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Corruption COVID Government Overreach Links from other news sources. Medicine Reprints from others. Science

Looking. Testimony of Lies: CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Perjured Herself Twice Before Congress

 

Originally Published on DailyClout.io

“Dr. Walensky seemed less cool in this appearance for Congress. This is the least composed and the most nervous, I feel, like I’ve seen this woman who’s usually kind of cool as a cucumber,” noted conservative podcaster Emerald Robinson Thursday. She also “perjured herself twice,” expressed special guest and DailyClout CEO Dr. Naomi Wolf.

The soon-to-be former CDC Director (June 30), Rochelle Walensky, testified before Congress for two hours on Tuesday. Here are some of the “key takeaways,” as provided by the Committee on Oversight and Accountability:

Key Takeaways

• CDC Director Walensky confirmed that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) promoted prolonged school closures that harmed America’s children.

• When America faced a public health crisis and turned to the CDC for help and guidance, the CDC provided misguided, unscientific, confusing, and at times blatantly false answers.

• AFT President Randi Weingarten had a direct line to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s personal and professional cellphones — raising further questions about potential political influence at the CDC.

• Dr. Rochelle Walensky testified that she spoke in her capacity as CDC Director during a White House briefing in February 2021. The Biden White House’s claim that her statements were made in her “personal” capacity when discussing school reopenings and vaccinations for teachers was false.

• Public health officials and organizations — including the CDC — must be held accountable for their failures and false statements during the pandemic in order to earn back the trust of Americans.

• The CDC needs structural reform to address current information and infrastructure issues, lack of transparency within the agency, and processes surrounding guidance publication.

One moment that garnered a lot of attention was Dr. Walensky’s exchange with Rep. James Comer (R-KY).

Rep. Comer asked Dr. Walensky several times about the CDC’s role in pressuring social media companies like Facebook, now Meta, to censor opinions that ran contrary to the CDC’s, to which Dr. Walensky continually answered, “That topic is one that is under litigation in the courts, so I will not be speaking to that.”

Dr. Naomi Wolf responded to such statements. “Dr. Walensky, when she said, I can’t speak to that because it’s under litigation, two Attorneys General, one from Missouri, and one from Louisiana, have sued and disclosed that, in fact, she the CDC, she right there, that woman was colluding with Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter, DHS, and the White House to censor information, including from yours truly right here in June of 2021, to warn women that there were menstrual problems subsequent to this injection, which, of course, has resulted two years later in fertility problems.”

“She did that, and he [Mark Zuckerberg] did that,” Dr. Wolf continued. “And now that the truth is coming out because of people like you and me and the hard work that we’re doing, and our 3500 volunteers. Now they’re like, ‘Oh, really bad that the government pushed us to censor things that might have been true.’ Well, yes. Mark Zuckerberg. They were true. And he’s injured so many women and babies and killed babies as a result of censoring that. And when Dr. Walensky said it’s under litigation, we’re suing her. George Smith, our lawyer in Ohio, sued her, and many other people are suing her for having lied and injured Americans as a result.”

Dr. Walensky was also “jumpy,” observed Dr. Wolf. “My husband’s a body language expert, and so it’s interesting watching this with him.” The man who appeared to be Dr. Walensky’s lawyer in the background often covered his mouth when Dr. Walensky had “blown it.” “And she blew it a couple of times,” remarked Dr. Wolf, but she also “lied twice.”

Here are those two lies, as outlined by Dr. Naomi Wolf.

Lie One: when Dr. Walensky stated that she didn’t know the COVID shots didn’t stop transmission when she touted “95% effective” to the American people.

“Well, our experts, our report [73] has shown that she knew perfectly well she was lying at the time she said that to Americans — that our experts found that Pfizer knew in November of 2020, which means she knew because she had the same documents, that the vaccines did not work to stop COVID,” stated Dr. Wolf.

