Wuhan Lab Leak Source of COVID: Sunday Times of London Lays Out Detailed Case
SARS-Cov-2 came from a shadow project on virulent viruses from a Chinese mine that being funded by the Chinese military.
From the start of the covid pandemic to the present day, Legal Insurrection has been monitoring developments in the investigation of the origins of the novel coronavirus known as the SARS-Cov-2 virus.
I started in February 2020 when I noted that Chinese university researchers believed the virus might have originated in a government laboratory in Wuhan.
Stories our team has covered since that time support the assertion covid’s origins were from a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
- 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
Interestingly, I recently reported that the former head of China’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Prof George Gao, had indicated that a lab leak origin for the pandemic could not be ruled out. I concluded that post with this statement:
Yet, this is an intriguing trial balloon that suggests more information may be revealed that the Chinese may want to get ahead of. Stay tuned!
The Sunday Times of London published a detailed article that confirms all the information in the accounts we published and may explain why Gao was offering up this new take on covid’s origins from Chinese officials.
In addition to affirming reports we published that covered humanized mouse testing, the presence of the furin cleavage site in the virus’ genetic makeup, and the astonishingly poor safety practices being used during research on this virus, the Times of London make an exceedingly persuasive case that the Chinese military was working on this particular pathogen as part of a bioweapons program.
Investigators who scrutinised top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.
The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons.
The article is lengthy…but worth reading for anyone interested in the full history surrounding the origins of covid. One of the scientists I have referenced in my posts, Microbiologist Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, is a vocal opponent of this research and a harsh critic of Dr. Anthony Facui. He has a Twitter thread summarizing key elements of the article.
“The viruses found there are now recognised as the only members of Covid-19’s immediate family known to have been in existence pre-pandemic. They were transported to the Wuhan institute and the work of its scientists became classified. ‘The trail of papers starts to go dark,'”
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) June 11, 2023
I would like to highlight a few points that go beyond the material I previously covered and which paint a truly chilling picture of what the Chinese military appears to have been doing while the EcoHealth science team led by Peter Daszak puttered in other research activities. Therefore, I will start in 2015-2017, when the samples of bat coronaviruses that killed Chinese mine employees were sent to the institute.
They were transported to the Wuhan institute and the work of its scientists became classified. “The trail of papers starts to go dark,” a US investigator said. “That’s exactly when the classified programme kicked off. My view is that the reason Mojiang was covered up was due to military secrecy related to [the army’s] pursuit of dual use capabilities in virological biological weapons and vaccines.”
According to the US investigators, the classified programme was to make the mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans.
They believe this led to the creation of the Covid-19 virus, and that it leaked into the city of Wuhan after a laboratory accident.
The US investigators also indicated the Chinese were working on a vaccine during the autumn of 2019.
“I interviewed scientists in Asia who have close relationships with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the source said. “They told me it is their belief that there was vaccine research going on in the fall of 2019, pertinent to Covid-19 vaccination.”
Chinese People’s Liberation Army had its own vaccine specialist, Zhou Yusen, a decorated military scientist at the academy, who had collaborated with the Wuhan scientists before. He apparently died after it was noted how rapidly China had prepared a covid vaccine.
In May 2020, aged just 54, Zhou appears to have died, a fact mentioned only in passing in a Chinese-media report and in a scientific paper that placed the word “deceased” in brackets after his name. Witnesses are said to have told the US investigation that Zhou fell from the roof of the Wuhan institute, although this has not been verified.
After increasing levels of concern and complaints about the nature of his research, Daszak omitted significant lethality data and lied about the severity of health effects in the test animals used during coronavirus experiments when he applied for even more funding.
The experiment was part-funded by EcoHealth’s grant money, but the FOI documents show that, while the Wuhan institute’s experiments were described in Daszak’s April 2018 annual progress report to the NIH, he did not refer to the deaths of the humanised mice.
There was also no mention of the mouse deaths in the grant renewal application Daszak filed to the NIH later that year. In this account, he said the mice had experienced “mild Sars-like clinical signs” when they were infected with the mutant virus. It had actually killed six of the eight infected humanised mice.
