RON UNZ • MAY 10, 2021 • 278 COMMENTS
There's a reason for that particular choice of words. A pattern of selective omissions in an otherwise entirely truthful presentation can easily mislead us as much as any outright lie. And under certain circumstances, such omissions may be made necessary by powerful outside forces, so that even the most well-intentioned writer is faced with the difficult choice of either excluding certain elements from his analysis or having his important work denied a proper audience. I have sometimes faced this dilemma myself, but over the last few years, my lengthy American Pravda series has charted those gaping lacunae in our received accounts of modern world history, as I have sought to provide a historical counter-narrative of the last one hundred years.
Careful reexaminations of events from fifty or sixty years ago may be interesting, but those of the present day have far greater importance, and this is particularly true with regard to the Covid-19 epidemic that has engulfed the world since early 2020. Millions have already died, including many hundreds of thousands of Americans, with a newly released research study by the University of Washington's authoritative Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) now suggesting that our domestic death-toll has already exceeded 900,000. This global outbreak first began in Wuhan, and the nature of its origin has become a major flashpoint in the new Cold War between China and America, with the trajectory of that conflict having only slightly changed as Trump Neocons have been replaced by Biden Neocons at the helm of our foreign policy.
Two months ago I published a lengthy article summarizing much of the information from the first year of the outbreak and focusing upon the heated debate regarding the origins of the virus. Aside from the reports of the teams of investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, several very long articles by independent journalists and researchers have constituted my main sources of information, including:
• How It All Started: China’s Early Coronavirus MisstepsThe Wall Street Journal • March 6, 2020 • 4,400 wordsThe Associated Press • April 14, 2020 • 2,400 WordsThe Wall Street Journal • August 17, 2020 • 4,500 WordsPhilippe Lemoine • Quillette • August 24-September 6, 2020 • 31,000 WordsFor decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if …?Nicholson Baker • New York Magazine • January 4, 2021 • 12,000 Words
This compendium of crucial research has now received a major addition, a 11,000 word analysis of the likely origins of Covid-19 by Nicholas Wade, a distinguished former science reporter and editor, who had spent more than four decades at the New York Times, Science, and Nature, and the author of several excellent books dealing with anthropology and evolutionary biology.
Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan?Nicholas Wade • Medium • May 4, 2021 • 11,000 Words
Suppressing Possible Artificial Origins as "a Conspiracy Theory"
The central focus of both Baker and Wade is indicated by their closely-related titles, namely the origins of the virus and whether it was the product of a laboratory, presumably the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then later released in a tragic accident. Both these authors strongly lean toward that latter possibility, but take somewhat different approaches. While Baker, a prominent novelist and liberal public intellectual, must rely upon general arguments or merely reports the opinions of the experts that he interviewed, Wade deploys his strong scientific background to build a persuasive case for that same conclusion.
From nearly the beginning of the epidemic, the position taken by the mainstream media had been that Covid-19 was very likely natural in origin, and although President Trump and some of his political allies soon loudly claimed otherwise, the perceived scientific consensus remained unchanged.
But as Wade demonstrates, that supposed consensus was largely illusory, having been shaped by two early items that appeared in prestigious scientific publications. On February 19, 2020, the Lancet had published a statement signed by 27 virologists and other noted scientists that declared: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin," and that "[scientists] overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife." Then the following month Nature Medicine published an analysis by five virologists providing some theoretical arguments against any artificial origin, stating that: "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."
These published pieces became far more influential than was warranted. Wade notes that the former statement had actually been organized behind the scenes by Peter Daszak, an American closely associated with the Wuhan lab and therefore hardly a disinterested party, while the latter relied heavily upon very dubious scientific reasoning. But once these emphatic conclusions had appeared in influential periodicals, few microbiologists were willing to challenge this newly established orthodoxy, especially because doing so would have placed them in the same political camp as Trump, a much vilified figure in their community. Baker had earlier made similar criticism and I had fully endorsed his verdict in my own March article, but Wade's analysis provides far greater depth.
Moreover, Wade also emphasizes the climate of fear that today governs much of our academic world, with future grant applications and even careers at risk if researchers depart from perceived orthodoxy on certain issues, perhaps including disputing the origins of Covid-19. He argues that although the Lancet and Nature Medicine letters were actually political statements rather than scientific findings, they were "amazingly effective" in suppressing dissent and led the overwhelming majority of journalists to accept them as reflecting a research consensus that actually did not exist.
