Media ignored clues on Covid origins for 17 months

FPI / May 31, 2021

For 17 months, WorldTribune.com and other independent media have reported on the evidence that Covid originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. And for 17 months the corporate media characterized those reports as "conspiracy theories" while Big Tech suppressed the sharing of such information on Facebook and Google search.

Now, according to a new study, researchers found "unique fingerprints" in Covid-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory.

In a new 22-page paper, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen revealed evidence to suggest Chinese scientists created the virus while working on a gain-of-function project in a Wuhan lab, the Daily Mail reported on Friday.

The latest revelation adds to mounting evidence that Covid originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is tied to the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army.

Independent media, including WorldTribune.com, have tracked the growing consensus among intelligence analysts that Covid escaped from the Wuhan lab.

On Jan. 28, 2020, Geostrategy-Direct.com published an article titled "Seafood? New Wuhan animal virus said tied to China’s bio-warfare program", which noted that Covid-19 "may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to the communist government’s covert biological weapons program."

On March 13, 2020, WorldTribune.com reported in an article titled "Threats, ‘disinformation’ from China seen deflecting scrutiny of secret Wuhan lab", that to deflect attention from the fact that the center of Beijing’s biological weapons program is based in Wuhan, China’s Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. Army of sending the coronavirus to China.

In May of 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration had compiled an extensive report on the origins of the virus.

“We have said from the beginning, this virus originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now,” Pompeo said. “Remember, China has a history of infecting the world and they have a history of running sub-standard laboratories.”

“These aren’t the first times that we have had the world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab,” Pompeo said.

The lab leak theory "was always credible," Daily Caller News Foundation investigative reporter Andrew Kerr noted in a May 27 analysis.

After more than a year of denigrating the hypothesis as a baseless conspiracy, mega media outlets are just now beginning to publish stories confirming the legitimacy of the lab leak theory.

In May 2020, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler insisted it was “virtually impossible for this virus to come from the lab.” On May 25, 2021, Kessler published a story saying the lab leak theory “suddenly became credible.”

In April 2020, publicly-funded NPR reported that scientists had "debunked" the lab leak theory. On March 31, 2021, NPR reported that the theory it insisted had been "debunked" had "taken on new life."

So, is it possible for the major media to suddenly become credible in its reporting on the origins of Covid-19?

No, it isn't. Solid, detailed reporting has been out there for 17 months.

In his analysis for the Daily Caller, Kerr compiled eight facts "that have been in the public domain for well over a year that point to the legitimacy of the lab leak theory that the media downplayed or outright ignored."

1. China arrested doctors for telling the truth about Covid-19

It was widely reported in western media that the first Chinese doctors to warn about the novel coronavirus in Wuhan were arrested and reprimanded by police for “spreading rumors online” and “severely disrupting social order.”

One of the Wuhan doctors forced to recant his early warnings about COVID-19, Li Wenliang, died from the virus in early February 2020.

Before his death, Li said he knew he would face punishment from Chinese authorities after he informed his medical school alumni in late December 2019 that he was treating patients with a new SARS-like illness. He asked his colleagues to warn their friends and family privately, but screenshots of his messages went viral within hours.

2. Wuhan’s top bat-based coronavirus researcher said she lost sleep worrying the virus came from her lab

China’s top virologist on bat-borne viruses, Shi Zhengli, told the Scientific American in March 2020 that the possibility of an accidental leak from her Wuhan lab was the first thing that crossed her mind when she learned of the virus’s outbreak in Wuhan in late December.

“Could they have come from our lab?” Shi, known by her colleagues as the “bat woman,” recalled thinking.

3. China’s ‘Bat Woman’ expressed shock that COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan

Shi also told the Scientific American in March 2020 that she was shocked to learn of a novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, some 600 miles north of where the bats that are known to carry similar viruses actually live.

“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,” Shi said.

4. Chinese researcher published — then deleted — a study concluding Covid-19 probably originated from Wuhan lab in February 2020

Botao Xiao, a researcher at the South China University of Technology, published a paper alongside another Chinese researcher on Feb. 6, 2020, reporting that the horseshoe bats known to carry a viral strain that shares 96.2% similarity to the virus that causes Covid-19 live 600 miles south of Wuhan in the Yunnan province.

The researchers also cited testimony from 60 people who lived in or visited Wuhan who said the bat “was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.”

“The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan” the two Chinese researchers noted in their paper, which was originally uploaded to Research Gate.

The paper provoked stern denials from Chinese authorities that there was any accident at the Wuhan lab. The paper was removed from Research Gate on Feb. 14 or 15, according to Internet archives.

5. Deadly viruses have a history of escaping from Chinese laboratories

The first SARS virus escaped twice from the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing in 2004, one year after that virus had initially been contained.

It’s entirely reasonable to question whether SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes Covid-19 — could have also escaped from a Chinese lab.

6. China deleted early samples of Covid-19

In May 2020, China confirmed that it had authorized laboratories to destroy early samples of the virus that causes Covid-19 for “biosafety reasons.”

Also in May 2020, the New York Post reported that open-source intelligence uncovered in the United Kingdom revealed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had censored a virus database in late 2019.

Later reports would reveal that the Wuhan Institute of Virology database removed a database containing information on at least 16,000 virus samples it had studied prior the pandemic in September 2019.

Members of the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19 in early 2021 did not even ask to review the deleted database because the sole U.S. member of the team, EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Dazsak, personally vouched for the Wuhan lab, saying the data did not contain relevant information on the pandemic’s origin.

7. Key American defender of Wuhan Lab had a clear conflict of interest

Daszak was responsible for orchestrating a statement published in The Lancet medical journal in February 2019 prior to any serious research on the origins of Covid-19 condemning “conspiracy theories” suggesting the virus doesn’t have a natural origin.

The Lancet statement was cited by numerous news outlets — and by fact check organizations to censor inquiries into the lab leak theory — during the early stages of the pandemic.

Despite his history of working closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for well over a decade prior to the pandemic, Daszak’s letter received widespread and uncritical coverage in the media. EcoHealth Alliance also transferred $600,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology between 2014 and 2019 as part of a project to study bat-based coronaviruses.

8. Prominent American virologist said lab leak theory shouldn’t be dismissed

One of the most vocal advocates for the legitimacy of the lab leak theory, Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard H. Ebright, said publicly as early as February 2020 that the hypothesis “cannot– and should not–be dismissed.”

Ebright was quoted by The Washington Post and MSNBC during the early stages of the pandemic firmly rejecting the separate origin theory that Covid-19 is a Chinese-manufactured bioweapon.

But the outlets omitted Ebright’s stance that the lab accident theory was legitimate and should not be dismissed.

Ebright recently revealed to independent journalist Michael Tracey that he told The Washington Post in January 2020 that he was willing to be quoted on the record saying Covid-19 could have entered the human population through a lab accident.

But The Washington Post omitted Ebright’s stance on the lab leak theory in a story published Feb. 17, 2020, criticizing Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton for repeating the Post described as a “conspiracy theory” that the release of Covid-19 could be connected to the Wuhan lab.

“On February 16, 2020, in an interview regarding comments by Sen. Tom Cotton, I again discussed both the genome sequence and the lab-accident hypothesis – this time, both on the record–with WaPo,” Ebright told Tracey in an email. “I was surprised that the February 17, 2020 article in WaPo quoted only my comments on the genome sequence and not my comments on the lab-accident hypothesis.”

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