Abstract SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin and contains a PRRA polybasic cleavage motif which is considered critical for efficient infection and transmission in humans. We previously reported on a panel of attenuated SARS-CoV-2 variants with deletions at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. Here, we characterize pathogenicity, immunogenicity, and protective ability of a further cell-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variant, Ca-DelMut, in in vitro and in vivo systems. Ca-DelMut replicates more efficiently than wild type or parental virus in Vero E6 cells, but causes no apparent disease in hamsters, despite replicating in respiratory tissues. Unlike wild type virus, Ca-DelMut causes no obvious pathological changes and does not induce elevation of proinflammatory cytokines, but still triggers a strong neutralizing antibody and T cell response in hamsters and mice. Ca-DelMut immunized hamsters challenged with wild type SARS-CoV-2 are fully protected, with little sign of virus replication in the upper or lower respiratory tract, demonstrating sterilizing immunity.
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】 : 你又在造谣了，这个PRRA缺失株是实验室里敲除的，相反，美国很少有这么方面的研究 : ，是做贼心虚吗？ : Abstract : SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin and contains a PRRA polybasic cleavage : motif which is considered critical for efficient infection and transmission : in humans. We previously reported on a panel of attenuated SARS-CoV-2 : variants with deletions at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. Here, we : characterize pathogenicity, immunogenicity, and protective ability of a : further cell-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variant, Ca-DelMut, in in vitro and in vivo : systems. Ca-DelMut replicates more efficiently than wild type or parental : ...................
As every fan of the old Perry Mason show remembers, courtroom witnesses swear “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
There’s a reason for that particular choice of words. A pattern of selective omissions in an otherwise entirely truthful presentation can easily mislead us as much as any outright lie. And under certain circumstances, such omissions may be made necessary by powerful outside forces, so that even the most well-intentioned writer is faced with the difficult choice of either excluding certain elements from his analysis or having his important work denied a proper audience. I have sometimes faced this dilemma myself, but over the last few years, my lengthy American Pravda series has charted those gaping lacunae in our received accounts of modern world history, as I have sought to provide a historical counter-narrative of the last one hundred years.
Careful reexaminations of events from fifty or sixty years ago may be interesting, but those of the present day have far greater importance, and this is particularly true with regard to the Covid-19 epidemic that has engulfed the world since early 2020. Millions have already died, including many hundreds of thousands of Americans, with a newly released research study by the University of Washington’s authoritative Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) now suggesting that our domestic death-toll has already exceeded 900,000. This global outbreak first began in Wuhan, and the nature of its origin has become a major flashpoint in the new Cold War between China and America, with the trajectory of that conflict having only slightly changed as Trump Neocons have been replaced by Biden Neocons at the helm of our foreign policy.
Two months ago I published a lengthy article summarizing much of the information from the first year of the outbreak and focusing upon the heated debate regarding the origins of the virus. Aside from the reports of the teams of investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, several very long articles by independent journalists and researchers have constituted my main sources of information, including:
How It All Started: China’s Early Coronavirus Missteps The Wall Street Journal • March 6, 2020 • 4,400 words China Didn’t Warn Public of Likely Pandemic for 6 Key Days The Associated Press • April 14, 2020 • 2,400 Words China’s CDC, Built to Stop Pandemics Like Covid, Stumbled When It Mattered Most The Wall Street Journal • August 17, 2020 • 4,500 Words The China Syndrome Part I: Outbreak The China Syndrome Part II: Transmission and Response The China Syndrome Part III: Wet Markets and BioLabs The China Syndrome Part IV: Did China Fudge its Data? Philippe Lemoine • Quillette • August 24-September 6, 2020 &# 8226; 31,000 Words The Lab-Leak Hypothesis For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if …? Nicholson Baker • New York Magazine • January 4, 2021 • 12,000 Words This compendium of crucial research has now received a major addition, a 11,000 word analysis of the likely origins of Covid-19 by Nicholas Wade, a distinguished former science reporter and editor, who had spent more than four decades at the New York Times, Science, and Nature, and the author of several excellent books dealing with anthropology and evolutionary biology.
Origin of Covid — Following the Clues Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? Nicholas Wade • Medium • May 4, 2021 • 11,000 Words Suppressing Possible Artificial Origins as “a Conspiracy Theory” The central focus of both Baker and Wade is indicated by their closely- related titles, namely the origins of the virus and whether it was the product of a laboratory, presumably the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then later released in a tragic accident. Both these authors strongly lean toward that latter possibility, but take somewhat different approaches. While Baker, a prominent novelist and liberal public intellectual, must rely upon general arguments or merely reports the opinions of the experts that he interviewed, Wade deploys his strong scientific background to build a persuasive case for that same conclusion.
From nearly the beginning of the epidemic, the position taken by the mainstream media had been that Covid-19 was very likely natural in origin, and although President Trump and some of his political allies soon loudly claimed otherwise, the perceived scientific consensus remained unchanged.
But as Wade demonstrates, that supposed consensus was largely illusory, having been shaped by two early items that appeared in prestigious scientific publications. On February 19, 2020, the Lancet had published a statement signed by 27 virologists and other noted scientists that declared: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” and that “[scientists] overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” Then the following month Nature Medicine published an analysis by five virologists providing some theoretical arguments against any artificial origin, stating that: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
These published pieces became far more influential than was warranted. Wade notes that the former statement had actually been organized behind the scenes by Peter Daszak, an American closely associated with the Wuhan lab and therefore hardly a disinterested party, while the latter relied heavily upon very dubious scientific reasoning. But once these emphatic conclusions had appeared in influential periodicals, few microbiologists were willing to challenge this newly established orthodoxy, especially because doing so would have placed them in the same political camp as Trump, a much vilified figure in their community. Baker had earlier made similar criticism and I had fully endorsed his verdict in my own March article, but Wade’s analysis provides far greater depth.
Moreover, Wade also emphasizes the climate of fear that today governs much of our academic world, with future grant applications and even careers at risk if researchers depart from perceived orthodoxy on certain issues, perhaps including disputing the origins of Covid-19. He argues that although the Lancet and Nature Medicine letters were actually political statements rather than scientific findings, they were “amazingly effective” in suppressing dissent and led the overwhelming majority of journalists to accept them as reflecting a research consensus that actually did not exist.
Wade’s own personal experiences have surely informed this shrewd analysis of the underlying political dynamics. His most recent book A Troublesome Inheritance had appeared in 2014, and its subtitle “Genes, Race, and Human History” reflected the potentially explosive nature of his subject matter. Although I considered it an outstanding treatment of the controversial topic, Wade’s work soon attracted a lynch-mob of critics, who organized a denunciatory public statement that they persuaded 139 prominent genetic scientists to sign. All these individuals were soon humiliated once it was proven that not a single one of them had actually bothered examining the true contents of the book that they were so fiercely attacking.
In the case of Covid-19, Wade demonstrates that once the political barriers have been removed and we are allowed to consider the evidence objectively, our conclusions are transformed. The scientific case for the natural origins of the virus becomes pitifully weak, thereby automatically elevating the competing lab-leak hypothesis, which had previously been denounced and stigmatized as a so-called “conspiracy theory.”
For example, despite fifteen months of presumably intensive effort, the Chinese have failed to locate evidence of any wildlife population hosting a closely-related precursor virus, which had easily been found in the previous cases of emergent viral epidemics such as SARS and MERS. Indeed, the closest natural relative to Covid-19 only exists among bats in the caves of Yunnan, nearly 1,000 miles distant from the Wuhan outbreak.
We would also expect an animal virus that became dangerous to humans would require a lengthy series of intermediate mutational steps as it gradually evolved the ability to effectively infect our own species, just as had been the case with SARS and other previous diseases. But Covid-19 seems to have suddenly appeared in a maximally infectious form, perfectly pre-adapted to humans and apparently derived from a single original source.
Finally, an important structural element of the virus, the “furin cleavage site,” is entirely absent from all other members of its viral family, and crucially contributes to its dangerously infectious nature. A natural origin for that structure seems implausible, while the scientific literature is replete with such additions having been made in laboratory experiments, including those conducted by the Wuhan researchers. Moreover, the particular genetic sequence found in that Covid-19 element is extremely rare in other coronaviruses, strongly suggesting that it was added from a different source.
The Excluded Third Possibility Having now twice read Wade’s long article, I can say that I find nearly all of his scientific arguments quite compelling, and I have almost no points of significant disagreement. Yet my overall conclusions are entirely different from his.
The explanation of this seeming paradox comes near the very beginning of his article, when he accurately states:
As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped.
A paragraph later, the text contains his first major section heading, entitled “A Tale of Two Theories.”
Although Wade is absolutely correct in stating that “there are two main theories” about the origins of Covid-19, this duality has been enforced by political pressures quite similar to those that had earlier excluded discussion of the “lab-leak hypothesis,” but with the sanctions being far harsher and more extreme.
Wade’s analysis masterfully demonstrates that once we are actually willing to explore the much-vilified “conspiracy theory” of an accidental lab-leak, we discover that it is far more plausible than the case of a natural origin, partly because the latter appears so unlikely. And if these were the only two possible theories, all arguments against the one would necessarily support the other. But this framework is upended once we recognize that there is a third logical possibility, far more vilified and excluded than that of the “lab-leak hypothesis” but also far more plausible and supported by much stronger evidence.
In my March discussion of Baker’s long article, I summarized how he first became involved in the topic, and described the crucial omission I had noticed in his 12,000 word opus:
Baker may not have been a professional virologist or expert in biowarfare, but as the Covid-19 outbreak began he had just completed Baseless, a lengthy non-fictional account of American national security secrets, which appeared to glowing reviews in July 2020. One of his major elements was an account of America’s massive 1950s bioweapons research program, which had been accorded resources and importance matching that of our nuclear weapons efforts. Based upon his years of research, the author was not a complete neophyte on biological warfare issues and was also fully aware of our own long history of laboratory accidents, which had claimed a number of lives. So he was naturally alert to the possibility that a similar accident had occurred in Wuhan, which contained China’s most secure facility of that same type.
The greatest weakness of Baker’s comprehensive analysis is not the controversial theory that he carefully examines, but the even more controversial possibility that he seems to totally ignore. At one point, he notes the remarkable characteristics of the pathogen, whose collection of features allowed it to so effectively target humans and which had first appeared in a city having one of the very few world laboratories engaged in exactly that type of viral research, closing his paragraph with the sentence “What are the odds?” But other, even more implausible coincidences were entirely excluded from his discussion, and the same had also been true for Lemoine.
