Twitter confirmed on Sunday that they permanently suspended the account of market website “Zero Hedge” in connection with an article they shared on the platform, linking the Wuhan coronavirus bioweapon to a particular scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Banned for outing a bioweapon expert
Not only did libertarian-leaning market monitor Zero Hedge trace the cause of the global economic disaster back to a biotech lab in Wuhan, China, they narrowed it down to the possible “father” of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus. Dr. Peng Zhou, Ph.D., a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He is also head of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group. Big Brother isn’t happy that the public knows that.
Zero Hedge generally concerns itself with reporting on dry and dusty Wall Street stock report news. They never expected to find themselves under a full scale censorship attack. Considering that assessments of just how bad the economic damage will be are just now coming in, Zero Hedge would definitely have an interest in it’s cause.
They didn’t publish anything that wasn’t already public knowledge, everything they reported was on the lab’s public website. That didn’t stop Twitter from taking the exceptionally heavy handed position of permanently banning a well respected business with over 670,000 followers. On Sunday, the social media platform confirmed the lifetime banishment “for violating platform manipulation policy.” Apparently, their big mistake was suggesting that people “pay him a visit.”
This is a shift in tactics for Twitter. In the past, they generally flagged “false information” and left it up. Under the new policy, in the wake of the virus pandemic, “those who engage in coordinated attempts to spread disinformation at scale about coronavirus issues will be removed from the service.” They also promise to “take down misinformation about the virus.”
Zero Hedge pushes back
When they first got Twitter’s notice on Friday, which accused Zero Hedge of breaking Twitter’s “rules against abuse and harassment,” they thought it was about a related story. They were wrong. It turned out that someone at left-leaning Buzzfeed dropped a dime on them for their story, “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?”
Editors at Zero Hedge are outraged. “We are confident that we did not violate any of the stated Twitter terms: We neither incited harassment nor did we ‘dox’ the public official, whose contact information is as of this moment listed on the Wuhan Institute’s website.”
Still reeling from the shock, they’re convinced Twitter is out to get them. “As such, we find the suspension arbitrary and unjustified and potentially motivated by reasons other than the stated ones.”
The exact passage that got them in trouble was this. “Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay [the doctor] a visit.” They list his email and phone number.
The ‘Father’ of 2019-nCoV Bioweapon
According to their article, the official story that “someone ate bat soup at a Wuhan seafood and animal market” was the cause of the outbreak “is a fabricated farce.” The true reason why it’s spreading like wildfire is because, it’s a bioweapon. “A weaponized version of the coronavirus (one which may have originally been obtained from Canada), was released by Wuhan’s Institute of Virology.” Either by accident, or on purpose.
It’s common knowledge that the level-4 biohazard lab studies “the world’s most dangerous pathogens.” Zero Hedge ran their website through Google’s translation program and dug up a fascinating help wanted post from a little over a year ago. Dr. Peng Zhou was looking for two “post-doc fellows” to work with “bats to research the molecular mechanism that allows Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses to lie dormant for a long time without causing diseases.” Zhou is listed as “Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group.”
Fascination with bats
Zhou is fascinated with bats because they are, in his words, a “super-mammal.” Bats “fine-tune antiviral defenses to balance an effective, but not an overt, response against viruses.” He seems to be the world’s top expert on bat virus and immunology.
A press release from his lab is titled, “How bats carry viruses without getting sick.” The post states, “in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, and bats can maintain just enough defense against illness without triggering a heightened immune reaction.” Humans can’t do that. Instead, when we encounter the same virus, “an immune-based over-response… can trigger severe illness.” For example, Zhou writes, “in humans, an activated STING pathway is linked with severe autoimmune diseases.”
It’s clear from Zhou’s work that some “mutant Coronavirus strains” are “not resistant to any natural immune pathway, and now appear to be out in the wild,” Zero Hedge writes.
