Enter The Wuhan Clan
Part Two: An Unholy Alliance & the Birth of a Bioweapon
This is Part Two of an investigative series that delves into the documented history of lab leaks worldwide and the research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that I contend, led to the pandemic that has upended our world. I will also examine the words and deeds of the individuals who through nothing but hubris, greed and abuse of power placed the future of our species in peril. It is my hope that even the most ardent skeptic of the “Lab Leak” theory will come away from this series with enough evidence to allow themselves to rethink their position and find the bravery to speak out. Read Part One Here
The average reader may not be aware that gain of function research, specifically on coronaviruses, has decades of research behind it. This paper trail of scientific literature offers our best insight into the origins of the pandemic. Once you understand the evolution of the research and see the same individuals attached to it since its inception, things begin to come into focus. Armed with this knowledge the wet market theory becomes a laughable conspiracy theory, transparently constructed to cover up the truth. We will begin with an email that was obtained via FOIA request that sets the stage.
On 13 January 2020, before China or the World Health Organisation (WHO) made any official statement on the nature of the coronavirus, Ralph Baric, a Professor and researcher at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, known worldwide for his research on coronaviruses and Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, the now infamous non-profit whose grant was recently reactivated, emailed each other. They both appear to be confident that the coronavirus in China is a “highly variable SARS-like CoV”. Interestinglya, Ralph Baric refers to the coronavirus as “Our highly variable SARS-like COV”, showing that he has a familiarity with the virus.
Here is the exchange:
“Hi Peter, I have to participate in an NIH call tomorrow at 10. I believe it’s a strategic meeting designed to help craft a NIH response plan to the WU-CoV. Hope things are going well. Looks like we found our highly variable SARS-like CoV! Ralph”
In reply to Ralph Baric’s email, Peter Daszak at 7.55 pm states:
“It sounds like we’re on the same call! And my exact thoughts are of the highly variable SARS-like CoV. I’ve told journalists about it, but it’s a complicated story for them to get across.”
Notice the date of these emails, they were a full two weeks before the WHO declared a public health emergency on January 30th, 2020. The tone of the emails show that Ralph Baric and Peter Daszak seem to actually be excited about the discovery of the virus, never-mind the public health risks it posed.
Along with Baric and Daszak, another person of interest in this story is Shi Zhengli, otherwise known as “Batwoman”. Baric and Daszak worked closely with her to conduct coronavirus virus research in China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Here we see a photo of Ralph Baric and Zhengli at a 2018 Emerging Viral Diseases symposium held in Wuhan, China.
Zhengli’s group, in partnership with EHA and Baric, were creating chimeric constructs as far back as 2007.
That year they published a paper entitled “Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin”. In this study she discusses how they discovered how the chimeric S protein they created is able to enter human cells via the ACE2 receptor.
“the chimeric S covering the previously defined receptor-binding domain gained its ability to enter cells via human ACE2, albeit with different efficiencies for different constructs.”
The ACE2 receptor is also how SARS-CoV-2 enters the human cell to wreak havoc within via the expression of the Spike protein.
This research continued unabated until October 2014 when the Obama Administration made a decision to place a moratorium on Gain of Function research due to concerns expressed by the scientific community. However, the pause allowed agencies within the U.S. government to continue funding if they determined “the research is urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.”
A month later Science published a piece entitled: “Moratorium on risky virology studies leaves work at 14 institutions in limbo. Projects include studies of seasonal influenza, raising questions about temporary ban”. As the title suggests, the article was decidedly on the side of the researchers lamenting the moratorium.
Moratorium on risky virology studies leaves work at 14 institutions in limbo | Science
A mere 3 days after Science published their story on the moratorium on November 21, 2014, EcoHealth Alliance announced their participation in the second phase of the PREDICT project which would develop “initiatives with to help prepare the world for emerging infectious diseases like pandemic influenza, SARS, and Ebola.”
USAID Announces Second Phase of Predict Project with Global Partners - EcoHealth Alliance
EcoHealth has received a total of $16,874,314 in grant money from the NIH and the NIAID, which has been directed toward Gain of Function coronavirus research that led to the creation of SARS-Cov-2. However that is just a fraction of the total taxpayer funds they have historically received.
NIH Reporter | List of EcoHealth Grants
According to USASpending.gov EHA has historically received at least $80.1 Million in Federal award money as far back as 2002. All coming from the following agencies, DoD, HHS, USAID, National Science Foundation, Dept. of Agriculture , or Dept. of Interior. In addition to grants EHA also received $10,348,195 on 9 contracts going back to 2004, 3 with DoD, 3 with DHS, 1 with HHS, 1 with DOI, and 1 with the Department of Commerce.
It’s notable that $34.6 million of the grants EcoHealth Alliance received in Pentagon funding from 2013 to 2020 came from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a branch of the DOD tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks”.
