Thank-you Lancet Statement
If you're tracing back to the origin of the Covid Cover-up, you wind up with two documents: The Lancet Statement and Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2. They are kinda special for me coz they were my entry point into seriously investigating the origin of Covid.
Dan started a thread on Formosahut about nCov on Jan 24 - we began noticing/recording some anomalies. I mentioned this with an Aus scientist I was on good terms with.
The reaction was bristling defensive - that took me aback - slightly. I sent a story from the Taipei Times on a scientists' symposium raising the possibility of a lab accident.
The email back was:
The experts don't believe in conspiracy (my bold)
link to the recently published Lancet Statement.
I read it - was gob-smacked to see 27 world-leading experts saying scientists from a CCP-run bio-defense/weapons lab were open and transparent. The language, was weirdly over-the-top - condemning conspiracy theorists - raving about unity/solidarity.
Having lived in Taiwan most of my adult life, right next-door to China, I tried to convey the little known fact amongst scientists that China is run by a totalitarian regime called the CCP - who are open and transparent about not being open and transparent - meaning the 27-experts were making a fundamental mistake in their reasoning. Begging the question: Why?
The scientist/friend responded with an animated propaganda cartoon praising China's response/ridiculing the doubter (literally made by the CCP - disturbingly platformed/plugged by the ABC - which, more than 2 year later - has not done a story investigating the origin of the biggest story of our lifetimes) and an article about a 5-G protest.
Regardless, by this point, through simple deduction, i knew this new virus was a lab-leak.
I also knew that the science community was aggressively trying to cover it up.
There's no other reason for scientists to be issuing unscientific statements based on an obvious lie.
It made me curious to delve deeper. I checked a paper that the Lancet Statement cited in support of its premise - it was called Proximal Origin. In it, i discovered further evidence of fundamental non-truths at the basis of this no-lab-leak PR offensive.
I started researching/writing about it on Formosahut. So far as i'm aware, that body of work (with contributions from Dan) was amongst the very first critical reviews on the planet (by scientists or non-scientists) of the Proximal Origin paper and the authors who concocted it.
Not that we were able to gain any traction with it - it's a tiny forum only used by Dan and I - until - out of the blue - intrepid Covid-origin researcher, @Billy Bostickson from Drastic, came across it and contacted me. I will be eternally grateful to him for that - it was exciting uncovering evidence of a cover-up - but it can also be a dark, lonely space in a world where there was a blanket media push to censor/vilify anyone asking questions. The censorship persists to this day. The vilification has dropped off - that's now been transferred to the vaccine-hesitant.
Meanwhile, efforts to report on evidence i was discovering in a phone conversation with my scientist friend were met with anger:
Scientist: Anyone who knows anything about virology knows that this virus couldn't have possibly come from a lab.
Scientist: I'm sick of listening to your boring conspiracy theories. (Hangs up. Sadly - it was last words we've spoken.