Below are two responses (a shorter and a longer one) to Mike Yeadon regarding the January 2020 Corman-Drosten PCR paper and the November 2020 critique that he and others authored. Both address Yeadon’s reply to my Substack Notes questions, which followed comments he made on It’s time for all living authors of the Corman-Drosten Review Report to confront social media science.
Point-by-Point “Conversational Format” Response
Yeadon : Did [Corman et al] design a test based on a rumour?
Yes. The design of the test was based on the contents of rumors.
Yeadon: I thought they based it on sequences lodged in a database of a “virus” called SARS.
Yes and no. They were directed to (or decided to be directed to) the SARS-CoV section of a database because of what social media reports said about the type of virus involved.
Yeadon: China had allegedly already reported an unusual cluster of pneumonia type illnesses in December 2019, hadn’t they?
The report isn’t alleged, if we assume the 30 December 2019 bulletin from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission is authentic, i.e., it was actually issued by a local authoritative body.
The Corman-Drosten paper doesn’t say when or how the authors themselves learned about the “outbreak.” They deferred to the WHO,: “According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown aetiology in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, on 31 December 2019” and cite this page.
The outbreak was alleged — and is unsubstantiated to this day.
Yeadon: Now, I know you know that I have for years recognised that everything about this alleged “pandemic” is a lie. This Corman Drosten test obviously included. There isn’t a legitimate way that a diagnostic test could have been developed. No such thing even conceptually makes any sense.
Agreed. It’s illegitimate, self-serving, and circular. People don’t have to take a “viruses don’t exist” position to see and accept that.
Yeadon: So, whether the authors kicked off their efforts because of unverified claims from China or because of unverified claims of illness from elsewhere, it’s still fraud.
It’s all fraud, but location (i.e, China) has nothing to do with the fact that Corman et al say they were directed by social media reports regarding the kind of virus that was rumored to be causing an outbreak involving unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan.
Yeadon: I’ve stated I was wrong to have allowed myself to have been caught up in it.
Yes you have — here and elsewhere.
Yeadon: Am I the only coauthor to have expressed regret over what I now see as pro-perpetrator propaganda?
I haven’t surveyed all of the authors but Lidiya Angelova (U.S.) has made comparable statements on her Substack.
Yeadon: If there are others, I’m happy to see if we can agree to release a statement to this effect. Not that it would gain publicity. Unless the perpetrators wish it, I retain only “freedom of speech but not of reach.”
No joint statement is required or requested. The surviving authors who are in agreement are, of course, free to issue a statement together if they wish. I would also appreciate clarity on why certain authors’ specific contributions are not listed.1
Suppression and censorship of views that depart from official and permitted-dissent narratives is very much a problem. Arguably, each of our “reach” is many thousands more than the writers of the U.S. Constitution ever envisioned a single individual could have by simply pressing “post” and we can be grateful for the ability to reach thousands of readers near-instantaneously.
Yeadon: Until then, if I have a single unit of effort to expend, I’m going to focus on counselling people to not sign up for digital ID & not to fear any future threats of “pandemic illnesses and vaccinations”.
People should spend time on what they want to spend time on. Most serious analysts, including yourself, have shown themselves capable of expending more than “a single unit.” Ultimately, bandwidth and personal priorities will determine where someone’s attention goes.
Response to Yeadon in Substack Notes (edited slightly from original)
Yes , the design of the Corman-Drosten test was based on the contents of rumors.
“China had allegedly already reported an unusual cluster of pneumonia type illnesses in December 2019, hadn’t they?”
The Eurosurveillance paper never says when its authors first heard of an “outbreak” in Wuhan. Wuhan’s health authority issued emergency notices on 30 December 2019—the same day as at least one tweet.
Around then (we aren’t sure when, possibly that day), as Science later reported, Victor Corman began trawling SARS-related sequences, “trying to guess” what a new SARS-like virus might look like in order to design a test. The design, in other words, rested on rumor-driven suspicion that a SARS-CoV per se was behind the alleged cluster.
Corman et al admitted as much — basically “we went to the SARS section of the database because that’s what social media chatter suggested”. (I’m pretty sure even a 10-year-old would know that’s a problem!)
What if the online buzz had been about an influenza virus instead? Would Corman and Drosten have been involved? Is a staged pandemic even possible without the perpetrators pointing to a potential viral culprit? Why weren’t more and other culprits sought, especially given that most cases of hospitalized pneumonia aren’t pinned on a single causal agent, or any (tested-for) agent at all?
Whatever one thinks about viruses or COVID, this much is true: a scientific paper justified a test design on the basis of social media sightings and the journal editors didn’t require the authors to cite or reference their sources. Both of those things are shocking on their face…no PhD required. This is what, for me, makes it so surprising that the subsequent critique, authored by many well-credentialed individuals, failed to mention it.
