The prevailing theory that the SARS CoV2 virus, which causes the infection known worldwide as COVID-19, began in a Wuhan wet market may itself be all wet.
Unchained and free to speak his mind now that he is no longer head of CDC (Centers for Disease Control), virologist Robert Redfield recently held forth about the origin of the virus that has killed three million internationally. Redfield believes the virus escaped the high-security, bio-safety level 4 laboratory in Wuhan. In a recent interview with Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN, Redfield stated:
“I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human. And at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human to human transmission. Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonotic to human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human to human transmission.”
Gupta appeared surprised, even stunned to hear the well-respected scientist and former government official espouse an opinion that has been labeled conspiracy theory by most media outlets worldwide for more than a year. For his part, Redfield seemed uncomfortable -- perched precariously between the bravery required to tell the inconvenient truth as he sees it and the reputational carnage it could potentially visit on his career. Redfield seemed defensive – or possibly pro-active -- when he asserted:
“That’s my opinion. I’m allowed to have opinions now. I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped. Now, other people don’t believe that, that’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out. It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in the laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.”
When Redfield cast a jaundiced eye at the idea the virus jumped from animals to humans, he implied that only highly specialized laboratory experiments known as gain of function could make a virus as incredibly transmissible as COVID-19. Gain of function experiments were suspended during the Obama administration for being too risky and potentially catastrophic. But in a shell-game maneuver, such bio-weapon experiments were outsourced during those years to the Wuhan Institute for Virology in China – under the aegis of none other than National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci.
The metastasizing power of the CCP to control international narratives – from deflecting criticism of its pogrom against its Uighur population to near-total ideological capture of the NBA -- is deeply unsettling. Exhibit A is that China successfully quelled any impetus to refer to its earth-paralyzing coronavirus by the place of origin, as is standard practice (see: Spanish flu, German measles, Lyme Disease, Zika, etc.).
With a savvy worthy of a nation bent on global hegemony, the CCP labeled it “racist” to refer to the cause of the pandemic as the “Wuhan Virus.” It was then able to compel its obedient sycophants in the WHO (World Health Organization) to echo the smear and succeeded in having the virus named COVID-19. The CCP knew full well how nuclear the charge of racism is and leveraged that raw American wound to its own ends. And make no mistake: Its intent was to disassociate China from COVID-19.
Redfield is not alone among eminent scientists in promoting the theory that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Lab. French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier, Ph.D., and Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan, Md, Ph.D., agree. And Yan’s opinion is highly informed, for she was employed at the Wuhan Lab before defecting to the United States in 2020 to sound the alarm. She asserts that COVID is a viral Frankenstein’s monster, created in her former workplace and escaped after its gain of function had been manipulated to be more virulent than almost any in history. Among risk-averse scientists, a consensus is growing that the Wuhan lab is COVID ground zero. And Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also came out early this year with his belief in the Wuhan lab escape, saying there was “significant evidence” for it.
Redfield took the expected criticism from the usual suspects for having dared to gainsay the CCP orthodoxy on the CCP virus. He was called “reckless and irresponsible” and accused of trafficking in “debunked Trump-era conspiracy theory.” When pressed, however, Redfield’s critics admit there is no more proof for the “bat in a wet market theory” than there is for the virus escaping the Wuhan lab. And as Redfield pointed out, “It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker.” Even the profoundly compromised head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom, agrees with that, stating “all hypotheses remain on the table.”
An inspection of the Wuhan lab in March by an international delegation found no evidence for the lab escape theory -- but it was widely derided as a farcical pantomime as it essentially came down to “a show of hands,” as one paper termed it, by the Chinese. The sole American representative at what appeared to be a stage-managed “inspection” with a foregone conclusion was Peter Daszak. He is the longtime head of the benignly named EcoHealth Alliance, which claims to be in the business of pandemic prevention – and yet it funded the Wuhan Institute for Virology gain of function and bat coronavirus science. If the lab escape theory turns out to be true, this may implicate Daszak and his EcoHealth Alliance in the pandemic. But it certainly makes him a suspect addition to the performative inspection of the Wuhan lab that cleared it of responsibility for the outbreak.
For his part, Gupta drafted the brave example of former CDC head Redfield and decided to come out as a believer in the lab escape theory – after the interview, of course, and once someone else of eminence had leaped first. If the theory is true, it will need as many acolytes as possible to confront the mighty CCP propaganda machine.
In a vacuum, it is always helpful to apply Ockham’s Razor to an intractable question. This philosophical theorem asserts that the simplest explanation is usually correct. Consider this: The most transmissible virus in the world in a century originated in a city with a lab that researches bio-weapons and gain of function virology. This city also has wet markets that sell perishable dead animals.
Is the simplest explanation that the virus jumped from a bat to a human at the wet market, then infected the entire globe? Or is it that there was a leak from the level 4 bio-safety lab that conducts bio-weapons experiments to make viruses extremely deadly and incredibly infectious that just happens to be in Wuhan – the city of COVID’s origin?
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