|
FILE - A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. The hunt for COVID-19 origins has gone dark in China. An AP investigation drawing on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents and dozens of interviews found feuding officials and fear of blame ended meaningful Chinese and international efforts to trace the virus almost as soon as they began, despite years of public statements to the contrary. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
BY DAKE KANG AND MARIA CHENG Updated 1:03 PM EDT, April 22, 2024
BEIJING (AP) — The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has gone dark in China, the victim of political infighting after a series of stalled and thwarted attempts to find the source of the virus that killed millions and paralyzed the world for months.
The Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation found. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.
The investigation drew on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents and dozens of interviews that showed the freeze began far earlier than previously known and involved political and scientific infighting in China as much as international finger-pointing.
糯米团 @nuomt#每日开智 4/22/2024 路德时评
关于病毒来源,当时曾给中共站台的媒体风向开始转变
之前美联社,质疑病毒来自中共实验室,给自然学说站台 美联社记者姜大翼,也曾在闫博士推文底下发推:闫博士,你有证据吗?(其人在北京)
今天姜大翼在美联社写了:对Covid 19起源的探索如何变得具有政治毒性 很明显风向已经转变 但该篇内容只是一点点的转变,并没有说真正的了解多少 “美联社调查发现,尽管中国政府声明支持公开的科学调查,但从疫情爆发的头几周起,中国政府就冻结了国内外追踪病毒的努力。” “调查参考了数千页未公开的电子邮件和文件,以及数十次访谈”
英国议会已经作证了,中共如何买通WHO。所以这些媒体赶紧往回找,但又不敢写的太深入,假装分析来分析去 不管怎么说,可见中共是树倒猢狲散、墙倒众人推,大家都赶紧往其身上踩一脚
为什么美联社发布这一篇文章? 因为美国国会接下来要对《科学》《柳叶刀》杂志开始质询,虽然有的人不敢来,但已经在调查了
4/22/2024 Luther Commentary
Regarding the origin of the virus, the media that had supported the CCP at the time began to change their tone
Previously, the Associated Press questioned whether the virus came from a Chinese laboratory and supported the theory of nature. Associated Press reporter Jiang Dayi also tweeted under Dr. Yan’s tweet: Dr. Yan, do you have any evidence? (He is in Beijing)
Jiang Dayi wrote in the Associated Press today: How the search for Covid 19's origins became politically toxic It's clear the wind has shifted, but the article only shifts slightly, and doesn't say how much is really known "An Associated Press investigation found that despite Chinese government statements supporting open scientific investigations, from the first weeks of the outbreak, the Chinese government froze efforts to track the virus at home and abroad." "The investigation drew on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents, as well as dozens of interviews"
The British Parliament has already testified how the CCP bribed the WHO. So these media outlets are rushing to look back, but they dare not write too deeply, pretending to analyze it over and over again. In any case, it can be seen that the CCP is like monkeys scattering when a tree falls, and everyone is rushing to step on it.
Why did the Associated Press publish this article? Because the US Congress will start questioning Science and The Lancet. Although some people are afraid to come, they are already investigating.
https://twitter.com/nuomt/status/1782753700379062364
Beijing's sea-based toxin research discussed for first time in State Department survey
EXCLUSIVE By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Tuesday, April 23, 2024
China’s military is conducting research on sea-based neurotoxins, raising new fears among U.S. officials and analysts that Beijing is secretly developing deadly biological weapons for use in a future conflict.
Concerns about the marine toxin research were aired for the first time by the U.S. government earlier this month in the annual State Department arms control compliance report.
The report contended that China “continued to engage in biological activities with potential [biological weapons] applications, including possible development of toxins for military purposes, which raise concerns regarding its compliance with” the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which went into effect in 1975 and was ratified by China in 1984.
China in the past was known to have developed germ weapons based on ricin, botulinum toxins, anthrax, cholera, plague and tularemia as part of a past biological arms program.
But the more recent disclosure of marine toxin work is the first time Beijing has been accused of conducting that type of strategic weapons research.
“The PLA’s research organizations have been conducting and directing military research related to dual-use marine toxins,” the report said.
The State Department also said China’s regular reports to other signatories of the BWC and Beijing’s own “confidence-building measures” failed to include information on the military marine toxin research.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/23/chinese-militarys-work-on-marine-toxins-raising-ne/
EcoHealth chief Daszak faces sharp questioning amid controversy over COVID origins
By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Wednesday, May 1, 2024
AN EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE SURROUNDING ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE, INC.’s RESEARCH ACTIVITIES May 1, 2024
Interim Staff Report of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Committee on Oversight and Accountability
U.S. House of Representatives
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024.05.01-SSCP-Report_FINAL.pdf
Posted: May 4, 2024 by Emily Kopp
EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Wednesday about his coronavirus research collaboration situated at the epicenter of the worst pandemic in a century.
Daszak’s organization collaborated closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab complex specializing in bat-borne viruses, including SARS-related coronaviruses. The lab hosted one of the world’s largest coronavirus databases before the data was made inaccessible in the fall of 2019.
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/ecohealth-daszak-grilled-by-subcommittee/
By Brooke Singman Fox News Published May 7, 2024 6:30pm EDT
Evidence supporting theory was presented to Dominic Raab, then the Foreign Secretary – but ‘was ignored’
Tony Diver, US EDITOR4 May 2024 • 8:00pm
Related Topics Covid Inquiry, Coronavirus, Dominic Raab, Wuhan Institute of Virology, China
PrintBy Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Wednesday, May 8, 2024
NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
Two classified State Department documents made public in part by a House subcommittee suggest that Chinese President Xi Jinping was involved in covering up the deadly COVID-19 outbreak.
The heavily censored reports sent from Taiwan to the State Department in July and August 2020 also provide new clues to the Chinese military’s role at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a location that at least two U.S. intelligence agencies believe was the origin of the pandemic.
The redacted State Department reports, once labeled “secret/sensitive” and “secret/noforn” (no foreign dissemination) — were made public by the House Government Oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup has written to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday asking that the full contents of the documents be made public.
Under questioning from Congress, two key figures have unwittingly strengthened the lab-leak theory.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/12/the-truth-about-covids-origins-is-finally-coming-out/
2024.05.28-BRW-Letter-to-NIH-Re.-FOIA_Redacted.pdf
By Roger Pielke Jr. The Honest Broker May 23, 2024
https://www.aei.org/articles/the-nih-ecohealth-alliance-cover-up/
POLITICS / MAY 28, 2024 JIMMY TOBIAS
After a top aide to Anthony Fauci was grilled by Congress, questions emerge as to whether others may have sought to avoid transparency around the Covid epidemic.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-origins-morens-hearing/
By Peter Laffin May 29, 2024 6:00 am
The Hill Premiered Nov 27, 2023 WASHINGTON
Vanity Fair contributor Katherine Eban weighs in on her latest reporting on alleged U.S.-funded research in China, predating the Covid-19 pandemic. #NIH #coronavirus
A series of previously unreported alarms and clashes over US-funded research in China reveal long-standing friction between two groups of government scientists: those who prioritize international collaboration, and those who are kept up at night by the idea that cutting-edge technologies could end up in the wrong hands.
BY KATHERINE EBAN NOVEMBER 21, 2023 Condé Nast.
"A six-month investigation by VF has found an almost decade-long trail of warnings issued by the Department of Energy to other government agencies, including the NIH, concerning the risk that US-funded biology research could be misused by overseas partners."
HENRY RODGERS CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT December 04, 2023 12:41 PM ET
https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/04/paul-gosar-nih-wiv-ecohealth-funding/
By DAVID ZIMMERMANN December 4, 2023 5:02 PM
Representative Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.) demanded answers from four federal agencies concerning their ongoing funding of EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan lab-associated nongovernmental organization that has received upwards of $50 million in taxpayer money since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Eminent British-Indian Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra has alleged that the World Health Organization (WHO) has completely lost its independence and suggested that the Indian government should ignore its advice on various issues and exit the global health body. Talking to a news agency, Malhotra, who gave a lecture at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here on "The Corporate Capture of Medicine and Public Health" recently, also claimed that regulators do not independently evaluate data related to drugs.
JAKE SMITH CONTRIBUTOR
December 07, 202311:20 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/07/congress-defense-bill-keep-funding-org-tied-wuhan-lab/
Contributed by Sharon Lerner (The Intercept)
OCR: Tesseract
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal
ACTION REFERRAL MEMORANDUM
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Tab-2-EHA-SUSP4D-ARM_05.15.2024_signed.pdf
Notice of Suspension and Proposed Debarment of EcoHealth Alliance, Inc
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Tab-1-EHA-SUSP4D-Notice_5.15.2024_signed.pdf
AN EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE SURROUNDING ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE, INC.’s RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024.05.01-SSCP-Report_FINAL.pdf
The Hill WASHINGTON 11/2/2023
Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave discuss a new investigation on research allegedly conducted in a lab in Montana before the Covid-19 pandemic officially began. #Fauci #Coronavirus
By ALEXA LARDIERI U.S. DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:20 EDT, 31 October 2023 | UPDATED: 21:52 EDT, 31 October 2023
BY ASHLEY RINDSBERG SEPTEMBER 17, 2023
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/blowing-covid-coverup-wide-open
Peter Daszak briefed Dr. Fauci after his 2021 visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology
November 15, 2023 | 2:35 pm
https://thespectator.com/topic/inside-ecohealth-alliance-closed-door-congressional-testimony/
Contributed by Paul Thacker
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24169364-hsgac-letter-to-hhs-on-nihs-morens-nov-2023
INVESTIGATION INTO THE REEDLEY BIOLAB
INVESTIGATION INTO THE REEDLEY BIOLAB: FINDINGS
On September 6, 2023, the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (“Select Committee”) issued its first subpoena as part of its ongoing investigation into the illegal facility that local authorities uncovered in Reedley, California. The subpoena, signed by the Chairman with an on-site visit by the Select Committee’s Chief Investigative Counsel and two investigative staffers, uncovered thousands of pages of documents, hundreds of photographs, and hours of video. This evidence, alongside interviews of local officials and other investigative steps, revealed troubling gaps in federal pathogen safeguards. These gaps allowed a wanted fugitive from Canada, who is a PRC national who had previously stolen millions of dollars of American intellectual property, to operate an illegal facility that contained “thousands of vials of potentially infectious agents” in Reedley, California.1 The Select Committee engaged in this investigation based on public requests and expressions of concern from both Republican and Democratic Members of Congress and in coordination with Congressman Jim Costa, who represents the district where Reedley is located.2 After the Select Committee issued the subpoena, Congressman Costa stated, “It is my hope that we work in a bipartisan, coordinated manner to fully understand the scope of this lab and prevent any future labs like this one from operating illegally in our communities.”3 The Select Committee shares these goals and drafted this report, in part, as an essential step towards accomplishing them. 4
https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023-11-15-Reedley-Report-1.10pm.pdf
Outline of Select Committee Investigation Findings on Biolab in Reedley, CA 11.15.23
Posted: December 18, 2023 by Emily Kopp
A 2018 research proposal called DEFUSE called for synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites — the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. (Photo credit: Unsplash)
American researchers concealed their intention to conduct high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan under lax safety standards from the Pentagon the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know.
