I never saw no miracle of science
that didn’t go from a blessing to a curse
If I ever loose my faith in you, Sting
Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy
Paranoid Android, Radiohead
In the preceding parts of this four-part series, I discussed the effects the SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic had and continues to have on our society (1). Our civil liberties were curtailed, and our constitutional rights were ruthlessly taken away. Since the ‘emergency law’ came into effect 1 December 2020, the Netherlands has been governed by decree. At this moment, the trinity of Mark Rutte, Hugo de Jonge and Ferd Grapperhaus now determines what happens in the Netherlands. Just these three politicians of a, believe it or not, cabinet that was outgoing, as a direct result of one of the largest scandals in Dutch political history. The political talking-heads of the Senate and House of Representatives, well-dressed yes-men and -women, without any political color or character, stood by lethargically, watched and did nothing. The only thing they signed for committedly, is the dissolution of our democracy.
His Self-Righteousness, His Disdainfulness and His Peacockyness, are thereby supported by the Outbreak Management Team. The members of this questionable clique of ‘scientists’ are deaf and blind to any form of criticism, nor do they care about the enormous social damage and suffering caused by their pseudo-scientific advice. Their recommendations are now known as ‘scientism’. It stands for anything that looks like science, but smells and tastes like quackery, which it proved to be.
Hence, the great knowledge and skills of experienced people like Martin Kulldorf, John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya and Sunetra Gupta were carelessly overridden (2,3). The Three Highnesses of The Hague preferred to base their policy on the fantasies of a raving ex-consultant, who in his enthusiasm jumped around while swinging a sledgehammer, not in the least hindered by any experience, knowledge or skill. The consequences thereof are obvious, and will, for years to come, remind us of the utter madness that has been poured out on us over the past year and a half.
Jointly, they are responsible for the rapid emergence of a society with strong totalitarian features, a development that continues unabated. The latest low is the vaccination terror as practiced by Hugo de Jonge in particular, without serving any purpose in combatting COVID-19 (4,5). Even children, who have absolutely nothing to fear from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, now must be sacrificed on the Altar of Models of Jacco Wallinga, the RIVM modeler. Models, that have demonstrated many times to be totally devoid of even the slightest sense of reality (6,7,8). It is the right of Hannah Ahrend: the new totalitarian state is being set up by boring, but extremely dangerous technocrats, not bothered by any moral sense.
In part two, I described how Alina Chan and a research group called DRASTIC, reestablished the possibility of a lab-leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). This after the above hypothesis was effectively suppressed in two scientific papers in the Lancet and in Nature Medicine. The Lancet’s paper was written by a small number of scientists and some executives of the powerful charity ‘The Welcome Trust’. People who attempted to bring up the lab-leak hypothesis after publication of this paper were immediately dismissed as conspiracy theorists, to put the zoonosis as the dominant theory prominently in the pseudoscientific shop window. Initially, this strategy was very successful, but meanwhile the wind has turned for Daszak and his companions (9,28,30,31).
The unique about DRASTIC is, that it is a team of partly anonymous researchers, led by an enigmatic figure whose identity is unknown, using the telling name ‘The Seeker’. He and his research team played a pivotal role in uncovering information about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, crucial information that had been hidden until then, and probably would still be hidden (10).
In the third part, I described the roles and interests of the main characters, who attempted to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis (11). The same names reappear time and again, including those of Peter Daszak and Marion Koopmans. These two as well, participated in the WHO-initiated fact-finding mission to Wuhan in March 2021. Until today, Koopmans’ role in the whole event has been kept silent in the Dutch mainstream media, and not a single critical question has been asked.
In this fourth part, I continue with January 2020.
On January 18, 2020, Tedros, in his role of WHO Director-General, spoke with President Xi-Jinping of China about a study to be conducted in Wuhan, under the sponsorship of the WHO. Subsequently, in March 2020, a small team of international experts visited China to learn about the clinical aspects of COVID-19, the epidemiological situation in China and China’s strategy to prevent further transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (12).
