Vanity Fair: Government Bureaucrats Warned Other Bureaucrats to Not Look Into Covid's Origins, as It Would "Open a Can of Worms;"
Scientists Issued Death Threats to Other Scientists

Do read this narrative-defying expose from Vanity Fair exposing the coordinated efforts of bureaucrats, politicians, and the media to threaten anyone pursuing the lab leak theory.

Let's just start calling it the "Lab Leak Fact."

Now yes, at every turn, they cover for their government pals and Democrat politicians and fellow media propagandists, sayin it's so very understandable that we all collectively acted to censor people and shut down scientific investigation because the Bad Orange Man said something only a fool would dismiss as false, but which could help he get reelected.

So of course we all banded together to suppress science to get Biden elected.

I mean, of course: "elected."

But dismiss that spin and just focus on the facts, which are damning for, yes, the government bureaucrats, the Democrat politicians, and the media -- including our Information Censoring Tech Overlords, social media monopolies.

The Lancet statement organized by Peter Daszak -- through whom Fauci funneled money to the Wuhan lab for gain-of-function research on bat viruses -- effectively shut down all discussion of the Lab Leak Fact by branding anyone who mentioned it a racist who wanted to harass Chinese scientists and Chinese people generally.

... On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed "solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China" and asserted: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19's origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been "nailed to the church doors," establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. "Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone."

That is Peter Daszak, as I've said before, organizing his own cover-up in the open and in real time.

Also note that Peter Daszak was aided in his intimidation of other scientists by his good pal and funder Anthony Fauci, who denounced the lab leak theory publicly.

Also note that Peter Daszak was, incredibly, assigned to officially "investigate" the very crime he was so zealously covering up!

The statement struck Demaneuf as "totally nonscientific." To him, it seemed to contain no evidence or information. And so he decided to begin his own inquiry in a "proper" way, with no idea of what he would find.

Of course it wasn't a scientific statement -- it was a purely political, defensive tribal statement.

A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19's origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology's gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.

In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, "warned" leaders within his bureau "not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19" because it would "'open a can of worms' if it continued." ...

But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. "I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis," Redfield told Vanity Fair. "I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science."

Your professional, rational, learned, judicious Ruling Class, everyone.

It's a gang of fat, stupid, incompetent Tom Nicholses taking their Twitter Drama into real life.

Dr. Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, said that from the very first reports of a novel bat-related coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, it took him a nanosecond or a picosecond" to consider a link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Only two other labs in the world, in Galveston, Texas, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were doing similar research. "It's not a dozen cities," he said. "It's three places."

Then came the revelation that the Lancet statement was not only signed but organized by a zoologist named Peter Daszak, who has repackaged U.S. government grants and allocated them to facilities conducting gain-of-function research--among them the [Wuhan Institute of Virology, the "Wuhan Lab," abbreviated WIV] itself. David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, ran the State Department's day-to-day COVID-19 origins inquiry. He said it soon became clear that "there is a huge gain-of-function bureaucracy" inside the federal government.

As months go by without a host animal that proves the natural theory, the questions from credible doubters have gained in urgency. To one former federal health official, the situation boiled down to this: An institute "funded by American dollars is trying to teach a bat virus to infect human cells, then there is a virus" in the same city as that lab. It is "not being intellectually honest not to consider the hypothesis" of a lab escape.

And why was that?

In the words of David Feith, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the East Asia bureau, "The story of why parts of the U.S. government were not as curious as many of us think they should have been is a hugely important one."

"Smelled Like a Cover-Up"

...

A small group within the State Departments' Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance bureau had been studying the Institute for months....

As officials at the meeting discussed what they could share with the public, they were advised by Christopher Park, the director of the State Department's Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, not to say anything that would point to the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research, according to documentation of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair.

Some of the attendees were "absolutely floored," said an official familiar with the proceedings. That someone in the U.S. government could "make an argument that is so nakedly against transparency, in light of the unfolding catastrophe, was...shocking and disturbing."

And yet: They enabled the cover-up, either actively or passively, by remaining stone silent as this "shocking" assault on the public's right to know was executed.

There's a lot more, but I'm stopping there to get this post up. I'll finish the article after I post. I'll update or post a Part 2 later with anything particularly interesting.

Update: From Tami.

In early July, the World Health Organization invited the U.S. government to recommend experts for a fact-finding mission to Wuhan, a sign of progress in the long-delayed probe of COVID-19's origins. Questions about the WHO's independence from China, the country's secrecy, and the raging pandemic had turned the anticipated mission into a minefield of international grudges and suspicion.

Within weeks, the U.S. government submitted three names to the WHO: an FDA veterinarian, a CDC epidemiologist, and an NIAID virologist. None were chosen. Instead, only one representative from the U.S. made the cut: Peter Daszak.

Can we say this investigation was "rigged" or will that get me banned from social media?

Vanity Fair: Government Bureaucrats Warned Other Bureaucrats to Not Look Into Covid's Origins, as It Would "Open a Can of Worms;"
Scientists Issued Death Threats to Other Scientists&bodytext= Do read this narrative-defying expose from Vanity Fair exposing the coordinated efforts of bureaucrats, politicians, and the media to threaten anyone pursuing the lab leak theory. Let's just start calling it the "Lab Leak Fact." Now yes, at every...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 02:31 PM

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