The bat cave was the source of samples that were likely morphed into the SARS-Cov-2 virus that causes covid. Shi Zheng-li (“Bat Lady” researcher leading the studies of bat viruses) published papers on a virus RaBtCoV/4991.
But the Wuhan institute withheld information about the mine deaths from EcoHealth and the US government. Shi’s team spent four years stripping the Mojiang mine, collecting 1,300 samples from the bats, and discovered 293 coronaviruses.
The work on the mine appears to have ended in May 2015. A year later, Shi published a scientific paper referring to the discovery at the site of a coronavirus that was from a lineage of Sars never seen before. She called it RaBtCoV/4991.
4991 was rebranded when the link to covid was identified.
After the pandemic began, the 4991 virus took on ever-greater significance. It was identified as the closest known relative to Covid-19. It meant the nine viruses found in the mine were the only members of Covid-19’s lineage known to have existed prior to the pandemic.
When the Wuhan institute was forced to admit the existence of 4991 — having listed a section of its genome sequence on an international database in 2016 — it changed the name to RaTG13, which meant it could not easily be linked to the mine.
One of the American scientists assisting US officials in their investigation puts the pieces together (emphasis mine):
Dr Steven Quay, a US scientist who advised the State Department on its investigation, believes the Wuhan institute’s secrecy about the mine virus never made sense. “There has never been an example of a bat virus directly infecting humans and killing,” he said. Sars was a bat virus that infected people via an intermediary animal. “If those miners died from a bat virus, that was the first time in the history of human science that that happened. And the Chinese didn’t publish it,” he added.
The investigators think Daszak was kept in the dark about this part of the work.
Quay believes Covid-19 was created by inserting a furin cleavage site into one of the mine viruses and then serial passaging it through humanised mice. He submitted a statement to the US Senate explaining the process. “You infect the mice, wait a week or so, and then recover the virus from the sickest mice. Then you repeat. In a matter of weeks this directed evolution will produce a virus that can kill every humanised mouse.”
This explains why from the beginning of the outbreak, he says, the pandemic virus was so remarkably well adapted to infect humans.
In conclusion, the Times of London did incredible and informative reporting on the origins of covid. The piece concludes the research associated with the virus was part of a shadow project on the mine viruses funded by the Chinese military.
No mention of raccoon dogs occurs anywhere in its piece.
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Comments
Fauci facilitated this “research” and covered up for it and still walks free as a bird
It’s all President Trumps fault! He’s a rocket scientist epidemiologist. No way he should have listened to the “eminent” Drs and scientists that were screaming, “ If you don’t do as we say, we’re all going to die”
I’m sure the media and politicians would have backed him 1000% and not laid EVERY death at his doorstop ( as if they didn’t)
Why they were so appreciative of his suggestions to use ivermectin they were on their collective knees praising him
And pence, ever so supportive that he brought the “Covid team” with Fauci and the scarf lady, they didn’t lie one time to the President, not once!
Yes yes yes , it’s all President Trumps fault
Ronnie says so and that’s good enough for me!
I’m hungry for some meatballs !
Actually, he didn’t. Did you read the report?
Fauci is many things, particularly a weasely politician, but China’s military tried to do this in secret without the rest of the world to play in their bioweapon sandbox. That’s their biggest crime to most of the world powers…not that they did it but that they didn’t share power.
You are correct. But Fauci was as scared as a lab rat, because he wasn’t sure that SARS-CoV-2 didn’t come from the experiments he was funding. So he misdirected and lied to cover up any potential link to EcoHealth and the NIH. He was sweating bullets because he knew he may have been responsible for the pandemic. He had a conflict of interest between himself and the public’s well-being & transparency/truthfulness, and he chose himself.
