Origin Tracing: How hard can it be?

As a WHO Expert Investigator, Peter Daszak would have us believe that tracing the origin of Covid is “complex...painstakingly difficult … not exciting...pretty boring”. He emphasizes that anyone not “trained in how to decipher genetic codes” should stay out of it.

WHO (Tedros and Mike Ryan) and the CCP (Xi Jinping et al) wrote the song-sheet Daszak and co. are singing from. WHO’s website tells us the origin is “a riddle that can take years to solve”.

Fellow WHO investigator, Dominic Dwyer from Australia, chimes in for the chorus:
“There is every chance we won’t ever find patient zero or bat zero - but hopefully we can learn better how to react when another pandemic comes along.”

Oh, so the investigation’s not about finding the origin - it’s about a “better way to react” - which just happens to be the CCP’s playbook.

Tedros: “As I have said repeatedly since my return from Beijing, the Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken ...very impressive, and beyond words. So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries. China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response. It’s not an exaggeration."

W. Ian Lipkin (WHO rep, author of “the definitive paper ruling out the possibility of a lab leak”): “We should take a page out of what China did.”

Daszak: China's response "is unprecedented...incredibly efficient...and open and transparent.

So what's the big lesson in all this for the public?

Daszak: "The big lesson to learn from this one is: we have to spend the money to properly prepare now. We estimate a nine to one return on investment, at least."

The messaging from our publicly funded WHO operatives is:

1. Don’t expect answers to the origin question
2. Anyone who asks for a lab-origin to be investigated is a "conspiracy theorist"
3. China’s totalitarian system is the best model going forward
4. Get ready for the next one
5. Give me more money!

But what if tracing the origin is not as hard as WHO’s operatives are making out? What if it’s just a smoke screen for concealing the origin?

Arthur Koestler, an intellectual and adventurer, makes a great point in his 1964 book The Act of Creation. To paraphrase, ‘The idea that science is a boring pursuit that is impenetrable to the layman is a myth created by scientists to protect their own patch. By surrounding science in this fog of obscurity, scientists seek to keep themselves at arm’s length from the public, avoid accountability, and reinforce their own status.’ (Chapter XI, Science and Emotion) On the contrary, Koestler argues science is both exciting and understandable.

Using that as a starting point, let’s take a look at what’s involved in tracing the origin - it’s not so complicated - in fact my guess is the CCP already knows. Dr. Daniel Lucey tends to agree:
"They (CCP) have the capability, they have the resources and they have the motivation, so of course they've done the studies in animals and in humans. I think it's findable and I think it's quite possible it's already been found. But then the question arises, why hasn't it been disclosed?"

Firstly, finding the origin is not theoretical astrophysics. It doesn’t involve complex mathematical equations to determine unverifiable outcomes. It’s straightforward detective work dealing with real world details.

Here’s what we know:
1. The closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 is RaTG13 at 96.2%. (Edit: since the time of writing a new candidate, BANAL-52 at 96.8% has emerged in Laos - an area from which WIV/EHA scientists collected viruses) (Remember, the virus discovered by Daszak and Batwoman (WIV-1) that was heralded as the origin for SARS-1 was only fractionally higher at “nearly 97%”)
2. These related viruses only exists in a few locations in the world - the Mojiang mine/cave in Yunan - and WIV. (note: none of them are known to be contagious to humans without significant alterations)
3. Therefore, SARS-Cov-2 originated from Mojiang in Yunan, (or northern Laos), or WIV.

Straight away that narrows the search down to a few key sites. We're getting close already.

Mojiang Mine Natural Origin Theory

Someone in the vicinity of the mine was infected through an interaction with an infected bat. (No bats (or pangolin) were sold at Nan Hua Seafood Market)

(Edit: In Sep 21 RaTG13 (96.3%) was beaten by BANAL-52 (96.8%) found in Laos. But it's the same logic - still has to travel 1000 kilometres-plus to get to Wuhan - and nowhere else.)

The virus was either ready to roll or may have undergone an undetected period of evolution within the human host.

That person could then have travelled to Wuhan thereby causing the outbreak.

Evidence

RaTG13, the closest relative, was collected from there.

How to investigate

1. Blitz test bats in the Mojiang mine area (which is the exact same area that was reportedly home to the bats that caused SARS-1). You were doing that before Covid so just redouble your efforts.

2. Test those humans living in the immediate vicinity of the mine. Or anyone who has been in the mine collecting viruses for research purposes.
3. Contract trace the first known cases in Wuhan to establish whether they had travelled from the Mojiang area or had close contact with someone from there.

Degree of difficulty:

None of that is complicated. It’s almost certainly been done already.

Problem with Scenario 1:

1. Given we can be pretty sure Chinese authorities would have already done the above testing, it’s a reasonable assumption we would know the results if it turned up anything that cleared WIV.

2. Why was there no outbreak at the site of the infection? It’s possible that the infected humans living in the immediate vicinity of the cave may have already developed an immunity (which could be easily checked through an antibody test) but there still should have been some sign of contagion in more populous areas of Yunnan.

Conclusion

It's unlikely, but it's not impossible. If 'patient-zero' travelled directly from the bat cave to Wuhan, 1000km away, probably by car, thereby not infecting anyone else, then stayed in Wuhan for two weeks or more ... it's theoretically doable.

On the positive side, being a small probability field, it's easy to prove one way or the other: trace the shit out of it.
If you're a totalitarian regime that's big on surveillance, you're tooled up - it's not like you're gonna have privacy rights qualms.
The first reported case is mid-Nov. We know it's highly contagious - the 'lying dormant for years' theory doesn't make sense - this virus hit the ground running. There'd have been a period where people wouldn't have twigged - it's similar to the flu - so you'd expect that - but it's explosive by nature - so maybe a month before that?
So go ahead - use your high-tech-totalitarianism to trace it back to those first cases - let's say it is early/mid-October (though i'd bow to the CCP's intel on that)- now you've got to the origin window within a week or two.

