Brownstone Institute
The Amateur Who Unraveled Wuhan
From the Brownstone Institute
BY
Tye’s unique perspective on China’s restrictive policies intensified his curiosity about the pandemic’s origins in early 2020. Amidst rampant speculation, his fluency in Chinese, and a decade of cultural immersion enabled him to explore overlooked open-source data, distinguishing him from those content with merely accepting information as presented.
Matthew Tye, an independent documentarian with a chronicled decade of living in (and motorcycling throughout) China, developed a profound understanding of its culture and language. In March 2020, Tye emerged as a singular figure in the scrutiny of the origins of the Covid-19 virus, using primary sources such as job postings and communications between Chinese researchers – putting to shame a New York Times reporter’s top-down approach of channeling Dr. Fauci (who himself may have been channeling CCP agitprop).
Yet despite Tye’s intricate and subtle discoveries linking the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the outbreak, his word didn’t travel much further than his own YouTube channel – along with one National Review article that similarly did not reverberate beyond its own innate viewership. This scenario underscores a poignant irony: in a digital age where (mis)information can circulate the globe instantaneously, platforms that could have amplified truth – Google, Facebook, Twitter – and the CDC – became custodians of silence, diverting public gaze from the “inconvenient truths” of China’s duplicity and the American deep state’s complicity – during the pandemic’s early days.
Before the pandemic reshaped global narratives, Tye was known for his engaging videos that captured the essence of living in China. He shared insights ranging from cultural explorations like Mahjong and the perceptions of tattoos in Chinese society, to more profound observations about the places where Chinese millionaires aspire to live in the US, and even a quest for China’s rumored “white people.” His documentaries and motorcycle journeys through China’s most remote and fascinating locales revealed China through an unfiltered lens.
Tye, deeply integrated into life in China through marriage and fatherhood, found himself compelled to leave the country in haste in 2018. This decision came after a chilling revelation: the public security bureau in Huizhou was circulating his photo, making him a target – due to his involvement in drone photography, albeit through Chinese contractors.
Relocating to California, Tye’s unique perspective on China’s restrictive policies intensified his curiosity about the pandemic’s origins in early 2020. Amidst rampant speculation, his fluency in Chinese, and a decade of cultural immersion enabled him to explore overlooked open-source data, distinguishing him from those content with merely accepting information as presented.
Tye’s scrutiny of China’s coronavirus response, detailed in his January 2020 critique “China Doesn’t Have This Under Control,” stemmed from skepticism of China’s motives and practices after long personal experience with both. Tye highlighted the country’s counterfeit N95 masks, censorship, hasty (and shoddy) construction of instant hospitals, hypocritical approach to travel restrictions; locking down its own cities while exporting the infected to Europe. Tye was unflinching in his analysis.
In a climate where the Chinese government was vigorously attempting to deflect inquiries into the virus’ origins, suggesting Italy, Russia, or elsewhere, Tye focused on the “metadata” resting only slightly below the surface, accessible to the curious, e.g. the enigmatic disappearance of 21 million cellphone subscriptions in China’s coinciding with the onset of strict lockdown measures; and discrepancies in Covid-19 statistics between China and open societies.
In late March 2020, he delved into the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s online presence, where he uncovered job postings and discussions from November 2019 that hinted at research on bat coronaviruses with potential human transmission. His most startling discovery in April 1, 2020’s “I Found The Source of the Coronavirus” involved a researcher who vanished from public view, with only opaque reassurances from the institute regarding her well-being. These findings were significant not just for their content but for the method of discovery; Tye relied on straightforward internet searches, bypassing the layers of censorship and obfuscation that can hinder such inquiries to China itself.
National Review’s Jim Geraghty did a thorough appraisal (April 3, 2020) of (the improbable) Matthew Tye’s groundbreaking findings:
“It is understandable that many would be wary of the notion that the origin of the coronavirus could be discovered by some documentary filmmaker who used to live in China [yet] a great deal of the information that he presents, obtained from public records posted on the Internet, checks out.”
“On December 24, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology posted a second job posting, “long-term research on the pathogenic biology of bats carrying important viruses has confirmed the origin of bats of major new human and livestock infectious diseases such as SARS and SADS, and a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified.— which Tye contends meant, “we’ve discovered a new and terrible virus, and would like to recruit people to come deal with it.””