A 2018 grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, coauthored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and American scientists, has stoked concern that the pandemic resulted from a lab accident.
It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2. Most worrying to some scientists: The proposal involved synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites — the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. Indeed, some scientists have likened DEFUSE to a blueprint for generating SARS-CoV-2 in the lab.
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/american-scientists-misled-pentagon-on-wuhan-research/
March 20, 2024, 12:21 PM EDT
EXCLUSIVEEllen M. GilmerReporter
By LUKE ANDREWS SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:46 EDT, 20 March 2024 | UPDATED: 17:01 EDT, 20 March 2024
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13220019/probe-covid-origins-lab-leak.html
By ALEXA LARDIERI U.S. DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:27 EST, 19 December 2023 | UPDATED: 13:52 EST, 20 December 2023
Dangerous research. (Permission to use this cartoon is granted with attribution.) Andrew Tuntable EMail: ATuntable@gmail.com
Twitter: @atuntable
Below is a summary, the evidence. More details about each point and links to research papers can be found in [Detailed Evidence].
https://originofcovid.org/summary-of-evidence/
By Social Links forJames BovardPublished Jan. 4, 2024, 7:00 p.m. ET
Open access Published: 26 May 2017
Virology Journal volume 14, Article number: 98 (2017) Cite this article 9538 Accesses 38 Citations 109 Altmetric Metrics
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-017-0766-9
The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province. Credit: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images.
HOME DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES BIOSECURITY NIH TO TERMINATE PART OF ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE GRANT AFTER ITS WUHAN PARTNERS REFUSE TO DELIVER INFORMATION ON CORONAVIRUS STUDIES Biosecurity
By Matt Field, August 24, 2022
Posted: January 6, 2024 by Emily Kopp
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/daszak-shi-visits-nih-fauci/
Scientists at the center of the “lab leak” controversy visited Anthony Fauci’s institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research — just months before NIH lifted a pause on high-risk virology, and two years before a novel coronavirus emerged near their lab in Wuhan.
Wuhan Institute of Virology Senior Scientist Shi Zhengli passed a security screening to visit National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staffers in June 2017, where she gave a presentation about novel coronaviruses, emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know show.
Shi is known internationally as the “Bat Lady” for her work with bats and their coronaviruses. Though ostensibly a civilian lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted research projects “for defensive and biosecurity needs of the military” since at least 2017, according to U.S. intelligence.
FEBRUARY 2024 SCIENCE, NATURE & TECHNOLOGY
Tech Commentary by James B. Meigs
I thought I was done with writing about Covid-19. But Covid-19 isn’t done with me—or with any of us.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-meigs/likely-lab-leak-covid-cassandra/
By Katherine Donlevy Published Jan. 16, 2024 Updated Jan. 17, 2024, 7:26 a.m. ET
By CAITLIN TILLEY, HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 12:59 EST, 16 January 2024 | UPDATED: 16:34 EST, 16 January 2024
Was a Fauci-endorsed Chinese donation part of the lab-leak cover up?
May 26, 2022 | 2:37 pm
On the morning of Sunday February 2, 2020, Anthony Fauci, then in the middle of putting together America’s pandemic response, received an unusual email with a highly unusual request. The email, revealed as part of a tranche of FOIA documents requested by the Intercept, was from George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School. “Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost, and I met yesterday with a team led by Jack Xia, the CEO of China’s Evergrande Company, and Dr. Jack Liu, Evergrande’s chief health officer,” Daley wrote. Addressing the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as “Tony,” he asked for “whatever information you are willing to share on your current efforts to coordinate a response.”
https://thespectator.com/topic/fauci-harvard-and-the-ccp/
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/great-covid-cover-up-shocking-truth-about-wuhan-15-federal-agencies
A series of previously unreported alarms and clashes over US-funded research in China reveal long-standing friction between two groups of government scientists: those who prioritize international collaboration, and those who are kept up at night by the idea that cutting-edge technologies could end up in the wrong hands.
BY KATHERINE EBAN NOVEMBER 21, 2023 Condé Nast.
"A six-month investigation by VF has found an almost decade-long trail of warnings issued by the Department of Energy to other government agencies, including the NIH, concerning the risk that US-funded biology research could be misused by overseas partners."
Wuhan was thrust into global prominence after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019. Picture: Getty Images
An intelligence agency official with a background at the World Health Organization was involved in downplaying the lab leak theory during Joe Biden’s 90-day probe into the origins of Covid-19.
Sharri Markson Sky News host November 27, 2023 - 6:00PM
糯米团 @nuomt 历史时刻:2020年7月10日,闫博士@DrLiMengYAN1 在福克斯FOX的首次专访 里面提到了路德社@lude_media 历史性的1.19节目! 这期专访现在看依然震撼! 距离这次专访播出,已经过去了1235天,这个世界改变了吗?留给人类的时间还足够吗? Translated from Chinese by https://translate.google.com/
Historical moment: Dr. Yan
s first interview on FOX on July 10, 2020 It mentioned the historic 1.19 program of Lutheran Society
! This interview is still shocking when I read it now! 1,235 days have passed since this interview was broadcast. Has the world changed? Is there still enough time left for humanity?
https://twitter.com/nuomt/status/1729248396333199575
Chef Eric @mingleili2距离闫博士首次参加Fox news节目已经过去1235 天了! 闫博士是第一个向世界说新冠会大流行!而且通过值得信赖的路德社向世界公布!闫博士的生命受到了习共的威胁!还有她爱人的追杀!几年下来,她说的一切都得到了验证!如今在中国疫情再一次袭来!留给我们的时间真的不多了!Translated from Chinese by https://www.google.com/
It has been 1,235 days since Dr. Yan participated in the Fox News program for the first time! Dr. Yan was the first to tell the world that the new coronavirus would become a pandemic! And announce it to the world through the trustworthy Lutheran News Agency! Dr. Yan’s life has been threatened by the Xi Communist Party! And her lover is chasing her! After a few years, everything she said has been verified! Now the epidemic is striking again in China! There really isn’t much time left for us!
https://twitter.com/mingleili2/status/1729263760425287708
Beijing’s lies denied the world a chance to stop the spread, costing millions of lives. We deserve to know the truth
MATT RIDLEY 28 November 2023 • 2:45pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/28/gove-covid-inquiry-man-made-china-wuhan/
December 14, 2023 updated 16 Dec 2023 12:18am
Why did so many journalists dismiss as a conspiracy the idea Covid-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan?
By Jim Edwards
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/wuhan-lab-leak-journalists-media/
by Gabrielle M. Etzel, Healthcare Reporter December 27, 2023 03:00 AM
17 Jan 2024, 09:26 AM Livemint
Posted: January 18, 2024 by Gary Ruskin
https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/USGS-DEFUSE-2021-006245-Combined-Records_Redacted.pdf
Former New York Times reporter said he became sceptical of hypothesis involving Wuhan laboratory after virologists said it wasn’t possible
Susie Coen, US CORRESPONDENT 26 March 2024 • 7:54pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/03/26/new-york-times-donald-mcneil-wuhan-lab-leak-theory/
Fauci Diverted US Government Away From Lab Leak Theory Of Covid’s Origin, Sources Say Fauci allegedly attacked lab leak theory at meetings at CIA, the State Department, and the White House
by @shellenberger @mtaibbi @galexybrane
https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1707077052795670538
The former director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, visited CIA headquarters to “influence” its review of COVID-19 origins, the House Oversight Committee reported yesterday.
Published: Sep 26, 2023
WASHINGTON — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) revealed new allegations that Dr. Fauci went to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters to “influence” its COVID-19 origins investigation. This revelation comes on the heels of recently acquired whistleblower testimony alleging that the CIA potentially skewed its COVID-19 origins review by offering six analysts significant financial incentives to conclude that the result of its investigation was inconclusive. Dr. Fauci’s questionable presence at the CIA, coupled with recently uncovered evidence that he, Dr. Fauci, “prompted” the drafting of “Proximal Origin” — the infamous paper that was used to attempt to “disprove” the lab leak theory — lends credence to heightened concerns about the promotion of a false COVID-19 origins narrative by multiple federal government agencies.
Richard H. Ebright @R_H_Ebright
29 million killed. 25 trillion dollars lost. Due--almost certainly--to the actions of four sociopaths who placed their career interests over the lives and interests of 7.9 billion: Zhengli Shi, Peter Daszak, Anthony Fauci, and Francis Collins.10:55 AM · Sep 28, 2023·
https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1707408744361922731
3 possibilities exist:
1. Fauci convinced the CIA to dishonestly obscure the lab origin of COVID.
2. The CIA convinced Fauci to obscure the lab origin of COVID. Or
3. An outside entity or person with unlimited monetary resources convinced Fauci to influence the CIA to obscure the lab origin of COVID. One thing is for certain, Fauci did not visit the CIA to seek the truth but to facilitate and further the cover-up.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/27/fauci-secretly-went-to-cia-hq-to-influence-covid-19-origins-probe-house-republican-alleges/…5:49 AM · Sep 28, 2023
A team from the University of North Carolina published a paper detailing how they had synthesised a Mers-like bat virus
BySarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR27 September 2023 • 7:53pm
Scientists linked to Wuhan bat researchers have been accused of performing dangerous experiments on a Mers-like virus that could spark a pandemic.
A team from the University of North Carolina published a paper in Science Advances on Wednesday detailing how they had synthesised a Mers-like bat virus, and used it to infect human cells and humanised mice.
Mers is one of the deadliest viruses, killing around 35 per cent of people that it infects.
The team includes Professor Ralph Baric and Trevor Scobey who worked with Professor Shi Zhengli, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, before the pandemic creating chimeric viruses by inserting spike proteins from bat viruses into the original Sars virus.
