What Really Happened in Wuhan Quotes

“A book written by PLA Chinese military scientists and senior Chinese public health officials in 2015, titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, was obtained by the US State Department as it conducted an investigation into the origins of Covid-19. The 263-page volume was published in 2015 by the Chinese Military Medical Science Press, a government-owned publishing house managed by the General Logistics Department of the PLA. It describes SARS coronaviruses as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons” and says they can be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before”. Some of China’s senior public health and military figures are listed among the 18 authors of the document, including the former Deputy Director of China’s Bureau of Epidemic Prevention, Li Feng. Ten of the authors are scientists and weapons experts affiliated with the Air Force Medical University in Xi’an, which the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Defence Universities Tracker ranks as “very high-risk” for its level of defence research, including its work on medical and psychological sciences.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“Intelligence agencies and Western governments have known for decades that China has a bioweapons program. It was rarely spoken about, kept to the domain of classified reports or intelligence files. But Chinese military-affiliated scientists were discussing the weaponisation of coronaviruses publicly and openly – and they did so five years before the Covid-19 pandemic.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“Acting Assistant Secretary of State Tom DiNanno, from the Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Bureau (AVC), says for years the United States has determined that China has an offensive biological program that it has not declared, in clear violation of the treaty. “China cheats on all their international arms control obligations, as does Russia, but they use these instruments as tools of statecraft,” he said. “The dual use of weaponising gain-of-function research could be, in fact, violation of the Biological Weapons Convention [BWC]. It is something we need to run to ground and vigorously pursue and it certainly is an item of relevance for the BWC.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“China has been conducting research on dangerous dual-use biological and genetic technologies that are prone to causing global pandemics,” his internal State Department report stated. “China’s submissions are a chilling display of what its scientists are doing.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“As former head of intelligence agency ASIO, Dennis Richardson told The Australian, “The way [China] has handled the COVID-19 matter should make people worry. This is a classic authoritarian power response, which simply tells lies.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“What kind of independent investigator dismisses US intelligence and is outraged at The New York Times for criticising the Chinese government for withholding data, but then immediately trusts answers given by the Wuhan Institute of Virology?”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“To many scientists, it was astonishing – and highly troubling – that no one had ever heard of RaTG13 before this article. Shi Zhengli and her team had not mentioned it in any other scientific papers. Yet, suddenly, here it was – a virus whose genetic sequence was 96.2 per cent identical to a virus that was fast causing a global pandemic. She didn’t say where it had come from, only Yunnan province “previously”. It was puzzling. Where had this virus sample so similar to SARS-CoV-2 originated and how? Shi Zhengli made no mention of the abandoned mine and did not even cite her 2016 paper.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“She said it was called RaTG13. And she said that this virus was 96.2 per cent identical at the whole-genome level to SARS-CoV-2. The importance of this revelation cannot be overemphasised. The closest known coronavirus to the one that causes Covid-19, with a 96.2 per cent genetic similarity, existed inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“BSL-4 Laboratory Director, Dr Yuan Zhiming, was repeatedly sounding the alarm about China’s poor laboratory safety in the year leading up to the outbreak.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“If it was a shock for senior White House officials to learn through media reports that Fauci had quietly lifted the ban on gain-of-function research back in 2017, they were even more astounded to discover he knew so much about the research in Wuhan, but never said a word as the pandemic unfolded. Instead, the role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in conducting risky coronavirus research was left to officials like Miles Yu and Matt Pottinger to uncover.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“The project was approved in 2018 and was set to run from January 2019 to December 2021. The results of this study, including details of which two new coronaviruses he was experimenting with – to specifically see if they can infect humans – were due to appear around the time of the outbreak but have never been published.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“To many outside of the scientific community, this type of experimentation sounds absurd. How is it even legal, given the astronomical risks? Debate has raged about the grave dangers of allowing gain-of-function research to take place. There are two main concerns. Firstly, it is a subset of dual-use research. In other words, it can be misused for malevolent military purposes such as bioweapons. Secondly, it can accidentally cause a pandemic. In a 2016 paper on the ethics of creating new, potentially deadly viruses, Michael Selgelid, Director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Bioethics at Monash University’s Bioethics Centre in Melbourne, wrote that this has been “one of the most hotly debated science policy issues during the 21st century, with controversy surrounding a series of published experiments with potential implications for biological weapons-making”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“A year on, in 2021, 43 international scientists would sign four letters calling for an investigation into a possible laboratory leak. The first group of 25 scientists went public with their letter on March 4, 2021 in response to the WHO’s flawed inquiry, which failed to investigate the Wuhan laboratories. The scientists published a series of letters outlining the steps the WHO needed to take for a rigorous scientific inquiry into the origins of the virus. One of the essential questions they identified that needs examining is this: “Did the WIV or any other laboratory ever attempt to recreate RaTG13 or any other coronaviruses by assembling them from synthetic gene sequences?” They want to obtain the records of laboratories involved in coronavirus research in Wuhan, such as laboratory notebooks, electronic records and details of gain-of-function research, including related sequences and isolates.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“He says the virus was highly adapted for infection of humans from the start, unlike earlier natural zoonoses, and that its infectious trigger – the furin cleavage site – isn’t found anywhere in related betacoronaviruses in its class, and thus he argues couldn’t have come from a natural recombination, but has been repeatedly included in viruses by laboratory scientists including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Since 1992, laboratories have been putting furin cleavage sites into viruses that didn’t have them – 11 different laboratories, 11 different experiments, including previous Wuhan Institute of Virology experiments, and every single time it makes it more virulent, more transmissible and more lethal,” he says. The end result, Dr Quay says, has always been supercharged viruses.