At this point, the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is unconfirmed, but remains hotly debated.

What Left-Rated Media Does

• Highlight lack of evidence for lab leak theory
• Frame animal-to-human passage as likely pandemic origin
• In some cases, describe lab leak theory as debunked or conspiratorial
• Focuses less on potential misconduct by U.S. government

What Right-Rated Media Does

• Highlight lack of evidence for other theories
• Highlight lack of transparency from Chinese government
• Highlight safety concerns at Wuhan lab
• Focuses more on purported misconduct by U.S. government

Let’s break down the media coverage and dominant opinions around the theory, and highlight the main facts and myths to be aware of.

Among the conclusions: Pandemic began with the lab leak, Biden’s HHS obstructed investigation, and NIH’s procedures for “overseeing potentially dangerous research are deficient, unreliable, and pose a serious threat to both public health and national security.”.

https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12.04.2024-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT.pdf

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final report Monday, making numerous findings that would have gotten people deplatformed four - or even three - short years ago, and some of the points upon which there was bipartisan consensus will rock the minds of the Covidian cult.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), a physician, chaired the committee.

Entitled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward," the report begins with Wenstrup outlining those points of bipartisan consensus:

1. The possibility that the COVID-19 virus emerged because of a laboratory or research related accident is not a conspiracy theory.
2. EcoHealth Alliance, Inc., and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive U.S. taxpayer dollars.
3. Scientific messaging must be clear and concise, backed by evidentiary support, and come from trusted messengers, such as front-line doctors treating patients.
4. Public health officials must work to regain Americans' trust; Americans want to be educated, not indoctrinated.
5. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo engaged in medical malpractice and publicly covered up the total number of nursing home fatalities in New York.

According to Wenstrup, the committee also made numerous findings, including (but not limited to):

1. The U.S. National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
2. The Chinese government, agencies within the U.S. Government, and some members of the international scientific community sought to cover-up facts concerning the origins of the pandemic.
3. Operation Warp Speed was a tremendous success and a model to build upon in the future. The vaccines, which are now probably better characterized as therapeutics, undoubtedly saved millions of lives by diminishing likelihood of severe disease and death. //

Contrary to what was promised, the COVID-19 vaccine did not stop the spread or transmission of the virus.

Vaccine mandates trampled individual freedoms and harmed military readiness.

And, most importantly, the committee found that "a lab-related incident involving dangerous gain-of-function research in China is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic." //

TXavatar
11 hours ago edited
I work in clinical drug trials and the key words missing from the discussion is "informed consent" which is the moral and legal bedrock of all medical treatments. With such a limited time to test, the drugs were not vaccines but rather experimental treatments and given liability exemption as a result. That could have been acceptable if presented as such to the concerned populace. However, when they were falsely promoted as vaccines and the population was coerced/mandated in to receiving them, "informed" and "consent" was thrown out the window.

Collins frets about the politicization of science, but largely conflates science with his own political agenda. //

But don’t expect many mea culpas from Collins about his time at NIH. He offers no apology for funding the harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies for medical research. Or for financing research that used gender-destructive puberty blockers on young people. Likewise, he fails to acknowledge his past promotion of the failed Darwinian idea that our genome is swamped with “junk DNA.”

Nor does Collins take real ownership of his most significant missteps during Covid. During the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Collins falsely assured the public that mRNA from the vaccines wouldn’t stay in the body “beyond probably a few hours.” A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person’s lymph system some two months after vaccination. Collins’ promotion of misinformation has been memory-holed. So has his emphatic promise in April 2021 that “There’s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.” A few months later, Collins was praising the imposition of mandates as a “forceful, muscular approach” and demonizing those who didn’t want to take the vaccines as killers on the wrong side of history.

Collins does acknowledge problems with government messaging during Covid and the “collateral damage” inflicted on ordinary Americans by various policies. But he calls the collateral damage “inevitable.”