Wade's own personal experiences have surely informed this shrewd analysis of the underlying political dynamics. His most recent book A Troublesome Inheritance had appeared in 2014, and its subtitle "Genes, Race, and Human History" reflected the potentially explosive nature of his subject matter. Although I considered it an outstanding treatment of the controversial topic, Wade's work soon attracted a lynch-mob of critics, who organized a denunciatory public statement that they persuaded 139 prominent genetic scientists to sign. All these individuals were soon humiliated once it was proven that not a single one of them had actually bothered checking the actual contents of the book that they were so fiercely attacking.
In the case of Covid-19, Wade demonstrates that once the political barriers have been removed and we are allowed to consider the cases objectively, our conclusions are transformed. The scientific case for the natural origins of the virus becomes pitifully weak, thereby automatically elevating the competing lab-leak hypothesis, which had previously been denounced and stigmatized as a so-called "conspiracy theory."
For example, despite fifteen months of presumably intensive effort, the Chinese have failed to locate evidence of any wildlife population hosting a closely-related precursor virus, which had easily been found in the previous cases of emergent viral epidemics such as SARS and MERS. Indeed, the closest natural relative to Covid-19 only exists among bats in the caves of Yunnan, nearly 1,000 miles distant from the Wuhan outbreak.
We would also expect an animal virus that became dangerous to humans would require a numerous lengthy series of intermediate mutational steps as it gradually evolved the ability to effectively infect our own species, just as had been the case with SARS and other previous diseases. But Covid-19 seems to have suddenly appeared in a maximally infectious form, perfectly pre-adapted to humans and apparently derived from a single original source.
Finally, an important structural elements of the virus, the "furin cleavage site," is entirely absent from all other members of its viral family, and crucially contributes to its dangerously infectious nature. A natural origin for that structure seems implausible, while the scientific literature is replete with such additions being being made in laboratory experiments, including those conducted by the Wuhan researchers. Moreover, the particular genetic sequence found in that Covid-19 element is extremely rare in other coronaviruses, strongly suggesting that it was added from a different source.
The Excluded Third Possibility
Having now twice read Wade's long article, I can say that I find nearly all of his scientific arguments quite compelling, and I have almost no points of significant disagreement. Yet my overall conclusions are entirely different from his.
The explanation of this seeming paradox comes near the very beginning of his article, when he accurately states:
Although Wade is absolutely correct in stating that "there are two main theories" about the origins of Covid-19, this duality has been enforced by political pressures quite similar to those that had earlier excluded discussion of the "lab-leak hypothesis," but with the sanctions being far harsher and more extreme.
Wade's analysis masterfully demonstrates that once we are actually willing to explore the much-vilified "conspiracy theory" of an accidental lab-leak, we discover that it is far more plausible than the case of a natural origin, partly because the latter appears so unlikely. And if these were the only two possible theories, all arguments against the one would necessarily support the other. But this framework is upended once we recognize that there is a third logical possibility, far more vilified and excluded than that of the "lab-leak hypothesis" but also far more plausible and supported by much stronger evidence.
In my March discussion of Baker's long article, I summarized how he first became involved in the topic, and described the crucial omission I had noticed in his 12,000 word opus:
The central focus of both Baker and Wade is indicated by their closely-related titles, namely the origins of the virus and whether it was the product of a laboratory, presumably the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then later released in a tragic accident. Both these authors strongly lean toward that latter possibility, but take somewhat different approaches. While Baker, a prominent novelist and liberal public intellectual, must rely upon general arguments or merely reports the opinions of the experts that he interviewed, Wade deploys his strong scientific background to build a persuasive case for that same conclusion.
From nearly the beginning of the epidemic, the position taken by the mainstream media had been that Covid-19 was very likely natural in origin, and although President Trump and some of his political allies soon loudly claimed otherwise, the perceived scientific consensus remained unchanged.
But as Wade demonstrates, that supposed consensus was largely illusory, having been shaped by two early items that appeared in prestigious scientific publications. On February 19, 2020, the Lancet had published a statement signed by 27 virologists and other noted scientists that declared: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin," and that "[scientists] overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife." Then the following month Nature Medicine published an analysis by five virologists providing some theoretical arguments against any artificial origin, stating that: "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."
