State Dept Memo In Early 2020 Assessed Lab leak as Most Likely Origin Of COVID-19

 by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke via The Epoch Times,

A newly released memo from the U.S. State Department reveals that government officials knew early on that the COVID pandemic likely originated at a lab in Wuhan, China.

That memo, dated April 2020, states that out of five possible origins for COVID, a lab leak was by far the most likely. The memo also suggests that alternative theories had been introduced to prevent a lab leak from being investigated. The memo, which focuses almost entirely on the likelihood of a lab leak, contains a large amount of information that wasn’t known publicly at the time it was written.

Although a lab leak is now widely accepted as a likely origin for the virus, when the memo was written, a concerted effort was underway to discredit that possibility. It also raises the question of what senior State Department leadership—including then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—knew and why the information was withheld from the public.

According to the newly released memo, the State Department knew as of April 2020 that the central issue surrounded an obsession with collecting and testing a massive amount of virus-carrying bats on the part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and China’s Wuhan-located Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The State Department noted that lab testing of the earliest-known patient at the Wuhan Central Hospital in December 2019 determined that the virus was a “Bat SARS-like Coronavirus.” At the time this patient was tested, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hadn’t disclosed that there was any problem at all.

When they finally acknowledged an outbreak, they initially blamed it on pneumonia. It was only at the end of January that the CCP finally started admitting that COVID-19 was caused by a new virus that was transmitted between humans.

By that time, the virus had already been seeded across the globe and any chance at suppression had been lost. It was during this same period that the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was made aware of the virus’s likely origin, having been told by a group of scientists whom he was funding that there was a high probability that the virus was engineered.

Although it’s been known since June 2021 that Fauci and the NIH covered up his knowledge of the virus’s origin, the State Department’s early insight into these matters wasn’t fully known until late March 2022, when the transparency group U.S. Right to Know obtained the April 2020 memo.

Two Labs

The memo, titled “An Analysis of Circumstantial Evidence for Wuhan Labs as the Source of the Coronavirus,” comprises five pages and is written in military BLUF style, meaning “bottom line up front.”

The memo begins by stating that one of two Wuhan labs is the likely source of the COVID outbreak. The two labs identified by the state department are the Wuhan CDC’s lab located in downtown Wuhan and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Shi Zhengli was known to have conducted dangerous gain-of-function experiments on bat viruses.

The State Department’s focus on the Wuhan CDC lab as a possible source is particularly significant as that facility is located only a few hundred feet from the Huanan Seafood Market where an already infected customer may have caused a superspreader event in December 2019.

Notably, the World Health Organization’s lead investigator of the virus’s origin, Peter Ben Embarek, privately told a Danish TV crew that he suspected that the Wuhan CDC lab was the origin of the pandemic. Embarek, who promoted a natural origin for the virus in his public report, privately noted that the CDC lab had mysteriously moved to its new downtown location in early December and that such a move may have increased the chances of a lab leak or accidental spillage.

The other lab identified by the State Department as the likely source of the pandemic is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been the main focus of attention over the past two years.

The State Department memo noted that the Wuhan Institute, by far the most logical place to investigate the virus origin, had been completely sealed off from outside inquiry by the CCP. The memo also noted that a gag order regarding both Wuhan labs had been issued on Jan 1, 2020, and a major general from the People’s Liberation Army had assumed control over the Wuhan Institute of Virology since early January of 2020.

The State Department memo emphatically stated that “All other proposed theories are likely to be a decoy to prevent inquiry to Wuhan CDC and Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

It bears repeating that the memo was written in April 2020.

That’s because the State Department’s decoy argument mirrors the actions taken by Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) head Dr. Francis Collins who–at the same time this memo was written–were actively suppressing and censoring any public discussion of the lab leak scenario. When Fox News ran a story in April 2020 suggesting that the virus came out of a Wuhan lab, Collins immediately contacted Fauci to explore ways the two men could “put down this very destructive conspiracy.”

Collins had previously told Fauci and his group of scientists that “science and international harmony” could be harmed if the lab leak theory took hold. Collins’s directive led Fauci’s group to publish two papers that categorically dismissed the lab leak theory, one in the medical journal the Lancet and the other in the scientific journal Nature. Those two papers would become the cornerstone of combined efforts from Fauci’s scientists, the media, Big Tech, and the U.S. government to suppress any discussion of a lab leak, while simultaneously promoting the natural origin theory.

The State Department memo also lists many facts that the public has only come to know in piecemeal fashion over the course of the past two years. We’ve previously covered many of these details on our show, including that the Wuhan CDC had a resident “Batman”—Tian Junhua—who bragged about personally having collected more than 10,000 virus-carrying bats as lab samples from Chinese caves.