Both these authors seem to assume that there exist only two possible scenarios: a natural virus that suddenly appeared in Wuhan during late 2019 or an accidental lab-leak of an enhanced disease agent in that same city. But there is an obvious third case as well, clearly suggested by Baker’s focus on America’s own very active biowarfare program, which he extensively discussed both in his long article and in his highly-regarded book. We must surely consider the possibility that the Covid-19 outbreak was not at all accidental, but instead constituted a deliberate attack against China, occurring as it did near the absolute height of the international tension with America, and therefore suggesting that elements of our own national security apparatus were the most obvious suspects. Given the realities of the publishing industry, any serious exploration of such a scenario would probably have precluded the appearance of the important Baker or Lemoine articles in any respectable publication, perhaps helping to explain such silence. But as I have argued in my long American Pravda series, many historical accounts that were blacklisted for exactly those sorts of reasons appear quite likely to be true.
Exactly the same glaring omission is found in Wade’s 11,000 word article. Taken together, Lemoine, Baker, and Wade have produced a large collection of high-quality articles on the origins of the global Covid-19 epidemic, but nowhere among their 54,000 words is there even a hint that the virus might possibly have had its origins in America’s well-documented and lavishly funded biowarfare program. For several years, our newspapers have proclaimed that we are now locked into a new Cold War against China, with some risk that it might turn hot. But the obvious possible implications of the sudden, potentially-devastating outbreak of a dangerous viral epidemic in our leading international adversary remains unmentionable, too explosive even to dismissed or ridiculed, let alone carefully considered.
As I noted towards the end of my long March article:
I can easily understand why all these simple facts and their obvious implications regarding the likely origins of the worldwide epidemic might be considered extremely uncomfortable, perhaps too uncomfortable to be discussed in our media outlets, and therefore have been so widely ignored. Most of these crucial points were already presented in my original April 2020 article on the subject, which quickly began to attract enormous traffic and interest in social media. Yet just days after it ran, our entire website was suddenly banned from Facebook and all our web pages were deranked by Google, perhaps underscoring the very dangerous nature of this material, and the reasons why so few others have been willing to raise the same points.
The Strong Evidence for an American Biowarfare Attack I find almost nothing to dispute in the comprehensive analyses provided by Lemoine, Baker, and Wade, but I do think my own work represents a crucial supplement to their research, given that I have primarily focused on that third possibility, a possibility that they were necessarily forced to avoid considering. Readers may judge for themselves, but I believe that my articles have demonstrated that the evidence supporting that excluded hypothesis is considerably stronger than that favoring either of those other two possibilities, whether the mainstream narrative of a natural virus or the much-vilified “conspiracy theory” of a lab-leak in Wuhan.
American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback? Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 21, 2020 • 7,400 Words American Pravda: Covid-19, Its Impact and Origins After One Year Ron Unz • The Unz Review • March 15, 2021 • 8,700 Words For convenience, I am excerpting substantial portions of my original April 2020 and my most recent March 2021 articles:
Although the coronavirus is only moderately lethal, apparently having a fatality rate of 1% or less, it is extremely contagious, including during an extended pre-symptomatic period and also among asymptomatic carriers. Thus, portions of the US and Europe are now suffering heavy casualties, while the policies adopted to control the spread have devastated their national economies. The virus is unlikely to kill more than a small sliver of our population, but we have seen to our dismay how a major outbreak can so easily wreck our entire economic life.
During January, the journalists reporting on China’s mushrooming health crisis regularly emphasized that the mysterious new viral outbreak had occurred at the worst possible place and time, appearing in the major transport hub of Wuhan just prior to the Lunar New Year holiday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese would normally travel to their distant family homes for the celebration, thereby potentially spreading the disease to all parts of the country and producing a permanent, uncontrollable epidemic. The Chinese government avoided that grim fate by the unprecedented decision to shut down its entire national economy and confine 700 million Chinese to their own homes for many weeks. But the outcome seems to have been a very near thing, and if Wuhan had remained open for just a few days longer, China might easily have suffered long-term economic and social devastation.
The timing of an accidental laboratory release would obviously be entirely random. Yet the outbreak seems to have begun during the precise period of time most likely to damage China, the worst possible ten-day or perhaps thirty-day window. As I noted in January, I saw no solid evidence that the coronavirus was a bioweapon, but if it were, the timing of the release seemed very unlikely to have been accidental.
Consider also the preceding waves of other unfortunate viral epidemics that had recently ravaged China:
[D]uring the previous two years, the Chinese economy had already suffered serious blows from other mysterious new diseases, although these had targeted farm animals rather than people. During 2018 a new Avian Flu virus had swept the country, eliminating large portions of China’s poultry industry, and during 2019 the Swine Flu viral epidemic had devastated China ’s pig farms, destroying 40% of the nation’s primary domestic source of meat, with widespread claims that the latter disease was being spread by mysterious small drones. My morning newspapers had hardly ignored these important business stories, noting that the sudden collapse of much of China’s domestic food production might prove a huge boon to American farm exports at the height of our trade conflict, but I had never considered the obvious implications. So for three years in a row, China had been severely impacted by strange new viral diseases, though only the most recent had been deadly to humans. This evidence was merely circumstantial, but the pattern seemed highly suspicious.
Another even more remarkable coincidence has received far greater distribution, becoming a staple of anti-American “conspiracy theories” and even resulting in a diplomatic incident involving the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
According to the widely accepted current chronology, the Covid-19 epidemic began in Wuhan during late October or early November of 2019. But the World Military Games were also held in Wuhan during that same period, ending in late October, with 300 American military servicemen attending. As I’ve repeatedly emphasized in my articles and comments for more than a year, how would Americans react if 300 Chinese military officers had paid an extended visit to Chicago, and soon afterward a mysterious and deadly epidemic had suddenly erupted in that city?
It surely would have been very easy for our intelligence services to have slipped a couple of their operatives into that large American military contingent, and the presence of many thousands of foreign military personnel, traveling around the large city and doing sightseeing, would have been ideally suited to providing cover for the quiet release of a highly- infectious viral bioweapon. None of this constitutes proof, but the coincidental timing is quite remarkable.
Biological warfare is a highly technical subject, and those possessing such expertise are unlikely to candidly report their classified research activities in the pages of our major newspapers, perhaps even less so after Prof. Lieber was dragged off to prison in chains. My own knowledge is nil. But in mid-March I came across several extremely long and detailed comments on the coronavirus outbreak that had been posted on a small website by an individual calling himself “OldMicrobiologist” and who claimed to be a retired forty-year veteran of American biodefense. The style and details of his material struck me as quite credible, and after a little further investigation I concluded that there was a high likelihood his background was exactly as he had described. I made arrangements to republish his comments in the form of a 3,400 word article, which soon attracted a great deal of traffic and 80,000 words of further comments.
Although the writer emphasized the lack of any hard evidence, he said that his experience led him to strongly suspect that the coronavirus outbreak was indeed an American biowarfare attack against China, probably carried out by agents brought into that country under cover of the Military Games held at Wuhan in late October, the sort of sabotage operation our intelligence agencies had sometimes undertaken elsewhere. One important point he made was that high lethality was often counter-productive in a bioweapon since debilitating or hospitalizing large numbers of individuals may impose far greater economic costs on a country than a biological agent which simply inflicts an equal number of deaths. In his words “a high communicability, low lethality disease is perfect for ruining an economy,” suggesting that the apparent characteristics of the coronavirus were close to optimal in this regard. Those so interested should read his analysis and assess for themselves his credibility and persuasiveness.
Some of this same speculation eventually reached Chinese social media, and led to articles in Chinese government publications, which immediately provoked a very hostile response by Trump Administration officials.
This latter sequence of events is carefully recounted in a massive 17,000 word, 54 page report released a few weeks ago by DFRLab, a social media- oriented research unit within the establishmentarian Atlantic Council, with the work being based upon nine months of research and preparation by a dozen staffers, together with the Associated Press investigations team. The study seemed aimed at tracking the appearance and Internet dissemination of a wide range of supposedly false or unsubstantiated “conspiracy theories” regarding the Covid-19 outbreak, and AP journalists soon publicized the results, denouncing “the superspreaders” of such allegedly spurious and potentially dangerous beliefs.
Weaponized: How Rumors About Covid-19’s Origins Led to a Narrative Arms Race DFRLab/The Atlantic Council • February 2021 • 17,000 Words But while this project did produce a very useful compendium of the chronology and source references of the various unorthodox narratives surrounding the disease, many of which were certainly erroneous or implausible, few effective rebuttal arguments were provided, notably regarding the extremely suspicious timing of the American military presence in Wuhan. Blogger Steve Sailer and others have often ridiculed this “point-and-sputter” school of refutation, in which non-mainstream theories need only be described in order to be considered conclusively disproved.
Although the Atlantic Council/Associated Press team certainly included numerous skilled social media researchers, journalists, and editors, there is no indication that any of these individuals possessed serious national security credentials, let alone specialized expertise in the arcane topic of biowarfare. This may help to explain why the weighty report which drew upon such enormous resources was almost entirely descriptive and made so little effort to analyze or evaluate the plausibility of the various conflicting “conspiracy narratives” that it treated at great length.
One further oddity of the very comprehensive DFRLab/Atlantic Council report was its own rather curious omissions. Given that its entire focus was on the full range of absurd “conspiracy theories,” the authors naturally explored speculation regarding an American biowarfare attack, and attributed this theory partly to Kevin Barrett, whom the report characterized as “a US Holocaust denier who has also claimed that the September 11 attacks were an ‘inside job’ by the George W. Bush Administration.”
The resulting news story by its Associated Press partners prominently featured Barrett as one of the America’s leading “super-spreaders” of Covid-19 conspiracy-nonsense. Yet Barrett’s only real role had been to quote and endorse my own very substantial writings in that area, and although he unsuccessfully urged the AP journalists to contact me directly, my name was entirely absent from either the news articles or the lengthy underlying research report. Since my own writings had constituted the longest and most comprehensive presentation of the American Biowarfare Hypothesis, such an omission appears curious. I suspect that the editors concluded that any attack on me would bring my articles to much wider attention, and therefore ruled it out as being obviously counter-productive.
