European nations turn back on AstraZenica

 8 European Nations Stop AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine On Reports Of “Serious” Blood Clots

Great Game India,

11 March, 2021

8 European nations including Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Norway and Iceland have decided to stop using the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine due to serious blood clot incidents reported in many countries.

Iceland has become the latest European nation to suspend the AstraZeneca jab.

The tiny island nation has confirmed roughly 6,000 COVID cases since the start of the pandemic, which is roughly 2% of the population.

Meanwhile, the EMA (the European equivalent of the FDA) confirmed that it has counted no fewer than 30 incidents of harmful blood clots in patients who received the vaccine, including at least one case in Denmark where the patient died.

The reason for halting the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is due to reports of serious blood clots after vaccination.

As per tweet of writer and skeptic Alex Berenson, this is not the only vaccine that causes adverse effects.

Alex Berenson tweeted “Just wait until they hear what the mRNA vaccines can do… Really, though, the side effect profile of the @astrazeneca vaccine is hardly worse than the mRNA shots, but somehow it has faced much more scrutiny. Follow the politics, I mean science.”

Health minister of Denmark confirmed the suspension of AstraZeneca Jabs via tweet. He said “there’s currently no ways to know for certain whether the cases of serious blood clots are connected to the vaccine, but the situation certainly warrants more investigation. We acted early, it needs to be thoroughly investigated.”

Italian PM Mario Draghi halted a shipment of AstraZeneca jabs to Australia. Health authorities in Italy are suspending jabs from current batch of vaccine. On the other hand, health authorities in London and Brussels dismissed these issues, insisting that this vaccine is safe while going with plans to approve Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose jab.

The EU medicines regulator said it was recommending the vaccine be authorized for all adults over 18 “after a thorough evaluation” of JNJ’s data found the vaccine met the criteria for efficacy, safety and quality. The JNJ jab is the fourth to be licensed for use inside the EU.

Health authorities in Denmark are so much worried about the adverse side effects believed to be related with AstraZeneca vaccine. Now Danish authorities also suspended AstraZeneca shot on Thursday.  Many patients have reported cases of blood clots they received after getting vaccinated. This suspension will last for 2 weeks.

As per European medicines agency, there are no evidences that link blood clots with the vaccine. The company said only 22 cases of adverse events have been noticed and approx 3M people have been vaccinated.

One investor claimed Denmark’s suspension of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on blood clot concerns shows “the detection systems that look for potential safety issues are working,” and that most of these “safety events” would ultimately be linked to natural processes, not the jab.

“It’s good to see the safety signal detection systems working and it’s important that any safety signal is followed-up using the correct protocols,” Shore analyst Adam Barker told Bloomberg. Data from the vaccine’s phase three trials suggests that “you would expect that most safety signals won’t ultimately be linked to the vaccine,” he said.

However, “it’s hard to make judgments on the impact on shareholder value,” he added, given there are “a lot of moving parts.” But ultimately, a risk-reward trade-off with any therapy; “you can only confidently make judgments on that decision when all the data is finalized and clear”.

Recently, a 65-year-old man in India collapsed and passed away just five minutes after getting first dose of vaccine against covid-19. He was injected with 0.5 ml dose of Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine Covishield intramuscularly.

Even Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt in charge of rolling out Australia’s coronavirus vaccine program was hospitalized just one day after taking the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

According to a report by Germany’s Standing Vaccination Commission, the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is only effective 8% in people over 65.

Three European countries of Sweden, France and Germany have decided not to use AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for people over 65. This decision was made due to the lack of data available about its effectiveness in elderly people.

For latest updates on the outbreak check out our Coronavirus Coverage.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/europes-covid-vaccine-rollout-faces-even-more-delays

From the NZ branch of Pravda - and instructions to sovereign nations from Big Daddy

Bulgaria, Denmark and Norway are among the countries that have paused (sic) its use.

But on Friday a WHO spokeswoman said there was no link between the jab and an increased risk of developing a clot.

Margaret Harris said it was an "excellent vaccine" and should continue to be used.

