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Overview: Brazen Lies The Lancet Statement Freedom of Information Where in the World Is Peter Daszak Now? In Conclusion SNS Events Our Partners Download This Issue

OVERVIEW: BRAZEN LIES

By Evan Anderson

Author's Note: This week's issue is unique. To commemorate the (frankly farcical) WHO investigation that has just concluded in China and released its first public statements, I have dedicated the body of this week's Viral Economy to Dr. Peter Daszak. Our ongoing work tracking Dr. Daszak's strange, arguably unethical, behavior throughout the pandemic has been a wild ride.

Daszak first appeared to us as a person of interest in January of last year, when we started to look into his role in gain-of-function virus research. (Readers may remember the quote in our February 2020 Special Alert, "SNS: Why the Wuhan Coronavirus Could Easily Be Manmade," in which he triumphantly announced that he had helped create an "existential threat to humanity.") Daszak has since emerged as a key player in the global pandemic, with flagrant conflicts of interest becoming more numerous throughout the past year. – era

Brazen Lies

Propaganda

1capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions

2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause, also : a public action having such an effect

– Merriam-Webster Online

One of the most bizarre aspects of the pandemic to-date is the nature of the debate regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus. From Day One, the issue has been clouded by a series of highly unfavorable actions by the government of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In the abovementioned SNS Special Alert, we highlighted a number of extremely concerning signs that the nature of SARS-CoV-2 pointed to the pathogen having escaped from either the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Chinese CDC location nearby. [See also this week's SNS Global Report, "The Origin of the Virus."]

Debate surrounding the topic continues, made more circuitous by the fact that at this point there is still zero on-the-ground evidence regarding proof of origin – a situation that has not changed in the slightest by the latest WHO foray or its conclusions publicized this week.

Seeking to avoid an international crisis and blame game was a squishy, but believable, line of argument used early on in the pandemic by biomedical researchers who did not wish to draw undue conclusions about the origin of the virus. However, the series of unfortunate coincidences that point to a potential lab origin outlined in our Special Alert have not changed. Here at SNS, we do not "brush off" patterns of odd coincidences without further investigation.

Below is a compilation of synopses from that Special Alert, combined with some new points of my own:

1. The first cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan occurred earlier than, and were unrelated to, the wet market outbreak. This was widely known and published from early on.
2. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is the only institution in China at the BSL-4 level, the highest level of biosafety precautions. This is where bioweapons, or "non-bioweapon"-engineered viruses for "good," as it were, are made.
3. The head of the WIV, Shi Zhengli, is famous for bat coronavirus research and for making novel coronaviruses out of those bat coronaviruses.
4. Shi Zhengli worked closely with US researchers, including Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and zoologist Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, on that same gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
5. This research used methods designed to increase infectivity, pathogenicity, and the ability of these bat coronaviruses to jump to human hosts.
6. This kind of research was banned in the United States for some time due to massive concerns raised in the virology community that it had provided no benefit, effectively created novel bioweapons with the rationalization that it could then help to cure the diseases it built, and was therefore irresponsible, unethical, and could easily lead to a global pandemic if leaked from a lab.
7. This collaborative work was in part considered successful because of its ability to change spike proteins and add furin cleavage sites to the bat coronaviruses in question. The novel coronavirus appears to be a bat coronavirus with a similarly unusual spike protein and furin cleavage site.
8. There is evidence that biological explanations provided for a natural origin of the virus are lacking in substantive character. One paper from August of last year noted that "data available do not fit with the spillover model currently proposed for zoonotic emergence which is thus unlikely to account for this outbreak."
9. The CCP and the government of China have sought to cover up aspects of the pandemic from the beginning, including, but far from limited to:
• Banning researchers from freely publishing about the virus
• Attempting to stall the release of the genetic code of the virus
• "Disappearing" and/or threatening journalists, researchers, and bloggers who talk about aspects of the virus and the pandemic
• Blocking access to Wuhan, the wet market, the CDC lab in Wuhan, and the WIV
• Blocking the WHO from transparently and freely accessing the country for an entire year, then blocking the current team unless the CCP and PRC government had veto power on its members, then blocking the team from entering the country, then blocking only some of its members from entering
• Confiscating samples from in-country research teams
• Running intensive propaganda campaigns proposing that the virus came from the US, Italy, other parts of Southeast Asia, and others, or was imported on frozen food (this will be relevant later)
10. Peter Daszak helped to get US research funding for the WIV to complete its bat coronavirus research, which, again, includes controversial gain-of-function research that crafts new pathogens in the lab through serial "passage" methods that can actively obscure the non-zoonotic origin of said viruses.
11. Peter Daszak was a lead publisher of the first public statement in The Lancet, neatly free of sufficient evidence (more on that later), which: a) claimed that a zoonotic origin was most likely; and b) labeled the idea that any explanation beyond a zoonotic one was either rumor or conspiracy theory.