For many people, his admissions will be too little, too late. //

The most serious flaw is Collins’ core message. He frets about the politicization of science and the growing distrust of claims made in the name of science. He wants to restore public trust in “science” and the experts.

The problem is he largely conflates science with his own political agenda. By the end of the book, it becomes clear that for him “science” has become a convenient club to bludgeon people who disagree with him. //

His “pre-bunking” is entirely one-sided. His goal is to shut down critical inquiry, not cultivate it. //

Collins also suggests listening to people with whom you disagree. Unfortunately, he has spent much of his career doing the opposite.

In October 2020, three distinguished epidemiologists published the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized the government’s lockdown policies. How did Collins respond? Did he convene a meeting with them to hear them out? No, he derided them in private as “fringe” figures and told subordinates: “There needs to be a quick and devastating take down” of their ideas. Collins expresses regret for his “intemperate” language, but says he has “no regrets for the point I made.”

In other words, he really hasn’t learned anything.

It’s precisely because Collins has insulated himself from fellow experts who disagree with him that he finds it so easy to caricature the viewpoints he opposes.

That is not the road to wisdom. It’s a road to folly.

In his latest bout of schooling his co-workers, a CNN panel that featured Jennings got onto the subject of RFK. Geoff Duncan said there's "intellectually" no reason by RFK Jr. should be the HHS secretary, and at best should be an "advisor." Duncan said that there's nothing on his resume that qualifies Kennedy.

It should be noted that the current HHS secretary is Xavier Becerra, a lawyer who was once California's Attorney General, who also has no health background, but this is never brought up by the left. The assistant secretary for the HHS is Rachel Levine, a man who thinks he's a woman.

Jennings tried to confront Duncan with this fact by asking what the qualifications of the previous heads of the HHS were, even before Becerra, causing Duncan to reveal his cards.

"RFK Jr. is a nut."

Again, I remind everyone of Rachel Levine, but I digress.

With Duncan's true reasoning now laid bare, Jennings began his offensive.

“Okay, so that's different from what you just said," said Jennings. "You just said he doesn't possess the requisite managerial experience, but then we get to the real issue here, which is you want to insult the man." //

These other panelists, who are clearly on the left, have no desire to put the blame on the institutions or the elitists who run them, elitists that many of these people are friends with. Notice that while they try to blame someone like Kennedy for spreading "misinformation," what they're ultimately saying is that you're still to blame for COVID spreading.

The institutions that told us to do all of these things ended up hurting us even more, as Jennings pointed out, but these elitists can't admit that. Notice they didn't linger on how the masks didn't work, or the lockdowns made it worse; the only attack they have is that "RFK. Jr. is a nut," and that our institutions aren't as trusted anymore because of nuts like him.

More WIV News: Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz worked to secure millions for a Minnesota-based lab that worked with the Chinese research facility. //

Researchers at France’s Pasteur Institute have just released a report suggesting that researchers at the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV, which may have been ground zero for COVID-19) may also be responsible for an outbreak of a “highly evolved polio strain.”

According to their findings, a young boy caught a case of polio ’99 percent’ identical to a polio variant that was stored 200 miles away at the Chinese research labs in Wuhan. //

The Pasteur researchers suspect that WIV14 polio, so named by the Wuhan scientists who first catalogued the strain, likely evolved from a well-preserved, 1950s strain of the virus used — almost exclusively — in vaccine production and laboratory settings.

The Biden administration pressured federal agencies to ignore vaccine safety protocols to fast-track its Covid shot mandates.

KEY POINTS

• Plaintiffs argue that what's commonly known as the COVID-19 vaccine isn't a vaccine at all (because it doesn't prevent transmission), but is a therapeutic, so it cannot be mandated by law.
• At the U.S. District Court level, a judge ruled that a 1905 Supreme Court ruling (Jacobson v. Massachusetts) related to mandatory smallpox vaccination allowed the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
• The 9th Circuit panel ruled that, taking the Plaintiff's pleadings as true (which they must at this point in the proceedings), Jacobson does not apply and that employees cannot be forced to receive "treatment" they don't want to receive.
• The ruling rejected LAUSD's claim that the suit is moot since the district had rescinded its mandate two weeks after oral arguments in this appeal went very poorly for the district, and gave a detailed timeline of LAUSD's continued attempts to manipulate the legal proceedings.

