Coronavirus pandemic – Wuhan market was not place of origin
Symbolic photo. (KEYSTONE/CHROMORANGE/Michael Bihlmayer)
by Pascal Derungs,* Zurich
(19 July 2024) The evidence is mounting: Unscrupulous researchers have probably developed the virus. A laboratory accident brought it into the world. “Das Lügengebäude bröckelt” (“The pack of lies is crumbling”), is the title of Professor of Physics Roland Wiesendanger’s article in the political magazine “Cicero”1 In it, the internationally renowned scientist summarises the current state of knowledge on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. He describes the official interpretation, according to which the virus is of natural origin and is said to have accidentally jumped from bats to humans at the animal market in the Chinese city of Wuhan – at the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of all places – as a “pack of lies”.
The counter-thesis circulating very early on, according to which Covid-19 has no natural origin, was discredited from the outset. As early as 19 February 2020, a high-ranking group of 27 recognised virologists claimed that this was a pure conspiracy theory in a high-profile publication in the journal “The Lancet”. However, the publication failed to mention that most of the signatories themselves had links to the laboratory in Wuhan, notes Roland Wiesendanger. Since then, all the relevant authorities and media have orientated themselves towards this interpretation of the natural origin. It was considered sakrosanct.
An overwhelming chain of evidence speaks in favour of a laboratory accident
More and more evidence is emerging which, according to Wiesendanger, supports the opposite. To summarise briefly, he postulates that
- the virus was artificially created and genetically programmed to spread via aerosols in the air and infect people (“gain-of-function”);
- esearchers from the USA and the laboratory in Wuhan had hoped that these high-risk experiments would provide new insights into the development and spread of pandemics in order to combat them more efficiently in future;
- in order to save costs, the necessary safety standards were disregarded by those responsible in the USA and at the Wuhan laboratory, despite urgent warnings;
- this led to the release of the cultivated SARS-CoV-2 virus and triggered exactly the kind of pandemic that this research was supposed to prevent, control and combat;
- subsequently, key players undertook various manoeuvres to conceal the actual events and deny their involvement.
Roland Wiesendanger’s evidence is based primarily on statements made by directly involved scientists to US Congressional committees of enquiry and on their e-mail correspondence, some of which was lost or even deleted, but some of which could be reconstructed. This shows that practically all those involved displayed suspicious and contradictory behaviour, made cover-up manoeuvres and in some cases false statements.
According to Wiesendanger, only the laboratory data and protocols from Wuhan could provide direct proof of the outrageous suspicion of human culpability. However, this laboratory data “disappeared” shortly after the outbreak of the first Covid cases in China. The Chinese authorities have not yet been persuaded to hand over this crucial information and make it available to the US investigating authorities.
USA and China conducted dangerous research long before coronavirus
Peter Daszak, President of the American NGO “EcoHealth Alliance” (EHA), played a central role. Together with scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), he had been conducting high-risk “gain-of-function” research with coronaviruses for many years before the pandemic.2 This was recorded by the Corona Investigation Committee of the US House of Representatives.
US politicians have been searching for answers to the mysteries of the coronavirus pandemic for four years
In 2020, members of the Democratic Party in the USA set up a committee to investigate the coronavirus pandemic. This committee of the House of Representatives was tasked with investigating the coronavirus policy of then US President Trump and the question of why so many people were dying in the USA. However, when the Republicans took over the majority in the House of Representatives in January 2023, this focus shifted. Since then, the investigative committee, more than half of which is made up of doctors, has concentrated on finding out more about the origins of the pandemic.
The Committee of Inquiry found that shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic, Peter Daszak conceived a research proposal detailing the artificial synthesis of a new SARS-like coronavirus type. A component called the furin cleavage site was to be inserted into SARS-like bat coronaviruses, which would make it easier to infect human cells.
When SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan sometime later, it had precisely this furin cleavage site, which made it unique among SARS-related coronaviruses, emphasises Roland Wiesendanger in his Cicero article. A coincidence is highly unlikely.
Safety standards were undermined because of the costs
In a preliminary version of the research proposal described above with the short title “DEFUSE”, Peter Daszak commented that the intention was not to carry out this research in an American BSL-3 biology laboratory, but rather under the less restrictive safety conditions of BSL-2 laboratories in Wuhan. From the outset, the intention was to run this project via the Wuhan laboratory.
Daszak acted despite urgent warnings from Ralph Baric, a leading US scientist in gain-of-function research with coronaviruses. This is revealed by an exclusive interview Baric granted to “Vanity Fair” magazine.3 US scientists would “freak out”, Baric wrote, if such research were to take place in a biosafety level 2 laboratory, as Daszak was planning to do. In his submitted research proposal, Daszak corrected this, stating that the experiments would take place in a laboratory with the highest security level 3, but without specifying a location. Wiesendanger describes the further events.
Baric, however, doubts that this was the case. He pointed to several published research papers which showed that the Chinese scientists carried out their virus research in BSL-2 laboratories.
Anthony Fauci’s institute got the ball rolling
Daszak’s application was not approved by the US research funding organisation DARPA. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards he received new research funding from a subdivision of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) headed by Anthony (Tony) Fauci, who later became the US presidential adviser, to carry out this research at the WIV in Wuhan.
In an email handed over to the US investigative committee, Baric told Peter Daszak that it was “a load of bollocks” to claim that “WIV conducted coronavirus research in laboratories with adequate biosafety protocols”. This also emerges from the interview in “Vanity Fair”. According to this, Baric told the investigative committee: “The market was clearly a channel for expansion. Is that where it started? I don’t think so." The argument does not hold up, he said, as genomic evidence suggests that COVID-19 was already circulating in the human population in mid to late October 2019. He could not rule out a laboratory accident.
