per CISM regulations) Wikipedia
Participants: 110 nations, 9,308 athletes Wikipedia
Sports disciplines: 27 disciplines, including 25 official and 2 demonstrative sports
Olympic Village: First time in Military World Games history, opened after the flag-raising ceremony Wikipedia
Significance
The Games promoted CISM’s motto “Military Glory, World Peace” (创军人荣耀 筑世界和平), aiming to enhance friendship through sport among armed forces worldwide Hubei - The people's government of hubei province. China topped the medal table, reflecting both its organizational capacity and military sports strength."
A controversy was that the US who usually have repeat competitors at this event that have dominated the games in the past, had mostly new unknown athletes (who many observers said were not very good). While Covid was essentially a cold/flu in healthy athletes under age 50, "conspiracy theorists" claim the US was seeding the virus for transmission all over the world. But why?
A pandemic would disrupt the 2020 election, making it easier for the Democrats to screw Bernie out of the nomination and finally defeat Trump at the ballot box since they failed in a courtroom.
I worked for NIH for six years back in the early '90s (a byzantine bureaucratic zoo), back when scientists could not monetarily benefit from their work ("Property of the American People"-- William Binney claims his group at NSA created much of what became Google but could not patent or make money, scoffs that it was invented in a garage; Page and Brin are now worth a combined $426 billion and Binney is a bitter double amputee diabetic.)
I was not aware of what was going in other labs, which was the case for the bench scientists at almost all institutions.
There is a rumour that public key cryptography was invented by NSA and/or GCHQ but the government could not claim prior art against RSA. Hard to prove unless they ever declassify it.
You may be remembering the 2019 Military World Games. I had a theory that US soldiers might have brought the virus to Wuhan during the games, but there is evidence of a patient zero even before the games. Some have even pointed to the rather hazy diagnosis of the respiratory problems by those who were vaping as caused by something in the vape juice as having symptoms similar to COVID months earlier than the outbreak.
Some "conspiracy theorists" (investigative reporters?) noted there were a number of respiratory issues in the area near Fort Detrick in MD and also in Dahlgren, VA (several military bases in Northern Virginia). If I remember correctly these were linked OFFICIALLY to vaping. There were also suspicious nursing home deaths in the area, but the Elderly can succumb to the common cold, particularly if opportunistic bacterial infections follow.
Ralph Baric, a brilliant scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill and probably the mastermind behind many Gain of Function techniques, recently retired (not by choice). Interestingly like Fauci he did not have his name on any of Fauci's clique of well-funded virologists' publications arguing for a non-lab origin for Covid (Baric was already well-funded and his name might have triggered GOF opponents).
Yes, Baric has been prominent across many lines of operation in this matter. Taibbi just displayed a couple of emails to him from Dr. Zhengli complaining the US was requiring her to respond to items she agreed to respond to when she signed a contract funding her research. I recall her arena of experiments was alerted in 2019 or earlier for poor training & substandard safety measures so Baric was also aware noting the correspondence traffic.
The World Military Games, a sports competition with teams composed of military personnel, was held in Wuhan in October 2019. There were reports that some participants developed an unusual upper respiratory infection, though never positively identified as COVID-19, which lead some people to believe COVID-19 could have been circulating well before it was officially identified as a pandemic.
This coincidence might have been used in CCP propaganda claiming COVID actually started in the US.
Even though I personally agree it had to be a lab leak, just because something seems absolutely obvious doesn't always cut it either scientifically or legally.
Right. But what made it more than suspicious was not the proximity but that the idea that someone thinking that the Wuhan institute of virology might be linked to a novel virus that originated in Wuhan was both preposterous and racist.
Moderna had patented the human MSH3 oncogene in 2016 of which a 19 identical nucleotide stretch ended up in the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV2. The codons involved are human not usual bat coronavirus codons. The authors (charitably) argue that a benign coronavirus was likely grown in human lung cells containing Moderna's MSH3 gene (to help the cell line grow) and a rare recombination event occurred that gave the mutant virus a huge selective infectious advantage over the parent benign coronavirus strain which quickly became SARS-CoV2 or a precursor strain geared for human cell infection. Possible.
A bigger question is whether Covid was the result of an accident or was its creation intentional? If there was no military/ intelligence involvement, I would lean to accident. However Fauci was being doubly paid as Head of NIAID and as one of the heads of Biodefense Research. "National Security" is unfathomable to most Americans and after initially denying bioweapons research labs in Ukraine, Nuland let it slip that Russians were now in control of some of those labs.
It could be deliberately created and also accidentally released. They are separate questions.
My view based on what I’ve read is that the intention was to create a highly contagious but benign mammalian virus that would in turn spread a gene therapy “vaccine” - potentially multiple different vaccine payloads. The release I believe to be a genuine lab accident. Albeit a predictable one due to dangerous research in underfunded conditions.
A lot of it is technical, and I wish they would discourage using pronouns which makes things very confusing, but one thing struck me and I wonder if I was interpreting it correctly.
In discussing whether Covid was the result of gain of function research, particularly what is "natural", it sounded to me like Baric considers genetic changes that happen in a cell culture as natural (I think maybe this would also apply to something like serial passage in mice), and "created" only applies to actual gene editing.
I'm guessing the average person would consider a cell culture or serial passage alteration to be anything but the common understanding of "natural". because were at not for the lab activities, the change probably wouldn't have happened at all.
It plays into the semantic games around the definition of "gain of function research". The public was encouraged to believe that the bug, in the wild, jumped from bats or pangolins or pigs into a human.
While reading keep in mind that Baric developed a currently undetectable method of inserting alleles into RNA/DNA that doesn’t leave the nucleotide fingerprint of previous methods.
I was asking a question, not assigning one or the other...not a fan, but one intelligent comment Rumsfeld purloined: "imagine the unimaginable". I think for those who alert to not be foxed by government's assent of "incompetence" bring something to the table in such matters.
Remember when Michael Osterholm tried to say it was just a coincidence? That if a new virus broke out in the Caribbean, we would see it in Atlanta (home of the CDC) first, because of passenger airline routing? I'd like to see the zoom call where that one was thunk up.
08/06/26: You can't. Fauci already sold it to the American people. And those killed by the covid "vaccine" don't get refunds, sorry. Meanwhile, on top of Fauci getting reamed out by Aaron Rodgers, here's another influential voice (if Fauci were a stock, it would be delisted by now): https://xcancel.com/VigilantFox/status/2085191902467440977
I asked ChatGPT if you're right. Here's what it said:
No. That passage takes several genuinely interesting facts and turns them into a degree of certainty that the evidence does not warrant. As of 2026, a lab-associated origin remains a serious and plausible hypothesis, and some U.S. intelligence agencies actually regard it as more likely than zoonotic spillover. But “absolutely, positively HAD to be a lab leak” is much stronger than either the scientific evidence or those intelligence assessments support. A recent Nature overview found that most scientific reviews still favor zoonotic origin, while emphasizing that the question remains unresolved.
The furin cleavage site (FCS) is probably the most misleading part of the quoted argument. SARS-CoV-2 does indeed have an unusual polybasic furin cleavage site that was not present in the other known sarbecoviruses when SARS-CoV-2 appeared. It is biologically important and contributed substantially to the virus's ability to infect human airway cells. Those are real facts.
But the leap from those facts to “a standard gain-of-function process, specifically targeting humans, that is almost never found in nature” doesn't follow. Furin cleavage sites absolutely do occur naturally in viruses, including other coronaviruses. The unusual fact is narrower: this particular FCS had not been observed in the known close sarbecovirus relatives of SARS-CoV-2. And the fact that we haven't sampled one in a close relative doesn't establish that nature is extraordinarily unlikely to produce one. Our sampling of bat coronaviruses is tiny relative to their actual diversity. Researchers have proposed ordinary evolutionary mechanisms—mutation/recombination in animal hosts or acquisition during previously undetected transmission—that could produce such a site.
There is another important distinction that the passage collapses: lab leak ≠ engineered virus. SARS-CoV-2 could, in principle, have originated from a laboratory accident involving a naturally collected virus. Conversely, showing that an FCS could have been engineered would not show that it was. Even the CIA's 2025 assessment favoring a research-related origin explicitly retained both research-related and natural-origin scenarios as plausible and assigned its conclusion low confidence.
The claim that “there is no evidence for natural origin” is simply false. There is substantial circumstantial evidence for zoonosis. In particular, the earliest recognized COVID-19 cases were geographically concentrated around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market; susceptible live mammals were being sold there; and SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental samples were concentrated in areas associated with wildlife sales. None of that proves an infected animal transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to a human—we still lack the decisive infected-market-animal sample—but it plainly constitutes evidence. That's one major reason many evolutionary virologists continue to favor zoonosis. The 2026 Nature review describes the published scientific literature as predominantly supporting that hypothesis.
Likewise, “natural origin would have near zero likelihood” isn't an established scientific result. To make that statement responsibly, one would need defensible estimates for things such as the frequency with which relevant insertions arise, the unsampled diversity of sarbecoviruses, exposure rates involving susceptible mammals, laboratory accident probabilities, and the relevant Wuhan-specific circumstances. We don't have sufficiently reliable numbers for those variables to calculate anything resembling “near zero.”
The Wuhan coincidence is nevertheless legitimate evidence for lab origin. Wuhan contained the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted extensive research on bat coronaviruses. If you were comparing hypotheses, the fact that an outbreak of a novel SARS-related coronavirus occurred in a city containing a major laboratory studying SARS-related bat coronaviruses is something the lab-origin hypothesis can point to. It shouldn't simply be waved away as irrelevant.