At that time, the question about the virus’s origin was not yet posed. That question only became actual when Donald Trump, in April 2020, stated that the virus had probably escaped from a lab in Wuhan, nicknaming it Kung-Flu. Beijing officials immediately responded by accusing the Americans of being responsible for the outbreak. The virus was said to have been transmitted by American soldiers during the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019. In advance, this does not seem very likely, since several athletes from various countries later claimed that they became ill during the Games. They also stated about an eery atmosphere during these Games, with Wuhan giving them the impression of a ghost town (13). Satellite images, analyzed by scientists at Harvard Medical School, already showed a significant increase in traffic around the main hospitals in Wuhan at the beginning of fall 2019. At that time, internet searches for words like ‘diarrhea’ and ‘cough’ increased rapidly as well (41). Eventually it became clear that the virus probably already circulated in Wuhan in September or October 2019 (20).
It was for Australia to be the first country calling on the international community to start an independent investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Beijing reacted furiously, and promptly imposed restrictions on the import of Australian wine. Hoping to reach a compromise, several European countries drafted a resolution to be put to the vote in the World Health Assembly, the institution of the WHO dealing with this. To conduct research in a country that is a member of the WHO, permission from that country is required. And so, it was necessary to negotiate with Beijing on the terms under which China would approve the resolution. According to US officials, the Chinese have urged other WHO member states to block the resolution or at least postpone the vote. As one of the officials put it: “every comma of the resolution had to be negotiated”.
The resolution, that was finally adopted in May 2020, gave no indication of the time at which the investigation into the origin of the virus in China would be conducted. The way the resolution came about was unusual and not did not follow normal procedures. Some Member States wanted an investigation as soon as possible, but this was allegedly refused by China. Many scientists warned that with the passage of time the chances of determining the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus would become smaller and smaller (14).
In July 2020, two WHO officials traveled to China to further negotiate the terms of the mission. Eventually, an agreement was reached between China and the WHO, evidenced by a document, as can be found on the WHO website (16). It was subsequently only published in November 2020, and the way in this agreement had been reached was not very transparent to the other WHO member states.
It was clear from the start that China determined which international experts could participate in the mission and what the research team would see. For example, the agreement stipulated that both the WHO and China had to agree to the members of the international investigation team. Effectively that means China could veto the participants in the mission.
Apparently, both Peter Daszak and Marion Koopmans could count on the approval of China. Daszak who, in March 2020, already resolutely spoke out against the possibility of a lab-leak in The Lancet and dismissed it as a conspiracy theory, would not have displeased China. However, Bart Haagmans from Koopmans’ research group, also signed the statement organized by Daszak. Whether this played a role for the Beijing regime in accepting Koopmans as a participant in the fact-finding mission remains unclear. In any case, she was no stranger to China, having served as a consultant to the Chinese Centers for Disease Control in June 2007, as her LinkedIn account shows. Contrarily, for the Chinese part of the fact-finding mission, the WHO had no say in which people would participate; this was to be decided by Beijing.
Another important fact is that no specific date had been set for the fact-finding mission in this agreement either. The investigation would be conducted at an ‘appropriate moment’, in other words, at an appropriate moment for Beijing.
One more condition, set by China, was that the investigation should be based on the already known scientific data collected and analyzed by Chinese researchers, to be made available to the investigation team by the Chinese authorities. In other words, it was not expected that the international investigation team would conduct its own investigation. Marion Koopmans did not deem this particularly problematic: she praised the Chinese scientists for the extensive research they had already conducted. The research team’s time was limited, she said, and they could always try to retrieve the raw data at a later stage (17). However, when leaving Wuhan, there was still no agreement on China making the raw data available. And to this day, that has not happened.
Furthermore, the agreement between China and the WHO explicitly states three times that the research should be aimed at identifying the zoonotic origin of the virus. Never once a lab-leak is mentioned as an option to be investigated. That apparently was not the target of the mission, and forensic experts, who could conduct such investigations, were missing from the investigation team (18).
Finally, in January 2021, nearly a year after Tedros spoke with Xi Jinping, a team of ten scientists and five experts from the WHO traveled to Wuhan to investigate the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Among them Marion Koopmans and Peter Daszak, two of the protagonists in part three of this four-part series. The US initially nominated four people to participate in the mission, but only Peter Daszak was chosen.