To fully appreciate LAUSD's manipulative tactics, you have to understand the timeline... //

Leslie Manookian of Health Defense Freedom Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the case, noted in a 2023 opinion piece that there's an unresolved conflict between Jacobson and another precedential SCOTUS case, Cruzan vs. Director, which held that medical treatments may be refused even if they might save a recipient’s life. And, she states, in Jacobson "the court decided that vaccines could be mandated in clearly defined and limited situations, such as a deadly smallpox outbreak. But COVID is not smallpox. What’s more, Jacobson allowed those who declined the vaccine to pay a fine — Jacobson did not allow the state to force a vaccine on unwilling recipients on pain of losing their livelihoods."

Public health officials, including former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, have admitted for years (even before LAUSD's resurrected mandate on August 13, 2021) that the COVID-19 mRNA shot does not prevent transmission of the virus and was ineffective against the Delta variant.

And just this week former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted under questioning from Congress that the COVID vaccine didn't stop transmission of the virus. //

In the decision Judge Ryan D. Nelson (a Trump appointee), detailed the unimpressive and unethical tactics used by LAUSD and its attorneys. //

It's important to note that the court did not find as a fact that the mRNA COVID shot is a treatment and not a vaccine, and did not find as a fact that it does not prevent the spread of COVID-19, as proceedings have not reached that stage; the court was simply ruling on a procedural motion as to whether the suit was moot and whether LAUSD's motion for judgment on the pleadings was properly decided.

Phil Holloway ✈️
@PhilHollowayEsq
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Fauci confesses he made it all up

He literally made it all up

Many of us knew this at the time

We shouted it from the rooftops too

https://mol.im/a/13481839
Last edited
4:29 PM · Jun 2, 2024 //

Speaking to counsel on behalf of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic earlier this year, Fauci told Republicans that the six foot social distancing rule 'sort of just appeared' and that he did not recall how it came about.

'You know, I don't recall. It sort of just appeared,' he said according to committee transcripts when pressed on how the rule came about.

He added he 'was not aware of studies' that supported the social distancing, conceding that such studies 'would be very difficult' to do.

In addition to not recalling any evidence supporting social distancing, Fauci also told the committee's counsel that he didn't remember reading anything to support that masking kids would prevent COVID. //

And, despite his repeated denials and Big Tech’s censorship campaign against anyone who dared suggest that the Wuhan virus might have come out of the—ahem—Wuhan Institute of Virology, the dishonest doctor admitted that perhaps we were right all along:

Further, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) told the counsel that he believes the lab leak theory—the idea that COVID began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—is a real 'possibility.'

Elon Musk

@elonmusk
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Follow
Prosecute/Fauci
Paul D. Thacker
@thackerpd
"SICK LIES"

New York Post goes after Fauci for his lies about dangerous virus research at the Wuhan institute of Virology.

It's only going to get worse for these liars.
2:44 PM · May 17, 2024 //

Alex Berenson
·
Apr 15
@AlexBerenson
·
The ur-text for the research that likely caused Covid, here in one convenient place - an NIH video of a 2013 conference where Tony Fauci and Peter Daszak watched Ralph Baric talk about how to make coronaviruses more dangerous.

Can't make it up
videocast.nih.gov
MERS-CoV Research: Current Status and Future Priorities Meeting

Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
Prosecute Fauci and Daszak
2:54 PM · Apr 16, 2024 //

Gay Guy Las Vegas
5 hours ago
I've hated Fauci since he killed thousands of gay men during the AIDS crisis. He was more interested in experimenting with the virus than curing it. When COVID came along, he got to experiment in the same way on millions. Prosecute and jail him without letting him use the Biden defense. (I'm mentally incompetent and cannot stand trial.)

