Back in March 2021 Peter Daszak, the central figure to the lab-leak theory cover-up and real-life Bond Villain, appeared on Chinese State-Owned media dismissing the lab-leak theory and providing commentary on the WHO report that was released the day before.

Daszak has yet to answer serious questions about strongarming convincing colleagues to sign their names to a January 2020 letter in Lancet concluding – without scientific and unevidence – that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have originated in the Wuhan Lab.  Daszak and many of his associates had made this claim early in the SARS-CoV-2 spread before any known US case of COVID-19.  Daszak’s claim was based solely on the information provided to him by China, and absent any on-the-ground investigation performed by any independent investigators.

Daszak, fresh off of his China-organized and led WHO investigation tour, jumped on a video interview with CGTN, a Chinese State-Owned Media company, and also an arm of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.  The interview is full of outright lies, deflections, and fabrications, for which Peter Daszak should be ashamed of saying.

Interviewer(I): “Thanks very much for accepting our interview, Mr. Peter Daszak. So first congratulations on the final report uh which is now uh public. And we know that report is that the lab leak theory which is controversial is extremely unlikely. How did you back then reach this consensus? You’re not ruling it out but still it is a hypothesis. Even there is no recommendations in the report for the next study, but we know that the WHO Chief [Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] on Tuesday also said that he is ready to deploy an additional mission involving some specialist expert on this.  What is your view on that?”

Daszak: Well first of all, you know, we looked at a lot of different pathways that this virus could have possibly taken, every pathway it could have taken really, from the wild into Wuhan, to cause this pandemic.  And what we’re trying to do is weigh the evidence for each pathway and when it came to the lab leak hypothesis, we just didn’t see significant information that suggests that that happened.  I mean, as a scientist you can only deal with the evidence that you see in front of your eyes and if it’s not there then you can only come to the conclusion that it’s extremely unlikely, which is, by the way, a unanimous conclusion.  And everybody knows that I have strong collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for many years so I very carefully waited until everyone else had passed their opinion before passing mine.  It was unanimous. There’s not really any evidence for a lab leak so far, um, released and… and what can we say you can never as a scientist rule out an idea, um, some evidence may appear one day but nothing there. Um, in terms of, um, you know what what’s been stated about further work, in the in the report we lay out recommendations for each pathway and for the lab leak hypothesis we talk about if any evidence comes in up in the future then that should be followed up and that labs of this type biosafety labs globally should have, um, the correct sort of inspections and… and considerations.  Um, I don’t know what that will lead to in the future that’s not my business as a scientist we’re assigned to look at it and to say “is this important or is it not important,” and we found that it was extremely unlikely.

Peter Daszak is a goddamned liar. Full stop.

Of the 313 pages that considered the source of COVID-19, just 4, considered the lab-leak theory.  He continues to suggest that they considered the evidence of a lab leak theory, but then again, the WHO report mentions nothing of the actual evidence of the types of research they were conducting at the Wuhan Institute of Virology nor the viruses on which they were conducting that research.  One particular virus, RaTG13, could have been easily manipulated in a lab to create SARS-CoV-2, considering that RaTG13 shares 96.4% of its genomic code and over 28,000 nucleotides with SARS-CoV-2.  In 2019, the Wuhan Insitute of Virology identified at least 5 new chimeric (lab-created) viruses, several of which share traits with SARS-CoV-2.

Daszak also speaks of “the evidence seen in front of your eyes,” but fails to mention that the report and evidence to which he refers, was released more than a year after the initial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, during which time the Chinese Government prevented access to any outside and independent investigations into the origins of the virus responsible for COVID-19.

But the statement that I take most umbrage with is:

“I very carefully waited until everyone else had passed their opinion before passing mine.  It was unanimous. Um, there’s not really any evidence for a lab leak so far, um, released and… and what can we say you can never as a scientist rule out an idea, um, some evidence may appear one day but nothing there.”