I find it highly unlikely that the DFRLab staffers were unaware of my existence. Their comprehensive report appeared in February 2021, and since it was based upon nine months of investigation, the project would have begun in May 2020. But on April 21, 2020, I had published my long original article making the case for an American biowarfare attack, and its rapidly growing popularity on Facebook only came to an end after the social media giant quickly banned our entire website, a sudden action that had been based upon a very doubtful report produced by that very same DFRLab team, with which Facebook has long partnered. Indeed this remarkable coincidence of timing raises the interesting possibility that the appearance of my article and its considerable popularity had actually prompted DFRLab to undertake its nine month investigation into the general subject of Covid-19 “ conspiracy theories.” Furthermore:
The extensive material collected by the Atlantic Council researchers lent further support to an important point I had made last April about the curious nature of the early Covid-19 coverage:
One intriguing aspect of the situation was that almost from the first moment that reports of the strange new epidemic in China reached the international media, a large and orchestrated campaign had been launched on numerous websites and Social Media platforms to identify the cause as a Chinese bioweapon carelessly released in its own country. Meanwhile, the far more plausible hypothesis that China was the victim rather than the perpetrator had received virtually no organized support anywhere, and only began to take shape as I gradually located and republished relevant material, usually drawn from very obscure quarters and often anonymously authored. So it seemed that only the side hostile to China was waging an active information war. The outbreak of the disease and the nearly simultaneous launch of such a major propaganda campaign may not necessarily prove that an actual biowarfare attack had occurred, but I do think it tends to support such a theory.
During January, American media outlets, including those under the authority of Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, began focusing attention on the Wuhan lab as the potential source of the viral outbreak, while journalists disputing this narrative and attempting to raise other possibilities had serious difficulties even getting their articles published on alternative websites:
Scientific investigation of the coronavirus had already pointed to its origins in a bat virus, leading to widespread media speculation that bats sold as food in the Wuhan open markets had been the original disease vector. Meanwhile, the orchestrated waves of anti-China accusations had emphasized Chinese laboratory research on that same viral source. But we soon published a lengthy article by investigative journalist Whitney Webb providing copious evidence of America’s own enormous biowarfare research efforts, which had similarly focused for years on bat viruses. Webb was then associated with MintPress News, but that publication had strangely declined to publish her important piece, perhaps skittish about the grave suspicions it directed towards the US government on so momentous an issue. So without the benefit of our platform, her major contribution to the public debate might have attracted relatively little readership.
All the evidence thus far presented has merely been circumstantial, strongly establishing that elements of the American national security establishment had the means, motive, and opportunity to stage a biowarfare attack in Wuhan. However, in April 2020 certain additional facts appeared that some have characterized as “smoking gun” proof of that disturbing scenario:
But with the horrific consequences of our own later governmental inaction being obvious, elements within our intelligence agencies have sought to demonstrate that they were not the ones asleep at the switch. Earlier this month, an ABC News story cited four separate government sources to reveal that as far back as late November, a special medical intelligence unit within our Defense Intelligence Agency had produced a report warning that an out-of-control disease epidemic was occurring in the Wuhan area of China, and widely distributed that document throughout the top ranks of our government, warning that steps should be taken to protect US forces based in Asia. After the story aired, a Pentagon spokesman officially denied the existence of that November report, while various other top level government and intelligence officials refused to comment. But a few days later, Israeli television mentioned that in November American intelligence had indeed shared such a report on the Wuhan disease outbreak with its NATO and Israeli allies, thus seeming to independently confirm the complete accuracy of the original ABC News story and its several government sources.
It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of the deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese government itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of precognition, I think this may have happened for the same reason that arsonists have the earliest knowledge of future fires.
According to these multiply-sourced mainstream media accounts, by “the second week of November” our Defense Intelligence Agency was already preparing a secret report warning of a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak taking place in Wuhan. Yet at that point, probably no more than a couple of dozen individuals had been infected in that city of 11 million, with few of those yet having any serious symptoms. The implications are rather obvious. Furthermore:
As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China’s own borders, another development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior. Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hatred Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.
Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?
Summarizing the Evidence for a Biowarfare Attack and Outlining the Hypothetical Scenario Most of the material quoted above had originally appeared in my April 2020 article and was afterwards extended and further discussed in my later pieces, the most recent appearing in March 2021. Taken together, they have been read at least a couple of hundred thousand times, and have provoked more than 500,000 words of comments. Yet the undeniable facts I presented have remained almost entirely excluded from the ongoing public debate, presumably for the practical political reasons I have suggested, so it is difficult to know exactly who has become aware of them.
Donald Trump’s departure from the White House seems to have finally encouraged our timorous mainstream media organs to admit that their longstanding presumption of the entirely natural origin of Covid-19 might not be correct, and they have begun giving some consideration to the long- derided competing theory of a man-made virus released in an accidental lab- leak. But under these changed circumstances, I consider it entirely unreasonable if they continue ignoring that very real third possibility of an American biowarfare attack. The key pieces of evidence I have provided that favor this hypothesis over the competing lab-leak scenario may easily be summarized:
(1) For three years, China had been locked in growing conflict with America over trade and geopolitics, and for three years in a row, China had been hit very hard by mysterious viruses. An Avian Flu virus severely damaged its poultry industry in 2018 and the following year a Swine Flu virus destroyed over 40% of its pig herds, China’s primary meat source. The third year, Covid-19 appeared. Certainly a suspicious pattern if the last were just a random lab-leak.
(2) The Covid-19 outbreak appeared at absolutely the worst time and place for China, the major transit hub of Wuhan, timed almost perfectly to reach high local levels of infection just as the travelers for the Lunar New Year holiday spread the disease to all other parts of the country, thereby producing an unstoppable epidemic. The timing of an accidental lab-leak would obviously be random.
(3) 300 American military servicemen had just visited Wuhan as part of the World Military Games, providing a perfect opportunity for releasing a viral bioweapon. Consider what Americans would think if 300 Chinese military officers had visited Chicago, and immediately afterwards a mysterious, deadly viral disease suddenly broke out in that city. It would be a strange coincidence if that the American military visit and an entirely unrelated accidental lab-leak had occurred at exactly the same time.
(4) The characteristics of Covid-19, including high communicability and low lethality, are absolutely ideal in an anti-economy bioweapon. It seems odd that a random lab-leak would release a virus so perfectly designed to severely damage the Chinese economy.
(5) From almost the very moment that the outbreak began, anti-China bloggers in America and the US-funded Radio Free Asia network had launched a powerful international propaganda offensive against China, claiming that the outbreak in Wuhan was due to the leak of an illegal bioweapon from the Wuhan lab. This may have merely been an exceptionally prompt but opportunistic response of our propaganda organs, but they seemed remarkably quick to take full advantage of an entirely unexpected and mysterious development, which they immediately identified as being due to a lab-leak.
(6) By “the second week of November” our Defense Intelligence Agency had already begun preparing a secret report warning of a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak in Wuhan although according to the standard timeline at that point probably only a couple of dozen people had started experiencing any symptoms of illness in a city of 11 million. How did they discover what was happening in Wuhan so much sooner than the Chinese government or anyone else?
(7) Almost immediately afterwards, the ruling political elites in Iran became severely infected, with many of them dying. Why did the accidental Wuhan lab-leak jump to the Iran’s political elites so quickly, before it had reached almost anywhere else in the world.
Given the conclusions suggested above, I also think it would be useful for me to provide my own summary of a plausible scenario for the Covid-19 outbreak. Although I had already presented this outline in a September 2020 article, I see no need for any revisions. Obviously, this reconstruction is quite speculative, but I think it best fits all the available evidence, while individual elements may be modified, dropped, or replaced without necessarily compromising the overall hypothesis.
(1) Rogue elements within our large national security apparatus probably affiliated with the Deep State Neocons decided to inflict severe damage upon the huge Chinese economy using biowarfare. The plan was to infect the key transport hub of Wuhan with Covid-19 so that the disease would invisibly spread throughout the entire country during the annual Lunar New Year travels, and they used the cover of the Wuhan International Military Games to slip a couple of operatives into the city to release the virus. My guess is that only a relatively small number of individuals were involved in this plot.
(2) The biological agent they released was designed primarily as an anti- economy rather than an anti-personnel weapon. Although Covid-19 has rather low fatality rates, it is extremely contagious, has a long pre-symptomatic infectious period, and can even spread by asymptomatic carriers, making it ideally suited for that purpose. Thus, once it established itself throughout most of China, it would be extremely difficult to eradicate and the resulting efforts to control it would inflict enormous damage upon China’s economy and society.
(3) As a secondary operation, they decided to target Iran’s political elites, possibly deploying a somewhat more deadly variant of the virus. Since political elites generally tend to be elderly, they would anyway suffer far greater fatalities.
(4) The deadly SARS and MERS outbreaks in East Asia and the Near East had never significantly spread back to America (or Europe), so the plotters wrongly assumed that the same would be the case with Covid-19. Anyway, since international organizations always ranked the US and Europe as having the best and most effective public health systems for combating any disease epidemic, they believed that any possible blowback damage would be very minor.
(5) Only a small number of individuals were directly involved in this plot, and soon after the disease was successfully released in Wuhan, they decided to further safeguard America’s own interests by alerting the appropriate units with the Defense Intelligence Agency, probably by fabricating some sort of supposed “intelligence leak.” Basically, they arranged for the DIA to hear that Wuhan was apparently suffering a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak, thereby leading the DIA to prepare and distribute a secret report warning our own forces and allies to take appropriate precautions.
(6) Unfortunately for these plans, the Chinese government reacted with astonishing determination and effectiveness, and soon stamped out the disease. Meanwhile, the lackadaisical and incompetent American government largely ignored the problem, only reacting after the massive outbreak in Northern Italy had gotten media attention. Since the CDC had botched production of a testing kit, we had no means of recognizing that the disease was already spreading in our country, and the result was massive damage to America’s economy and society. In effect, America suffered exactly the fate that had originally been intended for its Chinese rival.
Related Articles:
American Pravda: Covid-19, Its Impact and Origins After One Year American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback? 31,000 Words Missing from The Atlantic and The New York Times Sunday Magazine Half a Pulitzer Prize to the Wall Street Journal Bats, Gene Editing and Bioweapons: Recent Darpa Experiments Raise Concerns Amid Coronavirus Outbreak by Whitney Webb Was Coronavirus a Biowarfare Attack Against China? by OldMicrobiologist ← American Pravda: Covid-19, Its Impact a...