But there is an important correction to “two miles from the Wuhan lab where precisely that work was being performed.” The relevant proposition isn't established in that form. We know WIV researchers studied SARS-related coronaviruses and performed experiments involving modified coronaviruses. We do not have evidence that WIV possessed SARS-CoV-2, its immediate progenitor, or a virus close enough that the documented experiments would straightforwardly generate SARS-CoV-2 before the outbreak. That's one of the enormous missing pieces in the lab-origin case. Intelligence assessments focusing on WIV's activities have not produced public evidence establishing such a precursor or a specific laboratory accident.
So I'd separate the claims this way:
Could COVID have resulted from a laboratory accident? Absolutely.
Is there meaningful circumstantial evidence pointing that way? Yes.
Is the Wuhan coronavirus-research connection relevant evidence? Yes.
Does the FCS prove engineering? No.
Is an FCS essentially impossible naturally? No.
Is there no evidence for zoonosis? No; that's plainly wrong.
Has zoonosis been proved? No.
Has lab origin been proved? No.
Can someone reasonably think lab origin is currently more probable? Yes.
Can someone responsibly say the evidence establishes that COVID “absolutely, positively HAD to be a lab leak”? No.
This helps remind us that AI’s are deficient in common sense.
The behavior of the Chinese government is consistent with a lab leak and/or an engineered virus, inconsistent with the natural origin hypothesis. (Note all the places where the AI refers to a “lack of evidence”!) If China were innocent, it would want a thorough investigation; but it seems to prefer a cloud of suspicion to a clear resolution.
“Is there no evidence for zoonosis? No; that's plainly wrong.” It seems more accurate to say, given China’s stonewalling, zoonosis can’t be absolutely ruled out.
N.B.: ChatGPT treats the journal, Nature, as authoritative. From reading its daily newsletter, I tend toward the opposite view. Nature bet early and often on natural origin, and climbing down off that limb would be embarrassing and painful. Again, something an AI would find it difficult to understand (if that’s the word).
Did you tell the AI to reassess in light of the DARPA proposal to insert a furin cleavage site into a bat virus in Wuhan China submitted by Ralph Baric and the Bat Lady?
No offense, but people come to these comment sections to read what other humans think about a topic, not read LLM regurgitation. We all have the ability to type a question in to ChatGPT if we want to read AI slop.
It's actually proof of the problem if you think this is "fact checking". Fact checking would be if you got ChatGPT to provide sources for everything it wrote, and then you went and verified that those sources actually said what ChatGPT summarized. And of course making sure that those sources are actually based off something solid and not just circular references to each other.
I very much tolerate and appreciate fact checking. Do you?
Adam, the point is this: I'm not an expert, you're not expert, Taibbi isn't an expert. None of us here is even remotely sufficiently conversant in zoology, epidemiology, etc. to pronounce on the virus's origins. This means that we're obligated to withhold judgement or provisionally side with the scientific consensus. Why? The answer should be obvious. If, as a scientific ignoramus about the virus's origins, you throw in with lab-leak, then your opinion is political, not evidence-based.
I didn't quote ChatGPT to try to make a case for a zoonotic origin. I quoted it to dispel the commenter's claim that the virus MUST have been leaked from a lab. It was a plea for epistemic humility.
But whatever. Here everyone just purports to know that the virus was leaked from a lab--this despite the fact that the scientific consensus suggests otherwise.
Of course, Taibbi and his readers are also rabid conspiracists who dismiss the notion of a legitimate scientific consensus, so the fact that lab-leak has become doctrinal among them is unsurprising.
Okay, I don't know if you're new to the whole lab leak conversation, but the whole point about why this is such a big deal is that for a lot of us who did follow the discussion about the lab leak right from the beginning in 2020, it was very obvious that the lab leak hypothesis was being suppressed and that the "scientific consensus" only appeared that way because scientists who disagreed were being ignored, suppressed and called conspiracy theorists.
You didn't need to be an expert on the subject matter to see this. Over the last few years more and more of this information has been coming out and being confirmed in multiple ways, but a lot of it has been known from the start. You didn't need to be an expert to recognize that an accidental lab leak was ALWAYS a possibility, and anyone saying otherwise must be lying.
The whole point is that this was never a "legitimate" scientific consensus, and all of the evidence coming out is making it 100% clear that people like Fauci deliberately tried to engineer the appearance of a consensus. It's no longer speculation, the evidence is there.
Sure, it's possible... pangolins ain't that smart... probably raided a trash can at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A south-Alabama possum could have done it.
Do you have expertise in virology? Epidemiology? That's what I thought. You're an ignoramus about the relevant science, and so you're obligated to withhold judgement about the origin of the virus. But here are you, sputtering like the Dunning-Kruger case study you are.
Trev - do you have such expertise yourself and, if you say yes, explain to me how you are going to prove your claim on an anonymous board.
Also, I use AI daily and consider it reasonably reliable but, when using it, I would say about 1/3 of the time I end up challenging it and it concedes its flaws and errors. Your post is in no way persuasive when quoting a source that is known to hallucinate.
No, I don't have expertise in any of the relevant science. That's why I withhold judgement on the virus's origins or provisionally throw in with the scientific consensus. That's what people who aren't engaged in motivating reasoning do.
Oh ffs. Anyone can speak on the topic. I didn't say otherwise. I simply pointed out that proclaiming that the lab leak hypothesis is *certainly* true, as some blowhards do, is not intellectually respectable. There's nothing arcane or tricky about this. If you're insufficiently expert in the relevant areas of science, then you're simply a partisan douche (like Taibbi) if you throw in with a particular side.
As it happens, I can have an "educated conversation" on the topic--e.g., I often wonder why, if the virus was "created" in a lab, two distinct lineages of SARS CoV2 were isolated from the wet market differing from each other by only two nucleotides in two different genes. But I'm no expert, so I don't pretend to have any of this even remotely figured out.
But here in the asshole of cyberspace that is a Taibbi comment section, everyone--even those who've never cracked a science textbook--seems to just *know* the lab leak hypothesis is true. You should ask yourself why that is.
You judged a comment in a debate over the origin of the virus. and added a pathetically irrelevant set of challenges to the person you disagreed with. There is an ignoramous in this thread - get a mirror.
Were you in favor of Paul’s committee hearing? The Matts are going to “interrogate” the evidence in the same manner Paul hoped to interrogate Fauci. When significant new evidence arises it’s good to do a comprehensive review rather than start from previous beliefs.
At what point do “previous beliefs” become axiomatic facts? The scientific evidence is so overwhelming, of Covid's origins, it's virtually irrefutable. To suggest otherwise, IMHO is just giving the deniers more room to evade the truth.
If you are going to accuse someone of being complicit in the deaths of millions you owe them the best examination of the facts possible.
I believed the lab leak the most likely cause from the beginning. When I learned of the EcoHealth grants I believed further that we funded the research. Everything revealed since has strengthened that opinion.
However, just as death row inmates’ cases are subject to greater scrutiny, so too should the examination of the actions of Fauci, et al during the largest catastrophe since WWII. After which we held the Nuremberg Trials, BTW.
And BTW, my post said nothing about "being complicit in the deaths of millions”. That’s a whole other debate I don’t wish to engage in with anyone. Thanks.
With all due respect Marty, " the best examination of the facts possible.” HAS been done. I’ve read many, many scientific papers that make the case. In the law, “beyond a reasonable doubt” is the standard for conviction. Do you NOT think it has been determined by that standard? If you don’t, then OK. But IMHO it has. Thanks.
First, I did not mean to refer to you personally. If one accuses another of being complicit in the deaths of millions, the accuser should turn over every stone that refutes the claim.
Second, this discussion is meant for a wider audience than you or me. Your opinion is supported well enough to be "axiomatic" but there are millions of persuadables who are not as informed as you. A deep dive into the lab leak theory is useful for them.
Finally, the discussion will probably extend beyond the leak itself and that can reveal new information as well.
What do you mean by "Good grief." We still don't definitively know the origin of Covid, and if gain of function played any role. China sure hasn't helped much, and you can infer from that whatever you want. To me, it means China is hiding something.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US provided grant money to the EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn helped fund coronavirus research in Wuhan. Rand Paul believes that this research was for gain of function, and that this contributed to a lab leak, and yes, he believes that Dr. Fauci knew it helped fund gain of function research. None of this is entirely established yet, though. Many scientists still say it was an animal to human transmission that started Covid.
...and yet, after literally years of exhaustive searching, the Chinese government - which has every motivation to do so - has yet to find an animal, any animal, infected with this variety of COVID.
You state: "Many scientists still say it was an animal to human transmission that started Covid.”
How many STILL say this? How many say it was lab created? And who are the scientists saying it was animal to human and what are their motivations for saying this? I think you might find the answer is obvious. Thanks.
NPR, July 29, 2026 "Animal Spillover? Lab Leak? What the Science Says About the Origins of COVID-19"
"But virologists who study pandemic origins are much less divided than the U.S. intelligence community. They say there is "very convincing" data and "overwhelming evidence" pointing to an animal origin.
In a report iNssued in June 2025, the World Health Organization stated: "the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host."
That conclusion was based on three years of research by the 27 members of The WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens.
NPR's reporting has supported that theory.
A 2024 study in the peer-reviewed journal Cell found multiple lines of evidence showing the virus spilled over from wild animals to humans."
I hope these investigations don’t stop at Fauci. Many other medical doctors and health professionals perpetuated or added to the bad information during the pandemic. They need to be held accountable as well, especially those in positions of public trust, like the CDC people.
