Thread by @StevenDBT

Did US Gov't help create conditions that led to the release of Covid from a Wuhan Lab? Maybe so. read Nicholas Wade's article in posted at Bureau of Atomic Scientists: thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or…

2/ We've been told by #WHO and many scientists and US government officials that the lab leak hypothesis was impossible. But ...

3/ So, why, after no one tracked the coronavirus back to natural emergence, i.e., it's source in the wild, did authorities continue to downplay the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan Lab? Maybe because they were afraid of what a thorough investigation would reveal.

4/ Turns out the scientists leading the charge against the lab leak hypothesis had a large conflict of interest. They had been involved in funding "gain of function" research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Lab.

5/ Instead they wrote opinion pieces that relied on facts not in evidence to reject the Lab Leak theory:

6/ The media accepted that the virus must have resulted from natural emergence from the wild, & could not have come leak from the lab in Wuhan, but cracks in that argument began to appear in early 2021:

7/ So, why would a lab be working with manipulating viruses, including coronaviruses? And why would the US be involved in helping to fund that research in Wuhan? Three words: Gain of Function 👇

8/ A US scientist had taught Chinese scientists how to engineer a bat coronavirus capable of infecting human beings. She continued her research. And guess who helped fund it? The US National Institutes of Health (i.e., the NIH)

9/ Now, gain of function research may be important but it's damn dangerous. The Obama administration shut down such research in the US.

10/ But that didn't stop the NIH, led by American scientists from finding a loophole to fund the same research in China.

11/ That NIH grant went to Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance as prime contractor. The same Daszek who in the Lancet letter said a lab leak was impossible, & the same Daszek who was part of the WHO team that led a limited investigation of the Wuhan Lab.

12/ In the absence of evidence of a a natural vector for #Covid, & an inadequate investigation of the Wuhan Lab by WHO, why isn't the media digging into the possibility of a lab leak? Maybe cuz the #NIH funded the #WuhanLab into gain-of-function research into bat coronaviruses.

13/ The Lab escape scenario for Covid makes a great deal of sense. And the guy who called it a conspiracy theory, Daszek bragged in December 2019 about the work being done at the Wuhan Lab that he helped the Chinese with thanks to that NIH funding, right before the pandemic:

14/ No wonder Daszek and the #NIH and the #WHO and even the #CDC argued so strongly there was no way that #COVID19 was created in a lab. Because they knew that's exactly what the Chinese with US funding had been doing! Making a bat coronavirus capable of infecting human beings!

15/ Add to that the history of viruses leaking from research labs, & the fact that the #WuhanLab had no vaccines capable of protecting its own workers + the lesserr safety protocals followed there, & #Covid being the result of a lab leak from #Wuhan seems more and more plausible.

16/ So let's stop calling critics of the #WuhanLab leak hypothesis conspiracy theorists. And let's demand a full and thorough investigation into the conditions at the #WuhanLab & it's US funded research on bat coronaviruses. That is the very least we can do.

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