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Lin-Fa Wang: The Dark Knight
The Godfather of Bat Viruses
Artwork credit: Science, Katty Huertas
In the Covid Conspiracy card pack, Chinese-Australian Linfa Wang* is up there - Jack of Diamonds territory. Don’t know why he hasn’t had more attention. Is it a kind of perverse form of racism? He gets overlooked coz he’s not a white-guy? Or is it the buttoned-down (boring) persona he projects of the nice scientist toiling quietly away for the common good? It’s a good painting. It captures his veneer, which is paradoxically, who he is: a Master Veneerist. Whatever - let’s give him some love …
Science, Sep 30, 2020: The work (on Covid) is a natural next chapter for Wang, who has been tracking viruses from bats to humans for more than 2 decades.
Firstly - Covid does have a natural origin - human nature natural - second:
more than two decades - so before even SARS.
That’s uncanny.
As soon as Linfa starts studying bat coronaviruses, humanity, at the exact same point in history, is plagued with a series of bat virus events. We’re fortunate Linfa came along when he did! Right in time to save us all. Don’t know if Linfa is religious but i’d like to ask: Did you have some kind of premonition - a revelation from God?
Science, Marion Koopmans (WHO investigator/Feb 1 Teleconferencer), a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center, credits him for essentially launching the field of bat immunology and developing the tools to pursue it.
Koopmans: *He has made a heroic effort to *establish a very challenging research line, which needed to start from scratch.
Holy Bat Cave! Mr. Under-the-radar-Lin-fa invented bat viruses - from scratch.
Can’t get more proximal origin than that. Not only Covid, but the whole shebang chain of events. I’m upgrading his card to Joker in the pack.
CSIRO, 2007: Geelong scientist, Dr Linfa Wang .. also led Australian research efforts to characterise a new virus named Beilong. This discovery was the result of another global research partnership. The paramyxovirus is named after the two cities that collaborated – Beijing and Geelong.
Beilong. So poetic. Linfa, the ultimate interface guy, led the invention of not only bat viruses but a Sino/Aus-friendship commemorative virus.
Science, Sep 30: By pure chance, Linfa Wang, one of the world’s foremost experts on emerging viruses, was in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January.
The biologist was visiting collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) just as SARS-CoV-2 was starting to spread from the city to the rest of the world.
Ohr. By pure chance, Linfa Wang was in Wuhan in early Jan at the lab with Shi Zhengli, which is situated, by pure chance, right in the vicinity of Covid ground-zero.
Then, by even more pure serendipity, straight after Linfa Wang returned to Singapore he got involved in drafting the Lancet Statement with Daszak. We’ll explore those juicy details later - but first some backstory …
(* His surname is Wang - in China he’s Wang Professor or Wang Lin-fa - (Wung Lin-far - not Linffer) in the west he’s Linfa Wang - Wang is a super-common Chinese surname - most of them are - Linfa is more distinctive - it’s pretty cool that he kept it - most (George Gao) adopt an English name.)# Curriculum Vitae
Everything you need to know about Wang is in this CV helpfully posted by his current employer, Duke - though pretty sure Linfa wrote it himself (a couple of typos Linfa- but otherwise excellent). His journey from East China Normal University to the New Global Normal Universe - it’s all there.
I’d love to say i had a network of deepthroats for sources - but it’s not like that. Often enough - the best stuff is on the subject’s own website - or in puff-piece interviews they give to enabling media platforms. Vanity is their great undoing. Making their own publicity - fervently believing it, preaching it …
Thereby leaving a trail of incrimination. Thanks!
CURICULLUM VITAE (sic)
Linfa (Lin-Fa) Wang
EMPLOYMENT AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
2012.7-present:* Director and Professor, Program in *Emerging *Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, *Singapore
1990-2015: CSIRO, (Commonwealth Science & Industrial Research Organisation).
including:
2008-2015: Science Leader*, *CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory
He’s only had those two jobs - held them simultaneously from 2012-15. He’s no fly-by-nighter.
ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS
*January *1982-1986: *B.S. (Honour) Biology (Biochemistry), *East China Normal University
*June, *1986 - 1989: * Ph.D. Biochemistry (Molecular Biology), *University of California, Davis
1981-1982: Linfa won Outstanding Undergraduate Award, East China Normal University, top notch uni in a country of 1.3 billion. Then a scholarship to UC Davis. So, unlike Farrar or Daszak for instance, Linfa is genuinely smart - as a geneticist at least. Pretty smart at keeping in the shadows as well.
Funnily enough, he didn’t want to study biology:
Science: As a child growing up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, Wang would listen to Mao Zedong’s speeches through a loudspeaker in kindergarten. “I was thinking: ‘My God … how does his voice transfer from Beijing to Shanghai?’” Electrical engineering became his passion.
Inspired to study electrical-engineering by listening to Mao speeches on the public brainwashing system in kindergarten. Thinking My God… not at the content of the speeches (give him a break - he was 5-6 ), but the incredibleness of live broadcasting - the simultaneous oneness of it. Developing that into a passion as a brilliant young student.
I bet Linfa would have been great at electrical-engineering - but that’s not quite how it works in the CCP universe.
He’d been identified as super-smart - his guardians had a field in mind for him deemed a higher priority:
Science: But after getting into the prestigious East China Normal University, Wang was dismayed when the faculty assigned him to study biology.
Linfa: I thought, ‘I don’t like plants, I don’t like animals.’ Going to a renowned university felt like going to heaven but the wrong door of heaven, basically, because I went to a biology department.
The wrong door of heaven. The wrong door to heaven is … hell? Is that what happened. The world, through the agency of Linfa, had a sliding doors moment - where we went through the wrong door?
Science: *Secretly listening to Voice of America, Wang eventually became so proficient at English that he was *chosen for a scholarship to study abroad.
Science is writing this as a puff-piece for Linfa - which is funny - coz i’m reading it as evidence of someone groomed from childhood by the CCP, inserted into UC Davis, then CSIRO Australia, where he invents bat viruses, then Duke Singapore.# Bat Lady & The Dark Knight
Courtesy WIV website, 2005 (now deleted): Cohorts Cahooting. From left: Don’t know, don’t know (i’d like to), Bat Lady, The Dark Knight, Batty Man
ABC interview at the Bat Lab, 2011: Waiting on the secure side is Dr Linfa Wang - leader of the group known as the “bat pack” - and personally known as the bat virus man. He’s been working at the Animal Health Lab for 20 years.
Yeah, Bat Virus Man is pretty good - i still like Dark Knight - now i’m in a quandry. Bat Pack though, that’s great - can i use that?
As published by Formosahut in May 2020, there was a pivotal Bat-Pack GoF experiment in 2008 (same year Bat Virus Man was promoted to Head Scientist at CSIRO) that inserted a SARS S sequence into a bat virus to enable ACE-2 binding.
The experiments were conducted at WIV, led by Bat Lady & The Dark Knight - with Meng Yu, his wife, also employed by CSIRO.
Differences in Receptor Usage: ACE2-binding activity of SL-CoVs was easily acquired by the replacement of a relatively small sequence segment of the S protein from the SARS-CoV S sequence.
Bat Virus Man and Meng Yu (his wife), both employed by CSIRO, were a part of that GoF frontier virology cohort.
Differences in Receptor Usage: This work was jointly funded by .. a special fund from the president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (no. 1009), the Knowledge Innovation Program Key Project (KSCX1-YW-R-07) to Z. Shi (Bat Lady), .. and the Australian Biosecurity CRC for Emerging Infectious Diseases (project 1.026RE) to L.-F. Wang (the Dark Knight)
(Aside: This is how rabbit-holey everything is: CRC, the funding arm for Linfa, was set up in 2002 (so pre-SARS) - one of its supporting members is Consortium for Conservation Medicine - which was one of Daszak’s & Epstein’s first incarnations of EcoHealth. What are they doing on an Australian bio-security org in 2002? CRC: The threats may be natural, accidental, or deliberate (as in bioterrorism). (CRC’s brackets))
As Science notes, the two (Wang-Shi) have co-authored dozens of papers.