The mission was delayed again: Although two members of the team started their journey to Wuhan on January 5, 2021, they were unable to continue their journey halfway through. One of these two traveled back home, the other waited in a hotel for further instructions. The departure of the other eight members was canceled for the time being. Problems with some participants’ visas were mentioned, which apparently was why the mission had not yet been cleared by Beijing. The team’s arrival was rescheduled to January 14, 2021 (14).
With the entire team finally on their way, Chinese officials rejected two of the ten scientists on the flight from Singapore to Wuhan, because they tested positive for IgM antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, despite RT-PCR tests of both being negative several times. (14,17,18). Once in Wuhan, the thirteen members of the WHO team were added to a team of seventeen Chinese scientists to jointly conduct research into the origin of the virus.
Starting off, the research team was quarantined at the hotel for the first two weeks of the one-month fact-finding mission. During this period, they had daily video conferences with the Chinese scientists. During these videoconferences, the Chinese presented the analyses they had carried out, vital information that, however, according to some scientists, they could have easily shared before the start of the mission. After the two weeks of quarantine, the international team commenced face-to-face conversations with the Chinese colleagues. Excursions followed, to sites believed to have played an important role in the SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak. Besides these official meetings with the Chinese scientists, members of the international team were not allowed to speak informally with their Chinese colleagues. Moreover, with ‘necessary quarantine rules’ as official reason, most of the time they were accommodated in another part of the hotel than their Chinese colleagues. Not to mention them not being allowed to eat with the Chinese participants, which is generally a very valuable and informative part of such missions, according to one of the members of the research team. And finally, the official meetings and excursions were always accompanied by several Chinese officials who did not belong to the scientific part of the Chinese team.
It rapidly came to light that the mission was being used by those in power in Beijing to demonstrate they had acted fast and effectively in controlling the outbreak. Since the start of the outbreak, China has done everything it could to convince the world of this message (33,34,36). On the first day of the field trips, the team visited a local hospital to meet a physician who was presented by the Chinese as the first doctor to raise the alarm about the outbreak. The ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who in at first only wanted to warn his colleagues about a possible outbreak of a SARS-like syndrome and was punished for this by the Chinese regime, remained out of the picture (38). The next day, the team attended an exhibition, commemorating the Chinese authorities’ swift and decisive victory over the SARS-CoV-2 virus, designed to pay tribute to President Xi Jinping. On the third day, the team visited the affected market in Wuhan and another market to look at the frozen food storage facilities, a route of contamination put forward by China, although many international experts consider this extremely unlikely.
According to some team members, the political aim of these visits was to build mutual trust between the international investigation team and the Chinese authorities. According to the team members, ‘valuable conversations’ were held between the excursions, and the Chinese scientists were intensively questioned about the information they provided. In addition, the team members declared they were allowed to visit any location they wanted to visit, including three labs, and were given the opportunity to review more information than China had released the entire year before. According to China, the Chinese authorities had provided the team with information gathered by more than 1,000 Chinese experts, who had examined more than 76,000 medical records from more than 200 medical institutions as of July 2020. This study would have identified 92 patients who may have had COVID-19, but all 92 would have tested negative for antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, the antibody test had only been conducted shortly before the research team’s arrival in Wuhan, so they may have become undetectable. Furthermore, the Chinese authorities only provided the analyses they had performed and not the raw data of the 92 patients.
The number of 92 patients was a great surprise to the research team: In the province of Hubei in which Wuhan is located, an area with more than 60 million inhabitants, complaints such as persistent cough and fever should be much more common, based on other conditions alone. The team therefore wanted to know from their Chinese colleagues what the selection criteria were with which these 92 patients had been identified, and believed that with other selection criteria, many more patients could be found. The international experts therefore made an urgent request to provide the raw data of the 76,000 patients studied to the team. That was refused by the Chinese (14).