Around 5 million Europeans have already received the AstraZeneca jab.

There have been about 30 cases in Europe of "thromboembolic events" - or developing blood clots - after the vaccine was administered. There were also reports that a 50-year-old man had died in Italy after developing deep vein thrombosis (DVT).

The WHO is investigating the reports, as it does any safety questions, Harris said.

But no causal relationship had been established between the shot and the health problems reported, she said.

On Friday, AstraZeneca said the recorded number of blood clots in vaccinated people was "significantly lower... than would be expected among the general population".

"An analysis of our safety data of more than 10 million records has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis," a spokesperson said.

Bulgaria's decision to pause its rollout followed similar steps by Denmark, Iceland and Norway as well as Thailand. Italy and Austria have stopped using certain batches of the drug as a precautionary measure.

The European Medicines Agency, the EU's medicines regulator, said earlier there was no indication the jab was causing the blood clots.

Other countries, including the UK, Germany, Australia and Mexico, have said they are continuing their rollout.

Germany's Health Minister Jens Spahn said he disagreed with the countries suspending the vaccinations.

"From what we know so far, the benefit... is far greater than the risk," he said.

The temporary suspensions come as a setback for a European vaccination campaign that has stuttered into life, partly due to delays in delivery of the doses.

In the latest upset, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz complained that the EU was not distributing coronavirus vaccines fairly among member states - according to population size, as agreed.

He said some countries were striking side deals with vaccine makers instead of leaving procurement to the European Commission.

The German health ministry acknowledged in January that Germany had signed a deal for 30m doses with Pfizer BioNTech in September.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/438280/covid-19-no-reason-to-stop-using-astrazeneca-vaccine-world-health-organization-says

A WHO whistleblower has come forward to expose Bill Gates and GAVI

 

WHO Whistleblower Dr Astrid Stuckelberger Exposes Suspicious Activities Of Bill Gates And GAVI

Great Game India,

9 March, 2021

A whistleblower from the WHO, Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger in a stunning confession exposed the suspicious activities of Bill Gates and GAVI. In the 41st session of the Corona Investigative Committee she said the rules under which countries work with WHO virtually put WHO in charge of all rules and formal edicts and announcements — with Gates being right there as part of the executive board like an unofficial member state, making decisions that affect the entire world.

WHO Whistleblower Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger

Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger is a health scientist who does research, training and teaching in public health. Early on in her career, she began working with the World Health Organization, doing research which she says was “science for politics.”

As a writer, she published 10 books, and more than 170 scientific articles, policy papers, governmental, European Commission or UN reports.

As her career advanced, she started getting asked by politicians to organize events in public health. And then, in her capacity working with research ethics for WHO, she was asked by Geneva University to work on international health regulations in 1999.

She also worked with Georgetown University and others to be ready for a pandemic and to act quickly in the event one happened.

The Corona Investigative Committee

The Stiftung Corona Ausschuss (Corona Investigative Committee) in Germany is an independent platform for medical issues and ethics led by Dr Reiner Füllmich.

Dr. Füllmich is a leading lawyer in Germany and California, specialising in the prosecution of fraudulent corporations, including what may become the world’s largest global court case against all the protagonists in the so-called ‘Covid scandal’.

It was because of his efforts that a German court in a landmark ruling has declared that COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by the government are unconstitutional. Thuringia’s spring lockdown was a “catastrophically wrong political decision with dramatic consequences for almost all areas of people’s lives,” the court said, justifying its decision.

During the 41st session of the committee Dr. Astrid Stückelberger, a Swiss health scientist and researcher, blew the whistle on the inner workings of the WHO, where she worked for 20 years.

In a stunning confession, she says Switzerland is the center of corruption, and that GAVI and Bill Gates have total immunity from everything they do.

She talks about the “suspicious” activities of Bill Gates and the reservations she has about the actions of the WHO, GAVI and Gates.

Worse, when the pandemic began, she found that many breaches to international health regulations were occurring, and more.

The rules under which countries work with WHO virtually put WHO in charge of all rules and formal edicts and announcements — with Gates being right there as part of the executive board like an unofficial member state, making decisions that affect the entire world.