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】 : 你又在造谣了，这个PRRA缺失株是实验室里敲除的，相反，美国很少有这么方面的研究 : ，是做贼心虚吗？ : Abstract : SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin and contains a PRRA polybasic cleavage : motif which is considered critical for efficient infection and transmission : in humans. We previously reported on a panel of attenuated SARS-CoV-2 : variants with deletions at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. Here, we : characterize pathogenicity, immunogenicity, and protective ability of a : further cell-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variant, Ca-DelMut, in in vitro and in vivo : systems. Ca-DelMut replicates more efficiently than wild type or parental : ...................
去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
株。
广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。
疫苗株！解药！
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
说明这个病毒的确是中国制造的！否则无法解释为啥自去年4月份以来中国新发几千例
而无一死亡。
粉红们不自豪么？
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
你这相当于哈马斯管色咧要解药。
这不是牛痘与天花的标准关系复制吗。
这牛逼了，土工早全民自然免疫了吧。
现在基本真相大白，牛痘悄悄传，土工防疫部门假装不知道，
不过板上ADE族的出来也说两句吧，减毒疫苗是不是不会ADE.
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
删了PRRA的毒株确实毒性会大减，也不大会ADE了。因为ADE需要细胞融合功能，而少了弗林酶切位点后，细胞融合功能会大减。
【 在 RaoYing(老赵走好) 的大作中提到: 】
: 这不是牛痘与天花的标准关系复制吗。
: 这牛逼了，土工早全民自然免疫了吧。
: 现在基本真相大白，牛痘悄悄传，土工防疫部门假装不知道，
: 不过板上ADE族的出来也说两句吧，减毒疫苗是不是不会ADE.
怪不得美印日伤亡惨重
【 在 iminosugar (null) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
:
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。:
: 疫苗株！解药！
如果有可靠的减毒株，
合理的政策是反对口罩，提倡群免
谁这么干，
谁嫌疑最大
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
振奋人心！
那现在着急打疫苗的不是傻了？
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
我怀疑闫丽梦说的有可能不幸是真的，真的有效的疫苗在造毒者手里。删了PRRA是躲过了一个大坑，但是还有可能有别的大坑，新冠病毒里还有那么多蛋白，鬼知道那个被人改过了。
【 在 wangyangming(灭明功臣) 的大作中提到: 】
: 振奋人心！
: 那现在着急打疫苗的不是傻了？
我早就说过，初期五毒所泄露的毒性比较大，为了掩盖去海鲜市场释放毒性弱的，解释了为啥明知存在早期跟海鲜市场无关病例，武汉确诊还规定海鲜市场相关。李文亮感染的就是早期毒株，他那个科室全挂了。
我去年说过，英国的毒株是大阴放出来群免的疫苗株，那有一下变异那么多毒株。翻翻叔以前的帖子就知道了。不过他们水平不够，疫苗株变成毒株。这说明大家都在研究这个病毒，最后看谁的水平高
菌斑将军看不懂你的逻辑
某宝可能看得懂
【 在 ridgeren (Ridge) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我早就说过，初期五毒所泄露的毒性比较大，为了掩盖去海鲜市场释放毒性弱的，解释
: 了为啥明知存在早期跟海鲜市场无关病例，武汉确诊还规定海鲜市场相关。李文亮感染
: 的就是早期毒株，他那个科室全挂了。
那这个prra真的可能是哪个缺德鬼添加进去的？？？
【 在 atack (小军号) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我怀疑闫丽梦说的有可能不幸是真的，真的有效的疫苗在造毒者手里。删了PRRA是躲过
: 了一个大坑，但是还有可能有别的大坑，新冠病毒里还有那么多蛋白，鬼知道那个被人
: 改过了。
:
: 振奋人心！
:
: 那现在着急打疫苗的不是傻了？
:
PRRA 萨斯没有，反而更加致命，而且ADE更厉害
估计是外星人修改的，为了增加传染性，减少毒性
你又在造谣了，这个PRRA缺失株是实验室里敲除的，相反，美国很少有这么方面的研究，是做贼心虚吗？
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin and contains a PRRA polybasic cleavage
motif which is considered critical for efficient infection and transmission in humans. We previously reported on a panel of attenuated SARS-CoV-2
variants with deletions at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. Here, we characterize pathogenicity, immunogenicity, and protective ability of a
further cell-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variant, Ca-DelMut, in in vitro and in vivo systems. Ca-DelMut replicates more efficiently than wild type or parental
virus in Vero E6 cells, but causes no apparent disease in hamsters, despite replicating in respiratory tissues. Unlike wild type virus, Ca-DelMut causes no obvious pathological changes and does not induce elevation of
proinflammatory cytokines, but still triggers a strong neutralizing antibody and T cell response in hamsters and mice. Ca-DelMut immunized hamsters
challenged with wild type SARS-CoV-2 are fully protected, with little sign
of virus replication in the upper or lower respiratory tract, demonstrating sterilizing immunity.
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
靠，造谣不上税。你懂什么是因什么是果吗
美新版id 有不造谣的吗
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
人类技术比外星人差的远了，这个PRRA干嘛的，也不是你们认为的这么简单
萨斯测试以后，外星人改动地方多了，这个也不见得关键
外星人已经根据人类疫苗理论的巨大缺陷，写好今年剧本了，现在只要近观其变就行了
很多事情不是人力所能，必须承认技术的巨大差距
知道大致剧本，让自己不变成牺牲品，已经不错了
我是本版，第一个提出中国的抗疫成功是因为群免的吧？
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
真够不要脸的。。。
。。。。。
【 在 mynight01(一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我是本版，第一个提出中国的抗疫成功是因为群免的吧？
另外，我一直认为武汉封城，其实要封的是另外一种毒性很烈的毒株。
武汉好多灭门惨案，中央那帮人没一个敢去，都说明就不可能是现在普遍流行的病毒。【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我是本版，第一个提出中国的抗疫成功是因为群免的吧？
特么造谣不上税的。。。
群免还会封楼挖路
还会全国戴口罩？
真不要脸
这可是你天天批评的不顾人权。
好几个毒株谁都清楚
你美爹投放几种还不由着你美爹的性子
【 在 mynight01(一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 另外，我一直认为武汉封城，其实要封的是另外一种毒性很烈的毒株。
: 武汉好多灭门惨案，中央那帮人没一个敢去，都说明就不可能是现在普遍流行的病毒。
李克强没去吗？
越南光不造谣会死么？
【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 另外，我一直认为武汉封城，其实要封的是另外一种毒性很烈的毒株。
: 武汉好多灭门惨案，中央那帮人没一个敢去，都说明就不可能是现在普遍流行的病毒。
这尼玛是美剧，”末日孤舰“第一季的翻版吧？
那里面最后就是疫苗造成了通过呼吸传播的。
话说mRNA疫苗产生的蛋白有没有这个PRRA？？哪位将军知道？
【 在 keyrock (不高兴) 的大作中提到: 】
: 人类技术比外星人差的远了，这个PRRA干嘛的，也不是你们认为的这么简单
: 萨斯测试以后，外星人改动地方多了，这个也不见得关键
: 外星人已经根据人类疫苗理论的巨大缺陷，写好今年剧本了，现在只要近观其变就行了
: 很多事情不是人力所能，必须承认技术的巨大差距
: 知道大致剧本，让自己不变成牺牲品，已经不错了
中南坑尼玛逼，不造谣，不PS会死吗？
【 在 menyaihan (myh) 的大作中提到: 】
+1. 从文章摘要上看，显然减毒株才是研究所为了研究改造的。
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】
: 你又在造谣了，这个PRRA缺失株是实验室里敲除的，相反，美国很少有这么方面的研究
: ，是做贼心虚吗？
: Abstract
: SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin and contains a PRRA polybasic cleavage
: motif which is considered critical for efficient infection and
transmission
: in humans. We previously reported on a panel of attenuated SARS-CoV-2
: variants with deletions at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. Here, we
: characterize pathogenicity, immunogenicity, and protective ability of a
: further cell-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variant, Ca-DelMut, in in vitro and in
vivo
: systems. Ca-DelMut replicates more efficiently than wild type or parental : ...................
确实是最近为了研究改造的。。但是2020年2月份的时候，本版也确实有人说过，去掉
PRRA就是解药。
【 在 jhe123 (jhe) 的大作中提到: 】
: +1. 从文章摘要上看，显然减毒株才是研究所为了研究改造的。
: transmission
: we
: vivo
【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 另外，我一直认为武汉封城，其实要封的是另外一种毒性很烈的毒株。
: 武汉好多灭门惨案，中央那帮人没一个敢去，都说明就不可能是现在普遍流行的病毒。
As every fan of the old Perry Mason show remembers, courtroom witnesses
swear “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
There’s a reason for that particular choice of words. A pattern of
selective omissions in an otherwise entirely truthful presentation can
easily mislead us as much as any outright lie. And under certain
circumstances, such omissions may be made necessary by powerful outside
forces, so that even the most well-intentioned writer is faced with the
difficult choice of either excluding certain elements from his analysis or
having his important work denied a proper audience. I have sometimes faced
this dilemma myself, but over the last few years, my lengthy American Pravda series has charted those gaping lacunae in our received accounts of modern world history, as I have sought to provide a historical counter-narrative of the last one hundred years.
Careful reexaminations of events from fifty or sixty years ago may be
interesting, but those of the present day have far greater importance, and
this is particularly true with regard to the Covid-19 epidemic that has
engulfed the world since early 2020. Millions have already died, including
many hundreds of thousands of Americans, with a newly released research
study by the University of Washington’s authoritative Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) now suggesting that our domestic death-toll
has already exceeded 900,000. This global outbreak first began in Wuhan, and the nature of its origin has become a major flashpoint in the new Cold War between China and America, with the trajectory of that conflict having only slightly changed as Trump Neocons have been replaced by Biden Neocons at the helm of our foreign policy.
