Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by a House committee and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus’s structure to a U.S. government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019. Chinese officials at that time were still publicly describing the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, as a viral pneumonia “of unknown cause” and had yet to close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, site of one of the initial Covid-19 outbreaks.
China only shared the virus’s sequence with the World Health Organization on Jan. 11, 2020, according to U.S. government timelines of the pandemic.
What makes the revelation of this earlier attempt to publish the genetic structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus noteworthy is that: 1) the upload was deleted, and 2) according to documents obtained by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, China has insisted that the sequence shared with the WHO on January 11 was the earliest available sequence data.
The sequence was submitted by Dr. Lili Ren, an accomplished virologist at the Institute of Pathogen Biology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army. She is also a current subgrantee of non-profit EcoHealth Alliance on the same National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) grant as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has been debarred from receiving NIH grants for ten years for failing to provide laboratory records requested by NIH and for conducting research that “did lead or could lead to health issues or other unacceptable outcomes.”
Dr. Ren’s submission was missing some of the technical (not scientific) information required for publication on GenBank. She was notified by NIH staff on December 31, 2019, that her submission would be deleted without the additional information. Dr. Ren’s sequence is not the first instance of Chinese researchers attempting to delete early SARS-CoV-2 sequences posted to GenBank, but it is the earliest known one.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has confirmed that Dr. Ren’s December 28, 2019, sequence was nearly identical to the sequence later made public by the China CDC on January 10, 2020, which at the time was the first known sequence. China has consistentlystated that it published the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 as soon as it was available.
The newly unearthed information points to yet more evidence of the CCP's lack of transparency on the origins of COVID-19.
"This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information," said committee chair McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA), in a joint letter, the Epoch Times reports.
Yet there is another aspect of this revelation that deserves consideration: the provenance of that earlier aborted upload by China to GenBank highlights also that nothing has changed within the governmental “biosecurity state” that exists around the globe. All the same actors are in all the same places, they are all doing the same things, and they are all still playing God with viruses and with people’s health.
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Straight away, we are confronted with an awkward reality regarding the December 28 upload to GenBank: Dr. Lili Ren was a “subgrantee” of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak’s infamous non-profit that went to great lengths to funnel US taxpayer dollars to Chinese biolabs.
Ren is also notably a sub-grantee of the controversial nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.
The New York-based organization helped fund coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab that has long been scrutinized as the possible origin of COVID-19.
National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) GenBank repository, which received the data from Ms. Ren, notified the Chinese virologist that the submission was “incomplete” and “lacked the necessary information required for publication,” the Department of Health and Human Services told the House committee in a letter.
Following a quality review process that screens for technical details, the GenBank asked for additional information from Ms. Ren, who works at the state-run Institute of Pathogen Biology, but never heard back, leading to the sequence’s removal from the database on Jan. 16, 2020. During this period, GenBank received a near-identical COVID-19 genetic sequence from a different submitter, which it published on Jan. 12, 2020, according to the letter that the Energy and Commerce Committee released on Jan. 17 this year.
Thus Ms. Ren attempted to submit the genetic sequence data, flubbed the submission process, and then “went dark” when NIH personnel attempted to contact her to get additional technical information not involving the actual sequence itself.
Did she simply go silent because she thought she had done all she needed to do? Was she told not to follow up with NIH? Did government watchers in Beijing block the communications so that she never saw them?
We do not know the reasons for her lack of communication with NIH after the upload. We do know that at least one Chinese researcher was in possession of the genetic structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus at least two weeks before China officially acknowledged having sequenced a new coronavirus—which makes China’s insistence that it shared the data at the earliest opportunity factually false.
Dr. Ren’s association with EcoHealth reminds us yet again of just how deeply that organization is woven into nearly every narrative on COVID-19, including corporate media’s Pandemic Panic Narrative—and how EcoHealth continues to feed at the taxpayer trough despite having facilitated gain-of-function research at various Chinese biolabs.
EcoHealth Alliance, the controversial organization at the center of the Covid-19 pandemic, has continued to receive taxpayer money to study contagious animal-borne viruses in Asia and Africa.
Records from the government's USA Spending database show EHA has been awarded at least eight grants totaling more than $32million from the Department of Defense since 2017 for projects involving experiments with coronaviruses, Ebola and MERS.
EHA, led by British zoologist Peter Daszak, is a New York-based organization that has funneled taxpayer dollars awarded from the National Institutes of Health to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducts risky gain-of-function research.
These types of experiments see scientists intentionally alter viruses to make them more infectious or deadly - and the WIV is the lab Covid is believed to have been created and leaked from, sparking a worldwide epidemic that is estimated to have directly or indirectly killed more than 22million people.
