Peter Dazsek is one of the supervillains in the pandemic story. 

Often described as one of Fauci's best friends, he certainly has benefited mightily from his relationship to the once highest-paid person in the federal government. 

Dazsek funneled millions of dollars into the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain-of-function research and begged for money to create a Frankenstein coronavirus at the WIV that precisely matches the one that probably escaped from that lab in 2019. It seems that the proposal to do so went too far for DARPA and NIAID, but it seems likely that the project went forward anyway. 

After all, the virus they were trying to make in 2018 suddenly started infecting people in 2019. It is a mighty impressive coincidence if that isn't the virus that Dazsek proposed making. 

Mr. Dazsek was grilled by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Wednesday--it is remarkable that the testimony got so little attention--and he comes off looking like a very high-IQ sociopath, which I suspect he is. He is very good at dodging and weaving, and while he was caught in some lies the chances are that he will skate. 

After all, the feds just gave him more than $4 million more dollars, even though the Inspector General found that they misused government money. It is good to be connected. 

Dazsek insists that the overwhelming evidence out there--he says it is piling up all the time, in fact--is that the virus came from nature and was not a lab leak. This is, of course, total bunk. Most of the "evidence" comes from a fraudulent paper commissioned by Fauci to cover his own rear-end, and leaked emails show that the authors didn't really believe what they were saying in public. 

They were richly rewarded by Fauci with multi-million dollar grants for their efforts. 

Dazsek's testimony was not the big news of the day, though. It was the criminal referral the committee made, demanding that Dazsek be investigated. As well he should be, along with Fauci and countless others. 

Simultaneous with the testimony, Vanity Fair released an exclusive article that revealed that Ralph Baric, a virologist who worked with the Wuhan lab, admitted in closed testimony that a lab leak was possible, especially because the WIV was careless as hell with the work they were doing.

Gain of function research. In Wuhan. On coronaviruses. In grossly unsafe conditions. 

Now Baric says he believes that the virus likely escaped from nature and not the lab. I don't, and while I can't read minds it is pretty clear that Baric suspects that the lab leak theory is extremely likely correct. 

In 2015, Ralph S. Baric, arguably the world’s most accomplished coronavirologist, published groundbreaking research with Shi Zhengli, the leading coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

They had mixed components of different coronaviruses and created an artificial virus, or chimera, that could infect human cells. The research helped crystallize the threat posed by bat coronaviruses lurking in nature. But the experiments were dangerous too. In 2014, while their research was underway, the Obama administration enacted a pause on so-called gain-of-function research that could increase the virulence or transmissibility of certain viruses. Baric and Shi even flagged the dangers of the research themselves, writing, “Scientific review panels may deem similar studies…too risky to pursue.”

The experiments were done in Baric’s well-secured laboratory in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Afterward, however, Shi’s team at the WIV continued to utilize Baric’s cutting-edge research techniques. Their work was funded in part with a US research grant.

Despite the federal ban, Shi continued the work in Wuhan, almost certainly using funds funneled to her by Dazsek--who is maniacally supportive of gain-of-function research. Anthony Fauci funneled the funds to the EcoHealth Alliance, which Dazsek runs. 

Through it all, Baric has kept mostly silent—until now. On January 22, he gave a six-hour interview to investigators from two Republican-led House committees: the Oversight and Accountability’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Though the committees have not yet made his testimony public, Vanity Fair has exclusively reviewed his statements. While not formally under oath, Baric was required by federal law to answer truthfully. (Through a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill spokesperson, Baric declined to comment for this article.)

While there is little in the 212-page transcript that is likely to markedly shift the debate on how COVID-19 originated, the picture that emerges is of an American scientist who is deeply wary of his Chinese counterparts and has no way of knowing if or how they may have made use of the groundbreaking research techniques he developed.

Perhaps most notably, Baric testified that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli that the WIV’s critical coronavirus research was being conducted in labs with insufficient biosafety protections. When he urged her to move the work to a more secure biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab, he testified that she did not heed his recommendation. Because the WIV continued to perform coronavirus research at what he considers an inappropriately low biosafety level, Baric said of a laboratory accident, “You can’t rule that out…. You just can’t.”

As I said, while he is covering his own butt, he clearly has a strong sense that the virus escaped the lab, which had 15,000 samples of coronavirus, was doing biological warfare research, and had pursued money to produce a virus that matches COVID-19.  

One thing that is crystal clear in Baric's testimony is that he doesn't believe the origin story that has been put out there. The wet market was not the origin. He also believes--and told--Dazsek that he is a liar, although not in quite that blunt a way. 

Post pandemic, he emailed @EcoHealthNYC president Peter Daszak that his claim that WIV had appropriate biosafety protocols was "a load of BS." /4 pic.twitter.com/d7vxnH3m9X

— Katherine Eban (@KatherineEban) May 1, 2024

Dazsek is a liar, as all sociopaths are, and good at it. But when the guy who invented the processes used to do gain-of-function research and taught the Wuhan scientists how to do it says that the research was unsafe, I am inclined to believe him over a man who makes his money from it. 