Daszak’s first effort to crush the lab-leak theory came 15 months before the WHO issued their report. He didn’t wait!  HE LED THE EFFORT!  As far as the evidence, he relied solely on the word of Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There was no evidence of a lab leak because the Chinese Government covered it up. Daszak, a supposed student of science, sat there like a stooge, not questioning how much coverup could have occurred between the initial release of the virus and the time at which a team was finally able to access the country, only then to be shuttled around to locations and shown only the things which the Chinese Government allowed them to see.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, during that discussion I… I think you also pick up a very interesting question because I know that some Western Media also talk about your association with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They also refer to Madame Marion Koopmans, who had really good cooperation with Chinese institutes and, uh, they believe that you are involved or you are getting any [unintelligible] them what are your takes on these claims?

DASZAK: Well, it’s disappointing. Of course — of course I have collaborations with many, many Chinese Organizations and Institutes because we all work on these viruses and you know let’s not forget SARS, the original, um, important coronavirus emerged in Guangdong and that’s why we’re working in China collaboratively with China’s CDC, Wuhan Institute of Virology, many, many other organizations because we want to stop this happening and that is exactly what scientists should do. Global cooperation is what we have to do to fight these viruses.  They look at us as one planet, they look at us as one species, they don’t check our passports before they infect us, they don’t consider our ethnicity, our race, our wealth, our religion, our belief systems, and so if we’re going to really fight viruses we’re going to have to fight them together, it’s pretty clear.

Global cooperation, you say? Exactly how many international groups have been given unfettered access to the Wuhan Lab and surrounding areas?  Where are the questions being raised about Chinese cover-up operations, as well as the deletion of online viral repositories in the weeks following the initial outbreak?  Why is the only information about this virus being filtered through Chinese Government officials?  You say that you are working in China with their CDC and the WIV, but yet you haven’t worked at all with the NIH and NIAID, from whence you got most of your funding for these projects in China, to determine the source of this virus. Why?

I: Sure, but when it comes to the cooperation with China there is still mentality going on that because they question your independence, that’s the reason why we’ve seen earlier this month that 26 scholars in an open-letter said that they’re disagreeing with your conclusion and they say the research I quote, “Anything less than absolutely thorough and credible,” and what is your response to this given you know the organization sent you, send the expert team, to study such a situation on the ground.

PD: Well, I mean it’s it’s pretty straightforward you know, WHO, um, picked, um, a group of scientists who are leaders in their field, um, people like Fabian Leendertz, who helped understand where West Africa Ebola came from.  People like Marion Koopmans who’s done all this amazing work on the mink outbreaks in Europe, um, and and following all this this virus evolution, um, so we… I… I’m one of those experts…I…I happen to be one of the few people in the world who’s been working in China for, you know, 15 years now, on coronaviruses of bat origin which this almost certainly is.  So, it makes sense that I’m part of the team.  All of my collaborations are publicly known, um, they’re reported in every paper we publish, and we’ve published many, and…and the collaboration is open and transparent, and I hope that stands and I think history will judge it as… as, uh, the correct thing to do.

Fabian Leendertz isn’t exactly unbiased himself.  Leendertz has previously published studies in EcoHealth, a scientific publication which is edited by…… Peter Daszak.  Marion Koopmans lied about the type of research being conducted at the Wuhan Lab, despite being on the record as saying they were indeed conducting that research previously:

WHO Investigator Admitted A Year Ago That Chinese Labs Manipulated Coronaviruses, Now Denies Ithttps://t.co/PwprjFZ33B

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) March 30, 2021

Furthermore, Daszak calls himself an expert, even though Daszak is more of a funnel for funding than a researcher. But the evidence of research he has conducted shows that he was conducting the very research that could have created SARS-CoV-2, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, alongside Dr. Shi Zhengli. Daszak clearly falls into the Bond Villain category as he begins pontificating about how history would judge him despite the present making him look like a sociopath.

I: The U.S. side also, um, said that China did not provide the full access and pertinent data.  What is your take on this claims about the chinese side, uh, dealing with the WHO’s coming?

PD: Well, from from day one of leaving Wuhan we’ve had these media reports about lack of access, lack of transparency, lack of openness, lack of data, I challenge those people who believe there’s a lack of data to read the report it’s hundreds of pages packed with information that’s not been seen before and you know thousands of samples tested and reported in that report that have never been published, um, interviews with scientists with the original clinicians who found the first cases of COVID.  This is new information, new data, and I think it’s very successful and I’m very proud of that report. We we also talk about the next steps and I do take some support from the statements that have been made out of the U.S. White House for instance that they strongly support moving to the second phase. We all do. It’s in the report those are the recommendations, China has signed on to that, and we all look forward to that work beginning.

