Explosive Report: Wuhan Biolab Captured Bats From Caves Traced To COVID-19 Outbreak, Had US Funding

From Zero Hedge:

Recent findings regarding the origin of COVID-19 continue to support our January reporting that the disease may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology - which was experimenting with bat coronavirus found to be 96% genetically identical to COVID-19.

On Saturday, the Daily Mail added an important piece to the puzzle; the institute was experimenting on mammals captured over 1,000 miles away in Yunnan - which is particularly notable because genetic analysis of COVID-19's genome has traced it to horseshoe bats found in Yunnan's caves.

Horseshoe Bat

Also disturbing is that the lab had been operating in part on a $3.7 million grant from the US government.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that scientists there experimented on bats as part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which continues to licence the Wuhan laboratory to receive American money for experiments.

Results of the research were published in November 2017 under the heading: 'Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.'

The exercise was summarised as: 'Bats in a cave in Yunnan, China were captured and sampled for coronaviruses used for lab experiments. All sampling procedures were performed by veterinarians with approval from the Animal Ethics Committee of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.' -Daily Mail

"Bat samplings were conducted ten times from April 2011 to October 2015 at different seasons in their natural habitat at a single location (cave) in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. Bats were trapped and faecal swab samples were collected," the paper continues.

In April, 2018, a similar study was published by the institute titled "fatal swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by an HKU2-related coronavirus of bat origin," which reveals "Following a 2016 bat-related coronavirus outbreak on Chinese pig farms, bats were captured in a cave and samples were taken. Experimenters grew the virus in a lab and injected it into three-day-old piglets. Intestinal samples from sick piglets were ground up and fed to other piglets as well."

Via the Daily Mail

According to the Mail, Senior Ministers can no longer rule out that the virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory.

It comes after this newspaper revealed last week that Ministers here now fear that the pandemic could have been caused by a virus leaking from the institute.

Senior Government sources said that while 'the balance of scientific advice' was still that the deadly virus was first transmitted to humans from a live animal market in Wuhan, an accident at the laboratory in the Chinese city was 'no longer being discounted'.

According to one unverified claim, scientists at the institute could have become infected after being sprayed with blood containing the virus, and then passed it on to the local community. -Daily Mail

Meanwhile, Cao Bin, a soon-to-be-disappeared doctor at the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital has highlighted research showing that 13 of the first 41 patients diagnosed in Wuhan had zero contact with the 'wet market' commonly described as ground zero for the outbreak. "It seems clear that the seafood market is not the only origin of the virus," he said.

In response to news that the US was partially funding the institute, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-CA) said "I'm disgusted to learn that for years the US government has been funding dangerous and cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute, which may have contributed to the global spread of coronavirus, and research at other labs in China that have virtually no oversight from US authorities."

We're sure the Daily Mail will be banned from Twitter any moment now.

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"Black Swan" Hedge Fund Advised By Nassim Taleb Returns 3,612% In March

From Zero Hedge:

During the financial crisis, when most hedge funds suffered catastrophic returns forcing many to gate their investors, Mark Spitznagel, who is perhaps best known for the phrase "I spend all my time thinking about looming disaster", made what the WSJ reported was "huge gains" with his "black swan"-targeting hedge fund Universa Investments, which not incidentally is advised by Nassim Taleb. Then, in August 2015 during the infamous ETFlash crash, his fund reportedly made a gain of about $1 billion, or 20%, during a single, turbulent day when the VIX briefly broke and ETF trading went haywire for several hours.

Fast forward to March when the biggest "looming disaster" in decades finally struck, and when Universa hit the proverbial payday it was waiting for ever since the inception of its tail-hedge fund - which is basically deep out of the money puts which roll every month - in March 2008.

"It is a good time to reflect again on how we have performed for you as a risk mitigation strategy, if for no other reason than to give you some reassurance and even solace following one of the scariest months for markets on record" Spitznagel writes in his investor letter sent out to clients earlier today, and then delivers the good news: the fund generated a 3,612% return on invested capital in March, and a phenomenal 4,144% year to date.

