https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=morj-3rdWwM&ab_channel=TheGrayzone
well you Professor Jeffrey Sachs you are the chair of lancet's covid-19 commission and recently in Spain you commented that you believed that the that covid-19 or SARS Kobe 2 originated due to blunders of U.S biotech I wonder if you could expand on that and discuss the role of the Eco Health Alliance which was a channel for usaid and Pentagon DARPA funding to the Wan Institutes of virology which remains a key culprit in the origins of covid
Sachs: yep basically the virus SARS Cove too that causes covid-19 disease is a cervical virus a bat virus that is also called a sars-like virus because it's the same sub genus as the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003-2004. but there's a piece of the Genome of this virus that makes it really infectious and that is called the cleavage site that sits on the spike protein that we all learned about and that allows the spike protein to be cleaved or divided and thereby enter human cells much more easily SARS does not have this kind of cleavage site SARS-CoV2 is the only virus of this bat family cervical virus family or sars-like virus family that has a proteolytic cleavage site and the specific cleavage site is called the furin cleavage site and it's four amino acids that make this thing so infectious that it became a global disaster with 18 million deaths the operative question is where did that come from given that it is the only if you're in cleavage site in this family or sub-genus of viruses well they didn't tell us at NIH but we found out through leaks and lawsuits and all the rest and by because insiders knew about this that one of the projects of NIH funding was to insert furin cleavage sites into sars-like viruses they thought that was a good idea to make construct viruses that would be more dangerous
why
Sachs: not sure but one possible reason is for making vaccines against dangerous SARS like viruses or potential use of this class of virus as a bio Warfare we don't know we just don't know but what we do know is that there was dangerous research underway and we also know that when this virus first showed up in Wan and people said whoa what is this and the virologist looked at this in the NIH group National Institutes of Health Group out of Fauci's shop they said whoa look at that if you're in cleavage site what is that doing there and how did that get there and on February 1st 2020 there was a secret call it's not secret anymore because of Freedom of Information Act but there was a call where a group of virologists said whoa 80/20 just came out of a lab another one said I can't even think of how nature could have done this one another said 50/50. now four days later NIH oversees a draft paper that says definitely natural and I call that definitely weird and people should go to the website of the US right to know which has done a terrific job in these lawsuits and Emily Kopp a fantastic investigative reporter has laid out this remarkable week where inside they say natural and a few days later they I'm sorry inside they say lab and a few days later they say natural not that they learned anything over those three days but they decided to tell us a narrative this is how government works it creates stories it doesn't search for the truth that doesn't aim for the truth that doesn't tell the truth it creates stories and for weird understandable reasons that Noam Chomsky and others have talked about for decades the big media go along with these stories but they're very dangerous because these are stories this is not real investigation or or reality so let me say clearly we don't know exactly where this virus came from but whoa there is a lot of weird stuff and a lot of bad behavior by NIH and very interestingly the head of the Centers for Disease Control in 2020 Bob Redfield said inside hey this really could have come out of a Lab and what did Fauci do he cut him out of all the process and so he played the bureaucratic heavy and out came a narrative and the head of CDC with a lot of expertise in this area was completely shut out because he said you know there's another side to this story we need to look at it so what the Lancet commission concluded because we don't have the lab notebooks we don't have the lab records but what we can see is there is a pathway by which this could have come out of the laboratory for sure there's absolutely nothing even remotely close to definitive that it came out of the marketplace that's been much talked about there's so many holes and flaws and gaps in that story that it it's nothing close to being definitive and perhaps is just a place where sick people went and sneezed on on cages and because of what's called ascertainment bias that's where they looked in the in the beginning because they thought maybe they thought or they decided that maybe it came from the marketplace but the point is we have two viable hypotheses and we need to know and one of the reasons we don't know about the lab is that the U.S government Fauci shop has not told us the truth about what they were doing what the risks are what they thought and how this group made these early decisions and because we don't know we also don't know what else is going on what other research is still going on what other dangerous stuff is going on probably I don't know I shouldn't say probably I don't know but what I do know is nobody knows except the inside of the inside and that is not a that's not a safe situation for this world
well presumably Anthony Fauci knows we know that after 9/11 his National Institute for allergic and infectious diseases NIAD received billions from or under the watch of none other than Dick Cheney to conduct what we're seen as biodefense programs but would you have just acknowledged could also be bio Warfare programs