“He also contends that “news didn’t come out about coronavirus until ages after…doctors in Wuhan knew that they were dealing with a cluster of pneumonia cases…(The Chinese government waited three weeks before it) notified the World Health Organization of a “mystery pneumonia”.””
Moreover, Mr. Geraghty notes, “Scientific American verifies much of the information Tye mentions about Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed “Bat Woman.”“
Despite the impactful nature of his findings, Tye’s work attracted zero “mainstream media” recognition.
The New York Times, CNN, BBC, and the Wall Street Journal have never referenced or mentioned his contributions. Jack Dorsey’s Twitter (FBI-collaborative Vichy regime) nominally allowed but likely stifled his scoop’s spread. The largest retweet Tye’s discovery (via NR and Laura Ingraham) got was a mere 2.6K retweets.
Fortunately, Matthew Tye had done a reasonable job of building his channel (founded in 2012) to 1 million subscribers. The smoking gun, “I Found The Source of the Coronavirus” video has 2.4 million views (but still appends a CDC banner, ironically).
His YouTube channel’s residuals represent his sole means of support (along with Patreon). And, boy does he need it! China is very well able to recognize any thorn in its side and retaliate appropriately. There are a number of vloggers’ casting aspersions on his reputation, incessantly scouring his 653 videos for ad hominem shots. China took the direct approach of offering him a stipend to soften his approach. Upon his refusal, the CCP pivoted: as Matthew Tye explains, “The CCP Stopped All Brands From Working With Me,” pressuring “companies not to work with people critical of the communist party of China.”
Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Drexel commented in CNBC July 13, 2021:
“Tye receives a constant barrage of online harassment, most recently in the form of English-language CCP shills attempting to portray him as a white supremacist. But Tye has also encountered CCP censorship within the U.S.: while these same shills have their popularity artificially inflated by bots and wumao (“the 50 Cent Army,” reportedly paid RMB¥0.50 /post), China’s wumao also found ways to demonetize Tye’s videos on YouTube — throttling their view count and revenue.”
Remarkably, the Chinese media have sought to counter his influence by promoting a look-alike American to disseminate pro-China commentary, an effort to muddle perceptions and discredit Tye.
The doppelgänger lacks Tye’s insight and charisma, falling short of China’s past successes in brand mimicry. This misstep isn’t just a failed attempt at replication; it’s emblematic of a deeper irony. Once, China transformed from knockoff king to luxury label owner, turning ‘Made in Italy’ into a lucrative venture: purchasing high-end Italian brands; transplanting 250,000 workers – this irony came full circle when China exported Covid-19 cases direct to Milan. In early 2020, Wuhan residents were prohibited from traveling elsewhere within China, but NOT abroad – a policy that uncaringly transplanted the crisis.
Matthew Tye’s work cuts through the modern trend (both in journalism and intelligence-gathering) of reliance on remote technologies and “chatter” for insights. Tye embodies the essence of investigative journalism: direct, human-centric inquiry. His journey across China, engaging directly with its people and culture, provides a depth of understanding and insight that remote observation cannot replicate. His ability to uncover significant information about the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, armed with little more than dedication and direct observation, sets a powerful example for both journalists and intelligence agencies alike. A private military intelligence support group, NSI, did hire him for its speaker series in 2022. This recognition suggests a possible reconsideration of the imbalance between technology-driven and human-centric methods of understanding our world.
Matthew Tye, a modern-day Renaissance man with an insatiable curiosity for knowledge, embodies the spirit of those who discover profound truths not through targeted pursuit but by virtue of their expansive interests and experiences. Like the amateur, Michael Ventris, who deciphered Linear-B, Tye’s journey into the heart of China – fueled by a passion for exploration, whether cruising on his motorcycle, embracing the culture, or building a family – was never aimed at uncovering any secrets, let alone the enormously consequential origin story of a global pandemic.
Yet, it was this very openness and his immersion in what he describes as the “Gray Zone” of 1990s-2000s China – a time of burgeoning commerce and interaction – that ultimately positioned him to discern the shift towards a “Red Zone” of increased paranoia and restriction beginning around 2013, emblematic of the later Chinese government’s approach to Covid-19.