They both rose to fame (along with Daszak) for finding the SARS-1 bat virus from the famous Yunan caves.
In fact, it was nothing of the sort - less than 97% - same range as RaTG13 & the Lao sample but typical zoonati - never let facts get in the way of a good zoonosis narrative. As Linfa admits in a different article:
Nature, Feb 26 2020: Even a 99% similarity between the RBDs of the two viruses is not necessarily enough to link them, says Linfa Wang, .. who was part of the team that found the origin* of the SARS virus.*
A neat example of how blithely Nature pedals misinformation - If 99% isn’t definitive, then how does nearly 97% = found the origin of SARS?
In 2006 Linfa won: CSIRO Award for Excellence in Partnership, (SARS Team) (with Bat Lady),
Together they launched a worldwide bat virus hunting movement (with Dazza coming on as PR guy). They were especially attracted to the Yunnan caves but also SE Asia & Africa.
NPR: Daszak says the China bat sampling project has already *racked up quite a number of successes (*to the tune of) 15,000 samples from bats. From these they have already identified …about 50 fall (that) into a category that caused SARS and … COVID-19, including all the building blocks for SARS.
Technically, i doubt Linfa was/is traipsing through the batcaves of SE Asia collecting samples - he doesn’t like plants or animals for a start - Bat Lady does - loves the outdoors. Not Linfa’s cup of tea though. His job starts when the samples get to the lab-cave - that’s where the magic begins.
So our duo are a slight odd couple - but they are old friends - and they do click:
Science: They also like to team up in karaoke bars to sing classic Chinese ballads, says Peter Daszak, a researcher at the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City nonprofit, and a longtime collaborator with Wang and Shi.
Pete: Linfa is an excellent singer and to see him and Shi Zhengli do a duet is very special.
I’m sure it is! I’m wondering if we haven’t just seen a masterful performance.
So how did they meet?
Their relationship, like most things Covid, goes back to SARS. Technically, Anthrax ignited the funding explosion, but SARS provided a new rallying point once it became clear the whole Anthrax bioterrorism attack was literally a(/some) Fort Detrick scientist(s) drumming up business for vaccines.
Science: After WHO declared the epidemic over in July 2003, it put together a mission of eight scientists, including Wang, to investigate the origins of the virus in China.
Cool. Linfa was an original WHO investigator representing CSIRO, Australia. Dominic E. Dwyer (Westmead, Aussie) was also a WHO investigator for SARS - wonder if he was one of the eight?
Science: Wang had a hunch bats could be the source, but the rest of the team was skeptical. At a meeting in Beijing, Wang met the head of WIV, who suggested he collaborate with a scientist at her institute: Shi Zhengli, who was then studying viruses in fish and shrimp.
Linfa: She was the only virologist who believed me and was willing to collaborate with me.
So a legend was born: Bat Lady & the Dark Knight.
In 2005, they published a paper with Daszak, Epstein (EHA) and other scientists from WIV/CSIRO, the original Bat Packers, titled Bats are Natural Reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses - their fame and funding took off from there.
# Wang’s WIV World
Photo credit: The Australian (puff-piece Sep 2022)
We’ve already seen Linfa’s (CSIRO’s) connection to WIV through dozens of papers with Shi-WIV/(+Daszak-EcoHealth) - but does it go deeper? Is that even possible?
Normally it would take weeks of painstaking research to untangle a subject’s network of influence but luckily we can simply refer to Linfa’s CV for the definitive answer.
(2005-): Honorary Professor, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Oh. So apart from the collabs, Linfa is an honorary WIV professor. Not even Daszak, Lipkin, or Honorary Eddie Holmes had that honour. Rarefied-air alert.