Posted: September 5, 2023 by Emily Kopp
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/fauci-nih-wuhan-coronaviruses/
DIA-Response-to-23-cv-02936.pdf
Defense Intelligence Agency about the origins of COVID.
https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DIA-Response-to-23-cv-02936.pdf
IC ASSESSMENTS ON COVID-19 ORIGINS
DECLASSIFIED by DNI Haines on 23 June 2023
This report responds to the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, which called for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to declassify information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic
WUHAN LAB Thursday, September 07, 2023
by Gabrielle M. Etzel, Healthcare Reporter September 06, 2023 02:33 PM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/fauci-funding-for-coronavirus-wuhan-january
By ALEXA LARDIERI U.S. DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 14:00 EDT, 7 September 2023 | UPDATED: 15:49 EDT, 7 September 2023
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12491751/USAID-125million-project-pandemic.html
BMJ 2023; 382 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p2002 (Published 07 September 2023)Cite this as: BMJ 2023;382:p2002
https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj.p2002
A Mysterious Lab Is Shutting Down. It’s the End of an Era for Biosecurity.
Health authorities and policymakers squandered public trust by lying to the American people.
Eye on the News / Health Care, Politics and law
Oct 01 2023
In July 2020, Anthony Fauci got into a heated exchange with Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul during a Senate committee hearing. At the time, the question of whether the Covid-19 virus might have leaked from a Wuhan, China, laboratory was considered a conspiracy theory by most health officials and media outlets. But a few independent scientists and reporters kept investigating the possibility. A particularly troubling question was whether the U.S. government might have funded “gain-of-function” research that had made a naturally occurring virus more infectious. Fauci had supported such research in the past. And, as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a key branch of the Bethesda, Maryland-based National Institutes of Health, he was involved in distributing millions of dollars in grants to virus researchers around the world. In a hearing several months earlier, Fauci had denied that the NIH ever funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-covid-coverup
By JIM GERAGHTY June 19, 2023 9:24 AM
REPORT
GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER SEPTEMBER 28, 2023 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
HomeGlobal Engagement Center Remarks & Releases
Global Engagement Center Special Report: How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment
Every country should have the ability to tell its story to the world. However, a nation’s narrative should be based on facts and rise and fall on its own merits. The PRC employs a variety of deceptive and coercive methods as it attempts to influence the international information environment. Beijing’s information manipulation spans the use of propaganda, disinformation, and censorship. Unchecked, the PRC’s efforts will reshape the global information landscape, creating biases and gaps that could even lead nations to make decisions that subordinate their economic and security interests to Beijing’s.
The PRC spends billions of dollars annually on foreign information manipulation efforts.2 Beijing uses false or biased information to promote positive views of the PRC and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the same time, the PRC suppresses critical information that contradicts its desired narratives on issues such as Taiwan, its human rights practices, the South China Sea, its domestic economy, and international economic engagement. More broadly, the PRC seeks to cultivate and uphold a global incentive structure that encourages foreign governments, elites, journalists, and civil society to accept its preferred narratives and avoid criticizing its conduct.
by Gabrielle M. Etzel, Healthcare Reporter October 05, 2023 05:15 PM
Published: Oct 12, 2023
WASHINGTON — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) will hold a hearing titled “Strengthening Biosafety and Biosecurity Standards: Protecting Against Future Pandemics” to evaluate the effectiveness of existing biosafety and biosecurity practices in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and to discuss future policy improvements. Current standards for high-risk laboratories in the U.S. and abroad are confusing, overlapping, and often require individual facilities and scientists to police themselves. In addition, this hearing will examine the conflicting oversight mechanisms and federal guidelines that control laboratory activity funded by the U.S. government.
Published: Oct 18, 2023 WASHINGTON
Testimony of Jaime M. Yassif, Ph.D. Vice President, Global Biological Policy and Programs, Nuclear Threat Initiative Before the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Hearing on “Strengthening Biosafety and Biosecurity Standards: Protecting Against Future Pandemics” Wednesday, October 18, 2023
By ALEXA LARDIERI U.S. DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:20 EDT, 31 October 2023 | UPDATED: 21:52 EDT, 31 October 2023
October 30, 2023
October 8, 2023
September 17, 2023
COVID-19 vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere
a registered not-for-profit organization conducting independent scientific research on topics of public interest
Published: Sep 12, 2023
WASHINGTON — Staff on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offered six analysts significant monetary incentives to change their position on COVID-19’s origin. The whistleblower, who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer, alleges that of the seven members assigned to the CIA team tasked with analyzing COVID-19 origins, six officers concluded that the virus likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China. The CIA, then however, allegedly offered financial incentives to six of the experts involved in the investigation to change their conclusion in favor of a zoonotic origin.
By Josh ChristensonPublished Sep. 12, 2023, 10:38 a.m. ET
By MORGAN PHILLIPS, U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 10:19 EDT, 12 September 2023 | UPDATED: 13:43 EDT, 12 September 2023
Local, state and federal agencies have been investigating the lab that produced pregnancy and coronavirus tests to sell online.
OLIVIA BEAVERS 09/13/2023, 9:00AM ET
The House China Select Committee issued its first ever subpoena last week, as it took its investigation into a Chinese-owned lab in California to the next level.
Wuhan Institute of Virology broke rules with experiments that increased viral activity more than tenfold, says health department
BySarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR24 September 2023 • 3:15pm
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has failed to cooperate with US investigators CREDIT: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
The Chinese laboratory suspected of leaking coronavirus has been stripped of United States government funding for 10 years after conducting dangerous experiments that increased the potency of coronaviruses before the pandemic....
Published: Sep 26, 2023
WASHINGTON — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) revealed new allegations that Dr. Fauci went to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters to “influence” its COVID-19 origins investigation. This revelation comes on the heels of recently acquired whistleblower testimony alleging that the CIA potentially skewed its COVID-19 origins review by offering six analysts significant financial incentives to conclude that the result of its investigation was inconclusive. Dr. Fauci’s questionable presence at the CIA, coupled with recently uncovered evidence that he, Dr. Fauci, “prompted” the drafting of “Proximal Origin” — the infamous paper that was used to attempt to “disprove” the lab leak theory — lends credence to heightened concerns about the promotion of a false COVID-19 origins narrative by multiple federal government agencies.
Robby Soave weighs in on a JAMA study in which scientists still refer to the lab leak theory as "misinformation."
Print Email Share Tweet LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Telegram
Posted: September 5, 2023 by Emily Kopp
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/fauci-nih-wuhan-coronaviruses/
Pentagon Forms Council to Assess Biothreats, Coordinate Response
August 17, 2023 at 10:04 AM EDT
By the Editorial Board| August 22, 2023 at 7:30 a.m. EDT
In January 2020, the system failed as the virus spread. This can be gleaned from documents and interviews conducted by Chinese journalists. They managed to capture a revelatory picture of the struggle by doctors and hospitals despite China’s strict limits on news reporting and its system of censorship. Gilles Demaneuf of the research group DRASTIC, which has been probing the origins of the virus, has compiled and translated these materials in a 193-page report he has shared with the World Health Organization’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens. The report was made available to us. The findings are augmented by disclosures from U.S. Right to Know, a freedom-of-information group, and news accounts and congressional investigations in the United States.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/22/wuhan-doctors-pandemic-china-coverup/
MUDDY WATERS THE ORIGINS OF COVID-19 REPORT
April 17, 2023 PREPARED BY: DR.BOB KADLEC, BOB FOSTER, AND 117th GOP HELP COMMITTEE STAFF
https://www.marshall.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/MWG-FDR-Document-04-11-23-EMBARGOED.pdf
Posted: July 27, 2023 by Gary Ruskin
Limitations of the official 2019 Wuhan cases based on Primary Sources
Gilles Demaneuf ‘Paris Group’ and DRASTIC member - ‘Paris Group’ Presentation July 2023 (v1.1) Latest version available at https://bit.ly/IssuesEarlyWuhanCases https://bit.ly/PDF_IssuesWithEarlyWuhanCases
WION Jun 12, 2023 #China #WION
Was the Wuhan virus pandemic a result of Chinese military's persuasion of bioweapons? A new report reveals that China was mixing two of the deadliest coronaviruses inside the Wuhan lab shortly before the outbreak. Molly Gambhir tells you more. #China #Wuhancovid #WION
Posted: September 5, 2023 by Emily Kopp
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/fauci-nih-wuhan-coronaviruses/
Forbes Breaking News Apr 26, 2023
At today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned USAID Administrator Samantha Power. Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
Rich McCormick Jul 11, 2023
It is increasingly likely that Covid originated in a Wuhan lab, where US tax dollars were used in cooperation with China to conduct experiments, from which it accidentally escaped containment to wreak havoc on the world. Saying this would get you censored and deplatformed a couple years ago. Any apologies from the media and politicians who silenced people?
SubjectInvestigating the Proximal Origin of a Cover UpDateJuly 11, 2023Time10:00 amPlace2154 Rayburn House Office BuildingSelect Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
Witnesses and testimonies:Dr. Kristian Andersen
Professor, Scripps Research
Dr. Robert Garry
Professor, Tulane University School of Medicine
https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/investigating-the-proximal-origin-of-a-cover-up/
New documents show a scientist calling a lab leak “highly likely” — after drafting a paper claiming the opposite.
Ryan Grim July 12 2023, 5:18 p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-republicans/
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic@COVIDSelect·22h
Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and the co-authors of "Proximal Origin" suppressed and vilified the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis in favor of their preferred, coordinated narrative. ICYMI
Read our recent report detailing this alarming cover up: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Final-Report-6.pdf…4614128013.9K
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic@COVIDSelect
Transcribed interviews with every U.S.-based contributor to "Proximal Origin"
Dr. Kristian Andersen: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023.06.16-Andersen-Transcript.pdf…
Dr. Robert Garry: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023.06.09-Garry-Transcript-.pdf…
Dr. Ian Lipkin: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023.04.06-Lipkin-Transcript.pdf…
Dr. Michael Farzan: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023.04.21-Farzan-Transcript.pdf…2:46 PM ·
https://twitter.com/COVIDSelect/status/1679200700394270734
PERSPECTIVE
By multiple early indications, the United States has entered yet another surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, with wastewater levels, emergency room visits for COVID-19 and test positivity rates all on the rise across much of the country.
Between June 24 and July 12, the Biobot wastewater tracker showed a 46 percent increase nationally, concentrated in the South and on the coasts. According to one infectious disease modeler, these wastewater levels translate to roughly 280,000 Americans presently being infected with COVID-19 each day and rising.
INVESTIGATION
Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a V.F. investigation shows how an organization dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.