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“They had questioned a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2 ever since 2020. “I think the coronavirus leaked as early as the second half of August, early September 2019. There is a lot to suggest that,” Sørensen told Swedish news outlet Fria Tider in December 2020. “The scientific community doesn’t want to discuss issues that may hinder future virus research. You have to prove that it comes from nature, otherwise, it comes from a laboratory.” This goes to the heart of the cover-up: some virologists could have feared their experiments would be barred if the Covid-19 pandemic arose from gain-of-function research.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“Norwegian virologist Birger Sørensen, who is the CEO of biotech company Bionor Pharma, co-authored a scientific paper with UK oncologist and immunologist Angus Dalgleish, which claims SARS-CoV-2 has no credible natural ancestor and was created through laboratory manipulation beyond reasonable doubt. They claim Covid-19 was created by first using a natural coronavirus backbone and splicing a new spike onto it.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“The SARS-CoV-2 viruses possess special cell receptor binding domains combined with a special (furin) cleavage site of the coronavirus spike protein. Both properties together were previously unknown in coronaviruses and indicate a non-natural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen,” he says in an English-language precis on the Swiss Policy Research site. He also concludes that there is no evidence for the zoonotic theory, saying no intermediate host animal has been identified that could have facilitated the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen from bats to humans. Another”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“Professor Wiesendanger released a 100-page research paper where he provided his view on the unusual characters of SARS-CoV-2. He drew a stronger conclusion than Professor Ebright, saying he is “99.9 per cent sure that the coronavirus came from a laboratory”.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“We know that the backbone virus in SARS-CoV-2 is a horseshoe bat coronavirus,” he explains. “Those horseshoe bats live in southern China. Wuhan is well beyond their range. Wuhan doesn’t have horseshoe bats. This pandemic began in the middle of winter. But what Wuhan does have is China’s only level-4 virology institute, with the world’s largest collection of bat coronaviruses, that was doing aggressive gain-of-function research, including to make those highly pathogenic viruses more transmissible to human cells. We know that when the outbreak began, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was almost perfectly adapted for transmission to humans.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“As early as January 2020, Chinese officials knew the wet market was unlikely to be the source of the virus.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“It’s clear China used the pandemic to its strategic advantage in the region. “The whole thing has massively played into Chinese hands and it’s very disturbing, particularly in a country like Australia, where you’re on the Pacific rim and the other main occupant on the Pacific rim is China,” former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove said in an interview for this book. “If you look at the consequences for the Chinese state of what’s happened, if they wanted to accelerate their success internationally and their domination of their main opponent countries, they couldn’t have done it more effectively. Look at what’s happening in India. Look at what it has done to the US economy, and it’s clear that authoritarian states are better equipped to control their population in the face of a pandemic because they can immediately institute controls which the population don’t question.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“Asked what gives him a high degree of confidence that this originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the President said, “I can’t tell you that.” Pompeo, not mentioning the Wuhan Institute of Virology by name, said on May 3 that there was “enormous evidence” that the virus began in a laboratory. When pressed, he could not divulge the specifics. “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,” he said.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“The President was against the mask for visual purposes. He thought he looked bad in them. He did not like the masks. It had nothing to do with science, nothing to do with health and everything to do with the fact it didn’t fit his brand. It didn’t look right. That’s why he fought it for as long as he did.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“It’s fair to say that when the virus crippled Italy, senior officials in the Trump administration were shell-shocked. Their entire containment strategy to protect the United States was built on the premise the virus was not transmissible if someone was asymptomatic. That incorrect working assumption alone, based on medical advice from health officials, would cost the United States hundreds of thousands of lives.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“While he was careful to never disagree with the President in public, it’s understood that Pompeo made his views known to Trump about China’s cover-up and responsibility for the global outbreak. If his message was getting through to the President, it certainly wasn’t to his most senior advisors. The question remained: When was it time to tell the American public and the world about China’s activities at the Wuhan laboratories?”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“In a statement on June 4, 2019, Pompeo called for accountability for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre for the first time ever. He looked back to the horror in 1989, when 1 million pro-democracy advocates in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square called for an end to authoritarian dictatorship but were gunned down by Chinese troops in an early morning attack. Up to 10,000 innocent Chinese citizens were killed. The CCP now tries to deny it ever took place.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“The Chinese Communist Party’s culpability in deliberately covering up the virus instead of alerting the world is a crime as shameful and abhorrent as the Tiananmen Square massacre. Millions of lives have been lost, and counting, with families in every corner of the earth struck by tragedy, while economies have been decimated, livelihoods lost and people thrown into poverty. The question is, why did they act like this and what were they covering up?”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“The excessive control China exercised over the WHO would continue, even to the point of having a say in which scientists and academics from the international community could investigate the origins of the virus, according to a report in the Daily Mail. The outcome was that the CCP, with the help of the WHO, deliberately hid news of Covid-19 and the nature of the highly contagious virus. It’s why the United States grew so frustrated and eventually withdrew funding from the body.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“This wasn’t even China’s first cover-up of a coronavirus. Global health authorities and world leaders should have, from the very get-go, been more alert to the possibility of a cover-up of the contagion from China, given immediate past experience from SARS in late 2002 and 2003. Back then, China had faced international condemnation for covering up the virus outbreak and failing to alert global health authorities. In China, public health information is classed as a “state secret” until the Ministry of Health approves its release.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research

“All the while, China was requesting – at times demanding – public praise for its handling of the pandemic from the international community. CCP officials contacted the President of the Wisconsin Senate, Senator Roger Roth, asking that the Senate “pass a resolution praising the PRC’s response to the pandemic”, The New York Times reported. Chinese diplomats made similar requests to German officials. China then punished countries that questioned the outbreak or its handling of the pandemic with economic coercion.”
― Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan: The Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research