Sachs: yeah and but either way what is what is not evident to a lot of people is that Fauci's shop is the biodefense shop of the US government it's it's where the defense dollars go and you know maybe make this virus but they don't want us to know what's going on and that's—
let's drill this down in April 2020 promoted a nature magazine article which claimed that covid originated from nature and through FOIA requests the public learned that Fauci was involved in at least corresponding and collaborating with the virologists who put together that article he he probably was involved in the creation of that article itself and this was a cheneyesque act it was like Cheney trying to sell the Iraq War so the question here is what what role do you think Fauci played not only in the cover-up but possibly in the origins of covid-19 and to what extent can he be held accountable
Sachs: first of all that article is an awful article it's it's called the proximal origins of SARS-Cov2 it appeared in nature medicine in March 2020 and when I read it the first time I said oh okay this is natural you know they explain it and when I went back after I you know began to get what was going on because I didn't get it at the beginning… the most remarkable thing in that paper it it just makes your eyes bulge in the moment they say it couldn't have come out of a lab because after all this is this new virus is unlike any previously reported virus is is the line in there then the footnote to that which is footnote 20 is to a 2014 paper—what a joke! they're talking about an outbreak in 2020 and they say it couldn't have been from the lab and they cite a 2014 Authority for that most crucial claim?! and if this were in the least an honest paper the scientists would have said we don't know because we haven't seen the lab books we don't know what the research was, but this is not an honest paper; it was a designed narrative now what really happened we don't know except that there was a lot of dangerous research funded by the U.S government including NIAID and they were quite gung-ho on this gain of function work and the technology to make a SARS-CoV2 virus was pretty plain and we have very clever bioengineers in the United States that charted this out in a 2017 proposal to the defense department page 10 says we have 180 previously more than 180 previously unreported viral strains and on page 11 it says we're going to look for proteolytic Cleavage sites and where they don't exist we're going to insert them and you say holy hell you are thanks for telling us except they didn't tell us that had to be leaked from inside the US government for us to know about that so they charted out the handbook of how to make SARS-CoV2 and then with the straight face they just ignored that the whole time even till now these same scientists that reached the conclusion in March 2020 couldn't have come out from a lab now they're told well there were more than 180 previously unreported strands that comes out do they change their mind do they say oh we didn't know about that no they just carry on straight face this is not science this is a concocted narrative what it means I don't know but it needs an investigation which is what I've been calling for
and and on that investigation Sam husseini who's a friend of the gray Zone veteran researcher on U.S bioweapons helped publicize and expose the role of the US NGO Eco Health Alliance as a channel for USAID funding for gain of function research and we know that Eco Health Alliance was helping to direct the research at the Wan Institute to virology dazek when you appointed him to chair the task force you ran for Lance it was already on the World Health Organization commission he signed and organized the letter dismissing the lab origin as a conspiracy theory he obviously had a conflict of interest because of the funding of the Wan Institute severology even though he ridiculously denied there was a conflict there so I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the role of Eco Health Alliance and how Peter Daszak wound up under your watch as the chair of the task force didn't just waste a lot of time and who who initially put him forward to chair the task force
Sachs: it's a very simple story in early 2020 I believed the natural hypothesis because that's what the scientists were saying and I didn't have any reason to question that and I didn't know about the research that was going on and then I was asked to chair the Lance in commission and I thought well who's the guy that knows about zoonotic spillovers who knows about what's going on with the viruses so I asked dashing no one no one put them forward there was no ulterior thing there was just my naivete in that first six months so I asked him to organize this thing then I learned he's not telling me the truth and he thinks and it my own eyes opening up and being briefed by a number of scientists and being guided: “Jeff look at this understand this this is how this works this is the research that was underway” you know I had a two-year crash course in virology that was quite wonderful with a lot of very generous scientists helping me to understand this but what I did know and I know a lot about government because I've worked with a lot of governments over the last 40 years I knew that there was lying going on and the more I looked into it the more the lies and so that's after at one point I said to Daszak “show me your project documents” he said, “I can't” I said, “what do you mean you can't?! you're you're on a commission that's a transparent commission to get to the bottom of this you show them to me.”..”I can't, my lawyers say I can't”… “oh your lawyers say you can't well you can't be on the commission anymore” okay so that was the first step then the rest of the scientists all attacked me you know you're attacking science and so forth then the next Freedom of Information Act lawsuit dropped the next piece and then I found out the one that was attacking me the most for dismissing dashing was a co-investigator with dashik so I saw I wasn't getting it
who is that?
