It Was Never About A Virus

Oh! How the truth is most inconvenient!:

The controversy over the origins of Covid-19 refuses to die, despite efforts early in the pandemic to kill it. It was natural to doubt it was a coincidence that an outbreak caused by a SARS-like coronavirus from bats began in Wuhan, China, the only city where risky experiments were being done on diverse and novel SARS-like coronaviruses from bats. The Chinese Communist Party did its utmost to dismiss such suspicions, but so did a group of influential Western scientists.

On March 17, 2020, the journal Nature Medicine published a paper by five scientists, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” that dismissed “any type of laboratory based scenario” for the origin of the pandemic. It was cited by thousands of news outlets to claim that the virus emerged naturally. But Slack messages and emails subpoenaed and released by the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic suggest that some of the authors didn’t believe their own conclusions. Before, during and even after the publication of their paper, they worried privately that Covid-19 was caused by a laboratory escape, perhaps even of a genetically engineered virus.

The lead author, evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Institution, told the journal’s chief editor, João Monteiro, that he would edit the paper “to make clearer that this [virus] does have a natural origin” (emphasis in original). The paper stated boldly: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

Shortly after publication, Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health, wrote on the NIH website that “this study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19.” Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said from the podium of the White House that the paper showed that the data were “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.” In private, the authors celebrated the traction their paper was gaining despite angry emails from the public. “We RUUUUUUULE. That’s tenure secured, right there,” Mr. Andersen wrote.

The mainstream media frequently cited the paper in ridiculing any discussion of a lab leak as a conspiracy theory favored by racists and right-wing extremists. Facebook censored the topic for a year. Yet now the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Energy Department—the U.S. intelligence agencies with the strongest scientific expertise—have assessed that the pandemic likely had a research-related origin.

Mr. Andersen’s messages confirm that senior scientists who controlled the purse strings of large funding bodies prompted them to draft the paper after a conference call on Feb. 1, 2020. They were Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins and Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust. Shortly before their paper went public, evolutionary biologist and virologist Edward Holmes of Sydney University reported to his fellow authors that “Jeremy Farrar and Francis Collins are very happy” with the final draft. Two of the authors wrote in private messages that they had rushed their paper out under pressure from unidentified “higher-ups.” The role of these senior scientists went unacknowledged in the paper.

When asked at a July 11 subcommittee hearing—before the latest release of messages—about the contrast between their public and private opinions, one of the authors, virologist Robert Garry of Tulane University, replied: “I was doing what scientists often do, and that is take a devil’s advocate position.” Mr. Andersen said that changing your mind in the light of new evidence “is simply the scientific process.”

Yet the newly revealed messages show that the scientists didn’t change their minds. They continued to advocate privately for the devil even after a preliminary version of the paper went online on Feb. 16, 2020.

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Covid-19 may have started in a “laboratory incident” but the precise cause is unproven, says the Department of Health. The acknowledgment comes three years after then-Health Minister Patricia Hajdu ridiculed “conspiracy theories” about the Wuhan Institute of Virology: ‘You’re feeding into conspiracy theories people perpetuate on the internet.’

 

Also remember that this heartless cow travelled to and fro while telling Canadians never to visit their families or friends. She even billed the taxpayers.

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Conservative public interest advocacy group Defending the Republic (DTR) has obtained almost 15,000 pages of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data, claiming the data show an "utter lack of thoroughness" of the trials and calls the vaccine's safety into "serious doubt."

As a result of successful Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the group recently announced it had obtained—and is releasing—nearly 15,000 pages of documents relating to testing and adverse events associated with "Spikevax," Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.

Since 2022, the group has been involved in litigation against the FDA relating to the production of data submitted by Moderna in support of its application to federal regulators for approval of its vaccine.

As a result, the FDA agreed to produce around 24,000 pages of the Moderna records by the end of this year, with the 15,000 pages being the first instalment.

The records, some of which relate to adverse events related to the vaccine, include important information related to the safety profile of Spikevax, which was first authorized for emergency use in the United States in December 2020 and in January 2022 received full approval for adults.

"The public can be assured that Spikevax meets the FDA’s high standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality required of any vaccine approved for use in the United States," Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement earlier this year.

But the new data call this view into question. The advocacy group says that the tens of thousands of pages of clinical trial data released by the FDA supports the conclusion that there is "serious doubt" about both  the safety of Spikevax and the FDA's standards for approval.

Neither Moderna nor the FDA immediately responded to a request for comment.

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We keep being told that injury to the heart from the COVID vaccine is very rare, but a study done in Basel Switzerland indicates that the rate of subclinical myocarditis after the COVID vaccine is hardly rare at all.

In fact, in a study with only 777 participants with a median age of 37--all medical professionals getting the COVID vaccine–the incidence of elevated cardiac enzymes 3 days after injection was pretty substantial, at almost 3%.

The CDC did a study and from that, they claimed the rate was 0.001%, or one out of 100,000.

2.8% is a lot higher than 0.001%. Another 0.3% had “probable myocarditis,” putting the total at over 3%. That is 3000 times higher than the US government claimed. 

In this small study, nobody had serious complications, but with a myocarditis complication rate of 3%, you would have to expect that giving out hundreds of millions of doses is a pretty risky proposition.

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I'm surprised that they did not offer MAID:

The widow of a man who died after being denied a life saving organ transplant because of his vaccination status said the decision showed “a disgusting disregard for a man who was otherwise a prime candidate for transplantation.”

Meghan Harper, whose husband Garnet died in May, said a recent change in policy by the hospital involved is too little, too late.

On May 22, Garnet Harper of Sudbury, Ontario, died from complications related to dialysis. Mr. Harper was in kidney failure, but was denied a transplant by the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) because he had chosen not to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

On July 27, the LHSC sent The Epoch Times a statement, in which the hospital stated the policy had changed in May—the same month Harper died.

“As the pandemic evolved, so did our vaccination policy. As of May 2023, we no longer require transplant patients to have at least two doses of COVID 19 vaccine, although it is still highly recommended.”

The statement added, “We offer our deepest condolences to the Harper family for their recent loss.”

For Ms. Harper, who watched her husband die, the change in policy came too late.

“London Health Sciences needs to be held accountable for the discriminatory and deadly policy that they created and enforced,” she said in a statement to The Epoch Times, after seeing the hospital’s updated policy.

“Announcing a change in policy does not relieve LHSC of the responsibility they carry in Garnet’s death … experimental medicine should never have been mandated. Even the provincial guidelines they cite as directives for their harsh policy called the injection a recommendation and not a requirement.”

In a July 25 interview with The Epoch Times, Ms. Harper said denying her husband a transplant was unfair.

”I don't think that it's fair that anybody be denied an organ transplant in Ontario who needs one … and we need to make sure that people, whether they're vaccinated or unvaccinated in Ontario, are able to receive the health care that they desperately need,” she said.

She said Mr. Harper found out in February 2022 he had Stage 5 renal failure. The couple was told by a Sudbury doctor that he would likely be rejected as a candidate for transplant because of his stance against the vaccine mandate. Mr. Harper nevertheless decided to stand by his convictions.