Additionally, the Chinese authorities refused access to the raw data of the first 174 patients with COVID-19 (17). According to Marion Koopmans, this was not a real issue, as it had become clear during the mission that the virus already circulated in Wuhan before December 2019. However, the Chinese did come up with data that would suggest that the pandemic started in a country other than China and that the WHO should carry out an investigation. According to one of the team members, emotions sometimes ran high during the discussions. As she put it, “I am a scientist and I trust data… I don’t trust what anyone tells me.”
Tensions continued to rise after a presentation by the Wuhan blood bank. The international scientists requested determination of SARS-CoV-2 virus antibody levels in samples of that blood bank, obtained before December 2019, because this could show that the virus was already circulating in Wuhan before that date. According to the Chinese team, this was impossible because privacy laws and regulations would not allow it. Of course, such legislation and regulations also exist in other countries, but in emergency cases anonymous research is allowed to be performed, as is also performed at the Dutch blood bank. It is quite ironic that, in this regard, China would care about laws and regulations concerning the privacy of its citizens, if only because in many other situations it does not care about any form of human rights at all.
As expected, the WIV was also visited by the research team, but lasted only three hours. The team was shown presentations of the research being performed at the institute, about safety procedures and research on the health condition of staff at the time of the outbreak. They also got the opportunity to ask questions. Furthermore, they visited the Biosecurity Level 4 lab, where highest danger level research is performed.
One of the questions asked was why the database containing the sequences of approximately 22,000 viruses had been taken offline. According to Shi Zhengli – the ‘Batwoman’ – the reason was the thousands of attempts to hack this database, that had been made since the start of the pandemic. This proved to be a lie: The database had already been taken offline in September 2019, as discovered by two researchers from DRASTIC and Gilles Demaneuf, a data analyst from New Zealand (24).
It would have been logical for the international experts to have requested access to this database, but that did not happen. When asked during a press conference after the mission, Peter Daszak indicated that this had not been deemed necessary. According to Peter Daszak, his own organization EcoHealth Alliance had determined many of the sequences itself and therefore they essentially knew what was present in samples and sequences in the database (22). According to Daszak, there was simply no evidence that any other virus would be more closely related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus than the RaTG-13 virus. And that was the end of the matter, according to Daszak. It has since emerged that in September 2019 not only was the database taken offline, but the Chinese also had have some sequences removed from the NIH’s Sequence Read Archive database, sequences suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 virus had already been circulating in China for some time and Wuhan may have just been the first super spreader event (21). Moreover, these sequences showed a greater relationship with the RATG-13 virus and could be the missing links between this virus and the SARS-CoV-2 virus (44).
At the end of the mission, a conclusion was worked out, by proceeding to a vote on the most likely origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This was performed by presenting several scenarios to the team, after which they could vote by show of hands, a procedure orchestrated by the Chinese authorities. The Chinese participants sat in rows on one side of the conference room, the international experts on the other. The entire team, consisting of thirteen international experts and seventeen Chinese experts, was allowed to vote and the outcome was determined by a majority of votes. Five options to choose from were given: highly probable, probable, possible, improbable, and extremely unlikely.
The score was the following: Direct bat-to-human transmission was considered ‘possible to probable’. The possibility of transmission via an intermediate host was estimated as ‘probable to very likely’. The option that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would have been transmitted via frozen meat was classified as ‘possible’. Finally, the possibility of an escape from the lab was assessed as ‘extremely unlikely’. The latter was qualified as ‘a unanimous conclusion’.
Mission leader, Peter Embarek, during a press conference the following day, stated, that further scientific research should focus on the origin of the pandemic by transmitting the virus from animals to humans, possibly via an intermediate host. Thereafter, if necessary, the transmission via frozen food should be investigated. He also stated that members of the joint research team considered the possibility of an escape of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the lab as extremely unlikely, and that the team advised against further investigation into this. His Chinese counterpart Liang Wannian, during the same press conference, stated that no SARS-CoV-2 virus was present in the WIV. And if no virus was present, he said, it could not escape from the WIV.
After leaving Wuhan, several members of the team publicly stated that they lacked the authority, expertise, and access to relevant data, to conduct decent and thorough investigations in the WIV or any other research lab in China. The members openly stated that they had not been given access to the raw data. Nor were they allowed to view the original logs of safety precautions taken during experiments, the personnel conducting the experiments, the actual experiments performed or the breeding of animals. These data, according to many scientists, would have been essential for proper research into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Likewise, dr. Dwyer, an Australian microbiologist and participant in the mission, said they were denied access to data essential for a reliable study. He additionally stated that an in-depth investigation into a possible escape of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the WIV should be carried out by scientists with expertise in weapons inspections or inspections of bioweapons. None of the members in the research team possessed this expertise.
On March 30, the report of the research team on Wuhan was released. A total of 120 pages, of which only two pages were devoted to the possibility of a lab-leak. The report was written by the international members of the team, after which it was submitted to the Chinese scientists who were to make changes at their discretion before submitting the report to the WHO for publication.
Two weeks before final publication, the leader of the Chinese members of the research team already released the results of the fact-finding mission during an interview with The Global Times (29). According to this Liang Wannian, the conclusions in the report were based on the consensus between the international as well as the Chinese members of the mission. Furthermore, this Liang Wannian claimed that transmission of the virus via frozen foods was an important new route of transmission. He emphasized that an escape from the lab was “extremely unlikely” and that it was an established zoonosis. According to Liang Wannian, there had been no conflicts between the international and the Chinese members of the team and China had provided all relevant data. The entire interview with Liang Wannian reads like carefully crafted propaganda about the scientific integrity and diligence of the research team and the high degree of mutual respect, even friendship, between the international and Chinese members of the team. He also commented about people who did not share his conclusions about the possibility of a lab-leak: “Recently, some politicians and media in the world insisted on politicizing the scientific issue of tracing the source of COVID-19, regardless of scientific facts, for their own personal gain, arbitrarily misinterpreting the scientific findings and reports of our joint team, which is immensely disrespectful to the work of our scientists.” Whether such an opinion, coming from the leader of the Chinese members of the fact-finding mission, contributes to the objectivity and reliability of the conclusions in the report, is doubtful, especially since he expressed this opinion before the final report was published.
A US government internal committee assessed the results of the investigation inaccurate, containing several contradictions, resulting in conclusions in some passages undermining conclusions in others (23). A number of references, cited in the report, had already been withdrawn at the time of publication. With regard to the four hypotheses, the Committee stated that it was unclear how these hypotheses had been defined and how they could be validated. The Committee also took the view that it was unclear how the assessment of all data had been executed, and, on which basis one concluded one hypothesis to be more likely than another. The Committee remarked as well that the possibility of a lab-leak was mentioned only casually and, based on the available evidence, could never be considered to be ‘extremely unlikely’.
Even for Tedros, the conclusions in the fact-finding mission report were too much. He acknowledged the far-reaching flaws of the study and, as far as the WHO was concerned, all hypotheses were still open for debate. He stated that “every stone needed to be turned to reveal the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
In retrospect, it is amazing to see that Beijing could determine when the investigation in China was to be conducted, even delaying it at the last minute. It is appalling to see that China could veto the participants of the mission. China also managed to compose the entire research group, in such a way that during the crucial vote on the most likely cause of the outbreak, a procedure devised by Beijing, the Chinese scientists would anyhow be in the majority. In fact, the international team only got to see what the Chinese authorities wanted them to see, and the team only got to hear what Beijing wanted them to hear. The conclusions, as ultimately set out in the report, were based solely on data controlled and censored by China, and on conversations with Shi Zhengli and other Chinese scientists. They had to be believed only on their word, simply because the team were not provided with any data other than the analyses produced by the Chinese. It is likewise highly questionable whether Shi Zhengli and the other Chinese scientists were allowed to speak freely. In any case, given how China generally deals with citizens expressing an opinion that does not suit those in power in Beijing, and the strict censorship that China exercises, this seems extremely unlikely (33).
