(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Dr. Joseph Mercola—a noted vaccine critic who was dubbed “the misinformation superspreader” by the New York Times—suggested that the Obama-era Ebola crisis was likely the result of a lab leak, much like the COVID-19 pandemic, in an America First Report op-ed.
In December of 2013, the Zaire Ebola hemorrhagic fever broke out in Guinea, Africa, spreading rapidly across the continent and killing over 11,000 people.
The death rate of the disease is 53% to 88%, depending on the variant. Symptoms include gastric problems, flu-like symptoms, diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pains, among others.
At the time, researchers traced the origin of the disease to a 2-year-old boy in Meliandou, Guinea, named Emile Ouamouno, who allegedly came into contact with a fruit bat.
But, as Mercola noted, “no Ebolavirus RNA was ever detected in any of the bat samples collected from the area.”
Nonetheless, researchers treated the origin story as definitive.
However, “suspicions and rumors that the Ebola outbreak was the result of a lab leak were present from the start,” Mercola added. “Some scientists even suspected the virus might be a weaponized form of Ebola” given its very high kill rate.
According to Mercola, “persistent rumors in the region linked the outbreak to a U.S.-run research laboratory in Kenema, Sierra Leone. This facility studies viral hemorrhagic diseases, of which Ebola is one.”
The lab in question is located a mere 50 miles from where the outbreak is said to have originated.
As recently as November 2022, however, Robert Garry, the founder and president of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium, still insisted that Ebola “emerged via the wildlife trade.”
In contrast, Kristian Andersen, vice president of the VHFC’s Kenema lab, opposed Garry’s claim and suggested that a leak was entirely possible.
“The problem is that people see these coincidences,” Andersen said. “One of the new ones is the Ebola lab leak, which also is being blamed on us, because we had been studying Ebola in Kenema in Sierra Leone, and lo and behold Ebola emerged just a few miles from there in 2014.”