Sachs: that's Jerry Kirsch at Boston University and somebody I was friends with for a long time but he went after me and then I find out you know he's they're all one way or another not letting on and it's by the way it's not a big group it's a pretty small group but it's the inside group they have the inside track on NIH it's a small group that has talked to each other since the beginning it's a small group that was assembled to write this stuff and it was pretty unpleasant and and I saw that you know this is not this isn't about science this is about transparency this is about finding out what's really going on NIH you know in the lawsuits releases redacted documents meaning blanked out of one of them is the 2020 review of its research on these viruses and it's 290 blank pages and then they want trust from us come on if you want trust from us show us the document not blank pages so this is why we need an independent investigation
let me ask a related follow-up taking this back to Ukraine as we wrap we've seen these allegations or rumors of U.S biological weapons Labs that speculation was fueled earlier this year when Victoria Newlin was asked about it by Marco Rubio but didn't give a direct answer: “does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons”…Newland: “ Ukraine has a biological research facilities which in fact we are now quite concerned Russian troops Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of”… do you think there's any Merit to these rumors or allegations that the U.S has been involved in a biological weapons program inside of Ukraine
Sachs: Merit, that we need to find out we have a system of government which in principle if you're in seventh grade civics or at least when I was 50 years ago or it was more than 50 years ago we learned that there were congressional committees that would oversee the behavior of the executive branch that's what we need right now I don't know the answer to this but I know we need oversight and what I know for sure is we have not had transparency on these key issues and sad to say really since 1947 with the National Security Act and the creation of the CIA our government when it comes to issues like this operates in secrecy we say that we're a democracy but the public doesn't know we're not told when I was young a long time ago the New York Times actually used to do investigative reporting you'd be surprised they they they didn't believe what Johnson was saying and Nixon was was saying about about Vietnam and they were right and there was the Pentagon papers and there was Watergate and when I grew up it was normal that a reporter on the New York Times would actually look into something now it's like a different world. and so the impunity from the mass media is absolutely stunning that's why you know what we're talking about and what you're doing is so important because we're not getting it from the sources that are, quote “the the authoritative sources”; what we're getting is the government line well it's Aaron and I Aaron and I grew up in the Judith Miller era maybe yeah there you go it's incredible it's the opposite yeah I grew up in the Seymour Hirsch era, yes where I love these reporters and you know and their idea was bust these government officials for lying to us and they don't have that view right now well
now we're a conspiracy theorists if we follow inside hersh's footsteps
Sachs: oh I I was attacked that way today yet again by colleagues you know colleagues and it's just they don't understand I mean many people probably really don't understand what this consistent narrative creation lying falsehoods misdirection really is when it comes to all of these sensitive issues and these issues are life and death issues for us
well it's remarkable that more peop more of your colleagues it just seems remarkable to me that more of your colleagues don't speak out more and they did seem to be more outspoken at least within liberal circles during the bush era when the Iraq War started to go bad but now it seems that they've all adopted this mentality in favor of endless escalation I don't know if you can speak to that
Sachs: I don't know you know I'm not I mean I'm I vote Democratic but I I don't feel that we're functional as a democracy and and the last two democratic presidents launched a lot of wars and engaged in a lot of secret operations and I don't like it at all. and I think our foreign policy has basically been run by the neocons for 30 years, and Victoria Newland seems to be in every Administration. and so to my mind I don't like this partisan game well this is on our side you know Fauci's our guy we can't attack him and so on come on it's not these are not partisan issues these are issues about life and death that we need to know about and a lot of people still have a kind of partisan mentality that if the Democrats are in don't attack you know you're be you're part of the team but I don't feel that this is the right approach
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the center for sustainable development at Columbia University president of the UN sustainable development Solutions Network and served as chair of the Lancet covid-19 commission Jeffrey thank you so much for your time and insight yeah great to be with you thanks a lot thank you thanks for what you guys are doing English (auto-generated)