We at SNS particularly do not brush off patterns of many different unlikely coincidences when offered a counternarrative that is politically, personally, and financially convenient for the person or entity pushing it, supported by little to no substantive evidence.

That kind of "dissemination" of misinformation is, in fact, the very definition of propaganda.

Why are we talking about propaganda? Peter Daszak's name comes up quite a lot in the story of the novel coronavirus – but lately it has been coming up even more frequently.

The Lancet Statement

One of Daszak's early moves during the pandemic was the publication of a statement in the Lancet as one of as one of a number of co-authors. Of those co-authors, many have now been shown – through FOIA requests of Daszak's emails by US Right to Know – to have longstanding connections to his EcoHealth Alliance, including as board and staff members. This is a clear conflict of interest. Notes USRTK:

The Feb. 18 statement condemned "conspiracy theories" suggesting COVID-19 may have come from a lab, and said scientists "overwhelmingly conclude" the virus originated in wildlife. Emails obtained by USRTK revealed that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak drafted the letter and orchestrated it to "avoid the appearance of a political statement."

The Lancet failed to disclose that four other signers of the statement also have positions with EcoHealth Alliance, which has a financial stake in deflecting questions away from the possibility that the virus could have originated in a lab.

Another listed co-author is Leo Poon, the Hong Kong University coronavirus lead whom Li-Meng Yan accused of helping to cover up the novel coronavirus outbreak early on, before the PRC government publicly arrested her mother in response.

Additionally, FOIA'd emails show that Peter Daszak not only drafted the letter, but also published it as a non-scientific piece (a "Statement"); and that he further reminded his colleagues that it was important that it not appear to have originated from him or the EcoHealth Alliance itself.

In describing that scientists "overwhelmingly conclude" that the virus originated in wildlife, this Lancet "statement" cites eight articles and websites. The citations for these articles are as follows:

1. A Lancet piece written by a collection of Chinese virologists from China CDC, the People's Liberation Army hospital system, and a single researcher from the University of Sydney, Edward C. Holmes, whose profile on the university's website notes that he is an Honorary Visiting Professor at Fudan University and has been a Guest Professor at China CDC since 2014. Given the history of paid guest professorships at Chinese institutions, this is a potential conflict of interest both in name (public honors) and function (financial interest).
2. An article in Nature by three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including director Shi Zhengli.
3. A New England Journal of Medicine "Brief Report" penned by many of the same China CDC authors from Citation 1, under the auspices of the China Novel Coronavirus Investigating and Research Team. Interestingly, while this article does not appear to have any proof of zoonotic origin whatsoever, the researchers did find an 85% genetic match with a bat SARS-like CoV, identified as bat-SL-CoVZC45, MG772933.1, which was originally submitted to the National Center for Biotechnology Information's database by a team of researchers at the Institute of Military Medicine, Nanjing Command.
4. An article by a team of researchers in Greece which concludes that because the virus is similar to bat viruses, it must be a bat virus. This has little to do with where that bat virus came from, since the concern was always that we already know bat-like viruses were the whole point of the gain-of-function studies at the WIV. It is unclear why this is cited as a source to prove natural origin.
5. A piece by an Italian team with the same erroneous conclusion as Citation 4, stating that the virus is bat-related and alluding to a Chinese team's hypothesis about a snake origin. Similarly, the piece contains no evidence of zoonotic origin, just similarity to bat strains and a note that SARS-CoV-2 is "probably transmitted from bats after mutation conferring ability to infect humans."
6. A piece by Ralph Baric, Baric's UNC Chapel Hill associate, and a team of Chinese researchers at the University of Minnesota also stating that because the genetic code is highly related to other bat coronaviruses, SARS CoV-2 is also in the bat coronavirus family, which also fails to show proof of a zoonotic origin. The University of Minnesota team also co-publishes work with the WIV. This has the same clear conflict of interest problems, given Baric and the team's involvement in WIV research, while simultaneously maintaining the irrelevancy issues of Source 4.
7. A citation of a now defunct US CDC website that originally stated there was a likely animal origin.
8. The only cited source that states openly that it has proven there is no laboratory origin, penned by top virologists Kristian Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward Holmes (our Australian conflict of interest from Source 1), and Robert Garry. Unfortunately, this paper walks back that statement early in the body of the text, stating that laboratory origins are simply improbable, while then making three flawed points based on large assumptions without supporting evidence:
1. That the receptor binding domain (RBD) is novel, and therefore must be natural (novel does not equal natural, just previously unknown to the public).
2. That no evidence of known techniques for direct intervention through genetic manipulation is present (thus assuming that known techniques would be used at all, when direct manipulation is not how novel coronaviruses were being generated at the WIV in the first place, and evidence in fact exists that serial passage was used as a technique). and
3. That because there is no known genetic backbone in existing public databases, the virus cannot have come from the lab (this assumes the lab publicly publishes all viral genomes, a rather big assumption).