BY KATHERINE EBAN MARCH 31, 2022
Nicola Sturgeon introduced a raft of stringent restrictions in Scotland but a new report for the Scottish Covid Inquiry suggests there was 'insufficient or no evidence' to suggest that lockdowns, social distancing and face masks had any impact on slowing the spread of the virus Comments21
ByDavid WalkerPolitics reporter
BuzzFeed-v.-HHS-20-cv-2704-2.17.22-Partial-Production_Redacted-part-2.pdf
The Hill Premiered Jun 30, 2023 #Fauci #covidorigins
Twitter files author Michael Shellenberger weighs in on recent leaked NIH emails. #Fauci #covidorigins
By Richard A. Muller | Commentary
Posted: July 10, 2023 by Emily Kopp
In an interview with a Chinese news outlet obtained by U.S. Right to Know, a frontline doctor in Wuhan reveals in new detail how some of the earliest COVID-19 cases were undercounted — spanning from pressure by authorities to limit positive tests, CT machines overheating from too many lung scans, and pressure to not create a paper trail.
Few were better positioned to observe the stark difference between the growing crisis and authorities’ assurances that the virus was not spreading than a radiologist reviewing CT scans of patients’ lungs at one of the first Wuhan hospitals to detect the new disease.
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/wuhan-doctor-early-covid-cases-suppressed/
RESEARCH Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health Notice of Award Issue Date: 05/27/2014
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES Grant Number: 1 RO 1 Al 110964-01 FAIN: R01Al110964
Principal lnvestigator(s): PETER DASZAK,PHD Project Title: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence
BYBIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS August 11, 2023 at 8:20 AM EDT
https://fortune.com/2023/08/11/school-chronic-absence-record-rates-skyrockets-kids-stay-home/
Forbes Breaking News May 30, 2023
The former head of China’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) said the theory that the coronavirus may have leaked from a lab should not be ruled out, BBC News reported, in an apparent divergence from the Chinese government’s vocal opposition to any suggestion that the pandemic may have originated from a lab. READ MORE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladity...
By John Sudworth & Simon MaybinBBC News
The possibility the Covid virus leaked from a laboratory should not be ruled out, a former top Chinese government scientist has told BBC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65708746
By Mike Glenn - The Washington Times - Tuesday, May 30, 2023
A top Chinese virologist says that a lab leak scenario should not be discounted as a possible origin of COVID-19.
George Gao, the former director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Protection, told the BBC that another branch of the Chinese government had investigated the lab leak theory for COVID-19.
“They haven’t found wrongdoing,” Mr. Gao said.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/30/dont-rule-out-lab-leak-possible-origin-covid-19-ch/
Siladitya Ray Forbes StaffCovering breaking news and tech policy stories at Forbes. May 30, 2023,02:50am EDT
Updated May 30, 2023, 03:44am EDT
The former head of China’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) said the theory that the coronavirus may have leaked from a lab should not be ruled out, BBC News reported, in an apparent divergence from the Chinese government’s vocal opposition to any suggestion that the pandemic may have originated from a lab.
2023.06.12 13:27 ET
中科院武汉病毒研究所
British media: The new crown virus originated from Wuhan scientists and the People's Liberation Army to create biochemical weapons
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/huanjing/cm1-06122023123412.html
Scientists, governments cover-up lab leaks all the time: Investigative journalist on Covid’s origins
David M. Morens, a high-ranking official at the NIH, told prominent scientists discussing Covid’s origins that he would delete emails.
Jimmy Tobias June 29 2023, 2:30 p.m.
A TOP ADVISER to Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health admitted that he used a personal email account in an apparent effort to evade the strictures of the Freedom of Information Act, according to records obtained by congressional investigators probing the origin of Covid-19. The official also expressed his intention to delete emails in order to avoid media scrutiny.
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/29/covid-nih-personal-email-foia/
OPINION ZEYNEP TUFEKCI
June 21, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/opinion/covid-lab-leak-origins.html
U.S. spy agencies remain divided on whether the Covid-19 virus passed to humans via an infected animal or laboratory accident.
DECLASSIFIED by DNI Haines on 23 June 2023
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (U) This report responds to the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, which called for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to declassify information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report outlines the IC’s understanding of the WIV, its capabilities, and the actions of its personnel leading up to and in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report does not address the merits of the two most likely pandemic origins hypotheses, nor does it explore other biological facilities in Wuhan other than the WIV. A classified annex to this report includes information that was necessary to exclude from the unclassified portion of this report in order to protect sources and methods, but the information contained in the annex is consistent with the unclassified assessments contained in this report. (U) This report was drafted by the National Intelligence Officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation and coordinated with the IC.
A major revelation about researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology emerged this week. We still can’t say we’re any closer to the truth.
By Daniel Engber JUNE 23, 2023, 7 AM ET
HEALTH
NATHAN J. ROBINSON , EDITOR IN CHIEF OF CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE ON 6/27/23 AT 7:00 PM EDT
Dr. John Campbell Apr 19, 2023
Lab leak, US senate report https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-new... The 300-page report, released to Axios Pandemic, most likely "research-related incident" in Wuhan WIV may have begun developing two Covid vaccines in November 2019 "means SARS-CoV-2 would have been present at the WIV before the known outbreak of the pandemic." Theory that Covid-19 jumped from animals to humans in a market, no longer deserved "presumption of accuracy" Advocates of natural transmission theory, "must provide clear and convincing evidence" for their argument. "The preponderance of information affirms the plausibility of a research-related incident, that was likely unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment during vaccine-related research." Only one place, only one time Richard Burr report from last October https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media... FBI Director Christopher Wray (Feb 2023) "most likely" resulted from a potential lab leak in Wuhan Department of Energy Full 300 page document https://www.documentcloud.org/documen... MWG executive summary, April 16 2023 https://www.documentcloud.org/documen... Epidemiology Favors (Early) Mid October-Early November Emergence China’s official position is that the COVID-19 outbreak began no earlier than December 8, 2019. An increase in adult Influenza-Like-Illness (ILI) accompanied by negative results, statistically significantly higher than reported in the previous 5 years Eyewitness accounts, media reports, epidemiological modeling and additional academic studies, car parking, internet searches October to November 2019 The disease worsened in November.” Several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, loss of smell and ground-glass opacities in his lungs Precedent of Zoonotic Spillovers & Likelihood of an Animal Origin Failed animal-to-human transmissions, or “dead-end” spillovers, typically leave behind serological evidence. It would be expected that environmental samples collected from wet markets that were positive for SARS-CoV-2 would likely show evidence of animal genetic adaptation. China CDC Analyzed 1,380 samples, environment (923) animals (457) 73 SARS-CoV-2 positive environmental samples. None of the samples taken from the 18 animal species found in the market were positive for SARS- CoV-2. The three live viruses were sequenced, 99.980% to 99.993% similarity with human isolates Unlike the 2003 SARS outbreak, H7N9 influenza, (China March 2013) Multiple independent viral introductions, time and place China, no infection or positive serological sample(s) of any susceptible animal prior to the recognized outbreak. Plausibility of a Research-related Incident & Laboratory-acquired infections Professor Yusen Zhou of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) filed a patent for a Covid-19 vaccine on February 24, 2020 “uncertainties” surrounding the death of Prof Zhou, (died spring 2020) Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) might have been selling laboratory animals for human consumption WIV, experimenting on palm civets (29 per month were sold at the 17 wet markets in Wuhan) (January 3, 2020, a professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing was sentenced for corruption, and for selling animals and animal products after laboratory experiments) Summation of Events Leading to the Pandemic EcoHealth Alliance with the WIV, Project DEFUSE: Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses These experiments could create chimeric SARS-related viruses with Furin cleavage sites unknown in nature Wuhan scientists filed 13 patents to improve biosecurity in the six months before the pandemic E.g maintaining airtight seals on doors, ways of improving sterilisers and air filters Scientists were working with centrifuges that could have sprayed the virus into the air On November 19, 2019, Wuhan scientists were to attend mandatory biosecurity training Taught by official from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Session followed by remedial biosafety training course for WIV researchers Wuhan officials carried out an emergency airport drill on Sept 18, 2019, to identify passengers infected with novel coronavirus China’s National People’s Congress drafted legislation to strengthen the management of laboratories Pandemic may have been started by two spillover events, two weeks apart, minor genetic differences in early circulating strains, suggesting two lineages Mid-October to mid-November 2019 WIV collected 20,000 bat and animal samples by 2019, but did not disclose all of the viruses Before 2019, the WIV published sequences in a public database, taken offline in September 2019
Muddy Waters Group Investigation Executive Summary..
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23780776-mwg-fdr-document-04-16-23
BY TYLER DURDENWEDNESDAY, APR 19, 2023 - 06:20 PM
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chinese-lab-developed-covid-19-virus-senate-report-claims
An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic Interim Report
Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions Minority Oversight Staff October 2022
https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/report_an_analysis_of_the_origins_of_covid-19_102722.pdf
They used taxpayer dollars to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
April 22, 2023 | 10:15 pm SCIENCE & TECH
https://thespectator.com/topic/government-contracts-ecohealth-alliance-covid-pandemic-wuhan/
BY TYLER DURDENSATURDAY, APR 29, 2023 - 05:00 PM
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,
If officials don’t trust the public, the public won’t trust them.
While fingers are pointed at Trump and Fauci, the virus was an unbeaten foe.
Glen OwenDaily MailJune 18, 2023 3:29AM
TABLETOP EXERCISE Event 201
This training tabletop exercise is based on a fictional scenario. The inputs experts used for modeling the potential impact were fictional. It is a teaching and training resource for public health and government officials.
https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/tabletop-exercises/event-201-pandemic-tabletop-exercise
Twitter files author Michael Shellenberger discusses new reporting on "patients zero." #covid19 #pandemic About Rising: Rising is a weekday morning show with bipartisan hosts that breaks the mold of morning TV by taking viewers inside the halls of Washington power like never before. The show leans into the day's political cycle with cutting edge analysis from DC insiders who can predict what is going to happen. It also sets the day's political agenda by breaking exclusive news with a team of scoop-driven reporters and demanding answers during interviews with the country's most important political newsmakers.
New reporting, attributed to U.S. government sources, identified a coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in November 2019.
Ryan GrimJune 17 2023, 9:34 a.m.
ONE OF THE first Wuhan researchers reportedly sickened with Covid in fall 2019, Ben Hu, was getting U.S. financial support for risky gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the transparency advocacy organization White Coat Waste Project.
The funding came in three grants totaling $41 million, doled out by USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, the agency then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hu is listed as an investigator on the grants.
