Virology-Media Complex Continues to Push A False Narrative
In September, President Biden declared that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the end of the pandemic is in sight. However, conspicuously absent is any statement from Biden, the head of WHO, or other world leaders, even on such an occasion as the United Nations General Assembly, demanding a thorough investigation into the origin of COVID-19 that started in Wuhan, China.
Determining the pandemic origin is a matter of history, not politics nor blame. We cannot hope for the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to answer this question as it did with the deadly Sverdlovsk anthrax lab leak after Soviet Union dissolved. Somehow we need the CCP’s cooperation in order to proceed, as often expressed by Western officials, is simply disingenuous. It is passing the buck of responsibility that is owed to the millions who have died.
Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), dropped a bombshell in his latest interview that National Institute of Health (NIH) leaders, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, actively covered up a likely lab origin of COVID. Wuhan labs house the world’s leading collection of novel coronaviruses, many of them unpublished, and their biosafety risk was forewarned. Redfield further added that there are classified information pointing to an accidental leak.
Redfield said: “The potential for conspiracy is really on the other side. The conspiracy is Collins, Fauci, and the established scientific community that has acted in an antithetical way to science.” He further stated: "I knew it was orchestrated. Fauci and Collins … used their political power within the scientific community to set the narrative. … What Collins and Fauci did was not science. It was a political decision."
Redfield’s assertion is backed by NIH emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which revealed that Collins placed highest priority on “international harmony” than investigating Covid’s origin. Cynically, Fauci brushed aside the origin inquiry as “a shiny object that will go away.” These are not the expected attitudes nor reactions of NIH leaders at America’s renowned science agency.
The CCP was known to have provided flawed and incomplete data to WHO at the start of the pandemic, shutting down databases at Wuhan Institute of virology (WIV), issuing gag orders on COVID origin reporting, and publishing false scientific articles suggesting pangolin was the host. However, the real shocker is the obstructive role played by NIH leaders and a small clique of Western virologists in selling a false market origin narrative. The odd coupling of the virology establishment and the CCP is unmistakable, as both used the media to suppress and shift the attention away from gain-of-function (GoF) experiments conducted at WIV, some partially funded by the NIH.
By any stretch of journalistic imagination, these statements by Redfield are stunning revelation against the NIH leadership! Given the horrific backdrop of millions COVID deaths, one expects breaking news from the mainstream media. However, all we hear is the deafening silence.
Similarly, the media stayed silent about the news that after much delay, the NIH finally in August, canceled a federal grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based non-profit who has partnered with WIV in performing GoF experiments. If the lab leak hypothesis was loudly renounced by NIH leaders, the virology establishment, and most of the media as a “conspiracy” since the start of the pandemic, why then give in to this “conspiracy” now? Why stop funding that is “important” to scientific discovery?
The implication of this grant cancelation can’t be stated enough - EcoHealth, WIV, together with the Baric lab at the University of North Carolina, wrote the DEFUSE grant proposal in 2018 to conduct GoF research on novel coronaviruses. Against astronomical odds, merely a year later, the novel SARS2 virus with peculiar genetic features as proposed in the grant broke out in exactly the same city where WIV is located.
Alas! The NIH grant cancellation, which is essentially an unofficial acknowledgement of an error, wasn’t breaking news. The Redfield bombshell about the malfeasance of the NIH leadership, wasn’t breaking news. On the contrary, the media didn’t hesitate helping the virology establishment in selling the market origin narrative, despite the fact that the zoonotic claim falls apart upon close scrutiny. The New York Times (NYT) reported flawed zoonotic studies as breaking news. Virologists from the establishment received in-depth interviews, profiles, and quotes. NYT Science profiled Edward Holmes who infamously submitted a picture of the Wuhan market from 2014 as “evidence” for zoonosis.
