One of the smoking guns in the ongoing Trump administration probe into the COVID-19 cover-up is evidence suggesting that the Chinese suspected the novel virus may have neurological symptoms just weeks after it was officially identified, despite the fact that coronaviruses, historically, primarily affect the respiratory and digestive systems. 

Specifically, two scientists listed as authors on the first Chinese patent for a COVID-19 vaccine—that remarkably came about a month after the virus crossed the border into the U.S.—are affiliated with a neuroscience institute in Beijing that works closely with the Chinese military. 

The presence of these two researchers on the early 2020 vaccine patent in China is puzzling to federal investigators probing the origins of COVID-19, and its cover-up, because many of the virus’s long-term neurological effects were not a focus of Western scientists until much later. 

Patent filed in China one month after COVID hits U.S.

The patent was filed on February 24, 2020, only about one month after the first laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 case appeared in the United States and shortly before the World Health Organization declared the spread of the virus a global health pandemic. 

The patent was submitted by three Chinese entities—two located at the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing, the Institute of Microbe Epidemy and the Institute of Military Medicine. The application describes the process Chinese vaccine makers would use to prepare a “COVID-19 protein vaccine” and “a drug for preventing or treating the COVID-19.”

Eleven Chinese scientists are listed as the inventors, including one previously identified by Senate researchers probing COVID-19 origins—Zhou Yusen, director of the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity at the Academy of Military Sciences. 

Zhou previously researched and developed vaccines for SARS and MERS—two coronavirus variants similar to COVID-19. He also partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on at least two occasions.

Aside from questions about how rapidly Zhou and his team were able to file their patent, two of the scientists carry a perplexing affiliation with the Institute of Military Cognition and Brain Sciences at the Beijing Academy of Military Sciences. Little public information is available about the two scientists, Yan Li and Gencheng Han, but another published scientific paper identifies both researchers as part of the institute. At the time, before the spread of the new coronavirus was even considered a pandemic, COVID-19’s neurological symptoms were largely unknown in the West. 

This has raised the suspicions of federal officials, who are questioning why scientists who specialize in neurology were not only consulted but participated in developing the first COVID-19 patent. 

Weaponizing neurology is part of China's larger plan

Additionally, the Institute of Military Cognition and Brain Sciences is an opaque component of the Academy of Military Sciences and is home to scientists pursuing research into the Chinese military’s growing focus on achieving “mental/cognitive dominance,” which People’s Liberation Army strategists believe is important for future military conflicts.

Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, says that China is engaged in a comprehensive strategy to replace the United States and that the cover-up of the early emergence of COVID-19 is part of that scheme. 

“China has a plan to replace the United States, and they're working at it every single day. And I don't say that to scare people, that's the reality. They want to beat us technologically, militarily, economically and diplomatically. And the sooner we wake up to that, the better,” Congressman Darin LaHood told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday. 

“And we've seen evidence of this through Huawei and what China… has done with Huawei, what we they've done with TikTok, what they've done now with Deep Seek, what they did…in terms of lying and being deceitful with the Wuhan virus,” he continued. 

Possibly part of that effort: Chinese military strategists are actively developing new methods for using neurology to gain advantages on the battlefield, according to Elsa Kania, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security. 

“On the battlefield, attempts to undermine an adversary could include interfering with the adversary’s capacity for cognition, whether through manipulation or out-right destruction, from disrupting the flow of data to exploiting ideology or emotion,” she wrote in January 2020 for U.S. National Defense University magazine, Prism, which focuses on “emerging disruptive technologies.”

Kania concluded that this effort is connected to the Institute of Military Cognition and Brain Sciences, where one researcher by the name of Zhou Jin, who focuses on brain science and neural engineering, also contributed to “an expert group on psychological warfare and cognitive technology” through a high-level defense planning body in China. 

Dr. Robert Kadlec, former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Health and Human Services Department during the first Trump administration, was the first to raise questions about the unusual participation of neuroscientists in the early vaccine research and patent process. Dr. Kadlec played a central role in Operation Warp Speed and held numerous executive and legislative branch positions in biodefense and intelligence matters. 

In a report he wrote—"A Critical Review of COVID-19 Origins: Hidden in Plain Sight”— first published last September, Dr. Kadlec called Zhou’s collaboration with the brain institute “unusual for early vaccine research.” 

“Significantly, their published research provided limited, or no data of neuropathology observed in the experimental animals, or the neuroprotection afforded by the vaccine,” he wrote. 

“Institute of Military Cognition researchers’ involvement in such studies suggest an interest in the vaccine’s protection against SARS-CoV-2 early in the outbreak before evidence of its neurological effects were widely known,” Dr. Kadlec added later. 

You can read Dr. Kadlec’s report below: 

COVID's neurological impact

U.S.-based researchers, as recently as last year, found long-term neurological symptoms in patients previously infected with the COVID-19 virus that can last up to 3 months post-infection. These effects include neurocognitive deficits and sleep disturbances, according to research from Duke University. 

Another 2022 study published in Nature, found that, following the acute phase of COVID-19 infection, patients are at an increased risk of neurological symptoms such as ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, cognition and memory disorders, peripheral nervous system disorders, and episodic disorders (i.e., migraine, seizures, etc.) 

Some of the earliest research on COVID-19’s neurological effects came after the Chinese scientists submitted their vaccine patent. One of the first studies on these symptoms was published in April 2020 by a team composed of mostly Chinese doctors who observed cases in Wuhan, China firsthand. However, data collection for this study was ongoing just five days before the vaccine patent was submitted. 

More support for "lab leak" theory scoffed at by Fauci, Biden, legacy media

Suspected early knowledge of neurological systems and the unusual circumstances surrounding the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine patent could potentially provide further evidence to support the theory that the novel coronavirus was not of natural origin, but instead manufactured—for research or nefarious purposes—in a laboratory. 

Investigators are also pursuing another lead that shows an elite team of U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency scientists concluded in the summer of 2020 that COVID-19 likely was genetically manufactured and escaped a Chinese lab rather than evolving in nature, Just the News reported on Monday. But, that conclusion failed to make it into the official government assessments of the lab-leak theory.

The long-hidden study was only recently released by U.S. intelligence agencies responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, and is now also at the center of the ongoing investigation.

A DIA National Center for Medical Intelligence presentation showed the scientists concluded that the “SARS-CoV-2 Spike Appears to be a Chimera,” using the scientific terms for the COVID-19 virus and the “chimera" term for a genetically engineered pathogen that is a combination of pieces from two separate viruses.

The study—using complex genome analysis—also traced the process used for creating the new virus to an earlier manuscript that the Wuhan Institute of Virology published a decade prior— pointing to ongoing genetic research into coronaviruses at the laboratory, which has collaborated closely with the Chinese military, according to the U.S. intelligence community’s own assessment.