Tian also was widely known for his recklessness and carelessness during his collection process.

Regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the State Department memo noted that the director of the lab, Shi Zhengli, had conducted gain-of-function engineering of bat viruses to make them more easily transmittable to humans. As we now know, the defining feature of the COVID-19 virus, its furin cleavage site, is what makes the virus particularly transmissible in humans. While no furin cleavage site has ever been observed in naturally occurring SARS coronaviruses, Shi was part of a 2018 research proposal that aimed to insert exactly such a feature into coronaviruses.

The State Department’s memo also highlights the poor safety standards at the Wuhan Institute, a fact that could easily lead to an unintentional leak of the deadly virus to the outside population. Interestingly, the memo also questions the disappearance of lab worker Huang Yanling, whose bio, profile, and picture were scrubbed from the institute’s website shortly after the outbreak. To this day, Huang’s whereabouts and well-being remain unknown.

Lastly, the memo takes a detailed look at a Chinese medical professional whose online name is Wu Xiaohua. Wu claimed that Shi Zhengli was playing God by creating coronaviruses with the specific aim of making them more transmissible in humans. Wu also claimed that Shi used intermediate animals in her lab and that her lab’s management of deadly viruses was appallingly poor and negligent.

The State Department memo found Wu’s claims to be credible and that assessment holds up well, given the information that has been made public in the intervening two years. We now know Shi had an active plan to insert furin cleavage sites into bat viruses, we know that she used humanized mice to test how her virus creations would affect humans, and we know that her lab was repeatedly cited for its poor safety record.

The most striking takeaway from the memo is that it focuses almost entirely on the lab leak scenario, reflecting that the State Department was almost certain in April 2020 that the virus had originated in a lab. What remains entirely unclear is why neither the State Department nor Secretary Pompeo released this information as soon as they had it.

Had the memo been made public nearly two years ago when it was written, the course of events would have been very different. Knowing that the virus came out of a lab would have refocused public attention and the search for remedies could have been more focused.

There also would have been more concerted efforts to prevent future leaks. Rather than misdirecting the public toward a natural origin, Fauci and the NIH would have been exposed for their role in funding the work at the Wuhan Institute.

Most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party would have been subjected to greater international pressure for its role in suppressing any advance information regarding the outbreak. The memo might also have had an impact on the 2020 presidential election, as voters tended to see Donald Trump as far more capable than Joe Biden in taking on the CCP.

While we don’t know with certainty why the memo was concealed, the only person who had a constitutional role in deciding if suppression of a lab leak should be the policy of the U.S. government was President Trump. Although it’s possible that Trump decided it would be better to conceal the facts, it’s far more likely that, like all of us, the president was kept in the dark.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/state-department-memo-early-2000-assessed-lab-leak-was-most-likely-origin-covid-19

Seasonal COVID-19 booster shot? Don't count on it in the U.S. or Europe

 People in the U.S. and Europe hoping to receive COVID-19 vaccine booster shots every four to six months are in for a rude awakening.

On Wednesday, experts on both sides of the Atlantic tossed cold water on the idea of seasonal boosting.

In Europe, regulators concluded that it is too early to consider allowing a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. Meanwhile in the U.S., a panel of experts has directed the FDA to devise a plan for annual boosting against COVID-19.

The advice comes just a week after the FDA signed off on allowing people 50 and older to receive a fourth dose of Pfizer’s Comirnaty or Moderna’s Spikevax and suggested a fifth dose may be on its way by the fall.

The measure was designed to get ahead of a potential next surge of the virus. But even among experts, there is much uncertainty about future threat of the disease.

Trevor Bedford, Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center told the FDA panel Wednesday that a new strain such as omicron could emerge every 18 months to 10 years.

The mixed messages in the U.S. are bound to fuel further distrust in the vaccines and the regulators. Many in the U.S. are not sold on a first booster dose. As of March 30, of the 217.6 million Americans who had been fully vaccinated, only 97.5 million had received a booster.

Across the Atlantic, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the European Medicines Agency concluded that there is no evidence of a clear benefit of a fourth dose of the mRNA vaccines and that it should be provided only to those 80 and older and others who are immunocompromised.

The European experts did not rule out the possibility of signing off on a booster dose in the fall.

In making their assessments, experts in U.S. and Europe are relying on data from Israel which show that a fourth dose can significantly reduce the risk of severe disease but that protection from infection wanes within several weeks.

“Data indicate that a second booster given at least four months after first booster restores antibody levels without raising any new safety concerns,” the European regulators said in a statement. “Data also suggest that a second booster provides additional protection against severe disease, although the duration of the benefits is not yet known.

Meanwhile, analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald suggested that current boosting discussions bode well for the durability of the demand for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

“We believe that the FDA's prioritization of staying ahead of future variants/outbreaks and interest in coordinating efforts with manufacturers in a unified approach on future vaccine strain recommendations are positives for more flexible, adaptive technologies like mRNA,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Louise Chen wrote to clients.

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/seasonal-covid-19-booster-shot-dont-count-it-us-or-europe

Trevor Bedford tweet

 Today, I presented to

@US_FDA

VRBPAC with an overview of SARS-CoV-2 evolution up to this point and a brief perspective for what to expect going forward. Slides are here: https://bedford.io/talks/sars-cov-2-continuing-evolution-vrbpac/… and my slot in the full recording is viewable here: https://youtu.be/x8rq247E80I?t=11572…. 1/13

https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1511871589184270337?s=20&t=F9IZtFzBGJlxvu8NsmSHag

FDA aims to decide on strain selection for COVID boosters by June

 Top U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials on Wednesday said the agency is aiming to decide by June whether to change the design of COVID-19 vaccines in order to combat future variants, even if it does not have all the necessary information to measure their effectiveness.

"We're going to have to think about this in a way that is less than optimal because we're not going to have all the data that we'd like to have," Peter Marks, director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said at a meeting of the agency's scientific advisers to discuss the issue.

Marks also conceded that future COVID booster campaigns likely need to be less frequent. The FDA recently approved a fourth round of shots for older Americans.

"We simply can't be boosting people as frequently as we are and I'm the first to acknowledge that this additional fourth booster dose that was authorized was a stopgap measure," he said.

The panel of outside experts was convened to discuss how and whether to use additional vaccine boosters after data from Israel showed a fourth dose lowered rates of severe COVID among older people.

The FDA said it was hoping next generation vaccines would be to tackle multiple variants.

"Pivoting toward a monovalent vaccine directed at something like Omicron runs the risk of really narrowing the breadth of coverage for people who might be getting that modified vaccine as their primary series," FDA scientist Doran Fink said.

The advisory panel did not vote on any specific vaccines, but the agency said their discussions could help forge a strategy for future use of booster doses.

Many of the outside scientists raised concerns that the agency's preferred time line would not allow manufacturers to run full trials to generate clinical data on a new vaccines' effectiveness. They may instead have to rely on comparing immune responses generated by new vaccines to the old ones.

"I think the effectiveness of current vaccines will be a key driver in determining when that threshold, whatever it is, is reached," Dr. Jerry Weir, director of FDA's Division of Viral Products, said about when the regulator would consider additional boosters.

Data presented to the panel showed that current vaccines lose much of their effectiveness in preventing infections from the Omicron variant of the virus, but were better at preventing severe disease.

Those concerns, and data that showed waning protection from vaccines over time, drove U.S. health officials to authorize a second booster dose of the Moderna (MRNA.O) and Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE) shots for people aged 50 and older and the immunocompromised. read more

A fourth dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine lowered rates of severe COVID-19 among those 60 and older but offered only short-lived additional protection against infection, the study from Israel released on Tuesday found

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-fda-says-current-covid-vaccines-not-well-matched-against-ba2-variant-2022-04-06/

Shanghai wrestles with food shortages under virus shutdown

 Residents of Shanghai are struggling to get meat, rice and other food supplies under anti-coronavirus controls that confine most of its 25 million people in their homes, fueling frustration as the government tries to contain a spreading outbreak.

People in China’s business capital complain online grocers often are sold out. Some received government food packages of meat and vegetables for a few days. But with no word on when they will be allowed out, anxiety is rising.

Zhang Yu, 33, said her household of eight eats three meals a day but has cut back to noodles for lunch. They received no government supplies.

“It’s not easy to keep this up,” said Zhang, who starts shopping online at 7 a.m.

“We read on the news there is (food), but we just can’t buy it,” she said. “As soon as you go to the grocery shopping app, it says today’s orders are filled.”

The complaints are an embarrassment for the ruling Communist Party during a politically sensitive year when President Xi Jinping is expected to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as leader.

Shanghai highlights the soaring human and economic cost of China’s “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to isolate every infected person.

On Thursday, the government reported 23,107 new cases nationwide, all but 1,323 of which had no symptoms. That included 19,989 in Shanghai, where only 329 had symptoms.