In addition, in the spring of 2020, the Chinese CDC issued a regulation banning any sharing of information about the COVID-19 pandemic without prior approval. Shortly afterwards, a Beijing order followed, that any publication had to be submitted to the central government for approval, to ensure that the right steps were taken at the right moment, like moves in a game of chess (21). The facts that the mission was ‘accompanied’ by some twenty to forty Chinese officials during all meetings and field visits, and that the international team members were not allowed to speak to the Chinese scientists informally, also leaves little confidence in the degree of transparency that those in power Beijing had in mind. The scientific level, used in determining the most likely origin of the virus was ‘ad populum’ science, based on just a majority of votes. The substantive arguments for estimating a zoonosis as ‘possible to probable’, and a lab-leak as ‘extremely unlikely’ are not mentioned in the report. Those arguments were not, and could not, be made, given the timing of the investigation and the information available.
Marion Koopmans liked it all. Whether it was China’s repeated delay of the mission, the lack of raw data, China’s veto over the composition of the investigation team, the close monitoring of the mission by Chinese officials, the way the most probable cause of the outbreak was determined, or how Beijing could even determine what was and what was not included in the investigation report, Marion Koopmans did not speak a single word of criticism. Where other members of the team complained about lack of transparency from the Chinese, the lack of a strong mandate or the lack of necessary expertise, from Marion Koopmans no comment or remark on the results of the mission was published in any Dutch media. In fact, she commended the Chinese scientists for the amount of work they had already accomplished and didn’t think the lack of raw data was insurmountable. In her defense must be mentioned that, in another, later commentary, Koopmans ultimately concluded that not all data she had wanted to see were provided (37). Even despite China’s official position, clear from long before the start of the mission, already implying that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have escaped the WIV, and anyone who considered this possibility was treated by the Chinese team leader as a conspiracy theorist and enemy of China, it didn’t bother Koopmans in the least.
All she managed to say was that the mission was politically very sensitive, and that she was sick and tired of all cynicism about the mission to Wuhan (24). She also qualified the question about a possible lab-leak as ‘gradually becoming annoying’. The fact that the mission was ‘controversial’, Koopmans managed to say, was something that bothered both the international part of the research team as the Chinese part. But according to Koopmans, things went well after they ‘clearly expressed this to each other’. After that, they had ‘just talked about the content’. The question is whether her statements in response to this mission are extremely naive or perhaps extremely malignant.
By the way, not all participants in the mission took the view that it was only about the content and no major and coercive political influence on the mission were present. Team leader Peter Embarek told Science Magazine: “The politics was always in the room with us on the other side of the table. We had anywhere between 30 and 60 Chinese colleagues, and a large number of them were not scientists, not from the public health sector. We know there was huge scrutiny on the scientific group from the other sectors. So, the politics was there constantly. We were not naïve, and I was not naïve about the political environment in which we tried to operate and, let’s face it, that our Chinese counterparts were operating under.”
In any case, there is a lot at stake for Koopmans and the conclusion that it is a zoonosis is of particular importance. The idea for establishing the Pandemic & Disaster Preparedness Center was the initiative of Koopmans and it would be the crown on her work. According to her, the rapid development of a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus is due to fundamental research into viruses – such as is also being carried out at Erasmus University – including the gain-of-function research by Ron Fouchier. The ambitions of Koopmans and Fouchier are excellently highlighted in a documentary by ‘Tegenlicht’ of the VPRO (26), made after effectively dismissing the idea of a lab-leak theory by Daszak and several others – including Bart Haagmans (11).
In this documentary, Ron Fouchier talks extensively about the perceived great value of gain-of-function research to understand how viruses jump from animals to humans. He is yet unwilling to speak about the great dangers of such research, while several scientists have repeatedly warned about it. He expresses his ambition to develop a universal influenza vaccine and complains about The Netherlands barely investing in this. According to Fouchier, it could prevent all pandemics caused by influenza viruses – and, with a few tweaks – also by coronaviruses. He expresses his frustration about the fact that pandemics of the past century have not led to the realization that way more money should be invested. Once again, Fouchier mentions the Spanish flu as the most serious pandemic in recent history, resulting in a lot of fatalities. He forgets to mention the fact that the vast majority of people died of bacterial pneumonia as a complication during the Spanish flu, as proper antibiotics were not yet available at that time. He also highlights the eradication of smallpox as a success of vaccinations. Which may be true, but the virus that causes smallpox, variola major, has no animal reservoir and is therefore the only virus to date that has been successfully eradicated by global vaccination. The idea that mass vaccinations could eradicate a virus like the SARS-CoV-2 virus – with a particularly large animal reservoir – is completely ridiculous (42).
