Straight Talk MD

On 3/17/23, the MSM news cycle was dominated by an incredible claim by a group of international scientists: "new data" from early 2020 linked raccoon dogs at the Wuhan Seafood Market to the origin of COVID-19. When "Raccoon Dog Mediapalooza" commenced, journalists and science reporters had no data, no preprint, and no peer reviewed paper to validate the claims of these scientists. Now we have all three. Independent analysis of the "new data" shows that the international scientists, largely comprised of "the usual suspects," have once again misrepresented the evidence to support their preferred narrative [a natural spillover at the Huanan Seafood Market] and have co-opted the mainstream media to amplify it. Today, I interview Dr. Steven Massey to discuss #raccoondoggate, the data, what it shows—and more importantly, what it does not show. Spoiler alert: No credible evidence links raccoon dogs to the origin of COVID-19. Period. After interviewing Steve, one conclusion is clear: it is absurd to conclude from the "new data" that an infected raccoon dog at the Huanan Seafood Market is linked to the origin of COVID-19. We answer the question proposed in the first installment of this travesty: Yes, raccoon dogs are the new pangolins! Dr. Massey is a researcher in bioinformatics, metagenomics and genomics, complexity and molecular evolution.

In early February, Kevin McKernan, Chief Science Officer of Medicinal Genomics, was deep sequencing Moderna and Pfizer bivalent booster vaccines to help solve a technical problem with his sequencing process when he made an entirely unexpected discovery: the Pfizer and Moderna bivalent booster samples were contaminated with DNA that contained the Spike protein gene within it. Self-replicating DNA plasmids containing the spike protein gene are an integral part of the manufacturing process to make the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines; they are not supposed to be in the final product injected into humans. Kevin repeated the analysis on Pfizer's monovalent vaccine [the original COVID-19 vaccine requiring 3 jabs] using multiple different measuring tools and arrived at the same result: Plasmid DNA with the Spike gene contaminating the vaccine. When he measured the quantity of DNA it was an order of magnitude higher than the acceptable limit specified by the European Medicines Agency [EMA] in some lots. Today, I have Kevin McKernan in the virtual studio to explain his research, what he found, and what it means. #Plasmidgate.

On March 17th, at least 17 major news outlets published a story claiming a group of scientists had analyzed new genetic data from Chinese and that data linked raccoon dogs at the Huanan Seafood Market to the origin of COVID-19. At best, it was journalistic misfeasance, at worst it was willful misdirection. At the time "raccoon dog mediapalooza" dominated the news cycle, there was no data, no preprint, nor peer reviewed paper available for independent examination of the scientist's claims. "Raccoon dog mediapalooza" was based on "quotes" from "the usual suspects"; a cabal of virologists that have misstated, distorted, and/or overstated the evidence pointing to a natural spillover since the beginning of the pandemic. Today, I interview veteran journalist Mike Balter for the insider's perspective of the mainstream media coverage of the investigation of the origin of COVID-19 since the beginning. Their over-reliance on "the usual suspects" a small group of virologists with clear self interest in the outcome of an investigation into the origin of COVID-19. Mike has been a working journalist for more than four decades and wrote for Science Magazine for 25 of those years. It's a long interview but filled with many profound insights.

On March 17th, 2023, the news cycle was dominated by the announcement of an "international team of virologists and evolutionary biologists" that claimed to have analyzed data from China that showed raccoon dogs at the Wuhan Seafood Market were linked to the origin of COVID-19. Unfortunately, the scientists were unable to provide the data they had analyzed for independent examination. Baffling to many was that the data used to implicate raccoon dogs as the reservoir animal for SARS-2, was the same data that had previously been analyzed in a preprint last year. Using the same data, the authors of the preprint concluded that the Wuhan Seafood market was a super spreader location not the location of the origin of COVID-19... The evolutionary virologists implicating the raccoon dog were the usual suspects. A cabal of virologists that Jonathan Latham refers to as "Fauci's COVID-19 Origins SWAT Team..." A small group of virologists who've tried to maintain the false narrative that science shows that COVID-19 was the result of natural spillover and attacking those providing evidence that suggests COVID-19 originated from a lab. Some of these evolutionary biologists are the same ones that told us three years ago that a virus 99% similar to SARS-CoV-2 had been isolated from pangolins and that pangolins could be the missing link in the natural spillover to humans... They were wrong. Now, they're telling us it's a raccoon dog. Today, I interview Steven Massey to discuss the claim by "The Usual Suspects" that "the data shows" the racoon dog is the new pangolin. Dr. Massey is a researcher in bioinformatics, metagenomics and genomics, complexity and molecular evolution.