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/17/covid-origin-wuhan-patient-zero/
By Post Editorial BoardJune 17, 2023 7:46pm Updated
Rand Paul@RandPaul"Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus."Quote TweetMichael Shellenberger@shellenberger·Jun 13 After years of official claims to the contrary, strong new evidence suggests the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a Chinese lab. According to multiple sources, the researchers who led gain-of-function research, which increases infectiousness, were the first to be infected.
https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1669023284212506632
MICHAEL P SENGER DEC 8, 2022
https://www.michaelpsenger.com/p/drastic-founder-renounces-lab-leak
Posted: June 14, 2023 by Emily Kopp
Three previously unreleased State Department cables obtained by U.S. Right to Know include new information about classified research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
One cable alleges evidence of connections between China’s biotechnology sector and the People’s Liberation Army, including “cyber evidence” of “PLA shadow labs at WIV,” the PLA’s involvement with the construction of the lab and subsequent presence there, and “WIV personnel with possible PLA ties.”
A second cable appears to address the blurring of civilian and military research — specifically Beijing’s emphasis on “military-civil fusion,” or MCF — in the world of biotech.
A third cable details the way in which Beijing authorities, rather than local apparatchiks, censored the spiraling pandemic in critical early days, with devastating consequences: “Initial Outbreak Could Have Been Contained in China if Beijing Had Not Covered It Up,” it reads.
The cables were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department.
The cables may represent some of the research that informs a 2021 statement from the State Department that “the WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/cables-wuhan-institute-of-virology-classified-research/
Posted: August 9, 2022 by Emily Kopp
A prominent scientist who has denounced a congressional investigation into gain-of-function research helped fund Wuhan Institute of Virology gain-of-function work flagged by congressional investigators.
Peter Hotez, dean of the Baylor College of Medicine National School of Tropical Medicine, has been a fierce critic of potential hearings next year into a possible lab origin of COVID-19 and whether the National Institutes of Health prematurely discredited the hypothesis.
Hotez decried the hearings as nothing less than “a plan to undermine the fabric of science in America” in a viral tweet thread last week. Hotez also dismissed as an “outlandish conspiracy” the possibility that a lab accident sparked the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, Hotez’s own 2012 to 2017 NIH grant for the development of a SARS vaccine had the stated aim of responding to any “accidental release from a laboratory,” in addition to a possible zoonotic spillover of the virus.
“A COMPLEX AND GRAVE SITUATION” This report draws on numerous sources published in English and Chinese to examine the posture taken by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) toward biosecurity, biosafety, and public health starting from 2018 until 2021. Its primary focus is on tracing the authorities’ response to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as it progressed from a localized outbreak to a national epidemic to a full-fledged pandemic.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Senator Rubio is grateful for the staff, fellows, and outside experts who worked for countless months to connect the dots. A special thanks goes to the Project 2049 Institute, an organization co-founded by former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall G. Schriver. Schriver and his team, including Ian Easton, Alice Cho, and Kendal Walker, provided invaluable technical assistance on the compilation and review of this report.
https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/COVID-Origins-Full-Report-EMBARGOED.pdf
Joseph Simonson May 17, 2023
The number of people under 50 with cancer is increasing in many countries and for many different tumour types. Why this is occurring isn't entirely clear, but it may be due to some aspects of modern life
By Clare Wilson
29 March 2023
The Hill #covid19 #covidorigins #lableak• #covid19 #covidorigins #lableakJournalist Emily Kopp on the House's second hearing on the origins of Covid-19 held yesterday. #covid19 #covidorigins #lableak
Forbes Breaking News Apr 18, 2023
At today's House Select Committee on the Coronavirus hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) questioned witnesses about the lab leak theory.
Forbes Breaking News Mar 22, 2023
At today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) confronted Secretary of State Antony Blinken about records on COVID-19 research funding.
Speaking from personal experience, if you ask a life science professor what they think of this exchange, they will respond in a quick and dismissive manner with one or more of the statements below (or derivatives of these statements). (1) "I don't know what you are talking about" (2) "I haven't paid attention to all that" (3) "I don't have time for politics" (4) "was this that Republican witch hunt?"Quote Tweet
https://twitter.com/Bryce_Nickels/status/1640767765530247171
Benny Johnson@bennyjohnson·
Mar 27Biden Sec. of State Antony Blinken SOILS his pants after Rand Paul GRILLS him like skewer for covering up COVID origins
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1640414217575493635
https://twitter.com/Bryce_Nickels/status/1640767765530247171
View ORCID ProfileAdrian Jones, Daoyu Zhang, Steven E. Massey, View ORCID ProfileYuri Deigin, View ORCID ProfileLouis R. Nemzer, View ORCID ProfileSteven C. Quaydoi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210
CBS News Feb 27, 2023
An Energy Department classified report has concluded with "low confidence" that it is plausible COVID-19 accidentally leaked out of a laboratory in China. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane and CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang join "Red and Blue" to discuss the ramifications of the finding.
Kirby's remarks come after the Department of Energy reportedly concluded the virus most likely stemmed from a lab leak in Wuhan.
WION Feb 27, 2023 #Gravitas #Covid19
The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a Chinese research lab leak. The origin story has gone from "conspiracy theory" to a government debate. Molly Gambhir reports.
#Gravitas #Covid19 #WuhanLabLeak
BY ASHLEY RINDSBERG MARCH 08, 2023
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/treason-science-journals
Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is interviewed by CBS News about the Trump administration’s response to the global coronavirus outbreak outside the White House on March 12, 2020
A campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, in 2020.PHOTO: HECTOR RETAMAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.
The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.
The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.
The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.
The Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a lab leak, according to a classified intelligence report
wsj.com
WSJ News Exclusive | Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says
The Energy Department joins the FBI in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was...
https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1629851338069667841
Each new revelation is a reminder of how little is actually known.
DANIEL ENGBER FEBRUARY 28, 2023, 12:08 AM ET
We’re still pretending to know things about COVID that we don’t.
Regardless of whether Covid-19 escaped from a research facility, another deadly virus very well might.
By The Editorial Board | Review & Outlook
Other US agencies have come to different conclusions from the FBI on how the pandemic began.
Gilles Demaneuf Apr 27, 2022
A study by the DRASTIC collective
Overview:
In 2019 in Wuhan, there were nine sites with biosafety laboratories of level 2 (BSL-2) and above, including six sites with BSL-3 laboratories and one site with a BSL-4 laboratory.
This number is not abnormal for a city of about 10 million inhabitants. However, the creation of these labs is recent. The constructions of the BSL-3 laboratories in Wuhan have been, and still is, the subject of significant and rapid development.
What was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology must be examined openly and thoroughly
ROSS CLARK 24 November 2022 • 1:42pm
Avery large scandal has emerged relating to Covid-19, and this time it doesn’t involve a single Downing Street party. Emails have emerged which show that government scientists and other prominent figures in the field of genetics had their suspicions back at the beginning of 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 may have had a laboratory origin — but that rather than share their suspicions with the world they were happy to go along with efforts to effectively suppress this theory....
By IAN BIRRELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 06:54 EST, 24 November 2022 | UPDATED: 10:35 EST, 24 November 2022
BY TYLER DURDENTUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 03:00 PM
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Anthony Fauci once again defended brutal Chinese lockdowns, admitting that the Communist government is forcefully locking people inside buildings but adding that if it means people get vaccinated then he is “okay” with it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/watch-fauci-again-defends-chinese-lockdowns
kanekoa.substack.com@KanekoaTheGreat
And here's Fauci announcing the NIH lifted its funding pause on gain-of-function research on January 29, 2018
https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1608355782223093760
And here's a 2016 speech by Fauci's conduit to the Wuhan lab explaining exactly how the lab would make Covid.
twitter.com/davidsacks/sta…1:54 AM · Dec 29, 2022
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1608328412262719490
Nice to see #ExposeFauci getting new attention! 250k+ views in last few hours. All eyes on Fauci right now #FauciFiles @elonmusk
From Eric Spracklen 6:37 PM · Dec 28, 2022
https://twitter.com/EricSpracklen/status/1608245734318424065
By Dorothy Li and Steve Lance January 9, 2023 Updated: January 10, 2023
Forbes Breaking News Feb 9, 2023
At today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned United States Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
Nov 1, 2022 Just when did the covid virus start spreading around the world? Senator’s report on viral origins (Richard Burr) https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media... Section III China’s early COVID-19 Vaccine Development versus the U.S. Operation Warp Speed Full genetic sequence, SARS-CoV-2 First posted, global virus database, January 11, 2020 Chinese professor, violated government restrictions Then Vaccine developers inserted viral genome into cells to produce viral proteins Preclinical animal toxicity Safety and efficacy studies Human clinical safety and efficacy trials Commercial scale vaccine production. Operation Warp Speed Pre OWS work started on January 11, 2020 E.g. Adenovirus vector vaccines The AstraZeneca-Oxford, went from sequence to phase I clinical trials in 103 days (Ebola platform) J and J was 185 days Three adenovirus vector vaccines Pfizer trail started 7th May 2020 Another Chinese vaccine was patented on 24th February 2020 (Brigadier General Yusen Zhou, Academy of Military Medical Sciences) Question Did Chinese researchers have access to the genomic sequence before January 11, 2020? If so, how far in advance of January 11, 2020? MEP Cristian Terhes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTgD... In the case of Pfizer Submitted a clinical trial that started in 14th January 2020 Three days later Pfizer already started a test for these vaccines Moderna Trials since 2017 https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/about... https://apnews.com/article/fact-check... https://www.riotimesonline.com/wp-con... https://patentimages.storage.googleap... Virus shares a sequence of 19 nucleotides with Moderna genome Part of spike protein Coincidence or not a coincidence? (Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, Uracil)
Dr. John Campbell Nov 24, 2022
I feel let down and apologise if I have misled anyone https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la... We are public health scientists who have closely followed the emergence of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and are deeply concerned about its impact on global health and wellbeing. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. https://www.nature.com/articles/S4159...
Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus. Conclusion Obtaining related viral sequences from animal sources would be the most definitive way of revealing viral origins. (Fully formed or evolutionary intermediate) UK experts helped shut down Covid lab leak theory - weeks after being told it might be true Sir Patrick Vallance among scientists behind paper that stifled debate into the origins of the virus https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpZz9...