Cross reference that with those locals in close contact with bats in the Yunnan area (including WIV/EcoHealth bat collectors) who travelled to Wuhan in that timeframe - bingo - you've got your origin. Case solved.

Problem with Scenario 1:

1. Given we can be pretty sure Chinese authorities would have already done the above testing, it’s a reasonable assumption we would know the results if it turned up anything that cleared WIV.

This is an excellent point and one I hadn't considered. Indeed, if they had the evidence that absolved them from all responsibility, they would share it.

2. Why was there no outbreak at the site of the infection? It’s possible that the infected humans living in the immediate vicinity of the cave may have already developed an immunity (which could be easily checked through an antibody test) but there still should have been some sign of contagion in more populous areas of Yunnan.

Another excellent point. Again, if locals had developed this immunity, that would be easy to prove and it would also be shared.

Conclusion

It's unlikely, but it's not impossible. If there was a 'patient-zero' and that person travelled directly from the cave site to Wuhan, 1000km away, probably by car, thereby not infecting anyone else, then stayed in Wuhan for two weeks or more ... it's theoretically doable.
On the positive side, being a small probability field, it's easy to prove one way or the other: trace the shit out of it.
If you're a totalitarian regime that's big on surveillance, you're tooled up - it's not like you're gonna have privacy rights qualms.
The first reported case is mid-Nov. We know it's highly contagious - the 'lying dormant for years' theory doesn't make sense - this virus hit the ground running. There'd have been a period where people wouldn't have twigged - it's similar to the flu - so you'd expect that - but it's explosive by nature - so maybe a month before that?
So go ahead - use your high-tech-totalitarianism to trace it back to those first cases - let's say it is mid-October (though i'd bow to the CCP's intel on that)- now you've got to the origin window within a week or two.

Cross reference that with those in close contact with bats at the Mojiang mine who travelled to Wuhan in that timeframe - bingo - you've got your origin. Case solved

Of course, we'll never see this logic used in any reporting.

One thing that has come up in research - the 'conspiracy theorists' use measured language to amass details backed by references - the top experts favour abuse and/or meaningless generalizations.

The conspiracy theorists emphasize that investigating a lab origin is not a binary thing - investigate everything - the world's leading experts emphasize that it is a binary thing: we're gonna investigate this - therefore we can't investigate that - "using logic and reason".

Lab Origin:

Someone working for an Wuhan lab became infected with a version of RaTG13 then spread it into the community.

Evidence so far:

An unprecedentedly super-contagious coronavirus breaks out in Wuhan - right next door to a lab that was engineering super-contagious coronnaviruses.
Exhibition of weird name-calling behaviour from the world’s top experts when questioned as to whether it may have escaped from a lab.
RaTG13 (aka BtCoV/4991), collected from the Mojiang mine, was held at WIV, as were samples from the infected lungs of miners from the 2012 Mojiang incident.
As were another 15 000 samples of bat viruses* - and a veritable zoo of caged passaging animals and/or virus samples from bats to macaques to mice to snakes to pangolin. (* Edit: In late 2021 a Laos bat became new closest match at 96.7% - WIV/EcoHealth - through PREDICT - collected samples from Laos over several years)
WIV/EcoHealth scientists declared that some of the viruses collected were infectious to humans.
WIV/EcoHealth ‘passaged’ candidate viruses through animals and engineered/recombined viruses through Gain-of-Function experiments to make them more contagious.
WIV/EcoAlliance’s handling of bats without PPE, according to photos below (courtesy https://twitter.com/BillyBostickson), looks bloody dangerous.
Lab accidents happen - a lot. SARS-1 has escaped six times. Covid wouldn't even be the first pandemic caused by scientists. This 2010 paper concludes that the origin of the H1N1 pandemic was a lab in China due to an "accidental release of a frozen laboratory strain into the general population" in 1971.
Bio-security at the BSL-4 WIV was lax - it was worse at BSL-2 labs. Even the Global Times reported the “discharge of laboratory materials into the sewer after experiments without a specific biological disposal mechanism” and “chronic loopholes at laboratories”.
US intelligence reports saying, "researchers at the lab fell ill in the fall of 2019 with symptoms consistent with COVID-19".

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Contact trace employees at WIV and the less secure Wuhan CDC, a BSL-2 lab in Wuhan. And workers at any other labs playing around with coronaviruses in Wuhan. If they don’t want to reveal their contacts then put them in a Re-Education Facility and threaten their families - like you normally do - i'm sure you'll get it out of them.
Cross check with first reported cases.
Locate/interview WIV lab-worker, Huang Yanling, who disappeared suddenly.
Investigate allegations by Chinese and US experts of lax security at both facilities.
Access WIV’s database. According to international protocols, work on novel viruses must be published. Why did it go offline with unpublished material? Is that material relevant to the investigation?
Interview all western scientist who were outspoken in denying a lab-leak was possible (Lipkin, Daszak, Baric, Holmes, Andersen, Rambaut, Garry, Farrar, Fauci, Koopmans, Drosten, Ryan, Tedros, Embarek, Nature/Lancet editors etc). Make all their Covid-related correspondence public. Don't need to rely on China to do that. Give them lie detectors - offer immunity to the first one who spills the beans.

Degree of Difficulty:

Low. It's straightforward detective work. For sure the China-part has already been done by CCP officials.