Now, according to Fouchier, a global vaccination program would mean that diseases like polio and measles are on the verge of being eradicated. That remains to be seen. Due to the globally misleading attention to COVID-19, measles and polio vaccinations were put on hold in large parts of the world, and these diseases are expected to end up costing far more lives than COVID-19 would ever do (39). Apparently, the life of a child in the developing world is worth less than the life of an elderly person in the west, as I tried to express earlier (40).
Should eventually be proven that this SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic is the direct result of fiddling with viruses – the only thing Ron Fouchier’s career has been built upon – and the pandemic is the result of an escape from the WIV – as has happened several times with other pathogens in other laboratories (32) – this proof could be the death blow for gain-of-function research at Erasmus Rotterdam, as well as for the careers of both Fouchier and Koopmans. The completely unscientific conclusion of the WHO team that an escape from the laboratory would be ‘extremely unlikely’ was not only convenient for the Chinese and Peter Daszak, but also for Koopmans and Fouchier.
Nonetheless, the strong easterly wind from Erasmus Rotterdam has meanwhile weakened somewhat but is still clearly noticeable. Koopmans expressed in Science Magazine that insisting on laboratory audits in China may be logical, but such research will not be popular in China. She is therefore somewhat concerned about continued pressure on China, as Beijing might then permanently close its doors to renewed research (27). It would be better, she said, to wait for the Biden administration’s investigation and, if this investigation would provide any indications of a possible lab-leak, only then start lobbying for such audits. The presence of the enormous amount of, albeit indirect but indeed strong indications of a lab-leak, and the way China has really extremely tried – up to the publication of rogue scientific articles – to discredit the hypothesis of a lab-leak, is, for the sake of convenience, forgotten by Koopmans (33,34,35,36). Just like Koopmans avoids mentioning the fact that, until today, no evidence is presented for a zoonosis as cause of this pandemic, where such an assumption has been solely based on the fact that outbreaks of diseases likes SARS, MERS and Zika were caused by zoonoses. Furthermore, Koopmans does not clarify in what way waiting for the report from the Biden government – possibly concluding that a lab-leak is a real possibility – would positively influence the popularity of renewed research in China.
And finally, Koopmans appears not to be a supporter of the WHO initiative to establish a new institution for the next phase of research into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Koopmans is concerned about an expected further delay of research as a result, and states to Science Magazine that this would mean ‘losing valuable time’. Koopmans conveniently ignores the fact that the mission in which she herself participated was only achieved after a year and four months.
Although the demand for a renewed and this time thoroughly conducted investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is getting louder – in which this time the lab-leak theory should also be investigated as a serious option – it is a low-risk option for Koopmans to pay lip service to a new mission, since the utter chance of another fact-finding mission to Wuhan is less than minimal. Additionally, in all likelihood it is even less likely that the Chinese will ever release the raw data needed for a final conclusion. If evidence for a potential lab-leak would still exist, China has had plenty of time to get rid of it permanently, like it has repeatedly attempted to do so previously. Given that the lab-leak theory is still considered a serious option after all, cannot be attributed in any way to the WHO, and even less to the mission to Wuhan, but instead to the efforts of a post-doc from MIT, Alina Chan, and the partly anonymous and unofficial research team DRASTIC. Without them, Daszak’s scheme to transfer the lab-leak theory to the realm of conspiracy theories would most likely have succeeded.
If a new mission to Wuhan is initiated, it will also be unlikely that Koopmans or Daszak will participate again. The conflicting interests of Daszak and Koopmans have now regularly been highlighted in the international media, except in The Netherlands. In any case, China’s goal has been achieved: the lab-leak theory will probably remain a theory, despite the large amount of circumstantial evidence, probably to causing great satisfaction with Koopmans (43).
Koopmans and Fouchier can sleep a little easier again. The gain-of-function line of research has probably been secured and Koopmans has realized her ambition for a Center for Pandemic Control.
All as the result of perverted science, saturated with great political interests.