1/ Two claims central to the #COVID19 origins debate have now been published, apparently based on U.S. intel sources. First, that three researchers at the Wuhan Inst Virology got sick with something resembling Covid-19 during fall 2019. Second, that WIV researchers did…
2/ indeed insert furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses. As @Ayjchan has suggested, if these claims are considered well supported by the intel community, then the origins debate is over and a lab origin will be established within reasonable doubt….
3/ The furin cleavage site is key to getting at the truth, because how it got into the virus—through natural recombination, or either via genetic engineering or serial passage in cell cultures or animal models—is an unambiguous indicator of pandemic origins…
4/ That’s one big reason why so many zealous zoonosis advocates have bent themselves into pretzels trying to explain it away and failing to do so. The truth is that the odds of the FCS having gotten there by recombination are very low given the context for its presence…
5/ Which includes the 2018 DEFUSE proposal that explicitly sought funding for doing such experiments and the fact that SARS-CoV-2 is the only known Sarbecovirus that has an FCS. Throw in the “coincidence” that the pandemic arose in the city with the most famous…
6/ bat coronavirus lab in the world AND that the lab has been genetically engineering coronaviruses for many years and it’s amazing that anyone could have gotten away with dismissing the lab origin hypothesis has some kind of crazy “conspiracy theory.” The reckoning is…
7/ coming soon, especially if the U.S. #media starts doing its job, especially science journalists who have been so MIA in the investigation of Covid origins.

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More from @mbalter

Jun 20
1/ A few comments on today's @WSJ story confirming earlier reports that three named researchers at the Wuhan Inst Virology who worked closely on coronaviruses (esp SARS-like viruses) got sick in Nov 2019 of Covid-like symptoms (Accssible: archive.is/2023.06.20-140…)
2/ The story gave credit to the Substack blog Public which published the names of the researchers last week. It also gave a lot of credit to @WhiteCoatWaste and its dogged work over the past few years to dig out documents the U.S. government did not want public.
3/ Crediting other reporters and publications is an obligation often honored in the breach (@nytimes has been particularly bad about this although lately it has been getting better.) 4/ The WSJ reporters independently confirmed the previously published information...
Read 10 tweets
Jun 20
1/ As the gaslighting that the lab origins hypothesis for #COVID19 is just some crazy “conspiracy theory” steadily loses effectiveness in the fact of growing evidence, journalists should note that it’s still not too late to catch up with the story. Here are some leads:
2/ And here are some more. The difference between members of DRASTIC (and independent reporters) and mainstream science journalists is that the former actually investigated Covid-19 origins, while the latter cozied up to their favored sources and copied down what they said.
3/ I’ve written a fair bit myself about why so many journalists have failed to properly report the origins story. Here is one piece for the Society of Profressional Journalists magazine, Quill: quillmag.com/2023/04/04/cov…
Read 5 tweets
Jun 19
1/ This @NewYorker piece by Keith Gessen asking “who lost Russia?” is an important read and I highly recommend it. The main takeaway for me is the effect that Western advice and pressures had on sending the entire Soviet block… newyorker.com/magazine/2023/…
2/ into poverty, except for the fraction of their populations that got rich (the two sides of the coin always go together, despite the trickle down illusions of some.) While the worst period, eg in Russia, might have been mostly the first decade after the fall of…
3/ Communism, it left a lasting political legacy of right-wing movements and even fascism. The West encouraged an extreme version of laissez-faire capitalism that was never acceptable in any Western country. The results were predictable and paved the way for Putin.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 18
1/ If the intel agencies are going to miss the deadline for declassifying what they have on Covid-19 origins, which it appears they will, it’s odd that the mainstream #media does not have an update for us on how far along they are, whether they have asked for an extension…
2/ (which presumably can only be granted by Congress itself by amending the law), or even if they have done any work on this at all. Perhaps @nytimes, @washingtonpost, and other media have stories about this all ready to go; or perhaps the Biden Admin is a scofflaw…
3/ I assume we can count on leading members of Congress to start asking questions soon, or tell us what they know, since the vote was unanimous in both chambers. That should be bipartisan, of course, unless #Democrats think violating the law that Biden signed is okay.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 15
1/ It’s notable that most sources cited in the Times and Public/Racket stories about the “patient zeros” in Wuhan are identified as U.S. government officials. They are likely to be individuals familiar with what some of the intel shows (perhaps that of FBI or DoE)…
2/ and given the timing of the leaks, familiar with what the declassified documents about to be released will show. If that is true, then the question becomes, how good is the intel, especially the identification of three named researchers at the Wuhan Inst Virology?
3/ That is the question everyone should be asking, although the sources and methods behind that intel are likely to be redacted. These are guesses on my part, but also suggestions about how the intel should be regarded. Just as reporters can make mistakes, so can intel…
Read 5 tweets
Jun 14
1/ As the story about the Wuhan Inst Virology researchers who allegedly contracted #COVID19 in fall 2019 races around the world, it also raises some questions about the mainstream #media in the U.S. As the deadline for declassifying intel on Covid origins arrives…
2/ in just days, it was a no-brainer for journalists to start talking to sources in the intel community about what was in them, or even what might be redacted if that is likely to happen. The appears to be just what reporters at the (London) Times have done, and also…
3/ at Public, an alternative site. Why were they first with this story rather than @nytimes or @washingtonpost? Have reporters from those and other major media not been talking to intel sources, or have they been doing so but coming up with different information?
Read 10 tweets

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