By Herman Tiu Laurel

The twists and turns of “sleepy Joe” Biden on the Covid-19 origins issue is spellbinding, let’s fathom what is underneath it.

The search should go global.

First, during the 2020 election campaign against President Trump, Biden pooh-poohed the Trump’s derogatory epithets “Kung Flu” or “China Virus” and “Wuhan Virus” scapegoating China. And on January 27, 2021, as the freshly freshly-baked president of the U.S. Biden officially banned the use of the pejorative Trumpian terms to avoid “racial backlash” on Asian-Americans.

Biden’s moves in in the early course of the virus investigations were gusts of fresh air of rationality after the ignorant, racist rants of Trump linking the virus to China. The Trumpian rants were proven baseless by the WHO team of experts that proceeded to China to investigate the matter in the city where it was first detected –Wuhan and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

After four weeks in Wuhan, the 11-man multi-national WHO team of virologists, epidemiologists and scientists officially reported in March essentially the following: appreciation of the open and full cooperation of China, concluding that the “lab-leak” is “extremely unlikely” and that the inquiry “should really go and search for evidence of earlier circulation wherever that is…”

Biden politicizes WHO virus investigation

In May 2021 Marion Koopman, one of the WHO team leaders, again pledged to “search for evidence… wherever it is”.  Thence, Biden unexpectedly ordered his intelligence agencies 90 days to “redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion (about the virus origins) …” and political pressure was likewise brought on the WHO.

The 90-days ticked on and WHO seemed hamstrung from proceeding with the investigations as China objected to the seeming intention to revisit Wuhan again before other leads provided by information from other countries indicating probable earlier emergence in 2019 is looked into. In response 25-million Chinese Netizens initiated a Petition to Investigate Fort Detrick and, in the Philippines we initiated a similar petition and is on-going at present.

Delays concern WHO team

After the nearly four months hiatus caused by the US pressures and politicizing of the virus origin-tracing issue in the WHO, the WHO investigative team felt the urgency enough to warn by mid-August that:

“Crucially, the window is rapidly closing on the biological feasibility of conducting the critical trace-back of people and animals inside and outside China (Italics mine). SARS-CoV-2 antibodies wane, so collecting further samples and testing people who might have been exposed before December 2019 will yield diminishing returns…”

Biden’s Intelligence dud

Thereafter, the much-anticipated report from Biden’s intelligence agencies did finally come out and turned out to be a big dud. Western media published confusing headlines on the report: Forbes reported, “Biden reportedly Receives Inconclusive Report About Covid Origins …”; BBC, “… US intelligence report ‘inconclusive’…”; NYT, “Intelligence Review Yields No Firm Conclusion…”

However, it really wasn’t that inconclusive as the reports quote from the findings that SARS-CoV-2 “wasn’t weaponized and unlikely to have been engineered”. Those findings confirm also the WHO Wuhan team’s findings and the science community’s reaction is reflected by the 152-years old Nature science magazine’s headline “US Covid origins report: researchers pleased…”

With that US intelligence review of the Wuhan “lab-leak” theory out of the way, and given the sense of urgency the WHO virus origin investigating team has expressed, international observers would expect the global investigation to go full steam ahead. But US President Biden raises new disruptive issues again shifting away focus from the Widening of the investigation back to China.

Biden nitpicks

The Voice of America (VOA) reported on August 28, 2021 “Biden Says China Still Withholding ‘Critical’ Info on Covid Origins”; and on the same day Bloomberg reported that, “Biden Criticizes China for Not Aiding Report on Virus Origin”. China had opened Wuhan and extended up with full cooperation with the WHO team, while the US has kept its widely questioned Ft. Detrick closed.

As for data cooperation, Australian infectious disease expert Dominic Dwyer public had this to say: “The WHO people certainly felt that they had received much, much, more data than they had ever received in the previous year. So that in itself is an advance.”  But 174 cases of raw patient data requested could only be provided as summaries due to patient confidentiality.

As practiced anywhere in the world, private details of patients could not be viewed by the public unless expressly agreed to by the patient(s). The American Bar Association itself advices, “Health care practitioners have a duty to take reasonable steps to keep personal medical information confidential consistent with the person’s preferences… “

Biden blowing smoke

From a third-party view, aside from the unprecedented amount of information already provided by the Chinese side to the WHO investigation team, the Chinese also took pains to summarize the 174 cases that would otherwise have been would be fully shielded from review. This is certainly a lot more than what the US has been willing to do with the WHO investigations.

Set against the backdrop of China’s widely praised openness and cooperation that welcomed and assisted the WHO investigation team in January to February and the final report of Biden’s own intelligence agencies that agreeing with the WHO team’s earlier finding that the lab-leak theory is unlikely, Biden’s latest reactions seems like “blowing smoke” at eyes of the global audience.

What could the President of the United States be smoke screening from the eyes of the world on this virus issue. China has certainly not hidden anything, opening up that much to WHO scrutiny. It seems that there are plenty of reasons why the U.S. would be putting up a smoke screen on its possible role in the emission of the Cov9d-19 virus, and its not just the infamous Ft. Detrick.

US NIH reports earlier 2019 Covid cases

The latest sensational information coming from out of a prime U.S. health institution seriously implicates the U.S. in the Covid-19 pandemic origins, and this is none other than the country’s National Institute of Health (NIH) report of June 15, 2021 published in its own news releases and published in its website. I quote from it below:

 “A new antibody testing study examining samples originally collected through the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in five states earlier than had initially been reported. These findings were published in the journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases.

“The results expand on findings from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study (link is external) that suggested SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was present in the U.S. as far back as December 2019.”

This piece of information alone constitutes a vital piece of a puzzle in the virus origin-racing investigation bringing up other questions: how early was the virus in the US in 2019? Does it go as far back as mid-2019 and links to the “strange” vaping and flu death and the “incident” at Fort Detrick that caused it to be fully shut down by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in August 2019?

No time to lose, expand inquiry now

It is sufficiently clear that the nitpicking reactions aimed at China from Biden to his intelligence community’s report smacks of smoke-screening to evade deeper question, including the secrecy surrounding the hundreds of U.S. biolabs, researches of Dr. Ralph Baric, and particularly the USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The WHO virus origin investigation has been held up too long now and the team has raised the danger of the evidence in several countries “degrading” over time. Why is the WHO still dill-dallying five months after the Wuhan mission. It’s time to expand the investigation to the leads from other countries – Spain, Italy, France, Japan and the U.S.  The delay is becoming inexcusable.

The virus-origins investigation is of primordial importance to all the countries of the world. Understanding how and where is the virus could have possibly begun will be essential to discovering solutions to the present problems with the pandemic as well as a better understanding of how to detect and control future pandemic outbreaks.

(The Philippine Petition for WHO to Open Investigation into Fort Detrick is on-going, and the movement has just redesigned its sign-up platform to enable the “one-click” sign up. We will be resuming energetically with the drive after the current community quarantines in the Philippines.)

🔴 Probe Fort Detrick Petition
Text your name and email to 09564313643 to sign the petition

🔴 Sign the petition: https://asiancenturyph.com/probe-fort-detrick-petition/

🔴 Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/probefortdetrick