“And in fact, Pfizer got rid of [at least] 200 vaccinated COVID-sick people in their trials in order falsely to make the claim that they were 95% effective. But the fact that they got rid of those 200-[plus] sick people is right there in the documents that Rochelle Walensky was given.”

Dr. Chris Flowers, MD, attests that if those 200-plus people who were excluded from Pfizer’s clinical trials with COVID-like symptoms had been included, it would have shown that Pfizer’s COVID-19 shots actually had “negative efficacy.” Dr. Chris Flowers breaks down the data in this interview.

Lie Two: when Dr. Walensky stated you couldn’t transmit COVID while vaccinated.

“This was the basis for the illegal mandates,” lamented Dr. Wolf. “Well, she knew perfectly well at the time she said it that that was a lie. And in fact, the Pfizer Documents show, as of November 2020, that the vaccines didn’t work to stop transmission — that there was vaccine failure and failure of efficacy. So she categorically lied to Congress twice,” Dr. Wolf asserted.

In fact, Dutch MEP Rob Roos got a Pfizer spokesperson (J. Small) to admit that the pharmaceutical giant never confirmed its COVID shots stopped transmission because it had to “move at the speed of science.”

More Lies: Dr. Walensky’s verbal exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA).

Dr. Wolf expressed she was “frustrated watching this hearing because all of the evidence that these interrogators on the right needed is in our Pfizer Documents book. For the most part, they didn’t ask the right questions or the right follow-up questions, except for Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

Here’s the summarized transcript of that interaction:

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: “I’d also like to talk to you on behalf of all the pregnant women, not people, as you call them. This has also been ignored, the amount of miscarriages and stillbirths that increased drastically due to your advice to get vaccinated. Pregnant women, again, not people. But my question for you today, Dr. Walensky, is now that you’re going to be leaving the CDC pretty soon, what job are you going to take? Are you going to be on the board of either Pfizer or Moderna? Because you’ve done one hell of a job at making sure that they’ve made a lot of money. And I yield back.”

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: “Thank you for that question. Maybe first, I will comment that CDC is not responsible for the purchase of vaccines. So I can’t speak to all of the economics that you spoke to. I do want to talk [for] a minute about the Vaccine Adverse Reporting — that Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. So that system is intended for any person who has gotten a vaccine if they have an untoward event after that vaccine, whether or not it is related to the vaccine they report. It is intended to have an overreporting. All of the vaccines — not all — most of the vaccines that were being given. Remember, we gave 676 million doses of the vaccine. Any adverse event, if you got hit by a truck after you got your vaccine, that was reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. We at CDC have a responsibility to comb through every single one of them to review the medical charts and to see if they are related. We review all of the things that come into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. I’d be happy to have our staff educate your staff on the —”

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: “I don’t want my staff educated. You should educate the American people about what you’ve done [with] 1.5 million reports because they feel like you’ve done nothing and continue to say ‘safe and effective.’”

ROCHELLE WALENSKY: “Maybe I will just close my saying I don’t have plans after I step down.”

“So many lies. Lies upon lies,” responded Dr. Naomi Wolf.

“She’s using her education, her access, her resources to hurt and injure and kill people and lie to the American people before Congress.”

“VAERS is actually not designed to overreport,” Dr. Wolf countered. “According to Harvard University, in her hometown of Boston, it underreports by a factor of 1% to 10%. And even the most established scientists and healthcare institutions accept that VAERS underreports.”

“Secondly, if they’re tasked with looking into every single one of those reports to VAERS, why on earth did they not look at that gigantic spike in miscarriages? Dr. Wolf asked. “They didn’t do that,” she lamented. “So even if she claims, oh, all these [reports] — it wasn’t the vaccine. She doesn’t know it wasn’t a vaccine because they did not look. There are no studies that the CDC ran to look at why the spiking of reports of miscarriage and spontaneous abortion coinciding with the rollout of vaccine were so massive.”