And so the Lancet piece was published – a statement put out by scientists who work at or with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and China CDC claiming overwhelming evidence of natural origin, with a series of citations almost entirely from people with direct financial conflicts of interest on the topic. Daszak sought to enlist scientists to surreptitiously represent a broad scientific consensus that the virus couldn't possibly have originated in the lab, while actively working to obscure the fact that he was the sole driving force behind that "consensus."

Freedom of Information

Furthermore, Daszak's FOIA'd emails reveal that he switched the point of the piece to a simple "broad statement" after receiving pushback from multiple virologists who noted he should offer proof of its assertions.

Linda Saif at Ohio State University, in particular, responded:

Hi all
I concur with this draft!
One question is whether it would be useful to add just one or 2 statements in support of why nCoV is not a lab generated virus and is naturally occurring? Seems critical to scientifically refute such claims!
Linda

To which Daszak then replied:

Linda – you're right it would be good to be specific about the bioengineered virus conspiracy theory, but we [sic] I think we should probably stick to a broad statement.

Other notable aspects of the email thread are as follows:

1. Daszak begins with the conclusion that the virus is not from the lab, then seeks evidence to support this.
2. Daszak revises the sources to include sources from outside of China after a board member suggests doing so (implying an understanding that there was a problem with citing only Chinese virologists from the entities in question), but those outside sources are mostly either irrelevant or erroneous.
3. Daszak states: "Please note that this statement will not have EcoHealth Alliance logo on it and will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person, the idea is to have this as a community supporting our colleagues."
4. Daszak notes that "[t]his letter is carefully worded to avoid political statements, and we have been told would go a long way to supporting continued collaboration in this outbreak." This seems to imply that an outside party has implied to him that he will not receive collaboration on the outbreak unless this statement is published.
5. EHA board member Rita Colwell suggests that "[t]he statement you have prepared needs a lot more editing to indicate that with new information now being prepared a definitive answer can be provided."
6. Daszak notes, regarding his Chinese colleagues: "They have asked for any show of support we can give them" – implying that the statement was crafted at the request of Chinese researchers under suspicion of relation to the pandemic's origins.

Further, Ralph Baric, who also has a history of work with the WIV, was directly involved in crafting the responses added as a supporting evidence citation to Daszak et al.'s Lancet piece. Notes USRTK, the organization that completed the FOIA requests for emails from Baric and Daszak:

The early draft described "initial views of the experts" that "the available genomic data are consistent with natural evolution and that there is currently no evidence that the virus was engineered to spread more quickly among humans." This draft sentence posed a question, in parentheses: "[ask experts to add specifics re binding sites?]" It also included a footnote in parentheses: "[possibly add brief explanation that this does not preclude an unintentional release from a laboratory studying the evolution of related coronaviruses]."

In one email, dated Feb. 4, infectious disease expert Trevor Bedford commented: "I wouldn't mention binding sites here. If you start weighing evidence there's a lot to consider for both scenarios." By "both scenarios," Bedford appears to refer to lab-origin and natural-origin scenarios.

In fact, back in April, virologist Richard Ebright (one of the researchers to originally sound the alarm on the dangers of gain-of-function research that led to the US ban) was tweeting out proof of Daszak's conflicts of interest in sheer frustration after the EcoHealth Alliance director stated publicly that he had none. Ebright noted in another tweet that "It would be hard to imagine a more brazen lie."

Where In the World Is Peter Daszak Now?

