The committee’s findings have again corroborated the likelihood that COVID-19 is of a man-made origin.
(Don Via Jr. TRDL) — The most recent report released by the Senate committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) investigating the origins of COVID-19 has concluded the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the coronavirus pandemic to be “more likely than not a research related incident.”
In other words the committee’s findings have again corroborated the likelihood that COVID-19 is of a man-made origin.
An analysis published by the nonprofit investigative research group U.S. Right To Know, titled Senate HELP Committee Republicans: ‘Pandemic Was, More Likely Than Not, A Research Related incident’, authored by Emily Kopp, details the report below; (shared under creative commons) —
Worobey has said the evidence proves the virus emerged naturally and that continuing to speculate about a lab origin of COVID-19 jeopardizes trust in science.
“Those promoting conspiracy theories and attacking scientific findings that don’t break in the direction they wish, regardless of how well credentialed, inflict extraordinary damage on our ability to effectively advance global health,” Worobey recently wrote in Foreign Policy.
In contrast, the report states that key questions about the origin of COVID-19 remain unanswered.
It remains a mystery, the committee staff write, how SARS-CoV-2 acquired its furin cleavage site. The furin cleavage site is a feature on the virus’s spike protein that makes it especially dangerous. Furin cleavage sites do not appear to occur in other SARS-like viruses. But the report notes that researchers working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology authored a grant report laying out plans to test furin cleavage sites in SARS-like viruses, though it remains unclear whether this research was performed.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s interest in evaluating the pandemic potential of bat coronaviruses this way, combined with evidence that the WIV struggled to safely run its new maximum biocontainment lab in the years before the outbreak, also persuaded the committee Republicans that a lab origin is more likely.
“Advocates of a zoonotic origin theory must provide clear and convincing evidence that a natural zoonotic spillover is the source of the pandemic, as was demonstrated for the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak,” the report states. “In other words, there needs to be verifiable evidence that a natural zoonotic spillover actually occurred, not simply that such a spillover could have occurred.”
The findings continue to cast doubt on the dubious hypothesis of a zoonotic origin for COVID-19, criticism of which was once denounced as a “conspiracy theory” and subjected to censorship. But now plausibility of the lab leak theory continues to gain traction among government officials, including the Biden Administration and the WHO.
While it is key to keep in mind that Senate Republicans at the behest of the US empire do have their own geopolitical conflicts of interest that may incentivize the implication of the Chinese government, evidence continues to abound supporting the lab leak theory beyond political finger pointing.
The governments of both the United States and China have attempted to place the blame on each other as being responsible for the spread of COVID-19. In the case of the lab leak hypothesis, if true, would most realistically implicate the governments of both nations, as both were directly involved in the gain of function research experiments undertaken at the Wuhan institute of virology.
In fact, as reported by UnHeard in August of this year, the evidence is substantial to indicate that the United States government itself has played a role in covering up of the origin of COVID-19.
As numerous officials, including the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and chair of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission Jeffrey Sachs, remain convinced of the lab origin theory.
An excerpt of the UnHeard article elaborates —
“Here’s a brief recap of what we know about the cover-up — much of which we are aware of thanks to a series of Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests. Much of the work on SARS-like CoVs performed in Wuhan was part of an active and highly collaborative US-China scientific research programme funded by the US government — primarily through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), directed by Anthony Fauci, which is part of the NIH — and coordinated by the US-based non-governmental organisation EcoHealth Alliance (EHA). The group’s research work went beyond the simple analysis of existing coronaviruses, and actually involved the engineering of “chimeric” bat coronaviruses, some of which proved to be potentially more infectious to humans — a highly risky technique known as gain-of-function.”
It is a matter of record that Dr. Anthony Fauci has repeatedly denied, under oath, any US funding or involvement in gain-of-function research at the WIV during congressional hearings on the matter. Denials which have been starkly refuted upon the release of a series of materials and documents that show these claims were false and that Dr. Fauci lied to Congress under oath. A federal crime for which he has still not been charged.
The article continues…
“As a result of an FoIA request, we know that on February 1, 2020, Anthony Fauci convened a “totally confidential” conference call with at least a dozen high-level experts from around the world, many of whom privately admitted that there was a very high probability that the virus had been artificially engineered and had then “escaped” from the Wuhan lab.
Yet not only did the NIH fail to disclose this to the public or to Congress, but the emails released under the FoIA suggest that it took an early and active role in promoting the “zoonotic hypothesis” and the rejection of the laboratory-associated hypothesis.”
Furthermore, a series of emails obtained by U.S. Right To Know has shown that prominent scientists who authored widely cited articles denying the lab leak hypothesis outright privately confessed that such a leak was in fact possible.