Tye’s departure from China, propelled by the government’s growing suspicion, marks a poignant end to his exploration but also highlights the critical insights gained from a life lived in earnest curiosity. His story not only sheds light on the changing dynamics within China but also on the invaluable contributions of those who navigate the world with open hearts and minds, revealing truths that shape our understanding of global events.
Brownstone Institute
The Most Devastating Report So Far
From the Brownstone Institute
By
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
Brownstone Institute
The Revolution of 2024: A Rare Victory for Anti-Establishment Fury
From the Brownstone Institute
By
The sudden coming together of three great sectors of anti-establishment fury – MAGA, MAHA, and DOGE – in the last two months of the election of 2024 is one for the ages.
People are out and about, smiling at each other. It’s been true since the morning after the election, the results of which defied every prediction. Who doesn’t like to see the smug elites who have ruled the world for five awful years taken down a peg?
More than that, there are hints of a return to sanity. Mainstream advertisers are suddenly returning to X, putting their economic interest above their tribalist loyalties. The editor of pro-lockdowns Scientific American, which had long blessed totalitarian measures as true science, has resigned.
The attempt to pillage InfoWars and give it to The Onion has been reversed by a federal judge. That might be a fluke or might not be: maybe the lawfare is dialing back too. The cabinet of the incoming administration is being filled by voices that were fully censored for years. Employees are reportedly packing their bags at the FDA and other agencies.
Mainstream news commentators are sputtering around with less bravado than they have shown in years. CNN is firing major personalities.
Trump is talking about abolishing the income tax and granting $10K in tax credits per homeschooled child, not to mention blowing up college accreditation systems, among other sweeping changes.
The American Bastille day is coming, not only freeing the political prisoners of January 6 but also many of the unjustly persecuted including Ross Ulbricht, Roger Ver, and Ian Freeman, among so many others. That will be a day of rejoicing.
Oh, and peace seems to have broken out in some contentious areas of the world, for now.
What is happening? This is not the usual transfer of the resident of the White House. This is starting to look like an actual transfer of power, not just from Biden to Trump but from the permanent government – ensconced in many sectors – that has been long in hiding to an entirely new form of government responsive to actual voters.
As it turns out, there was no late surge for Kamala Harris. All the polls were wrong, and the rest was media blather. What was correct were the betting odds on Polymarket, and only days later, the FBI raided the 26-year-old founder’s home and confiscated his phone and laptop.
There are still many millions of missing voters, people who supposedly showed up for Biden in 2020 but stayed home this time. Meanwhile, there has been a historic shift in all races, ethnicities, and regions, with even the possibility of flipping California from blue to red in the future.
After decades of academic slicing and dicing of the population according to ever more eccentric identity buckets involving race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual interest, along with countless thousands of studies documenting deep complexity over intersectionality, the driving force of the election was simple: class, and the few intellectuals and some wealthy entrepreneurs who understand that.
The division was not really left vs right. It was workers vs laptoppers, wage earners vs six-figure stay-at-homers, bottom half vs top 5 percent, people with actual skills vs weaponized resume wielders, and those with affection for old-world values vs those whose educations have beaten it out of them for purposes of career advancement.
The silent majority has never been so suddenly loud. It just so happened that the heavily privileged had come to inhabit easily identifiable sectors of American society and, in the end, had no choice but hitch the whole of the overclass wagon to the fortunes of a candidate like themselves (Kamala) but who was unable to pull off a compelling masquerade. Not even a parade of well-paid celebrity endorsements could save her from total rebuke at the polls.
Sylvester Stallone called Trump a second George Washington but another reference point might be Andrew Jackson. The overwhelming victory for Trump is on a scale not seen since 1828 when, four years after the presidency was stolen from Jackson, Old Hickory came back in a wild landslide and cleaned up Washington. Trump arrives in Washington with a mandate for the same, with 81% of the public demanding that the government shrink in size and power.
It has all happened so quickly. We are barely ten days into the realization of what just transpired and the entire lay of the land seems different, like a tectonic shift in politics, culture, mood, and possibilities. We are even seeing blunt and open talk about the horrendous Covid response that so utterly demoralized the country and the world, after years of silence on the topic. We have promised hearings coming, and court cases galore now on fast track.
The sudden coming together of three great sectors of anti-establishment fury – MAGA, MAHA, and DOGE – in the last two months of the election of 2024 is one for the ages. It provides the beginnings of an answer to the great question on our minds for decades: how precisely does an authentic revolution take root in an industrialized Western democracy? Are elections capable of delivering real results?