What happened over the course of this month, though, is nothing short of bizarre. After delaying a full WHO investigation for a year, the PRC government first allowed the assembly of a team to travel to Wuhan this winter for an investigation before subsequently blocking their entry, leading to more warm, fuzzy words about the point of the investigation from the international organization.

Chinese authorities demanded the right to veto any team members who were not of their liking. Amid massive information lockdowns regarding the coronavirus writ large inside the country, the WHO team was finally allowed in. With it went Peter Daszak, whose assignment to the team had already caused internal controversy in the virology community, given that the investigator was now essentially investigating himself in one massive conflict of interest.

After the first team to enter China was initially not allowed to visit Wuhan at all, then was allowed into Wuhan but not allowed to visit the Institute, this trip featured a three-hour stop at the WIV featuring none other than Daszak himself. What was done during this visit is not clear, but within days the team announced that it would end research into the possibility of a lab origin.

Even more bizarre and remarkable was the rapid shift by Daszak and others toward a parroting of the most recent massive propaganda pushes by the PRC government. As the Associated Press noted on January 13:

The Chinese government has tried to stir confusion about the virus's origin. It has promoted theories, with little evidence, that the outbreak might have started with imports of tainted seafood, a notion rejected by international scientists and agencies. "The WHO will need to conduct similar investigations in other places" an official of the National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said.

The WHO team, however, seems to have adopted the same stance. In the past few days, the team has declared it "unlikely" that the virus came from the lab, abandoned any investigation of the lab, and begun to state without evidence that there are indications that the virus came from outside of China, and that it probably also entered the Huanan market in frozen meats.

The Huanan market, as we have mentioned so many times before, was not the location of the first traced case of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan. This statement is therefore even more spurious than it seems, since it is a relatively moot point from the start.

Who was doing this propaganda parroting?

None other than Peter Daszak.

In a final moment of apropos online fighting, the US State Department this week attempted to assuage public concern about this glaring conflict of interest by noting that they would rely on the assessment of US intelligence groups.

Of course, Daszak had to get his two cents in here as well, and tweeted immediately Tuesday with some sage advice about how unreliable a narrator the intelligence community can be.

In an interesting twist of irony, he simultaneously posted an article from the South China Morning Post, which has been forced to stop publishing in Mandarin by the PRC government and has been identified as likely to have finally completed its transition from publication to PRC government mouthpiece since the fall of Hong Kong.

You really can't make this stuff up.

In Conclusion

To bring this puzzle of myriad conflicts of interest to its unfortunate conclusion, let's review. At the beginning of the pandemic, much concern was raised around the world, including inside of China, that perhaps this novel coronavirus with unique changes to the spike protein region could have come from the buildings next door and/or a short drive away from the initial outbreak, for the sole reason that there was a body of direct evidence (later deleted in China by the authorities) in publications from the WIV researchers themselves that, in fact, they were manufacturing novel coronaviruses with unique changes to the spike proteins.

This was met by the WHO with effectively zero active response, despite constant and public attempts by the PRC government to obfuscate information and delay or disrupt any WHO investigation. It also became clear that the US government and a number of controversial US researchers whose work was banned in the United States were involved in this process of virus manufacturing occurring in Wuhan.

Suddenly, and apparently at the behest of researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a group mainly composed of those selfsame researchers and their coworkers decided to publish a thin "statement" citing mostly one another's work and claiming that there was no possible way that the virus emerged from the WIV lab – then surreptitiously pawned it off as an international scientific consensus.

Their ringleader, who had crafted the document himself while trying to hide that fact during its publication, received and directed large quantities of funding for his work with WIV researchers. In fact, he built a career out of it, earning a six-figure salary – all of which was temporarily threatened, as well as some of his funding, when the gain-of-function work he enabled at WIV was exposed this year.

That man was then selected to be on the small WHO investigative team, possibly by the Chinese government itself. He traveled to Wuhan to investigate his own activities, and his team promptly decided after a three-hour visit to the facility that their longstanding colleagues there are most likely not responsible for the pandemic.

Then, he went on US national television and repeated the current party line of the CCP while offering no evidence for his assertions, deeply confusing his interviewer. As a final wave of approval from the Chinese government on Tuesday, state-controlled press declared a large propaganda victory, prompting this embarrassing headline from the Washington Post: "As WHO coronavirus mission leaves empty-handed, China claims propaganda win."

This all leads to many, many more questions. One, however, is the most obvious . . .

 

That national television bit, in which Daszak confounds a CNN anchor as he makes a series of unfounded speculations that line up neatly with PRC propaganda, is right here.

 

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