'Is This In Fact A Bioweapon?': Roger Marshall Grills Doctor About COVID-19 Origins

6 months ago

At today's Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) questioned Dr. Steven Quay about the origins of COVID-19.

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Transcript

00:00Thank You Senator Johnson. Senator Marshall you're recognized for your

00:02questions. Thank You Mr. Chairman. I think it's first of all it's important to

00:07remember why we're here today. We're here today because we don't want to have

00:11another pandemic like this. I think it's important that we recognize that a

00:16million Americans have lost a loved one and they're still looking for closure. We

00:21have 15 million Americans with long COVID and perhaps if we knew the origin

00:26of COVID and the development maybe that would give us a clue how to treat us. I

00:32want to start with Dr. Quaye and go back to the diffuse grant for just a second.

00:38This is a grant by EcoHealth and Peter Daszak. Recall that Peter Daszak is

00:45David Moran's BFF and that grant was denied but yet it lays out a framework

00:53for the development of COVID-19 and you went through six or seven several

00:59reasons that are absolutely consistent. That they said they would do X and they

01:04did X and what are the chances of all those things ending up in a COVID virus?

01:09Yeah well again just as a reminder so they they said they were going to go to

01:13a particular spot in southern China to get a virus. They were going to make sure

01:18that it had diversity from SARS-1 of about 25%. They were going to put it

01:23into humanized mice to enhance its ability to recognize the receptor

01:27binding domain. They're going to put furin cleavage site in a very particular

01:31spot. You know out of 13,000 letters in the spike protein they said in the grant

01:36they were going to put it at a spot called the S1 S2 junction. They said

01:41and so all of those were found in SARS-CoV-2. Its nearest neighbor is from

01:46the same area. It has a 99% binding affinity for the human

01:52receptor. SARS-1 jumped into humans. It only had 15% of the epidemic changes it

01:57needed to become epidemic. What do you think the chances of all? I've quantified it because I

02:02like statistics and it's one in 1.2 billion. So one in a billion chance all

02:07that comes to fruition. There were some comments on that grant in the margin. So

02:12Dr. Barrick, North Carolina, developed the technology for the protein spike. He

02:17taught Dr. Shi. He gave them humanized mice. Again this was all funded with USAID

02:22grant money as well. What were some of the comments in the margin you think

02:25that are significant? Well this is important because the folks told DARPA

02:29we're going to do this research in North Carolina under very high safety

02:33conditions in the grant. That's what they wrote. The marginal comments in drafts

02:37that were only obtained through FOIAs said a different thing. Dasik said hey

02:41we're gonna shift this over to Wuhan because it'll be cheaper,

02:44faster, we'll get a lot more done that way. Barrick says boy if US scientists

02:49knew this was going on they would think this is crazy. This is in the marginal

02:52comments. So they in a way they weren't truthful with DARPA in the grant. So Dr.

02:56Barrick you along with Dr. Fauci or the father of gain-of-function knew that

03:00that other scientists in America would have a fit if this was being done. Yeah

03:04and again so fast forward to January 2020 these two scientists, Dasik

03:09and Barrick, sitting down with the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and a computer

03:14would know within one hour this thing has all the features of what we proposed

03:18in that grant. And the fact they either didn't tell anybody or the people they

03:22told didn't do anything about it meant that that human-to-human transmission

03:27was not a we were not aware of that. And asymptomatic transmission we were not

03:31aware of. This is the first new respiratory virus that's asymptomatic.

03:34Right let's come back I'm gonna use that come back to that point in just a

03:38second. You know we went through what I call the smoking guns that really show

03:41beyond a reasonable doubt that this virus was made in a laboratory in Wuhan

03:45China. It was synthetic you know everywhere from the geography of where

03:49it shows up for the first time to the fact that there was virus already

03:53spread to multiple continents by the time the wet market brought break

03:56occurs. They never have found the intermediate species with SARS and MERS

04:01it took months to find an intermediate species. Anyone that says the raccoon dog

04:04is the intermediate species is just laughable science. No progenitor viruses

04:10and the timeline they were developing a vaccine already November 2019. Dr. Shi is

04:16taking down the DNA lab banks in September 2019. She takes down another

04:20the lab bank here in this country I may be March of the next year as well. But of

04:26all the smoking guns and this is the hardest to explain to people is just the

04:30the genetic makeup of this virus and you pointed out the protein spike. The

04:36protein spike alone be like a person that the protein spike that fits into a

04:40lung cell would be like the chances of a person walking in the room with the

04:44key that fits the lock on those doors. I mean it was a perfect protein spike you

04:48mentioned the furin cleavage site. There's other spots but I wanted to talk

04:52about the ORF8 site for just a second. Dr. Quay what's the significance of this

04:57ORF8 site? So ORF8 is a protein that's down near the right-hand side of

05:02the virus. It is not in the final virus it is secreted into the bloodstream and

05:07it does two things. Early in the infection it blocks interferon

05:12expression so you don't you don't sweat you don't have a fever you don't show

05:16the symptoms of an infection. And later in the infection it blocks what's called

05:20antigen MHC presentation. So we learn from HIV that a virus that can block the

05:26ability of pieces of the virus to be presented to the immune system is a

05:30virus that is very hard to make antibodies against very hard to fight

05:33against it. Two master's thesis during 2015 that have only been published in

05:37Chinese no papers came from it at the Wound Institute of Virology created a

05:42synthetic cloning system for ORF8. So gain-of-function research around things

05:48that make viruses asymptomatic and things that that make them not be able

05:52to make antibodies to are beyond the pale of what what you know Dr. Ebright

05:57has said in terms of the civilian use. So really this ORF8

06:02is a synthetic link sequence never found in nature and they place it in here

06:08right they place this link in here for the purposes of the two cardinal sins

06:13the cardinal sin of asymptomatic virus and then transmission with without that

06:18symptom as well and the inability to make an immune response. I mean that's

06:22the cardinal sins of gain-of-function research. What what purpose would there

06:26be if you're wanting to develop vaccines is there any civilian purpose or is

06:31this in fact a bioweapon? I can't say it's a bioweapon because that's in the

06:36mind of the person that made it but but it is it is a highly unusual highly

06:40synthetic they were doing synthetic biology around it and it's two functions

06:44are quite remarkable with respect to what kind of research you would do in

06:49the civilian world. Dr. Ebright is there a possibility that it could have been a

06:52dual purpose that there could have been used as a bioweapon? So the original SARS

07:00virus SARS-CoV-1 is a tier one select agent in the United States so it is in

07:07the group of pathogens and biological toxins that our federal government has

07:13identified as having high potential for use as a bioweapon in bio warfare

07:19bioterrorism or biocrime. It by definition therefore according to our

07:25federal government is a bioweapon agent. It is not a bioweapon but it is an agent

07:32that potentially could be used. Is there any good use any good reason to put this

07:35in the by in the virus if you're developing a vaccine? I would return to

07:40my general comment on gain-of-function research on potential pandemic

07:44pathogens that research has no civilian practical application. Researchers

07:52undertake it because it is fast, it is easy, it requires no specialized

07:59equipment or skills and it was prioritized for funding and has been

08:04prioritized for publication by scientific journals. These are major

08:08incentives to researchers worldwide in China and in the US. The researchers

08:14undertake this research because it's easy they get the money and they can get

08:18the papers. Thank you Senator Marshall. Senator Scott do you recognize for your

08:23questions? First I want to thank the chair and the ranking member for hosting

08:27this hearing. We should did this a lot I think we there's a lot that we still

08:31need to learn.

'Is This In Fact A Bioweapon?': Roger Marshall Grills Doctor About COVID-19 Origins

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