Pompeo: Sufficient evidence of covid origins at China virology lab

Source : Newsmax 

News (1)

Pompeo: Evidence "Staggering" of COVID origins at China virology lab

Reporter : Fran Beyer / Image courtesy : Joe Raedie/Getty Images

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday described as “staggering” the lengths to which the China went to cover up the suspected origins of the coronavirus pandemic at a Wuhan virology laboratory.

In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Pompeo said “every piece of evidence that we saw throughout the entire time suggested that this originated in the laboratory, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

“I haven't seen a shred of evidence that suggest to the contrary,” he continued. “The evidence continues to accumulate despite the fact that the [China Communist Party] would not allow anybody to have access to the laboratory, the original materials, the doctors that were working there.

“The list of the cover-up efforts is staggering and the combination of the circumstantial evidence that we have combined with the intense effort to deny us information about that lab suggest to me strongly that this is where it originated.”

Pompeo added that in January, there was the release of a set of now declassified information pieces “to talk about the fact that we believe that there were doctors that came down with the symptoms from the virus back in 2019.”

Pompeo said it represented “the knowledge that the Chinese Communist Party had about human--human transition long before they admitted to the [World Health Organization] and the world.”

“There's increasing evidence that the Chinese Communist Party acted at least with reckless negligence and perhaps even worse,” he declared.

News (2)

COVID-19 origins investigation sought by top scientists

Reporter : Jim Thomas

A letter published in the academic journal "Science" on Thursday called for a new and truly independent investigation of all possible origins of the COVID-19, including the alleged laboratory accident releasing the virus in Wuhan, China, The Hill reported.

"Understanding the origins of the pandemic is essential to addressing our vulnerabilities and preventing future crises," the letter read. "Unfortunately, as outlined in previous open letters released on March 4 and April 7, structural, procedural, and analytical shortcomings of the WHO-convened joint study into COVID-19 origins have created unnecessary barriers to this understanding."

It was signed by 25 scientists and academics and organized by Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C.; Virginie Courtier, an evolutionary geneticist with the Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, in France; and Gilles Demaneuf, an engineer and data scientist with the Bank of New Zealand, The Hill reported.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the report an "important beginning" but observed it failed to find the source of the virus.

"As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general, the United States and 13 other countries and the European Union that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve," the scientists wrote in the letter.

A team of experts from WHO carried out an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus from January to February 2021, more than a year after the first illnesses were reported in Wuhan in December 2019.

Back in March, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported what it concluded were the origins of the virus, saying the virus most likely jumped from an intermediate animal to humans.

The report also said it was "extremely unlikely" the virus escaped from a government lab in Wuhan. However, investigators were unable to determine exactly how and when the original inter-species transmission took place. The letter observes, while there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or lab accident, the team of investigators assessed the zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host theory as "likely to very likely" and the lab accident theory as "extremely unlikely," according to The Hill.

"We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data," the scientists wrote in the letter. "A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest."

Scientists believe "the two theories were not given balanced consideration," the letter claimed.

That report was also carped because the investigation was not extensive enough, as access to raw data was restricted by Chinese authorities who refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw, personalized data on early COVID-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China, according to WHO investigators who described heated exchanges over the lack of detail, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The letter follows several similar public statements from other groups of scientists all over the world calling for a new and more transparent investigation.

The pandemic has caused more than 3.3 million deaths worldwide.

News (3)

Sen. Paul, Fauci tussle over COVID origin, virus research

Reporter : Solange Reyner

Sen. Rand Paul tussled with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday during a Senate hearing on the pandemic response over the origins of the novel coronavirus, specifically the notion that China's Wuhan Institute of Virology was experimenting to enhance COVID's ability to infect humans.

“Juicing up super virus is not new,” Paul, R-Ky., said, singling out a collaboration between virologist Dr. Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina and Shi Zhengli, a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin, on how to create super viruses.