Keep scrolling though, to Invited Positions, you find this one:
(2007-present): Chair, Scientific Advisory Board, Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Whoa! Chair of the Advisory Board for WIV! From 2007 to the time of the outbreak. Still doing it.
How the heck was that sitting there in his online CV - but neither I (well i have now) nor anyone else has done a drill-down on this dude? That’s one helluva powerful position in a country of 1.3 billion.
The goal of these investigations is to swim up stream - put names/faces to the them. In Linfa Wang, we’ve got a live one - operating at the interface of Sino/West bio-alliance. Linfa is the interface.
THE Science = Hunter Biden: entitled, addicted to hard drugs, off-the-rails, financially mixed up with the CCP
The question is: Who is THE Science’s Daddy?
Hello Linfa Wang. It’s a modern family situation - with several Daddies - but he’s one of em.
We can safely assume that it was in his capacity as Chairman that he visited WIV in early January 2020. Lot of important stuff to advise about in those pivotal days.
The Feb 1 Teleconference was historic, but the January WIV Advisory Conference - a live event - predates that - it shaped it.
So what advice did Linfa share?
The following is an artistic rendering of what may have transpired …# Inside the Jan 2020 WIV Conference
This is a docu-drama (some real quotes entwined) re-imagining the WIV Jan 2020 Conference. Any resemblance to real persons is an educated fluke.
Linfa Wang, Chairman: To recap our last meeting in October, it’s now clear the virus has escaped into the community. (murmuring, nodding agreement)
This has put us in a precarious position. Before we get started on our response plan, let me first invite Party Committee Secretary Xiao who has a statement to read:
Xiao Gengfu (Secretary of Party Committee): Thank you Wang Chairman:
The National Health Commission unequivocally requires that any tests, clinical data, test results, conclusions related to the epidemic shall not be posted on social media platforms, nor disclosed to any media outlets including government official media, nor shall it be disclosed to partner institutions.
Wang Linfa: So thats’ pretty clear. Thanks Xiao Secretary. For partner institutions you can read EcoHealth, CSIRO, Columbia, Duke, Oxford/Edinburgh/Wellcome, Scripps, Sydney etc - all of them.
If there are things you need to communicate, and there will be, it goes through me. I don’t need to tell you this - it’s a delicate situation - everything is on the line. Everything. The less moving parts on the China-West interface the better. (agreement, nodding)
Now, our agenda here today is to discuss the steps required to deal with this crisis in the short term - with a long term view.
In the short term, the best advice i can give is:
Don’t worry - be happy. (laughter)
First and foremost we’re scientists - we stay calm in a crisis - we find solutions - that’s what we do.
It’s important to remember: we’ve been here before. There’s a roadmap - it will get us out - if we follow it unflinchingly. The first rule is: act normally. For example, we’ll still go out to a restaurant every night - we’ll mix together publicly - we must be seen behaving as if nothing is wrong.
Secondly: Speaking from the coalface of Hendra, then as a WHO investigator for SARS, etc, history teaches us that outbreaks present certain business-related implications that need to be … (Zhengli raises her arm) Yes, Zhengli …
Zhengli: Sorry, is this the right time to be talking about business opportunities? There’s a highly contagious virus on the loose - I’m getting blamed for it on Weibo … it’s …
Linfa: Yes, yes, Zhengli I know.
Zhengli: I don’t think you do know. It’s ok for you - Mr. Invisible in Australia - I already had the Bat Lady nickname - so I’m the one out on a limb here - Now I …
Wang Yanyi (WIV Director): Zhengli - this is not the right time to …
Zhengli: Now I wake up it’s vile abuse for breakfast - death threats, i’ve got …
Wang Yanyi: Zhengli, we …
Zhengli: Have you even seen the hate-mail i’m getting?
Linfa: Yes, I have. It’s abhorrent. We all feel for you and it’s important we do address it - we’ll talk about that this afternoon. For now, know that steps have been taken as of yesterday to filter out the trolls. We’ve got your back.