EcoHealth, in an ironic twist, even managed to qualify for $1,497,763 total in Paycheck Protection Plan loans during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
EcoHealth Alliance Grants and Contract History | USA Spending
Astute readers may be asking themselves, “if in 2014 a moratorium was placed precisely on the type of research EcoHealth Alliance was conducting, how did they get around it?”. Apparently, a cozy relationship with the NIH helped because Peter Dazsak, the man running EHA, proposed a clause that was accepted by NIH as a basis for the exemption. It reads:
“Should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under this grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain you must stop all experiments with these viruses.”
NIH Officials Worked With ECOHEALTH Alliance To Evade Restrictions on Coronavirus Experiments
That's all it took to get around the moratorium. This helps to explain the vehement denials by Fauci, NIH and EHA that they did not conduct Gain of Function research. This is a patently false assertion backed up by the governments own documentation of the grants awarded to EHA. The message is clear, deny GOF research happened at all costs because anything other than that would bring the house of cards tumbling down.
From the moment the moratorium was put in place, the academic research community began lobbying to have it lifted. The response is strikingly similar to the response the NIH received for the pause of EHA’s Grant in 2020, after it was learned they worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In unison scientists from the past and present, former heads of regulatory agencies and scientific societies wrote letters expressing their disdain for the decisions.
While this all happened, the work in Wuhan continued and on March 20th, 2015 Baric was granted a patent for the creation of “chimeric coronavirus spike proteins”
Methods and compositions for chimeric coronavirus spike proteins | Ralph Baric Patent
Coincidentally, or not, in November 2015 Baric and ZhengLi, “The Batwoman” released a paper entitled : “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” This now famous paper set the stage for emergence of SARS-CoV-2. In it they explain that they discovered a coronavirus that could jump species, infect humans, and seemed to be resistant to treatment and prevention with vaccines. You’ll notice the Editors’ note added in March 2020 stating without evidence that “scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus”
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
As mentioned, Zhengli has a long history of working on coronaviruses in China. She directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Her work discovering bat derived coronaviruses has garnered her international fame and the WIV has the largest database of bat-related viruses.
Another person who fits into the story is none other than Stephane Bancel the current CEO of Moderna and now a Billionaire because of it. He joined Moderna in 2011 when it was a fledgling startup who just so happened to be receiving piles of taxpayer funds from DARPA to develop their revolutionary mRNA technology.
DARPA Awards Moderna Therapeutics A Grant For Up TO $25 Million To Develop Messenger RNA
Where did Bancel work prior to Moderna? He was CEO of BioMérieux, a French multinational biotechnology company. His tenure there was from 2007-2011 and here is where it gets quite interesting. What is BioMérieux known for, you ask? Designing and constructing BSL-4-Labs. Labs that are said to have the highest level of security because they house the world's most deadly pathogens.
What specific lab did Bancel assist in designing and constructing? You guessed it. The Wuhan Institute of Virology the same BSL-4-Lab in that was studying coronaviruses and conducting gain of function research just before a novel coronavirus was said to be discovered circulating in Wuhan. Although an agreement was signed to build the lab in 2004, it wasn’t completed until 2014 due to funding as well staffing issues.
Scientific American had this to say about it back in 2017:
“The Wuhan lab cost 300 million yuan (US$44 million), and to allay safety concerns it was built far above the flood plain and with the capacity to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, although the area has no history of strong earthquakes. It will focus on the control of emerging diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization ‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world.”
“It will be a key node in the global biosafety-lab network,” says lab director Yuan Zhiming.”
That worked out well. It became a key node in the global network, just not in a good way.
“The Chinese Academy of Sciences approved the construction of a BSL-4 laboratory in 2003, and the epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) around the same time lent the project momentum. The lab was designed and constructed with French assistance as part of a 2004 cooperative agreement on the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases.”
China to Permit Lab Poised to Study World's Most Dangerous Pathogens
The only problem is that they didn’t prevent or control infectious diseases, they engineered them to be more infectious to humans via gain of function research that was approved by Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.
Another little discussed fact is that once the virus had been discovered in Wuhan, the WIV curiously decided it needed to wipe its public virus database from the internet and “renovate” the Institute.The announcement was later redacted from the Chinese Ministry of Finance website, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin first noted:
“Shortly after the WIV took its public virus database off the internet in September 2019, the lab announced a contract competition to renovate its air conditioning system for approximately $606 million”. The timing couldn’t be more suspicious.
In addition to these curious events, 2 years earlier in late 2017 two diplomats wrote two cables to Washington reporting on their visits to the Wuhan lab.
In 2018, Diplomats Warned of Risky Coronavirus Experiments in a Wuhan Lab. No One Listened.
“More should be done to help the lab meet top safety standards”, they said, and they urged Washington to do something about it. They also warned that the WIV researchers had discovered new bat coronaviruses that could easily infect human cells, and used the same cellular route that had been used by the original SARS coronavirus.