“Third,” Dr. Wolf continued. “What she’s lying about is that she knows exactly what caused those spontaneous abortions and miscarriages because she has the same paperwork from Pfizer that we have. And there’s a section in the Pfizer documents where there’s an 80 percent miscarriage rate after women got vaccinated. And there’s another section where — and this is in report 69 — where Pfizer shows that two of these tiny babies in utero who were delivered early, meaning spontaneously aborted after their moms got vaccinated and died.”

“The reason for that was, in Pfizer’s words, ‘transplacental’ exposure to the vaccine,” Dr. Wolf attested.

Transplacental exposure to the vaccine,” she repeated. “She [Dr. Walensky] had these documents. She knew what they said. And this was turned in a report to the White House, the CDC, and the FDA on April 20, 2021. On April 23, 2021, that woman got up in front of the White House at a press conference and said to the pregnant women of America that she recommended that they get vaccinated. She said the vaccine was safe and effective for pregnancy, and she recommended that pregnant women get vaccinated to protect their babies. And she said [that] there’s never a bad time to get vaccinated before your pregnancy, during your pregnancy, or after you’re pregnant. And she knew this report from Pfizer that showed that babies were dying in utero due to transplacental exposure, Pfizer’s words. And that they were being poisoned by the mRNA and spike protein in their mother’s breast milk.”

“That woman murdered babies, and she knew it,” asserted Dr. Wolf. “And five days after we posted [Pfizer] Report 69, she announced her resignation. So that’s what Congress should be asking her about. Did she know that? And if so, why did she tell pregnant women of America to take something that would kill their babies and poison them if they breastfed them?”

That famous Pfizer Report 69, which was published five days before Dr. Walensky’s resignation announcement, is available for free, along with all the other Pfizer Documents Reports on dailyclout.io.

Pfizer Report 73, which details how Pfizer knew by November 2020 that its mRNA COVID shot was neither safe nor effective, is available here. That particular report is a highly-technical read, but one of the authors, Dr. Chris Flowers, MD, summarizes the main points in this interview:

And if you’d like to support the work of Dr. Naomi WolfAmy Kelly, and the 3500 DailyClout/War Room volunteers, please order a copy of the Pfizer Documents Book for yourself, a family member, a friend, your doctor, or your local representative. The greatest crime in human history is all thoroughly documented here:

 

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Looking. Biden Touts U.S. Building World’s Largest Solar Plant — in Angola.

Looking. Biden Touts U.S. Building World’s Largest Solar Plant — in Angola.

President Joe Biden is bragging that his administration is building one of the world’s largest solar plants, not in the United States but rather in the Central African nation of Angola.

“You know, soon — soon, Africa will have one billion people,” Biden said during remarks at the League of Conservation Voters Annual Capital Dinner. Despite Biden’s claim, Africa’s population hit one billion residents in 2009 when he was vice president in the Obama administration.

“We have plans to build … in Angola one of the largest solar plants in the world,” Biden bragged. “I can go on, but I’m not.”

Indeed, earlier this month, the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $900 million direct loan to Angola “to support the construction of two photovoltaic solar energy power plants in the country,” officials said.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1669187098371391490

The massive multi-million project comes as, last year, Biden decided to exempt foreign-made bifacial solar panels — the overwhelming majority of which come from China — from Section 201 tariffs on solar imports to the U.S. that were first imposed by former President Trump in January 2018 at a 30 percent rate.

After that decision, LG Electronics announced that it will be closing its Huntsville, Alabama, solar panel manufacturing plant — resulting in more than 200 Americans being laid off.

In addition, Biden has continuously sided with Chinese solar manufacturers by imposing a tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia even as his Commerce Department has said that the panels are made in China but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to avoid U.S. tariffs.

 

 

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Crime Racism The Courts The Law

Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooter found guilty in federal death penalty trial.

Robert Bowers was found guilty on Friday (6/16) on all counts in the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 worshippers.