Otherwise, agree. Fauci appears to be the ringleader with pressuring staff and scientists to follow his narrative and try concealing his screwups. Likely others who willingly followed him who looked to benefit from the gain of function research done in China that led to COVID.
I know someone who worked at the CDC when everything was blowing up. (She is a doctor, but was politically a flunky - they are in every organization!) There were a number of arguments going on at rhe staff level about origin, treatment, etc. She was promoting Vitamin D but got nowhere; 'Management' had a story and they were sticking with it. She saw the writing on the wall and decided it was a good time to retire from the agency.
Pretty sure there were several studies in 2020 showing vitamin D deficient patients were at higher risk (as much as 10-fold) for Covid infection. Most highly pigmented populations away from the Equator are vitamin D deficient. Blacks had double the Covid death rate of whites when age and other factors were taken into account.
I could never understand why the US covid response consisted of the mRNA vaccine MONOTHERAPY. If truly dangerous, other therapies (mostly safe at therapeutic concentrations like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) and vitamins and supplements promoted for general health particularly in the Elderly would have been inexpensive add-ons even if not really needed by all).
My veterinarian friends were stunned by the WHO decreeing that glucocorticoids were verboten in serious respiratory viral infections. In animals acute glucocorticoids are given along with antibiotics (for secondary bacterial infections/ pneumonias) as Standard of Care for serious respiratory viral infections. The WHO only backed off on such steroid use in August 2020 by which time most physicians had discovered their efficacy.
It was definitely strange behavior. Why not try a mostly harmless intervention alongside the standard care? All they really accomplished was to make many (if not most) of us lose trust and faith in the medical establishment.
“It's not just because Fauci was wrong—scientists are wrong all the time. It's not because public health coerced us into debatable actions—that happens often, from drunk-driving laws to helmet mandates, and people generally accept those because they emerge from decades of societal consensus.
Fauci is unique because he represents a rare convergence of factors:
· A. He alone, or with a very small group, made decisions.
· B. Those decisions coerced hundreds of millions of people.
· C. He was largely incorrect about those actions.
· D. He was unable to admit uncertainty or doubt.
· E. He failed to gather better evidence, even though as NIAID director he controlled a massive budget that could have funded randomized trials.
· F. He demonized scientists who disagreed.
· G. His own diary reveals he often believed the opposite of what he said publicly.
That constellation of factors makes people viscerally angry—and understandably so. Consider a woman who said she'll never forgive him because he forced her toddler to wear a "dirty, bacteria-riddled mask" for eight hours a day. The media might say, "He didn't have the power to do that." But his diary shows he was privately encouraging politicians to close schools and mandate masks for children as young as two—a policy the EU never adopted and that defies common sense. He used his political capital to push those policies and demonized anyone who disagreed, like Jay Bhattacharya, whom he called a "fringe epidemiologist."
He overstepped his role.”
Vinay Prasad, MD MPH; Physician & Professor
Hematologist/ Oncologist
Professor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Medicine
This is a great summary and irrefutable (though the Fauci lovers of the world will surely try). I would only add another example: "Consider the person who was forced to let a loved one die alone". This to me was one of the most heartbreaking elements of what happened.
We have this same problem throughout the entire administrative state. Just so happens that one aspect of this apparatus was exposed for the waste abuse and incompetence that is so typical of of every organ of the vast managerial state.
The mystery is whether or not Dr. Frankenstein, oops, I mean Fauci's pardon was signed by autopen or by an incompetent Boob, and is it valid? That's the mystery.
Why not get Birx to rat out Fauci for immunity? I don’t care if anyone goes to jail because I know it’ll never happen anyhow. I just want the TRUTH to be out so all these people who believe the media and still don’t get it to be slapped in the face with it.
Exactly! The truth is what we want. But I'm not sure the Media and the Left would ever accept the Truth. To admit their mistakes in accepting all of that poisonous and destructive information from Fauci &Co. would show the world that they are full of nothing but hot air. They physically can't do that.
Agreed, but when I first read your comment "Why not get Birx to rat out Fauci for immunity?" I actually wasn't sure whether you meant immunity from prosecution or immunity from Covid. The brain works in strange ways (at least mine does).
Exposing Peter Hotez is one of my pet projects. He was lapping up the attention. Here's one of his "scientific" articles in a "scientific" publication. Take a look—it's short.
Remember the early 2020 video clips out of China of people there dropping dead in the streets from the virus? How come that didn’t replicate itself anywhere else in the world?
Yet covid caused nothing like this anywhere in the world. The videos were completely fake, and a huge psyops campaign like that doesn’t happen on accident. The Chinese government faked the videos that kicked off the panic around the world. China falsely claimed that lockdowns stopped the virus cold, setting the way for bought governments around the world to mimic China’s response. China then rode the ensuing wave of chaos to the precipice of becoming the world’s largest superpower. And now they’re performing a follow-up act with lockdowns in Shanghai, no doubt hoping we will jump off that cliff again.
As far as I know, no government official has spoken about these faked videos and what they mean. Perhaps the Chinese have a incriminating paper trails leading to our ‘public servants’ like they do with Tony Fauci. I’m 100% positive the Chinese bribery trail runs in our government much, much further than the Biden family. It’s time that important people start asking important questions — is ANYBODY going to hold China accountable for their actions?
It's absolutely surprising that we haven't found out more about those fake videos. At the very least, the miracle of corpses chatting and smoking cigarettes should have triggered either religious or scientific wonderment.
Did YouTube take down the China ‘instantly drop dead’ videos? I went to your 2022 linked post and looks like you reference a video that is no longer there 🧐
Interesting this video is from TOMONEWS, as this was formerly owned by Jimmy Lai and Cheung Kim-Hung (Next Digital) and both are now imprisoned by the CCP (and serving 6 and 20 year prison terms) for violating China’s ‘National Security Law’.
On post Elon Musk acquiring X I saw countless videos of people dying suddenly whether they were standing at a podium speaking to a group, or athletes in the prime of their life in excellent condition on sporting fields there were countless videos of this happening all over the United states.
I think it was pretty clearly demonstrated those videos were staged. I've seen several where between filming, corpses were chatting and smoking cigarettes.
"I’m also going to do a livestream with Dr. Matt Bivens tomorrow summarizing the evidence for and against a lab leak, as the ongoing mystery as to Covid’s origins remains the most important story."
Surely there isn't a mystery to the origins at this point...
I’m not sure why there isn’t more curiosity about the events in 2014 when the Obama administration placed a moratorium on GOF research because of the extreme danger it posed. Fauci was involved in shipping GOF research to Wuhan, funding it and laundering this funding through sites hard to track, a subcontractor ECO Health Alliance headed by an equally duplicitous liar named Peter Daszak. If Fauci was a prime mover and funder of this research the public should clearly understand this.
Because of multiple “loopholes” in the moratorium, GOF research never stopped in the US; it went underground and overseas; IC, Obama, et al were aware of this. Fauci was the money-mover; Dazak was facilitator in moving money, and Ralph Baric UNC is at the top of the list of culprits who continued the work which led to SARS-COV2. Baric, world-renowned virologist, shared his discovery of how to manipulate(engineer) a virus without leaving the regular fingerprints of a CRISPR modification with Bat Woman Shi at the CCP-affiliated Wuhan Lab. Because, well, science…
Rose thanks for expanding on my comments. I’m still at a loss on how Baric UNC has escaped scrutiny. Yes I know he’s a CIA/DOD “employee” so he was protected but he’s as complicit as Fauci, Dazak and this is the Trump DOJ.
The origin isn't a mystery. It was a science experiment that leaked into a public space. The mystery is why Dr. Fauci lied about his department's involvement with something President Obama stopped.
Precisely! Public doesn’t understand this. That’s why the auto pen pardon goes back to 2014. This little megalomaniac thought he knew better than US virologists (he’s not a virologist) that recommended stop GOF research too dangerous.
I don't think Obama stopped it. I think he made it *look* like he stopped it, so he got the benefit of both the PR and the continuation of bioweapons research.
A former Obama admirer, I've become pretty disillusioned.
Suppose Fauci directed funds to gain of function research and suppose he shaped the narrative that it was not a Wuhan Lab leak: What or who was behind all that? DARPA backed away from funding the research many suspect resulted in COVID. Somehow it still got funded via NIH/NIAID…and in China of all places.
Not to put too fine a point but this but the intelligence community knows this pattern: nations performdual use science somewhat in the open, get pushback, shift it to some darker source of funding, offshore it. Ken Alibek defected from the former Soviet Union and wrote about similar moves in Biohazard (and a lab leak of something like Ebola). Fauci may be the fall guy for some deeper strategy that blew up big time.
Remember it was the notable virologist Jon Stewart on a Colbert Tonight Show that finally gave the liberals permission to suspect the lab leak.
The libs were so stuck on rejecting anything from conservative media that it took a fake journalist comedian to inform his a late night comedy host and his best friend, in a late night comedy skit for these losers to finally accept the truth.
What I found fascinating was Colbert’s reaction in that interview. He absolutely did not want Jon Stewart to say that and was trying mightily to stop him. For anyone who hasn’t watched that clip, it is definitely worth checking out. A moment of clarity on programming devoted to obscuring it.
That wasn’t my personal impression. I felt that Colbert didn’t want Stewart to go there but then when he couldn’t prevent it, he did sort of reluctantly go along.
Although copies of his phone during the COVID-19 era are going to yield some more evidence and insight, the real data to search for IMHO should be in the 2008 to 2019 timeframe. That's when the US Army at Fort Detrick had their funding cutoff thanks to efforts by Rand Paul's father, Ron Paul. This cutoff of DNA work and GOF came to light and began at around the same time a cloned sheep born in the UK called "Dolly" made the news around 2003.