Watch video of the 41st session of the Corona Investigative Committee below:

Earlier, GreatGameIndia reported how GAVI controls the coronavirus reponse of nations operating like a Vaccine Cartel.

According to a peer reviewed study published in a respected journal by the world’s most authoritative vaccine scientists, Bill Gates DTP vaccine killed 10 times more African girls than the disease itself.

The vaccine apparently compromised their immune systems. Although, such study was never performed before 2017, Bill Gates and the Vaccine Alliance GAVI and WHO pushed the vaccines on unsuspecting African babies.

Bill Gates funded and British led GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) has created a system called “Performance based funding” whereby they financially punish nations based on their compliance or non-compliance to vaccination programs.

However, the figure of GAVI’s vaccine related deaths is much higher and according to Madhav Nalpat, the Director of the Department of Geopolitics & International Relations at Manipal University, critical drugs produced by Big Pharma have resulted in as many as 38 million premature deaths.

The BMGF funds international NGOs such as GAVI and PATH, which follow its policy of favouring the brands produced by US-EU companies such as Ely Lilly, Pfizer, GSK, Merck, Novartis and other such companies known for the high price of several of the medicines marketed by them.

Although exact figures are difficult to come by, a health expert claimed that the “intolerably high prices of critical drugs produced by Big Pharma have resulted in as many as 38 million premature deaths in underdeveloped countries during the past decade”, and that this figure would have been “much more in case civil society groups in Europe had not agitated successfully for entry to cheaper substitutes from India for several extortionately priced drugs for killer diseases produced by pharma conglomerates in the developed world”.

GAVI is also associated with the British Eugenics Movement as well as other Eugenics-linked institutions like the Wellcome Trust and other manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine like AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

Deep corruption of Bill Gates and GAVI

 PHD SCIENTIST, WORKING FOR DECADES WITH WHO, EXPOSES DEEP CORRUPTION OF BILL GATES & GAVI

Corona Investigative Committee: PhD Scientist, Working for Decades with WHO, Exposes Deep Corruption of Bill Gates, GAVI, WHO, the UN & Global Governments

WHO comes clean on PCR tests

Important information that you can bet will get ZERO attention from lamestream media

WHO (finally) admits PCR test is potentially flawed

Second PCR memo in two months casts even more doubt on the “gold standard” of Covid diagnosis

The World Health Organisation has released a memorandum which potentially completely undermines all the “pandemic” case numbers from all over the world.

On the 13th of January, they put out this memo, stating that a single positive PCR test should not be used for diagnosing Sars-Cov-2 infection.

To quote them directly:

Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.

Translation: If you get a positive test for someone with no symptoms, re-test them. Or rather: any PCR positive test is potentially a false positive.

It goes on to say:

Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.

Note it says “an aid for diagnosis” and NOT “a diagnostic test”.

In careful bureaucratic language, they are essentially admitting that PCR tests were not meant to be used diagnostically, and cannot be relied upon to do so accurately. Just as Dr Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test, said himself many times.

Understand this. The PCR test is virtually the ENTIRE foundation of the Covid narrative. Without it you have nothing but healthy people and the normal winter flulike illnesses. Every ‘case’ you read about is only a case because of a PCR test.

We and others have been saying since at least June that the PCR test is scientifically meaningless. And now, by degrees the WHO is admitting it too.

And if the PCR test is meaningless. So is the “pandemic”. A lie built in the deliberate misuse of a tool not fit for purpose.

Were the 'conspiracy theorists' just proven right about the "fake rescue plan" for COVID?

 

Right On Cue For Biden, WHO Admits High-Cycle PCR Tests Produce COVID False Positives

Zero Hedge, 

21 January, 2021

Were the 'conspiracy theorists' just proven right about the "fake rescue plan" for COVID?

Did the 'science-deniers' just get confirmation that it was political after all?

The short answer to both of these questions regarding the COVID-19 'casedemic' and the fallacy of asymptomatic PCR testing is YES and YES!