Bowers was convicted on all 63 charges, including 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death. Bowers offered to plead guilty if the death penalty was taken off the table, but prosecutors turned him down.

The bullet damaged doors of the Tree of Life synagogue building in Pittsburgh, was entered June 1, 2023, as a court exhibit by prosecutors in the federal trial of Robert Bowers.The bullet-damaged doors of the Tree of Life synagogue building in Pittsburgh was entered June 1, 2023, as a court exhibit by prosecutors in the federal trial of Robert Bowers.© U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania via AP

The jury deliberated for less than one day. Jurors will next weigh if Bowers should be sentenced to death.

Bowers stormed the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, gunning down 11 people in the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. Bowers allegedly told investigators after his arrest that he wanted to kill Jewish people, according to a criminal complaint.

This undated Pennsylvania Department of Transportation photo shows Robert Bowers.

This undated PennDOTphoto shows Robert Bowers. © Pennsylvania Department of Transportation via AP, FILE

Prosecutors said Bowers, armed with a semi-automatic assault-style rifle and three handguns, moved “methodically” through the synagogue and shot many of his victims at close range.

In opening statements in May, defense attorney Judy Clarke admitted that Bowers was the shooter and said he “shot every person he saw … and injured first responders who came to their rescue.”

A memorial is placed inside the locked doors of the dormant landmark Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, Oct. 26, 2022.

A memorial is placed inside the locked doors of the dormant landmark Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, Oct. 26, 2022.© Gene J. Puskar/AP
“There will be no question that this was a planned act and that he killed 11 people,” Clarke said, but she asked the jurors to “scrutinize his intent.”

The jury, comprised of 11 women and seven men, included an intensive care nurse, a new father and a veteran.

The penalty phase is set to begin June 26.

The signage on the dormant landmark Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood is framed in spring foliage, Apr. 19, 2023..

The signage on the dormant landmark Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood is framed in spring foliage, Apr. 19, 2023..© Gene J. Puskar/AP

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Corruption Opinion Politics Uncategorized

Looking. Episode 4 the Tucker article.

Looking. Episode 4 the Tucker article. Well Tucker is out with another great Twitter article. He doesn’t mess around and gives it to old Joe. 

Producer fired for this.

For this you fire someone?

Short snip it of what Tucker had to say.

“On Tuesday afternoon, the Biden administration had Donald Trump arrested. It was a pretty big news story. You may have seen it just before 09:00 p.m. That night. As part of its coverage, Fox News ran two live video feeds next to one another. On the right, Donald Trump addressed his supporters in New Jersey. On the left, Joe Biden spoke at an event for the Secretary General of NATO in Washington. Beneath those videos, at the bottom of the screen, Fox’s banner read this way quote wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested. Those words were up for less than 30 seconds, but the effect was immediate,” Tucker said.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1669472439472988161

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Corruption Leftist Virtue(!) Reprints from others. Sexual Abuse WOKE

Newsom takes in Disneyland’s first Pride Nite — gets rightfully hammered for it

Newsom takes in Disneyland’s first Pride Nite and gets hammered for it © Provided by Washington Examiner.

Story by Luke Gentile for The Washington Examiner

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) took in Disneyland’s After Dark: Pride Nite Tuesday and shared his experience with followers across social media.

“Great to be at Disneyland’s first ever Pride Night,” Newsom, a suspected 2024 Democratic hopeful, tweeted.