If the DOJ pursues this an there is real prosecution and investigation of Fauci during COVID and before, IMHO there could be some serious collateral damage associated to a number of other scientists, universities (UNC, NC State, John Hopkins) and may even affect at least one Senatorial race (Cooper was governor and controlled UNC at that time) and one governorship (NC) due to the alleged deep involvement of politicians in this matter.
I remember going to a secluded upscale bar at a UNC leased building off West Barbee Chapel Road around late 2014 with another retired CIA Station Chief for a drink and surprised to see a number of Chinese PLA officers in uniform drinking at the bar with some senior university officials and some state officials.
The COVID story started way before the Wuhan mess. I'll surmise it started the day the funding for DNA virus modification, weaponization, Gain-of-Function was cut off from Fort Detrick for ethics and danger reasons and a go around the Congressional bans was hatched. There were many rumors (quickly put down by the press) of mysterious outbreaks around the UNC epidemiology labs on the Chapel Hill campus. Then somehow, the research was moved via contractors to mini bio-labs overseas. How we got to choose a CCP PLA controlled lab to perform our bio-weapons research as a sub-contractor is another story which may possibly be about the Central Bankster Cabal and treason by national and NC state officials.
Studying the AIDS epidemic and Fauci's role in the could also yield some more pre-2014 evidence. IMHO Nancy Pelosi was a player in that situation.
Disclosure: I was a neighbor of one of the key players in the UNC Epidemiology Department so even I personally saw many Chinese around the neighborhood.
Assuming for the moment that like a lot of other nations we are doing biowar research under the guise of dual use …why on earth are we doing COVID GOF with the CCP PLA? Why would the DoD (or NSA or CIA or whatever dark deep state forces) do something hand in hand with our supposed adversaries? I dont believe that Fauci is a saint and I don’t believe he is a demon. Maybe, he was driven by vanity but maybe that’s just an easy narrative feature to drive the news-feed algorithm, There may be a real case that he was a willing cog in government machinations around biowarfare. But why would a partnership with China make sense to all the parties? Or am i just not idiotically idiot enough to understand the idiocracy of their rationale?
You raise an VERY interesting question, Peter. Why would the US Military, the US intelligence community, the Congress, Fauci and NIH all overlook the selection of the Chinese PLA to continue this probably sensitive national security work started at UNC and John Hopkins and move it in China under CCP PLA control? Why would the Chinese brazenly show up (in uniform, no less) at UNC's Bolshevik Chapel Hill campus and with explicit state approval, get trained in our sensitive and maybe secret bio-weapon knowledge to continue the work under PLA control in China itself? This makes no sense, but that's what happened. Why did the financial bean counters at the CBO and Treasury not raise an alarm or even a question? Why no FBI investigation? Why no CIA detection? Where's the security? The protection of taxpayer intellectual property?
The "Occam's Razor"-like solution would be that all these parties are ideologically and/or financially advantaged to do so. This would mean that there is a huge number of people, from both sides: China and the Unites States Government, that are ideologically/financially or otherwise part of an anti-insurgency to bring down our Republic. That could explain why we gave our secret bio-weapon work to the Chinese PLA and no one even complained. Kinda like Clinton giving our rocketry secrets to the PLA in the 90's?
Remember that Trump was not supposed to win the election in 2016. According to MAGA conspiracy advocates, the narrative is that Hillary was to win and lead the United States into a war against China that the US would lose and the surrender terms would include revoking the US Constitution, thus freeing the elites to re-make America and reduce world population by killing millions of us. Could it be that this conspiracy was actually yet another fact? BTW, why did a good friend of Fauci, Bill Gates, get a "Q" Security clearance?
The whole convoluted Covid origin story could be made into a film or TV series. In fact, it reminds me of the interesting Canadian science-fiction television series "ReGenesis" that ran way back in 2004 to 2008. Peter Outerbridge played David Sandstrom, a molecular biologist and Chief Scientist at "NorBAC", a fictional organization with a lab based in the city of Toronto. NorBAC investigated problems like bioterrorism, mysterious diseases, or radical changes in the environment in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In one episode from 2006, David Sandstrom was on leave from NorBAC because of some problems at the lab, and was visiting China as a tourist when he was approached by Chinese officials who requested rather sternly that he help them diagnose and treat a mysterious infectious disease that was spreading out of control. He was not in a good position to refuse, so they brought him to a hospital where he examined patients, spoke to doctors and nurses, and finally said that this was over his head and he would need the assistance of his colleagues back at NorBAC, both for their expertise and the lab's advanced equipment. At this point his Chinese hosts raised frantic objections to any spread of information about the outbreak, which they were under tremendous pressure from high officials to cover up. They told Sandstrom that although he understood medicine and science, he did not understand China and its cult of secrecy. Sandstrom told them that if they really wanted his help they would have to compromise on this point. So they rigged up some kind of obscure and slow telephone modem-based communications link that let him communicate with and transfer data to NorBAC. Eventually they figured out what was causing the outbreak and how to end it.
YES! More journalism please, Matt. And please keep your laser focus on the systemic problem of MSM’s big fail in applying Jim Rutenberg’s post-Trump standards to a genuine public health emergency. Getting Fauci is not as important as exposing the science “reporting” at NYT, WaPo, CNN, Atlantic, etc.
There are significant discrepancies between Fauci’s diary entries and his public pronouncements regarding Covid-19. And, regarding our public health bureaucracy, supposedly they know best how to manage a so-called pandemic (where the survival was >99%). So, we should refuse to discuss any of this? Decline to investigate any of this?! Where are critical thinking skills?
Covid absolutely, positively, HAD to be a lab leak. There is no evidence for natural origin, which would have near zero likelihood. Why? The furin cleavage site. A standard gain of function process, specifically targeting humans, that is almost never found in nature. You think covid breaking out two miles from the Wuhan lab where precisely that work was being performed is just a coincidence? If so, I've got a bridge you might like to buy.
Does anyone else recall a mention early on of the US military in the Chinese province "war gaming" or some such & the speculation that it was a DARPA weapon dropped off to deter suspicion this was a US developed bioweapon. Apologies for the faulty memory of specifics but this was the general perspective. I am just curious if that was mere speculation or has some validity.
I don't recall that, but your post brings to mind the case of Charles Lieber, a Harvard chemistry professor who was arrested in January 2020 for lying about his links to another Chinese lab in Wuhan while accepting grant money from the Department of Defense. Naturally, before much was known, I suspected he (and the DoD) might be somehow connected with weaponizing the COVID virus, but his specialty was nanotechnology so I more or less forgot about it . . . until I read your post. Nanotechnology? Hmmm. I never thought the US had clean hands in any of this, but it's starting to look like too many Americans happily cooperated with our Chinese frenemies way more than anyone cares to admit.
I remember a case beginning to build in my brain for potential US involvement when reading about Lieber's nanotechnology ... a seed had already been planted in a prior article about Zhengli bat doctor in late 2019, but blowing it off as my mind wasn't ready to accept the magnitude of the charade ...
The allegation at the time was it was some kind of US military sports team visit. The more tinfoil version was that this team seeded the virus either from the US to China or vice versa. I don’t think it’s significant.
From AI:
"2019 Military World Games in Wuhan
The 7th CISM Military World Games — officially known as the 2019 Military World Games — were held in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China from October 18 to 27, 2019 Wikipedia. This was the first time China hosted the event, marking its largest-ever military sports gathering.
Event Overview
Host city: Wuhan, Hubei, China
Dates: October 18–27, 2019
Organizers: Military Sports Commission of China, Ministry of National Defense, and military commands (per CISM regulations) Wikipedia
Participants: 110 nations, 9,308 athletes Wikipedia
Sports disciplines: 27 disciplines, including 25 official and 2 demonstrative sports
Olympic Village: First time in Military World Games history, opened after the flag-raising ceremony Wikipedia
Significance
The Games promoted CISM’s motto “Military Glory, World Peace” (创军人荣耀 筑世界和平), aiming to enhance friendship through sport among armed forces worldwide Hubei - The people's government of hubei province. China topped the medal table, reflecting both its organizational capacity and military sports strength."
A controversy was that the US who usually have repeat competitors at this event that have dominated the games in the past, had mostly new unknown athletes (who many observers said were not very good). While Covid was essentially a cold/flu in healthy athletes under age 50, "conspiracy theorists" claim the US was seeding the virus for transmission all over the world. But why?
A pandemic would disrupt the 2020 election, making it easier for the Democrats to screw Bernie out of the nomination and finally defeat Trump at the ballot box since they failed in a courtroom.
This is exhausting.
Any chance you r DARPA😂
I worked for NIH for six years back in the early '90s (a byzantine bureaucratic zoo), back when scientists could not monetarily benefit from their work ("Property of the American People"-- William Binney claims his group at NSA created much of what became Google but could not patent or make money, scoffs that it was invented in a garage; Page and Brin are now worth a combined $426 billion and Binney is a bitter double amputee diabetic.)
I was not aware of what was going in other labs, which was the case for the bench scientists at almost all institutions.
There is a rumour that public key cryptography was invented by NSA and/or GCHQ but the government could not claim prior art against RSA. Hard to prove unless they ever declassify it.
"Covid" was exhausting!
I think this site, formerly known asTKNews, promoted this/that.
No.
