WHO Quietly Drops Second Phase of Probe Into Covid Origins
Meanwhile, House Republicans launch probe into covid origins with letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its investigation into the origins of the covid pandemic.
The organization cited ongoing challenges over attempts to get information from Chinese sources.
“Their hands are really tied,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told the scientific journal Nature. Without access to China, researchers said it may be impossible to understand how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people.
The next phase of the investigation was intended as a follow-up to research conducted in January 2021 by an international team of experts convened by the WHO in Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. The team released a report in March outlining four possible scenarios, with the most likely pointing to the virus spreading from bats to people. But the follow-up trip to further analyze evidence has been scrapped.
“There is no phase two,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO, told Nature. “The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins.” The Chinese ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to the journal’s requests for comment.
WHO recommended a deeper probe into whether a lab accident may be to blame for releasing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is the cause of the covid pandemic after backlash abounded from their original report, which read as if the Chinese crafted it.
That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.
WHO concluded last year that it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 might have spilled into humans in the city of Wuhan from a lab. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped into people from bats, possibly via another animal.
There is continuing research, however, that appears to be focused on the animal-origins hypothesis.
Researchers are undertaking some work to pin down a timeline of the virus’s initial spread. This includes efforts to trap bats in regions bordering China in search of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2; experimental studies to help narrow down which animals are susceptible to the virus and could be hosts; and testing of archived wastewater and blood samples collected around the world in late 2019 and early 2020.
But researchers say that too much time has passed to gather some of the data needed to pinpoint where the virus originated.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are beginning their investigation into the origins of the covid pandemic by requesting documents and testimony for current and former Biden administration officials.
The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic are seeking information, including from Dr. Anthony Fauci, concerning the idea that the coronavirus leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab.
“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement on Monday.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the oversight committee, said Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials that took part in any sort of cover-up accountable.”
I have been covering the reasonable, and in my view probable, lab origin for the covid pandemic since February of 2020, when I noted that Chinese university researchers believed the virus might originate from a government laboratory in Wuhan.
Other sign-posts on the road to reaching this sensible conclusion are:
- Majority of 17 international intelligence agencies believe COVID-19 started as accidental release from Wuhan lab.
- CNN’s Sanjay Gupta Supports Former CDC Director’s ‘Informed’ Theory That COVID Escaped From Wuhan Lab
- Classified Study: COVID-19 Could Have Originated in Chinese Lab
- Wuhan Lab Leak ‘Is Now the Most Likely Origin of COVID’ – MIT/Harvard Scientist Tells UK MPs
- Letter Offers More Evidence of Wuhan Lab Project Source of COVID Pandemic
- Experts Assert ‘Rare’ Genome Sequencing Shows Coronavirus Bioengineered, Optimized for Human Infectivity
It will be interesting to see where the Republican investigation leads, which I suspect will be the most accurate of the continuing probes.
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Comments
The last of those links is the most important in understanding what is happening.
The most important evidence is the continuing promotion of a cover story that is impossible. Neither bats nor pangolins were sold in Wuhan wet markets. So whatever the source, it wasn’t the wet market.
How do we know that they were not sold there? Just because someone went there and didn’t find any for sale that day doesn’t mean anything about whether they were for sale on some other day.
We know that originated in Wuhan, we know that I was genetically engineered and that furthermore addition genetic engineering was used to mask the previous engineering. I had commented here when everyone was claiming there was no bioengineering that because of Coronavirus rapid mutation rate that conventional selective breeding could have been used.
It is interesting that the head of China’s biowarfare took over the lab early on. It is also interesting that China stopped Wuhan residents from moving in China while allowing them to migrate all over the world.
This sure as hell looks like a case of unrestricted warfare to me. It is time that we go on a war footing to disengage, there should be ZERO dependence on any Communist country. Return manufacturing to America and trusted allies. It is time to starve enemy economies, hopefully they can be reigned in short of war.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its investigation into the origins of the covid pandemic.”
Vaxt and Furious.
“There is continuing research, however, that appears to be focused on the animal-origins hypothesis.”
Because who can say — the earth may be flat after all.
WHO’s no longer on first.
Oh, I Don’t Know…
It doesn’t matter what TPTB say anymore; I will never believe them.
The last link is as far as I’m concerned, the right one. The R investigation will go in a circle and end nowhere. Too much Chinese money in DC to allow an accurate conclusion. It is not the CCP we should distrust, though we must, but our own government.
At this point, I’m convinced that the entire Biden administration is a Chinese asset.
The third law of Robert Conquest’s “Three Laws of Politics”:
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Labor and environmental arbitrage by way of Wuhan, by way of Kiev, by way of the District of Corruption.
I’m sticking so far with my idea that both theories are true: It came from the lab and the wet market. The virus started in the lab. At some point one or more infected bats were discarded and some low-level lab employee was instructed to take them to the incinerator to be destroyed in the proper manner. That person reasoned that it would be a waste to destroy perfectly good bats — there’s good eating on them — these nose-in-the-air scientists are like Marie Antionette and don’t understand how commoners live — the lab no longer needs them so who will miss them? — and took them down to the wet market and sold them to some dealer on the QT. Both of them profit, the lab is no worse off, who’s to know?
That would be absolutely typical of how things work in communist countries. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time, and is what makes such countries actually work, until they don’t. If you’ve ever wondered how the USSR managed to last 70 years, part of the answer is that “there’s a lot of ruin in a country”, but another large part is that nobody actually obeyed the law. People find ways to keep their heads above water. Most of the time it works, and then the communists can say look, our experiment is working; once in a while it ends in disaster.
Irish Democracy is a thing.
Wasn’t Fauxi overseeing the lab? Gee I wonder if he might know.
No, he wasn’t overseeing the lab. Where did you get the idea that he was?
Money flows and communications — the art of “directing with out directing.”
The decision to get the Mrna vaccine was a mini IQ test. Carnegie Mellon found that the most hesitant group were PhDs, followed by those without college degrees. The least hesitant were those with masters degrees, followed by those with undergraduate degrees.
This shows what a sham basic tertiary education is. It indoctrinates a bunch of dolts and strips them of their critical thinking skills. Those who were smart enough to attain true PhDs in rigorous fields were just too smart to fall for the nonsense. Many at the bottom rung used their God given common sense to smell a rat.
“Hesitant” is the right word. Jab or not is a pretty coarse-grained signal; more illuminating is “why” or “why not.”
“their hands are really tied on this”
Translation: we are scared shitless of China
This is reminiscent of #MeToo, anti-war, immigration reform, sanctuary States/states, shared responsibility/progressive prices, etc. and similar activism that was summarily aborted when it evolved to pose a progressive “burden” to the people carrying out the action.
Perhaps, the Wuhan lab needs a visit from a drone or any other means without regards to collateral damage to prevent any other such pandemics from escaping