We have detailed the controversy surrounding America's COVID "casedemic" and the misleading results of the PCR test and its amplification procedure in great detail over the past few months.

As a reminder, "cycle thresholds" (Ct) are the level at which widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test can detect a sample of the COVID-19 virus. The higher the number of cycles, the lower the amount of viral load in the sample; the lower the cycles, the more prevalent the virus was in the original sample.

Numerous epidemiological experts have argued that cycle thresholds are an important metric by which patients, the public, and policymakers can make more informed decisions about how infectious and/or sick an individual with a positive COVID-19 test might be. However, as JustTheNews reports, health departments across the country are failing to collect that data.

In fact, as far back as October, we brought the world's attention to the COVID-19 "casedemic" and the disturbing reality of high-cycle threshold PCR tests being worse than useless as indicators of COVID-19 "sickness". PJMedia's Stacey Lennox said at the time:

Biden will issue national standards, like the plexiglass barriers in restaurants he spoke about during the debate, and pressure governors to implement mask mandates using the federal government’s financial leverage.

Some hack at the CDC or FDA will issue new guidance lowering the Ct the labs use, and cases will magically start to fall.

In reality, the change will only eliminate false positives, but most Americans won’t know that.

Good old Uncle Joe will be the hero, even though it is Deep-State actors in the health bureaucracies who won’t solve a problem with testing they have been aware of for months. TDS is a heck of a drug.

And now, as Lennox explains in detail below, we have been proved 100% correct as less than one hour after President Biden's inauguration, the WHO proved us right.

In August of last year, The New York Times published an article stating that as many as 90% of COVID-19 tests in three states were not indicative of active illness. In other words, they were picking up viral debris incapable of causing infection or being transmitted because the cycle threshold (Ct) of the PCR testing amplified the sample too many times.

Labs in the United States were using a Ct of 37-40. Epidemiologists interviewed at the time said a Ct of around 30 was probably more appropriate. This means the CDC’s COVID-19 test standards for the PCR test would pick up an excessive number of false positives. The Times report noted the CDC’s own data suggested the PCR did not detect live virus over a Ct of 33. The reporter also noted that clinicians were not receiving the Ct value as part of the test results.

Yet a PCR test instruction document from the CDC that had been revised five times as of July 13, 2020, specified testing and interpretation of the test using a Ct of 40. On September 28, 2020, a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases from Jaafar et al. had asserted, based on patient labs and clinical data involving nearly 4,000 patients, that a Ct of 30 was appropriate for making public policy. An update to the CDC instructions for PCR testing from December 1, 2020, still uses a Ct of 40.

Shortly before the New York Times article was published, the CDC revised its COVID-19 test recommendations, saying that only syptomatic patients should be tested. The media went insane, and Dr. Fauci went all over television saying he was not part of the decision to change the testing standards:

“I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is.”

So, of course, the Mendacious Midget™ had spoken, and the guidelines went back to testing everyone, all the time, with an oversensitive test.

The idea that asymptomatic spread was a concern as of August was just one of many lies Dr. Fauci told. At the beginning of the pandemic in late January, he said:

The one thing historically that people need to realize is that even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there is a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.

There is not a single study or meta-analysis that differs from Fauci’s original assessment.

Today, within an hour of Joe Biden being inaugurated and signing an executive order mandating masks on all federal property, the WHO sent out a notice to lab professionals using the PCR test. It said:

WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1).

The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load.

Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.

literally one hour after Biden takes the oath, the WHO admits that PCR testing at high amplification rates alters the predictive value of the tests and results in a huge number of false positives pic.twitter.com/iDtXmappRw

— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) January 20, 2021

This translates to “in the absence of symptoms, a high Ct value means you are highly unlikely to become ill or get anyone else sick in the absence of very recent exposure to an infected person.”

Dr. Fauci knew this in July when he said that tests with a Ct above 35 were likely picking up viral debris or dead virus.

Even at a Ct of 35, the incidence of virus samples that could replicate is very low, according to Jaafar et al.

The only state I know that requires reporting the Ct with every test is Florida, which started this policy in December.

The WHO went on, stating:

Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.

In short, a positive PCR test in the absence of symptoms means nothing at a Ct of higher than 30, according to the experts interviewed by the New York Times and according to Jaafar et al. Yet positive tests is the number CNN loves flashing on the screen.

If the percentage found by the Times in August holds, there have been approximately 2.43 million actual cases to date, not 24.3 million.

There is also no way to calculate the deaths from COVID-19 rather than deaths with some dead viral debris in the nostrils.

What I have referred to as the “casedemic” since September will be magically solved just in time for Joe Biden to look like a hero. For doing absolutely nothing.

Do not tell me there is not a politicized deep state in our health agencies. Do not ever tell me I need to listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci again. And every business owner who has been ruined because of lockdowns due to a high number of “cases” should be livid. Any parent whose child has lost a year of school should be furious.

None of this was for your health. It was to get rid of Orange Man Bad.

now they will drop the cycle rates and you can watch the curve go negative... like magic... because the new magic man isn't the bad man and the masks he ordered worked!!!!!

— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) January 20, 2021

As an aside, this also clearly explains the disappearance of the "flu" during this season as the plethora of high Ct PCR Tests supposedly pointing to a surge in COVID are nothing of the sort.

As Stephen Lendman noted previously, claiming “lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks, (outbreaks) plummet(ting) by 98% in the United States” ignored that what’s called COVID is merely seasonal influenza combined with false positives (extremely high Ct) from PCR-Tests.

And for that reason, the great 2020 disappearing flu passes largely under the mass media’s radar. Media proliferated mass deception and the power of repetition get most people to believe and having successfully "killed the flu", they will now do the same with COVID... and, if allowed by our betters, we will all return to the new normal they desire.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/israels-dr-fauci-warns-pfizers-covid-vaccine-only-half-effective-advertised

Trump's final bombshell

 

In Final Act, Trump Admin To Present 'Bombshell' Findings Blaming Wuhan Lab For COVID-19, WHO Cover-Up

Zero Hedge,

13 January, 2021

The Trump administration will present 'dramatic new evidence' that the virus which causes COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab, according to the Daily Mail, which adds that outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will make a "bombshell" announcement that SARS-CoV-2 did not naturally jump from bats to humans through an intermediary species - and was instead cultured by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where both Chinese and foreign experts have warned of shoddy bio-security for years.

The Britsh government (Daily Mail and all), meanwhile, dismissed the claims in advance - saying that 'all the credible scientific evidence does not point to a leak from the laboratory.'

This is of course patently false, as several prominent microbiologists - including one who worked in the Wuhan lab - have said it was likely created there and likely escaped. Two weeks ago, US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger said there was a "growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus," while French intelligence warned of the possibility of a 'catastrophic leak' from the lab due to poor bio-security over a decade before the outbreak.The lab’s highest security ‘P4’ section was built with French help in a deal signed off by Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. But after it opened in 2015, the French contingent due to work there were pushed out by China’s military. -Daily Mail

Meanwhile, China scrubbed "hundreds of pages of information" spanning over 300 studies conducted by the WIV, including some which discuss passing diseases from animals to humans. Totally normal behavior from innocent people, we're sure.

Pompeo is also set to cite close links between the Institute and the People’s Liberation Army.

He will point out its highest security section has always had a ‘dual use’ military and civilian purpose.

He is also expected to accuse the World Health Organisation of assisting in a Chinese cover-up by refusing to probe the lab’s possible role.

Its ten-person team tasked with investigating the pandemic’s origins will arrive in Wuhan tomorrow – but there is no mention of the lab in its official terms of reference. -Daily Mail

"We don’t know whether this virus was natural or artificially created, and if it came from the lab, whether this was an accident or deliberate. It would be immoral and foolish to allow any sort of cover-up," said former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who added that it was 'vital' that the WHO team investigate.

"If it emerges the virus did come from the lab, China will become the pariah of the world," he added.

That said, MIT / Harvard doctor Alina Chan, who has been investigating the origins of the pandemic, doesn't think the WHO is suited to conduct any investigation.

