"Pandemic Preparedness," and the gain-of-function research that underlies it, operates under a grand deception, a big lie.

The Biological Weapons Convention, which every major nation has signed, "prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons." As a result, gain-of-function research - the process of taking viruses and other pathogens found in nature and making them more transmissible and dangerous in humans - must be justified by defining it as something other than what it really is - namely, the creation of biological weapons and countermeasures for those weapons.

The grand deception - the big lie - used to justify gain-of-function research goes something like this: "We need to alter pathogens in the lab to anticipate the mutations that just might occur in nature, and to promote the production of vaccines to protect humanity from these theoretical superbugs."

In truth, there is no legitimate reason to create superbugs in the laboratory. One does not save Tokyo by creating Godzilla. Unfortunately, science can be both complicated and confusing, especially when the "experts" are intentionally untruthful. This grand deception has therefore worked for decades, and a gigantic, profitable, and frankly terrifying pandemic preparedness industry involving governments, non-governmental organizations, Big Pharma, and universities has grown as a result.

In order to expose and discredit a big lie that has persisted for such a long time, sometimes a "smoking gun" is needed - that is, a piece of clear and obvious evidence that the long-held premise is false. In the case of the big lie surrounding gain-of-function research and the pandemic preparedness industry, monkeypox serves the role of smoking gun. [...]