Baric also takes a big shot at Anthony Fauci, implying that he, too, is a liar. Fauci is a liar, no implication necessary. Just string together his BS utterances over the past few years and it is clear that his relationship to the truth is as solid as mine is with Christie Brinkley or Taylor Swift. 

Baric told congressional investigators that he believes it’s far more likely that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over naturally from animals to humans, given the sheer abundance of viruses in nature. But he also said in his testimony that he disagrees with the most widely promulgated spillover argument: that the virus leapt from infected animals to people at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where it first burst into public view in December 2019. The argument does not hold up, he said, because genomic evidence suggests that COVID-19 was already circulating in the human population by mid-to-late October. “Clearly, the market was a conduit for expansion,” he testified. “Is that where it started? I don’t think so.”

Baric also weighed in on a controversy that has pitted Dr. Anthony Fauci against Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who has leveraged his credentials as an eye doctor to position himself as a crusader against America’s scientific and medical establishments. In contentious Senate hearings, Fauci has repeatedly denied Paul’s claims that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci led at the time, had funded gain-of-function research at the WIV. However, Baric told investigators that the experiment in dispute, in which technicians created a chimeric virus that made lab mice sicker, was “absolutely” gain-of-function research: “You can’t argue with that.” He also said he felt that the experiment’s results should have triggered regulatory review.

Fauci argues with that because otherwise, he will be exposed for participating in what amounts to mass manslaughter along with his friend Dazsek. 

Let's face it, though: these men are mass murderers, have profited handsomely from it, and are lauded by all the Right People™ for being so. 

The federal grant money for the experiment in question, which was conducted at the WIV sometime between 2018 and 2019, was funneled through EcoHealth Alliance. It was Daszak, EcoHealth’s president, who organized an open letter in the Lancet medical journal early in the pandemic that helped paint the lab-leak hypothesis as a baseless conspiracy theory. Today, the Select Subcommittee is expected to release a report that calls for NIH to recommend that EcoHealth Alliance, and Daszak personally, be debarred from receiving federal funds. As part of its investigation into COVID-19’s origins, the Select Subcommittee is holding a series of hearings. Daszak is scheduled to testify publicly today, and Fauci is set to do so on June 3.

America’s intelligence agencies remain divided over whether SARS-CoV-2 came from a natural spillover or a lab accident. US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra recently said the question may “never” be answered “unless China opens up some more.”

The single biggest issue to jump from the pages of Baric’s testimony is his persistent concern over unsafe research practices at the WIV. Some of Shi’s research papers, he said, “actually stated that they were doing the culturing work under BSL-2.” BSL-3 labs typically require negative pressure air flow, HEPA air filtration systems, and full Tyvek suits for lab workers—all to protect against leaks. BSL-2 laboratories do not require specialized air filtration or full gowns.

BSL-2 has the same safety requirements as a dentist's office. 

Think about that. They were culturing deadly viruses in what amounts to a dentist's office. 

Yet we are told there is no chance that this came from a lab leak. Yeah, right. 

The dispute over biosafety arose again in 2018, as Baric and Shi worked with Daszak on a grant proposal to collect SARS-like bat coronaviruses and insert a genetic component called a furin cleavage site that would enable them to more easily infect human cells. The proposal has since drawn attention because, when SARS-CoV-2 subsequently emerged in Wuhan, it possessed a furin cleavage site, making it unique among SARS-related coronaviruses. The 2018 proposal was submitted by Daszak to the Pentagon research and development agency DARPA.

Last December, a Freedom of Information research group called U.S. Right to Know released margin comments from an early draft of the grant proposal. In one, Peter Daszak tagged his collaborators and said, “Ralph. Zhengli. If we win this contract, I do not propose that all of this work will necessarily be conducted by Ralph, but I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team. Once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, and I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan as well.”

In other words, Dazsek lied to the government to get the money. 

Sociopath, as I said. 

There is much more in Katherine Eban's article; she has several others linked that flesh out the evidence even more on the lab leak theory. I highly recommend reading them. 

You can also read the interim report put together by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Committee on Oversight and Accountability, which is large but comprehensive, although not complete. 

"On Wednesday…members of both US political parties came armed with blistering criticism for Peter Daszak, the head of…EcoHealth Alliance"

Republicans and Democrats investigating origins of COVID-19 find a common target: Daszakhttps://t.co/bh07uoSiqf

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) May 3, 2024

The bottom line: Dazsek and Fauci are coming out of this as proven liars and sociopaths who have benefited greatly from being well-connected. They are almost certainly responsible for one of the greatest mass death events since World War II, and almost certainly, they will get away with it. 

Neither may live to see their reputations in tatters, but they will, when the history books are written, become known as the men who killed millions. 

That's little comfort to me. Those millions will remain dead, and both men will likely die surrounded by people who will proclaim their greatness.