"These returns likely surpass any other investment that you can think of over the period you have been invested with us. Kudos to you for such a sound “tactical” allocation to Universa", Spitznagel said, taking a well-deserved victory lap, adding that the fund was able to monetize the bulk of the spikes in P&L that it experienced in March, "while keeping downside protection in place throughout, should the market continue lower—one of our tricks of the trade."

Spitznagel went on: "the standalone Universa tail hedge strategy’s life-to-date mean annual net return on invested capital (expressed as returns on a standardized capital investment since inception in March 2008, and using yours from your start date) has been +76% per year. (During this period, as a reminder, the SPX has gained 151%. Are we really such an “über-bearish” strategy?).

In explaining how the Universa fund adds fat-tail protection to a diversified portfolio, Spitznagel writes that:

We have managed to consistently achieve our aim of raising our risk mitigated portfolio CAGRs by lowering risk, pandemic or no pandemic. And, as I have said many times before, it has worked so well simply because of the mathematics of compounding: the big losses are essentially ALL that matter to your rate of compounding, not the small losses—and not even the big or small gains. The big losses literally destroy your geometric returns and, equivalently, your wealth, through what I have called the “volatility tax.” For risk mitigation to be effective, it therefore must focus primarily on mitigating those big, rare losses (the tails). More specifically, risk mitigation must have a very high “bang-for-the buck” in a portfolio when the chips are down in a crash, relative to the portfolio cost of that “buck” the rest of the time—a very “convex” (tail) hedge. None of these other competing strategies have shown that.

Spitznagel also included a performance scorecard, which showed that a portfolio invested 96.7% in the S&P500 and just 3.3% in Universa's Tail Hedge fund, would have had a positive return in March, a month when the S&P dropped 12.4%. The same portfolio - which eliminates the adverse effect on compounding from downside shocks - would have produced a 11.5% CAGR since inception in March 2008 versus 7.9% for the S&P500.

"To put this in perspective, that value-added to the SPX portfolio CAGR life-to-date from a 3.33% allocation to the Universa tail hedge is mathematically equivalent to a 3.33% allocation to an annuity over that same period yielding 102% per year. Let that one simmer for a minute. We are not just another little incremental source of alpha within your portfolio; nor are we just some exotic alternative to a fixed income allocation", the Universa CIO wrote explaining his risk management philosophy.

"Remember, anyone can make money in a crash; it’s what they do the rest of the time that matters. The totality of the payoff is what creates the portfolio effect." 

There is more on how Universa's "risk-mitigation" strategy worked to offset the sharp March losses in the pdf attached below, but what we found more interesting was the brief outlook on markets and the global economy from the Universa CIO, which while pithy, is sufficient concise to recap everything one needs to know about the "market" in the years to come:

Looking ahead, the world remains very much trapped in the mother of all global financial bubbles. This is obvious, a given. Markets were priced for “perfection,” and now, following even more of the greatest monetary stimulus in human history  (much of it in the span of just the last few weeks), they’re still priced for “really good”—still very expensive.

So this is far from over; the current pandemic is merely threatening to pop the bubble. (And, as we all can plainly see, the powers that be are likely running out of ways to keep the bubble inflated.) Make no mistake, it’s the systemic vulnerabilities created by this unprecedented central-bank-fueled bubble, and the crazy, naïve risk-taking and leverage that accompanies it, that makes this pandemic so potentially destructive to the financial markets and the economy.

Is the bubble now popping? When I look deep into my magic crystal ball, it clearly says to me, “There are no magic crystal balls!” And, moreover, those who grandiosely tout their crystal balls need to be avoided in the interest of preservation of capital. Whose crystal ball saw this past quarter coming? Sure, the global pandemic risks were there for all to see (as our colleague Nassim Nicholas Taleb pointed out in his book The Black Swan, some 13 years ago), but no one can ever really see what’s next, what lies around the corner. Despite our performance, that has included us. One’s risk mitigation strategy must reflect that reality.