You may be remembering the 2019 Military World Games. I had a theory that US soldiers might have brought the virus to Wuhan during the games, but there is evidence of a patient zero even before the games. Some have even pointed to the rather hazy diagnosis of the respiratory problems by those who were vaping as caused by something in the vape juice as having symptoms similar to COVID months earlier than the outbreak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Military_World_Games
Some "conspiracy theorists" (investigative reporters?) noted there were a number of respiratory issues in the area near Fort Detrick in MD and also in Dahlgren, VA (several military bases in Northern Virginia). If I remember correctly these were linked OFFICIALLY to vaping. There were also suspicious nursing home deaths in the area, but the Elderly can succumb to the common cold, particularly if opportunistic bacterial infections follow.
Ralph Baric, a brilliant scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill and probably the mastermind behind many Gain of Function techniques, recently retired (not by choice). Interestingly like Fauci he did not have his name on any of Fauci's clique of well-funded virologists' publications arguing for a non-lab origin for Covid (Baric was already well-funded and his name might have triggered GOF opponents).
Yes, Baric has been prominent across many lines of operation in this matter. Taibbi just displayed a couple of emails to him from Dr. Zhengli complaining the US was requiring her to respond to items she agreed to respond to when she signed a contract funding her research. I recall her arena of experiments was alerted in 2019 or earlier for poor training & substandard safety measures so Baric was also aware noting the correspondence traffic.
The World Military Games, a sports competition with teams composed of military personnel, was held in Wuhan in October 2019. There were reports that some participants developed an unusual upper respiratory infection, though never positively identified as COVID-19, which lead some people to believe COVID-19 could have been circulating well before it was officially identified as a pandemic.
This coincidence might have been used in CCP propaganda claiming COVID actually started in the US.
Even though I personally agree it had to be a lab leak, just because something seems absolutely obvious doesn't always cut it either scientifically or legally.
Right. But what made it more than suspicious was not the proximity but that the idea that someone thinking that the Wuhan institute of virology might be linked to a novel virus that originated in Wuhan was both preposterous and racist.
The media do like to pile on.
True especially if they get to call people they don’t like racists
Or conspiracy theorists.
I put a lot of weight on this Perspectives peer-reviewed scientific paper from 2022:
frontiersin.org/journals/virology/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808/full
Moderna had patented the human MSH3 oncogene in 2016 of which a 19 identical nucleotide stretch ended up in the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV2. The codons involved are human not usual bat coronavirus codons. The authors (charitably) argue that a benign coronavirus was likely grown in human lung cells containing Moderna's MSH3 gene (to help the cell line grow) and a rare recombination event occurred that gave the mutant virus a huge selective infectious advantage over the parent benign coronavirus strain which quickly became SARS-CoV2 or a precursor strain geared for human cell infection. Possible.
A bigger question is whether Covid was the result of an accident or was its creation intentional? If there was no military/ intelligence involvement, I would lean to accident. However Fauci was being doubly paid as Head of NIAID and as one of the heads of Biodefense Research. "National Security" is unfathomable to most Americans and after initially denying bioweapons research labs in Ukraine, Nuland let it slip that Russians were now in control of some of those labs.
It could be deliberately created and also accidentally released. They are separate questions.
My view based on what I’ve read is that the intention was to create a highly contagious but benign mammalian virus that would in turn spread a gene therapy “vaccine” - potentially multiple different vaccine payloads. The release I believe to be a genuine lab accident. Albeit a predictable one due to dangerous research in underfunded conditions.
Since 2020 my money has on genetically engineered and accidentally released.
Accidental release happened before with Ebola.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001512.htm
Yes there are many examples of accidental release. It basically should be an expected scenario.
Hoof and mouth, etc. The expectation I’d believe zoonotic origin for SARS-CO-2 was insulting.
I'm currently halfway through the transcript of Ralph Baric's interview by Rand Paul's staff on 4/10/26 https://www.paul.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.23_UPDATED-FINAL-FINAL_BARIC-TI_Redacted.pdf
A lot of it is technical, and I wish they would discourage using pronouns which makes things very confusing, but one thing struck me and I wonder if I was interpreting it correctly.
In discussing whether Covid was the result of gain of function research, particularly what is "natural", it sounded to me like Baric considers genetic changes that happen in a cell culture as natural (I think maybe this would also apply to something like serial passage in mice), and "created" only applies to actual gene editing.
I'm guessing the average person would consider a cell culture or serial passage alteration to be anything but the common understanding of "natural". because were at not for the lab activities, the change probably wouldn't have happened at all.
It plays into the semantic games around the definition of "gain of function research". The public was encouraged to believe that the bug, in the wild, jumped from bats or pangolins or pigs into a human.
You are spot on re: semantics.
While reading keep in mind that Baric developed a currently undetectable method of inserting alleles into RNA/DNA that doesn’t leave the nucleotide fingerprint of previous methods.
😳
I was asking a question, not assigning one or the other...not a fan, but one intelligent comment Rumsfeld purloined: "imagine the unimaginable". I think for those who alert to not be foxed by government's assent of "incompetence" bring something to the table in such matters.
Remember when Michael Osterholm tried to say it was just a coincidence? That if a new virus broke out in the Caribbean, we would see it in Atlanta (home of the CDC) first, because of passenger airline routing? I'd like to see the zoom call where that one was thunk up.
08/06/26: You can't. Fauci already sold it to the American people. And those killed by the covid "vaccine" don't get refunds, sorry. Meanwhile, on top of Fauci getting reamed out by Aaron Rodgers, here's another influential voice (if Fauci were a stock, it would be delisted by now): https://xcancel.com/VigilantFox/status/2085191902467440977
I rarely agree with Jon Stewart, but his discussion of the lab leak theory with Colbert was priceless. Still available on YouTube, too.
I asked ChatGPT if you're right. Here's what it said:
No. That passage takes several genuinely interesting facts and turns them into a degree of certainty that the evidence does not warrant. As of 2026, a lab-associated origin remains a serious and plausible hypothesis, and some U.S. intelligence agencies actually regard it as more likely than zoonotic spillover. But “absolutely, positively HAD to be a lab leak” is much stronger than either the scientific evidence or those intelligence assessments support. A recent Nature overview found that most scientific reviews still favor zoonotic origin, while emphasizing that the question remains unresolved.
The furin cleavage site (FCS) is probably the most misleading part of the quoted argument. SARS-CoV-2 does indeed have an unusual polybasic furin cleavage site that was not present in the other known sarbecoviruses when SARS-CoV-2 appeared. It is biologically important and contributed substantially to the virus's ability to infect human airway cells. Those are real facts.
But the leap from those facts to “a standard gain-of-function process, specifically targeting humans, that is almost never found in nature” doesn't follow. Furin cleavage sites absolutely do occur naturally in viruses, including other coronaviruses. The unusual fact is narrower: this particular FCS had not been observed in the known close sarbecovirus relatives of SARS-CoV-2. And the fact that we haven't sampled one in a close relative doesn't establish that nature is extraordinarily unlikely to produce one. Our sampling of bat coronaviruses is tiny relative to their actual diversity. Researchers have proposed ordinary evolutionary mechanisms—mutation/recombination in animal hosts or acquisition during previously undetected transmission—that could produce such a site.
There is another important distinction that the passage collapses: lab leak ≠ engineered virus. SARS-CoV-2 could, in principle, have originated from a laboratory accident involving a naturally collected virus. Conversely, showing that an FCS could have been engineered would not show that it was. Even the CIA's 2025 assessment favoring a research-related origin explicitly retained both research-related and natural-origin scenarios as plausible and assigned its conclusion low confidence.
The claim that “there is no evidence for natural origin” is simply false. There is substantial circumstantial evidence for zoonosis. In particular, the earliest recognized COVID-19 cases were geographically concentrated around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market; susceptible live mammals were being sold there; and SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental samples were concentrated in areas associated with wildlife sales. None of that proves an infected animal transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to a human—we still lack the decisive infected-market-animal sample—but it plainly constitutes evidence. That's one major reason many evolutionary virologists continue to favor zoonosis. The 2026 Nature review describes the published scientific literature as predominantly supporting that hypothesis.
Likewise, “natural origin would have near zero likelihood” isn't an established scientific result. To make that statement responsibly, one would need defensible estimates for things such as the frequency with which relevant insertions arise, the unsampled diversity of sarbecoviruses, exposure rates involving susceptible mammals, laboratory accident probabilities, and the relevant Wuhan-specific circumstances. We don't have sufficiently reliable numbers for those variables to calculate anything resembling “near zero.”
The Wuhan coincidence is nevertheless legitimate evidence for lab origin. Wuhan contained the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted extensive research on bat coronaviruses. If you were comparing hypotheses, the fact that an outbreak of a novel SARS-related coronavirus occurred in a city containing a major laboratory studying SARS-related bat coronaviruses is something the lab-origin hypothesis can point to. It shouldn't simply be waved away as irrelevant.
But there is an important correction to “two miles from the Wuhan lab where precisely that work was being performed.” The relevant proposition isn't established in that form. We know WIV researchers studied SARS-related coronaviruses and performed experiments involving modified coronaviruses. We do not have evidence that WIV possessed SARS-CoV-2, its immediate progenitor, or a virus close enough that the documented experiments would straightforwardly generate SARS-CoV-2 before the outbreak. That's one of the enormous missing pieces in the lab-origin case. Intelligence assessments focusing on WIV's activities have not produced public evidence establishing such a precursor or a specific laboratory accident.
So I'd separate the claims this way:
Could COVID have resulted from a laboratory accident? Absolutely.
Is there meaningful circumstantial evidence pointing that way? Yes.
Is the Wuhan coronavirus-research connection relevant evidence? Yes.
Does the FCS prove engineering? No.
Is an FCS essentially impossible naturally? No.
Is there no evidence for zoonosis? No; that's plainly wrong.