Two months ago I published a lengthy article summarizing much of the
information from the first year of the outbreak and focusing upon the heated debate regarding the origins of the virus. Aside from the reports of the
teams of investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, and the Associated Press, several very long articles by independent journalists and researchers have constituted my main sources of information, including:
How It All Started: China’s Early Coronavirus Missteps
The Wall Street Journal • March 6, 2020 • 4,400 words
China Didn’t Warn Public of Likely Pandemic for 6 Key Days
The Associated Press • April 14, 2020 • 2,400 Words
China’s CDC, Built to Stop Pandemics Like Covid, Stumbled When It Mattered Most
The Wall Street Journal • August 17, 2020 • 4,500 Words
The China Syndrome Part I: Outbreak
The China Syndrome Part II: Transmission and Response
The China Syndrome Part III: Wet Markets and BioLabs
The China Syndrome Part IV: Did China Fudge its Data?
Philippe Lemoine • Quillette • August 24-September 6, 2020 &#
8226; 31,000 Words
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis
For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if …?
Nicholson Baker • New York Magazine • January 4, 2021 • 12,000 Words
This compendium of crucial research has now received a major addition, a 11,000 word analysis of the likely origins of Covid-19 by Nicholas Wade, a
distinguished former science reporter and editor, who had spent more than
four decades at the New York Times, Science, and Nature, and the author of
several excellent books dealing with anthropology and evolutionary biology.
Origin of Covid — Following the Clues
Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
Nicholas Wade • Medium • May 4, 2021 • 11,000 Words
Suppressing Possible Artificial Origins as “a Conspiracy Theory”
The central focus of both Baker and Wade is indicated by their closely-
related titles, namely the origins of the virus and whether it was the
product of a laboratory, presumably the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then
later released in a tragic accident. Both these authors strongly lean toward that latter possibility, but take somewhat different approaches. While
Baker, a prominent novelist and liberal public intellectual, must rely upon general arguments or merely reports the opinions of the experts that he
interviewed, Wade deploys his strong scientific background to build a
persuasive case for that same conclusion.
From nearly the beginning of the epidemic, the position taken by the
mainstream media had been that Covid-19 was very likely natural in origin,
and although President Trump and some of his political allies soon loudly
claimed otherwise, the perceived scientific consensus remained unchanged.
But as Wade demonstrates, that supposed consensus was largely illusory,
having been shaped by two early items that appeared in prestigious
scientific publications. On February 19, 2020, the Lancet had published a
statement signed by 27 virologists and other noted scientists that declared: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” and that “[scientists]
overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” Then the following month Nature Medicine published an analysis by five
virologists providing some theoretical arguments against any artificial
origin, stating that: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a
laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
These published pieces became far more influential than was warranted. Wade notes that the former statement had actually been organized behind the
scenes by Peter Daszak, an American closely associated with the Wuhan lab
and therefore hardly a disinterested party, while the latter relied heavily upon very dubious scientific reasoning. But once these emphatic conclusions had appeared in influential periodicals, few microbiologists were willing to challenge this newly established orthodoxy, especially because doing so
would have placed them in the same political camp as Trump, a much vilified figure in their community. Baker had earlier made similar criticism and I
had fully endorsed his verdict in my own March article, but Wade’s analysis provides far greater depth.
Moreover, Wade also emphasizes the climate of fear that today governs much
of our academic world, with future grant applications and even careers at
risk if researchers depart from perceived orthodoxy on certain issues,
perhaps including disputing the origins of Covid-19. He argues that although the Lancet and Nature Medicine letters were actually political statements
rather than scientific findings, they were “amazingly effective” in
suppressing dissent and led the overwhelming majority of journalists to
accept them as reflecting a research consensus that actually did not exist.
Wade’s own personal experiences have surely informed this shrewd analysis
of the underlying political dynamics. His most recent book A Troublesome
Inheritance had appeared in 2014, and its subtitle “Genes, Race, and Human History” reflected the potentially explosive nature of his subject matter. Although I considered it an outstanding treatment of the controversial topic, Wade’s work soon attracted a lynch-mob of critics, who organized a
denunciatory public statement that they persuaded 139 prominent genetic
scientists to sign. All these individuals were soon humiliated once it was
proven that not a single one of them had actually bothered examining the
true contents of the book that they were so fiercely attacking.
In the case of Covid-19, Wade demonstrates that once the political barriers have been removed and we are allowed to consider the evidence objectively,
our conclusions are transformed. The scientific case for the natural origins of the virus becomes pitifully weak, thereby automatically elevating the
competing lab-leak hypothesis, which had previously been denounced and
stigmatized as a so-called “conspiracy theory.”
For example, despite fifteen months of presumably intensive effort, the
Chinese have failed to locate evidence of any wildlife population hosting a closely-related precursor virus, which had easily been found in the previous cases of emergent viral epidemics such as SARS and MERS. Indeed, the
closest natural relative to Covid-19 only exists among bats in the caves of Yunnan, nearly 1,000 miles distant from the Wuhan outbreak.
We would also expect an animal virus that became dangerous to humans would
require a lengthy series of intermediate mutational steps as it gradually
evolved the ability to effectively infect our own species, just as had been the case with SARS and other previous diseases. But Covid-19 seems to have
suddenly appeared in a maximally infectious form, perfectly pre-adapted to
humans and apparently derived from a single original source.
Finally, an important structural element of the virus, the “furin cleavage site,” is entirely absent from all other members of its viral family, and
crucially contributes to its dangerously infectious nature. A natural origin for that structure seems implausible, while the scientific literature is
replete with such additions having been made in laboratory experiments,
including those conducted by the Wuhan researchers. Moreover, the particular genetic sequence found in that Covid-19 element is extremely rare in other coronaviruses, strongly suggesting that it was added from a different source.
The Excluded Third Possibility
Having now twice read Wade’s long article, I can say that I find nearly all of his scientific arguments quite compelling, and I have almost no points
of significant disagreement. Yet my overall conclusions are entirely
different from his.
The explanation of this seeming paradox comes near the very beginning of his article, when he accurately states:
As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is
that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the
virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped.
A paragraph later, the text contains his first major section heading,
entitled “A Tale of Two Theories.”
Although Wade is absolutely correct in stating that “there are two main
theories” about the origins of Covid-19, this duality has been enforced by political pressures quite similar to those that had earlier excluded
discussion of the “lab-leak hypothesis,” but with the sanctions being far harsher and more extreme.
Wade’s analysis masterfully demonstrates that once we are actually willing to explore the much-vilified “conspiracy theory” of an accidental lab-leak, we discover that it is far more plausible than the case of a natural
origin, partly because the latter appears so unlikely. And if these were the only two possible theories, all arguments against the one would necessarily support the other. But this framework is upended once we recognize that
there is a third logical possibility, far more vilified and excluded than
that of the “lab-leak hypothesis” but also far more plausible and
supported by much stronger evidence.
In my March discussion of Baker’s long article, I summarized how he first
became involved in the topic, and described the crucial omission I had
noticed in his 12,000 word opus:
Baker may not have been a professional virologist or expert in biowarfare,
but as the Covid-19 outbreak began he had just completed Baseless, a lengthy non-fictional account of American national security secrets, which appeared to glowing reviews in July 2020. One of his major elements was an account
of America’s massive 1950s bioweapons research program, which had been
accorded resources and importance matching that of our nuclear weapons
efforts. Based upon his years of research, the author was not a complete
neophyte on biological warfare issues and was also fully aware of our own
long history of laboratory accidents, which had claimed a number of lives.
So he was naturally alert to the possibility that a similar accident had
occurred in Wuhan, which contained China’s most secure facility of that
same type.
The greatest weakness of Baker’s comprehensive analysis is not the
controversial theory that he carefully examines, but the even more
controversial possibility that he seems to totally ignore. At one point, he notes the remarkable characteristics of the pathogen, whose collection of
features allowed it to so effectively target humans and which had first
appeared in a city having one of the very few world laboratories engaged in exactly that type of viral research, closing his paragraph with the sentence “What are the odds?” But other, even more implausible coincidences were
entirely excluded from his discussion, and the same had also been true for
Lemoine.
Both these authors seem to assume that there exist only two possible
scenarios: a natural virus that suddenly appeared in Wuhan during late 2019 or an accidental lab-leak of an enhanced disease agent in that same city.
But there is an obvious third case as well, clearly suggested by Baker’s
focus on America’s own very active biowarfare program, which he extensively discussed both in his long article and in his highly-regarded book. We must surely consider the possibility that the Covid-19 outbreak was not at all
accidental, but instead constituted a deliberate attack against China,
occurring as it did near the absolute height of the international tension
with America, and therefore suggesting that elements of our own national
security apparatus were the most obvious suspects. Given the realities of
the publishing industry, any serious exploration of such a scenario would
probably have precluded the appearance of the important Baker or Lemoine
articles in any respectable publication, perhaps helping to explain such
silence. But as I have argued in my long American Pravda series, many
historical accounts that were blacklisted for exactly those sorts of reasons appear quite likely to be true.
Exactly the same glaring omission is found in Wade’s 11,000 word article.
Taken together, Lemoine, Baker, and Wade have produced a large collection of high-quality articles on the origins of the global Covid-19 epidemic, but
nowhere among their 54,000 words is there even a hint that the virus might
possibly have had its origins in America’s well-documented and lavishly
funded biowarfare program. For several years, our newspapers have proclaimed that we are now locked into a new Cold War against China, with some risk
that it might turn hot. But the obvious possible implications of the sudden, potentially-devastating outbreak of a dangerous viral epidemic in our
leading international adversary remains unmentionable, too explosive even to dismissed or ridiculed, let alone carefully considered.
As I noted towards the end of my long March article:
I can easily understand why all these simple facts and their obvious
implications regarding the likely origins of the worldwide epidemic might be considered extremely uncomfortable, perhaps too uncomfortable to be
discussed in our media outlets, and therefore have been so widely ignored.
Most of these crucial points were already presented in my original April
2020 article on the subject, which quickly began to attract enormous traffic and interest in social media. Yet just days after it ran, our entire
website was suddenly banned from Facebook and all our web pages were
deranked by Google, perhaps underscoring the very dangerous nature of this
material, and the reasons why so few others have been willing to raise the
same points.
The Strong Evidence for an American Biowarfare Attack
I find almost nothing to dispute in the comprehensive analyses provided by
Lemoine, Baker, and Wade, but I do think my own work represents a crucial
supplement to their research, given that I have primarily focused on that
third possibility, a possibility that they were necessarily forced to avoid considering. Readers may judge for themselves, but I believe that my
articles have demonstrated that the evidence supporting that excluded
hypothesis is considerably stronger than that favoring either of those other two possibilities, whether the mainstream narrative of a natural virus or
the much-vilified “conspiracy theory” of a lab-leak in Wuhan.
