The Lancet Emails
Linfa's role in crafting/PR launching the notorious Lancet Statement
Linfa The Interfacer
Firstly, credit to US Right to Know, one of the organizations that has been instrumental in exposing the cover-up conspiracy through a series of FOI requests, including Baric’s emails discussing the drafting of The Lancet Statement. This underlines once again that the answers to all our questions don’t lie in the scientific minutiae - that’s a dead-end - that the suspects love to draw the unwary into.
By far the simplest/fastest route to the origin is to interrogate the chief persons-of-interests - immunity to the first one to flip.
Unfortunately, (spoiler) this is one of those political-thriller movies that goes all the way to the top. That means: there's no appetite to investigate the crime of the millennium - from the media - or law enforcement - due to the wicked web of institutionalized corruption it's bound to uncover.
Whose interest is served by that?
Not we, the establishment. We've got everything running exactly the way we like it - rule by the experts - we're the top canopy of the trees. why would we want to talk about a scary truth that brings all that into question?
No, the push from above is to bury it. So we can't hold our breaths waiting for the experts to come to our rescue. Ain't gonna happen.
That leaves netizens like US Right to Know. As they well-know, the evidence we need is: communications between the actors
Don’t need to be an expert to understand it. If you can read English, that’s good enough to get started.
We already know that Linfa Wang chaired an emergency response conference at WIV from Jan 11-14. They don’t do FOI’s in China, so short of Linfa being interrogated and coming clean, unlikey, we won't know the exact details of what was discussed in those meetings.
The details exist fine - the actors know them - but we don't.
Luckily, philosophy allows you to still deduce certain happenings. Go where science can't (due to data input limitations). Let's see what we can deduce from the available fragments:
From: Daszak Feb 8, 2020
To: Rita Colwell (LS signatory, EHA director)
You should know that the conspiracy theorists have been very active, targeting our collaborators with some extremely unpleasant web pages in China, and some have now received death threats to themselves and their families. They have asked us for any show of support we can give them.
Some important points to unpack there:
- Built-in use of conspiracy theorist othering
- The conspiracy theories started in China. The extremely unpleasant web pages - they were from Chinese citizens. That was all shut down of course - the head perps traced & disappeared. But the origin of lab-accident speculation, that was later branded as racist in the west, started in Wuhan - where it ran wild. As it would, when a super contagious coronavirus breaks out next door to the world’s leading coronavirus lab - in the middle of your city.
- The death threats - they were against Bat Lady. I don’t doubt they were real (as in online hate speech). Along with Weibo blowing up with lab-accident speculation, that gives a human insight into the extreme stress Shi Zhengli was under.
- They have asked us for any show of support we can give them. This is pivotal: the Lancet Statement was a request from WIV,
Put two and two together: the idea for the Lancet Statement was hatched at the WIV conference.
Wang Linfa interfaced the request shortly after he left China on Jan 18. He came back with a plan. He was energized - time to get proactive - be the cool head in a crisis.
The fact Daszak & Baric went full-throttle to execute his request indicates their complicity in the creation of the origin disease. Why else concoct such a transparent scam unless it's an all or nothing play?
It took a Sino/Western Bat Pack to create Covid in the Bat Lab - then one day it blew up ...
whoops
Right. Now we're in the trenches together dealing with the fall out. Let's have a WIV Annual Retreat. Get Linfa here.
Linfa: We can flip this - make it work for us - our wildest dreams work for us, or:
go meekly - lambs to the slaughter
It's your choice - what have you got in the big moments - when it really counts?
Do not sign this statement
Working late into the night, Daszak & Karesh (EHA) finish their draft of the Lancet Statement and send it around the cohort:
From: Daszak Feb 6, 2020, 12:43 am
To: Ralph Baric CC: (redacted - we can assume): Hume Field, Linfa Wang, Billy Karesh, Linda Saif, Jim Hughes (Rita Colwell was added later) (all EHA accredited Bat Packers)
Please review the letter and let me know if you are willing to join Billy Karesh and myself as co-signatories. Also please confirm your title and affiliation that will be shown in the letter.
Linfa has gone this far, he’s likely the one who requested, verbally framed the letter with Daszak, but he’s not stupid. He knows my work is done - it’s time to quietly step off the ship. He's a designer - not a signer.
The email arrives at 12:43 am - so late at night. Linfa reads it - it's got the right points but in Pete’s florid style. Then he reads the last line:
We declare no competing interests
Linfa calls Daszak immediately on the Bat Phone - advises Daszak & Baric not to sign either.
He’s smart enough not to record his input in writing*, but unfortunately Pete isn’t:
From: Peter Daszak Sent:Thurs, Feb 6, 2020, 3:16 pm
To: Baric, Ralph CC: (as above)
Subject: No need for you to sign the “Statement” Ralph!!
I spoke with Linfa last night about the statement we sent round. He thinks, and I agree with him, that you, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.
Jim Hughes, Linda Saif, Hume Field, and I believe Rita Colwell will sign it, then I’ll send it round some other key people tonight. We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.
Cheers,
Peter
So this is Linfa trying to talk sense into Daszak on the phone the night before. Don’t sign it - we’ll get busted. We have huge COI’s. We’re too close. It will link back to us.
Baric gets it straight away. Fires back an email within the hour:
From: Baric, Ralph Sent: Thurs, Feb 6, 2020, 4:01 pm
To: Peter Daszak
Subject: Re: No need for you to sign the “Statement” Ralph!!
I also think this is a good decision. Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact. ralph
It will look self-serving - which it totally is - it’s counter productive. What we need to do is: cover our tracks lest it links back to us. Everyone’s agreed.
So imagine Linfa’s horror when Daszak goes ahead and signs it anyways!
That’s gotta be vanity from our man Pete - didn’t want to miss out on the Celebrity Scientist publicity ride.
Daszak (along with Lipkin representing Prox-O) then went on to become the voice of the no-lab-leak cohort, tirelessly working the media to promote the Lancet Statement and vilify the conspiracy theorists.
The Guardian came to the party by publishing one Pete's peak-weird diatribes at the height of his fame. (critiqued on Formosahut, Dec 2020)
It was this addiction to the limelight - vanity - that would largely contribute to the unraveling of the No-lab-leak offensive - exactly as Linfa had tried to warn it would.