(Aside: Regarding point 5, as @Billy Bostickson reported, WIV said it’s Database went offline due to "cyber-security issues", which might sound like an excuse, but it makes sense that outside intelligence agencies would have tried to hack it. Did they succeed?)

Conclusion

The weight of circumstantial evidence points to a lab-origin:

the outbreak happened in Wuhan
there were labs in Wuhan manipulating closely related coronaviruses
biosecurity was lax at these labs
lab-accidents are common

This adds up to the simplest, most logical explanation. Which 'warrants further investigation'.

William of Occam, the 14th century philosopher who championed the ‘keep it simple’ technique of analysis to counter the out-in-the-weeds logic of his contemporaries, will be turning in his grave every time an expert tells us how “painstakingly complicated” it is.
Unsurprisingly, Occam was vilified by the experts of his time.

WHO Investigator Peter Daszak, expert of our time, loves banging on about "evolutionary hotspots", while another WIV/Daszak GoF collaborator, Ralph Baric says the “constant mixing of different viruses creates a great opportunity for dangerous new pathogens to emerge.” What does the computer model say (and William of Occam) when you key in "the constant mixing" going on with WIV’s biological concoction?

Ingredients:

deadly viruses
caged lab animals - (tortured btw)
entitled scientists recombining/evolving/engineering more deadly viruses

Method:
Add human error and stir. Allow to simmer for decades until it explodes.

Serving suggestion:
Deny you cooked it.

Here’s a good question to open the topic:
How did SARS-1 originate?
Ans: Bats infected civets which infected humans at a wet market, right?

Wrong. There’s no evidence for civets being the intermediate host. It’s a made-up narrative thing - which makes me question the whole origin of SARS-1 - but i’m not going down that rabbit hole!

Bat Lady rose to prominence through her studies on SARS-1. She was convinced that civets had nothing to do with it. Here is her evidence from a 2006 paper:

"During the 2002–2003 outbreaks, none of the animal traders surveyed in the markets, who supposedly had very close contact with live civets, displayed SARS symptoms.
These observations seem to indicate that >1 other animal species may play a role in transmission of SARS-CoV to humans.

Most, if not all, civets traded in the markets are not truly wildlife animals; rather, they are farmed animals...No significant level of SARS-CoV antibody was detected in any of the 75 samples taken from 6 farms in 3 provinces.

Similar results were obtained in wild-trapped civets in Hong Kong; none of the 21 wild civets sampled had positive antibody or PCR results for SARS-CoV.

The lack of widespread infection in wild or farmed palm civets makes them unlikely to have been the natural reservoir host."

Bat Lady's conclusion was that civets at the market (some of which did test positive) were more likely to have become infected by humans rather than the other way around.

In 2013, a WIV/EcoHealth Alliance collaboration announced they had:

“...uncovered genome sequences of a new virus closely related to SARS (which) suggests that SARS may have originated from one of these viruses, precluding civets from playing a part in the transmission process."
(note: WIV wasn't called WIV in 2013, but involved much the same personnel.)

The paper states:
“Our results provide the strongest evidence to date ...that intermediate hosts may not be necessary for direct human infection by some bat SL-CoVs.”

Even Ian Lipkin, who to this day talks about civets being an intermediate host for SARS as if it’s an incontrovertible fact (as he segues into his pangolin theory) admitted back in 2013 that:
“(I)t does provide compelling evidence that an intermediate host was not necessary.”

Finally in 2017, the same researchers proclaimed they'd found all "the building blocks" in a cave in Yunnan - 1000 km away from Guangdong. Meaning they could theoretically piece together SARS from different bats. But still no explanation of how that theoretical bat traveled 1000km, without infecting anyone on the way, and no demonstration of its theoretical virus being able to jump from bats to humans (or civets).

So how the hell did we get to the situation where the entire world believes civets were the culprits?

The answer appears to lie in the self-perpetuating industry that is the field of scientists studying zoonotic transfer. Let’s take a closer look at this tight-knitted clique.

We touched on this before but it’s worth another look. According to this 2011 Science article:

“The anthrax mailings that petrified Americans soon after 9/11... led to an explosion of biodefense research in the United States. Nearly $19 billion has been spent—a huge increase over previous levels…(T)he number of planned or operating high-security biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs in the United States has climbed from four to 12.”

In a climate of (false, as it turned out) fear of a bio-terrorism attack after 911 and the anthrax incident, Biosecurity was born as a mega-industry.

But as Dan pointed out, ask anyone: ‘What was the origin of the anthrax incident?’ (thereby the origin of the biolab explosion and Lipkin/Daszak’s celebrity ascendency?)

Most people won’t know. I didn’t - had to look it up - i’m still not sure. The FBI website says:

“In August 2008 (seven years after the attack), Department of Justice and FBI officials announced a breakthrough in the case and released documents and information showing that charges were about to be brought against Dr. Bruce Ivins, who took his own life before those charges could be filed.”
(Aside: Robert Mueller was the then-head of the FBI. The investigation appears bungling.)

Oh, so who the fuck was this Dr. Bruce E. Ivins? Turns out he was a microbiologist expert working in a lab at Fort Detrick.

“Dr. Ivins, who had helped develop an anthrax vaccine to protect American troops (a rabbit-warren in itself - lots of long-term side-effects complaints from soldiers), had spent his career waiting for a biological attack.”

That’s awfully similar to the non-stop fear-mongering by Daszak/Lipkin who can’t stop crowing that they’d been “warning us for years” and "this may not be the big pandemic that we’re all most worried about." (so give us more money)

“Suddenly, at 55, (Ivins) was advising the F.B.I. and regaling friends with scary descriptions of the deadly powder, his expertise in demand.”

(Imagine if he’d had Facebook and Twitter, Dr. Peter Daszak’s favourite platform.)