Sloppiness makes a retrospective review impossible
The investigative committee also found that Daszak did not supervise the risky experiments on the artificial modification of coronaviruses in Wuhan, even though American taxpayers’ money was being channelled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He also did not demand laboratory books from his scientific colleagues in Wuhan, contrary to common practice in such cases.
Based on this misconduct, the funding of Peter Daszak and his organisation with US taxpayers’ money was suspended in May 2024.4
How the “pack of lies” was established
It was also Peter Daszak who, on 19 February 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, organised the well-known open letter by 27 virologists in the medical journal “The Lancet”,5 which played a key role in presenting the lab leak hypothesis as a groundless conspiracy theory and discrediting it in the eyes of the global public.
In January 2021, Daszak travelled to Wuhan on behalf of the WHO without disclosing his obvious conflicts of interest. He was part of a ten-strong group of scientists tasked with finding out more about the origins of the pandemic.
The researchers’ willingness to take risks was excessive
The advisor to the US President during the coronavirus pandemic, Anthony (Tony) Fauci, was always a strong and influential advocate of gain-of-function research, Wiesendanger recalls. More than ten years ago, Fauci was already saying that the knowledge gained from this type of research would justify the risk of a possible pandemic triggered by it. He was also the one who organised and publicly justified the outsourcing of this high-risk research from the USA to China, Wiesendanger clarifies.
Anthony Fauci before the investigative committee
Fauci had originally testified under oath that the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and its subdivision NIAID had “at no time” funded such research. This claim was corrected in mid-May by a senior representative of the NIH. In fact, some scientific publications on “gain-of-function research” in Wuhan included acknowledgements to the NIH for funding. At his second hearing on 3 June 2024, Fauci finally had to admit that he had channelled massive amounts of funding to Wuhan via Peter Daszak.
Under oath, Fauci denied the allegations that he had actively participated in concealing a possible laboratory origin of the virus. On the contrary, he was “open to the hypothesis that the virus could have come from a laboratory”.
As evidence, Fauci quoted from an email to a researcher: He himself had advised a colleague at the time to inform the secret service immediately if the hypothesis that the virus had originated in a laboratory was confirmed. However, Fauci emphasised that it is “molecularly impossible” that Sars-CoV-2 was created during experiments funded by US taxpayers. He regularly receives death threats, he disclosed.
The former “Covid czar” Fauci also contradicted the account of his former employee David Morens that Fauci had used his private email address for business purposes to let sensitive matters slip past the official channel. Morens had claimed that he was in close contact with Fauci. Fauci, on the other hand, distanced himself from Morens and condemned his machinations.
The well-known economist Jeffrey Sachs recently pointed out that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – and in particular the institute that Fauci headed for decades – became the “home” of US bioweapons research from 2001 onwards. According to Sachs, the NIH became the “research arm” of the military and the secret services. The corresponding funding flowed to the institute headed by Fauci.
Sachs headed the scientific Covid-19 committee of the medical journal “The Lancet” and thus gained deep insight into the connections. The internationally well-connected US professor of economics initially believed in the theory of natural origins – until he came across more and more details that made a laboratory origin more likely.
Although Sachs also belongs to the Democratic camp, he praises the Republican head of the US coronavirus pandemic investigation committee for his “transparency, honesty and common sense”.
Cover-up and destruction of evidence
The US Covid investigation committee also questioned David Morens, a senior advisor to Anthony Fauci.6 In October 2021, David Morens wrote in an email to Peter Daszak: “From the numerous comments Tony has made to me and from what Francis [meaning the then head of the NIH, Francis Collins – editor’s note] has said in the last five days, it is clear that they are trying to protect you, which also protects their own reputation.” The Committee of Inquiry found that Morens had unlawfully deleted official government emails to circumvent potential requests for disclosure under the Public Records Act. He also illegally sent official messages via his private Gmail account. In addition, he had failed in many ways to fulfil official and ethical requirements for a high-ranking NIH employee.
The governments secretly assumed the lab accident
Given the rapid, strict lockdown measures in spring 2020, Wiesendanger considers it highly credible that national security authorities, not only in the US but also in many allied countries, took control of the response to the Covid pandemic because they knew that Sars-CoV-2 was an engineered virus originating from a laboratory researching potential bioweapons. It seemed too risky to leave the control measures solely to the responsible health authorities. On 13 March 2020, President Donald J. Trump declared a nationwide emergency. In his Cicero article, Wiesendanger notes that this response was like that of a military threat.
This is confirmed once again by a letter from the US House of Representatives’ Covid Pandemic Investigation Committee to Acting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken dated 7 May. It states that it is credible that
1. Covid-19 was caused by a laboratory accident in Wuhan;
2. the Chinese Communist Party prevented and obstructed a full investigation into these matters; and
3. there was a seamless relationship between the Wuhan laboratory and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
“Gain-of-function” continues to threaten the world
In conclusion, Roland Wiesendanger writes: “The fact is that high-risk ‘gain-of-function’ research with pandemic-capable pathogens is still being conducted and promoted in many countries around the world, with unforeseeable consequences.”
Source: https://www.infosperber.ch/wissenschaft/corona-pandemie-wuhaner-markt-war-nicht-ursprungsort/, 24 June 2024
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)
1 https://www.cicero.de/kultur/corona-aufarbeitung-labortheorie-wiesendanger
4 https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/ecohealth-suspended/
5 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext