As with all new & emerging diseases, the topic of origin always arises at some point. With HIV/AIDS, scientists were practically tripping over themselves to track down the origin as soon as it became clear that it had been present in the Haitian population at least a decade longer than it existed on American soil. Prior to that it looked like it originated here, as our gay male cohort was the first group to be noticeably affected. Africans were responsible? Whew, good. We must trace it back to the source at once for the good of humanity.
With COVID though, world leaders seem much less interested in finding the actual roots of the disease. China shut the doors of the Wuhan lab to the World Health Organization in 2020, which shouldn't have even been an option with a disease that had the entire globe on the brink of public health & economic disaster. Slowly, some fringe voices started questioning whether the virus might've originated in the Wuhan laboratory. While many skeptics poo-pooh'ed them, a few of these claims came from within the scientific community & high up in the government. Then China countered with a wave of claims that COVID actually existed before the Fall of 2020 & originated at the Fort Detrick, Maryland, laboratory.
As an American who's steadily fed a diet of Western propaganda, this sounded like a weak & almost laughable attempt by the PRC to deflect responsibility back onto the Americans, particularly those like Trump who were calling it the "China Virus" & inciting racial violence against Asians. But with a bit more digging I found that this theory actually has some circumstantial evidence to back it up. (Not that I subscribe to the idea that COVID came from a laboratory, let alone one in the U.S. I'm just laying out both sides of the discussion in one place since every other article on this issue is painfully one-sided).
Americavirus?
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| Fort Detrick's lab was shut down by cease & desist order in August 2019 |
The first case of SARS-COV-2 is officially said to have occurred in November 17, 2019 in Wuhan, though some reports claim it circulated undetected in the Chinese city as far back as October 2019.
How could a virus so strongly associated with China have started in the U.S.? Just because the first cases were identified there does not mean it started there. As with AIDS, we now know the "first cases" that showed up in New York City's gay male population in 1981 were nothing of the sort--the HIV virus had actually been circulating in the U.S. since 1969 with our first identified patient Robert Rayford & got a firm hold in IV drug users in the '70s. Meanwhile it had been killing people in Haiti since the '60s & was finally traced back to the 1920's in central Africa where it crossed over from chimps & sooty mangabeys to humans & became HIV-1 & HIV-2, respectively. Obviously COVID doesn't have an incubation period that long, but that doesn't mean early cases weren't missed or misidentified as something else. In fact it's quite likely that's exactly what happened.
Take the fact that "an unknown respiratory virus" infected more than 60 residents of the Greenspring Senior Living Center in Fairfax County, Virginia in the Summer of 2019 before spreading to a 2nd nursing home nearby, killing 3 people in all. Note that this illness didn't just sicken the frail & elderly--it also infected healthy young employees. It was later confirmed that this virus was NOT influenza, though to this day they haven't publicly identified it. The fact that this happened in the heat of the Summer threw epidemiologists for a loop since most viral outbreaks this deadly happen in the Fall & Winter months.
Greenspring, VA, is 1 hour and 22 minutes from the Ft. Detrick laboratory.
2 Dead After Respiratory Outbreak at Fairfax Nursing Home (July 2019)
The third outbreak happened when my entire family was sick with Omicron, & the rash's onset coincided perfectly with the onset of their symptoms so I have no doubt it's COVID related, as rashes are a well-known symptom. I was vaccinated in May 2021 shortly before the huge wave of COVID hit that Summer, which meant I was likely safe for the time being. But by Fall the immunity had worn off. Delta hit around Thanksgiving & Omicron around Christmas--I have to assume that's what caused the rashes. Every time it lasted 3 weeks so it's clearly viral & not, say, an allergic reaction or some other minor skin condition. Prior to the August 2019 incident I never had so much as a blemish.
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Not Monkeypox: My poor disgusting skin :(
I wasn't the only American with strange symptoms that Summer. This was the Summer of "vaping lung disease" aka EVALI, a strangely COVID-like ailment that causes ground glass opacities on x-rays & often kills its victims. And like COVID, it was quickly blamed on China, with their "tainted Chinese vapes" catching all the flack. This article straight up admits that states with higher number of vapers had more COVID cases early in the pandemic, which points to a major overlap between so-called EVALI & COVID in the earliest days of the pandemic. Obviously vapes can't cause COVID (a virus), so there should be no correlation there unless researchers were confusing the two in the days before a COVID test existed.
While it's true that inhaling lipids like Vitamin E acetate & other oils can cause lipoid pneumonia, the idea that so many young, healthy kids were dropping dead so fast from these vapes never sat right with me. (Or that symptoms of lipoid pneumonia would include things like diarrhea & vomiting which is more common with viruses like COVID). Shitty black market vapes have always existed--why were they suddenly killing people en masse? Chinese officials challenged the U.S. to go back & check the EVALI victims for evidence of COVID and they refused despite now having the technology to do so.
So it seems we're at an impasse.
What I didn't know was that there was actually some merit behind China's finger-pointing at the Fort Detrick lab, at least as far as timing was concerned. Because in August of 2019, Fort Detrick had to "pause" work (aka shut down emergency-style) after failing a safety inspection with the CDC in Atlanta. As a USAMRIID military lab, they work with the most dangerous pathogens known to man including Ebola, plague, anthrax, Marburg virus & the coronavirus family, though trying to find out whether they were studying coronaviruses pre-2020 is next to impossible. What I did find was disturbing enough:
What I didn't know was that there was actually some merit behind China's finger-pointing at the Fort Detrick lab, at least as far as timing was concerned. Because in August of 2019, Fort Detrick had to "pause" work (aka shut down emergency-style) after failing a safety inspection with the CDC in Atlanta. As a USAMRIID military lab, they work with the most dangerous pathogens known to man including Ebola, plague, anthrax, Marburg virus & the coronavirus family, though trying to find out whether they were studying coronaviruses pre-2020 is next to impossible. What I did find was disturbing enough:
According to this well-written piece, the CDC found Fort Detrick lab workers opening a door that was to remain sealed at all times while "a large amount of biohazardous waste was being moved," thus exposing unprotected workers nearby. And that wasn't all. They found cracks in ceilings and around vital lab equipment in rooms that were supposed to be completely sealed, & inventories on dangerous pathogens weren't being kept among other violations. I can't find the original CDC report online (again, what gives Google?) but needless to say whatever it contained was serious enough for them to send a cease & desist order to one of the most prestigious military labs in the country, if not the world. The fact that it was shut down in August 2019 meant their violations had been ongoing for some time prior to that.
The National Institutes of Health has also "paused" funding for gain-of-function research a few times. Specifically on SARS, MERS & influenza back in 2014-2017. Gain-of-function research is the hotbed issue politicians like Rand Paul have been arguing with Dr. Anthony Fauci about in hearings, but the argument goes back much further among scientists, many of whom have been concerned about something like this happening for a very long time.
Point One Finger, Three Point Back
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| The Wuhan lab carried out high-risk bat research on coronaviruses for years |
Meanwhile the Wuhan lab (BSL-4) was in no better shape. In fact they were known to be engaging in extremely risky bat research according to a January 2018 State Department cable that accused them of operating without enough adequately trained technicians & investigators. The cable specifically raised the alarm about a potential human risk of a "new SARS-like pandemic". Pretty damning. As far back as 2014, concerned U.S. scientists urged a moratorium on the type of gain-of-function studies going on at the Wuhan lab. The nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention lab (BSL-2) raised similar concerns.
The Chinese government has been extremely unhelpful as the world's epidemiologists have tried to track down the origins of this disease. One brave dissenting voice in the Chinese scientific community, Dr. Alina Chan, was practically excommunicated from the medical and scientific world for so much as raising the question that the virus might've originated in the Wuhan lab. Dr. & alleged "whistleblower" Li Wenliang met a similar fate when Wuhan police admonished him for alerting his colleagues about a new SARS-like coronavirus circulating in Wuhan via a WeChat message that was later leaked.
It's easy to pile on the Chinese medical establishment for tarring and feathering these folks until you look at how our own scientific community & government treat dissenting voices who raise similar questions, such as those who questioned whether Dr. Anthony Fauci & the NIH supported and funded gain-of-function studies on bat coronaviruses... at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, no less. If this virus originated in a lab, the burden of blame might be more of a circle than a straight line pointing at one country or the other.
Conclusion (In Progress)
When it's all said & done, it's not so much about which lab or country this disease started in. These labs operate all over the world, many in the middle of major metro areas or locations that experience earthquakes, major weather events or wars. (And these are just the BSL-4 labs; one of the Wuhan facilities in question was just a BSL-2). All engage in extremely risky research that serves no real purpose other than satisfying scientists' curiosity about highly deadly pathogens. Let's face it: These BSL-4 labs aren't curing cancer--they're looking for antidotes to biowarfare agents & potential weapons that could be used in warfare scenarios against other nations. The shady histories of military labs prove as much.
Inside the US Government's Top-Secret Bioweapons Lab
Any benefit gained from things like gain-of-function research is largely outweighed by the risks. And if the public doesn't even know it's going on & doesn't get a vote in whether it occurs, it's tantamount to mass murder when a pandemic of this magnitude breaks out. This secrecy also provides the perfect cover for powerful governments like China (the world's manufacturing superpower) & the U.S. (the world's military superpower) when these disasters inevitably happen, which impedes research & prevents potential medical breakthroughs in treating the diseases they caused. Meanwhile poorer regions like South Africa, Haiti & South America don't have this luxury & receive full blame when a new pandemic breaks out on their soil.
Without accountability & acknowledgement of our mistakes, we cannot learn from them & are doomed to repeat history. So far I've heard nothing about putting the kibosh on these dangerous viral studies or even enacting stricter safety policies in BSL-3/4 labs. Absolutely nothing & no one has been held accountable. Nothing is changing in either the world's laboratories or seafood/animal trading "wet" markets (assuming it started there). No matter which country COVID came from, the lesson is the same: ultra-risky research by flawed humans has no place in the modern world. MK-ULTRA, the Manhattan Project & countless other unethical experiments should have taught us that.
And for those who may be skeptical that a virus could come from a laboratory, here's a quick rundown of diseases known to have escaped from labs. It's not a matter of conspiracy theory or people "doing it on purpose"--nations don't purposely kill off their own populations. (They wouldn't be fretting about "low birth rates" while pushing abortion bans & mass immigration on us if they wanted our numbers down). It's caused by good old human error & incompetence. Even the best intentions lead straight to hell when you play with fire. And these scientists are playing with literal fire in these BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs every single day. The fact this doesn't happen more often is a miracle.
Oh, and just for funzies here are some real-world discussions from lab workers on Reddit that will open your eyes about what really goes on in scientific laboratories:
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