On March 8th the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic convened their investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Dr Jonathan Latham, "a card-carrying virologist" joins me to perform a warm autopsy on this first Subcommittee hearing on "Investigating the origin of COVID-19." Dr Latham is the Editor of Independent Science news and the co-founder and executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project. While much of the proceeding was political theater, former CDC Director Robert Redfield continues to unravel the false narrative promoted by Drs Fauci, Farrar, Collins, and a cabal of scientists funded by them. While every scientist testifying at the hearing agreed that it was no conspiracy theory that COVID-19 might have come from a lab, it has becoming increasingly evident there was a conspiracy to mislead and deceive the public that the "science showed" that COVID-19 was the result of a natural spillover and that this was the consensus of scientists. We discuss the preponderance of evidence that points to a cover-up and a carefully constructed disinformation campaign to distract, deceive, and mislead the public's attention away from extremely risky gain-of-function research that may have led to the pandemic of the century.

Last week, journalists from the WSJ reported that the US Department of Energy [DOE] had joined the FBI in concluding that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely arose from a lab leak in Wuhan. While the DOE assessment is supported by a growing body of circumstantial evidence in the public domain, the cloak and dagger manner in which it was leaked to the Press raises more questions than it answers. Today Sam Husseini and I discuss the DOE assessment—what we know and what we don't know, the "limited hangout" post 9/11 that manipulated US public opinion to believe Iraq had WMDs, the WHO role in the ongoing investigation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and their appointment of Jeremy Farrar as Chief Scientist, and the rapidly evolving "official narrative" on the origin of COVID-19. Sam Husseini is an independent reporter covering WMDs and biowarfare since 9/11.

Last week, Adrian Jones, Daoyu Zhang, Steven Massey, Yuri Deigin, Louis Nemzer, and Steven Quay reported out on an ingenious analysis of genomic datasets from NCBI that indicate a lab in Wuhan was performing potentially risky genetic engineering manipulations on a novel coronavirus that was previously unreported. The manipulation? Inserting a MERS spike protein into a previously unreported coronavirus. MERS has a case fatality rate of over 30%. What is clear from the analysis is that at least one lab in Wuhan was performing risky gain-of-function research on unreported coronaviruses before the pandemic started, the kind that could have created SARS-CoV-2. It also shows that risky GOF research is being conducted in Wuhan that has no identifiable medical benefit, but has the potential to create a pandemic level pathogen. Today I interview Steven Massey, a professor of bioinformatics that has been actively researching the origin of SARS-CoV-2 since the pandemic began and one of the authors of this significant discovery. We discuss the paper, how his team discovered this novel engineered coronavirus from Wuhan, and what it means in the search for the origin of COVID-19...

Jonathan R Latham PhD is a "card-carrying" virologist, the co-founder and Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project, and the Editor of Independent Science News. In the first half of today's interview, we discuss several theories of the origin of COVID-19, Fauci's COVID Origin SWAT Team, the significance of RaTG-13 and those Mojang Miners, accelerated viral evolution in immunocompromised hosts, and much more. In the second half, we discuss the many unusual features of the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa that point to an "unnatural" origin, and the many similarities to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

Today, I interview independent reporter Jimmy Tobias. Jimmy successfully challenged the NIH to have the redactions removed from Dr Fauci's emails surrounding his secret deliberations with NIH Director Francis Collins, Jeremy Farrar, and several renown virologists regarding the possible lab origin of COVID-19. We discuss the content of those unredacted emails between Drs. Fauci, Collins, Farrar and a cabal of internationally recognized virologists in the first nine days of February 2020. These emails followed the now notorious February 1st, 2020, secret teleconference arranged by Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci to discuss the unanimous opinion of four renown virologists that the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic had genetic features that looked "potentially engineered" and was "inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory." Within days of that secret teleconference, these virologists made a 180-degree about-face and wrote a highly influential correspondence in Nature Medicine entitled: The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 stating unequivocally that the virus responsible for the COVID-19 could not have come from a lab. How the authors of The Proximal Origin Correspondence came to this reversal so quickly and so adamantly without any credible science to justify it was a mystery... until the redactions from Fauci emails were removed.

My guest is epidemiologist and biosecurity expert, Raina MacIntyre. Dr MacIntyre is Head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute, and Professor of Global Biosecurity at UNSW. Today we discuss her latest book DARK WINTER: An insider's guide to Pandemics and biosecurity. We discuss a series of unnatural outbreaks [lab leaks or deliberate misuse] that have occurred over the past 70 years: Sverdlovsk anthrax release, Rajneeshee bioterror attacks, Amerithrax attacks, and others... Raina breaks down the patterns and features they have in common. We discuss the highly unusual features of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the 2019 COVID-19 outbreak that raise questions about a possible unnatural origin of these outbreaks. In every case, the outbreak was initially deemed a natural occurrence by scientists, but later [often many years later] were determined to have had an unnatural origin. Common features in these cases are denial, a cover-up, silence, and often an "information war" led by scientists to control the narrative. The conclusions are inescapable and unsettling: When it comes to investigating an unusual outbreak, we cannot leave the scientists in charge of the investigation. And second, in an era of widely available synthetic biology, accelerated natural selection, and covert DUROC, we face an existential threat from bioweapons of mass destruction. The odds have already shifted dramatically in favor of any outbreak being due to a lab leak or deliberate misuse rather than due to a natural occurrence.