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The Claremont Review of Books has published Jeffrey Anderson’s terrific review/essay “Covid catastrophes.” I think “Faucism in one county” might capture the spirit of Anderson’s take on the tyranny imposed on us by the authorities under the Covid regime. Anderson’s essay makes me angry about it all over again, but the point is to prevent a recurrence.
While we’re angry all over again, we should check out former New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade’s update of the investigation of Covid’s origin. The virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, of course, but Wade has the latest on the so-called DEFUSE protocol that seems to have led to the work in Wuhan:
[W]hereas most viruses require repeated tries to switch from an animal host to people, SARS-CoV-2 infected humans out of the box, as if it had been preadapted while growing in the humanized mice called for in the DEFUSE protocol.
The authors of the proposal were a team led by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York, Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Although Mr. Baric is the leading expert on the technology, Mr. Daszak intended for much or most of the work to be done in Ms. Shi’s laboratory, despite giving a different impression to Darpa. He writes in the recently discovered documents that “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.”
Ms. Shi did most of her work with SARS-type viruses in the minimal-containment condition known as BSL2, whereas Mr. Baric, who regarded the viruses as seriously dangerous, worked in a more secure lab known as BSL3. Mr. Daszak noted that the lower-security labs would save money: “The BSL-2 nature of work on SARSr-CoVs makes our system highly cost-effective relative to other bat-virus systems.” Mr. Baric replied to this comment that the viruses might be grown under BSL2 safety conditions in China, but “US researchers will likely freak out.”
Mr. Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance last year asserted that the DEFUSE project was never implemented: “The proposal was not funded and the work was never done, therefore it cannot have played a role in the origin of COVID-19.” But science is a competitive business. After Darpa turned down the DEFUSE proposal in February 2019, the researchers in Wuhan might have secured Chinese government funding and gone ahead by themselves. Viruses made according to the DEFUSE protocol could have been available by the time Covid-19 broke out, sometime between August and November 2019. This would account for the otherwise unexplained timing of the pandemic along with its place of origin.
Here Wade inserts parenthetically: “Mr. Daszak, Mr. Baric and Ms. Shi didn’t respond to emails seeking comment. Chinese officials have demanded that the U.S. ‘stop defaming China’ by raising the possibility of a lab leak.” Wade then concludes:
One piece is missing from the puzzle—the identity of the parent viruses from which SARS-CoV-2 was derived. The Chinese authorities have rigorously suppressed all information about the viruses being kept in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the documentary and scientific evidence already assembled seems sufficient to understand the genesis of the pandemic that killed millions.
The refusal of the Chinese authorities to cooperate in the relevant investigation has seemed to me a most potent piece of circumstantial evidence from the get-go.
RealClearFoundation president David DesRosiers has announced the inaugural winners of of its Samizdat Prize. Tonight’s the night. The Samizdat Prize is intended to honor the most important users of the First Amendment in the United States. The prize aspires to confer the honor that various of the Pulitzer Prizes bestow and should replace them in the mind of right-thinking men and women. In the words of DesRosiers, the award that is given by Real Clear to journalists, scholars, and public figures who have fought censorship and stood for truth, whatever the cost.
The first three recipients of the Samizdat Prize could not be more worthy: Miranda Devine (for her work on the Biden family business), Jay Bhattacharya (the anti-Fauci), and Matt Taibbi (for his work on the Twitter Files). I have written about all three many times on Power Line. DesRosiers talked about the prize with Buck Sexton here in a discussion posted at RCP.
Dr. Bhattacharya received the prize this past September. His remarks are posted here at RCP. Matt Taibbi has just posted “America enters the samizadat era” at his Racket News site. He looks back on his career in acknowledging the honor he receives tonight. Thanks to John Hinderaker, I met Matt last year. Politics aside, we have cheered him on and sought to follow his path in our own way.
Miranda Devine wrote in her New York Post Devine Online newsletter this morning:
I am thrilled to be in Palm Beach tonight to receive the inaugural Samizdat award from RealClearPolitics, alongside pandemic refusenik Dr Jay Battacharya and Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi.
It’s an honor to be part of this grassroots movement to reclaim honest journalism in an era of lies.