I could chalk it up to the chaotic nature of 2020 were it not for the fact that least one critique author (the visual artist, no less!), Bobby Malhotra, called out the reliance on rumor in tweet 65 of his October 2020 thread.
So why wasn’t it included in the final critique?
Was it a deliberate omission to avoid looking stupid, sidestep an indictment of sequencing & testing altogether, or (worse) to protect professional interests? Were all of the critique authors really so invested in the “novel spreading virus” story at that point that they couldn’t see to the most obvious questions to ask? (Clearly not, because Malhotra did.)
I’m not requesting mea culpas or group statements. I want to understand why Malhotra’s observation wasn’t included. Raising the point that he did (and/or points like those Jonathan Engler made in 20232) could have called the bluff on the whole story in 2020…and still could today.
Can you see how highlighting that the test design – and delimiting of sequences (by Corman and by the Chinese scientists who, in very short order, supplied purportedly “novel” and disease-causing sequences) — was based on rumor helps expose fraud, and does so without compelling or insisting on a “No Viruses” view?
Either way, I hope we can agree that declaring “there are no viruses” or “it’s all fraud” doesn’t answer what actually happened and how. It may satisfy you, and (as you said) you are expending efforts elsewhere, but I’m still of the mind that showing that SARS-CoV-2 (like SARS-CoV-1) wasn’t novel and was never shown to cause illness or transmit human-to-human, and that virologists either knew this or should have known this, could help build a bridge for others to cross.
To reiterate, 22 scientists from six different countries said they used rumors in social media reports as the basis of an assumption about the KIND of virus involved in an alleged outbreak. It should have been the first fatal flaw identified in a critique; instead, it was omitted altogether.
Countries and affiliations list for each of the 22 authors on the Corman et al Eurosurveillance paper below:
These were effectively side-stepped by one critique author, from my point of view — at least publicly.
Personal Note/Follow-Up
I didn’t know about the Corman-Drosten protocol, its paper, and the Borger et al. critique for years. The U.S. used the CDC’s PCR test; hence, my was focus was on technologies, FDA approvals, and data patterns here — and on documenting related shenanigans in my state, e.g., https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/for-the-record-my-unpublished-solicited https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/how-the-fda-found-out-about-u-of
If memory serves me correctly*, I learned more about the Corman-Drosten PCR and its architects later, after becoming involved in the international group PANDA.
In summer 2024, I looked into how SARS-CoV-2 was named and corresponded with a virologist involved in the process. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/the-sars-cov-2-name-game-long-read
Shortly thereafter, I read Farewell to Virology (this version: https://www.docdroid.net/UzZBoFi/a-farewell-to-virology-expert-edition-pdf). I THINK it was then that I first noticed that the Corman et al said that they’d assumed from “social media reports” that a rumored outbreak in Wuhan, China, was from a SARS-related coronavirus.
I mentioned it to Jonathan Engler, who pointed me to his own April 2023 “a-ha” and tweet.
Like Engler, I was shocked that scientists would base assumptions about a kind of virus involved in an alleged outbreak on rumor. I was also struck that a scientific journal didn’t require the authors to cite the reports. We later wrote about what those “reports” might have been, relying in part on investigations others had already found and hypothesized. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/did-the-corman-drosten-protocol-rely
Whatever the sources — and regardless of whether the authors truly learned of an alleged outbreak in Wuhan from such sources — the key point for me is that they said their process began with and was guided by online rumors.
That it would take little more anonymous posts on the Internet for virologists from six countries to take unverified reports seriously enough to use it as an impetus or basis for design should concern anyone who values scientific integrity.
Epidemiologists, public health officials, and journal editors might say that social media and online reporting systems are useful (and necessary) for “detecting” outbreaks of serious diseases or “newly emergent” pathogens. By that logic, Victor Corman was clever to act on rumor — and happened to be right! *eyeroll emoji*
But what “checks” were in place to determine if he and his colleagues were wrong? And how do the virologists themselves, know that social media wasn’t used to trick them?
They don’t, and that should concern everyone who wants to make sure the same playbook can’t be used again.
*If my memory is "off" or faulty, I welcome correction.
I understand there’s an opening or two at CDC. I suggest RFK change things up: rather than continuing with the quotas of freaks, charlatans and malevolent demons, why not bring in real, capable researchers with no agenda other than a rigorous, dogged pursuit of the truth; those who will not and cannot be bamboozled by fraudulent data manipulation and fake science employed to inflict tremendous harm on people for profit, power and sheer sadistic delight in evil. Why not bring Jessica Hockett on board? If what CDC seeks is the truth, I have seen no one demonstrably better qualified by their high quality, extensive, rigorous, thorough, determined - and wholly uncompensated - body of work than Jessica Hockett. There may well be others, but if what I have outlined is the goal - and it should be - she unquestionably fits that bill. @Wood_House76 for CDC.