Throughout the last couple of months, COVID reporting done here at RedState has been proven true and accurate, time and time again. First, it was The Intercept validating our reporting on gain-of-function research funding. Then The Daily Mail confirmed our reporting regarding the original Lancet Letter and the conflicts of the vast majority of the signers. Even later, the Atlantic confirmed that the CDC doesn’t even collect the data necessary for the majority of the policy decisions they make. Now the Wall Street Journal has joined the party, reporting on the disbanding of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Origins Commission and the conflicts of interest contaminating the impartiality of the Commission members.

From the WSJ:

Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said he has disbanded a task force of scientists probing the origins of Covid-19 in favor of wider biosafety research.

Dr. Sachs, chairman of a Covid-19 commission affiliated with the Lancet scientific journals, said he closed the task force because he was concerned about its links to EcoHealth Alliance. The New York-based nonprofit has been under scrutiny from some scientists, members of Congress and other officials since 2020 for using U.S. funds for studies on bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research facility in the Chinese city where the first Covid-19 outbreak occurred.

EcoHealth Alliance’s president, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recusing himself from that role in June. Some other members of the task force have collaborated with Dr. Daszak or EcoHealth Alliance on projects.

The headline bills the piece as a WSJ Exclusive, and the subhead says, “Columbia professor says task force’s ties to nonprofit that worked with Wuhan Institute of Virology risked perception of bias.” The only part that’s “exclusive” is the Columbia professor’s comments admitting what I reported back in June: that Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance’s ties to Wuhan made him completely unfit to lead such a group, and that several other members of the commission were completely compromised as well because of their ties to either Daszak or EcoHealth Alliance.

From the June 3rd, 2021 article, “INCREDIBLE:  Lancet Launches COVID-19 Origin Commission – Headed by Peter Daszak“:

Each of the 12 people named as members of the Commission is as conflicted as Daszak. Six of them were co-authors on the Lancet cover-up letter from February 2020: Peter Daszak, Hume Field, Gerald Keusch, Sai Kit Lam, Stanley Pearlman, and Linda Saif (who also helped to draft the Lancet Letter).  A seventh, Dr. Danielle Anderson, was a source on a “Health Feedback” article used by Facebook as a “fact-check” on lab release posts. John Amuasi participated in an infectious disease workshop with Peter Daszak in February 2021. Then we have Carlos de Neves, who participated in a forum with Daszak in 2020 about the origins of COVID-19 and other potential outbreaks. Isabella Eckerle and Malik Peiris were sourced (as was Peter Daszak) in an article in September 2020, which only accepted the natural zoonotic event theory. Rounding out the 12, Supaporn Wacharapluesadee (and again Peter Daszak) was also sourced in an article defending the natural zoonotic event theory.

With Daszak as the chair of this task force, was there any doubt he would surround himself with anyone who would question his narrative? Every single member of this committee which is supposed to analyze “data on all of the theories put forward on the origins of COVID,” is already in the bag for a natural zoonotic event. How could Lancet or anyone else take any result from this group seriously? Is this what they consider to be “objective?”

Less than three weeks after RedState’s reporting of the conflicts of Daszak and the other members of The Lancet’s COVID-19 commission Daszak recused himself from the commission, citing a conflict of interest. At that time we questioned why the Lancet would Daszak’s resignation but not demand the resignation of the other, equally-conflicted, members of the Commission.

From that article:

No word on whether or not the other six, all of whom had made up their minds on the origin of COVID-19 in January 2020, will continue to serve on the commission. Of the remaining six, all of them are Daszak loyalists. Many media organizations are attempting to take credit for this development, however, those same organizations don’t seem to mention the majority of the members of the remaining commission and their loyalty to the man who may potentially be partially responsible for the deaths of more than three and a half million people.

Science should never start from a place where the prevailing most-likely theory is not considered for any reason, and the vast majority of the members of this commission were already touting the much-less-likely natural zoonotic event absent a shred of data that supported it. In fact, just last week RedState’s reporting on the topic was vindicated again when a group of epidemiologists posted a letter in the Lancet stating that there was no direct evidence supporting the zoonotic (natural) transfer theory; rather, the data leaned toward a lab accident.

Until September 11, when the Daily Mail reported on commission conflicts of interest, it seems that RedState was the only place reporting the conflict of other members of the commission, and fortunately, at least this portion of Dr. Peter Daszak’s continued CYA-ing over the lab-leak theory has been foiled. Still, no one is talking about the likelihood of his motive, which of course could include attempting to stay out of prison. Remember, Daszak has been found working with the WHO to cover for the Chinese, emailing Fauci thanking him for running defense against the lab-leak theory, and even appearing on Chinese state-controlled media as a propaganda puppet.

We will continue to follow this story wherever it goes, but RedState remains the place you will find the truth first, and our record continues to show we get it right more often than anywhere else.