Weekly lab leak news
Fauci FOIA's, RaTG13, sewage and apologies
Apologies to Jon Cohen of Science Magazine
I previously assumed a NIAID email offering a free Washington, D.C. hotel was sent to Jon Cohen of Science Magazine, but it was sent to Jon Epstein of EcoHealth. He was briefly discussed in post #7 and seen as Peter Daszak’s #2. Our imaginations can run wild with all the NIH redactions, so let’s continue with more!
Tony Fauci & Francis Collins emails
Independent journalist Jimmy Tobias obtained the FOIAs below. Fauci discusses a particular subject: the rare codons (CGG-CGG) found in the SARS2 furin cleavage site. Fauci’s friend David Baltimore called it the ‘smoking gun’ for a lab leak. The rare double codon CGG-CGG was also patented for attenuated animal vaccines.
Fauci was asked about this codon site during his 2021 Congressional testimony.
In the email below, Fauci discussed this USA Today article from 2021 about his secret Feb 1st, 2020, teleconference with Kristian Andersen and company.
In the email below, Fauci and NIH director Francis Collins discuss this early SARS2 lab leak paper based on the three dead Mojiang miners from 2012. Fauci had previously discussed the RaTG13 sample with Ralph Baric during their Feb 11th, 2020 meeting. It was during this meeting that Baric wanted Shi arrested for publishing RaTG13.
To answer Fauci’s question above, Shi told Jon Cohen of Science Magazine that RaTG13 was “only a genome sequence, and we didn’t isolate this virus.” This sounds like a similar situation with SCH014, where Shi couldn’t isolate the virus, so she shared the sequence with Baric before publication. Shi partially uploaded the RaTG13 sequence to an NIH database called Genbank in 2018, but it was not released until 2022. To repeat, NIH sat on the nearest known progenitor to SARS2 for two years.
Who knows what the email above is about since most of it has been redacted? But apparently, Senior Counsel at HHS made an “offer” to the NIH in 2021 regarding “WIV correspondence” that the former NIH Associate Associate Director for Legislative Policy and Analysis (now a Cambrian BioPharma VP) “strongly suggested” the NIH agree to.
Congressional FOIA inquiry
If you still think China is the only entity covering up a Wuhan lab, watch this Congressional hearing. The NIH has redacted thousands of pages from their simple FOIA request. Congressmen with security clearances are also frustrated. Senator Rand Paul mentioned the power of the purse and accountability will go further than new laws and regulations. Tony Fauci’s assistant, David Morens, was mentioned because he admitted to deleting incriminating NIH emails.
New ‘bipartisan’ lab leak committee
“Senator Rand Paul has found a Democrat to join him in investigating the virus’ origins. And it’s not just any Democrat. It’s Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on which Paul is the ranking Republican.”
L.A. Times dives into the lab leak mud
Richard Ebright and Bryce Nickels (of Rutgers University) say the complaint misrepresents their words and activities. “I have never compared any of the signatories to Josef Mengele or Pol Pot, and I have never characterized any of the signatories as murderers,” Ebright said via email. He adds, “I also never have threatened or incited violence against any of the signatories.”
The same L.A. Times writer also wrote a hit piece on the few media members covering the DARPA Defuse leak in September 2021.
Reader comment
Reader
is a reminder one has to read a lot to understand a little. His comment highlighted the importance of the Proximal Origin draft documents. Here is a collection of the authors’ quotes evolving. They even admitted, “Indeed, the availability of the (Shi’s) RaTG13 bat sequence (uploaded to GISAID on Jan 24th) helped reveal key RBD mutations and the polybasic cleavage site.”Former NYT science writer
Donald McNeil admitted in his book that the Proximal Origin authors duped him. The scientists “clearly misled me early on.” He is “disappointed, both in them and in myself, that I was so easily taken in…It’s one thing to be lied to by a politician and fail to check it out. But on viral evolution, to whom do you go for a second opinion?”
COVID Origin Is a Gordian Knot
Lab accidents at new Chinese bat lab in Colorado
Old Montana article on the new BSL4 bat lab
“The current (bat) vivarium didn’t offer the option to maintain the semi-natural conditions that different insects and animals need to survive, which limited options for scientists working at the lab. The rooms in the new building will be climate-controlled…Other animals, like some bats, require a lot of humidity to survive.”
Solid Evidence
University of Missouri virologist Marc Johnson claims to have found something amazing: SARS2 didn’t evolve in bats (hint: try Vincent Munster’s deer). Marc studies SARS2 in wastewater, but SARS2 has never been isolated from sewage.
Reader Q&A: Why are virologists so interested in furin cleavage sites?
It's hard to convey how obsessed Western virologists were with furin cleavage sites. A furin cleavage site could measure once, cut twice, but in their mind, they are protecting humanity. The interest started in Montana with a 2006 paper inserting a furin cleavage site into a bovine (i.e. deer) coronavirus at the same spot as SARS2 (R667). It continued with the ferret papers and flu research (i.e. Vincent Munster). They think it's the key to unlocking/blocking species jumping for both flu (from birds) and coronaviruses (from bats). Baric and Munster called it "intracellular proteases" in their 2018 bat paper. Baric’s coronavirus research and biodefense $$$ dovetail nicely with U.S. troops in foreign countries (SARS in SE Asia and MERS in the Middle East). For more info, search for 'furin cleavage site' in post #4.
Scientists pen dueling articles to shape ‘gain-of-function’ policies
Review of Dali Yang’s Wuhan book
This problem of “ascertainment bias” also fooled Western scientists for years as they continued to argue that because early cases were associated with, or lived near, the market, the virus must have started there. This was and is a circular argument.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2024/how-not-to-investigate-the-origins-of-covid/
Here's an interesting development - a now sacked former senior journalist at the New York Times, Donald McNeil Jr, has stated that the Proximal Origin gang misled him:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/03/26/new-york-times-donald-mcneil-wuhan-lab-leak-theory/
Hi Jim, Thanks for the citing my comment. (I am a he not a her. In England, where I was born, "Robin", as in "Hood", is a reasonably common name for boys and for some girls, perhaps with a 'y'.) I have not had time to read the drafts of the proximal origin article, but I am sure it would be interesting to do so.