Thursday 5 August 2021

My new book: On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation

On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation


On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation is the title of my new book. It is the product of more than a year's hard digging into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It will be out by the end of August in Canada, the first week in September in the US. 

It is without doubt the hardest book I've ever written. Doing an investigation during a pandemic required me to reinvent the tactics I used when I started in journalism in the early 1970s. My first job for Maclean's Magazine was to research a story on the planned Montreal Olympics for a writer who had strong opinions about why it shouldn't go forward, but no facts to back them up. To do that project, I rarely left the periodical section of the University of Toronto's Robarts Library because what I found there about past Olympics --all had involved financial boondoggles-- was great support for the writer's argument. ("You found this in the library? In the newspapers? In magazines? Really?") To do this one, I rarely left the house, working instead on two computers and a smart phone which provided instantaneous access to a tsunami of information. In the beginning, when we were locked down, no one was allowed to leave their home for any reason other than to buy food (and toilet paper) or for a medical emergency. Even if I'd ignored those rules, it wouldn't have got me anywhere. Most of the researchers I wanted to interview don't live in Canada and weren't in their labs anyway.  The borders were shut. Most government officials were working from home. Parliament was closed. So I was forced to develop my own imperfect version of the method of inquiry once wielded like a broadsword by the legendary US journalist I.F. Stone. His most important scoops came from careful reading of public documents and deft use of the Freedom of Information Act.   

I read everything I could find in learned journals, in pre-print literature and on academics' blogs about the nature of SARS-CoV-2, its relationship to other coronaviruses, its chemistry, its evolutionary history, the very unusual structure of its genome and its near perfect adaptation to human beings from the very start of the pandemic. I scoured the worldwide daily press, dived down many internet rabbit holes, made too many access to information applications. Most knowledgeable researchers, to my surprise, didn't answer my emails. That was a first: usually scientists want to discuss their work with journalists. It helps them climb the tenure ladder to get their ideas circulating in the broader community. More astonishing was the lengths to which civil servants went to protect themselves and their political masters from embarrassment by means of improper redactions and outright refusals to comply with the access to information law. As I figured out who I had to talk to, if they responded (a few did) I  interviewed them by means of email and telephone. But it was mainly through their published works that I came to know then. What I learned about the way globalized virological science has been practiced over the past twenty years surprised and enraged me. Certain names kept coming up: Shi Zhengli, Linfa Wang, Peter Daszak, Ralph S. Baric, Kristian Andersen, Zhihong Hu, Xianguo Qiu, Keding Cheng, Chen Wei, E.C. Holmes, George Gao. 

The book is both a detection narrative and an exposition of the political and scientific context for the worst public health disaster since the great flu epidemic of 1918/19. It points fingers. It names names. It describes the way in which the government of China, from the very beginning, withheld vital information and promoted false-by-omission scientific narratives in order to deflect blame even as it permitted the virus to spread. China's relentless PR campaign began at the end of December, 2019 even as the first mention of a nasty pneumonia circulating in Wuhan found its way to social media sites and from there to the West. China was helped in its efforts by the WHO, whose job is to protect the world from such disasters, and even more shockingly by some of the world's best scientific journals, our leading coronavirus experts and the US institutions which fund their work. All were more anxious to protect their interests than to pursue the truth. The book describes in detail how China used the globalization of biological science as cover for dual-use research that could not be done at home, reaching into the most secure laboratory in Canada for the study of the most dangerous pathogens  (Ebola, Marburg, Nipah). China's top military/civilian scientists (there is no boundary between them) used it as if it were their very own lab for years. 

More than 4 million people are known to have died from SARS-CoV-2 since December, 2019. That number is at least twice as high if suspected, but not certified, COVID deaths in India are factored in. It will continue to grow as the virus wends its way throughout the mostly un-vaccinated developing world, mutating as it goes, stumbling on ever more clever means to infect humans and the susceptible animals that live near us. These deaths are not and will not be the result of an unavoidable accident of nature: they are and will be the product of the very best human minds.

As the 4th wave begins, it's time to hold some of those humans to account.

Stay tuned.

7 comments:

  1. Glad you pointed out those particular names…. The dozen perfectly placed nucleotides placed into the furin cleavage site was the first indication to me it was not ‘natural’…. Although it seems we might disagree on the ‘vaccine’ aspect.

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  2. please see last paragraph of https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Patrick_Soon-Shiong#/Investments__
    By the summer of 2021, Soon-Shiong's T cell-inducing universal COVID-19 vaccine booster shot had reached Phase III trials in his native South Africa, with a stated goal of completely blocking transmission and stemming an endemic tide of COVID-19 variants.[44]

    denis.lahaie@gmail.com

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  4. You asked the Canadian Government if the Microbiology lab had shipped SARS-COV-2... but that was NOT the correct question.
    If WUHAN was doing GAIN OF FUNCTION, the right question would be...

    Was the SARS-COV-1 SAMPLE, that was shipped to the lab from Saudi Arabia, ever worked on, by the two fired scientists.

    Canada didn't have the SARS-COV-2 SAMPLE, but it did have the SARS-COV-1 SAMPLE. If that sample was stolen, and shipped to WUHAN, then enhanced... it's a much different story because Canada's govt allowed military scientists to ship the source material, to China.

    If it was enhanced at WUHANs lab from SARS-COV-1 to SARS-COV-2.... we have found the origin. And the material did not come from a BAT CAVE... it came from Winnipeg... stolen by Chinese Scientists on behalf of the Military.

    ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION... WERE THE TWO SCIENTISTS EVER IN CONTACT WITH THIS SAMPLE FROM SAUDI ARABIA.
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/saudi-coronavirus-work-stymied-at-canadian-lab-1.1322426

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    1. I do believe I did ask the right questions. The sample you refer to was not SARS 1, it was MERS which is very distant from SARS-CoV-2. That sample was sent to Francis Plummer, not to Xiangguo Qiu or Keding Cheng. Cheng did not arrive at the NML until more than a year later. There was no particular problem for Chinese scientists to get samples of SARS 1--they had plenty of samples from the SARS pandemic in 2002/2003.

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    2. Thank you for your reply! The Chinese did not have a P4 lab until 2017 so they likely had no way of containing the SARS-1 virus adequately for 15-16 years. As such, its more likely, that Canada is covering up their loss of this sample; as a national security issue. Otherwise, Allied governments would ask them how & why governments outside of the NATO alliance acquired biological agents from Canada and take action to ensure Canada isn't a security risk. Under the liberal government, to the whole of the western world due to globalist ideology conforming liberals at the helm - they seem to be presenting that risk to continental security.

      The problem is that if the Chinese Scientists acquired a Sars-COV-1 sample (which was very high restricted btw - as the article I attached discusses); that it could have been sent to WUHAN and then ENHANCED using Gain Of Function Research that was funded by Dr.Fauci's institutions proven involvement.

      Investigative journalists need to put the burner under the govts rear end, not cover up for em. Thanks for digging deeper.

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