When the president orders a contract terminated, and the agency screws up the process, that is not an accident; that is an intentional act.

(In a prior life, I was on a conference call with Fauci the day after Trump pulled the plug on EcoHealth Alliance's gain-of-function research, and he was not a happy man.)

The evidence for whether ivermectin impacts recovery, hospital admissions, and longer-term outcomes in COVID-19 is contested. The WHO recommends its use only in the context of clinical trials.

In this multicentre, open-label, multi-arm, adaptive platform randomised controlled trial, we included participants aged ≥18 years in the community, with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, and symptoms lasting ≤14 days. Participants were randomised to usual care, usual care plus ivermectin tablets (target 300–400 μg/kg per dose, once daily for 3 days), or usual care plus other interventions. Co-primary endpoints were time to first self-reported recovery, and COVID-19 related hospitalisation/death within 28 days, analysed using Bayesian models. Recovery at 6 months was the primary, longer term outcome. //

Ivermectin for COVID-19 is unlikely to provide clinically meaningful improvement in recovery, hospital admissions, or longer-term outcomes. Further trials of ivermectin for SARS-Cov-2 infection in vaccinated community populations appear unwarranted.

AstraZeneca has come under intense scrutiny over recent months over evidence that their version of the COVID-19 vaccine, known as Vaxzevria, has caused dozens of cases of Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS), leading to at least 81 deaths. Around 50 victims and grieving relatives are also suing the company as a result.

Peter Daszak suggests U.S. sent money to Wuhan lab despite knowing the Chinese army was using the facility to make bioweapons, //

There is a famous adage that when Republicans screw up, that is the story; when Democrats screw up, the Republican reaction is the story.

Legal Insurrection readers will recall our coverage of EcoHealth’s bat virus research in Wuhan and the history of its President Peter Daszak, as it pertains to the origins of the novel coronavirus that spread worldwide. //

Daszak’s statements included the troubling fact that the freezers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology contain over 15,000 virus samples belonging to the U.S. government.

The immune system can get kicked into overdrive when the fungi run riot. //

Fungi are an indispensable part of your microbiome, keeping the body’s host of microorganisms healthy as part of a system of checks and balances. But when you’re hit by an infection, fungi can be thrown out of equilibrium with other organisms inside you, leading to a more severe infection and other symptoms of illness.

For this reason, the pandemic immediately set off alarms for Iliyan Iliev, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medical School. “We were thinking, the first thing that’s going to happen is people will start getting fungal co-infections,” he says. With the microbiome unbalanced, fungi might start running riot inside Covidpatients, Iliev reasoned. His fears were soon realized. //

This complex crosstalk between the gut microbiome and the immune system is an example of how most things in the body are intertwined... //

Now, Iliev and Kusakabe are interested in exploring how fungal overgrowth may appear in long Covid—and how immunity is affected. “What’s the impact of this reprogramming of the immune system by the fungus and the virus?” Iliev asks. “What happens long-term if you have suffered from that?”

A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens. //

Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared on "Sunday Morning Futures" with Maria Bartiromo and alleged a whistleblower revealed that at least 15 government agencies were aware that gain-of-function research on viruses was being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China as far back as 2018.

Two new reports on the US governmental response to COVID in 2020-2021 call into question the public health efficacy of some measures and make a strong case that some of the measures marketed as ways to keep us safe were counterproductive, if not outright harmful. The Hoover Institute looks at the effect COVID policies had on public education, while the Committee to Unleash Prosperity report gives an overview of all policies.

The Hoover Institute study is synopsized in New Report Details Horrifying Cost of Fauci’s Failures. Its basic theme is that COVID policies in education have yet to be felt or appreciated and will ripple through the world economy for years.

