Counter Points Covers Ebola 2014 Lab Origin Story and Covid Origins Machinations

Andersen, VP of labs in West Africa, admits to working on Ebola prior to 2014 outbreak, contradicting Garry, his colleague and co-author of "Proximal Origins" --which dismissed lab origin of Covid.

Virologist Jonathan Latham and myself were guests on Counter Points with Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky yesterday for about a half hour. We talk about our Ebola 2014 story, recent statements by Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research about working on Ebola in West Africa prior to the 2014 outbreak there; connections to Covid and also about the latest hyped stories about raccoon dogs being behind the Covid pandemic.

Andersen and Robert Garry of Tulane are the heads of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium in Kenema, Sierra Leone, and were the two lead authors of “Proximal Origins” in Nature Medicine in the Spring of 2020 which drove much of the media coverage claiming Covid could not have lab origin. Our segments start at 58:11:

Ryan Grim had a solo segment recently and made some interesting observations regarding Kristian Andersen’s recent comments:

Andersen’s recent comments about working on Ebola prior to 2014 were first noted by @CD57227 and then picked up by Nicholson Baker. Andersen contradicts denials of Ebola work by Garry over the years. Ryan Grim notes he has emailed both Andersen and Garry and not received any response.

Most recently, Garry wrote in a piece published on Nov. 10, 2022 that: “In reality, we did not have EBOV in our laboratory and therefore could not have released or engineered it.” Garry made no reference to the in-depth investigation by piece by Jonathan and myself, but his piece appeared shortly after we published — on Oct. 25, 2022.

In contrast, Andersen recently stated:

One of the new ones is the Ebola lab leak, which also is being blamed on us, because we had been studying Ebola in Kenema in Sierra Leone, and lo and behold Ebola emerged just a few miles from there in 2014, right — um — obviously across the border in Guinea, but it's maybe a hundred miles or so away.

Ryan Grim notes Andersen’s hesitation and shifting from “a few miles” to “a hundred miles”. Also, this isn’t a “new one” — Africans and a few others have suspected the labs were behind the outbreak since 2014.

From “Decoding the Gurus” podcast from March 11 at 56 minutes and 20 seconds:

KRISTIAN ANDERSON: It's really important to understand that the part of the virology field that studies emerging viruses, and studies the evolution of these viruses, is a very small field. It's not a huge number of people doing this type of work. Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance for example is another actor in this, right. They have studied this for many years. That's why our names keep coming up again, because it's the same people who have been doing this for decades, right?

And the problem is that people see these coincidences. One of the new ones is the Ebola lab leak, which also is being blamed on us, because we had been studying Ebola in Kenema in Sierra Leone, and lo and behold Ebola emerged just a few miles from there in 2014, right — um — obviously across the border in Guinea, but it's maybe a hundred miles or so away. And people then put that together and say, "Oh, so that Ebola must have been a lab leak. too. And it was Robert Garry and Kristian Andersen again." And the reason why these names keep coming up, and the reason why we get grant money to study infectious diseases is because we study infectious diseases, and have done so for many many decades. And that's why the names keep coming up again, right?

It's not because there's some kind of major conspiracy theory here, were all of us have been sort of fiddling with the field well prior to the pandemic, right? It just doesn't make any sense. I don't even understand how you can make that connection. It just doesn't make sense.

In the course of the Counter Points discussion, I cite the 2001 anthrax attacks and my Feb. 2020 questioning of the CDC about Covid lab origins and other recent deceits regarding Covid origins.