{"id":237353,"date":"2023-06-19T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=237353"},"modified":"2023-06-14T05:18:18","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T04:18:18","slug":"on-todays-explosive-coronavirus-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/06\/on-todays-explosive-coronavirus-story\/","title":{"rendered":"On Today’s Explosive Coronavirus Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

As months-long joint investigation goes public, some additional details and context.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

13 Jun 2023 – <\/em>Michael Shellenberger\u2019s Public <\/em>today released a blockbuster story<\/a>, \u201cFirst Person Sickened By COVID-19 Was Chinese Scientist Who Oversaw \u201cGain Of Function\u201d Research That Created Virus<\/a>,\u201d which generously credits Racket. <\/em>The story cites three government officials in naming scientist Ben Hu, who was in charge of \u201cgain-of-function\u201d research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as the \u201cpatient zero\u201d of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

This is a major story, contradicting early official explanations pointing to zoonotic cross-species \u201cspillover\u201d at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, colloquially known as the Wuhan wet market. The mystery bat or pangolin suspected of transmitting the disease to humans at that market was never found<\/a>. The Public <\/em>story for the first time asserts the source of contamination: a Wuhan Institute scientist fell ill after exposure to a virus engineered at his place of work.<\/p>\n

The implications of this are enormous and represent a major problem for the federal health bureaucracy, several intelligence agencies, and the news media, to say nothing of politicians in both parties (but particularly those on the Democratic side) who\u2019ve deflected public interest from the Wuhan Institute and gain-of-function research. The secrets of both the pandemic\u2019s origin and the reason for America\u2019s at-best-sluggish investigation of same have become the mother of all political footballs, and today\u2019s news is likely to be just the first in a series of loud surprises.<\/p>\n

The bulk of this investigation was done by Michael and the Public <\/em>team, who\u2019ve been digging into this matter with impressive ferocity for a while now. My part was more incidental, and I\u2019m a bit hamstrung in talking about the nature of it, except to say that in addition to the material Michael dug up in today\u2019s article, numerous federal agencies appear to have designed their probes of Covid-19\u2019s origins so as to discount the possibility of lab origin in advance.<\/p>\n

We were told, for instance, that despite longstanding interest in the Wuhan Institute as a potential security concern, at least one intelligence agency overruled a majority of its in-house investigators to produce a report on the pandemic\u2019s origin discounting the lab-leak hypothesis.<\/p>\n

The \u201cpatient zero\u201d report is likely to focus even more attention on stories by publications ranging from the Washington Post<\/a> <\/em>to the Intercept<\/a> <\/em>to the Wall Street Journal<\/a> <\/em>about U.S.-funded \u201cgain-of-function\u201d research, which sources insist is the likely reason many agencies (with the notable exception of the FBI<\/a> and the Department of Energy<\/a>, which both pointed at lab origin as a possible explanation) were steered away from the Wuhan Institute as a possible outbreak source.<\/p>\n

The Public <\/em>story should force a hard look at the cost of steering investigators away from the Wuhan Institute. Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing, put it this way in Michael\u2019s story:<\/p>\n

Had US government officials including Dr. Fauci stated from day one that a COVID-19 research-related origin was a very real possibility, and made clear that we had little idea what viruses were being held at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, what work was being done there, and who was doing that work, our national and global conversations would have been dramatically different. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The identity of Covid\u2019s \u201cPatient Zero\u201d is a big part of a puzzle that will likely take a while to fully assemble, but there\u2019s reason for optimism this time. Unlike other recent stories that have been ignored, like the Nord Stream explosion, numerous mainstream news organizations either have individual reporters or whole teams assigned to the theme Michael hit first today. Sooner or later, this story is coming out. I.F. Stone famously said all governments lie, but it\u2019s beginning to look like the scale of this one would have shocked even him.<\/p>\n

In any case, congratulations to Public, and <\/em>please stay tuned to this space and theirs for more.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Matthew C. Taibbi is a U.S. author<\/em>, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for <\/i>Rolling Stone, author of several books, a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary<\/i>, co-host of <\/i>Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on <\/i>Substack.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 racket.news<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

13 Jun 2023 – As months-long joint investigation goes public, some additional details and context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":207043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2124],"tags":[244,1829,550,1868,2571,1864,70,888,2506],"class_list":["post-237353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debates-on-covid-vaccines","tag-china","tag-coronavirus","tag-corruption","tag-covid-19","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-pandemic","tag-usa","tag-vaccines","tag-wuhan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237355,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237353\/revisions\/237355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}