Thread by @breakfast_dogs

The Proximal Origin of Ebola
Part 1

Like Covid-19, there is mystery shrouding the origin of the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa (Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia). Very different diseases but the outbreaks have much in common, including many of the same people involved.

@samhusseini and @bioSRP recently revived interest in the possibility of a lab leak origin. Though they don't claim dispositive proof, they point out that evidence supporting a natural origin is fragile, and a plausible case for a lab leak can be made.

https://x.com/BioSRP/status/1584914301214662656

They weren't the first to suspect a lab leak. International law expert Francis Boyle (who had helped implement the Bioweapons Convention in the US) was at the time the leading proponent of a theory that a lab in Kenema, Sierra Leone, with ties to USAMRIID, was responsible.

Naturally this idea was mocked and "debunked" by mainstream media (and more recently in a Bob Garry paper) as a "conspiracy theory".

web.archive.org/web/2023111322…

The official line- that a child of 18-months was the index case after contact with infected bats, is questionable. Early suspected cases weren't tested for Ebola, and symptoms are common to many diseases. Bats and animals tested later were all negative.

who.int/news-room/spot…

It is now established fact that many early cases went undetected in Sierra Leone. Journalist @sherifink found cases had gone unreported as early as March. By the time testing began in June 2014, the virus had spread widely and was genetically diverse.

https://x.com/CD57227/status/1721544552060715486

The lab under suspicion is situated at Kenema General Hospital (KGH). The lab was run by the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium (VHFC) whose members include Harvard and Tulane, Scripps and UTMB. Some of the leadership will be familiar to those following Covid origins.

At the time Kristian Andersen was at Harvard, where he did postdoc with Pardis Sabeti. Bob Garry is also a founding partner in Zalgen Labs, which is based near Fort Detrick and developed an Ebola therapeutic. Doug Simpson is former CEO of Corgenix, which developed an Ebola test.

Separate to VHFC but at the same KGH site is Metabiota. This adds an extra layer of intrigue. The VC firm in which Hunter Biden was partner - Rosemont Seneca - was a seed investor in Metabiota, and was actively promoting the company to potential clients and new investors.

Emails from the Hunter Biden laptop leak show some at Rosemont Seneca even saw Ebola as a marketing opportunity.

Hunter Biden's value to RS was his then Vice-President father. They could market a unique advantage in finding "public policy opportunities" and "avoiding missteps".

China also sent a team to Sierra Leone basing themselves on the other side of the country. Though ostensibly there to provide medical support, many were research scientists. Some will also be familiar names - senior among them George Gao of China CDC, and Wuchun Cao of AMMS.

On the ground in Sierra Leone the Chinese team was led by AMMS's Yigang Tong and Shandong Uni's Weifeng Shi. In Covid origins work they were responsible for pangolin coronaviruses and RmYN02 respectively. They have worked together often in the past, as have their teams.

Tong is closely associated with the discovery (or invention) of the pangolin coronaviruses, some of which have near identical RBD to SARS-CoV-2. In a paper he revealed they had them since 2017. At that time he was involved in a secret military project.

https://x.com/breakfast_dogs/status/1744029206860980239?s=20

Some have speculated that Andersen and Garry feared if SARS-CoV-2 were the result of a lab leak, it could lead to an investigation of their Sierra Leone activities.

Perhaps Ron Fouchier alluded to this in an email following the Feb 1st teleconference?

https://x.com/Rebecca21951651/status/1734197785182765421?s=20

Chinese involvement may expand this. Perhaps blackmail was used - if you expose our lab leak, we'll expose yours?

This might well explain their overnight conversion from a serious concern about artificial origin, to ridiculing it as a "conspiracy theory".

At the pre-pandemic preparedness "Event 201", George Gao, seated next to now ODNI Director Avril Haines, dropped a reference to rumors of a lab leak in Sierra Leone during a session on controlling "misinformation and disinformation".

(From 1:00)

https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1635437727117352960?s=20

The day after the infamous Feb 1st teleconference there were other events that appear to be a coordinated Chinese influence operation to derail the case for an artificial origin. The Chinese had clearly been informed of the nature of discussions.

On Feb 2nd Edward Holmes was contacted by former colleague Tommy Lam regarding the "discovery" of pangolin coronaviruses. Many of these had already been sequenced and uploaded, and a paper was published in October 2019. But western scientists hadn't given it any attention.

Neither Tommy Lam, nor the Guangdong scientists were the source of the pangolin samples and isolates. These came from AMMS, who had had them since 2017. PLA officers Yigang Tong and Wuchun Cao are credited on the final published paper, but oddly, not on the preceding pre-prints.

In 2014 Lam had authored, with Holmes and HKU's Yi Guan (also known for work linking civets to SARS-1), a paper on a separate Ebola outbreak happening simultaneously in the DRC. They hinted that, but for its remote location, this outbreak may have looked like a lab leak.

Also on Feb 2, 2020, Fauci was contacted by Harvard Medical School about a proposed US$128 million donation from Evergrande. This was to fund a joint Sino-US group to study Covid origins (among other things), presumably to influence the direction investigations might take.

The donor's representative, who claimed to be CEO of Evergrande Health, insisted on direct discussion between Fauci and Zhong Nanshan. Zhong had been integral in the attempt to link the SARS-1 outbreak to civets (which many scientists now find dubious).

https://x.com/AshleyRindsberg/status/1570357155357679616?s=20

Was it significant that Harvard was the beneficiary, given they were a partner in VHFC?

In any case the deal didn't proceed as planned. Only one payment of $12m was ever received. Journalist @AshleyRindsberg failed to track down the intermediary.

https://x.com/AshleyRindsberg/status/1678694977596006402

The Chinese were clearly offering inducements for the Americans to push a natural origin, but did they also have leverage to threaten them - "kompromat"? Perhaps some scientific evidence they had acquired that might show an artificial origin of West African Ebola?

To be continued...