Yet another miraculous coincidence was discovered just last year by a team of researchers and published in the scientific journal Frontiers.
The study entitled “MSH3 Homology and Potential Recombination Link to SARS-CoV-2 Furin Cleavage Site” found that analysis of the original Covid genome found the virus shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna, which has a total of 3,300 nucleotides. It was patented in 2016.
“SEQ ID11652 is transcribed to a MSH3 mRNA that appears to be codon optimized for humans (11). We did not find the 19-nucleotide sequence..in any mammalian or viral genomes except SARS-CoV-2 with 100% coverage and identity in the BLAST database”
MSH3 Homology and Potential Recombination Link to SARS-CoV-2 Furin Cleavage Site
The daily mail did a story on this that raised a lot of eyebrows but was immediately dismissed as yet another “quirky coincidence” by critics, despite the fact that the researchers said that “there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna's sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution.”
Yes I’m sure a one in three trillion chance is just a “quirky coincidence”. To recap, Moderna’s current CEO is the former CEO of the French biotech company BioMérieux. Coincidentally, BioMeriux partnered with the Chinese to design and oversee the construction of the BSL-4 Wuhan Lab. The very same lab that is accused of being the source of the novel coronavirus that has been used to upend the entire world.
In addition to this amazing sequence of events, Moderna also just so happens to own a patent of a DNA sequence that was recently discovered to be a part of the same virus that has upended the entire world. I’m no mathematician but I would venture to say that the odds of this being a coincidence is roughly around one in three trillion.
The Moderna patent was issued 13 months after Baric was awarded his patent for the “chimeric coronavirus spike proteins”. It’s not clear if Baric’s spike proteins bear any relation to SARS-CoV-2 but the fact that this part of the story has so successfully been dismissed as coincidental and subsequently memory-holed should be of great concern to the public.
As calls for lifting the ban on gain of function moratorium reached a crescendo, in February 2016, Peter Daszak spoke at an event hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine called “Where Will The Next Pandemic Come From?”. While there he explained the progress his colleagues in Wuhan had made with their research:
“We found other coronaviruses in bats, a whole host of them; some of them looked very similar to SARS. So we sequenced the spike protein, the protein that attaches to cells; then we – I didn’t do this work, my colleagues in China did this work – you create pseudo-particles, you insert the spike proteins from those viruses, see if they bind to human cells, each step of this you move closer and closer to this virus could really become pathogenic in people.”
Just 3 months later in May of 2016 The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, a board on which Anthony Fauci sat, released a report effectively advising the government that the moratorium should be lifted and any pathogen that poses a significant risk be subjected to enhanced review:
“After thorough deliberation and extensive input from domestic and international stakeholders, the NSABB [National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity] issued its recommendations. NSABB’s central finding was that studies that are expected to enhance Potential Pandemic Pathogen (PPP) have potential benefits to public health but also entail significant risks. NSABB recommended that such studies warranted additional scrutiny prior to being funded.”
John Holdren, Obama’s Director of Science and Technology Policy also played a key role in the recommendation to lift the ban. Holdren has been a professional doomsayer for decades, predicting catastrophe based on his conviction that we need to adopt population control policies to avert ecological disaster. In 1973 he authored “Human Ecology: Problems & Solutions” along with fellow Neo-Malthusian doomsayers Paul and Ann Ehrlich. In it he opined that given our population problem:
“Political pressure must be applied immediately to induce the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the American population. Once growth is halted, the government should undertake to influence the birth rate so that the population is reduced to an optimum size and maintained there”.
Amazon Link: Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions
Given his past opinions on population control, including the deliberate mass sterilization of the population via the water supply believe it or not, Holdren advising the president to resume gain of function research adds another dimension to the story.
In the end it would take 8 months until January 9, 2017 when the Obama Administration accepts the NSABB recommendations and re-authorizes funding for gain of function research.
“Adoption of these recommendations will satisfy the requirements for lifting the current moratorium on certain life sciences research that could enhance a pathogen’s virulence and/or transmissibility to produce a potential pandemic pathogen (an enhanced PPP).
Recommended Policy Guidance for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight
During this time period, just after Trump had won the election, we find the rhetoric of a potential for a pandemic starting to ramp up both within and outside of government. Thus far we have examined the historical record of lab leak, the specific gain of function research conducted on coronaviruses at the WIV as well as the patents issued to members of our Wuhan Clan
In the final part of this series we will examine this rhetoric and the exercises that were conducted in the years leading up to COVID-19 being unleashed onto the world. I think you will find that in hindsight any investigator worth their salt would look directly to the individuals spouting this rhetoric with such confidence and ask themself, cui bono?
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Great work! I can not wait for the third part - will you include Event 201?
Excellent piece of investigative journalism!