Who Led the Effort to Discredit the Coronavirus Wuhan Lab Theory?
Suddenly, the hypothesis that SARS-CoV2 originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is gaining traction. President Biden, the media, and Democrats in Congress are now on board for an investigation of China regarding the origin of the virus including the laboratory origin possibility. A day after a CNN story that reported Biden had canceled a State Department investigation initiated under former President Trump, Biden announced a new intelligence investigation into the origin of SARS-CoV2. Bidens reverse of course is also timed with growing bipartisan Congressional support for investigating the virus including the lab origin hypothesis. After more than a year, the wheels are falling off the initial conclusion that SARS-CoV2 emanated from nature. Not long ago, merely mentioning the possibility the virus was from the Wuhan laboratory was considered a conspiracy, resulting in posts from individuals, including scientists, getting blocked in social media. While a lot of attention is rightly focusing on how the media was wrong, attention is also needed on those responsible for feeding the media with the conspiracy narrative and prematurely negating the laboratory origin hypothesis without any evidence. The effort to silence and punish free expression and scientific inquiry about the origins of SARS-CoV2 can be linked to the financial and reputational self-interest of key players that slammed the laboratory origin driven hypothesis. Ironically, it appears scientists laid the groundwork to silence legitimate inquiry or discussions into the origins of SARS-CoV2. A campaign to brand the laboratory origin idea as a conspiracy theory can arguably be linked to a sophisticated public relations effort that would make the biggest PR firms in the D.C. swamp jealous. At the epicenter of the conspiracy branding strategy was allegedly Dr. Peter Daszak the President of EcoHealth Alliance - a New York based nonprofit organization. At the very least, emails reveal Dasak applauded Dr. Anthony Fauci, after Fauci discredited the lab theory leak. It was also Daszak who channeled $600,000 of National Institute of Health grant money from Dr. Fauci to support bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan laboratory. Daszak and Fauci face significant financial and reputational risk if SARS-CoV2 was a result of their work to fund bat coronavirus research in China. Both are handsomely paid. Fauci is the highest paid government bureaucrat at just over $415,000 in 2019 and Daszak also raked in $354,065 FY 2019 from the nonprofit he runs. While the money is important, the possibility their support of the Wuhan laboratory created the pandemic must be horrifying to the two men, especially Fauci. As the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci is responsible for stopping pandemics, not creating them. A laboratory sourced SARS-CoV2 would make Fauci the Dr. Frankenstein of the 21st century and Daszak his loyal assistant Fritz. In an apparent effort to prevent legitimate scientific investigation into the laboratory sourced hypothesis, Daszak worked behind the scenes and orchestrated a statement from scientists in February 2020 to label the Wuhan laboratory hypothesis as a conspiracy. The statement published in the medical journal The Lancet said, We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin, and Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors and prejudice that jeopardize our global coloration in the fifth against this virus.  U.S. Right to Know - a nonprofit - obtained Daszaks emails highlighting his effort to generate the letter signed by 27 influential scientists. According to U.S. Right to Know, Daszak wrote the statement and recruited scientists to sign it. The statement generated news labeling the laboratory virus narrative as a conspiracy and Daszak provided soundbites in numerous news stories. Daszak called the Wuhan virus origin hypothesis Conspiracy theories and crackpot theories in a preemptive strike to set the media narrative against the alternative hypothesis in February 2020. The strategy worked. When then-President Trump referred to the Wuhan laboratory as the culprit for the pandemic in April 2020, the media, already primed with the conspiracy narrative, attacked the president and others questioning the origin of the virus including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark. The conspiracy branding that dominated the news also created air cover for Fauci when he prematurely backed the natural origin option following Trumps comment at a White House briefing in April and there after until he recently accepted the possibility of a laboratory origin this month. Beyond the Lancet statement, Daszak is uniquely positioned to influence world opinion about the origins of the pandemic. Remarkably, Daszak was selected to participate in two international groups - The Lancet COVID-19 Commission and the WHO-convened Global Study of the Origins of SARS-CoV-2 to look into the origins of SARS-CoV2. Finally, the alternative hypothesis for the origin of SARS-CoV2 is being taken seriously but mounting evidence points to a balanced investigation was delayed by scientists with a vested interest in the outcome.