# 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](https://gop-foreignaffairs.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Copy-of-Add-a-little-bit-of-body-text-18.pdf)* *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 statemen**t, 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,](http://formosahut.com/forum/index.php?mode=entry&id=2421) 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.