A Closer Look at the Dubious Peter Daszak and His Role in the COVID-19 Sham

Back in June last year, I wrote an article about the almost-certain laboratory origins of SARS -CoV-2, more commonly known as COVID-19.

In that article, I discussed the interlinking of several entities who have established themselves as key players in the COVID-19 con. These include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology and an outfit called EcoHealth Alliance.

Who, Exactly, are EcoHealth and Peter Daszak?

Much has been written about Gates, Anthony Fauci's NIAID and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Far less is known about EcoHealth Alliance, despite the fact it acted as the conduit for American money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a BSL-4 lab that specialized in risky gain-of-function research with bat coronaviruses.

I explained the whole ruse in detail here, but in short: Fauci, head of NIAID, approved millions of dollars in grants (US taxpayer money) to the Wuhan lab, which was well known to be experimenting with bat coronaviruses. Rather than directly pay the Wuhan lab (owned by the CCP), the money was first sent to the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance.

EcoHealth was founded by Peter Daszak, a British zoologist and media-proclaimed 'expert' on zoonotic disease ecology who moved to the US in the late 1990s. Daszak remains the president of EcoHealth, which purports to be a 'nonprofit' non-governmental organization supporting programs on "global health" and pandemic prevention.

On 7 November 2019, the pedo-friendly Netflix aired an episode of Explained titled The Next Pandemic. Daszak and Gates featured heavily in the documentary, both displaying remarkable clairvoyant powers by insisting an impending pandemic was looming.

Shortly afterwards the episode aired, the global shitshow that is COVID-19 kicked off in earnest.

A Good Friend of the Wuhan Lab Absolves the Wuhan Lab

More recently, it was revealed the China-friendly Daszak was the sole US member of the WHO team that concluded a Wuhan lab leak of COVID-19 was “extremely unlikely.”  None of the three experts the US government recommended to the WHO for inclusion on the team even received a phone call.

The investigation that arrived at this dubious conclusion was an utter wank in which the team travelled to China then holed themselves in a hotel for four weeks, tweeting pictures of their food and the views from their rooms. Their detective work consisted mainly of superficial discussions and Zoom meetings with Chinese officials, as the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology was largely off-limits. The team were given CCP-approved presentations about the lab’s research, safety procedures and the health of staff, "and were able to ask questions."

The WHO team was only allowed to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology for a single three-hour visit on 3 February 2020, where they met with Shi Zhengli – the virologist dubbed “bat woman” who last year insisted there was no way the virus escaped from her “world-class lab.” Contrary to Zhengli's self-serving claims, in early 2018 US Embassy officials visited the Wuhan lab several times and “sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats.”

As the Wall Street Journal noted, the entire farce was carefully stage-managed by the Chinese Communist Party.

“It soon became evident to foreign officials and scientists tracking the mission that the team’s itinerary was partly designed to bolster China’s official narrative that the government moved swiftly to control the virus,” the newspaper wrote.

“The team’s first visit was to a hospital where they met a doctor Beijing feted as the first to raise alarms through official channels about an outbreak of unknown pneumonia. The next day, after another hospital visit, the team went to an exhibition commemorating Chinese authorities’ early ‘decisive victory in the battle’ against the virus, paying tribute to President Xi’s leadership.”

Of the team's month-long stay in China, Daszak admitted “there were Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff in the room throughout our stay. Absolutely. They were there to make sure everything went smoothly from the China side.”

How thoughtful of them.

When the bored and closely-monitored team turned their attention to the discomforting fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology deleted public databases containing information on at least 16,000 virus samples in September 2019, they did not even request to review the data as part of their investigation.

Daszak revealed during a panel discussion in March that they did not request to see the deleted WIV databases because he personally vouched for the lab, saying the data did not contain relevant information on the pandemic’s origins.

A textbook classic case of "nothing to see here folks, now move along!"

Daszak speaks on the phone at a hotel in Wuhan, China, 3 February 2021.

Daszak's presence on the panel was an audacious conflict of interest, given that he was project lead of the six NIH-funded Wuhan lab projects which focused on the emergence of novel zoonotic coronaviruses with bat-origin. The six projects received a total funding of $3,748,715 courtesy of Fauci's NIAID, which was funneled through his EcoHealth Alliance.

Thanks to his role as the project principal, Daszak was a close collaborator with "bat woman" Shi Zhengli.

And, as you'll learn shortly, prior to joining the WHO team, Daszak had publicly dismissed the possibility of a lab leak as a “conspiracy” theory. Appointing someone who had already made his mind up on the issue made a complete mockery of what was supposed to be an impartial investigation.

From the onset of the pandemic, the bald-faced Daszak has denied he has a conflict of interest with the WIV, a claim that Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard H. Ebright said in April was a “brazen lie.”

Statement of Stupidity

On 19 February 2020, the Lancet published a bizarre piece of correspondence titled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19."

One of the listed co-authors was Daszak.

The brief letter did not contain a single scientific fact and added absolutely nothing to the pool of knowledge regarding COVID-19. Instead, the letter contained a bunch of essentially meaningless sop.

"We are public health scientists who have closely followed the emergence of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and are deeply concerned about its impact on global health and wellbeing," said the authors.

"We sign this statement," they continued, "in solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak. We are all in this together, with our Chinese counterparts in the forefront, against this new viral threat."