Complaints about food shortages began after Shanghai closed segments of the city on March 28.

Plans called for four-day closures of districts while residents were tested. That changed to an indefinite citywide shutdown after case numbers soared. Shoppers who got little warning stripped supermarket shelves.

City officials apologized publicly last week and promised to improve food supplies.

Officials say Shanghai, home of the world’s busiest port and China’s main stock exchange, has enough food. But a deputy mayor, Chen Tong, acknowledged Thursday getting it the “last 100 meters” to households is a challenge.

“Shanghai’s battle against the epidemic has reached the most critical moment,” Chen said at a news conference, according to state media. He said officials “must go all out to get living supplies to the city’s 25 million people.”

At the same event, a vice president of Meituan, China’s biggest food delivery platform, blamed a shortage of staff and vehicles, according to a transcript released by the company. The executive, Mao Fang, said Meituan has moved automated delivery vehicles and nearly 1,000 extra employees to Shanghai.

Another online grocer, Dingdong, said it shifted 500 employees in Shanghai from other posts to making deliveries.

Li Xiaoliang, an employee of a courier company, complained the government overlooks people living in hotels. He said he is sharing a room with two coworkers after positive cases were found near his rented house.

Li, 30, said they brought instant noodles but those ran out. Now, they eat one meal a day of 40 yuan ($6) lunch boxes ordered at the front desk, but the vendor sometimes doesn’t deliver. On Thursday, Li said he had only water all day.

The local government office “clearly said that they didn’t care about those staying in the hotel and left us to find our own way,” Li said. “What we need most now is supplies, food.”

After residents of a Shanghai apartment complex stood on their balconies to sing this week in a possible protest, a drone flew overhead and broadcast the message: “Control the soul’s desire for freedom and do not open the window to sing. This behavior has the risk of spreading the epidemic.”

The government says it is trying to reduce the impact of its tactics, but authorities still are enforcing curbs that also block access to the industrial cities of Changchun and Jilin with millions of residents in the northeast.

While the Shanghai port’s managers say operations are normal, the chair of the city’s chapter of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, said its member companies estimate the volume of cargo handled has fallen 40%.

Some large factories and financial firms are having employees sleep at work to keep operating. But Schoen-Behanzin said with no timetable to end lockdowns, “some workers aren’t volunteering any more.”

Residents of smaller cities also have been confined temporarily to their homes this year as Chinese officials try to contain outbreaks.

In 2020, access to cities with a total of 60 million people was suspended in an unprecedented attempt to contain the outbreak. The ruling party organized vast supply networks to bring in food.

A resident of the Minhang district on Shanghai’s west side who asked to be identified only by her surname, Chen, said her household of five was given government food packages on March 30 and April 4. They included chicken, eggplant, carrots, broccoli and potatoes.

Now, vegetables are available online but meat, fish and eggs are hard to find, Chen said. She joined a neighborhood “buying club.” Minimum orders are 3,000 yuan ($500), “so you need other people,” she said.

“Everyone is organizing to order food, because we can’t count on the government to send it to us,” Chen said. “They’re not reliable.”

A message from a viewer of an online news conference by the city’s health bureau challenged officials: “Put down the script! Please tell leaders to buy vegetables by mobile phone on the spot.”

Gregory Gao, an operations specialist for an automaker who lives alone in the downtown Yangpu district, said only Meituan remains after food sellers said supply sites in the area were closing.

“I can’t get anything for two or three days in a row,” said Gao, 29.

Zhang said some of her neighbors have run out of rice.

“The government told us at the beginning this would last four days,” she said. “Many people were not prepared.”

https://apnews.com/article/covid-business-health-shanghai-china-db82171b57b0768fea8352c1cd98bf39

S. Korea's new COVID-19 cases stay in 200,000s for 4th day

 South Korea's new coronavirus cases remained in the 200,000s for the fourth consecutive day Friday in a downward trend that could cause health officials to lower the infectious disease level of COVID-19 amid eased social distancing rules.

The country reported 205,333 new COVID-19 infections, including 31 cases from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 14,983,694, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.

The public health agency reported 373 new COVID-19 deaths Friday, up from 348 on Thursday and 371 on Wednesday, raising the death toll to 18,754.

The number of critically ill patients stood at 1,093, down 23 from the previous day.

https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20220408001300320

Philly’s indoor mask mandate likely to return next week, as city COVID-19 cases creep up

Philadelphia is poised to reinstate its indoor mask mandate next week as COVID-19 cases climb again.