Has zoonosis been proved? No.
Has lab origin been proved? No.
Can someone reasonably think lab origin is currently more probable? Yes.
Can someone responsibly say the evidence establishes that COVID “absolutely, positively HAD to be a lab leak”? No.
Sure. Anything's possible. Probably no greater than a 99.99% chance that it came from that lab
This helps remind us that AI’s are deficient in common sense.
The behavior of the Chinese government is consistent with a lab leak and/or an engineered virus, inconsistent with the natural origin hypothesis. (Note all the places where the AI refers to a “lack of evidence”!) If China were innocent, it would want a thorough investigation; but it seems to prefer a cloud of suspicion to a clear resolution.
“Is there no evidence for zoonosis? No; that's plainly wrong.” It seems more accurate to say, given China’s stonewalling, zoonosis can’t be absolutely ruled out.
N.B.: ChatGPT treats the journal, Nature, as authoritative. From reading its daily newsletter, I tend toward the opposite view. Nature bet early and often on natural origin, and climbing down off that limb would be embarrassing and painful. Again, something an AI would find it difficult to understand (if that’s the word).
Did you tell the AI to reassess in light of the DARPA proposal to insert a furin cleavage site into a bat virus in Wuhan China submitted by Ralph Baric and the Bat Lady?
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal/
Add that URL to your AI request and see what happens.
I don’t need AI, I knew from January 2020.
No offense, but people come to these comment sections to read what other humans think about a topic, not read LLM regurgitation. We all have the ability to type a question in to ChatGPT if we want to read AI slop.
In other words, we don't tolerate fact-checking around here. Got it. And also, go fuck yourself.
It's actually proof of the problem if you think this is "fact checking". Fact checking would be if you got ChatGPT to provide sources for everything it wrote, and then you went and verified that those sources actually said what ChatGPT summarized. And of course making sure that those sources are actually based off something solid and not just circular references to each other.
I very much tolerate and appreciate fact checking. Do you?
Adam, the point is this: I'm not an expert, you're not expert, Taibbi isn't an expert. None of us here is even remotely sufficiently conversant in zoology, epidemiology, etc. to pronounce on the virus's origins. This means that we're obligated to withhold judgement or provisionally side with the scientific consensus. Why? The answer should be obvious. If, as a scientific ignoramus about the virus's origins, you throw in with lab-leak, then your opinion is political, not evidence-based.
I didn't quote ChatGPT to try to make a case for a zoonotic origin. I quoted it to dispel the commenter's claim that the virus MUST have been leaked from a lab. It was a plea for epistemic humility.
But whatever. Here everyone just purports to know that the virus was leaked from a lab--this despite the fact that the scientific consensus suggests otherwise.
Of course, Taibbi and his readers are also rabid conspiracists who dismiss the notion of a legitimate scientific consensus, so the fact that lab-leak has become doctrinal among them is unsurprising.
Okay, I don't know if you're new to the whole lab leak conversation, but the whole point about why this is such a big deal is that for a lot of us who did follow the discussion about the lab leak right from the beginning in 2020, it was very obvious that the lab leak hypothesis was being suppressed and that the "scientific consensus" only appeared that way because scientists who disagreed were being ignored, suppressed and called conspiracy theorists.
You didn't need to be an expert on the subject matter to see this. Over the last few years more and more of this information has been coming out and being confirmed in multiple ways, but a lot of it has been known from the start. You didn't need to be an expert to recognize that an accidental lab leak was ALWAYS a possibility, and anyone saying otherwise must be lying.
The whole point is that this was never a "legitimate" scientific consensus, and all of the evidence coming out is making it 100% clear that people like Fauci deliberately tried to engineer the appearance of a consensus. It's no longer speculation, the evidence is there.
Sure, it's possible... pangolins ain't that smart... probably raided a trash can at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A south-Alabama possum could have done it.
Do you have expertise in virology? Epidemiology? That's what I thought. You're an ignoramus about the relevant science, and so you're obligated to withhold judgement about the origin of the virus. But here are you, sputtering like the Dunning-Kruger case study you are.
Woooo, big words for someone who missed Skenny's sense of humor😂
I wasn't replying to Skenny.
Oh good! I thought he was hilarious! I need to level up on tracking lines for responses😕
Trev - do you have such expertise yourself and, if you say yes, explain to me how you are going to prove your claim on an anonymous board.
Also, I use AI daily and consider it reasonably reliable but, when using it, I would say about 1/3 of the time I end up challenging it and it concedes its flaws and errors. Your post is in no way persuasive when quoting a source that is known to hallucinate.
Bravo!!! I am practically a Luddite and even I can spotted its hiccups from the get-go!
No, I don't have expertise in any of the relevant science. That's why I withhold judgement on the virus's origins or provisionally throw in with the scientific consensus. That's what people who aren't engaged in motivating reasoning do.
So you’re incapable of an educated conversation on the topic yet believe yourself the arbiter of who may and may not speak on the topic?
🙄
Oh ffs. Anyone can speak on the topic. I didn't say otherwise. I simply pointed out that proclaiming that the lab leak hypothesis is *certainly* true, as some blowhards do, is not intellectually respectable. There's nothing arcane or tricky about this. If you're insufficiently expert in the relevant areas of science, then you're simply a partisan douche (like Taibbi) if you throw in with a particular side.
As it happens, I can have an "educated conversation" on the topic--e.g., I often wonder why, if the virus was "created" in a lab, two distinct lineages of SARS CoV2 were isolated from the wet market differing from each other by only two nucleotides in two different genes. But I'm no expert, so I don't pretend to have any of this even remotely figured out.
But here in the asshole of cyberspace that is a Taibbi comment section, everyone--even those who've never cracked a science textbook--seems to just *know* the lab leak hypothesis is true. You should ask yourself why that is.
I recommend you spend some time at https://drasticresearch.org/
So, there was no judgment in "Do you have expertise in virology? Epidemiology? That's what I thought. You're an ignoramus..."?
Interesting definition of the word.
Are you a moron? I definitely did judge the comment. I withhold judgement ON THE ORIGIN OF THE VIRUS. Jesus fuck.
You judged a comment in a debate over the origin of the virus. and added a pathetically irrelevant set of challenges to the person you disagreed with. There is an ignoramous in this thread - get a mirror.
Mystery of its origin? Good grief.
Gain of Function Wuhan Flu.
Were you in favor of Paul’s committee hearing? The Matts are going to “interrogate” the evidence in the same manner Paul hoped to interrogate Fauci. When significant new evidence arises it’s good to do a comprehensive review rather than start from previous beliefs.
At what point do “previous beliefs” become axiomatic facts? The scientific evidence is so overwhelming, of Covid's origins, it's virtually irrefutable. To suggest otherwise, IMHO is just giving the deniers more room to evade the truth.
If you are going to accuse someone of being complicit in the deaths of millions you owe them the best examination of the facts possible.
I believed the lab leak the most likely cause from the beginning. When I learned of the EcoHealth grants I believed further that we funded the research. Everything revealed since has strengthened that opinion.
However, just as death row inmates’ cases are subject to greater scrutiny, so too should the examination of the actions of Fauci, et al during the largest catastrophe since WWII. After which we held the Nuremberg Trials, BTW.
When will the Fauci Trials commence?
And BTW, my post said nothing about "being complicit in the deaths of millions”. That’s a whole other debate I don’t wish to engage in with anyone. Thanks.
With all due respect Marty, " the best examination of the facts possible.” HAS been done. I’ve read many, many scientific papers that make the case. In the law, “beyond a reasonable doubt” is the standard for conviction. Do you NOT think it has been determined by that standard? If you don’t, then OK. But IMHO it has. Thanks.
David, a couple of points:
First, I did not mean to refer to you personally. If one accuses another of being complicit in the deaths of millions, the accuser should turn over every stone that refutes the claim.
Second, this discussion is meant for a wider audience than you or me. Your opinion is supported well enough to be "axiomatic" but there are millions of persuadables who are not as informed as you. A deep dive into the lab leak theory is useful for them.
Finally, the discussion will probably extend beyond the leak itself and that can reveal new information as well.
What do you mean by "Good grief." We still don't definitively know the origin of Covid, and if gain of function played any role. China sure hasn't helped much, and you can infer from that whatever you want. To me, it means China is hiding something.
No, dude. It means that little rat fuck Fauci is hiding something. That's the whole point.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US provided grant money to the EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn helped fund coronavirus research in Wuhan. Rand Paul believes that this research was for gain of function, and that this contributed to a lab leak, and yes, he believes that Dr. Fauci knew it helped fund gain of function research. None of this is entirely established yet, though. Many scientists still say it was an animal to human transmission that started Covid.
...and yet, after literally years of exhaustive searching, the Chinese government - which has every motivation to do so - has yet to find an animal, any animal, infected with this variety of COVID.
You state: "Many scientists still say it was an animal to human transmission that started Covid.”
How many STILL say this? How many say it was lab created? And who are the scientists saying it was animal to human and what are their motivations for saying this? I think you might find the answer is obvious. Thanks.
NPR, July 29, 2026 "Animal Spillover? Lab Leak? What the Science Says About the Origins of COVID-19"
"But virologists who study pandemic origins are much less divided than the U.S. intelligence community. They say there is "very convincing" data and "overwhelming evidence" pointing to an animal origin.
In a report iNssued in June 2025, the World Health Organization stated: "the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host."
That conclusion was based on three years of research by the 27 members of The WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens.
NPR's reporting has supported that theory.
A 2024 study in the peer-reviewed journal Cell found multiple lines of evidence showing the virus spilled over from wild animals to humans."