Despite EHA's connection to the WIV and Covid, six of the government grants were initiated after the pandemic spread across the globe.
EcoHealth itself has an ethically checkered past particularly in relation to COVID and the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Documents unearthed via FOIA requests record EcoHealth’s efforts to secure government funding for a research “project”—project Defuse—to insert “spike proteins” into an existing SARS viral sequence.
A newly-uncovered trove of documents detailing plans to create a Covid-like virus in China months before the pandemic make the 'lab leak almost certain', experts say.
The records - obtained now by FOIA requests - lay out a plan to 'engineer spike proteins' to infect human cells that would then be 'inserted into SARS-Covid backbones' at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018.
Just a year later, in late 2019, the Covid-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic.
The proposal was made by the now-notorious EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit that channels US government grants abroad to fund these types of experiments.
Ultimately, the application was denied by the US Department of Defense, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a 'blueprint' for how to create Covid.
Readers will note that one of the architects of Project Defuse was Ralph Baric, another advocate of gain-of-function research who appears time and again in the narratives surrounding COVID and the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Even the apologists within the academic media have not been able to fully avoid the reality that Baric’s “reverse genetics” techniques and his ideas for grafting different spike proteins onto an existing SARS-like virus come uncomfortably close to the apparent evolution of the actual SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In 2013, the American virologist Ralph Baric approached Zhengli Shi at a meeting. Baric was a top expert in coronaviruses, with hundreds of papers to his credit, and Shi, along with her team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, had been discovering them by the fistful in bat caves. In one sample of bat guano, Shi had detected the genome of a new virus, called SHC014, that was one of the two closest relatives to the original SARS virus, but her team had not been able to culture it in the lab.
Baric had developed a way around that problem—a technique for “reverse genetics” in coronaviruses. Not only did it allow him to bring an actual virus to life from its genetic code, but he could mix and match parts of multiple viruses. He wanted to take the “spike” gene from SHC014 and move it into a genetic copy of the SARS virus he already had in his lab. The spike molecule is what lets a coronavirus open a cell and get inside it. The resulting chimera would demonstrate whether the spike of SHC014 would attach to human cells.
In other words, Ralph Baric specializes in playing God with viral pathogens.
Did EcoHealth divert funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to move Baric’s Project Defuse idea forward? They claim they didn’t, but at the same time we are faced with numerous contacts between EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak and Shi Zhengli—the Wuhan Institute’s infamous “bat lady” for her research on bat coronaviruses—as well as Shi Zhengli and NIAID’s Anthony “The Science™” Fauci, contacts which defy easy explanation and raise questions about the research actually being done in Wuhan.
Scientists central to the “lab-leak” theory of COVID-19’s origins visited Anthony Fauci’s institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research months before the NIH resumed creating new viruses in the lab — a practice scientists have debated could cause a pandemic.
Wuhan Institute of Virology Scientist Shi Zhengli, known as “the bat woman of China” for her research on SARS-like coronaviruses in bat caves, presented her findings on novel coronaviruses to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staffers in June 2017, according to a report by U.S. Right to Know.
EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research organization that funded Shi’s lab, arranged the meeting, which the group’s president Peter Daszak dubbed a “double act” between him and Shi.
We are also faced with emails and other documents attesting to both Fauci’s and Daszak’s knowledge of “novel coronavirus” research taking place in Wuhan.
Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the NIH and by FOIA, reveal that Fauci and his top aides were aware of the novel coronavirus research underway at the pandemic’s epicenter well before 2020.
Despite this, Fauci did not mention the 2017 meeting with Daszak in 2022 during a sworn deposition with the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The deposition was part of a lawsuit alleging that he and other White House officials leaned on social media companies to limit debate about COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic.
We should remember also that NIH-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—research which again involved EcoHealth Alliance—resulted in at least some gain-of-function research being performed, in flagrant violation of the research grant’s terms.
The experiment also raises questions about assertions from Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins that NIH-funded projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology did not involve gain-of-function research. In May, Fauci testified before Congress: “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” The documents do not establish whether Fauci was directly aware of the work.
Scientists working under a 2014 NIH grant to the EcoHealth Alliance to study bat coronaviruses combined the genetic material from a “parent” coronavirus known as WIV1 with other viruses. They twice submitted summaries of their work that showed that, when in the lungs of genetically engineered mice, three altered bat coronaviruses at times reproduced far more quickly than the original virus on which they were based. The altered viruses were also somewhat more pathogenic, with one causing the mice to lose significant weight. The researchers reported, “These results demonstrate varying pathogenicity of SARSr-CoVs with different spike proteins in humanized mice.”