Top scientists including Sir Patrick Vallance, Were warned that virus could have evolved in lab animals Collaborated in above paper Debate therefore stifled To date Proximal origins paper Accessed more than 5.7 million times and cited in 2,627 subsequent papers. Emails from early 2020 FoI request, James Tobias, freelance journalist Authors held lengthy discussions with experts, Sir Patrick and Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust Warned WIV had been carrying out research on bat-coronaviruses, at worrying levels of biosecurity. Research to alter Sars-like bat coronaviruses had been taking place for many years in Wuhan (not mentioned in paper) Sir Jeremy Farrar, (Wellcome) Wuhan was like the "Wild West". Prof Kristian Andersen, Scripps Research Institute La Jolla, California (lead author) had earlier told colleagues that features of the virus looked as if they’d been engineered in a lab. (No mention of this was made in the paper) Dr Jeremy Farrar, (Wellcome) It is important that we understand how all pathogens emerge so that we can prevent future pandemics as the efforts to gather evidence continue, it is important to stay open-minded Serial passaging Would cause the virus to contain o-glycans The second notable feature of SARS-CoV-2 is a polybasic cleavage site (RRAR) at the junction of S1 and S2 Prof Ron Fouchier, Dutch virologist (from another e mail chain) It is good that this possibility was discussed in detail with a team of experts. However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from active duties, and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular February 8th e mail Prof Edward Holmes (one of the authors) Ever since this outbreak started there have been suggestions that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, if only because of the coincidence of where the outbreak occurred and the location of the lab. I do a lot of work in China and I can tell you a lot of people there believe this and believe they are being lied to Prof Kristian Andersen, February 8th (Lead author) Passage of Sars-live coronaviruses have been going on for several years and more specifically in Wuhan under BSL-2 conditions BSL-2 laboratories are used to study moderate-risk infectious agents or toxins such as salmonella. Serious diseases should be handled in BSL-3 or 4 labs. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) Importing bat coronaviruses from areas of China which hold the closest viruses to Covid-19 Had also applied for funding to manipulate viruses by inserting a furin cleavage site (FCS) The email chain Involved Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an organisation which was funding research at the Wuhan lab. Senate report on viral origins the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a research-related incident https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media... https://asiatimes.com/2022/10/new-evi... https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...
Dec. 20, 2019 to Jan. 18, 2020 Searches for flu-like symptoms Differs from Previous Natural Zoonotic Spill overs Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Lack of intermediate bats to humans Influenza H7N9 (2019) multiple independent introductions across multiple locations Geographically disparate, independent spill overs of H7N9
UNCLASSIFIED UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE MINORITY UNCLASSIFIED SUMMARY of the SECOND INTERIM REPORT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Part I:
• The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the country, with almost every household feeling its effects. The United States’ death toll from this virus has surpassed one million people. Although concrete data is hard to lock down, millions of Americans are suffering from the long-term effects directly attributed to this virus. COVID-19 has also negatively affected communities, especially our school systems. It is becoming increasingly clear that school-age children face major educational hurdles because of long-term school closures. The American public deserves answers to every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic, including how this pandemic started and specifically whether it was a natural occurrence or was the result of a lab-related event. This Committee is uniquely positioned to assist in answering the questions surrounding the origins of COVID-19. This unclassified report attempts to add to the discourse of COVID-19 origins with the understanding that information held by the United States Intelligence Community (IC) that has yet to be shared with this Committee could be useful in making a final determination of the question of whether the origin of this pandemic was natural or lab-related.
• In direct contrast to media skepticism in the early days of the pandemic, the scientific community now largely accepts as feasible that the COVID-19 pandemic may have emerged from a lab-related event involving Chinese scientists experimenting with coronaviruses. Scientists have called for additional investigations and broader government cooperation to address the issue. Since the People’s Republic of China has not been transparent in sharing information, the IC is uniquely situated to provide relevant information. However, the IC has thus far failed to inform the public and failed to keep its Congressional oversight committees fully informed about what it knows. The IC owes the American people greater transparency on the information it already has and must be fully transparent to those in Congress with oversight responsibility.
• Based on our investigation involving a variety of public and non-public information, we conclude that there are indications that SARS-CoV-2 may have been tied to China’s biological weapons research program and spilled over to the human population during a lab-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The IC has failed to adequately address this information. The Committee has not seen any indications that the Chinese military intentionally released SARS-CoV-2.
• Omissions in the IC’s declassified version of its Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins (Updated Assessment) were misleading on key issues. One of the IC’s three primary tasks in its 90-day assessment of the virus’s origins was to evaluate the virus’s potential connections to biological weapons programs. The declassified report claimed the IC was able to reach “broad agreement” that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Despite the fact the IC relayed its confidence levels for nearly every other assessment in the declassified report – low confidence, moderate confidence, etc. – the IC failed to disclose to the public its confidence level regarding this bioweapons assessment.
* The IC’s declassified version also withheld other key information from the public that was in the classified version. The Committee believes that this vital information could have been included in the declassified version without harming national security. In fact, these omissions likely skewed the public’s understanding of key issues. The IC should be transparent regarding what it does or does not know regarding the relationship between the PLA’s Fifth Institute of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), which China has publicly admitted conducts bioweapons research and coronavirus experiments, and the WIV, particularly during 2019.
• In addition to the problems with the IC’s declassified version of the Updated Assessment, the classified version provided to Congress omits additional vital information and dismisses important intelligence in a cursory manner. The IC also failed to correct claims in the classified Updated Assessment when additional clarifying and important information became available, information that undermined a key assertion in the report.
• The IC has failed to comply with numerous requests for more information on these issues. The Committee will continue to press the IC to share the information it has and to explain why information was omitted from the declassified and classified reports
.• Members will seek to declassify the full classified version of our investigative report on this matter. Regardless, the IC should, on its own, declassify and release to the public all relevant information it may have about: the AMMS and biological weapons; the history of China’s biological weapons plans and proposals; the nature and timing of experiments by military scientists at the WIV in 2019; and Fifth Institute scientist General Zhou Yusen, who has since died under questionable circumstances.
JULY 12, 2022|JUDICIAL WATCH
Records Show Fauci Agency ‘Gain-of-Function’ Concerns about Wuhan Lab Going Back to 2016
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch announced today that it received 1651 pages of records from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealing an FBI “inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The records also show National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) officials were concerned about “gain-of-function” research in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016. The Fauci agency was also concerned about EcoHealth Alliance’s lack of compliance with reporting rules and use of gain-of-function research in the NIH-funded research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/nih-fbi-inquiry-of-wuhan-grant/
https://www.judicialwatch.org/judicial-watch-nih-records-reveal-fbi-inquiry-of-wuhan-grant/
The records also show EcoHealth Alliance’s legal team suggesting that a records request for data on their bat coronavirus research in Wuhan be denied because of the January 6 disturbance.
Judicial Watch obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for records of communications, contracts and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-00696)).
Oct 31, 2022 Senate report on COVID coronavirus origins the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a research-related incident https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media... Dec. 20, 2019 to Jan. 18, 2020 Searches for flu-like symptoms Cases probably started mid October, 2019 Analysis of Natural Zoonotic Origins Hypothesis Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Lack of intermediate bats to humans Virus likely needed to circulate in an intermediate host An animal virus must evolve to gain human infecting potential Closest virus is in horseshoe bats residing in Southern China or Southeast Asia Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak Differs from Previous Natural Zoonotic Spill overs Lack of dead ends spill over events, no epidemiological train in animals or humans Influenza Infected poultry and birds always found H7N9 (2019) multiple independent introductions across multiple locations Geographically disparate, independent spill overs of H7N9 Avian Influenza had circulated in bird populations, time and several provinces in China before the first known human infections SARS epidemic At least five independent spill overs of the SARS virus into humans Live animal markets followed by human to human E.g. Guangdong Province, November 2002 to January 2003 SARS, later on in 2003 – 2004 Additional independent subsequent spill over infections in humans Civets identified within 6 months Early SARS viral samples from humans contained genetic mutations that reflected prior circulation and adaptation in palm civets In total contrast Chinese government, asserted that the COVID-19 originated from a natural zoonotic transmission occurring at the Huanan market Geo-temporal spread of COVID-19 in China, December 31, 2019 to February 11, 2020 Earliest identified SARS-CoV-2 well-adapted for human-to-human transmission Early SARS-CoV-2 variants had little genetic diversity, 2 nucleotides out of 29,900 (Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, Uracil) No evidence of previous intermediate host circulation Genetic similarity between the environmental samples and human viral samples, supports the likelihood that the virus found at the Huanan Seafood Market was shed by humans Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, to address pandemic preparedness and response programs Interim report, to examine the two prevailing theories of origin Last fifteen months Reviewed several hundred scientific studies, interviewed several dozen subject matter experts, analyzed previous reports and studies. The lack of transparency and collaboration from government and public health officials in the People’s Republic of China with respect to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 prevents reaching a more definitive conclusion. I hope this report will guide the World Health Organization and other international institutions Introduction Challenging Since January 3, 2020, People’s Republic of China (PRC) have prohibited sharing or publishing any information on SARS-CoV-2 without state review and approval. Establishing timeline, is difficult Mid October, 2019
An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Interim Report Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions Minority Oversight Staff October 2022
https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/report_an_analysis_of_the_origins_of_covid-19_102722.pdf
An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic Interim Report
Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions Minority Oversight Staff
October 2022
Conclusion
As noted by the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, the COVID19 Lancet Commission, and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence 90-Day Assessment on the COVID-19 Origins, more information is needed to arrive at a more precise, if not a definitive, understanding of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how the COVID-19 pandemic began.225 Governments, leaders, public health officials, and scientists involved in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and working to prevent future pandemics, must commit to greater transparency, engagement, and responsibility in their efforts.
Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident. New information, made publicly available and independently verifiable, could change this assessment. However, the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy. The following are critical outstanding questions that would need to be addressed to be able to more definitively conclude the origins of SARS-CoV-2:
What is the intermediate host species for SARS-CoV-2? Where did it first infect humans?
Where is SARS-CoV-2’s viral reservoir?
How did SARS-CoV-2 acquire its unique genetic features, such as its furin cleavage site?
Advocates of a zoonotic origin theory must provide clear and convincing evidence that a natural zoonotic spillover is the source of the pandemic, as was demonstrated for the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak. In other words, there needs to be verifiable evidence that a natural zoonotic spillover actually occurred, not simply that such a spillover could have occurred.
An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic Interim Report
Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions Minority Oversight Staff
October 2022
https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/report_an_analysis_of_the_origins_of_covid-19_102722.pdf
Dr. John Campbell Oct 31, 2022
Senate report on COVID coronavirus origins the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a research-related incident
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaJt5jC5gbY
Oct 18, 2022 ABC7
Boston University researchers say they've developed a new, more lethal strain of COVID that killed 80% of the mice infected with it. Researchers say their study will help them better understand the omicron variant and come up with new treatments.