Zhengli: Sorry, it’s been stressful - sorry.
Linfa: Don’t be. But in answer to your question: yes, now is the right time to discuss financial decisions. That’s how it works in the big-bad-world. If you want a market for novel virus drugs - you need a novel virus. For whatever reason - we’ve got one. This is our silver-lining. If we act in the moment, play our cards right, which is all we have to do, we’re uniquely positioned to add unprecedented capital/influence.
Alignments of this magnitude do not come along every day. Director Wang has some immediate steps:
Director Wang: Zhengli, we need you to file applications to have Remdesivir patented asap - we know it kills the virus in vitro - it may be our antidote - that’s big. Same-time start work on a Remdesivir paper, say it inhibits virus infection efficiently in a human cell line - or something to that effect - we’ll get Nature to feature it.
(paper published in Nature Feb 4) (*
Linfa: There are billions to be made on Remdesivir alone - especially if we can make it the only approved drug. (Zhengli jots it down)
Director Wang: Zhengli, where are we with (Wuhan Institute of) Biological Products on a vaccine?
(WIBP, which shares a complex with WIV, is the research hub of Sinopharm (zero-effectivity against Omicron, pedalled to poor countries), a bio-tech with BC criminal form. WIBP has been named as a key dual-purpose bioweapons/defense facility (China WMD report, PDF p67))
Zhengli: Well, we were testing a promising candidate on bats as you know, when, uhm, the event, uhm, happened, so, very close. The main obstacle is logistically going through the official trials - that could take years to …
Linfa: Don’t worry about that - we can shave a couple of years off, no problem. One year is perfect.
Gong Peng: Perfect? You realize the virus will have spread world-wide by then? It’s a crisis meeting right? When are we going to talk about what immediate steps we can take to stop the spread? It’s still possible to stop this virus.
Linfa: What virus? (nervous laughter)
Here’s the thing. We don’t want to stop it - not yet.
Gong Peng (Deputy Director): (haha) You’re joking right? It will be our heads if this gets out. We can still stop this, it’s ... (Xiao Secretary types something on his laptop.)
Linfa: Thankyou Gong Peng, let me put it this way: you like sport, is that correct?
Gong Peng: Sure, i love it. Everyone knows.
Linfa: Good - think of this as:
The Olympic Games of World Governance
In order to win the Olympics, you need a competition, is that correct?
Gong Peng: Yes, of course.
Linfa: In order for that to happen we need to let it seep into the world first. It’s crucial we hold our nerve. Only when it infects the west do we institute our response. Xiao Secretary will explain.
Xiao Gengfu (Secretary of Party Committee) Everything is ready to go - we have pre-fab quarantine facilities that we can have up and running in a week - the ring-of-steel around Wuhan - the required personnel to secure Hubei is on alert.
Linfa: So let it run. We hold our nerve in the beginning. Then we’ll see who wins in the end.
Gong Peng: But millions of people will die …
Linfa: Millions of old, frail people, yes. It will scythe through that demographic. That’s sad. On the other hand, can you put your hand on your heart - as a scientist - and say that’s not exactly what the world needs right now?
Zhengli: You mean to prevent climate change?
Linfa: Yes, that too. But we’re too old as a society. We’ve got a work-force from a 1 child generation as producers holding up an elderly generation of 4-6 children. How is that sustainable? Either economically, or in terms of resources? The world needs to lose population weight. That’s a cold-hard-fact. (Zhengli raises hand - Linfa hand signals to mean ‘let me finish’)
Yes, there will be collateral damage - but the vast majority of death will be old &/or obese people with co-morbidities - 80% won’t even know they’ve had it. The good will outweigh the bad. I give you my word. Zhengli (Linfa gestures open-palmed towards her):
Zhengli: So how long do we … stay silent?
Linfa: As long as possible. Tedros - WHO - of course - they’ll do everything they can to support us - keep the world open long enough to let the genie well and truly out of the bottle.