An analysis of the strain narrowed it down to ... Fort Detrick. Ruling out the original suspects - Al Queda and/or Saddam Hussein. As such:

“An alternative theory of a possible perpetrator took shape: the bioevangelist. An American obsessed by the bioterrorism threat — maybe a biodefense insider who might gain in pay or prestige from an attack — had decided to alert the nation.”

Let’s unpack that:

The anthrax incident was a lab-escape event.
The three chief FBI suspects were US scientists.
This lab-escape precipitated an “explosion in biodefense labs” and the rise of today’s celebrity scientists.
Those same highly-paid scientists are angrily shutting down calls for an investigation into a lab-escape possibility for Covid.

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Microbiologist, Dr. Bruce E. Ivins

“In August 2008 (seven years after the attack), Department of Justice and FBI officials announced a breakthrough in the case and released documents and information showing that charges were about to be brought against Dr. Bruce Ivins, who took his own life before those charges could be filed.”
(Aside: Robert Mueller was the then-head of the FBI.)

I wasn't aware that they'd ID'd anybody. As I recall, the findings that the anthrax came from Fort Detrick fairly early on. (If memory serves, which it sometimes doesn't.) I remember thinking how odd it was that that finding didn't get more attention on the media. It was just a non story. But the anthrax itself was a huge story, very sensational.

Then the findings that it was produced by our own military? Not a blip.

It's a crazy story - another tv series in itself! I can't believe there hasn't been one already. The guy was advising the FBI - for many years. Before Ivins, they had another suspect - also a scientist. It's still not conclusive it was Ivins - but seems likely it leaked via a science expert working at Fort Detrick - who was motivated by some twisted idea of the 'common-good'.

Apparently the note was one of the give-aways - it does read like it was made up.

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Once upon a time, a clique of Gain-of-Function bio-evangelists rode the 911 money-wave to wealth and fame. Along the way they developed close ties with Chinese scientists and government officials. When Covid happened they walked the red carpet onto the platform of mainstream media (from Fox to CNN) and science journals. They presented themselves as our scientific heroes riding to our rescue in a time of crisis as they (coincidentally?) promoted the CCP's version of events.

In the process of tracing the origins of Covid, the proximity of our celebrity scientists to ground zero 'warrants further investigation'.

W. Ian Lipkin:

Founding Director of Northeast Biodefense Center in 2003. Granted $46 mil in 2009 alone for “pursuing multifaceted research activities” to fight “emerging infectious diseases and terrorism” with special emphasis on "Bacillus anthracis and ... Zoonotic diseases ...due to expertise of NBC members.”
Member of WHO Collaborating Center.
Loves the limelight. Featured advisor for the movie Contagion, which he never shuts up about. Reveals one of the characters, who saves the world by breaking the rules, is based on him. Conducted media blitz praising the CCP’s system of government (16:17) after returning from China in Feb 2020.
Founding Director of the Beijing Center for Infectious Diseases. Visiting professor at Beijing University. Joint lab at Sun Yat-sen University, Beijing (CCP funded). Splits time between Columbia Uni and China.
Relentlessly touts a medical data-centralization operation called GIDEON, whose funding, according to Lipkin, comes from the CCP. (13:43)
“Close friends” with Chinese government ministers and officials. (18:10)
Received two prestigious awards from the CCP/PLA, including one presented by Li Kechiang in person.
Advocate of Gain-of-Function experiments.
Co-author of Proximal Origins, “the definitive paper ruling out the possibility of a lab leak”, thereby shielding WIV from growing scrutiny. Blamed pangolin from a Wuhan market.
Celebrity virus/environmental evangelist (32:30). Has played up threat of zoonotic crossover all his career - says this is not ‘the big one’.

Peter Daszak:

President of EcoHealth Alliance, which has received $99.8 million in US taxpayers’ money, mostly from US defense, homeland security and intelligence agencies. David R. Franz, an EcoHealth Alliance advisor, was in the thick of the FBI’s anthrax investigation. All three suspect scientists in the anthrax mailings worked under Franz at USAMRIID (US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases).
Estimated salary of US$400 000 per year from EcoHealth alone. Then add on the generous bat/WIV/research gigs - 91% paid by you. The thing about Big-Not-for-Profit.com is the the Profit is gobbled up in wages by the gobblers.
Long term collaborator with Lipkin and WIV scientists - specializes in coronavirus Gain-of-Function research. If you deduce that Covid escaped from an Wuhan lab, it follows that Daszak probably worked on that virus pre-escape.
Limelight addict. All over the media like a rash since the outbreak of Covid. Tireless Twitter activist.
WHO/CCP approved investigator of Covid origins. Claims that the origin "starts to point towards the border" (outside China) and they have "closed the lid" on a lab accident.
Praises CCP as "open and transparent" .
Celebrity virus/environmental evangelist. Has been playing up the threat of zoonotic crossover events - still says this is not the big one.

In a nutshell: Virus Hunter and Batman (and Batwoman) are financially invested in:

The rise of the CPP
The limelight
Virus events - especially Zoonotic ones

They are all sciences in a sense, but let’s check out the science science one - their field of expertise. Is the whole fear-dome of zoonotic transfer events a real threat? Or just a beat-up by celebrity scientists with financial interests?

There are three things i care about: - the right to privacy - freedom - the environment. Our celebrity scientists hijacked the last one to get people to give up the first two. I’ve got a great craw - but that was never gonna make it all the way down.

Here’s the argument oft repeated by celebrity scientists (espoused here by Virus Hunter):

32:30 "I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - deforestation - population migration - international travel - climate change."