An Inquirer analysis showed the most current COVID case counts and the percent increase of cases both meet the city’s benchmarks that would trigger the return of the mask mandate for public indoor spaces. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health agreed with the analysis.

“What we see and know is cases are rising,” said James Garrow, a spokesperson for the department. “People should start taking precautions now.”

The Inquirer analysis isn’t predictive, and it is possible that key metrics triggering the return of the mask mandate could decrease by Monday. It’s “certainly possible,” Garrow said, but the city has not yet reached the peak of the case increase that appears to be building now. The city will review Monday’s hospitalization numbers and the last seven days of case counts to decide whether to change policies.

The COVID data are not alarming enough to warrant an immediate change in the city’s mask policies, though, he said. The city has said it would announce changes to its COVID safety requirements on Mondays, and an announcement on whether mask requirements would return would likely come then, Garrow said. If the COVID metrics stay around where they are now, or increase, the health department could choose not to resume mandating masks indoors, he said, but it’s unlikely.

“It’s possible,” Garrow said, “but it certainly is not my personal preference.”

If brought back, the mask mandate would apply to schools in the city as well. Spring break is April 11 to 15, and the city had already stipulated that masks would be required in schools for the following week, from April 18 to 22.

The department created a tiered alert system earlier this year to provide a framework for when precautions would increase or ease, and will likely stick to it, he said. The department may announce the return of the mask mandate Monday but delay implementing it for a few days, Garrow said, to give businesses time to adapt.

Since March, the city has been in response level 1 — “All Clear” — which does not require masks apart from some narrow exceptions, including public transportation.

On Monday, the health department recommended people start masking indoors again, without requiring it.

What are the metrics to bring back a mask requirement?

To jump up to the “Mask Precautions” response level, the city needed to hit two of the following three triggers:

• Average new daily cases are above 100 (but below 225).

• Hospitalizations are above 50 (but below 100).

• Cases have increased by more than 50% in the previous 10 days.

The second metric has already been hit earlier this week; 51 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized as of Tuesday. As of Wednesday, 49 people were in city hospitals with COVID.

With the city nearing the two other thresholds — Philly was averaging 94 new COVID-19 cases per day as of April 1, using a three-day lag that the city recommends — officials encouraged residents to wear masks in indoor public spaces.

According to an Inquirer analysis Wednesday, using the same three-day lag, the average number of new COVID-19 cases per day was 110 as of April 3. And the 10-day increase in the average number of new cases was 54%.

Hospitalizations dropped to 49 on Wednesday, according to state data, just short of hitting a third metric.

The city had initially included a fourth metric, the percent of COVID tests with positive results, but concerns about the reliability of testing led the city to drop that benchmark. Because so many people are taking COVID tests at home, and because those taking tests at sites like hospitals and clinics are likely to lead to inflated positivity rates, testing has become a less valuable tool for measuring COVID’s spread.

What are Philly’s other response levels?

The city has four COVID-19 response levels: “All Clear,” “Mask Precautions,” “Caution,” and “Extreme Caution.”

Since early March, the city has been in the “All Clear” category, under which there are no vaccine or testing requirements for places that serve food or drinks, and there are no mask requirements in most public places.

The second risk level — “Mask Precautions” — would put the indoor mask mandate back into effect. “Caution,” the third level, adds a requirement for places that serve food or drink to require a vaccine card or negative COVID-19 test from patrons; “Extreme Caution” makes a vaccine card or exemption a requirement.

Would the ‘Mask Precautions’ response level also bring back a vaccine card or testing requirement?

No. The “Mask Precautions” response level only adds an indoor mask mandate.

“Caution” would allow you to show a vaccine card or negative test from the previous 24 hours to get inside a place that serves food or drinks. The highest response level is the only one that would require a vaccine card (or an exemption) to get inside those establishments.

What happens if the mask mandate returns?

The city will return to the same level of indoor restrictions that were in place through most of the last two years. The city relied on restaurant inspections and 311 complaints to identify businesses not complying with the masking order, and the health department isn’t anticipating additional monitoring or enforcement efforts if the mandate resumes.

Critiques of the city’s tiered system have raised the question of whether the key metrics could hover around where they are now, leading to the mask mandate ending and returning week by week, a confusing and frustrating possibility. The history of the pandemic suggests that isn’t likely, Garrow said. COVID tends to surge and recede in a wave pattern, and the only time case counts and hospitalizations stay stable is when they are very low.

Bringing back the mandate next week, he said, is designed to play a role in trying to keep the crest of the next wave as low as possible.

https://www.inquirer.com/health/philadelphia-mask-mandate-covid-cases-20220406.html