The virology-media complex spreads far and wide including the Guardian, Nature, Science, NPR, PBS, Economist, etc, which gave ample coverage to establishment virologists like Michael Worobey, Angela Rasmussen, Peter Hotez and Danielle Anderson. Holmes and Hotez worked on projects with WIV, a conflict-of-interest (COI) that they didn’t voluntary disclose. Anderson was cited by the media as a fact-checker on origin theories but her association with WIV and EcoHealth was not reported. Rasmussen and Worobey co-authored with virologists who were on the secret NIH conference call with Fauci and Collins in February 2020, after which the lab leak hypothesis was labeled as a “conspiracy.”
In the latest narrative-shaping push, Rasmussen and Worobey penned an op-ed in the Foreign Policy arguing that it is dangerous to discuss the leak hypothesis. This piece encapsulates the deceit, hypocrisy, and gatekeeping from this selective group of virologists who resist any attempt to have a proper public discourse on the danger of GoF research and biosafety risk. The op-ed is full of straw-man arguments:
1) Three years into this pandemic, Rasmussen and Worobey still label the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy! This is despite President Biden having had ordered an intelligence review and one agency concluding with a moderate level of confidence that COVID was leaked. WHO has publicly stated that both lab and market origin are valid hypotheses. Moreover, the latest report on COVID origin from the Lancet commission, chaired by Jeffery Sachs of Columbia University, concurs with WHO that the origin remains unknown.
2) Critically, the Lancet report confirms what Redfield had stated, that NIH has not been transparent with data. Furthermore, virologists on the Lancet commission didn’t disclose their COI with WIV voluntarily, despite repeatedly asked by Sachs.
3) Rasmussen and Worobey dismissed the Lancet report simply because Sachs was interviewed by someone who is anti-vaccine. They further argued that the 2018 DEFUSE proposal was not funded so it is to be ignored completely. Most science proposals are expected to obtain some preliminary data before submission, and work continues despite initial rejection, so it can apply to other agencies. Importantly, WIV is funded by the Chinese government to continue whatever projects it wants; NIH funding adds prestige but not a requirement. Scientists don’t drop their life-long work simply due to one rejection. For example, the NIH grant success rate is only ~20%, or a rejection rate of 80%. This is an obvious attempt by the authors to misinform the public who may not be familiar with the grant process.
4) They try hard to sell their flawed market origin paper. The fundamental facts are: a) no animal host found; b) no trace of infection chain from food handlers to animal farms. c) clinical data submitted by CCP are known to be biased and incomplete.
5) Authors try gatekeeping by stating that only virologists are qualified to investigate the origin. They failed to mention that Dr. David Baltimore along with other virologists, had explicit concerns about particular genetic features of SARS2. Baltimore won the 1975 Nobel prize in Medicine, served as president of the prestigious Rockefeller University and California Institute of Technology. As of 2022, Rasmussen or Worobey have not won the Nobel prize, nor served as president of any universities or community colleges.
6) Authors accuse that Sachs isn’t qualified since he is an economist. That’s funny since Rasmussen and Worobey are virologists, and they just opined in Foreign Policy. Maybe they try to carry on the best “traditions” of Collins and Fauci who certainly acted as foreign diplomates placing “international harmony” above the origin investigation.
7) Authors’ logic is circular - there is no direct evidence for lab leak so we can’t ask for a leak inquiry, and we shouldn’t investigate the leak hypothesis because it is dangerous for virologists. Imagine Boeing executives ask the public not to investigate 737-MAX crashes because it is dangerous to Boeing executives!
The fundamental issue is that GoF research and biosafety carry an existential risk to mankind. What if the next GoF virus leak from unsafe labs has the transmissibility of COVID but a higher fatality rate? Therefore, the public must have a say in GoF experimentation in enhancing viral lethality. This issue can’t be an exclusive domain of virologists, but must be addressed just like climate change and nuclear proliferation, with a sense of urgency and involving all of us.
Dr. Austin Lin is a scientist at the State University of New York and consultant to Citizen Power Initiatives for China.
Dr. Jianli Yang is founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and the author of For Us, The Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth.