More accurately, if he investigated it, he would be _sure_ that the virus with its obviously bioengineered furin cleavage site genetic code could only come from lab experiments quite similar to the banned gain of function experiments he paid a Wuhan lab to perform. If it wasn’t his experiments (and I assume his experiments were supposed to be performed on a less dangerous virus family), it was the Chinese learning from his experiments and doing their own series of experiments in parallel. That is, he had not only paid to have experiments deemed too dangerous for the most secure American labs performed in a less secure Chinese lab, but he had paid to train Chinese scientists to weaponize a virus.
COVID-19 wasn’t that weaponized virus. It was a practice run that escaped the lab. Not even the Chinese would be stupid enough to develop a weaponized virus from a type that was notorious for fast mutations, so no vaccine could remain effective for long.
I wouldn’t swallow this report, whole. For example, the conferences in Rwanda (vaccine passports), Brazil (fake lethality statistics), and NYC (how to control the narrative) were all funded by Gates and associates and were within 4 months of the “accidental” leak. I guess Bill is a really smart guy. Not only did he make a bundle from his vaccine investments, but he had everything (passports, statistics, narrative, etc.) setup his way 2 months before the “accidental” leak. In addition, he was telling everyone that would listen that 2020 would be the year of the pandemic which is probably why Larry Page and Sergy Brin quit Alphabet and went to a remote island to live for a year. Indeed, more CEOs resigned in 2019 than any year in history. Now, I don’t to be a conspiracy theorist, so maybe all of this was just an amazing set of coincidences.
The Big Guy was paid good $$ to keep a lid on this disinformation. Are you trying to get your name added to the DOJ’s domestic terrorist list?
Can malevolent intent and cunning designs never be attributed to the transparently malicious and belligerent Chinese communist regime? I get that incompetence is often a hallmark of military endeavors in such regimes, but, the Chinese seem more competent than the Soviet Union in this regard.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that the Chinese communist leadership saw how President Trump was being mercilessly and lawlessly undermined, sabotaged and subverted by the Deep State, Dumb-o-crats and a compliant and gleeful media, and, sought to manipulate the situation to their obvious advantage, by helping to undermine what would otherwise have been an easy re-election campaign, and, by installing a feeble, compromised, compliant and easily manipulated/exploited vassal, in dotard-marionette, Biden.
The timing of this allegedly accidental “leak” seems far too fortuitous to be coincidental, with the Wuhan virus arriving on U.S. shores at the end of year 2019, or, at the beginning of 2020, thus allowing the vile Dumb-o-crats ample time, pre-election, to sow maximum panic through their hysterics, histrionics, fear-mongering and distortions, and, to help destroy the U.S. economy via a slew of totalitarian and lawless diktats. With dotard-marionette, Biden, being the obvious beneficiary, his wizened cadaver dragged across the election finish line thanks to the combined efforts and machinations of the FBI/Deep State, mainstream media and Big Tech.
IMO it was an accidental leak due to sloppy protocol. From that point though everything about it was an intentional act of the CCP. They downplayed it, hid data, lied about it, sucked up PPE around the world before the story got out and even after. For that matter everything prior to the accidental leak was deliberate as well; these clowns created it in the lab by blending and splicing wild strains together. Not to mention our favorite Fauci and his band of merry men who at least bent if not broke prohibitions about gain of fiction and they certainly haven’t been transparent about their actions prior, during and after Rona mania.
Possibly. But it is also possibly that Daszak asked some of the people he was funding to accidentally leak it to affect the US election.
Possible? Sure I suppose it is possible but I don’t think it likely. IMO the CCP took advantage of the opportunity created by the accidental leak and so did the Fauci fascist and his totalitarian brethren in many States.
There is no question at all that many d/prog blue jurisdictions altered the 2020 election procedures so as to be nearly meaningless in order to engage in widespread shenanigans. That is inarguably true and as far as impact on the 2020 election it really doesn’t matter whether the opportunity for shenanigans was created intentionally or by accident; all that matters is the d/prog in blue and purple States definitely took advantage of the opportunity to run buck wild.
Do you think the CCP could possibly have imagined how the DNC would leverage the pandemic to its own advantage? Where they using a crystal ball? I think the the idea is of rather low probability. The CCP would have known an intentional release of the virus would cause instability, but “instability” itself suggests, if it does not actually mean, “unpredictable.”