...Gain-Of-Function Experiments At Boston University Create A Deadly New Covid-19 Virus. Who
HEALTHCARE Forbes Steven Salzberg Contributor Oct 24, 2022,07:30am EDT
This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. (NIAID/TNS) TNSTNS
By Ryan Mancini | RMancini@masslive.com
Boston University is defending its research after a report studying the COVID-19 omicron variant’s lower severe infection rate was met with criticism among news outlets and one of its financial backers.
Da-Yuan Chen, Devin Kenney, Chue Vin Chin, Alexander H. Tavares, Nazimuddin Khan, Hasahn L. Conway, GuanQun Liu, Manish C. Choudhary, Hans P. Gertje, Aoife K. O’Connell, Darrell N. Kotton, Alexandra Herrmann, View ORCID ProfileArmin Ensser, John H. Connor, Markus Bosmann, Jonathan Z. Li, Michaela U. Gack, Susan C. Baker, Robert N. Kirchdoerfer, Yachana Kataria, Nicholas A. Crossland, Florian Douam, Mohsan Saeeddoi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.13.512134This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?]
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.13.512134v1.full
CBS-Boston via Yahoo News
Boston University says COVID strain created in lab is not more dangerous
CBS-Boston via Yahoo News
Boston University refutes report that lab created dangerous COVID strain
War Of Words: Experts Slam Boston University For Developing New COVID Strain; School Denies...
Mashable· The horror of the coronavirus continues, with terrifying news from Boston University in the United...
NIH investigates Boston University COVID experiments amid controversy
CBS News· The National Institutes of Health is now examining whether experiments performed at Boston ...
Federal Gov’t Is Not Happy With Boston University’s Lab-Made COVID Strain
The Daily Beast· “This research made the virus replicate less dangerous,” the school said in a statement, refuting...
OCTOBER 25, 20227:44 AM UPDATED 9 HOURS AGO
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-boston-virus-idUSL1N31Q0ZK
Boston University COVID researchers combine omicron spike protein with original virus, test strain on mice
RICK SOBEY BOSTON HERALD UPDATED OCTOBER 18, 2022 12:59 PM
Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/nation-world/national/article267486713.html#storylink=cpy
https://www.kentucky.com/news/nation-world/national/article267486713.html
Times Now Digital -ReactComments|3
This is the most shocking news for a world that has lost so much to a pandemic that we are battling for the third year in a row.
NEW YORK – 30, AUGUST, 2022 – EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), in partnership with Boston University, was awarded a $1 million Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention Phase I (PIPP) grant by the National Science Foundation. The team of scientists will strategize methods of early infectious disease detection and intervention.
“EcoHealth has championed analytical approaches to predicting pandemics for the last 25 years. This new collaboration with global leaders at BU & our own leaders in emerging disease research takes our work to the next level” said EcoHealth Alliance President, Dr. Peter Daszak.
New Lab-Made Covid-19 Coronavirus At Boston University Raises Questions Forbes
Boston University COVID researchers combine omicron spike protein with original virus, test strain
Wall Street Silver@WallStreetSilv·Oct 17
When and where will they "accidentally" release it…?
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1582063733488001025
By LUKE ANDREWS HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:06 EDT, 18 October 2022 | UPDATED: 17:17 EDT, 18 October 2022
A senior US health official today admitted that controversial Covid manipulation research carried out in a laboratory in Boston was not authorized — despite being funded by taxpayer money.
DailyMail.com exclusively revealed yesterday that a team from Boston University had developed a hybrid Covid virus — combining the Omicron and original Wuhan strains — which had an 80 per cent lethality rate.
Public records indicate it was partly paid for using a grant awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the federal government's main research agencies.
The above passage from the paper shows that the research used money from NIAID and NIH grants. It was funded by Boston University, which they said meant they did not need to contact NIAID to get clearance for the work
In the new research , which has not been peer-reviewed, a team of researchers from Boston and Florida extracted Omicron's spike protein — the unique structure that binds to and invades human cells. It has always been present but it has become more evolved over time. Omicron has dozens of mutations in its spike protein that made it so infectious. Researchers attached Omicron's spike protein to the original wildtype strain that first emerged in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic. The researchers looked at how mice fared under the new hybrid strain compared to the original Omicron variant
By PAUL FARRELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 00:55 EDT, 3 October 2022 | UPDATED: 11:24 EDT, 3 October 2022
BY TYLER DURDEN THURSDAY, SEP 15, 2022 - 02:40 PM
After providing a platform for a massive 'Natural Origins' Covid-19 disinformation campaign by EcoHealth Alliance head Peter Daszak, The Lancet appears to have done a 180 - suggesting Covid-19 may have originated "in US laboratories engaged in the laboratory manipulation of SARS-CoV-like viruses," among other possibilities.
https://covid19commission.org/
By Robert Redfield and Marc Siegel Aug. 15, 2021 3:34 pm ET
US National Institutes of Health Ending Subaward for Lab in Wuhan, China
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has ended a subgrant to the laboratory in China located where the first COVID-19 cases were identified in 2019.
CHINA Zachary Stieber Aug 20, 2022
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs says he is “pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of US lab biotechnology” and warns that there is dangerous virus research taking place without public oversight. Current Affairs
filed 02 August 2022 in THE VIRUS
By PAUL FARRELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 00:55 EDT, 3 October 2022 | UPDATED: 11:24 EDT, 3 October 2022
By Matt Field | March 25, 2022
By Laura H. Kahn | March 10, 2022
https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/the-origins-of-sars-cov-2-still-to-be-determined/
The accident and a subsequent cover-up have renewed relevance as scientists search for the origins of Covid-19.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/20/world/europe/coronavirus-lab-anthrax.html
March 28, 2022
By Sarah Cobey, Jesse Bloom, Tyler Starr and Nathaniel Lash
Dr. Cobey studies the interaction of immunity, virus evolution and transmission at the University of Chicago. Dr. Bloom and Dr. Starr study virus evolution at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Mr. Lash is a graphics editor for Opinion.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/28/opinion/coronavirus-mutation-future.html
Home Coronavirus Excess mortality
by Charlie Giattino, Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Joe Hasell
We update this page each week with the latest available data on excess mortality. Last updated: 29 March 2022
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
Sep 15, 2022 Dr. John Campbell
The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic, 14th September 2022 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la... https://covid19commission.org Viral origins The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains unknown. There are two leading hypotheses: that the virus emerged as a zoonotic spillover from wildlife or a farm animal, possibly through a wet market, in a location that is still undetermined; or that the virus emerged from a research-related incident, during the field collection of viruses, or through a laboratory-associated escape. No independent, transparent, and science-based investigation has been carried out regarding the bioengineering of SARS-like viruses that was underway before the outbreak of COVID-19. The laboratory notebooks, databases, email records, and samples of institutions involved in such research have not been made available to independent researchers. Independent researchers have not yet investigated the US laboratories engaged in the laboratory manipulation of SARS-CoV-like viruses, nor have they investigated the details of the laboratory research that had been underway in Wuhan. US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has resisted disclosing details of the research on SARS-CoV-related viruses that it had been supporting, providing extensively redacted information only as required by Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. In brief, there are many potential proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2, but there is still a shortfall of independent, scientific, and collaborative work on the issue. The search for the origins of the virus requires unbiased, independent, transparent, and rigorous work by international teams in the fields of virology, epidemiology, bioinformatics, and other related fields, and supported by all governments. In the absence of an unbiased, independent, and rigorous search for a natural origin by a multidisciplinary team of experts alongside an unbiased, independent, and rigorous investigation of the research-related hypotheses, the public's trust in science will be imperilled, with potentially grave long-term repercussions. It is therefore crucial to investigate all hypotheses fully, not only to ascertain the source of the pandemic and to protect against future emerging infectious diseases, but also to ensure the integrity of science itself. The perceived lack of transparency to date by leading scientific agencies and laboratories is troubling and needs to be addressed. Strategies to prevent research-related releases should include stronger international and national oversight of biosafety, biosecurity, and biorisk management, including the strict regulation of gain of function research of concern. When investigating the origins of any novel pathogen, potential hypotheses should not be prematurely rejected to ensure that time-sensitive data— such as early case information and laboratory records—are collected.
BY TYLER DURDENTHURSDAY, SEP 15, 2022 - 02:40 PM
After providing a platform for a massive 'Natural Origins' Covid-19 disinformation campaign by EcoHealth Alliance head Peter Daszak, The Lancet appears to have done a 180 - suggesting Covid-19 may have originated "in US laboratories engaged in the laboratory manipulation of SARS-CoV-like viruses," among other possibilities.
Read our final report here: https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/covid19
The Lancet COVID-19 Commission is an interdisciplinary initiative encompassing the health sciences, business, finance, and public policy.
The work of the Commission has four main themes:
The work of the Commission will be supported by twelve Task Forces, in areas ranging from vaccine development, to humanitarian relief strategies, to safe workplaces, to global economic recovery.
https://covid19commission.org/
https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/covid19
Published:September 14, 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01585-9
As of May 31, 2022, there were 6·9 million reported deaths and 17·2 million estimated deaths from COVID-19, as reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME; throughout the report, we rely on IHME estimates of infections and deaths; note that the IHME gives an estimated range, and we refer to the mean estimate). This staggering death toll is both a profound tragedy and a massive global failure at multiple levels. Too many governments have failed to adhere to basic norms of institutional rationality and transparency, too many people—often influenced by misinformation—have disrespected and protested against basic public health precautions, and the world's major powers have failed to collaborate to control the pandemic.The multiple failures of international cooperation include (1) the lack of timely notification of the initial outbreak of COVID-19; (2) costly delays in acknowledging the crucial airborne exposure pathway of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and in implementing appropriate measures at national and global levels to slow the spread of the virus; (3) the lack of coordination among countries regarding suppression strategies; (4) the failure of governments to examine evidence and adopt best practices for controlling the pandemic and managing economic and social spillovers from other countries; (5) the shortfall of global funding for low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), as classified by the World Bank; (6) the failure to ensure adequate global supplies and equitable distribution of key commodities—including protective gear, diagnostics, medicines, medical devices, and vaccines—especially for LMICs; (7) the lack of timely, accurate, and systematic data on infections, deaths, viral variants, health system responses, and indirect health consequences; (8) the poor enforcement of appropriate levels of biosafety regulations in the lead-up to the pandemic, raising the possibility of a laboratory-related outbreak; (9) the failure to combat systematic disinformation; and (10) the lack of global and national safety nets to protect populations experiencing vulnerability.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01585-9/fulltext
June 23, 2022
https://unherd.com/2022/06/what-happened-to-the-lab-leak-hypothesis/
By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed in prepared Senate testimony this week that some U.S. intelligence agencies — not identified by name — believe the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic may have been genetically modified in a laboratory and not transmitted naturally from an animal host in China, where it was first identified.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/may/11/dia-intel-suggests-covid-virus-was-lab-engineered/
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1499461957849694212
https://zenodo.org/record/6299116#.YiEV5y-B2qD
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8393104/
Nature (2022)Cite this article Metrics
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04532-4
The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 is unknown despite reports of various SARS-CoV-2-related viruses in Asian Rhinolophus bats1–4, including the closest virus from R. affinis, RaTG135,6 and in pangolins7–9. SARS-CoV-2 presents a mosaic genome, to which different progenitors contribute. The spike sequence determines the binding affinity and accessibility of its receptor-binding domain (RBD) to the cellular angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and is responsible for host range10–12. SARS-CoV-2 progenitor bat viruses genetically close to SARS-CoV-2 and able to enter human cells through a human ACE2 pathway have not yet been identified, though they would be key in understanding the origin of the epidemics. Here we show that such viruses indeed circulate in cave bats living in the limestone karstic terrain in North Laos, within the Indochinese peninsula. We found that the RBDs of these viruses differ from that of SARS-CoV-2 by only one or two residues at the interface with ACE2, bind more efficiently to the hACE2 protein than the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain isolated in early human cases, and mediate hACE2-dependent entry and replication in human cells, which is inhibited by antibodies neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. None of these bat viruses harbors a furin cleavage site in the spike. Our findings therefore indicate that bat-borne SARS-CoV-2-like viruses potentially infectious for humans circulate in Rhinolophus spp. in the Indochinese peninsula.