These published pieces became far more influential than was warranted. Wade notes that the former statement had actually been organized behind the scenes by Peter Daszak, an American closely associated with the Wuhan lab and therefore hardly a disinterested party, while the latter relied heavily upon very dubious scientific reasoning. But once these emphatic conclusions had appeared in influential periodicals, few microbiologists were willing to challenge this newly established orthodoxy, especially because doing so would have placed them in the same political camp as Trump, a much vilified figure in their community. Baker had earlier made similar criticism and I had fully endorsed his verdict in my own March article, but Wade's analysis provides far greater depth.
Moreover, Wade also emphasizes the climate of fear that today governs much of our academic world, with future grant applications and even careers at risk if researchers depart from perceived orthodoxy on certain issues, perhaps including disputing the origins of Covid-19. He argues that although the Lancet and Nature Medicine letters were actually political statements rather than scientific findings, they were "amazingly effective" in suppressing dissent and led the overwhelming majority of journalists to accept them as reflecting a research consensus that actually did not exist.
In the case of Covid-19, Wade demonstrates that once the political barriers have been removed and we are allowed to consider the cases objectively, our conclusions are transformed. The scientific case for the natural origins of the virus becomes pitifully weak, thereby automatically elevating the competing lab-leak hypothesis, which had previously been denounced and stigmatized as a so-called "conspiracy theory."
For example, despite fifteen months of presumably intensive effort, the Chinese have failed to locate evidence of any wildlife population hosting a closely-related precursor virus, which had easily been found in the previous cases of emergent viral epidemics such as SARS and MERS. Indeed, the closest natural relative to Covid-19 only exists among bats in the caves of Yunnan, nearly 1,000 miles distant from the Wuhan outbreak.
We would also expect an animal virus that became dangerous to humans would require a numerous lengthy series of intermediate mutational steps as it gradually evolved the ability to effectively infect our own species, just as had been the case with SARS and other previous diseases. But Covid-19 seems to have suddenly appeared in a maximally infectious form, perfectly pre-adapted to humans and apparently derived from a single original source.
Finally, an important structural elements of the virus, the "furin cleavage site," is entirely absent from all other members of its viral family, and crucially contributes to its dangerously infectious nature. A natural origin for that structure seems implausible, while the scientific literature is replete with such additions being being made in laboratory experiments, including those conducted by the Wuhan researchers. Moreover, the particular genetic sequence found in that Covid-19 element is extremely rare in other coronaviruses, strongly suggesting that it was added from a different source.
The Excluded Third Possibility
Having now twice read Wade's long article, I can say that I find nearly all of his scientific arguments quite compelling, and I have almost no points of significant disagreement. Yet my overall conclusions are entirely different from his.
The explanation of this seeming paradox comes near the very beginning of his article, when he accurately states:
As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped.A paragraph later, the text contains his first major section heading, entitled "A Tale of Two Theories."
Although Wade is absolutely correct in stating that "there are two main theories" about the origins of Covid-19, this duality has been enforced by political pressures quite similar to those that had earlier excluded discussion of the "lab-leak hypothesis," but with the sanctions being far harsher and more extreme.
Wade's analysis masterfully demonstrates that once we are actually willing to explore the much-vilified "conspiracy theory" of an accidental lab-leak, we discover that it is far more plausible than the case of a natural origin, partly because the latter appears so unlikely. And if these were the only two possible theories, all arguments against the one would necessarily support the other. But this framework is upended once we recognize that there is a third logical possibility, far more vilified and excluded than that of the "lab-leak hypothesis" but also far more plausible and supported by much stronger evidence.