Apart from climate change - all of those have been going on since the Stone Age. (edit: including climate change)
Ok, I’ve got a theory - if you flip the script with Lipkin/Daszak speak - you end up closer to the truth. In the spirit of scientific experimentation, let's give it a spin:

32:30 I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - scientists collecting viruses - scientists meddling with viruses - scientists having accidents with viruses.

"Why do I think things could get worse? If we don’t change the ways in which we interact with our natural environment, we’re going to have this problem continuously."

Why do I think things could get worse? If we don’t change the ways in which scientists interact with our natural environment, we’re going to have this problem continuously.

"We have international trade which means that something that starts in central Africa rapidly spreads around the world - just like this did, right?"
(Ian, memo-to-self, Covid didn’t start in central Africa, right? How about this:)

We have international trade which means that something that starts in Wuhan rapidly spreads around the world - just like this did, right?

"We have people who can no longer 34:16 find protein so they wind up eating wild animals and becoming infected by those animals."

We have scientists who can no longer 34:16 find funding so they wind up trapping wild animals and becoming infected by those animals.

"We have very wealthy people who like to keep exotic pets, which can infect animals as well - so we are a perfect storm for this - we need to change the way we interact with our natural environment." 34:39

We have very wealthy scientists who like to experiment on exotic lab animals, which can infect lab workers as well - so we are a perfect storm for this - we need to change the way scientists interact with our natural environment. 34:39

32:30 "I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - deforestation - population migration - international travel - climate change."

Apart from climate change - all of those have been going on since the Stone Age. Ok, I’ve got a theory - if you flip the script with Lipkin/Daszak speak - you end up closer to the truth. In the spirit of scientific experimentation, let's give it a spin:

32:30 I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - scientists collecting viruses - scientists meddling with viruses - scientists having accidents with viruses.

This is your main thesis which I agree with. And I would argue the climate change as well has been going on since the beginning of the planet. We're just in a stage that is being enhanced by human activity.

And the arguments about deforestation and migration? That's laughable.

And the arguments about deforestation and migration? That's laughable.

Yes, they talk about migration/refugees like it only started yesterday. I wonder how Moses got on battling all the coronaviruses.

Iraq War 2 caused mass migration. It resulted in a lot of people suffering long term side-effects from scientists using troops as guinea pigs for their anthrax vaccine - but no coronaviruses that i'm aware of.

How about all the birds migrating from continent to continent every year? Did that just start up recently as well?

Pollution and/or destruction of the environment is bad. It’s bad for the planet, it’s bad for economies.

But it doesn’t cause super-contagious expialadocious coronaviruses.

If anything, environmental destruction should be great for reducing risk.

Here’s the argument again, this time by Daszak et al:

“Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of wild species have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people.”

Jeff Tollefson reiterates, proudly presented by Nature:

“This phenomenon (Covid) is likely to be the direct result of increased contact between humans, wildlife and livestock, as people move into undeveloped areas. These interactions happen more frequently on the frontier of human expansion because of changes to the natural landscape and increased encounters with animals.”

Putting aside that the evidence suggests the outbreak happened in Wuhan, not in some remote forest, the above theory, at first sight, sounds vaguely plausible. But let’s think about it logically for a minute.

Thought image a:
An island of natural habitat being encroached upon by deforestation for development.

Thought image b:
That same island shrunk to a quarter the size by “rampant deforestation”.

Mathematics will tell you that deforestation decreases the overall interface circumference of human-animal interaction.

As with migration, “rampant deforestation” is not something that started a few years ago. People talk about so many ‘football fields’ of rainforest being cleared in the Amazon every day - i agree - very bad - but take a drive across America or along the east coast of Australia and see how many football fields of forest have been cleared for farming and buildings. Why didn’t that cause a rash of coronavirus pandemics?

The thing is, when you bulldoze a habitat for a cattle farm, a mine, or a shopping mall, whatever, the native animals and birds don’t hang around riding the escalators and infecting the shoppers. Most of the animals die. Some lucky ones retreat back to the remaining habitat, where they compete for dwindling resources - causing further death.

Let’s take pangolin for example. Ian Lipkin, Hlomes, Andersen et al told us that Covid was caused by bats infecting pangolin which infected humans. Pangolin are solitary creatures which are already an endangered species. Bulldozing their habitat is not going to increase bat or human interaction with pangolin in the wild. It will dramatically decrease it.

So what does that leave us with? Top scientists, enabled by mainstream media platforms, cynically playing on people's concerns about environmental destruction to deflect attention from their own reckless, cruel experiments on animals - experiments designed to manufacture more contagious viruses - just like SARS-CoV2.

The "'perfect storm'" was brewing in Daszak's lab environment - not the natural one.

Our erstwhile experts love pumping up the fear factor. It’s a simple equation: Fear2 = Love of Money3. Worked spectacularly with the 911 anthrax lab-escape - now look what we’ve got - Covid-19 - the fear-monger’s wet-dream.

In the throes of manifesting that wet dream our heroes are still not satiated. They dream of more perversions... bigger ones: "This pandemic has been very severe” Mike Ryan huffs, reaches for the tissue box - “But this is not necessarily the big one."

Back in the real world for a minute, how likely are zoonotic crossover events, really?

Growing up in a country town, with a father who liked hunting-shooting-fishing, i did a lot of those. We’d go on 10-day camping trips up the Lachlan River. Shoot pigs (feral pests), kangaroos (dog meat - human food if we didn’t get anything better), ducks (human food), water rats (for the fur). That’s a full on viral hotspot existence including bush meat literally cooked at the coal-face.
Then came home to 30 backyard show-chooks and racing pigeons (with attendant rats and mice and bats) - and cleaning the shit out of those sheds without a mask. I fucking hated that job - breathing in shit-dust...

But don’t remember being plagued by deadly coronaviruses.