Newsom posted a clip of himself taking in the fireworks over the park’s iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle with a rainbow cascading in the background.

https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1668844447470358528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1668844447470358528%7Ctwgr%5Ed37c2e7e4a16c1264c2a8a8b7c54aff09c840631%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fnews%2Fnewsom-takes-in-disneylands-first-pride%3Futm_source%3Dmsnutm_medium%3Dreferralutm_campaign%3Dmsn_feed

The California park is hosting what is being touted as its official LGBT “Pride Nite” festivities from June 13 to June 15, Disney posted to social media.

https://twitter.com/Disneyland/status/1646554191731490836?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1646554191731490836%7Ctwgr%5Ed37c2e7e4a16c1264c2a8a8b7c54aff09c840631%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fnews%2Fnewsom-takes-in-disneylands-first-pride%3Futm_source%3Dmsnutm_medium%3Dreferralutm_campaign%3Dmsn_feed

This will be its first after-hours event in celebration of pride, according to the park.

“Disneyland Park will host the first ever Disneyland After Dark: Pride Nite during a separately ticketed evening event,” a statement from Disney announcing the event read. “Guests can enjoy special after-hours park access to shorter attraction wait times, special entertainment, Character experiences, photo opportunities and much more!”

From 9:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., visitors will be able to partake in dance parties with their favorite Disney characters in “special attire” amid “pride-themed backdrops,” according to park officials.

Following his post, Newsom was hammered with tweets criticizing his areas of focus as governor.

Kevin Dalton @TheKevinDalton
Gavin Newsom: you won’t see me discussing any of the mass shootings in California, you won’t see me at the funerals of any police officers murdered by violent felons that should be behind bars, you won’t see me doing anything effective to prevent homelessness.

Skylarking @EmpressLibra25 replied:

You WILL find him at a restaurant during a lockdown…without a mask.
😷
Kenrik March @KenrikMarch
How about you do something for the other 90% of your state for a change?
Sam Dawson @SamsGarageSale
Move in. You won’t be missed.

This event certainly is no “E-ticket!”

Even the MCU and Star Wars franchises won’t save Disney at this rate.
Yeah, given the known quantity of mentally ill gender-confused loons in Cali, they just might make up 10% of the state’s population. But what about the other 90%?

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Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. Uncategorized WOKE

Looking. GOP Congressman Stuns Woke Chief

 

Looking. GOP Congressman Stuns Woke Chief. I want to thank GP for this great article.

There is no more useless position in American society than the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) positions ubiquitous throughout corporate America and government. One GOP Congressman expertly exposed this truism this week.

Rep Brian Mast (R-FL) on Tuesday queried Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the Joe Biden’s State Department, regarding how these worthless diversity initiatives are put into practice when hiring.

The congressman first asked Abercrombie-Winstanley if being bald made someone a more qualified diplomat. The woke DEI officer chuckled and responded: “Not that I know of.”

Mast then asked if being 5’8″ (Mast’s height) or 6″3 made someone a better diplomat Abercrombie-Winstanley answered: “no, I don’t believe so.”

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How funny is this? Just my own thoughts Progressive Racism Stupid things people say or do.

Looking. No Rachel you’re not a news organization but an outlet for racism, bigotry, and hate speech.

Looking. No Rachel you’re not a news organization but an outlet for racism, bigotry, and hate speech. The other day Maddow spoke about MSNBC being a news organization and it would taint their view of the news. Funny that she would say that.

MSNBC thought it news to cover the court proceedings and charges against the former President, but found it not news worthy to cover his response. Remember that this is the same loon who carried on for what? Years about a Russian connection between Trump and the Russians. I rest my case.

Rachel Maddow alerts viewers that newly indicted ex-president Donald Trump has begun an address to supporters at his Bedminster golf club but in light of the expectation that the speech will be a “litany of lies and false accusations” MSNBC will not broadcast the speech live but will instead report any news that comes from it.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1668783860958593024

 

https://youtu.be/PFEvRiVSKkU

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Corruption Crime

Looking. How funny is this? Weissmann of all people has a back up plan to get Trump.

Looking. How funny is this? Weissmann of all people has a back up plan to get Trump. What’s this clown famous for?

Weissmann was involved in FBI activities with the mob in New York in the 1990s. He was a key member of the Enron Task Force in the early 2000s and also was involved in the sale of Uranium One under Obama.

