Did COVID Emerge?
Single released on 1 May 2021
(For more information on this substack and the band - Not Fit For Purpose - the What/Why/Who/When/Where/How - check out my about page. To listen to the track on Bandcamp, click on the album artwork.)
There have been occasional news stories about lab accidents, the ban on gain-of-function research, and whether that ban was effectively ignored by the main protagonists of gain-of-function research in the US. But these stories have not benefited from widespread media amplification. Why? To protect commercial interests, maybe?
Let’s take a walk through the single’s key lyrics and highlight articles where you can find more information.
Did COVID emerge?
The key question about the origins of COVID. A good starting point.
Move along, nothing to see here, please disperse!
And that is the classical parody of a political cover up.
There once was a country that funded research,
was it cause of a scourge, this funded research?
Or did COVID emerge?
Move along, nothing to see here, please disperse!
‘Americans are unaware of the extent of China’s infiltration of U.S. medical research, the degree to which U.S. officials and scientists facilitated it, the possibly dangerous transfer of technology, including that related to the likely creation of the COVID-19 virus, and the continuation of such collaborative programs.’
September 2020
There once was a country that banned gain-of-function,
the studies enhancing pandemic destruction,
they banned gain of function for protocol breach,
was it cause of a scourge, this funded research?
The ban on gain-of-function research was announced, in October 2014, as:
U.S. Government Gain-of-Function Deliberative Process and Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS Viruses
But studies continued in spite of the ban.
Was there a plan to side-step the ban?
Continuing work into gain-of-function,
the studies enhancing pandemic destruction,
they banned gain-of-function for protocol breach,
was it cause of a scourge, this funded research?
Dr. Fauci Says Wuhan Virus Was Likely Not Created in Wuhan Lab He Funded with Millions of US Dollars
‘In 2014, the US funding for the project was stopped due to the US government moratorium on risky virology studies involving influenza, MERS & SARS viruses. The project was then taken over by the Chinese government and moved to Wuhan, China. Active work on the project continued through late 2019.’
May 2020
The work, sub-contracted to experts in bats.
Imagine that - experts in bats!
Studying bats in spite of the ban.
So was there a plan to side-step the ban?
China bat caves need exploring in search for COVID origins, WHO team member says.
‘Daszak was involved in research into the origins of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002-2003, tracing its roots to bats living in a cave in southwest Yunnan province. “Similar research needs to be done if we are going to find the true wildlife origin” of COVID-19, said Daszak, president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance.’
February 2021
That country then funded a lab in Wuhan;
off-shoring the work because of the ban.
They funded the lab's bat coronavirus programme.
NIH defends funding for Wuhan virus work
‘Ms. Fine stated in an email that NIH gave a $292,000 grant last year to the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based research group, that involved the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a sub-awardee of the research contract. The funds “supported research that characterized the function of newly discovered bat spike proteins and naturally occurring pathogens,” she stated.’
May 2020
Did the lab in Wuhan have a protocol breach?
Spectacular reach, that protocol breach?
Was the breach cover up a wet market in cats?
Evidence Chinese Officials Reported Wuhan Institute Was Source of Coronavirus Through February
‘As late as February it was being reported in China that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was where the coronavirus originated.’
April 2020
“After word of the outbreak finally became public, Chinese leaders were quick to blame Wuhan's 'wet market' where wild animals -- though not bats -- are sold for consumption, leading one source to tell Fox News the debacle is the 'costliest government coverup of all time.' ”
April 2020
‘According to the email exchanges between the National Academy of Science and the consultant scientists, there appeared to be a clear effort by the scientists to support the naturally-occurring theory and to eliminate or downplay any mention that the COVID-19 virus was engineered, had unique human binding characteristics, might mutate towards higher infectivity and possessed a furin polybasic cleavage site not found in any related coronavirus.’
‘On March 7, 2020, Peter Daszak and Stanley Perlman were authors on an article in the British medical journal The Lancet, which stated “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” ’
March 2021
The evidence trail of the country who funded
a project, avoiding their own labs who blundered
with anthrax and smallpox and avian flu.
Cambridge Working Group Consensus Statement on the Creation of Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs)
‘Recent incidents involving smallpox, anthrax and bird flu in some of the top US laboratories remind us of the fallibility of even the most secure laboratories, reinforcing the urgent need for a thorough reassessment of biosafety.’
July 2014
Did they cover the trail with the help of the WHO?
WHO report into COVID pandemic origins zeroes in on animal markets, not labs
‘ “We were allowed to ask whatever questions we wanted, and we got answers,” says Daszak, who collaborates with researchers at the Wuhan institute. “The only evidence that people have for a lab leak is that there is a lab in Wuhan,” he adds.’
March 2021
But the lab in Wuhan they had published their findings,
revealing the funding source of research tidings,
the US taxpayer whose generous donation
bank-rolling the plan to side-step the ban!
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
‘Research in this manuscript was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) under awards U19AI109761 (R.S.B.), U19AI107810 (R.S.B.), AI085524 (W.A.M.), F32AI102561 (V.D.M.) and K99AG049092 (V.D.M.), and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China awards 81290341 (Z.-L.S.) and 31470260 (X.-Y.G.), and by USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from EcoHealth Alliance (Z.-L.S.).’
‘Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH.’
November 2015
That paper was published in Nature Medicine in 2015 and documents collaborative research into gain-of-function studies (both before, and after, the ban was in place) between Ralph Baric’s team (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Zhengli-Li Shi’s team (Wuhan Institute of Virology).
Did the WHO visit Wuhan to find out the source?
It's bats, via cats, of course!