I’d never heard of them until SARS-1. Now they’re everywhere supposedly.

These days, i still live in the countryside, go fishing, camping - got backyard chooks, wild animals, bats galore - so a lifetime of continuous hotspot inhabitation. Should that be banned now?

Despite the talk of bulldozers, cattle-farms, and mining causing Covid, according to Daszak et al’s actual theory - it’s people leading my kind of lifestyle who are committing the highest risk behaviour.

Interestingly, so are those living indigenous lifestyles. Take my Bunun neighbour A-de for example - our shared farming/hunting experiences is kinda how we clicked. He’s got a living larder of farm animals at his house - goes hunting for wild pig and goats. Then get this - traps/eats civets! I also trapped them! (released far away) because they raid chicken sheds - for the eggs mostly but also chickens - daily if you don’t trap them. Never saw A-de wear a mask while doing any of the above. How high risk is that?! Quickly ban it now - for the sake of humanity!

What Daszak et al are actually promoting is a ‘War on Indigenous Lifestyle’. You won’t hear them say that - but that’s what it amounts to.

His solution:

"A modern, well run factory farm ...usually (has) better biosecurity, as people don’t want to lose all their animals – and income."

No farmer wants to lose all their animals - and income - i would have thought - or you mean their income doesn’t matter - just that of the subset of bosses of modern, well run factory farms, paying good money for biosecurity experts, like yourself?

Daszak laments:
“What you’ve got now is a lot of amateur farmers, who have converted old properties that are pretty unsecure from a disease point of view.”

Ok, so it’s also a War on Hippies as well. A War on Alternative Lifestyles.

So what’s left in Daszak’s ideal world of biosecurity when you cancel indigenous and alternative lifestyles? Apart from massive funding for biosecurity experts?

Since you've made me aware of this guy Daszak, I see him everywhere. He's constantly in the news, on TV, on podcasts. Shit, I saw him on Netflix just yesterday. Why is he spending all his time selling his theories?

And your points are valid. These experts speak as if people just started interacting with wild animals in the past couple of decades, which is absurd. If anything, we're interacting less with wildlife, not more.

Since you've made me aware of this guy Daszak, I see him everywhere. He's constantly in the news, on TV, on podcasts. Shit, I saw him on Netflix just yesterday. Why is he spending all his time selling his theories?

And your points are valid. These experts speak as if people just started interacting with wild animals in the past couple of decades, which is absurd. If anything, we're interacting less with wildlife, not more.

He's a salesman with eye-popping conflicts of interest - appeasing China - supported by all major media platforms.

'Absurd' is the word. It's flat-out Covid Misinformation - designed to get more money.

Daszak’s favourite claim - edit - favourite of course is ‘whoever disagrees with me is a conspiracy theorist’ - second favourite is:
“We can safely estimate that between one and seven million people are infected with bat coronaviruses each year.” (in South East Asia alone)

People are infected, so the story goes, “on a daily basis.. by undiscovered viruses in wildlife in emerging disease hotspots.”

“Any one of these could be the next ‘Disease X’ – potentially even more disruptive and lethal than COVID-19.”

Indeed. 7mil divided by 365 = 19 178 potential Disease X’s every day!

The Message is:

Be afraid. Zoonotic crossover events are lurking/happening around every human interaction with animals - from bats to backyard chickens - was always ready to explode - which we warned you about - btw.

“But we’re all to blame – we talked about pandemics professionally, but we should have shouted louder. Some people did, but they were called scaremongerers, accused of hyping it up. Look at where we are now."

Don’t be too hard on yourself Pete - you shouted long n loud from the world’s loudest platforms. You totally out-shouted the other voices (Prof Ebright) warning that your behaviour was bound to unleash a pandemic. You did your absolute best. When the history of Covid is written - no-one can take that away from you.

On the upside, “where you are now” is a rich getting richer pivotee-to-China WHO celebrity scientist - which is not a bad gig going forward considering...

“A pandemic such as this one isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy.”

The scariest thing is how confident you are that people won't find out the truth.

Therefore (a): Any one of those 20k crossover events per day caused Covid.

Therefore (b): Shut up.

Therefore (c)
“The big lesson to learn from this one is: we have to spend the money to properly prepare now.”

Give us “one or two billion dollars” to transition the world to a 'new-normal-lockdown-compliant-get-your-6-monthly-jab-surveillance mentality.'

That’s just the ‘free-world’ entry-level version. Hands up any politicians that would like to wield that kind of data/authority over the masses…?

“We estimate a nine to one return on investment, at least...and that's without including the cost of Covid.”

That's a 900% return for investors into Daszak/WIV Inc! Sounds tempting.

“The problem is that it's hard (for EcoHealth/WIV) to convince people to fund a big project that would cost one or two billion dollars when these truly global pandemics are not common.” (super-rare actually - we’ll get there soon)

“I worry that we’re not going to change.”

Don’t worry! It’s changing. You changed the world Pete! How many of us can say that?

So how did our intrepid bat hunters arrive at that ‘7 mil zoonotic-crossover events per year’ figure that all their arguments are based on?

“In October 2015, we collected serum samples from 218 residents in four villages in Jinning County, Yunnan province, China.
“As a control, we also collected 240 serum samples from random blood donors in 2015 in Wuhan, Hubei Province more than 1000 km away from Jinning (Fig. 1A) and where inhabitants have a much lower likelihood of contact with bats due to its urban setting.” (Lol - Daszak was so sure an outbreak wouldn’t occur in Wuhan that he used it as a control group.)

From that ‘experiment’, no people in Wuhan tested positive (according to their arbitrary cut-off threshold) but six people supposedly tested positive to bat virus antibodies - harmless ones.