And of course he led the Russian collusion fiasco for Mueller. How’d that turn out? Well he’s got another scheme.

Seems as if he thinks Smith may not win in Florida. So bring up more federal charges in New Jersey. It never ends.

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Corruption Crime Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

Looking. FBI Deputy Director Admits Redacting Mention of Joe and Hunter Biden Recordings in Document Shown to Congress.

Thanks Breitbart.

FBI Deputy Director Admits Redacting Mention of Joe and Hunter Biden Recordings in Document Shown to Congress.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate admitted during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that the FBI redacted any mention of audio recordings of Joe and Hunter Biden in a document shown last week to Republican lawmakers in which an FBI informant alleged the Bidens were involved in a bribery scheme around 2015 and 2016.

Under grilling from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Abbate confirmed: “What I will tell you with respect to the document, the document was redacted to protect the source.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Monday revealed that the document, which was a transcript of an FBI interview with an informant, contained references to 17 alleged audio recordings — 15 with Hunter Biden and two with then-Vice President Joe Biden. However, Grassley said, when the document was made available to the House Oversight Committee last week under pressure from Republicans, the references to the audio recordings had been deleted.

Grassley pointed out that the document is an unclassified document and should not be redacted, let alone need to be viewed in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, which the FBI made lawmakers do.

Abbate had at first tried to skirt the question, with Blackburn asking him several times to explain why the information was redacted.

After he finally responded, she told him.

I think it would be helpful when you came before us, if you were willing to answer the questions, it would help to remove the perception that the American people have — they see you do it everyday — and that is politicizing the FBI and using it against the American people who don’t happen to be named Biden, Clinton, or one of the elites.

Abbate also denied that the FBI was politicized, which Blackburn disagreed with.

“There are two very clear standards of justice in this country. We see it every single day. The American people see this every single day. They look at you and see a politicized entity that is weaponizing an agency of the federal government against the American people,” she told him.

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COVID Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

Looking. First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources.

This article first was posted on Public.

Looking. First People Sickened By COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists At Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Say US Government Sources.

The three scientists were engaged in “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses when they fell ill

After years of official pronouncements to the contrary, significant new evidence has emerged that strengthens the case that the SARS-CoV-2 virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

According to multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation by Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus, “patients zero,” included Ben Hu, a researcher who led the WIV’s “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses, which increases the infectiousness of viruses.

More than three years after the pandemic’s outbreak, many around the world had given up on learning the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the highly infectious respiratory virus that has killed millions, and the response to which shut down businesses and schools, upended societies, and caused enormous collateral damage.

Public officials in the U.S. and other countries have repeatedly suggested that uncovering the pandemic’s origin may not be possible. “We may never know,” said Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who oversaw pandemic response for two administrations.

Now, answers increasingly look within reach. Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus.

As such, not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019, but also that they were working with the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, and inserting gain-of-function features unique to it.

When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%”

“Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli,” said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and coauthor with Matt Ridley of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid19. Shi is known as “the bat woman of China,” and led the gain-of-function research at the WIV. “He was her star pupil. He had been making chimeric SARS-like viruses and testing these in humanized mice. If I had to guess who would be doing this risky virus research and most at risk of getting accidentally infected, it would be him.”

Hu and Yu researched the novel lineage of SARS-like viruses from which SARS-CoV-2 hails, and in 2019 coauthored a paper with Shi Zhengli that described SARS-like lineages they had studied over the years.

Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing who raised questions starting in early 2020 about a possible research-related pandemic origin, said, “It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with COVID-19 before anyone else. That would be the ‘smoking gun.’ Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in Shi’s lab.”

Sources tell Public and Racket that other news organizations are chasing aspects of this story. On Saturday, The Times of London quoted an anonymous U.S. State Department investigator saying, “It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation, and cover-up of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Public and Racket are the first publications to reveal the names of the three sick WIV workers and place them directly in the lab that collected and experimented with SARS-like viruses poised for human emergence.