But if history and economic logic are any guide, if the pandemic doesn’t pop this bubble then, of course, it will be something else that eventually accomplishes this. That’s my Cassandra speech (again).

Full Universa letter below:

• RECOVER LOST FUNDS WITH GLANCY
• 
  

CalPERS Wins "Bad Timing" Award, Unwinds Tail Risk Hedges Weeks Before Coronacrisis Hit

Submitted by Market Crumbs

A few weeks ago, news broke that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) had taken its biggest hit since the financial crisis as a result of the recent market collapse.

CalPERS' fund balance shrunk from $404 billion to $335 billion, signaling a loss of $69 billion in just one month.

"It’s not that we didn’t expect it, although it does seem a little unprecedented in the market," CalPERS' CEO Marcie Frost said at the time. "We were planning for a market downturn or correction in the market for the last couple years."

Despite saying CalPERS was planning for a correction the last couple years, Frost failed to mention at the time the pension exited one of its two hedges.

According to insiders, CalPERS removed one of its two hedges against tail-risk just a few weeks before the coronavirus caused the stock market to plummet.

Although the hedge CalPERS did maintain generated "several hundred million dollars" for the pension, the hedge CalPERS exited would've generated more than $1 billion for the fund.

CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Ben Meng said the hedges were terminated because they were costly and other methods were cheaper, more effective and better suited for CalPERS.

"At times like this, we need to strongly resist 'resulting bias' — looking at recent results and then using those results to judge the merits of a decision," Meng said. "We are a long-term investor. For the size and complexity of our portfolio, we need to think differently."

CalPERS was warned about giving up on the hedges at an August 2019 meeting with one of its consultants at Wilshire Associates.

"Remember what those are there for," said Andrew Junkin, consultant at Wilshire Associates, according to transcripts from the meeting. "In normal markets, or in markets that are slightly up or slightly down, or even massively up, those strategies aren’t going to do well. But there could be a day when the market is down significantly, and we come in and we report that the risk-mitigation strategies are up 1,000%."

Last year Meng called for a review of CalPERS' tail-risk hedging as part of a plan to reduce the number of outside managers the fund used. A number of employees at CalPERS were against the idea, but CalPERS decided to redeem its funds from one of the two managers in October, with the position closed in January.

Ironically, the outside manager that CalPERS redeemed its funds from was none other than Universa Investments, which is advised by Nassim Taleb, author of the best seller "The Black Swan." Universa Investments generated a 3,612% return in March and 4,144% return year to date.

The terminated hedge that would've generated more than $1 billion for CalPERS returned more than 3,600% in March, validating the warning Junkin gave to CalPERS' executives and board members.

The other hedge, through LongTail Alpha, was terminated on March 31. Factoring in the hundreds of millions of dollars the hedges cost CalPERS in the years leading up to the pullback, it seems likely the company may not have generated any profits on the two hedges.

So whether the moral of the story is always have a hedge for the most unexpected outcome, listen to your consultant or trust your employees' instincts, CalPERS learned an expensive lesson by giving up on a hedge that cost the fund an immaterial amount compared to the payoff it was intended to provide.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr. Exposes Bill Gates' Vaccine Agenda In Scathing Report

Authored by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chairman, Children’s Health Defense,

Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.

Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.

Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain.

[ZH: The CDC has a large financial interest in pushing untested vaccines on the public and WHO is even more under the control of Big Pharma. The organization is corrupt beyond the meaning of the word. “The WHO is a sock puppet for the pharmaceutical industry.” — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

During Gates’ 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis.

South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.” Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philanthropic practices as “ruthless and immoral.”

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.

In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, “We must make this the decade of vaccines.”

A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”.

In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a  “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade.  Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines.

In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.

A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually.

Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development.

The Gates Foundation only spends about $650 million of its $5 billion dollar budget on these areas. 

They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.

In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine.

In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children.

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