American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 21, 2020 • 7,400 Words
American Pravda: Covid-19, Its Impact and Origins After One Year
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • March 15, 2021 • 8,700 Words
For convenience, I am excerpting substantial portions of my original April
2020 and my most recent March 2021 articles:
Although the coronavirus is only moderately lethal, apparently having a
fatality rate of 1% or less, it is extremely contagious, including during an extended pre-symptomatic period and also among asymptomatic carriers. Thus, portions of the US and Europe are now suffering heavy casualties, while the policies adopted to control the spread have devastated their national
economies. The virus is unlikely to kill more than a small sliver of our
population, but we have seen to our dismay how a major outbreak can so
easily wreck our entire economic life.
During January, the journalists reporting on China’s mushrooming health
crisis regularly emphasized that the mysterious new viral outbreak had
occurred at the worst possible place and time, appearing in the major
transport hub of Wuhan just prior to the Lunar New Year holiday, when
hundreds of millions of Chinese would normally travel to their distant
family homes for the celebration, thereby potentially spreading the disease to all parts of the country and producing a permanent, uncontrollable
epidemic. The Chinese government avoided that grim fate by the unprecedented decision to shut down its entire national economy and confine 700 million
Chinese to their own homes for many weeks. But the outcome seems to have
been a very near thing, and if Wuhan had remained open for just a few days
longer, China might easily have suffered long-term economic and social
devastation.
The timing of an accidental laboratory release would obviously be entirely
random. Yet the outbreak seems to have begun during the precise period of
time most likely to damage China, the worst possible ten-day or perhaps
thirty-day window. As I noted in January, I saw no solid evidence that the
coronavirus was a bioweapon, but if it were, the timing of the release
seemed very unlikely to have been accidental.
Consider also the preceding waves of other unfortunate viral epidemics that had recently ravaged China:
[D]uring the previous two years, the Chinese economy had already suffered
serious blows from other mysterious new diseases, although these had
targeted farm animals rather than people. During 2018 a new Avian Flu virus had swept the country, eliminating large portions of China’s poultry
industry, and during 2019 the Swine Flu viral epidemic had devastated China
’s pig farms, destroying 40% of the nation’s primary domestic source of
meat, with widespread claims that the latter disease was being spread by
mysterious small drones. My morning newspapers had hardly ignored these
important business stories, noting that the sudden collapse of much of China’s domestic food production might prove a huge boon to American farm
exports at the height of our trade conflict, but I had never considered the obvious implications. So for three years in a row, China had been severely
impacted by strange new viral diseases, though only the most recent had been deadly to humans. This evidence was merely circumstantial, but the pattern seemed highly suspicious.
Another even more remarkable coincidence has received far greater
distribution, becoming a staple of anti-American “conspiracy theories” and even resulting in a diplomatic incident involving the Chinese Foreign
Ministry.
According to the widely accepted current chronology, the Covid-19 epidemic
began in Wuhan during late October or early November of 2019. But the World Military Games were also held in Wuhan during that same period, ending in
late October, with 300 American military servicemen attending. As I’ve
repeatedly emphasized in my articles and comments for more than a year, how would Americans react if 300 Chinese military officers had paid an extended visit to Chicago, and soon afterward a mysterious and deadly epidemic had
suddenly erupted in that city?
It surely would have been very easy for our intelligence services to have
slipped a couple of their operatives into that large American military
contingent, and the presence of many thousands of foreign military personnel, traveling around the large city and doing sightseeing, would have been
ideally suited to providing cover for the quiet release of a highly-
infectious viral bioweapon. None of this constitutes proof, but the
coincidental timing is quite remarkable.
Biological warfare is a highly technical subject, and those possessing such expertise are unlikely to candidly report their classified research
activities in the pages of our major newspapers, perhaps even less so after Prof. Lieber was dragged off to prison in chains. My own knowledge is nil.
But in mid-March I came across several extremely long and detailed comments on the coronavirus outbreak that had been posted on a small website by an
individual calling himself “OldMicrobiologist” and who claimed to be a
retired forty-year veteran of American biodefense. The style and details of his material struck me as quite credible, and after a little further
investigation I concluded that there was a high likelihood his background
was exactly as he had described. I made arrangements to republish his
comments in the form of a 3,400 word article, which soon attracted a great
deal of traffic and 80,000 words of further comments.
Although the writer emphasized the lack of any hard evidence, he said that
his experience led him to strongly suspect that the coronavirus outbreak was indeed an American biowarfare attack against China, probably carried out by agents brought into that country under cover of the Military Games held at Wuhan in late October, the sort of sabotage operation our intelligence
agencies had sometimes undertaken elsewhere. One important point he made was that high lethality was often counter-productive in a bioweapon since
debilitating or hospitalizing large numbers of individuals may impose far
greater economic costs on a country than a biological agent which simply
inflicts an equal number of deaths. In his words “a high communicability,
low lethality disease is perfect for ruining an economy,” suggesting that
the apparent characteristics of the coronavirus were close to optimal in
this regard. Those so interested should read his analysis and assess for
themselves his credibility and persuasiveness.
Some of this same speculation eventually reached Chinese social media, and
led to articles in Chinese government publications, which immediately
provoked a very hostile response by Trump Administration officials.
This latter sequence of events is carefully recounted in a massive 17,000
word, 54 page report released a few weeks ago by DFRLab, a social media-
oriented research unit within the establishmentarian Atlantic Council, with the work being based upon nine months of research and preparation by a dozen staffers, together with the Associated Press investigations team. The study seemed aimed at tracking the appearance and Internet dissemination of a
wide range of supposedly false or unsubstantiated “conspiracy theories”
regarding the Covid-19 outbreak, and AP journalists soon publicized the
results, denouncing “the superspreaders” of such allegedly spurious and
potentially dangerous beliefs.
Weaponized: How Rumors About Covid-19’s Origins Led to a Narrative Arms
Race
DFRLab/The Atlantic Council • February 2021 • 17,000 Words
But while this project did produce a very useful compendium of the
chronology and source references of the various unorthodox narratives
surrounding the disease, many of which were certainly erroneous or
implausible, few effective rebuttal arguments were provided, notably
regarding the extremely suspicious timing of the American military presence in Wuhan. Blogger Steve Sailer and others have often ridiculed this “point-and-sputter” school of refutation, in which non-mainstream theories need
only be described in order to be considered conclusively disproved.
Although the Atlantic Council/Associated Press team certainly included
numerous skilled social media researchers, journalists, and editors, there
is no indication that any of these individuals possessed serious national
security credentials, let alone specialized expertise in the arcane topic of biowarfare. This may help to explain why the weighty report which drew upon such enormous resources was almost entirely descriptive and made so little effort to analyze or evaluate the plausibility of the various conflicting “conspiracy narratives” that it treated at great length.
One further oddity of the very comprehensive DFRLab/Atlantic Council report was its own rather curious omissions. Given that its entire focus was on the full range of absurd “conspiracy theories,” the authors naturally
explored speculation regarding an American biowarfare attack, and attributed this theory partly to Kevin Barrett, whom the report characterized as “a
US Holocaust denier who has also claimed that the September 11 attacks were an ‘inside job’ by the George W. Bush Administration.”
The resulting news story by its Associated Press partners prominently
featured Barrett as one of the America’s leading “super-spreaders” of
Covid-19 conspiracy-nonsense. Yet Barrett’s only real role had been to
quote and endorse my own very substantial writings in that area, and
although he unsuccessfully urged the AP journalists to contact me directly, my name was entirely absent from either the news articles or the lengthy
underlying research report. Since my own writings had constituted the
longest and most comprehensive presentation of the American Biowarfare
Hypothesis, such an omission appears curious. I suspect that the editors
concluded that any attack on me would bring my articles to much wider
attention, and therefore ruled it out as being obviously counter-productive.
I find it highly unlikely that the DFRLab staffers were unaware of my
existence. Their comprehensive report appeared in February 2021, and since
it was based upon nine months of investigation, the project would have begun in May 2020. But on April 21, 2020, I had published my long original
article making the case for an American biowarfare attack, and its rapidly
growing popularity on Facebook only came to an end after the social media
giant quickly banned our entire website, a sudden action that had been based upon a very doubtful report produced by that very same DFRLab team, with
which Facebook has long partnered. Indeed this remarkable coincidence of
timing raises the interesting possibility that the appearance of my article and its considerable popularity had actually prompted DFRLab to undertake
its nine month investigation into the general subject of Covid-19 “
conspiracy theories.” Furthermore:
The extensive material collected by the Atlantic Council researchers lent
further support to an important point I had made last April about the
curious nature of the early Covid-19 coverage:
One intriguing aspect of the situation was that almost from the first moment that reports of the strange new epidemic in China reached the international media, a large and orchestrated campaign had been launched on numerous
websites and Social Media platforms to identify the cause as a Chinese
bioweapon carelessly released in its own country. Meanwhile, the far more
plausible hypothesis that China was the victim rather than the perpetrator
had received virtually no organized support anywhere, and only began to take shape as I gradually located and republished relevant material, usually
drawn from very obscure quarters and often anonymously authored. So it
seemed that only the side hostile to China was waging an active information war. The outbreak of the disease and the nearly simultaneous launch of such a major propaganda campaign may not necessarily prove that an actual
biowarfare attack had occurred, but I do think it tends to support such a
theory.
During January, American media outlets, including those under the authority of Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, began focusing
attention on the Wuhan lab as the potential source of the viral outbreak,
while journalists disputing this narrative and attempting to raise other
possibilities had serious difficulties even getting their articles published on alternative websites:
Scientific investigation of the coronavirus had already pointed to its
origins in a bat virus, leading to widespread media speculation that bats
sold as food in the Wuhan open markets had been the original disease vector. Meanwhile, the orchestrated waves of anti-China accusations had emphasized Chinese laboratory research on that same viral source. But we soon published a lengthy article by investigative journalist Whitney Webb providing
copious evidence of America’s own enormous biowarfare research efforts,
which had similarly focused for years on bat viruses. Webb was then
associated with MintPress News, but that publication had strangely declined to publish her important piece, perhaps skittish about the grave suspicions it directed towards the US government on so momentous an issue. So without
the benefit of our platform, her major contribution to the public debate
might have attracted relatively little readership.
