Do Ebola 2014 Origins Hold the Key to Covid Origins?

Did Kristian Andersen just send me the creepiest email? The website for the Consortium likely responsible for the 2014 outbreak no longer exists — is that part of a wider set of erasures?

The current outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one that one might expect, there have been many outbreaks of Ebola in that part of Africa. The 2014 outbreak in West Africa — over 1,000 miles away — should have been a clearly different story. How did Ebola get there? On August 19, 2014, NPR ran a story claiming that bats had flown that incredible distance to introduce Ebola to the region. I recall the late Francis Boyle mocking the idea as ridiculous at the time.

The source for that notion? Peter Daszak, the now infamous former head of EcoHealth Alliance.

The subject of Covid origins is making some news recently with the statements by CIA official James Erdman to a Senate Committee, or more properly, to just the Republican members of it as the Democrats didn’t even show up. This seems to be part of a pattern of government sources driving and limiting the narrative as previously reported. The testimony came just after a deadline for prosecuting Fauci had passed.

Interestingly, Erdman said “Still others participated in planning Event 201 in 2019. This was a coronavirus pandemic tabletop exercise curiously similar to the events that played out during the COVID19 pandemic and it was attended by Dr. Fauci...” This hints at the idea that the pandemic was planned. But Fauci’s not listed as having participated in Event 201 — Avril Haines and George Gao are. See piece on Haines by Alexis Baden-Meyer.

Moreover, Erdman and committee chairman Rand Paul continuously talked about “lab leak” — seeming to preclude the possibility of intentional release.

As in the case of Palestine, there’s significant evidence the public doesn’t believe the establishment narrative. But this hasn’t resulted in meaningful shifts of policy — in part I believe because parts of the reality have been limited and put out in pieces to different parts of the population, avoiding a “storming the Bastille” moment.

In addition, it was claimed (by Paul and/or Hawley) that legislation demanded that all information regarding Covid origins be made public, when it was only information pertaining to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — following an agenda of targeting China as previously reported. On X, Paul was widely criticized for not getting to the bottom of the issue.

It is now fairly widely recognized that the signers of the Nature Medicine “Proximal Origins” paper from March 2020 were totally wrong in dismissing that Covid could have come from a lab.

I was among the first to criticize the article — one of the most widely cited “scholarly” pieces of all time — as “misleading” the following month in Salon.

The two lead signers of “Proximal Origins” were Robert Garry of Tulane University and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research. They also head up the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium in Kenema, Sierra Leone.

It is likely that these labs in West Africa were actually responsible for the Ebola outbreak of 2014. Not incredible bats which flew over 1,000 miles. See in-depth article by virologist Jonathan Latham and myself from 2022. Jonathan notes, “there is still no evidence for naturally occurring Ebola in West Africa nor new evidence for Ebola in bats anywhere.”

Thus, by pretending to refute the possibility of Covid lab origins, they may well have actually been protecting themselves. That is, if the global public understood in early 2020 that Covid likely had lab origins, it would have prompted major momentum for change regarding such dangerous lab work — and compelled an examination of past outbreaks.

It’s not just about any one particular outbreak, it’s about a structure. Examining these connections will likely lead to more real answers than depending on pronouncements by CIA officials and Senators

The notorious Ron Fouchier — who weaponized the avian flu in a series of experiments which drew mainstream concern in 2011 — wrote to Andersen and Garry in February 2020: “If we assume passaging as a possible scenario here, we must assume it is also plausible for all outbreaks from the past, present and future.”

That is, it appears Fouchier was threatening Andersen and Garry who were initially raising questions about whether Covid could have had lab origins, that if they don’t toe the company line on Covid, their possible culpability regarding Ebola 2014 could be exposed.¹

Many have speculated that funding pressure from Fauci could also account for them signing an article dismissing the possibility of lab origins for Covid. And indeed such financial dependency is long-standing. Garry has said “Tony Fauci really came to our rescue" in ensuring the funding for the VHFC in west Africa years earlier. Garry added: "One of the leading Covid theories of course is that the virus leaked from a lab. I have kind of a lot of prior experience in that myself about being accused of leaking viruses.”

I have noted this core conflict from Andersen and Garry in the past, for example, see this piece in 2023 when they testified before Congress:

I just realized that the website for the VHFC no longer exists, see what it looked like from 2022 on WayBackMachine before the article by Jonathan and myself was published. Now the VHFC website simply forwards to the website for Andersen’s lab at Scripps Research.

I wrote to the Andersen lab for an explanation — lab@andersen-lab.com is the only address I could locate for the lab or any of the individuals associated with it:

Hope you’re well.

I’m an independent journalist who writes about various subjects including GoF.

I notice that vhfc.org points to your page.

Can you please explain why that’s the case and when that began?

Thank you,

Sam Husseini

I got this rather creepy response:

Dear Sam,

Hope I’m well?
How kind to inquire,
as you stoke your small fire
with rumors, innuendo, and zeal.

Yes, I’m quite well,
living the dream,
despite your long-running theme
of pretending fiction is real.

Unfortunately, I can’t help with your inquiry, however, additional information is available at https://covid-origin.info and www.zoonati.com.

Guggenheim is great. Best of luck with your continued writing on the subject. If you still have questions, perhaps this may help as well: https://andersen-lab.com/secrets/the-biggest-secret/.

Cordially,

Me

It pretends to be dismissive² of my work, but obviously doesn’t answer the question: Why is the VHFC website no longer around? Indeed, does the project still exist and what has become of the labs and all the funding put into them?³

So, given that Andersen — or whoever in the lab who wrote the email — don’t care to answer the question, it would appear there are attempts to re-brand the VHFC operation under a series of other umbrellas. These include the West African Research Network for Infectious Diseases, the West African Emerging Infectious Disease Research Center (WA-EIDRC) and the Center for Viral System Biology. These groups include many of the same players and have gotten substantial NIH funding in recent years.

Such moves remind me of how the mercenary firm Blackwater — founded by Erik Prince who longs for a renewed imperialism — repeatedly changed its name after it was subjected to some level of scrutiny for its criminality in Iraq.

But this may also be part of a wider effort to memoryhole the 2014 outbreak and what lessons should be drawn from it, just as the anthrax attacks have been memory holed.

Latham also notes: “The virus outbreak in DRC currently is Bundibugyo virus and not classic Ebola. Although the WHO called it "Ebola", classic Ebola is now called "Zaire ebolavirus”. This unhelpful rearrangement of the terminology allows many more viruses and ones distantly related to actual Ebola be called ‘Ebola’, amping up the levels of concern among people not familiar with these changes.”

1. I would have thought that Andersen and Garry wouldn’t need such threats — that they would see the implications of saying that Covid had lab origins in early 2020, but it’s possible they were being thick, or possibly holding out for more funding to go along with the company line. Some of the communication between these individuals has been made public and presented by US Right to Know, but it’s not clear if it is exhaustive or if it goes back far enough.

2. Some of what Andersen writes is ironic and/or revealing, and possibly threatening. I hope to return to this.

3. I forwarded Andersen’s email to Peter Schultz, head of Scripps Research and received no reply.