For now, the answer seems to be yes. That should thrill any responsible observer of social, cultural, economic, and political affairs. It means that the early architects of the American system were not wrong. The intolerable costs of political upheaval of ages past can be mitigated by planting power firmly in the hands of the people through the plebiscite. This was their view and their gamble. All the evidence of our time points to the wisdom of the idea.
In the darkest days of the last year of the first Trump presidency, the bureaucracy was riding high, in full revenge mode against an elected government it hated and sought to overthrow. The agencies were passing strange edicts that felt like laws but no one knew for sure. You are essential, you are not. You must stay home, unless you have an emergency. Your elective surgery needs to wait. The kids cannot go to school. That European vacation cannot happen. You can eat at a restaurant but only if you are six feet away from other patrons and you must put this China-made cloth on your mouth if you get up to go to the restroom.
The flurry of edicts was mind-boggling. It felt like martial law, because it was some form of exactly that. The best research points to the astonishing reality that this was never really a public-health response but a scheme by security and intelligence sectors to enact some kind of global color revolution, which is why the policies were so similar the world over. It was indeed an awesome display of power, one that invaded all our communities, homes, and families.
No one knows this better than Team Trump, even if there has been near silence on the topic for all these years. They have had time to put the pieces together and figure out what happened and why. And they carefully, and in seclusion worthy of a Cistercian monastery, plotted their return, leaving nothing to chance.
Meanwhile, the past two years have had the Covid insurrectionists quietly stepping away from the spotlight, while leaving as much of their newfound power in place: the censorship, the technology, the mandates, and the propaganda that all of this shock-and-awe was nothing more than “common sense health measures.” It was never tenable, and vast numbers have come to realize that something went very wrong, like a kind of evil settled over the world and burrowed itself within all institutions.
In an instant, the whole scheme seems to be crumbling. The incredible result is that the administration under which this calamity occurred is now coming back, which is probably the strangest irony of our times.
And yet, even though no one has yet been open about precisely what happened in the White House in March 2020 to cause Trump to greenlight the lockdowns, there is a widespread belief that it was never really his choice. It was some kind of coup – egged on even by his closest advisors and the VP – that he either could not stop or lacked the personnel to marshal effective resistance. Regardless, he has been forgiven because, implausibly, the next administration not only owned the worst of it but added even more on top of that, including the wicked combination of mask mandates, forced injections, and continued school closures.
The result has been a continuing economic crisis, one far worse than agencies admit, in addition to a health, education, and cultural crisis. Meanwhile, all those involved in causing this from behind the scenes have been rewarded with professorships, loving interviews in the mainstream media, and lavish security provisions to protect them from legions of what they suppose are angry workers and peasants.
Therefore, among many of the ruling class, the results of this election are certainly not welcome, and nor are many of the early appointments. They represent the coming together of MAGA, MAHA, and DOGE, the fulfillment of decades of cultivation of disparate groups of dissidents who had not previously realized their common interests and common enemies. It was the Covid era and the imposition of top-down rule that brought them all together.
It was like three groups wandering around in a giant maze who suddenly confront each other and then, realizing that they all shared the same predicament, figure the way out together. These new alliances have not only shattered right and left, as traditionally understood, but reshaped the structural basis of political activism for the duration. It turns out that medical freedom, food freedom, free speech, political freedom, and peace all go together. Who knew?
The incumbent world of academia, think tanks, and most media simply finds itself unprepared to deal with the new realities. They had hoped everyone would forget about the last five years as if it was just a thing that happened but is now over; everyone just needs to grapple with the great reset and learn to love our new lives of surveillance, propaganda, censorship, perpetual war, poison food, unaffordable everything, and endless injections of potions for our own health and well-being.
Well, times have changed. How much? Early signs point to a dramatic unfolding of revolutionary change over the coming months. Is believing this the triumph of hope over experience? Absolutely. Then again, no one believed five years ago that most people in the world would be locked in their homes and communities, stuck drinking and streaming movies until biotech could come up with a cure for a respiratory virus with a zoonotic reservoir. Then it did not work and made people more sick than ever.
That was nuts but it happened.
If that could happen, with predictable results, the response could be equally implausible and more much thrilling. What’s man made can be unmade by man, and something new built in its place.
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