“This gain of function research has been funded by the U.S.,” Paul added. “Dr. Baric and Xi worked together to insert bat virus spike protein into the backbone of the deadly SARS virus and then used this manmade super virus to infect human airway cells. … Can you imagine if a SARS virus that’s been juiced up and had viral proteins added to it to the spike protein, if that were released accidentally?”

Gain-of-function experiments involve genetically modifying viruses to make them more infectious in an effort to better understand the way in which a pathogen adapts to environmental pressure, allowing disease control measures to be better planned and potential vaccines and therapies to be explored.

Paul, a physician who began practicing ophthalmology in 1993, then asked whether Fauci supported NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan.

"Sen. Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect," Biden’s chief medical adviser responded. "The NIH has not ever, and does not now, fund 'gain-of-function research' in the Wuhan Institute."

"Do you fund Dr. Baric's gain-of-function research?" Paul asked.

"Dr. Baric is not doing gain-of-function research, and if it is, it is according to the guidelines and is being conducted in North Carolina,” Fauci said ... “If you look at the grant and if you look at the progress report, it is not gain-of-function, despite the fact that people tweet that, write about it."

Paul pointed out that at least 200 scientists from the Cambridge Working Group argued that the Wuhan research was gain of function even if the NIH didn’t define it as such and accused Fauci of “fooling with mother nature” and allowing super viruses to be created.

“I do not favor gain-of-function research in China. That is not correct,” said Fauci, eventually adding: “You are saying things that are not correct!”

Paul also asked Fauci whether he could categorically confirm that COVID-19 did not leak from the Wuhan lab.

“I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I am fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on China. However, I will repeat again, the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Questions remain about the origin and the “lab leak hypothesis,” which the World Health Organization has said should be investigated.

News (4)

Leaked, Chinese document reveals malevolent intent for coronaviruses

Reporter : Nick Koutsobinas

A document titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, written by Chinese scientists and Chinese public health officials in 2015, discussed the weaponization of SARS coronaviruses. It postulates a World War III scenario fought with biological weapons.

The paper describes coronavirus as a "new era of genetic weapons," according to news.com.au, and details how coronaviruses can be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before."

According to a Politico article published in March, one United States official had said, "If there was a smoking gun, the CCP [Communist Party of China] buried it along with anyone who would dare speak up about it... We'll probably never be able to prove it one way or the other, which was Beijing's goal all along."

But according to Peter Jennings, executive director of Australian Strategic Policy Institute, this newly uncovered document may be as close to a "smoking gun" as we have. 

"I think this is significant because it clearly shows that Chinese scientists were thinking about military application for different strains of the coronavirus and thinking about how it could be deployed," said Jennings. 

Jennings added, "It begins to firm up the possibility that what we have here is the accidental release of a pathogen for military use."

The document would also explain why China was reluctant to cooperate with investigations on the virus's origin. 

"If this was a case of transmission from a wet market it would be in China's interest to cooperate… we've had the opposite of that."

Robert Potter, who works as a cybersecurity specialist analyzing the Chinese government said, the document definitely is not fake. 

"We reached a high confidence conclusion that it was genuine … It's not fake but it's up to someone else to interpret how serious it is," Potter stated.

Potter stated that it is unlikely the virus escaped from a lab. 

"It emerged in the last few years … they (China) will almost certainly try to remove it now it's been covered."

According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 was most likely of animal origin, which crossed over from humans to bats. Director of public health pathology Dominic Dwyer, who acts as a representative for the WHO, went to the wet market in Wuhan, where one theory states the virus originated. He said the wet market might not be the source of the virus.

"The market in Wuhan, in the end, was more of an amplifying event rather than necessarily a true ground zero. So we need to look elsewhere for the viral origins," Dwyer said.

One of the critical worries from a United States senior administration official was that, "This was just a peek under a curtain of an entire galaxy of activity, including labs and military labs in Beijing and Wuhan playing around with coronaviruses in ACE2 mice in unsafe labs ... It suggests we are getting a peek at a body of activity that isn't understood in the West or even has precedent here."

Refs: www.newsmax.com