I agree with CommoChief. The release was an accident. Why would the WIV/Chinese military intentionally release a bio weapon at the doorstep of the facility where it was made? Far more effective would have been to release it in the terminal of a major airport (preferably in another country), to make it as difficult to follow the trail to the WIV’s doorstep. Why would they leave breadcrumbs for anyone to follow? It was an accident. It’s the only thing the makes sense. Even if the reply is “They did it that way on purpose to make it look like an accident,” says they weren’t worried about being fingered for the “accident.” But the CCP was obviously very concerned about being fingered. Wouldn’t you think they would have wanted to avoid that if they were going to do an intentional release of the virus?
The CCP could certainly understand, at a minimum, that hysteria surrounding the virus would have a damaging economic effect; predictions about Dumb-o-crat machinations/behavior, aside. The goal was to wound President Trump’s re-election campaign, and, his economic record up until the lockdowns wreaked economic havoc, had been stellar.
I don’t say that the “leak” is an impossibility; just that I think it’s a mistake to deny the possibility of intentional acts of biowarfare from an increasingly malevolent and belligerent Chinese regime that’s far more cunning and underhanded than many in the west are willing to admit.
They might have intentionally released the virus – but it is highly unlikely that they would have done it there. In Wuhan, right at the doorstep of WIV that almost assuredly created the virus (unless they had farmed out the work to a lower security facility, like the BSL 2 lab next to their wet market). If I were in charge, I would probably have released it right next to Fort Detrick, MD, in the US, home of our military’s bio weapons research to pin it on the US. anywhere else in the world would have been better for the CCP than where it was released.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick
And still they had to steal the election
Well, as bioweapons go it was kind of a dud. As an excuse to crush rising populist movements and further massive government control it was excellent.
Yes, it was a dud. However, I wonder about the potential for it to recombine with MERS, say in Saudi Arabia (or Iran), which will appear to be natural on the surface.
Try try again!
“When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again until you do succeed.”
(You have to hear Curly say it, or to say it like Curly, to get the joke. Some of the Stooge’s spoken humor was very adult-oriented. Moe in one short says something I won’t even report here because out of context of the bit they were doing, it’s just too rude!)
I agree, but it may explain why China went “batshit” crazy when it leaked there, welding people into their apartment houses and the like. Because of their secret goals, they had the mindset that they had just released the mother of all plagues, instead of the slightly enhanced flu virus it actually was.
It was in the perfect area to be optimized into a bioweapon. Highly transmissible and not so deadly that the symptoms occur quickly, which means it can spread before symptoms really show.
A bioweapon that kills everyone within hours is not very effective because of gaps in spread. This was the perfect starting block for a good bioweapon and that’s why they were researching it.
I agree. A terrifically fearful middle step.
Covid wasn’t the bioweapon. That was just to create the fear. The vaccine was, and still is, the weapon. As for the lab leak theory – whether it was accidental or on purpose remains a mystery. But the question of it being from the lab or from nature? That was settled when the CDC admitted it had a patent on sars cov 2. You can’t patent something from nature. It has to be man made.
The Chicoms learned the full measure of the west’s pusillanimity during “COVID”. Next time they will deliberately unleash a far more lethal virus after having inoculated its population with an effective vaccine. Preemptive nuclear strike is our only chance.
This was clearly a CCP intentional response to tariffs and trade sanctions rightfully imposed in China by Trump which was designed to cripple the economy of the U.S. and render Trump politically vulnerable
Several things: there has never been, and probably never will be a good vaccine for upper respiratory viruses. As noted in the article, they are infectious before symptoms appear, and they quickly mutate to bypass immunity.
So the Chinese military was hoist on its own petard. The whole concept of biological warfare disregards this likelihood.
This article eviscerates all the objections to the lab theory.
One other thing: I have noticed how much attention this report has been given in American newspapers.
A similar, but less detailed report was published in the Guardian two years ago.
