Lab Leak Evidence Is Destroying the Science Cult

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• The long-censored lab-leak hypothesis, which suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, accidently leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, is now going mainstream as rapidly accumulating evidence makes it impossible to ignore

• It’s known with great certainty that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had access to and were doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in collaboration with U.S. scientists, and received funding from the National Institutes of Health for such research

• If it turns out that SARS-CoV-2 did come from a lab, it’s the type of thing “that could obliterate the faith of millions”

• To go from actively censoring and ridiculing those who urged officials to investigate the lab-leak theory further to suggesting they may have been right all along, is to call into question every other detail we’ve been told to believe about the COVID-19 narrative

The COVID-19 science cult — made “out of science, expertise, the university system, executive-branch ‘norms,’ the ‘intelligence community,’ the State Department, NGOs, the legacy news media, and the hierarchy of credentialed achievement in general”1 — has been held as gospel during the pandemic.

Anyone who dared to speak out against it or any of its narratives would quickly be silenced. The lab-leak hypothesis, which suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, accidently leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, is now going mainstream as rapidly accumulating evidence makes it impossible to ignore.

Yet, the very mention of this hypothesis has been heavily censored throughout the pandemic by Big Tech. Writing in The Guardian, U.S. columnist Thomas Frank stated:2

Ironically, Frank was among those who brushed off the lab-leak theory, even trying to talk a viewer out of believing the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab.

“The reason I did that,” he wrote, “is because the newspapers I read and the TV shows I watched had assured me on many occasions that the lab-leak theory wasn’t true, that it was a racist conspiracy theory … that it got infinite pants-on-fire ratings from the fact-checkers, and because (despite all my cynicism) I am the sort who has always trusted the mainstream news media.” But, he posits, “What if this crazy story turns out to be true?”3

Faith of Millions Could Be Obliterated

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has staunchly defended the natural-origin theory for SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mainstream media used Fauci's statements on the issue as “proof” that the lab-leak theory was nothing more than a ridiculous conspiracy theory.4

A year later, Fauci is now claiming he's "not convinced" the virus had a natural origin after all, and that we must continue to investigate "what went on in China until we find out, to the best of our ability, what happened."5 The flip-flop is an embarrassment to all of those who used Fauci’s word as proof, ignoring the evidence around them in favor of blind faith in the established COVID-19 rhetoric.

If it turns out that SARS-CoV-2 did come from a lab, Frank said, it’s the type of thing “that could obliterate the faith of millions.”6 To go from actively censoring and ridiculing those who urged officials to investigate the lab-leak theory further to suggesting they may have been right all along, is to call into question every other detail we’ve been told to believe about the COVID-19 narrative. And it’s likely to be a major shake-up.

Frank wrote, “Should it turn out that scientists and experts and NGOs, etc. are villains rather than heroes of this story, we may very well see the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism go up in a fireball of public anger.”7

Signs Pointed to a Laboratory Leak From the Beginning

I first mentioned that the outbreak had the hallmarks of a laboratory escape in an article posted February 4, 2020, and it was dismissed by the mainstream media, as were others who also sounded the alarm. Frank said that his “complacency on the matter was dynamited” by an essay in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists from May 2021,8 which details scientific facts about the potential origins of SARS-CoV-2.

Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance president, is a name that comes up often, because Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance funded controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Further, NIAID, a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, gave funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, which then funneled it to WIV.9

In February 2020, a group of virologists published a letter in the Lancet, stating they “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” and calling the lab leak theory a conspiracy, adding, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”10

Yet, the letter was not the result of independent investigation but, rather, a conflicted PR attempt. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported:11

Frank also summed up a number of details that have emerged that make the lab leak theory an increasingly likely scenario. Among them:12

• Laboratory accidents happen regularly. From January 1, 2015, to June 1, 2020, 28 lab incidents were reported at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s biosafety level 3 labs, for instance. All involved genetically engineered organisms and six involved lab-created coronaviruses.13

• Daszak, despite working closely with WIV, was part of the World Health Organization’s investigative team charged with identifying the origin of SARS-CoV-2; the team dismissed the lab-accident theory.

• We know with great certainty that researchers at the WIV had access to and were doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. We also know that they collaborated with scientists in the U.S., and received funding from the National Institutes of Health for such research. As noted by Peter Gøtzsche with the Institute for Scientific Freedom:14

Growing Effort to Reveal the Truth

The U.S. government has committed to redoubling their efforts to look into the real origins of COVID-19. While Beijing has stated that it considers the investigation to be complete,15 a U.S. investigation is expected to examine information from WIV held by NIH, NIAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, EcoHealth Alliance and the National Science Foundation.16

Meanwhile, the Senate passed an amendment to ban U.S. funding to WIV going forward, while another banned U.S. funding for any GOF research in China.17 This is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough and will in no way prevent another manmade pandemic because this type of research is being done all around the world, not just in China.

Unless the U.S. government bans GOF research within its own borders, and encourages the rest of the world to ban it as well, there’s nothing to prevent researchers from creating another deadly pathogen that would never have arisen naturally. U.S. lawmakers have also begun to push for their own investigations. Josh Rogin wrote in The Washington Post:18

The investigations are likely to face many hurdles, however. Already, WIV quietly deleted all mentions of its collaboration with NIAID, NIH and other U.S. research partners from its website shortly after Fauci testified in a Senate hearing in March 2021.19 Further, as Rogin noted:20

As it stands, the preponderance of clues leans toward SARS-CoV-2 originating in a lab, most likely WIV, and having undergone some sort of manipulation to encourage infectiousness and pathology in humans. If and once this is confirmed, investigations into the many other widely dictated dogmas of the COVID-19 science cult are also long overdue.