Originally Posted By Bodhy⏩

Originally Posted By MiscIQ⏩

Originally Posted By MiscIQ⏩

The Sunday Times has spoken to three members of the team. The intelligence they saw suggests the types of risky experiments undertaken on the ****ou cave Sars viruses were also conducted in secret on RaTG13 and the other Covid-19-like viruses from the mine.

“They were working with the nine different Covid variants,” one of the investigators said. They believe one virus at the Wuhan institute was an even closer match to Covid-19 than RaTG13. “We are confident they were working on a closer unpublished variant — possibly collected in Mojiang,” the source added.

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

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

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

Originally Posted By gwg77⏩

Originally Posted By DuracellBunny⏩

Michael Shellenberger’s Public today released a blockbuster story, “First Person Sickened By COVID-19 Was Chinese Scientist Who Oversaw “Gain Of Function” Research That Created Virus,” which generously credits Racket. The story cites three government officials in naming scientist Ben Hu, who was in charge of “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as the “patient zero” of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is a major story, contradicting early official explanations pointing to zoonotic cross-species “spillover” at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, colloquially known as the Wuhan wet market. The mystery bat or pangolin suspected of transmitting the disease to humans at that market was never found. The Public story for the first time asserts the source of contamination: a Wuhan Institute scientist fell ill after exposure to a virus engineered at his place of work.

The implications of this are enormous and represent a major problem for the federal health bureaucracy, several intelligence agencies, and the news media, to say nothing of politicians in both parties (but particularly those on the Democratic side) who’ve deflected public interest from the Wuhan Institute and gain-of-function research. The secrets of both the pandemic’s origin and the reason for America’s at-best-sluggish investigation of same have become the mother of all political footballs, and today’s news is likely to be just the first in a series of loud surprises.

The bulk of this investigation was done by Michael and the Public team, who’ve been digging into this matter with impressive ferocity for a while now. My part was more incidental, and I’m a bit hamstrung in talking about the nature of it, except to say that in addition to the material Michael dug up in today’s article,numerous federal agencies appear to have designed their probes of Covid-19’s origins so as to discount the possibility of lab origin in advance.

We were told, for instance, that despite longstanding interest in the Wuhan Institute as a potential security concern, at least one intelligence agency overruled a majority of its in-house investigators to produce a report on the pandemic’s origin discounting the lab-leak hypothesis.

The “patient zero” report is likely to focus even more attention on stories by publications ranging from the Washington Post to the Intercept to the Wall Street Journal about U.S.-funded “gain-of-function” research, which sources insist is the likely reason many agencies (with the notable exception of the FBI and the Department of Energy, which both pointed at lab origin as a possible explanation) were steered away from the Wuhan Institute as a possible outbreak source.

The Public story should force a hard look at the cost of steering investigators away from the Wuhan Institute. Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing, put it this way in Michael’s story:The identity of Covid’s “Patient Zero” is a big part of a puzzle that will likely take a while to fully assemble, but there’s reason for optimism this time. Unlike other recent stories that have been ignored, like the Nord Stream explosion, numerous mainstream news organizations either have individual reporters or whole teams assigned to the theme Michael hit first today. Sooner or later, this story is coming out. I.F. Stone famously said all governments lie, but it’s beginning to look like the scale of this one would have shocked even him.

In any case, congratulations to Public, and please stay tuned to this space and theirs for more.

Three previously unreleased State Department cables obtained by U.S. Right to Know include new information about classified research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

One cable alleges evidence of connections between China’s biotechnology sector and the People’s Liberation Army, including “cyber evidence” of “PLA shadow labs at WIV,” the PLA’s involvement with the construction of the lab and subsequent presence there, and “WIV personnel with possible PLA ties.”

A second cable appears to address the blurring of civilian and military research — specifically Beijing’s emphasis on “military-civil fusion,” or MCF — in the world of biotech.

A third cable details the way in which Beijing authorities, rather than local apparatchiks, censored the spiraling pandemic in critical early days, with devastating consequences: “Initial Outbreak Could Have Been Contained in China if Beijing Had Not Covered It Up,” it reads.

The cables were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department.

The cables may represent some of the research that informs a 2021 statement from the State Department that “the WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”

US taxpayers supported research in three Chinese labs that included risky gain-of-function experiments with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a new government report found Wednesday.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) provided $2,168,345 in grant funding to the Chinese research institutions between 2014 and 2021, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The report shows $1,413,720 in subgrants allocated by the Manhattan-based EcoHealth Alliance went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where hazardous research was conducted on bat coronaviruses.

Chinese scientists Ben Hu, Ping Yu and Yan Zhu were the first humans to contract COVID-19 while at the lab researching how to increase infectiousness and make pathogens stronger, according to a Tuesday report from Substack journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi.

The FBI and Energy Department have both assessed the so-called “lab leak theory” as the most likely explanation for the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Today, the GAO confirmed that US taxpayer dollars awarded from the National Institutes of Health and USAID were ultimately used for research by entities in China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was known to be doing coronavirus research,” said House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) in a joint statement.

“This revelation is very concerning due to the increased focus on the ‘lab leak’ theory, which suggests that the virus may have originated from the Wuhan laboratory rather than through natural means,” they added. “We have long argued that the American people deserve the truth about COVID-19’s origin and continue to take concrete actions to declassify intelligence related to the pandemic.”

The funding figure may not reflect the full amount, since sub-awards of fewer than $30,000 don’t need to be reported in government records.

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Originally Posted By frankdtank20⏩

Originally Posted By MiscIQ⏩

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Originally Posted By MiscIQ⏩

Originally Posted By gwg77⏩