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/29/g-s1-136142/rand-paul-anthony-fauci-lab-leak-spillover-pandemic-origin
Fucking NPR. Six years later and they’re still trying to give that little rat fuck Fauci space to maneuver.
How much does NPR suck?
Look it up. I already know.
Nahhh! I don’t want to waste any more time on you. Bye.
To me, I fear, we were involved on our own shores.
We were. See Ralph Baric.
Yup. And Fort Detrick,,,, but I’m a conspiracy whacko.
It's all here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/
I hope these investigations don’t stop at Fauci. Many other medical doctors and health professionals perpetuated or added to the bad information during the pandemic. They need to be held accountable as well, especially those in positions of public trust, like the CDC people.
I'd like to know why Deborah Birx is sliding under the radar.
I'm aware of at least one case where one of Fauci's aides was arrested earlier this year for attempting to conceal communications and evidence related to COVID's origins in response to FIOA requests. Via Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/28/fauci-aide-covid-research-indictment-00895447.
Otherwise, agree. Fauci appears to be the ringleader with pressuring staff and scientists to follow his narrative and try concealing his screwups. Likely others who willingly followed him who looked to benefit from the gain of function research done in China that led to COVID.
I know someone who worked at the CDC when everything was blowing up. (She is a doctor, but was politically a flunky - they are in every organization!) There were a number of arguments going on at rhe staff level about origin, treatment, etc. She was promoting Vitamin D but got nowhere; 'Management' had a story and they were sticking with it. She saw the writing on the wall and decided it was a good time to retire from the agency.
Pretty sure there were several studies in 2020 showing vitamin D deficient patients were at higher risk (as much as 10-fold) for Covid infection. Most highly pigmented populations away from the Equator are vitamin D deficient. Blacks had double the Covid death rate of whites when age and other factors were taken into account.
I could never understand why the US covid response consisted of the mRNA vaccine MONOTHERAPY. If truly dangerous, other therapies (mostly safe at therapeutic concentrations like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) and vitamins and supplements promoted for general health particularly in the Elderly would have been inexpensive add-ons even if not really needed by all).
My veterinarian friends were stunned by the WHO decreeing that glucocorticoids were verboten in serious respiratory viral infections. In animals acute glucocorticoids are given along with antibiotics (for secondary bacterial infections/ pneumonias) as Standard of Care for serious respiratory viral infections. The WHO only backed off on such steroid use in August 2020 by which time most physicians had discovered their efficacy.
It was definitely strange behavior. Why not try a mostly harmless intervention alongside the standard care? All they really accomplished was to make many (if not most) of us lose trust and faith in the medical establishment.
“It's not just because Fauci was wrong—scientists are wrong all the time. It's not because public health coerced us into debatable actions—that happens often, from drunk-driving laws to helmet mandates, and people generally accept those because they emerge from decades of societal consensus.
Fauci is unique because he represents a rare convergence of factors:
· A. He alone, or with a very small group, made decisions.
· B. Those decisions coerced hundreds of millions of people.
· C. He was largely incorrect about those actions.
· D. He was unable to admit uncertainty or doubt.
· E. He failed to gather better evidence, even though as NIAID director he controlled a massive budget that could have funded randomized trials.
· F. He demonized scientists who disagreed.
· G. His own diary reveals he often believed the opposite of what he said publicly.
That constellation of factors makes people viscerally angry—and understandably so. Consider a woman who said she'll never forgive him because he forced her toddler to wear a "dirty, bacteria-riddled mask" for eight hours a day. The media might say, "He didn't have the power to do that." But his diary shows he was privately encouraging politicians to close schools and mandate masks for children as young as two—a policy the EU never adopted and that defies common sense. He used his political capital to push those policies and demonized anyone who disagreed, like Jay Bhattacharya, whom he called a "fringe epidemiologist."
He overstepped his role.”
Vinay Prasad, MD MPH; Physician & Professor
Hematologist/ Oncologist
Professor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Medicine
All of the above plus Fauci is a CIA-adjacent head of US bioweapons. At minimum that’s a huge conflict of interest and a giant red flag.
Plus, how the EFF does Bill Gates manage to sit in on the highest levels of Pandemic meetings??
People are always saying, “But RFK Jr. isn’t a doctor!” I am not sure why that never comes up with Gates.
-H. He's a lying little rat fuck.
This is a great summary and irrefutable (though the Fauci lovers of the world will surely try). I would only add another example: "Consider the person who was forced to let a loved one die alone". This to me was one of the most heartbreaking elements of what happened.
We have this same problem throughout the entire administrative state. Just so happens that one aspect of this apparatus was exposed for the waste abuse and incompetence that is so typical of of every organ of the vast managerial state.
Right on in a kind way! Thank you!
He expands on those points. https://www.drvinayprasad.com/p/why-fauci-struck-a-nerve-and-5-more
The mystery is whether or not Dr. Frankenstein, oops, I mean Fauci's pardon was signed by autopen or by an incompetent Boob, and is it valid? That's the mystery.
His full legal name is Dr. Little Rat Fuck.
They need to get birx.
Why not get Birx to rat out Fauci for immunity? I don’t care if anyone goes to jail because I know it’ll never happen anyhow. I just want the TRUTH to be out so all these people who believe the media and still don’t get it to be slapped in the face with it.
Exactly! The truth is what we want. But I'm not sure the Media and the Left would ever accept the Truth. To admit their mistakes in accepting all of that poisonous and destructive information from Fauci &Co. would show the world that they are full of nothing but hot air. They physically can't do that.
Agreed, but when I first read your comment "Why not get Birx to rat out Fauci for immunity?" I actually wasn't sure whether you meant immunity from prosecution or immunity from Covid. The brain works in strange ways (at least mine does).
And Baric and Daszak and Hotez. The whole NIIAD chain of command. And get everyone who signed the Lancet letter to roll.
Exposing Peter Hotez is one of my pet projects. He was lapping up the attention. Here's one of his "scientific" articles in a "scientific" publication. Take a look—it's short.
"Crafting Your Scientist Brand" https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000024 (2018)
“Always wear a lab coat when you’re on TV”
He is a maniac. Even though he wears a white coat, he still manages to look disheveled and crazy.
Eew.
Everyone needs to watch this interview to understand what a true sham these hearings are. https://youtu.be/b0uicem9ryg?si=pnZKypHv5llmcD3d
My hunch is that covid was manufactured in multiple Labs all over the world, and released intentionally on the public.
Remember the early 2020 video clips out of China of people there dropping dead in the streets from the virus? How come that didn’t replicate itself anywhere else in the world?
DING DING DING
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/the-covid-years-werent-terrible-for
Yet covid caused nothing like this anywhere in the world. The videos were completely fake, and a huge psyops campaign like that doesn’t happen on accident. The Chinese government faked the videos that kicked off the panic around the world. China falsely claimed that lockdowns stopped the virus cold, setting the way for bought governments around the world to mimic China’s response. China then rode the ensuing wave of chaos to the precipice of becoming the world’s largest superpower. And now they’re performing a follow-up act with lockdowns in Shanghai, no doubt hoping we will jump off that cliff again.
As far as I know, no government official has spoken about these faked videos and what they mean. Perhaps the Chinese have a incriminating paper trails leading to our ‘public servants’ like they do with Tony Fauci. I’m 100% positive the Chinese bribery trail runs in our government much, much further than the Biden family. It’s time that important people start asking important questions — is ANYBODY going to hold China accountable for their actions?
It's absolutely surprising that we haven't found out more about those fake videos. At the very least, the miracle of corpses chatting and smoking cigarettes should have triggered either religious or scientific wonderment.
My favorite is the guy who dies of covid while standing up, but then reanimates as a zombie and breaks his fall just before he hits the ground.
Did YouTube take down the China ‘instantly drop dead’ videos? I went to your 2022 linked post and looks like you reference a video that is no longer there 🧐
Link still works on my end.
https://rumble.com/embed/v1v2qny/?pub=ztma8
Thanks for reposting, I can view it now.
Interesting this video is from TOMONEWS, as this was formerly owned by Jimmy Lai and Cheung Kim-Hung (Next Digital) and both are now imprisoned by the CCP (and serving 6 and 20 year prison terms) for violating China’s ‘National Security Law’.
On post Elon Musk acquiring X I saw countless videos of people dying suddenly whether they were standing at a podium speaking to a group, or athletes in the prime of their life in excellent condition on sporting fields there were countless videos of this happening all over the United states.
Were the videos of sudden deaths in USA, before or after the vaccine was released? The videos from China of this were before any vaccine.
The first ‘vaccine’ became available mid Dec 2020, then rolled out over Y2021. Musk purchased Twitter in late Oct, 2022.
True.
I suspect it was something put out to cause hysteria -- which worked.
This was caused by the vaccines however. The people who who died and had Covid, the cause of death was the treatment they received.
I think it was pretty clearly demonstrated those videos were staged. I've seen several where between filming, corpses were chatting and smoking cigarettes.
In one of the shots you can see a camera crew reflected in the store window.
Sure is lucky an entire camera crew was there to film!
Not to mention the ominous music played in video background. What a racket of propaganda
I figured it was a psyop.
Your hunch is correct. It’s the product of multiple US labs but primarily RMNL and UNC Chapel. Wuhan was merely the final assembly area.
"I’m also going to do a livestream with Dr. Matt Bivens tomorrow summarizing the evidence for and against a lab leak, as the ongoing mystery as to Covid’s origins remains the most important story."
Surely there isn't a mystery to the origins at this point...