Gong Peng: How they gonna do that?
They’ll say it’s not as serious as flu - talk-down the effectiveness of masks - say we’ve been transparent (TS: 19:05) - Ian will help with that, too.
Gong Peng: Everyone knows masks work in the initial stages. How on earth will they sell that?
Linfa: Yeah, it sounds mad to our way of thinking, but the west doesn’t have that mask-culture like we do. Ian thinks it’s possible - in the initial stages at least, long enough. He and WHO will argue there’s no clear evidence that they work - he’s a master at that.
Instead, they will promote lockdowns.
Zhengli: Americans will never accept that. You’ve been in Australia too long.
They will if they’re persuaded it works. Ian will make a video with some Hollywood movie stars to promote lockdowns - he’ll say the world needs to follow our lead (TS: 19:05). But importantly, there will be no mention of masks in the video, coz we still want it to spread.
Zhengli: Which movie stars?
Linfa: It’s the Contagion cast, Kate Winslet will do it - Matt Damon - he’ll star as the lockdown advocate.
Zhengli: Oh, I like Matt Damon!
Wang Director: That’s a smart move. Introduce the lockdown culture globally - then we hold the vaccine key up our sleeve as the only way out.
Linfa Wang: End result: Institution of the One Health bio-state globally. Gold Medal for the CCP system of government. Sun Tzu will be smiling down on us.
# The Afternoon Session
Linfa: To begin, I want to address the issues raised by Zhengli this morning regarding the online trolls. As mentioned, steps have been taken - Zhengli - if you still receive any negative messages then please report them to The Party via Gong Peng Secretary - he will follow up. In the meantime, it’s important you do not respond.
Zhengli: How can I defend … ?
Linfa: That’s our job. Do not respond. That goes for all of us. This is a strict order from above - I fully agree with it.
Zheng-li: Ok, so we can put a stop to it here - what happens when it hits the west? You can’t just censor information there …
Linfa: Yes … and No. There are things we can do. And this is what i want to address.
There’s Ian Lipkin, as we know, Eddie, Peter & Ralph of course, most of WHO - then there’s the people they know - the higher-ups, Fauci, Collins, Farrar, Drosten, Tedros - Nature, Lancet, Science etc… They’re all on board.
Then there’s who they know.
(Wang Director raises hand) Yes, Wang Director:
Wang Director: It’s important to see this in the overall context of our United Front Work Department program. Linfa of course was one of our model graduates in 1986 when he was placed at UC Davis, then CSIRO Australia. Today there are thousands of Chinese patriots seeding academic institutions globally - influencing the influencers This is something we have been patiently preparing for - Linfa is a pioneering hero in this Long March. (clapping)
Linfa: Thanks Wang Director. I’m just a boring scientist. The point is, as you say, the thousands who’ve befriended networks - the goal is to connect the networks globally. The time to activate has arrived. This is what we’ve been waiting for. We’re not going into this on a wing-and-a-prayer - we have capability
Wang Director: Let’s not forget Biden - we have Hunter.
Zhengli: But Trump’s in charge - not Biden - he’s …
Linfa: For now. Let’s see how he goes with SARS-WIV-8 running rampant.
*The fact is, this is our chance to demonstrate - to the world - that our system of government is *the best model for global adoption in the new era.
Zhengli: All these foreigners we’re relying on - I mean, I like Peter & Ian, but they’re egotists - In …
Linfa: Which is why flattery works so well on westerners!
Zhengli: Haha! But in the heat of battle, can we trust them - their temperament?
Linfa: Short answer: no. But we can trust them to protect their self-interests. They’re all in this as deep as we are. Deeper. They stand to gain enormously if we’re successful - lose badly if we’re not - worse than us, potentially - at least we have stable government backing us. (audible assent from others)
Zhengli: So what are they going to do to help in a practical sense exactly? We need some public show of support, a statement.
Linfa: Good question. Let’s take a 10-minute break - think about your suggestions - we’ll discuss practicalities when we get back.