Next week, the Directorate of National Intelligence is expected to release previously classified material, which may include the names of the three WIV scientists who were the likely among the first to be sickened by SARS-CoV-2.

bill signed by President Biden earlier this year specifically called for the release of the names and roles of the sick researchers at the WIV, their symptoms and date of symptom onset, and whether these researchers had been involved with or exposed to coronavirus research.

On Dec. 29, 2017, two years before the pandemic began, Chinese state-run television aired a video that includes a scene of Ben Hu watching a lab worker handle specimens. Neither are wearing protective gear. The same video shows WIV scientists hunting for bat viruses with little protective gear. “If they were worried about being infected in the field, they would need full body suits with no gaps” to be safe, said Chan. “That’s the only way.”

The WIV research with live SARS-like viruses was performed at too low of a safety level, “BSL-2,” explains Chan, “When we now know that the pandemic virus is even capable of escaping from a BSL-3 lab and infecting fully vaccinated young lab workers.”

While scientists justify such research as necessary for developing vaccines, President Barack Obama banned federal funding for gain-of-function research of concern in 2014, because experts had come to the consensus that it was too dangerous. However, the National Institute of Health and NIAID headed by Francis Collins and Fauci, and a major U.S. government grantee, EcoHealth Alliance, deemed their work on SARS-like viruses as not falling under the gain-of-function research of concern definitions and funded this project in China and Southeast Asia.

In March 2018, the WIV, the EcoHealth Alliance, and the University of North Carolina applied for a $14 million grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency DARPA to engineer “furin cleavage sites” into SARS-like coronaviruses to study how this affected their ability to grow and cause disease.

Scientists say the key piece of the COVID-19 virus, which made it so transmissible compared to its closest relatives, was its unique furin cleavage site.

DARPA rejected the grant, but it now appears the WIV went forward with the research anyway. The Times of London reported that US collaborators of the WIV had come forward and said the Wuhan scientists had put furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses in 2019.

Hu co-authored multiple papers on coronavirus research, including a 2017 paper on chimeric bat coronaviruses with Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, which was funded in part by the NIH and the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT Program. Data privately shared with the NIH revealed that these chimeric SARS-like viruses grew far more quickly and caused more severe disease in humanized mice in the lab.

When the WIV put out their first paper about the pandemic virus, they failed to point out the novel furin cleavage site despite having had plans to and allegedly putting such gain-of-function features into SARS-like viruses in their lab. “It’s as if these scientists proposed putting horns on horses, but when a unicorn shows up in their city a year later they write a paper describing every part of it except its horn,” said Chan.

Public sent emails and made phone calls to the NIH, WIV, EcoHealth Alliance, Daszak, Hu, and Shi over the last several days and did not hear back.

It is unclear who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public. “You would expect the country of origin to be defensive,” said Chan, “but you wouldn’t expect a country receiving the virus to be withholding key evidence.”

On January 15, 2021, five days before President Joe Biden took office, the U.S. State Department published a fact sheet that pointed to the likelihood of a lab leak as the cause of a pandemic.

Already, the State Department in 2021 suspected that the WIV had lied to the public. “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. That raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was ‘zero infection’ among the WIV’s staff and students by SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.”

In February of this year, the Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, told a reporter that “the FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”

The Times of London reported that State Department investigators “found evidence that researchers working on these experiments were taken to hospital with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019.” As previously reported in Vanity Fair, some of the information State Department investigators found in 2021 was “sitting in the U.S. intelligence community’s own files, unanalyzed.”

“Ever since I put out my [May 2020] preprint [research paper] saying that an accidental lab origin was possible, I was criticized as a conspiracy theorist,” said Chan. “If this info had been made public in May of 2020, I doubt that many in the scientific community and the media would have spent the last three years raving about a raccoon dog or pangolin in a wet market.”

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