In my March discussion of Baker's long article, I summarized how he first became involved in the topic, and described the crucial omission I had noticed in his 12,000 word opus:
Baker may not have been a professional virologist or expert in biowarfare, but as the Covid-19 outbreak began he had just completed Baseless, a lengthy non-fictional account of American national security secrets, which appeared to glowing reviews in July 2020. One of his major elements was an account of America's massive 1950s bioweapons research program, which had been accorded resources and importance matching that of our nuclear weapons efforts. Based upon his years of research, the author was not a complete neophyte on biological warfare issues and was also fully aware of our own long history of laboratory accidents, which had claimed a number of lives. So he was naturally alert to the possibility that a similar accident had occurred in Wuhan, which contained China's most secure facility of that same type.The greatest weakness of Baker's comprehensive analysis is not the controversial theory that he carefully examines, but the even more controversial possibility that he seems to totally ignore. At one point, he notes the remarkable characteristics of the pathogen, whose collection of features allowed it to so effectively target humans and which had first appeared in a city having one of the very few world laboratories engaged in exactly that type of viral research, closing his paragraph with the sentence "What are the odds?" But other, even more implausible coincidences were entirely excluded from his discussion, and the same had also been true for Lemoine.
Both these authors seem to assume that there exist only two possible scenarios: a natural virus that suddenly appeared in Wuhan during late 2019 or an accidental lab-leak of an enhanced disease agent in that same city. But there is an obvious third case as well, clearly suggested by Baker's focus on America's own very active biowarfare program, which he extensively discussed both in his long article and in his highly-regarded book. We must surely consider the possibility that the Covid-19 outbreak was not at all accidental, but instead constituted a deliberate attack against China, occurring as it did near the absolute height of the international tension with America, and therefore suggesting that elements of our own national security apparatus were the most obvious suspects. Given the realities of the publishing industry, any serious exploration of such a scenario would probably have precluded the appearance of the important Baker or Lemoine articles in any respectable publication, perhaps helping to explain such silence. But as I have argued in my long American Pravda series, many historical accounts that were blacklisted for exactly those sorts of reasons appear quite likely to be true.
Exactly the same glaring omission is found in Wade's 11,000 word article. Taken together, Lemoine, Baker, and Wade have produced a large collection of high-quality articles on the origins of the global Covid-19 epidemic, but nowhere among their 54,000 words is there even a hint that the virus might possibly have had its origins in America's well-documented and lavishly funded biowarfare program. For several years, our newspapers have proclaimed that we are now locked into a new Cold War against China, with some risk that it might turn hot. But the obvious possible implications of the sudden, potentially-devastating outbreak of a dangerous viral epidemic in our leading international adversary remains unmentionable, too explosive even to dismissed or ridiculed, let alone carefully considered.
As I noted towards the end of my long March article:
I find almost nothing to dispute in the comprehensive analyses provided by Lemoine, Baker, and Wade, but I do think my own work represents a crucial supplement to their research, given that I have primarily focused on that third possibility, a possibility that they were necessarily forced to avoid considering. Readers may judge for themselves, but I believe that my articles have demonstrated that the evidence supporting that excluded hypothesis is considerably stronger than that favoring either of those other two possibilities, whether the mainstream narrative of a natural virus or the much-vilified "conspiracy theory" of a lab-leak in Wuhan.
As I noted towards the end of my long March article:
I can easily understand why all these simple facts and their obvious implications regarding the likely origins of the worldwide epidemic might be considered extremely uncomfortable, perhaps too uncomfortable to be discussed in our media outlets, and therefore have been so widely ignored. Most of these crucial points were already presented in my original April 2020 article on the subject, which quickly began to attract enormous traffic and interest in social media. Yet just days after it ran, our entire website was suddenly banned from Facebook and all our web pages were deranked by Google, perhaps underscoring the very dangerous nature of this material, and the reasons why so few others have been willing to raise the same points.The Strong Evidence for an American Biowarfare Attack
I find almost nothing to dispute in the comprehensive analyses provided by Lemoine, Baker, and Wade, but I do think my own work represents a crucial supplement to their research, given that I have primarily focused on that third possibility, a possibility that they were necessarily forced to avoid considering. Readers may judge for themselves, but I believe that my articles have demonstrated that the evidence supporting that excluded hypothesis is considerably stronger than that favoring either of those other two possibilities, whether the mainstream narrative of a natural virus or the much-vilified "conspiracy theory" of a lab-leak in Wuhan.
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 21, 2020 • 7,400 WordsRon Unz • The Unz Review • March 15, 2021 • 8,700 Words
For convenience, I am excerpting substantial portions of my original April 2020 and my most recent March 2021 articles:
Please go to The Unz Review to continue reading the entire essay.
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This is how the American people are being cleaved into believers and non-believers with the Techno Covid Religion:
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