But the terms of the grant clearly stipulated that the funding could not be used for gain-of-function experiments. The grant conditions also required the researchers to immediately report potentially dangerous results and stop their experiments pending further NIH review. According to both the EcoHealth Alliance and NIH, the results were reported to the agency, but NIH determined that rules designed to restrict gain-of-function research did not apply.
At every turn, the reveals yield far more questions than answers.
The most damning aspect of this research is the explicit admission that the pathogen studied, GX_P2V(short_3UTR) was cultivated in a laboratory setting.
We previously reported that the early passaged GX_P2V isolate was actually a cell culture-adapted mutant, named GX_P2V(short_3UTR), which possesses a 104-nucleotide deletion at the 3’-UTR.
“Cell culture-adapted mutant”—these researchers in Beijing “grew” their very own SARS-CoV-2-related virus and then infected “humanized” mice with it.
They created a dangerous and lethal virus simply for the purpose of “studying” it, and without apparent regard for the risks of what could happen if that virus escapes the lab and in spread around the world. This research is the epitome of playing God with viruses.
Note that EcoHealth is still receiving US taxpayer dollars.
This latest reveal about China’s duplicity on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is yet another reminder that, for far too many virologists around the world, playing God with viruses is merely the status quo. As we learned from Project Veritas’ expose on Pfizer, this not the “new normal”, but rather the “old normal”.
There are many notable quotes to glean from the video, but the telling one comes at the very beginning:
well one of the things we're exploring is, like, why don't we just mutate it ourselves so we could...we could create...preemptively develop new vaccines, right?
Where have we seen this before? For starters, it’s the premise of the Tom Cruise action thriller “Mission Impossible II”, where the villain, Sean Ambrose (played with scenery chewing glee by Dougray Scott), steals a manufactured pathogen, “Chimera”, along with the cure (“Bellerephon”), intending to make billions off the cure after unleashing the pathogen on the world.
Yes, Pfizer is imitating a Tom Cruise movie to make its next billions in profit. That alone should scare the bejesus out of everybody.
Ultimately, the distinction between what constitutes “bioweapons research” versus “threat reduction research” is a rather Clintonian parsing of the terms.
Regardless of the terms, the research activities involved target dangerous pathogens. Regardless of the terms, the research demands the storage of dangerous pathogens. Regardless of the terms, the research invites if not demands the strictest of scrutiny to ensure it remains within the parameters of the BWC.
Their mendacity and malevolence is so routine, so deeply ingrained, that its most frightening aspect is its banal ordinariness.
Welcome back to the “old normal” in “biosecurity” and “threat reduction”.
This latest reveal about China’s myriad lies and deceptions in early 2020, sadly, is a grim reminder that not only have none of the actors been called to account, but many are still actively doing the very things that likely gifted the world with SARS-CoV-2 and COVID, as well as the Pandemic Panic lunacies which followed.
This latest reveal about China reminds us that, in far too many respects, absolutely nothing has changed since 2020. We have learned nothing. We have done nothing.
All Facts Matter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Alternatively, please consider making a donation via Ko-Fi. Thank you always for your support!
"This latest reveal about China reminds us that, in far too many respects, absolutely nothing has changed since 2020. We have learned nothing. We have done nothing."
We have launched the spike protein into billions of people. Weaponizing the most critical 'feature' of this virus, and that is a CRIME covered up as a gift.
My guess is that when he was President, he fairly innocently consulted his agency heads, never dreaming that at least one would be so twisted as to deliberately kill 600,000 Americans just to exult in his power. As President, Trump was not a scientist, so understandably relied on the people whose job was to BE scientists. Later, as the truth of the mishandling of Covid was gradually exposed, Trump probably felt considerable angst at being betrayed in this manner. But he is Trump, a man who does not admit weakness or error if he doesn’t have to, because that is poor strategy in the Art of the Deal.
As for your second point, time is on Trump’s side. Between now and Election Day, the number of voters who become cognizant of what truly transpired can only increase - perhaps exponentially!
"This latest reveal about China reminds us that, in far too many respects, absolutely nothing has changed since 2020. We have learned nothing. We have done nothing."
We have launched the spike protein into billions of people. Weaponizing the most critical 'feature' of this virus, and that is a CRIME covered up as a gift.
My guess is that when he was President, he fairly innocently consulted his agency heads, never dreaming that at least one would be so twisted as to deliberately kill 600,000 Americans just to exult in his power. As President, Trump was not a scientist, so understandably relied on the people whose job was to BE scientists. Later, as the truth of the mishandling of Covid was gradually exposed, Trump probably felt considerable angst at being betrayed in this manner. But he is Trump, a man who does not admit weakness or error if he doesn’t have to, because that is poor strategy in the Art of the Deal.
As for your second point, time is on Trump’s side. Between now and Election Day, the number of voters who become cognizant of what truly transpired can only increase - perhaps exponentially!