All the evidence thus far presented has merely been circumstantial, strongly establishing that elements of the American national security establishment had the means, motive, and opportunity to stage a biowarfare attack in Wuhan. However, in April 2020 certain additional facts appeared that some have
characterized as “smoking gun” proof of that disturbing scenario:
But with the horrific consequences of our own later governmental inaction
being obvious, elements within our intelligence agencies have sought to
demonstrate that they were not the ones asleep at the switch. Earlier this
month, an ABC News story cited four separate government sources to reveal
that as far back as late November, a special medical intelligence unit
within our Defense Intelligence Agency had produced a report warning that an out-of-control disease epidemic was occurring in the Wuhan area of China,
and widely distributed that document throughout the top ranks of our
government, warning that steps should be taken to protect US forces based in Asia. After the story aired, a Pentagon spokesman officially denied the
existence of that November report, while various other top level government and intelligence officials refused to comment. But a few days later, Israeli television mentioned that in November American intelligence had indeed
shared such a report on the Wuhan disease outbreak with its NATO and Israeli allies, thus seeming to independently confirm the complete accuracy of the original ABC News story and its several government sources.
It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were
aware of the deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any
officials in the Chinese government itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of precognition, I think this may have
happened for the same reason that arsonists have the earliest knowledge of
future fires.
According to these multiply-sourced mainstream media accounts, by “the
second week of November” our Defense Intelligence Agency was already
preparing a secret report warning of a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak
taking place in Wuhan. Yet at that point, probably no more than a couple of dozen individuals had been infected in that city of 11 million, with few of those yet having any serious symptoms. The implications are rather obvious. Furthermore:
As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China’s own borders,
another development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly where one might expect, among the
East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February Iran had become
the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its
political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior.
Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hatred Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.
Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses
have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before
significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world
outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military
commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?
Summarizing the Evidence for a Biowarfare Attack and Outlining the
Hypothetical Scenario
Most of the material quoted above had originally appeared in my April 2020
article and was afterwards extended and further discussed in my later pieces, the most recent appearing in March 2021. Taken together, they have been
read at least a couple of hundred thousand times, and have provoked more
than 500,000 words of comments. Yet the undeniable facts I presented have
remained almost entirely excluded from the ongoing public debate, presumably for the practical political reasons I have suggested, so it is difficult to know exactly who has become aware of them.
Donald Trump’s departure from the White House seems to have finally
encouraged our timorous mainstream media organs to admit that their
longstanding presumption of the entirely natural origin of Covid-19 might
not be correct, and they have begun giving some consideration to the long-
derided competing theory of a man-made virus released in an accidental lab-
leak. But under these changed circumstances, I consider it entirely
unreasonable if they continue ignoring that very real third possibility of
an American biowarfare attack. The key pieces of evidence I have provided
that favor this hypothesis over the competing lab-leak scenario may easily
be summarized:
(1) For three years, China had been locked in growing conflict with America over trade and geopolitics, and for three years in a row, China had been hit very hard by mysterious viruses. An Avian Flu virus severely damaged its
poultry industry in 2018 and the following year a Swine Flu virus destroyed over 40% of its pig herds, China’s primary meat source. The third year,
Covid-19 appeared. Certainly a suspicious pattern if the last were just a
random lab-leak.
(2) The Covid-19 outbreak appeared at absolutely the worst time and place
for China, the major transit hub of Wuhan, timed almost perfectly to reach
high local levels of infection just as the travelers for the Lunar New Year holiday spread the disease to all other parts of the country, thereby
producing an unstoppable epidemic. The timing of an accidental lab-leak
would obviously be random.
(3) 300 American military servicemen had just visited Wuhan as part of the
World Military Games, providing a perfect opportunity for releasing a viral bioweapon. Consider what Americans would think if 300 Chinese military
officers had visited Chicago, and immediately afterwards a mysterious,
deadly viral disease suddenly broke out in that city. It would be a strange coincidence if that the American military visit and an entirely unrelated
accidental lab-leak had occurred at exactly the same time.
(4) The characteristics of Covid-19, including high communicability and low lethality, are absolutely ideal in an anti-economy bioweapon. It seems odd
that a random lab-leak would release a virus so perfectly designed to
severely damage the Chinese economy.
(5) From almost the very moment that the outbreak began, anti-China bloggers in America and the US-funded Radio Free Asia network had launched a
powerful international propaganda offensive against China, claiming that the outbreak in Wuhan was due to the leak of an illegal bioweapon from the
Wuhan lab. This may have merely been an exceptionally prompt but
opportunistic response of our propaganda organs, but they seemed remarkably quick to take full advantage of an entirely unexpected and mysterious
development, which they immediately identified as being due to a lab-leak.
(6) By “the second week of November” our Defense Intelligence Agency had
already begun preparing a secret report warning of a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak in Wuhan although according to the standard timeline at that point probably only a couple of dozen people had started experiencing any
symptoms of illness in a city of 11 million. How did they discover what was happening in Wuhan so much sooner than the Chinese government or anyone else?
(7) Almost immediately afterwards, the ruling political elites in Iran
became severely infected, with many of them dying. Why did the accidental
Wuhan lab-leak jump to the Iran’s political elites so quickly, before it
had reached almost anywhere else in the world.
Given the conclusions suggested above, I also think it would be useful for
me to provide my own summary of a plausible scenario for the Covid-19
outbreak. Although I had already presented this outline in a September 2020 article, I see no need for any revisions. Obviously, this reconstruction is quite speculative, but I think it best fits all the available evidence,
while individual elements may be modified, dropped, or replaced without
necessarily compromising the overall hypothesis.
(1) Rogue elements within our large national security apparatus probably
affiliated with the Deep State Neocons decided to inflict severe damage upon the huge Chinese economy using biowarfare. The plan was to infect the key
transport hub of Wuhan with Covid-19 so that the disease would invisibly
spread throughout the entire country during the annual Lunar New Year
travels, and they used the cover of the Wuhan International Military Games
to slip a couple of operatives into the city to release the virus. My guess is that only a relatively small number of individuals were involved in this plot.
(2) The biological agent they released was designed primarily as an anti-
economy rather than an anti-personnel weapon. Although Covid-19 has rather
low fatality rates, it is extremely contagious, has a long pre-symptomatic
infectious period, and can even spread by asymptomatic carriers, making it
ideally suited for that purpose. Thus, once it established itself throughout most of China, it would be extremely difficult to eradicate and the
resulting efforts to control it would inflict enormous damage upon China’s economy and society.
(3) As a secondary operation, they decided to target Iran’s political
elites, possibly deploying a somewhat more deadly variant of the virus.
Since political elites generally tend to be elderly, they would anyway
suffer far greater fatalities.
(4) The deadly SARS and MERS outbreaks in East Asia and the Near East had
never significantly spread back to America (or Europe), so the plotters
wrongly assumed that the same would be the case with Covid-19. Anyway, since international organizations always ranked the US and Europe as having the
best and most effective public health systems for combating any disease
epidemic, they believed that any possible blowback damage would be very
minor.
(5) Only a small number of individuals were directly involved in this plot, and soon after the disease was successfully released in Wuhan, they decided to further safeguard America’s own interests by alerting the appropriate
units with the Defense Intelligence Agency, probably by fabricating some
sort of supposed “intelligence leak.” Basically, they arranged for the DIA to hear that Wuhan was apparently suffering a “cataclysmic” disease
outbreak, thereby leading the DIA to prepare and distribute a secret report warning our own forces and allies to take appropriate precautions.
(6) Unfortunately for these plans, the Chinese government reacted with
astonishing determination and effectiveness, and soon stamped out the
disease. Meanwhile, the lackadaisical and incompetent American government
largely ignored the problem, only reacting after the massive outbreak in
Northern Italy had gotten media attention. Since the CDC had botched
production of a testing kit, we had no means of recognizing that the disease was already spreading in our country, and the result was massive damage to America’s economy and society. In effect, America suffered exactly the fate that had originally been intended for its Chinese rival.
Related Articles:
American Pravda: Covid-19, Its Impact and Origins After One Year
American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback?
31,000 Words Missing from The Atlantic and The New York Times Sunday
Magazine
Half a Pulitzer Prize to the Wall Street Journal
Bats, Gene Editing and Bioweapons: Recent Darpa Experiments Raise Concerns
Amid Coronavirus Outbreak by Whitney Webb
Was Coronavirus a Biowarfare Attack Against China? by OldMicrobiologist
← American Pravda: Covid-19, Its Impact a...
别洗了，全世界那么多生物专家会不知道？
这种“解药”肯定有它的局限性，甚至是危险的，不可能是有意为之。
【 在 ABCHBC (小李飞飛飝屌艹兲五) 的大作中提到: 】
: 确实是最近为了研究改造的。。但是2020年2月份的时候，本版也确实有人说过，去掉
: PRRA就是解药。
这个其实没啥深奥的，科学本来就是大胆立论小心求证。如果看见病毒致病都是通过
PRRA进行的，最自然的想法就是把它敲掉。这个应该是业内人员简单直白的第一反应之一才对。
【 在 ABCHBC (小李飞飛飝屌艹兲五) 的大作中提到: 】
: 确实是最近为了研究改造的。。但是2020年2月份的时候，本版也确实有人说过，去掉
: PRRA就是解药。
三姓家奴越南光别闹了
【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 别洗了，全世界那么多生物专家会不知道？
: 这种“解药”肯定有它的局限性，甚至是危险的，不可能是有意为之。
我一年多前就已经说过了，实践起来需要时间。
【 在 jhe123 (jhe) 的大作中提到: 】
: 这个其实没啥深奥的，科学本来就是大胆立论小心求证。如果看见病毒致病都是通过: PRRA进行的，最自然的想法就是把它敲掉。这个应该是业内人员简单直白的第一反应之
: 一才对。
你是相关专业的？那没有就此申请个funding实在太可惜了。
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我一年多前就已经说过了，实践起来需要时间。
已经有这样的文章了
还有把普通冠状病毒加个prra反过来操作的
完全证实了prra的核心作用，正反面的证明
[在 jhe123 (jhe) 的大作中提到：]
:这个其实没啥深奥的，科学本来就是大胆立论小心求证。如果看见病毒致病都是通过
:PRRA进行的，最自然的想法就是把它敲掉。这个应该是业内人员简单直白的第一反应
之一才对。
不错，机理确定后，就该继续考察和其它疫苗对比的效益风险，看看能不能当疫苗用了。这估计就是主贴提到的研究本来的用意。
【 在 LiQiang (真正接班人) 的大作中提到: 】
: 已经有这样的文章了
: 还有把普通冠状病毒加个prra反过来操作的
: 完全证实了prra的核心作用，正反面的证明
: [在 jhe123 (jhe) 的大作中提到：]
: :这个其实没啥深奥的，科学本来就是大胆立论小心求证。如果看见病毒致病都是通过
: :PRRA进行的，最自然的想法就是把它敲掉。这个应该是业内人员简单直白的第一反应
: 之一才对。
生物文科别再搞这些浪漫主义的人体实验了。
病毒是可以自我进化的，你特么搞出些具有传染性的“活疫苗”，你的风险控制机制在哪里先？
【 在 jhe123 (jhe) 的大作中提到: 】
: 不错，机理确定后，就该继续考察和其它疫苗对比的效益风险，看看能不能当疫苗用了
: 。这估计就是主贴提到的研究本来的用意。
贴一个去年三月和武汉哥们的微信。
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
第一，文章里的研究是在动物身上进行的，第二，对不懂的事情你就不要信口开河了。
就像转基因蚊子一样，如果这个活疫苗风险可控，症状轻微，然后能成为普遍流传的毒株，就可以压制致命毒株的传播。当然这个是大胆立论的部分，还需要在实验室内小心求证，确保实际可行后才能投入实用。
【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 生物文科别再搞这些浪漫主义的人体实验了。
: 病毒是可以自我进化的，你特么搞出些具有传染性的“活疫苗”，你的风险控制机制在
: 哪里先？
“suggesting the S1/S2 junction may be under selection pressure as the SARS-CoV-2 virus circulates in humans”?