"We have to take the necessary steps to do a proper investigation and, based on the available information, I don’t think the WHO is up to the task," said Chan. Stanford professor of microbiology David Relman, meanwhile, has voiced fears that the WIV was genetically engineering natural viruses to make them more transmissible - writing in November that "If SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again."

According to Sam Armtrong, China expert with the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, "The global public has a right to know exactly what was going on prior to the emergence of this deadly pandemic. The question cannot be shirked."

And as Edward Lucas writes via the Mail, "All the evidence points to cover-up...(but the truth can't be hidden for ever):

*  *  *

Secrets, lies and thuggery are the hallmark of the Chinese Communist regime. And in the mystery of the devastating Wuhan virus, all three are combined.

The strongest evidence of a crime is a cover-up. And the Chinese authorities have provided that.

They have fought ferociously to prevent an international inquiry into the pandemic’s origins.

Their repeated obstruction of the World Health Organisation’s fact-finding missions has provoked even that notoriously supine body to protest.

Even now, WHO investigators are being prevented from accessing the vitally important laboratory in Wuhan that is likely to be at the heart of America’s allegations.

Experts have been questioning the Chinese authorities’ account of events for a year. Now, it appears, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to make a direct accusation.

Was it really pure chance the virus first attacked the human race in the only city in China with a research lab specialising in manipulating the world’s most dangerous viruses?

That would be as odd as a new disease emerging in the surroundings of Britain’s top-secret biological defence research establishment of Porton Down in Wiltshire.

To this day, scientists who support the theory that the virus is a mutation that emerged from Wuhan’s ‘wet market’ have not been able to find a convincing candidate for the animal in which this mutation actually occurred.

The official explanation is the new virus was 96 percent identical to a bat virus, RaTG13, found in Yunnan province in southern China.

But as Chinese professor Botao Xiao pointed out in a paper in February, no such bats are sold at the city’s markets. And the caves where they live are hundreds of miles away.

That paper disappeared from the internet. Mr Xiao — perhaps mindful of the fate that awaits those in China who promote inconvenient truths — disavowed it.

Many scientists privately assumed an engineered virus released via a laboratory accident was at least as likely as the idea of a series of stunningly unfortunate chance mutations.

After all, Shi Zhengli, the Chinese scientist nicknamed ‘Bat Woman’ was a regular visitor to those caves. When news of the outbreak broke, she initially feared that a leak from her research institute was to blame.

That thought alone should have prompted a full-scale and searching inquiry. Instead, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a diktat: ‘Any paper that traces the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed.’

But even the Chinese regime cannot hold back the truth forever. Over the past twelve months independent research, official leaks and news reports have strengthened the lab-leak hypothesis.

In February a Taiwanese professor, Fang Chi-tai, highlighted a curious feature of the virus’s genetic code, which would make it more effective in attacking targeted cells. This was unlikely to be the result of a natural mutation, he suggested.

Much scientific research involves modifying viruses to understand how they function. Many observers have worried for years that the risks of such experiments are not properly thought through.

Lab safety procedures are riddled with potential loopholes and flaws: breakages, animal bites, faulty equipment or simple mis-labelling can all lead to a deadly pathogen reaching its first human victim. If so, such carelessness has now cost tens of millions of lives.

Yet we should be clear. The Chinese authorities are ruthless. But even they would not unleash a global plague.

Only in the fevered imagination of conspiracy theorists is Beijing deliberately waging biological warfare on the West.

Paradoxically, such speculation — promoted by among others President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon — may have hampered the search for the truth, by making the lab-release theory seem racist and politically toxic.

In February, in Britain’s politically correct medical journal, the Lancet, scientists published an open letter denouncing ‘conspiracy theories and rumours’, urging solidarity with Chinese colleagues.

Yet it was just those colleagues who were bearing the brunt of the regime’s frantic attempts to censor the truth about the outbreak.

The Chinese regime prizes self-preservation above all — certainly over the truth, or the health of its own people, let alone the lives of foreigners.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9140251/Trump-team-blame-China-lab-growing-Covid-19.html