WhatsInWuchang

Curious about what's in Wuchang

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

New article 📄:

Wrong Side of the Yangtze River: Did a Map Mistake by the World Health Organization Contribute to Premature Conclusions About SARS2's Origin?

https://t.co/cGtlbGaC4r📄

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

@ban_epp_gofroc @thackerpd Agree

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

"Fauci wasn’t merely wrong about key aspects of his supposed field of expertise — from the effectiveness of masks to those completely arbitrary and nonscientific social distancing rules. It also seems clear that he outright lied about many things, including the extent to which the U.S. was funding gain-of-function virus research in the Chinese city where the first COVID cases were identified."

https://t.co/nT2YKk5m9b

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

Well argued

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

People sometimes claim that I am motivated to champion the lab leak theory of Covid origin by financial interest because I co-wrote a book about it.

But in the book we covered both sides of the debate.

And publishers paid me less for that book than any other I have written in decades.

I then halved that by sharing the authorship with @Ayjchan.

And I gave half of the remaining proceeds away to charity.

If money was my motivation I would never have written that book.

But if they really think money is such a motivator perhaps they could look into the far larger grants that those opposing the lab leak have received, and reflect on how those would have been at risk if they had gone against Anthony Fauci's insistence that the lab leak is a conspiracy theory.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

In our analysis of the origin of Covid, @Ayjchan and I are often urged to speculate about exactly what happened but we resist going too far beyond the known facts.

Expertise and funds went from America to Wuhan a lot: that much is a fact. Sequence information was sometimes shared. It is possible that synthesised viruses and sequences were whizzing back and forth too but we have no evidence of this for SARS-CoV-2. 

For several years before the pandemic, the Wuhan team had been successfully genetically engineering sarbecoviruses and experimenting with these in the lab.

They had surpassed Baric in the quantity of these experiments and, most importantly, had access to a still-secret trove of bat sarbecoviruses from the regions where SARS-CoV-2's closest relatives have been found.

Baric was the sorcerer, certainly, but it is far more likely that the accident happened to the apprentice.

[Jeffrey A Tucker @jeffreytucker]

Outstanding documentation here.

Did Ralph Baric at UNC Create SARS-CoV-2? https://t.co/pvj57V62Gu via @brownstoneinst

[Matt Orfalea @0rf]

5 years ago today

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Tucker Carlson asked Joe Kent why the Thomas Crooks surveillance tapes haven’t been released.

Kent’s answer blew him away.

He explained the government deliberately withholds information to create noise with conspiracy theories, so the “actual question never gets answered.”

TUCKER: “The current president was the subject of a near-successful assassination attempt.”

“And we’re just not going to look into very obviously or divulge information that everyone knows they have.”

“For example, the surveillance tape from the shooting range at which Thomas Crooks trained, because it would answer the question, was he training with somebody?”

“And if so, who? They have that footage, and they won’t release it. What could possibly be the explanation for that?”

KENT: “I know what the result is. The result is people come to their own conclusions. And this is where crazy conspiracy theories come from.”

“And then those conspiracy theories usually are easy to ‘debunk’ or make the people saying them sound crazy. So then the actual question never gets answered.”

[Tucker laughs in awe]

TUCKER: “Sorry. Can you say that for people who haven’t lived in Washington?”

“I try to explain this to people all the time because this has been ongoing since at least the Kennedy assassination.”

“But this is a very serious and recurring thing. It’s a tactic. And you just explained it better than anyone I’ve ever heard. Can you just do that again?”

KENT: “So basically, you give no information whatsoever on something that’s obvious, that there should be information.”

“You outlined there’s potentially footage of Crooks at the shooting range. Again, police, 101, go get the tapes. Let’s figure it out.”

“If you don’t want to address that question, then you just go silent. You say, ‘you can’t ask that question,’ which then creates people who come out of kind of nowhere, and they start drawing their own conclusions.”

“Knowing the way the internet works, half of them, if not more, are probably going to be so far off in left field... that then you can just be like, Oh, these people asking these questions about that tape at the video range. Crazy conspiracy theorists.’”

“And so then you’ve just diverted all attention away from the thing that you’re trying to conceal. And now everyone’s focused on the crazies.”

TUCKER: “Man.”

KENT: “And then the second someone asks a legitimate question, they’re ‘crazy.’”

[JOSE GEFAELL @ChGefaell]

What happened in 2021?

[Bryce Nickels @Bryce_Nickels]

In terms of predicting whether those involved in the COVID origins cover up will ever be held accountable--The decision by new NIH leadership to publish the new vision for NIAID in the same journal (Nat Med) led by the same chief editor (Joao Monteiro) that published 'Proximal Origin' six years earlier sends a clear signal that accountability is off the table & the public should move on.

[Bryce Nickels @Bryce_Nickels]

🥂Happy 6-Year Anniversary to the Big Lie!🥂

6 yrs ago today, Kristian Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, Ian Lipkin, Eddie Holmes, and Robert Garry published the fraudulent “Proximal Origin” paper, which claimed to “clearly show” that SARS-CoV-2 was not a product of intentional manipulation.

The now-notorious paper played a central role in spreading the false -- and pervasive -- narrative that the weight of scientific evidence ruled out a lab origin for COVID-19—a claim that Andersen and his colleagues continue to promote today.

In the years since, the misconduct surrounding its creation has been publicly exposed. A taxpayer-funded congressional investigation even concluded that Proximal Origin was the product of scientific misconduct.

And yet, the paper—and its authors—remain largely unaccountable.

If the scientific community cannot muster enough courage to retract such an egregious fraud, they are clearly not worthy of public trust.

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

@Bryce_Nickels Move on man, what's a three year pandemic between friends?

/s

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

@Kevin_McKernan @bariweiss @TheFP Agree

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

New FOIAs by @USRTK show US virologists proposed putting furin cleavage sites into viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 (Covid) AFTER the pandemic began.

There's still no gov oversight of privately funded work on pathogens that aren't select agents.

[Epstein File Search @epsteinsearchin]

Rep. Thomas Massie says Trump called him on the House floor after he pushed to release the Epstein files.

Trump told him three times: "I'm coming at you like you've never seen in your life."

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

@SkaendMan @seanthomas85 @ProfEmilyOster Condolences

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

@seanthomas85 @ProfEmilyOster It's okay, I didn't die from salmonella

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

If you think about it... I mean reeeally think about it... the side that is forced to act first is the victim.

[WhatsInWuchang @InWuchang]

It's defense if you bomb them first.

[Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47]

.@SecRubio: "The president made the very wise decision—we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

[JD Vance @JDVance]

Twenty years ago we invaded Iraq. The war killed many innocent Iraqis and Americans. It destroyed the oldest Christian populations in the world. It cost over $1 trillion, and turned Iraq into a satellite of Iran. It was an unforced disaster, and I pray that we learn its lessons.