There never was
I’m not sure why there isn’t more curiosity about the events in 2014 when the Obama administration placed a moratorium on GOF research because of the extreme danger it posed. Fauci was involved in shipping GOF research to Wuhan, funding it and laundering this funding through sites hard to track, a subcontractor ECO Health Alliance headed by an equally duplicitous liar named Peter Daszak. If Fauci was a prime mover and funder of this research the public should clearly understand this.
Because of multiple “loopholes” in the moratorium, GOF research never stopped in the US; it went underground and overseas; IC, Obama, et al were aware of this. Fauci was the money-mover; Dazak was facilitator in moving money, and Ralph Baric UNC is at the top of the list of culprits who continued the work which led to SARS-COV2. Baric, world-renowned virologist, shared his discovery of how to manipulate(engineer) a virus without leaving the regular fingerprints of a CRISPR modification with Bat Woman Shi at the CCP-affiliated Wuhan Lab. Because, well, science…
Disclaimer: I voted for Obama twice.
I may be just a micro-animal, but now I'm fully convinced that Obama was totally aware of what he was doing. The moratorium was great PR.
Rose thanks for expanding on my comments. I’m still at a loss on how Baric UNC has escaped scrutiny. Yes I know he’s a CIA/DOD “employee” so he was protected but he’s as complicit as Fauci, Dazak and this is the Trump DOJ.
The origin isn't a mystery. It was a science experiment that leaked into a public space. The mystery is why Dr. Fauci lied about his department's involvement with something President Obama stopped.
Precisely! Public doesn’t understand this. That’s why the auto pen pardon goes back to 2014. This little megalomaniac thought he knew better than US virologists (he’s not a virologist) that recommended stop GOF research too dangerous.
It’s all about $$$ and power.
I don't think Obama stopped it. I think he made it *look* like he stopped it, so he got the benefit of both the PR and the continuation of bioweapons research.
A former Obama admirer, I've become pretty disillusioned.
Obama was protected by all of the media. He was no different than any other politician.
The mystery is why we’ve allowed this to happen!
No mystery at all!!
Suppose Fauci directed funds to gain of function research and suppose he shaped the narrative that it was not a Wuhan Lab leak: What or who was behind all that? DARPA backed away from funding the research many suspect resulted in COVID. Somehow it still got funded via NIH/NIAID…and in China of all places.
Not to put too fine a point but this but the intelligence community knows this pattern: nations performdual use science somewhat in the open, get pushback, shift it to some darker source of funding, offshore it. Ken Alibek defected from the former Soviet Union and wrote about similar moves in Biohazard (and a lab leak of something like Ebola). Fauci may be the fall guy for some deeper strategy that blew up big time.
Remember it was the notable virologist Jon Stewart on a Colbert Tonight Show that finally gave the liberals permission to suspect the lab leak.
The libs were so stuck on rejecting anything from conservative media that it took a fake journalist comedian to inform his a late night comedy host and his best friend, in a late night comedy skit for these losers to finally accept the truth.
They have breathed the poison of hate for so long, they can't overcome its affects on themselves.
What I found fascinating was Colbert’s reaction in that interview. He absolutely did not want Jon Stewart to say that and was trying mightily to stop him. For anyone who hasn’t watched that clip, it is definitely worth checking out. A moment of clarity on programming devoted to obscuring it.
I’ll watch it again, but I think Colbert was feigning his response. They were both acting in a planned “skit”.
That wasn’t my personal impression. I felt that Colbert didn’t want Stewart to go there but then when he couldn’t prevent it, he did sort of reluctantly go along.
Although copies of his phone during the COVID-19 era are going to yield some more evidence and insight, the real data to search for IMHO should be in the 2008 to 2019 timeframe. That's when the US Army at Fort Detrick had their funding cutoff thanks to efforts by Rand Paul's father, Ron Paul. This cutoff of DNA work and GOF came to light and began at around the same time a cloned sheep born in the UK called "Dolly" made the news around 2003.
If the DOJ pursues this an there is real prosecution and investigation of Fauci during COVID and before, IMHO there could be some serious collateral damage associated to a number of other scientists, universities (UNC, NC State, John Hopkins) and may even affect at least one Senatorial race (Cooper was governor and controlled UNC at that time) and one governorship (NC) due to the alleged deep involvement of politicians in this matter.
I remember going to a secluded upscale bar at a UNC leased building off West Barbee Chapel Road around late 2014 with another retired CIA Station Chief for a drink and surprised to see a number of Chinese PLA officers in uniform drinking at the bar with some senior university officials and some state officials.
The COVID story started way before the Wuhan mess. I'll surmise it started the day the funding for DNA virus modification, weaponization, Gain-of-Function was cut off from Fort Detrick for ethics and danger reasons and a go around the Congressional bans was hatched. There were many rumors (quickly put down by the press) of mysterious outbreaks around the UNC epidemiology labs on the Chapel Hill campus. Then somehow, the research was moved via contractors to mini bio-labs overseas. How we got to choose a CCP PLA controlled lab to perform our bio-weapons research as a sub-contractor is another story which may possibly be about the Central Bankster Cabal and treason by national and NC state officials.
Studying the AIDS epidemic and Fauci's role in the could also yield some more pre-2014 evidence. IMHO Nancy Pelosi was a player in that situation.
Disclosure: I was a neighbor of one of the key players in the UNC Epidemiology Department so even I personally saw many Chinese around the neighborhood.
Assuming for the moment that like a lot of other nations we are doing biowar research under the guise of dual use …why on earth are we doing COVID GOF with the CCP PLA? Why would the DoD (or NSA or CIA or whatever dark deep state forces) do something hand in hand with our supposed adversaries? I dont believe that Fauci is a saint and I don’t believe he is a demon. Maybe, he was driven by vanity but maybe that’s just an easy narrative feature to drive the news-feed algorithm, There may be a real case that he was a willing cog in government machinations around biowarfare. But why would a partnership with China make sense to all the parties? Or am i just not idiotically idiot enough to understand the idiocracy of their rationale?
You raise an VERY interesting question, Peter. Why would the US Military, the US intelligence community, the Congress, Fauci and NIH all overlook the selection of the Chinese PLA to continue this probably sensitive national security work started at UNC and John Hopkins and move it in China under CCP PLA control? Why would the Chinese brazenly show up (in uniform, no less) at UNC's Bolshevik Chapel Hill campus and with explicit state approval, get trained in our sensitive and maybe secret bio-weapon knowledge to continue the work under PLA control in China itself? This makes no sense, but that's what happened. Why did the financial bean counters at the CBO and Treasury not raise an alarm or even a question? Why no FBI investigation? Why no CIA detection? Where's the security? The protection of taxpayer intellectual property?
The "Occam's Razor"-like solution would be that all these parties are ideologically and/or financially advantaged to do so. This would mean that there is a huge number of people, from both sides: China and the Unites States Government, that are ideologically/financially or otherwise part of an anti-insurgency to bring down our Republic. That could explain why we gave our secret bio-weapon work to the Chinese PLA and no one even complained. Kinda like Clinton giving our rocketry secrets to the PLA in the 90's?
Remember that Trump was not supposed to win the election in 2016. According to MAGA conspiracy advocates, the narrative is that Hillary was to win and lead the United States into a war against China that the US would lose and the surrender terms would include revoking the US Constitution, thus freeing the elites to re-make America and reduce world population by killing millions of us. Could it be that this conspiracy was actually yet another fact? BTW, why did a good friend of Fauci, Bill Gates, get a "Q" Security clearance?
Lots of questions, Peter.
The whole convoluted Covid origin story could be made into a film or TV series. In fact, it reminds me of the interesting Canadian science-fiction television series "ReGenesis" that ran way back in 2004 to 2008. Peter Outerbridge played David Sandstrom, a molecular biologist and Chief Scientist at "NorBAC", a fictional organization with a lab based in the city of Toronto. NorBAC investigated problems like bioterrorism, mysterious diseases, or radical changes in the environment in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In one episode from 2006, David Sandstrom was on leave from NorBAC because of some problems at the lab, and was visiting China as a tourist when he was approached by Chinese officials who requested rather sternly that he help them diagnose and treat a mysterious infectious disease that was spreading out of control. He was not in a good position to refuse, so they brought him to a hospital where he examined patients, spoke to doctors and nurses, and finally said that this was over his head and he would need the assistance of his colleagues back at NorBAC, both for their expertise and the lab's advanced equipment. At this point his Chinese hosts raised frantic objections to any spread of information about the outbreak, which they were under tremendous pressure from high officials to cover up. They told Sandstrom that although he understood medicine and science, he did not understand China and its cult of secrecy. Sandstrom told them that if they really wanted his help they would have to compromise on this point. So they rigged up some kind of obscure and slow telephone modem-based communications link that let him communicate with and transfer data to NorBAC. Eventually they figured out what was causing the outbreak and how to end it.
Journalism like this is why I subscribe to Racket News. Keep up the good work, Matr!
YES! More journalism please, Matt. And please keep your laser focus on the systemic problem of MSM’s big fail in applying Jim Rutenberg’s post-Trump standards to a genuine public health emergency. Getting Fauci is not as important as exposing the science “reporting” at NYT, WaPo, CNN, Atlantic, etc.
“Getting” Fauci is an impossibility and most likely a total distraction.
Agreed.
There are significant discrepancies between Fauci’s diary entries and his public pronouncements regarding Covid-19. And, regarding our public health bureaucracy, supposedly they know best how to manage a so-called pandemic (where the survival was >99%). So, we should refuse to discuss any of this? Decline to investigate any of this?! Where are critical thinking skills?
Not to mention that there was already a pandemic plan that had been worked on for years, that went completely out the window once Covid showed up.