By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
On October 14, 2022, the journal "Science" ran another summary of reports, including citing a report that just appeared in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" on October 10 that found “...the peer-reviewed literature overwhelmingly supports the zoonotic hypothesis,” the conclusion that the virus “spread naturally in a zoonotic jump from an animal to humans—without help from a lab.”
Back on July 11, 2021, I had written a column titled “Science, Not Spies, Will Determine COVID-19 Origin.” It was picked up worldwide by newspapers in Norway, Pakistan, India, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Our newly-elected President Biden had ordered a 90-day investigation by the U.S. intelligence community into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and that report’s conclusion, which Biden summarized on August 27, 2021, arrived at nothing. Spies are not scientists. I had clearly pointed out historical cases where the “intelligence” community got the reality wrong, especially our claim that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Only scientists can solve a science problem. We have now seen tremendous strides in knowledge of virus genetics and evolution over this additional year. Scientists worldwide have developed more-refined technology to detect and trace viral strains. These results have come together in a series of solid reports linking the Wuhan markets with the original outbreak cases. In the August 26, 2022 issue of "Science," 18 Western scientists found that in late 2019, live SARS-CoV-2-susceptible mammals were sold and SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental samples were associated with venders selling live animals. They also found that by mapping the early cases, “...the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Another study by 29 researchers focusing on the unique genome of early strains discovered that the early SARS-CoV-2 virus had already existed in two distinct viral lineages they label as “A” and “B” before February of 2020, indicating that there were “...at least two separate cross-species transmission events” where the virus was transmitted into humans.
Back in July of 2021, a Politico-Harvard poll found that 52 percent of U.S. adults believed Covid-19 leaked from a lab. A survey conducted by Morning Consult in mid-2021 found that 70 percent of Republicans and 32 percent of Democrats believed the virus spilled from a lab in Wuhan, China. Only 11 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats think the virus spread from animals.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated on an ABC program that “there’s enormous evidence” the coronavirus came from the Wuhan virology lab, but he agreed with the intelligence report that there was no evidence the virus was man-made or genetically modified.
Today, the worldwide science community is still waiting for any solid evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was in any way engineered in a lab. And as time advances, we gain more studies clarifying the genetic modifications this virus has undergone in its evolution from a bat virus origin to its wider range of hosts.
The only likely knowledge that our “intelligence” community could contribute is China’s history in our World War II battle with Japan. A Japanese Unit 731 grew typhoid and black plague disease agents on captive prisoners, and then released the infected lice and fleas from overhead “bombing,” resulting in hundreds of thousands of Chinese deaths from these biological warfare agents. The Japanese officers of Unit 731 never faced the Tokyo war crimes trials because the U.S. was interested in their hazmat technology and biowarfare techniques. Because this horrible history is known by all modern Chinese, any resort by their government to develop biological warfare would result in massive public opposition.
However, America’s extensive research developing biological warfare is not in our history books. It ended when President Nixon signed a convention to discontinue our biological weapons programs. This stopped any further research into biological warfare agents that had formerly been a major effort at Fort Detrick, the Pine Bluff Arsenal, the Dugway Proving Ground, and elsewhere. Indeed, during the time of the attack on 9/11, there was an unrelated set of deaths that occurred from envelopes of weaponized anthrax spores that the U.S. had developed earlier. Perhaps it is our guilt in having developed biological weapons that makes us suspect other countries.
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