The real point of this of Maoist-sounding drivel quickly became apparent when the authors wrote:

"We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens." (Bold emphasis added)

The scientists that concluded this, of course, did so despite a complete lack of evidence. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support the oft-repeated claim that COVID-19 kicked off in a Wuhan wet market after the ephemeral and heretofore still unknown "Patient Zero" ate a bat/pangolin/snake (the purveyors of this idiotic tale can't quite make up their mind which one).

Meanwhile, it is an indisputable fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had long been toying with bat coronaviruses and had already succeeded in creating a hybrid coronavirus with a special affinity for lung tissue.

Twenty-seven researchers, clearly with nothing better to do, signed this piece of rot. Why it was ever published in a medical journal still remains a mystery to this day. Okay, I think we really know why it was published, but the fact remains medical journals are supposed to be all about science and evidence, not goofball "statements of support" that sound like communist propaganda from the 1960s.

The head author of the Lancet letter was listed as Charles Calisher, from Colorado State University, Fort Collins.

Turns out Charles wasn't really the head author after all.

US Right to Know, an investigative public health nonprofit group, decided to delve into the matter further. Through a public records request, they were able to obtain emails showing the Lancet statement was organized by employees of EcoHealth (the entire tranche of emails is archived here).

Daszak was keen to keep this hidden from readers. In a 6 February 2020 email, Daszak told his colleagues, "Please note that this statement will not have EcoHealth Alliance logo on it and will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person, the idea is to have this as a community supporting our colleagues."

In an 8 February 2020 email to Rita Colwell, Daszak wrote: "please note that we will not be referring to this as a ‘petition’ but as a ‘statement in support of’ – This is in the title and will be in all materials we send out. This is to avoid the appearance of a political statement – this is simply a letter from leading scientists in support of other scientists and health professionals who are under serious pressure right now." (Colwell agreed to lend her name to the statement, so long as she was referred to as "Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland College Park").

Daszak told Colwell, without citing any examples, that "conspiracy theorists" had targeted "our collaborators with some extremely unpleasant web pages in China, and some have now received death threats to themselves and their families."

Daszak had nothing to say about the fact Chinese whistle-blowers who contradicted the official COVID story were dying, disappearing, getting arrested, strong-armed into silence or censored by Chinese authorities.

Chinese authorities even threatened COVID-19 survivors and grieving relatives of those who died. Lawyers were warned not to file suit against the government.

For some strange reason, Daszak felt no need to include these unfortunate victims of CCP oppression in his "statement of solidarity." 

Despite his intimate links to the Wuhan lab, and the financial benefits they endowed him, Daszak had the audacity to end the Lancet statement with the sentence, "We declare no competing interests."

Wow.

Daszak's Eleven

It turns out Peter Daszak is quite the hustler. Thanks to some diligent sleuthing by Independent Science News, we now know the $3.7 million channeled to the Wuhan lab via EcoHealth is just the tip of the iceberg.

EcoHealth has in fact received at least $123 million in US taxpayer money. Between 2004-2020, EcoHealth received $61,491,183 in Federal grants. Pentagon funding accounted for $39 million of that figure. Most of that Pentagon spending, $34.6 million, was from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the DOD which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.”

Another $20 million came from Health and Human Services ($13 million, which includes National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control), National Science Foundation ($2.6 million), Department of Homeland Security ($2.3 million), Department of Commerce ($1.2 million), Department of Agriculture ($0.6 million), and Department of Interior ($0.3 million).

Most of the remaining money to EcoHealth - at least $64.7 million - was from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance.

For his role as president of EcoHealth, Daszak draws a personal salary of over US $400,000. EcoHealth's 990 form covering the 2017 calendar year shows he compensated himself $402,059. For 2018, that figure was $410,801.

A further $1,784,468 was divvied up between 9 of Daszak's EcoHealth colleagues for the 2018 calendar year, giving an average remuneration of $198,274. Like most well-connected 'non-profit' organizations, EcoHealth is in reality a nice little earner for its senior staff.

Ebright (and yours truly) sees Daszak as an opportunistic mediocrity who has been able to generate a lucrative income stream – without doing any of his own research or having his own lab – by writing grant applications. As GMWatch.org notes, "This is how he has built up his handsomely-funded nonprofit with its Manhattan offices, not to mention his salary of over $400,000 per annum, while parceling out 'the remaining cash to labs in exchange for honorary authorships on papers.'"

Daszak and his seemingly benevolent EcoHealth are milking US taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars. The only tangible result at this point appears to be a global hysteria campaign centered on an overblown virus almost certainly emanating from a Wuhan lab that EcoHealth distributed money to on behalf of the US government.

No-one has yet provided a satisfactory answer as to why the US Government was sponsoring a laboratory owned by its main geopolitical threat, a laboratory performing research with bioweaponry applications.

Closer scrutiny also needs to be cast upon the leadership arrangements at federal agencies. While it is a taxpayer-funded agency, the NIAID has been run by the dubious Fauci since 1984. That's 37 years - far too long for any one person to be running a government agency. However, while the US constitution wisely prescribes a two-term limit on the Presidency, there is nothing to stop an unelected bureaucrat like Fauci from treating an agency like the NIAID as his own personal fiefdom for decades on end.

Article updated 23 May 2021 with additional information about WHO team visit to China and EcoHealth staff remuneration.

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