To Dr. Daszak’s claim that we should read the report to find out what’s in it, I issue him a similar challenge:  Find a single source of data regarding the viral research done at the WIV or the types of viral strains tested, that wasn’t provided to you by the Chinese Government.  Whether or not you want to believe that China wouldn’t have a reason to lie if it was a natural event, you can’t ignore the fact that they wouldn’t be honest with the world if it was a synthetic creation released from their lab.  It would devastate their economy and set back Chinese foreign relations by 100 years.  For that reason, why could you trust anything that China has “signed on to,” considering the entirety of their clear motivation to cover something up?

I: Sure, talking about the next steps you estimated that the results of the origins, uh, could come out, uh, very soon fairly soon, within the next few years about, um, but it seems that it will take quite a lot more time for you experts to collect integrated data at the global level, for example, you refer to the Southeast Asia as the potential hotspot.  Is this unanimous clue among your experts?

PD: Oh yeah, every recommendation in that report is unanimous. It’s it’s a consensus report; we all agreed to it, we all signed off on it. But in terms of how long will this further work take, I go back to what happened after SARS, the outbreak in Guangdong. Um, initially we thought civets were the source of the outbreak but not really the reservoir and it took us a couple of years to find bats working with Shi Zhengli of The Wuhan Institute of Virology actually, and…and then another three years perhaps to find the real progenitor viruses, the virus that gave rise to SARS coronavirus.  So, this does take time i’m sure given the intense scrutiny and interest it will be quicker this time but we will get there and we’ll get there by international collaboration and cooperation and mutual respect.

Let me get this straight:  You’re telling us that it is without a doubt, a natural, zoonotic origin, yet you cannot tell us where it came from, what virus it mutated from, whether or not there was an intermediate host, nor how long it will take you to determine all those things, yet it definitely wasn’t from a lab, that was conducting viral-gain-of-function research on viruses that could have genomically served as the backbone of SARS-CoV-2, in the very city where the viral outbreak took place.  For Daszak to say that equal time and consideration was given to the lab-leak theory is a disingenuous fabrication.

I:  So, are you still that much optimistic about the results, about the research moving forward amid this political sensitivities?

PD: Yeah, and…i… i stand resolute against these political attacks that we see every day.  Look, when I came to Wuhan with this mission, we didn’t know what we were going to be shown, we didn’t know how straightforward this work would be, or how difficult. What we saw every single day was new information critical, new information and we saw scientists who were willing ready, and able to cooperate and collaborate with us.  So, I remain even more optimistic and..and I’m looking forward to the next two-to-three years as we dig in deeper and really get to the bottom of this and trace back the origin of this virus.  It will have begun somewhere in the region of Southeast Asia or South China.  We don’t know exactly where, um, it looks like the… the wildlife markets and…and trade networks may have played a key role, um, but we will get there we will find out and… and that information will be very rapidly shared with the world which is what we need to do.

What?!?  You, as investigators, waited for the Chinese Government to show you what you needed to see and give you access to the researchers they thought you needed to interview, more than a year after the initial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, and you, as a “serious scientific professional” believe that the Chinese Government is being open and forthcoming with their information about the lab?  Not only that, Daszak believes we should follow the information from the Chinese more than we should believe our own US intelligence agencies.  To me, those are the words of a treasonous spy.

Well now this👇. @JoeBiden has to look tough on China. Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects. Happy to help WH w/ their quest to verify, but don’t forget it’s “TRUST” then “VERIFY”! https://t.co/ukaNAkDfEG

— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) February 10, 2021

Of course, Daszak wants to help.  He wants to help continue to push his defensive narrative of his Chinese overlords.

I: Thanks so much for your time President and we should good luck to your work and hope that next time and when you are visiting Wuhan or visiting China, I could be around.

PD: I look forward to that, Xièxiè (thank you).

I: Thanks so much, Yes, thank you.

My guess is that Peter Daszak could see himself back in China very soon, and maybe on a bit of a more permanent basis.