AT A GUESS, BECAUSE THE REGIME NEEDED HIM TO: Why did Peter Daszak change his mind? New documents reveal he warned against risky research.

Peter Daszak spent many years hunting down bat viruses with Chinese scientists, helped fund their cutting-edge research in Wuhan, and then vociferously led opposition to any suggestions that the pandemic might have been linked to a laboratory in the city. A pugnacious character, the British zoologist would pop up regularly in the media to fiercely dismiss “conspiracy theories”, playing a key role in efforts to stifle debate over the origins of Covid-19.

So how strange to discover that this same man had previously warned that risky research was “intensifying” threats from “lab-enhanced viruses”. In fact, two years before the pandemic erupted, Daszak was involved in drafting a presentation about the dangers of engineered viruses being accidentally or even deliberately released into the world.

In this newly uncovered presentation, the scientist warned that “gain-of-function” research — which boosts the transmissibility of viruses — was “elevating the risk” that “deadly novel biological agents” could be released through accident or design. The document, demanding the urgent development of counter-measures, put such risk at the same level as natural spillover from the wild. It even focused on the specific threat from coronaviruses.

Yet after the pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Daszak headed the charge against those claiming the mysterious new disease might be potentially linked to research in the city, with even the British Medical Journal branding him the leader of the campaign to label such critics as conspiracy theorists.

Little wonder the disclosure of this document has provoked angry claims of hypocrisy.

Indeed. Plus: “Today, Daszak is the $460,368-a-year president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based group that channelled US research funding to Wuhan Institute of Virology until the payments were exposed and terminated by President Trump in April 2020.” Well, there’s a clue.

As somebody said, they told me to follow the science, but instead I followed the money and it led me straight to the science.