The effort to “debunk” the lab leak theory of COVID origins was always in bad faith. Even if one thought that it was more likely than not that the virus jumped from an animal to human beings, it made no sense to fight hard against looking into alternative possibilities.

You’d never know it by what the media says, but after years of looking, nobody has found a hint of an animal host–a recent “blockbuster” report that claimed that an animal source was found at the Wuhan wet market was ridiculous on its face. Researchers found COVID RNA on some hair samples–big whoop. Swipe any surface in America that hasn’t been cleaned in a while and you would find the same thing.

There is only one motivation for strongly denying the possibility that the virus escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it isn’t that anybody involved cares about the truth. They want to hide what they know, believe, or suspect is the truth: that the virus escaped from the WIV, and that the US was funding the research that led to that escape.

Earlier this week I wrote about a blockbuster Sunday Times report on how COVID was engineered by scientists at the WIV, using funding from the United States and the Chinese military. None of what they wrote was a surprise to me, but the story tied together a lot of threads and made a solid case that COVID was engineered and that the governments of the United States and China were both covering it up.

A new report from Michael Shellenberger’s Public has added another piece to the puzzle: we actually know who the first COVID patients were, and they weren’t random folks shopping at a wet market to get some monkey meat. They were the scientists who developed the virus.

After years of official claims to the contrary, strong new evidence suggests the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a Chinese lab. According to multiple sources, the researchers who led gain-of-function research, which increases infectiousness, were the first to be infected. pic.twitter.com/f5irBa3zZ5

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) June 13, 2023

Again, the only thing shocking about this report is that our government officials and the MSM have worked so hard and been so successful in hiding these facts from the public. The US government has known about this for 3 years, and despite that fact, the public health establishment has kept denying its relevance.

There is no innocent explanation for the denials that emanated from our government. When virologists contacted Dr. Fauci explaining that their research suggested that COVID was engineered, Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins berated them and assigned them to write a paper denying that very fact. When they did so Fauci rewarded them with millions of dollars in research grants.

Now the authors of that paper admit that they may have gone too far–as in, they were totally wrong. Each has told the BBC that their conclusion may have been premature.

Influential paper which dismissed Covid lab leak went 'too far', claims one of the researchers https://t.co/4cziYnuGF0 pic.twitter.com/vP6m7JWkbn

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) June 13, 2023

That’s not what they were saying until about 5 minutes ago. They insisted as late as this March that a lab leak was a conspiracy theory.

What has changed is that the story is completely unraveling.

Soon you will find all sorts of people backtracking as the evidence finally comes out into the open. Fauci and company coerced and bribed these guys–they got $9 million grants to change their minds–and now the evidence of a lab leak is pretty hard to dispute. So along with others, they will blather about having “gone too far” or how they misjudged the evidence.

Given how they viciously attacked others who were, after all, telling the truth, such excuses ring very hollow indeed.

After years of official pronouncements to the contrary, significant new evidence has emerged that strengthens the case that the SARS-CoV-2 virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

According to multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation by Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus, “patients zero,” included Ben Hu, a researcher who led the WIV’s “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses, which increases the infectiousness of viruses.

More than three years after the pandemic’s outbreak, many around the world had given up on learning the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the highly infectious respiratory virus that has killed millions, and the response to which shut down businesses and schools, upended societies, and caused enormous collateral damage.

Public officials in the U.S. and other countries have repeatedly suggested that uncovering the pandemic’s origin may not be possible. “We may never know,” said Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who oversaw pandemic response for two administrations.

Now, answers increasingly look within reach. Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus.

As such, not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019, but also that they were working with the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, and inserting gain-of-function features unique to it.

When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%”

If you still believe that Anthony Fauci and company had everybody’s best interests at heart, I don’t know what to tell you. Fauci certainly knew that the WIV was doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses–he had been funding that research through the EcoHealth Alliance. At the very least he had to suspect that there was a connection between that research and the outbreak.

He also knew that the WIV had a terrible safety record. This was a matter of public record–the lab had been inspected by the US government and found wanting.

It is likely that the names of the scientists from the WIV who first caught and then spread COVID to the world population will be officially revealed, which is why Shellenberger and Taibbi are getting out in front of the story. When that happens and this report is confirmed there will be an enormous effort to justify hiding these facts from the public.

It was to prevent racism. We wanted to avoid a war with China over an accident. We only suspected, and didn’t know. Insert excuse here.

You can imagine the reasons that will be trotted out.

None of them are the primary reason for the coverup. It was because the NIH and NIAID wanted to cover their own asses. They caused millions of deaths and don’t want the blame.

Who would? In their place, I would probably have gone insane with guilt. These guys are made of sterner stuff, though. They bulled through and lied to everybody. Nothing succeeds in Washington like total shamelessness.

And it worked. Everybody involved has moved on. They are wealthy and well-regarded, and they will pay no price. Old news.

This is infuriating, because the people who were telling the truth or simply asking the right questions were viciously attacked, punished, their careers destroyed, and the public deceived.

That, too, is old news. It is the price of doing business in Washington DC, apparently. And who cares? They aren’t in the club.

The fact that the MSM was so willing to promote the fairly obvious lie that it was impossible for the COVID virus to have escaped from a lab shows how corrupt they are. A few weeks ago Nate Silver suggested that the lab leak seemed plausible and he was attacked by his media colleagues for giving aid and comfort to conservatives. Literally, their argument came down to that–if conservatives say it, you must refute it. The truth comes in a distant 5th in importance.

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