A W.H.O. Researcher on His Trip to China Seeking Origins of the Virus
‘Peter Daszak, a member of the W.H.O. team and the president of EcoHealth Alliance in New York, is primarily concerned with the animal origins of the virus. A specialist in animal diseases and their spread to humans, Dr. Daszak has worked with the Wuhan Virology Institute, a collaboration that last year prompted the Trump administration to cancel a grant to his organization.’
‘In an interview after his return to New York, he said that the visit had provided some new clues, which all of the scientists, Chinese and international, agreed most likely pointed to an animal origin within China or Southeast Asia. The scientists have largely discounted claims that the virus originated in a lab, saying that possibility was so unlikely that it was not worth further investigation.’
February 2021
The virus and variants are highly transmissible,
that's the whole point to gain-of-function research.
Did someone say it's a risk worth taking,
a world-wide pandemic from funded research?
A flu virus risk worth taking
by Anthony S. Fauci, Gary J. Nabel and Francis S. Collins
‘Anthony Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Gary Nabel is director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Francis Collins is director of the National Institutes of Health.’
‘The scientists, journal editors and funding agencies involved are working together to ensure that access to specific information that could be used to create dangerous pathogens is limited to those with an established and legitimate need to know.’
December 2011
(such as the Chinese military, perhaps?)
Before we finish let's summarise briefly:
the people promoting gain-of-function research,
did they spend US taxpayers dollars side-stepping restrictions
and off-shored a protocol breach
to a lab in Wuhan missing scientist patient zero?
‘The fate of a Chinese researcher believed to be the world’s first COVID-19 patient remains a mystery despite a year-long search by Western intelligence officials investigating the origins of the pandemic.’
‘Huang Yanling, who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was one of scores of doctors, scientists, activists and journalists who disappeared during the Chinese Communist Party’s suspected cover-up.’
‘During the early weeks of the outbreak last February, rumours swirled on Chinese social media that the graduate student was “patient zero”, creating a direct link between the controversial lab and the virus outbreak.’
January 2021
It's just another conspiracy theory
funded by the US taxpayer,
and ridiculed by establishment media
who don't want to follow the evidence trail.
Move along, nothing to see here, please disperse.
‘A small but growing number of scientists have considered another hypothesis: that an ancestral bat coronavirus was collected in the wild, genetically manipulated in a laboratory to make it more infectious, training it to infect human cells, and ultimately released, probably by accident, in Wuhan, China.’
‘For most of 2020 this hypothesis was considered a crackpot idea, but in the last few weeks, more media attention has been given to the possibility that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located near the Wuhan city center and with a population of over 11 million inhabitants, may have been the source of the field specimen collection effort, laboratory genetic manipulation, and subsequent leak.’
March 2021
It's just another conspiracy theory
funded by the US taxpayer,
and ridiculed by establishment media,
who don't want to follow the evidence trail
to a lab in Wuhan missing scientist patient zero.A boo-boo, a boo-boo, just a little mistake, just a boo-boo.
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
‘ It’s documented that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were doing gain-of-function experiments designed to make coronaviruses infect human cells and humanized mice. This is exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS2-like virus could have emerged. The researchers were not vaccinated against the viruses under study, and they were working in the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 laboratory. So escape of a virus would not be at all surprising. In all of China, the pandemic broke out on the doorstep of the Wuhan institute. The virus was already well adapted to humans, as expected for a virus grown in humanized mice. It possessed an unusual enhancement, a furin cleavage site, which is not possessed by any other known SARS-related beta-coronavirus, and this site included a double arginine codon also unknown among beta-coronaviruses. What more evidence could you want, aside from the presently unobtainable lab records documenting SARS2’s creation? ’
‘Proponents of natural emergence have a rather harder story to tell. The plausibility of their case rests on a single surmise, the expected parallel between the emergence of SARS2 and that of SARS1 and MERS. But none of the evidence expected in support of such a parallel history has yet emerged. No one has found the bat population that was the source of SARS2, if indeed it ever infected bats. No intermediate host has presented itself, despite an intensive search by Chinese authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is no evidence of the virus making multiple independent jumps from its intermediate host to people, as both the SARS1 and MERS viruses did. There is no evidence from hospital surveillance records of the epidemic gathering strength in the population as the virus evolved. There is no explanation of why a natural epidemic should break out in Wuhan and nowhere else. There is no good explanation of how the virus acquired its furin cleavage site, which no other SARS-related beta-coronavirus possesses, nor why the site is composed of human-preferred codons. The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities.’
’To these serried walls of silence must be added that of the mainstream media. To my knowledge, no major newspaper or television network has yet provided readers with an in-depth news story of the lab escape scenario, such as the one you have just read, although some have run brief editorials or opinion pieces. One might think that any plausible origin of a virus that has killed three million people would merit a serious investigation. Or that the wisdom of continuing gain-of-function research, regardless of the virus’s origin, would be worth some probing. Or that the funding of gain-of-function research by the NIH and NIAID during a moratorium on such research would bear investigation. What accounts for the media’s apparent lack of curiosity?’
’People round the world who have been pretty much confined to their homes for the last year might like a better answer than their media are giving them. Perhaps one will emerge in time. After all, the more months pass without the natural emergence theory gaining a shred of supporting evidence, the less plausible it may seem. Perhaps the international community of virologists will come to be seen as a false and self-interested guide. The common sense perception that a pandemic breaking out in Wuhan might have something to do with a Wuhan lab cooking up novel viruses of maximal danger in unsafe conditions could eventually displace the ideological insistence that whatever Trump said can’t be true.’
’And then let the reckoning begin.’
May 2021