Both the Guardian and the Times are well known as far right MAGA publications.
Misinformation, disinformation, and xenophobia, too. Deplorable.
Don’t you hate it when China is depicted as something less than a utopian paradise?
Joe Biden’s proud of his “made in China” tattoo. He and Hunter got matching tattoos after his last China deal.
They apparently got the idea when the Chinaman handed him a fat check and said, “Don’t forget! We made you.”
I thought his tattoo said, “Made in the USA/Bought by China.”
test
You passed
A constant battle to get comments to post.
Are you a Trump supporter?
Oh forgot the /sarc…lol
The fact that you are here is proof that they don’t censor. It’s a technical glitch.
The Covid pandemic gave us a new look at a world that is totally controlled. The government mandated the vaccine and at the same time refused to investigate what its origin was. The msm went along and then refused to report on the deaths and medical conditions caused by the vaccine. Jobs were lost and businesses ruined because of the government mandates and lockdown. After most of us are dead, investigations of this period in our nation’s history will reveal the truth. Not through the corrupt msm but from medical agencies and universities. I truly believe that Biden did what he did because of blackmail from the CCP. He has removed every restriction that Trump established to monitor and control China’s antiAmerican activity. He allowed four spy balloons to overfly our country and allows them to harass our ships and planes with no pushback. There has to be a reason.
How long before ‘leak’ is replaced with ‘release’?
It leaked like the virus in the movie “Twelve Monkeys”.
The Chinese never developed an effective vaccine, so that doesn’t make any sense.
What does make sense is they deliberately spread it around the world to obscure the place of origin. In the long run that didn’t affect the results.
Why was Fauci so invested in this? Why does NIH continue to fund CCP weapons research?
Why oh why, why do you think there are 47 biolabs in Ukraine ?
A lovely safe and secure location
Plan your vacation soon, hotels are filling up!
The biolab myth is a joke.
It’s amazing how many people who think China lies about everything will swallow anything Russia defecates.
So there’s no labs in Ukraine which we’ve been sending money to ‘securely shut down’ since the end of the cold war 3 decades ago? The same labs that State, DoD and CIA testified to Congress were so sensitive they must not fall into Russian hands?
Which is odd b/c the labs were Soviet run so the Russians would know about/have samples of Soviet era research… begs the question what have they been cooking up since the cold war in those labs that DoD/CIA/State don’t want the Russians to have access to?
Do you have a link to a source? There’s something incoherent about biolabs existing since the Soviet era, especially since Ukraine was a de facto Russian client state until 2013.
The Undersecretary Sec of State, Victoria Nuland, testified about biolabs on 8 March, 2022. In an exchange with Sen Rubio she stated that; ‘ Ukraine has biological research facilities (labs) which we are quite concerned…, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of’.
Yes it is incoherent. Part of the end of the cold war money flow to former Soviet States like Ukraine was to basically buy off the scientists, researchers and workers in these biological and nuke facilities in an effort to keep them from running with their toys to the highest bidder.
We have been shoveling $ for three decades to secure and safely destroy the contents of the facilities. The same sort of facilities that Nuland is so concerned about the Russians gaining control of. Why? The Russians would have the files and samples of the work being done in the Soviet era. The logical answer is that they haven’t been destroying the toys but instead continue to work and develop new toys in these facilities. That is what they don’t want Russia to have nor do they want the US Taxpayer to know what they have been doing.IMO
“He apparently died after it was noted how rapidly China had prepared a covid vaccine…
Witnesses are said to have told the US investigation that Zhou fell from the roof of the Wuhan institute,”
That’s just funny, I don’t care who you are.
Seriously, the only part of this report that confuses me is whether or not the revelation that “the project actually began as a secret Chinese military biowarfare project” modifies in any way our previous information that Fauci funded its development. Because that makes it officially treason, even under the highly restrictive definition in the constitution, I don’t care who you are
Who can have possibly seen this coming? I mean absolutely nobody thought this might have come from a lab right?
lolz. Besides almost everyone