“Samizdat” was the name of the underground press resisting the tyranny of the former Soviet Union.
It means ‘We publish ourselves” and was the inspiration for David DesRosiers, publisher and president of RealClear Foundation, to set up a rival journalism award to the Pulitzers.
Bravo to RealClear for bucking the establishment.
I couldn’t agree more. I would only add our congratulations to the inaugural recipients of the Samizdat Prize.
According to his Martin Kulldorff bio, Ph.D., Dr.h.c., is an epidemiologist, a biostatistician, and a founding fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom. He was a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University for thirteen years. Dr. Kulldorff’s research centers on developing and applying new disease surveillance methods for post-market drug and vaccine safety surveillance and for the early detection and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks. In October 2020, he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, advocating for a pandemic strategy of focused protection instead of lockdowns.
City Journal has just published Professor Kulldorff’s account of the censorship of his work and his involuntary departure from Harvard. It was something (many things) he thought and said — crimes against the groupthink of the Covid regime. His account runs to 2,500 words and is titled “Harvard tramples the truth.” It’s straight outta Cambridge. It’s straight outta D.C. It’s straight outta Orwell.
It opens: “I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.” Read every word here.
The great Dr. Jay Bhattacharya hosts the Illusion of Consensus podcast. I have embedded his most recent episode below via X. In this episode he speaks with Martin Kulldorff. Please check it out in its native habitat here and help Dr. Bhattacharya extend his reach to other platforms.
Dr. Bhattacharya’s introduction to the podcast notes that “in this critical conversation we discuss a number of hot topics, most crucially Martin’s firing from Harvard for his opposition to vaccine mandates. He has broken the silence on this tragic issue and we are happy to host his first public conversation on the matter. We also discuss Martin’s firing from the CDC over the J&J vaccine and Harvard’s generally unscientific response to the pandemic. The conversation concludes with a discussion on decentralizing and reforming the scientific community.”
Drs. Bhattacharya and Kulldorff are are two-thirds of the team that hatched the Great Barrington Declaration. With any luck, they will be recognized in next year’s Samizadat Prize.
New Illusion of Consensus podcast with @martinkulldorff. Martin tells the story of his career in public health, his advocacy for the basic principles of public health in the covid era, and his departure from Harvard.
(The link to the podcast is in my bio. Please subscribe!) pic.twitter.com/K3GOZupBlQ
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) March 12, 2024
The required reading for the Illusion of Consensus podcast is of course Martin Kulldorff’s March 11 City Journal column “Harvard tramples the truth.” Dr. Kulldorff also discusses his experience in the excellent City Journal podcast with John Tierney below (City Journal transcript here).
A global vaccine treaty being drafted by the World Health Organization (W.H.O) is to be rejected by Britain amid concerns it would have to give away a fifth of its jabs while ceding sovereignty to the unelected U.N. subsidiary.
The post ‘Undermines Sovereignty’ — UK Rejects Signing W.H.O. Global Vaccine Treaty appeared first on Breitbart.
The AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine will be withdrawn globally after the firm admitted the jab causes a rare but dangerous side effect.
The post AstraZeneca Coronavirus Vaccine to Be Pulled Worldwide for ‘Commercial’ Reasons appeared first on Breitbart.
The Chinese government celebrated heavy travel and tourism during China’s Labor Day holiday season, which ran from May 1 to May 5, as a sign the struggling economy is beginning to recover.
The post Foreigners Avoid China as Domestic Tourism Picks Up appeared first on Breitbart.
President Joe Biden said during a fundraiser Friday in San Francisco, California, that he wished former President Donald Trump had injected himself with bleach.
The post Biden Says Trump Should Have Injected Himself with Bleach: ‘Wish He Had Done a Little Bit’ appeared first on Breitbart.
W.H.O. countries failed to submit a finalized draft of the proposed pandemic accord this week amid controversy.
The post W.H.O. Goes into Overtime Drafting Pandemic Treaty as Opposition Grows appeared first on Breitbart.
Mothers are back to work in droves in Biden's inflated economy after the government shuttered businesses and closed schools during the pandemic.
The post U.S. Department of Labor: More Mothers Working Than Before Pandemic appeared first on Breitbart.
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