“Importantly, 20 (9.1%) participants witnessed bats flying close to their houses”. (Whoopee-doo)

Here’s the interesting thing - the six samples deemed ‘positive’ according to the cut-off line, only reacted with the recombined WIV viruses from “the receptor binding domains (RBD) of the spike protein (S) from SARS-CoV, bat SARSr-CoVs Rp3, WIV1, and SHC014”.

Biotech expert Yuri Deigin took a look at their methodology - he thinks it’s suss - but whatever, let’s say it’s true - there were 6 positives - not that surprising since the ingredients for the WIV viruses were collected from the same area.

The difference is, according to EcoHealth/WIV’s report, none of them felt sick or remembered being sick from the natural virus - nor did they spread it to others. Compared to WIV's recombined GoF viruses which are designed to make people sick and spread to others.

Even Batwoman admits "the majority of bat viruses are harmless". The only extant known bat viruses in the world today that aren’t harmless, are the ones concocted at WIV. And Covid.

Buried in the report was the admission that:

(Zoonotic) spillover is a relatively rare event….(T)o date, no evidence of direct transmission of SARSr-CoVs from bats to people has been reported.”
WIV/EcoHealth then got funding to conduct a second, bigger study in which “0.6% tested positive for bat coronaviruses.” (all harmless)

The authors admit: “The low seroprevalence observed in this study suggests that bat coronavirus spillover is a rare event.” (not even “relatively rare” anymore - just rare)

In fact:
“We did not find evidence supporting a direct relationship between bat contact and bat coronavirus sero-positivity in the human population.”

Therefore: it’s so rare that there is “no evidence”. You can't get rarer than that.

Remember, these studies showing “no evidence of direct transmission of SARSr-CoVs from bats to people” are the entire basis for Daszak’s claim that both Covid and “the next Disease X”, and so on... are lurking around every corner.

So how the hell does Daszak keep getting away with these ludicrous fringe-theory claims?

Why does he get supported to the hilt by other scientists and mainstream media outlets?

It’s the same old answer that we keep running up against. It’s gotta be either:

(a) colossal stupidity, or

(b) corruption

Review:

There is “no evidence of direct transmission of SARSr-CoVs from bats to people”.

There is "no evidence" of pangolin or any other wild animal acting as an intermediate species (between bats (for which there’s no evidence) and humans) (unless you count scientists as an intermediate species - and the lab-animals, including pangolin, through which bat viruses were passaged). That goes for SARS-1 & 2.

Even if there was a crossover event, it still doesn’t explain how a highly contagious virus ended up in Wuhan without causing an outbreak anywhere else.

There is a mountain of evidence detailing scientists spreading misinformation and fear-mongering to pump up the above scenario, as we’ve covered.

The obvious question is why are they doing that?

Here is a recap of the motivations of the top experts:

Money - lots of it. Daszak is calling for billions of dollars in funding to pursue his unsubstantiated zoonotic crossover theories and all the GoF experiments associated with it. ‘Virus Hunting’, which took off after 911, is still riding the exponential curve. On the other hand, revelations of a lab-leak would, hopefully, see a strong contraction in funding for high-risk facilities such as WIV, and a ban on GoF.
Celebrity status. Fame is addictive - for those that are prone to craving it. Like any other drug.
Power. Also addictive. In the ‘Brave New-Normal’ of data-centralization and surveillance, our guys, almost exclusively men, are on the right side of that power imbalance. They are the top- experts who keep telling us to listen to the experts.

There is a stack more easily refutable “arrant nonsense”, as Richard Ebright, a rare hero amongst the scientists in all of this, puts it, being spouted by the top-experts. But at some point you need to step back out of their weeds and focus on what’s important.

How did it happen?

Probably a Lab Accident

Can that be proved definitively?

Yes. Most likely already has been - by the CCP’s internal investigation.

Will the outside world ever be granted access to this evidence?

Probably not.

Why does it matter?

Apart from the obvious that we don’t want it to happen again, an awful lot of big state surveillance has been downloaded on the population - all of which is being justified by Covid.

Are we being asked to accept this because of a security lapse at a lab?

Are we living in a world where the top-experts, super-sized by their media platforms, are spreading CCP propaganda and lying to us?

The most likely answer to those questions is, i'm sorry to say, ‘Yes’.

The next question is; ‘What can we do to fight against that?’

Firstly, what is it we’re fighting for?

Freedom of Speech (de-platforming/censoring of alternative views)
Right to Privacy (phone tracking, surveillance)
Freedom of Movement (lockdowns)
Freedom of Assembly (protests banned)
Freedom to not take experimental chemical agents that don’t work - or even get you high (No jab - No job)

This War on Civil Rights, instituted by governments, is driven by a powerful cohort of unelected, unaccountable experts.

Mainstream media/Big-Tech is the delivery device.

And that’s just in the ‘free’ -world.

It’s hard to imagine a more formidable goliath.

In the good old days, we might look for a politician to buck this trend - someone people can rally around - but in the Australian political landscape at least, nobody has shown any such leadership. Not from the left, the right, the Greens, or the independents. They all trumpet the same lines - ‘Listen to the (select crew of) experts’ - abuse/cancel anyone who asks a question.

That just leaves the public to organize themselves - do their best to provide factual information and disseminate it however they can.

Here’s some steps we can take:

Our secret weapon is a question

Don’t blindly believe the top experts. Science is not supposed to be a religion.
Question them. That will enrage the experts - but stay calm and carry on.
Do they have conflicts of interests?
Are they financially/psychologically beholden to the CCP for example?
Are they financially/psychologically beholden to corporate interests? Which ones?