against evolution？
转基因蚊子争议很大好不好。
尼玛在动物身上试验就没有变异风险？
我不需要懂生物，但是我懂控制，你只需要告诉我，你的预警系统和控制系统准备如何设计？
如果没有，那么你这个可以自动复制进化的正反馈系统，非常容易完全失控，可比AI可怕得多。
【 在 jhe123 (jhe) 的大作中提到: 】
: 第一，文章里的研究是在动物身上进行的，第二，对不懂的事情你就不要信口开河了。
: 就像转基因蚊子一样，如果这个活疫苗风险可控，症状轻微，然后能成为普遍流传的毒
: 株，就可以压制致命毒株的传播。当然这个是大胆立论的部分，还需要在实验室内小心
: 求证，确保实际可行后才能投入实用。
去年四月初交稿五月初发表出来的文章。下面一句是作者的展望：
The potential of the Del-mut variants as an attenuated vaccine or laboratory tool should be evaluated.
lubbock一帮舔活自己打脸吧。
【 在 atack (小军号) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我怀疑闫丽梦说的有可能不幸是真的，真的有效的疫苗在造毒者手里。删了PRRA是躲过
: 了一个大坑，但是还有可能有别的大坑，新冠病毒里还有那么多蛋白，鬼知道那个被人
: 改过了。
: : 振奋人心！
: : 那现在着急打疫苗的不是傻了？
:
为啥？
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1756700?fbclid=IwAR2xHDcmL-YZpxGTdEtUBWv29KykNAOcqFlFcS5HSYr6plA80Fx0jaedaZ8&
: 去年四月初交稿五月初发表出来的文章。
: lubbock一帮舔活自己打脸吧。
属实
【 在 dakedo (大蝌蚪) 的大作中提到: 】
: 如果有可靠的减毒株，
: 合理的政策是反对口罩，提倡群免
: 谁这么干，
: 谁嫌疑最大
腥胱根本就没有脸
【 在 llcare (剑华) 的大作中提到: 】
: 群免还会封楼挖路
: 还会全国戴口罩？
: 真不要脸
: 这可是你天天批评的不顾人权。
: 好几个毒株谁都清楚
: 你美爹投放几种还不由着你美爹的性子
:
: 另外，我一直认为武汉封城，其实要封的是另外一种毒性很烈的毒株。
:
: 武汉好多灭门惨案，中央那帮人没一个敢去，都说明就不可能是现在普遍流行的
: 病毒。
:
这是民科还是政屁？真能掰，要是真的那还不是坏事，我憋有如此技能以后美帝还敢放肆，恐怕真相是在美帝实验室。
你不是说这是最近为了什么什么改造的吗？
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】
: 为啥？
人家敲除一下PRRA，就是为了看看效果。
我说这话是去年二月份，比这文章还早。
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 你不是说这是最近为了什么什么改造的吗？
一屁三谎的黄疮们又出动了呵呵
文章白纸黑字摆在目前。lubbock真的是一屁三谎。
是敲除吗？是敲除吗？！
两篇文章都说在自然培养条件下，这个区域容易丢。就是说它进化来的可能性小，因为是逆进化。
尼玛，你挖PRRA的坑挖了一年多，发现挖到自己墙根儿底下了。不挖了？现在又“敲除”？
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】
: 人家敲除一下PRRA，就是为了看看效果。
: 我说这话是去年二月份，比这文章还早。
从老王到博导，美新版ID有不造谣的吗？
转基因蚊子在对人类无害这点上没有任何争议，所谓的争议的都是对长远生态影响的不确定。这种影响只能投入实用后才能完全确定。
动物实验本来就是为了研究效益和风险而搞的。如果风险太大的话停止不用就完了呗。这尼玛有啥好抬杠的？
【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 转基因蚊子争议很大好不好。
: 尼玛在动物身上试验就没有变异风险？
: 我不需要懂生物，但是我懂控制，你只需要告诉我，你的预警系统和控制系统准备如何
: 设计？
: 如果没有，那么你这个可以自动复制进化的正反馈系统，非常容易完全失控，可比AI可
: 怕得多。
咧害了，你的鳖
不懂就问，这个PRRA可以是后加的吗？没有的才是原始自然状态？
很多病毒是可以跟人体无害共存的，也是病毒进化的一个方向。
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 还嘴硬。是敲除吗？是敲除吗？！
: 两篇文章都说在自然培养条件下，这个区域容易丢。就是说它进化来的可能性小，因为
: 是逆进化。
: 尼玛，你挖PRRA的坑挖了一年多，发现挖到自己墙根儿底下了。不挖了？现在又“敲除
: ”？
这是民科还是政屁？真能掰，要是真的那还不是坏事，我憋有如此技能以后美帝还敢放肆，恐怕真相是在美帝实验室。
你没看懂他在说什么吧。
这种技能谁都有，敢不敢拿韭菜实验的问题。
【 在 stk110 () 的大作中提到: 】
: 这是民科还是政屁？真能掰，要是真的那还不是坏事，我憋有如此技能以后美帝还敢放
: 肆，恐怕真相是在美帝实验室。
那是实验室条件下，有没有从人类分离出来丢失这个PRRA的？
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 还嘴硬。是敲除吗？是敲除吗？！
: 两篇文章都说在自然培养条件下，这个区域容易丢。就是说它进化来的可能性小，因为
: 是逆进化。
: 尼玛，你挖PRRA的坑挖了一年多，发现挖到自己墙根儿底下了。不挖了？现在又“敲除
: ”？
土共拒绝提供任何序列。
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】
: 那是实验室条件下，有没有从人类分离出来丢失这个PRRA的？
某堡尾巴终于露出来了
【 在 lubbock12 (非老非小将) 的大作中提到: 】
: 你又在造谣了，这个PRRA缺失株是实验室里敲除的，相反，美国很少有这么方面的研究
: ，是做贼心虚吗？
: Abstract
: SARS-CoV-2 is of zoonotic origin and contains a PRRA polybasic cleavage
: motif which is considered critical for efficient infection and
transmission
: in humans. We previously reported on a panel of attenuated SARS-CoV-2
: variants with deletions at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. Here, we
: characterize pathogenicity, immunogenicity, and protective ability of a
: further cell-adapted SARS-CoV-2 variant, Ca-DelMut, in in vitro and in
vivo
: systems. Ca-DelMut replicates more efficiently than wild type or parental : ...................
有些人是拿钱办事带节奏的。
还要一帮跟着起哄的SB民科。 破坏性不大，就是有点恶心。
COVID-19 研究专业性很强。 同专业不同方向都不敢随便开口。但是这个组的工作，基本上是个生物专业的都看得明白。 突变病毒来源的那篇文章 2020年12月发表在 Emerg Microbes Infect 上。 现在又是什么单位出来炒一波？
【 在 stk110 () 的大作中提到: 】
: 这是民科还是政屁？真能掰，要是真的那还不是坏事，我憋有如此技能以后美帝还敢放
: 肆，恐怕真相是在美帝实验室。
Breaking！！！又可以狂灌海外中文论坛，刷爆满足感了，聚聚谢幕后难得机会！！
尼玛要是一个致命的未知的传染病毒出现，你的正常反应是什么？好奇围观？
去年2月份，人类对这个病毒了解是多少，检测手段是什么？
【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 另外，我一直认为武汉封城，其实要封的是另外一种毒性很烈的毒株。
: 武汉好多灭门惨案，中央那帮人没一个敢去，都说明就不可能是现在普遍流行的病毒。
美国施放的，所以才一直不急不慢不封城不检测，因为美国知道初期病毒特性，就如川普说的：大流感啊！而且疫苗那么快就出来了，几乎是美国开始检测病毒起，疫苗就开始生产了。好好快呀！
你米爹特堡造得疮瘟病毒，这是抵赖不了的，怎么洗地也不能抹去昂撒兽族的恶魔属性。敢让世界到特堡查查吗？傻B
【 在 iminosugar (伪糖) 的大作中提到: 】
: 去年3月份，有多人都说武汉二月底三月以后流行的是一种减毒株，原来流行的是疫苗
: 株。
: 广州去年三四月份就分离出S1/S2结合区包括著名的PRRA sequence缺失的毒株，因为这
: 一区域在人体条件下不稳定，容易掉。现在好了，去年发了一篇文章、现在又一篇。: 疫苗株！解药！
自打有疫， 一种结果是杀死全体宿主，一种是病原完全被灭， 还有就是群体免疫。
你三个可能挑出一个已经比板上一半妄人靠谱了。
【 在 mynight01 (一束星光) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我是本版，第一个提出中国的抗疫成功是因为群免的吧？