“Based on the available research on lifetime earnings associated with more skills, the average student in school during the pandemic will lose 5 to 6 percent of lifetime earnings,” they found. “Because a lower-skilled workforce leads to lower economic growth, the nation will lose some $31 trillion (in present value terms) during the twenty-first century. This aggregate economic loss is higher than the US GDP for one year and dwarfs the total economic losses from either the slowdown of the economy during the pandemic or from the 2008 recession.” //

But Florida was one of the few states, and perhaps the only large one, to make reopening schools a priority, despite the objections of teachers unions and media outlets that attempted to label the governor as “DeathSantis.”

And it’s going to pay off, relatively speaking. A figure presented in the research shows that Florida’s economic state loss in GDP is nearly equal to Pennsylvania, despite a population that’s nearly 75% bigger than Pennsylvania. And California’s estimated losses, roughly $1.3 trillion, are more than 116% higher than Florida, much larger than the population difference. Similarly, New York’s economic losses far exceed Florida’s, despite a smaller population. //

Lesson #1: Leaders Should Calm Public Fears, Not Stoke Them //

In my view, this observation is only valid if you assume the leadership during COVID cared about mitigating the panic. Rather, it seems that Fauci, Birx, and others deliberately ratcheted up panic for reasons that one can only speculate about.

Lesson #2: Lockdowns Do Not Work to Substantially Reduce Deaths or Stop Viral Circulation //

Lesson #3: Lockdowns and Social Isolation Had Negative Consequences that Far Outweighed Benefits //

In my view, this section misses the point because it takes at face value claims that lockdowns were instituted for public health rather than societal control reasons. //

the real purpose was to socially isolate families and fragment communities.

Lesson #4: Government Should Not Pay People More Not to Work //

Lesson #5: Shutting Down Schools Was a Major Policy Mistake With Tragic Effects on Children, Especially the Poor //

Lesson #6: Masks Were of Little or No Value and Possibly Harmful //

Lesson #7: Government Should Not Suppress Dissent or Police the Boundaries of Science

...This underutilization was likely a significant contributor to non-COVID excess deaths in the United States. //

Lesson #9: Protect the Most Vulnerable //

Lesson #10: Warp Speed: Deregulate But Don’t Mandate //

Conclusion: Limit Government Emergency Powers and Earn Back Public Trust

One result of the government’s error-ridden COVID response was that the Americans have justifiably lost faith in public health institutions. Lockdowns, school closures, and mandates were catastrophic errors, pushed with remarkable fervor by public health authorities at all levels. We recommend that Congress and the states define by law “public health emergency” with strict limitations on powers conferred to the executives and time limits that require legislation to extend. Additionally, term limits should be established for all senior health agency positions. Grantmaking should be independent of policy-making and public communication, and NIH funding itself should be decentralized or block-granted to the states. Congress should require full transparency of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA), CDC, and NIH discussions with immediate posting to public forums. //

It should be definitively restated that CDC guidance is strictly advisory and the CDC does not have power to set laws or mandates. The U.S. should halt all binding agreements with the World Health Organization until satisfactory transparency and accountability is achieved. Unless and until key institutions openly acknowledge that lockdowns, school closures, and mask/vaccine mandates were catastrophic errors that will not be repeated in the future, the American people will – and should – withhold their trust.

Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, co-author of Great Barrington Declaration: “This information will eventually come out. It’s not top secret.” //

The CDC “released” a 148 page study on myocarditis after COVID-19 “vaccination” and every single page is completely redacted. This must be a new record. https://t.co/kIE2s7Wl2z pic.twitter.com/M6xDbRYMZx

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) March 7, 2024 //

Traditionally, when science is practiced correctly, the scientist publishes the raw data (or makes that data available to the inquisitive) and is ready to address alternative theories and accept corrections when appropriate. Being funded by the taxpayer, the CDC means they collected that data on our behalf. This information is a matter of public health…not some sort of national security secret for which substantial redaction would be appropriate.

The manipulation of FOIA rules has been noted:

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford medical school professor who has advised DeSantis on COVID policy, sarcastically posted in response to Steiber, “I hear b(5) redactions are all the rage these days. Besides, there are just some things the public shouldn’t know.”

The agency released a unified "practical" guidance for respiratory viruses.