Uncovering the Mystery of COVID-19: Tracing the Origins of the Coronavirus Pandemic

David S. Truman: The result of prodigious research of very high standards. Research carried out diligently and methodically undertaken. In spite of deliberate obstruction and obfuscation. It is a remarkable achievement and a fascinating insight into the reality of the origin of Covid-19. Not a very easy read but it is absolutely worth your time!

United Kingdom on Aug 28, 2023

hayekuk: All of 2020, anyone suggesting that perhaps a Chinese lab was the origin of Covid, was called a conspiracy theorist, racist, a loon and a hater. People were banned and shadow-banned from social media for suggesting it; ‘fake news’ plastered all over their posts, health warnings attached. Until Biden ordered an investigation. One year later, a lab is thought to have been the birthplace of Covid. Author Matt Ridley was one of the first to see through the hysteria. He chose the scientific method of questioning and rebuttal to the dogmatic consensus blindness some trued to impose. Five stars, all the way.

United Kingdom on Mar 14, 2023

PaulDirac: Dr. Alina Chan is a virologist, she and Matt Ridley produced a blood chilling book about the emergence and origin of SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In many ways this is an attempt to take China to a court of public opinion for their obfuscation and attempts to hide the data concerning the origin of Covid-19.
A special narrative is given place to the WHO which proved to be ineffective in policing China, and several world famous western virologists who helped fund the Chinese Wuhan laboratories, including the extremely controversial Gain of Function research.
Why bother, you ask, it’s done and dusted.
In this field, like many others, we need to start being independent and critical even of “experts”, out of the 27 signatories of the letter proclaiming that this virus can’t be the product of a lab leak, it turns out 25 were in China’s pay.
The book is very readable but has extensive key viral biology explained in plain language, great job guys.

United Kingdom on Dec 19, 2022

ky: A very disappointing tale which Alina Chan & Matt Ridley tell masterfully. Their forensic attention to the detail makes this book a delight to read. I presume it will not be available in Chinese translation and on sale in all good bookshops from Canton to Beijing? And in that fact lies the soul of this story. Many Chinese citizens have shown how brave, honest, clever, and well meaning they are, doing the right thing, because it is the right thing to do. But an autocratic dictatorship does not change its spots whatever the century.
Dr Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance comes across as self serving and duplicitous. He has not acquitted himself well in this pandemic. I am surprised he has not been arrested and questioned for obstructing the investigation into the cause of so many deaths. Daszak’s lack of integrity and downright dishonesty would appear to have helped the CCP hide the truth. But he is not alone. Many Western scientist and journalists have shown a decided lack of judgment. Whatever happened to follow the data, follow the science?
Dr Fauci and the NIH, in funding gain-of-function projects at WIV, has shown a level of naivety completely inexplicable at his...

United Kingdom on Aug 03, 2022

Cjbevan: One of the authors, Matt Ridley, I first heard on youtube; and after the second time around I then looked up this book, which he co-authored. The idea of the lab-leak origin has been around for a while, mooted by people such as Bret Weinstein , and notoriously publicised by Donald Trump, immediately thus discrediting the idea in the eyes of many.
The book goes carefully though the data, the theory, and the history of the trawl for data, in order to try to find out the story behind it. A strange, perhaps bizarre and even possibly sinister conclusion is that there is no conclusive evidence produced as to its origin; it remains unknown.
This is strange, even bizarre, because an enormous amount of energy has been expended at this question, and a lot of very well equipped minds and laboratories have endeavoured to find it, and so far, found nothing at all. It is sinister, because at every stage of meaningful links or evidences being found, the Chinese government systematically has destroyed evidences and data, obfuscated explanations, or forbade examination.
For these reasons; the destruction of data, and the forbidding of examination, and the disingenuous, obfuscation of...

United Kingdom on Mar 18, 2022

Sotto voce: It was in 2012 that a >97-99%, ACTG protein production instruction set for SARS-Covid later covid-19 was genetically revealed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). No one was told. Unintended papers inferred and 18 months later admitted that 2 mining victims were the first humans to die in that year. A WIV chief would early on say that the peculiar mining deaths were meaningless. People die in small villages every day. Nothing would come of it. Except, that chief knew and was operationally expert with a very dark secret. She had a famous American scientist associate who knew the same thing.

China's Covid-19 secrets have been progressively revealed by an informal, global team of known and anonymous data scientists, odd fellows and viral scientists coagulated online under the acronym "Drastic" to embrace the challenge of discovering "Where did covid-19 come from?"

Have we heard about the "bombshell" investigation from Drastic and perhaps a majority of esteemed virologists dissatisfied with CCP response? No, the MSM has not mentioned that a majority of virologists with a few staunch, well-known, exceptions have come to accept that a Wuhan lab escape proposition....

United States on Dec 14, 2021

A. Menon: Almost two years into the Pandemic facing a further mutated and more infectious virus there is no conclusion on the origin of the virus. There is also a complete lack of interest out of China to allow for a forensic investigation and the consequences of which is that there is now a significant lack of trust in the conclusions out of China or the WHO. Viral explores this topic with much detail and gives the whole history of interaction between scientists in China and their international peers. Furthermore they go through how random individuals trawling through public databases found clues about the genome overlap Covid-19 and bat genomes associated with miner deaths in Yunnan a decade ago. The story is woven together well and the cases are made for both sides with the evidence weighing more heavily, but not with certainty, on a virus accidentally escaping from a lab. It is quite gripping as well as highly concerning.

The book weaves together a dense story starting with the mysterious death of several miners in Mojiang County in 2012. In a bat cave in this county several miners came down with pneumonia and significant health deterioration with unknown origins. Speculations...

United States on Nov 23, 2021