If a scientist saying 'fossil fuels are great' was getting money from Exxon, you'd want to know that. So how 'bout those top-scientists (Daszak,Lipkin et al) promoting the CCP's version of Covid from the loudest platforms? Are they benefitting from their arrangements with this totalitarian regime?

Details

What are they arguing exactly? Demand details. The top scientists will fight tooth and nail not to discuss details, but wade through that - you gotta get them - you can't get to the truth without them.

Once you do get to those details - you’ll find the false premise - you'll find vested interest. From there it all unravels.

Be Positive

Have fun. Some of it is hilarious.
Be engaging, open in discussions - leave the name-calling to the other side.

Yeah, sounds nice in theory, but what's the likelihood that will stand a chance against the combined might of the political/scientific/tech elites? That’s a fair point.

But as Lin Shuling would say in the protest against Miramar/Taitung Government:

If we fight, there’s still that small chance. If we do nothing, we can be sure there's no chance.

Around 400BC Socrates made an important breakthrough in human thought: he invented ‘the question’ as a tool for unlocking the truth.

This seems like a simple, uncontroversial thing, but today we are in a position where asking questions provokes a furious response from the experts, so let’s take a look at how Socrates got along and see if there are any parallels with todays’ situation.

Disclaimer: Following Socrates advice may lead to you being executed by the state.

“To explain the origin of my unpopularity”, Socrates (according to Plato), recounted a story in which the Oracle had said that Socrates was the “wisest of men”.

Socrates couldn’t believe it:

I know very well that I am not wise
even in the smallest degree.

On the other hand:

It cannot be (the Oracle) is speaking falsely
for (the Oracle) is a god and cannot lie.

Socrates was “for a long time at a loss” to understand the meaning.

“(V)ery reluctantly”, Socrates sought “to point out to the Oracle its mistake.” He determined the best way to do this was by questioning the experts of his time.
The theory was:

You said that I was the wisest of men
but this man is wiser than I am.

Therefore: I am not the wisest of men.

First off, he chose a politician, who was “reputed to be wise” and “examined him” by asking a series of questions.

(B)ut this was the result:
When I conversed with him I came to see that,
though a great many persons, and most of all he himself,
thought that he was wise, yet he was not wise.

Socrates troubles began, however, when:

I tried to prove to him that he was not wise
though he fancied that he was.
By so doing I made him, and
many of the bystanders, my enemies.

Later Socrates reflected on this encounter:

Neither of us probably knows anything that is really good,
but he thinks that he has knowledge, when he has not,
while I, having no knowledge, do not think that I have.

Socrates was forced to deduce:

I seem, at any rate, to be a little wiser than he is on this point:
I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Undeterred, Socrates embarked upon a journey of “Herculean labors” whereby he sought out more experts - “I went on to one man after another” - but each examination produced “exactly the same result”, including the unfortunate consequence that:

I was making enemies every day
which caused me much unhappiness and anxiety.

So what was Socrates' inescapable conclusion from questioning all these elites?

I must tell you the truth; verily, by the dog of Egypt:
I found that the men, whose reputation for wisdom stood highest
were nearly the most lacking in it
while others, who were looked down on as common people
were much better fitted to learn.

This confirms to me a belief I've long held that we've only advanced as a species technologically, which, granted, has given fantastic benefits and is a good thing. But we confuse this with moral, ethical, and indeed logical advancement, which I maintain we have not demonstrated at all. Yet we think we're somehow better than the people who occupied the very square meter we are now 5000 years ago.

The technological advances we've made have allowed us to improve human rights through, mainly, food production. Most of our social advances have been made possible by the technical ones, not by some moral or spiritual awakening. Those in power can simply afford to hand out more freedoms to those under them. If that situation of abundance reverses, so will human rights.

PS: In the midst of yet another move. May visit less frequent until we get settled.

This confirms to me a belief I've long held that we've only advanced as a species technologically, which, granted, has given fantastic benefits and is a good thing. But we confuse this with moral, ethical, and indeed logical advancement, which I maintain we have not demonstrated at all.

Great minds! Furthermore, the advancements in ethics and logic that we did make appear to have been shuffled down towards the bottom of the deck, while science/technology has become the new god of everything.

Good luck with the move! Always a major operation. Off to warmer climes? One day we're gonna catch up again for a beer or two - or even a mead...

Good luck with the move! Always a major operation. Off to warmer climes? One day we're gonna catch up again for a beer or two - or even a mead...

Yep, we'll be near Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. It's on average 10C warmer in the winter. That will make a huge difference. I'm not moving the snow shovel.

If we fight, there’s still that small chance. If we do nothing, we can be sure there's no chance.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." (Not sure who said that.)

All good points.

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Origin Tracing: How hard can it be? (General)

Origin Tracing: Arthur Koestler

Theory 1 - Natural Origin

Theory 1 - Natural Origin

Theory 1 - Natural Origin

Theory 2 - Lab Origin

Lab Origin - How to Investigate

Intermediate hosts - Civets

911 and the Rise of the Celebrity Scientists

911 and the Rise of the Celebrity Scientists

911 and the Rise of the Celebrity Scientists

Rise of the Celebrity Scientists - Ian Lipkin

Rise of the Celebrity Scientists - Peter Daszak

Zoonotic Crossover - The Environment

Zoonotic Crossover - The Environment

Zoonotic Crossover - The Environment

Did Climate Change cause Covid?

Fear Factor

The Real World

The Real World

The Real World

Zoonotic Crossovers - Daszak's Argument

Therefore

Daszak's Evidence

Conclusion

Conclusion - Part 2

Taking up the Fight

The Socratic Method

The Origin of Socrates' Unpopularity

The Origin of Socrates' Unpopularity

The Origin of Socrates' Unpopularity

The Origin of Socrates' Unpopularity

Taking up the Fight