bioRxiv . 2020 Aug 26;2020.08.26.268854. doi: 10.1101/2020.08.26.268854. Preprint
Bryan A Johnson, Xuping Xie, Birte Kalveram, Kumari G Lokugamage, Antonio Muruato, Jing Zou, Xianwen Zhang, Terry Juelich, Jennifer K Smith, Lihong Zhang, Nathen Bopp, Craig Schindewolf, Michelle Vu, Abigail Vanderheiden, Daniele Swetnam, Jessica A Plante, Patricia Aguilar, Kenneth S Plante, Benhur Lee, Scott C Weaver, Mehul S Suthar, Andrew L Routh, Ping Ren, Zhiqiang Ku, Zhiqiang An, Kari Debbink, Pei Yong Shi, Alexander N Freiberg, Vineet D Menachery
Free PMC article
SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in a global pandemic and shutdown economies around the world. Sequence analysis indicates that the novel coronavirus (CoV) has an insertion of a furin cleavage site (PRRAR) in its spike protein. Absent in other group 2B CoVs, the insertion may be a key factor in the replication and virulence of SARS-CoV-2. To explore this question, we generated a SARS-CoV-2 mutant lacking the furin cleavage site (ΔPRRA) in the spike protein. This mutant virus replicated with faster kinetics and improved fitness in Vero E6 cells. The mutant virus also had reduced spike protein processing as compared to wild-type SARS-CoV-2. In contrast, the ΔPRRA had reduced replication in Calu3 cells, a human respiratory cell line, and had attenuated disease in a hamster pathogenesis model. Despite the reduced disease, the ΔPRRA mutant offered robust protection from SARS-CoV-2 rechallenge. Importantly, plaque reduction neutralization tests (PRNT 50 ) with COVID-19 patient sera and monoclonal antibodies against the receptor-binding domain found a shift, with the mutant virus resulting in consistently reduced PRNT 50 titers. Together, these results demonstrate a critical role for the furin cleavage site insertion in SARS-CoV-2 replication and pathogenesis. In addition, these findings illustrate the importance of this insertion in evaluating neutralization and other downstream SARS-CoV-2 assays.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32869021/
Apr 4, 2022 The Hill
Ryan Grim breaks down new reporting from Vanity Fair about the NIH's possible funding of gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.
INVESTIGATION
Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a V.F. investigation shows how an organization dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.
BY KATHERINE EBAN MARCH 31, 2022
BREAKING NEWS: LEAKED DOCUMENT SHOWS U.S. AND CHINESE SCIENTISTS PLANNED TO GENETICALLY ENGINEER A SARS-LIKE VIRUS BY INSERTING A SEGMENT KNOWN TO MAKE IT MORE INFECTIOUS TO HUMANS
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1499461957849694212
https://zenodo.org/record/6299116#.YiEV5y-B2qD
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8393104/
Mar 10, 2022 WION
Newly published documents from the US embassy in China reveal that US officials were aware of China's cover-up in Wuhan. They flagged China's incomplete health bulletins in January 2020. Did Fauci and US officials hide the reality in Wuhan? Palki Sharma tells you.
BREAKING NEWS: LEAKED DOCUMENT SHOWS U.S. AND CHINESE SCIENTISTS PLANNED TO GENETICALLY ENGINEER A SARS-LIKE VIRUS BY INSERTING A SEGMENT KNOWN TO MAKE IT MORE INFECTIOUS TO HUMANS
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1499461957849694212
https://zenodo.org/record/6299116#.YiEV5y-B2qD
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8393104/
Nature (2022)Cite this article Metrics
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04532-4
The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 is unknown despite reports of various SARS-CoV-2-related viruses in Asian Rhinolophus bats1–4, including the closest virus from R. affinis, RaTG135,6 and in pangolins7–9. SARS-CoV-2 presents a mosaic genome, to which different progenitors contribute. The spike sequence determines the binding affinity and accessibility of its receptor-binding domain (RBD) to the cellular angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and is responsible for host range10–12. SARS-CoV-2 progenitor bat viruses genetically close to SARS-CoV-2 and able to enter human cells through a human ACE2 pathway have not yet been identified, though they would be key in understanding the origin of the epidemics. Here we show that such viruses indeed circulate in cave bats living in the limestone karstic terrain in North Laos, within the Indochinese peninsula. We found that the RBDs of these viruses differ from that of SARS-CoV-2 by only one or two residues at the interface with ACE2, bind more efficiently to the hACE2 protein than the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain isolated in early human cases, and mediate hACE2-dependent entry and replication in human cells, which is inhibited by antibodies neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. None of these bat viruses harbors a furin cleavage site in the spike. Our findings therefore indicate that bat-borne SARS-CoV-2-like viruses potentially infectious for humans circulate in Rhinolophus spp. in the Indochinese peninsula.
Early 2018: Wuhan & US scientists propose inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-like viruses in the lab.
Late 2019: Novel SARS-like virus with novel cleavage site is detected in Wuhan.
Early 2020: WIV manuscripts fail to take note of the virus' novel cleavage site.
10:04 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1511162716366389252
The best-laid scams of vice & spin: an origin Tweetorial[1] The global scientists who suppressed awareness of the Furincleavage site [FCS] exacerbated the mistakes triggered by China's cover-up of the outbreak in Jan. '20. Any chance to stop the pandemic died on 2/1.
https://twitter.com/CharlesRixey/status/1519748598740750337
INVESTIGATION
Chasing scientific renown, grant dollars, and approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak transformed the environmental nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance into a government-funded sponsor of risky, cutting-edge virus research in both the U.S. and Wuhan, China. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a V.F. investigation shows how an organization dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.
MARCH 31, 2022
Early 2018: Wuhan & US scientists propose inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-like viruses in the lab.
Late 2019: Novel SARS-like virus with novel cleavage site is detected in Wuhan.
Early 2020: WIV manuscripts fail to take note of the virus' novel cleavage site.
10:04 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1511162716366389252
Yujia Alina Chan, Shing Hei Zhan Author Notes Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 2022, msab327, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab327Published: 12 November 2022
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/39/1/msab327/6426085?login=false
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1370392/v1
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/
Sharon Lerner, Mara Hvistendahl
March 11 2022, 9:50 a.m.
SINCE THE EARLY days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Peter Daszak has been at the center of a heated, and at times vicious, debate over the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The parasitologist helms the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, a wildlife conservation organization that aims to understand and prevent infectious diseases; the organization has received more than $118 million in grants and contracts from U.S. agencies, much of which Daszak distributes to labs around the world. Starting in 2005, he worked closely with Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who was a key partner on a 2014 National Institutes of Health grant to research bat coronaviruses in China. The Intercept has published over 2,500 pages of documents and communications from the grant following a Freedom of Information lawsuit — information that has transformed public understanding of the research conducted under the grant.
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/11/covid-nih-ecohealth-peter-daszak-interview/
Rossana Segreto@Rossana38510044
"And by the way, that database is somewhere on the USAID government system." https://theintercept.com/2022/03/11/covid-nih-ecohealth-peter-daszak-interview/… Care to share it @USAID?
Rossana Segreto@Rossana38510044·20m"
"For the furin cleavage site, you should really ask Ralph Baric. He wrote that section of the DARPA grant."
Care to tell us more about the furin cleavage site @Baric_Lab?
EMAILS POINT TO OVERSIGHT PROBLEMS WITH NIH BAT CORONAVIRUS GRANT
In an interview, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak addressed gaps and missing information in documents released to The Intercept. Mara HvistendahlMara Hvistendahl March 3 2022, 9:30 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/03/wuhan-coronavirus-research-nih-ecohealth/
The media’s lab leak fiasco is the most-read Slow Boring post of all time.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/im-not-convinced-by-the-new-lab-leak?s=w
DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.30910.00328 Projects: Pandemics DRASTIC
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355373689_The_October_Surprise_in_Wuhan
Show authors Nature (2022)Cite this article
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04532-4
The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 is unknown despite reports of various SARS-CoV-2-related viruses in Asian Rhinolophus bats1–4, including the closest virus from R. affinis, RaTG135,6 and in pangolins7–9. SARS-CoV-2 presents a mosaic genome, to which different progenitors contribute. The spike sequence determines the binding affinity and accessibility of its receptor-binding domain (RBD) to the cellular angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and is responsible for host range10–12. SARS-CoV-2 progenitor bat viruses genetically close to SARS-CoV-2 and able to enter human cells through a human ACE2 pathway have not yet been identified, though they would be key in understanding the origin of the epidemics. Here we show that such viruses indeed circulate in cave bats living in the limestone karstic terrain in North Laos, within the Indochinese peninsula. We found that the RBDs of these viruses differ from that of SARS-CoV-2 by only one or two residues at the interface with ACE2, bind more efficiently to the hACE2 protein than the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain isolated in early human cases, and mediate hACE2-dependent entry and replication in human cells, which is inhibited by antibodies neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. None of these bat viruses harbors a furin cleavage site in the spike. Our findings therefore indicate that bat-borne SARS-CoV-2-like viruses potentially infectious for humans circulate in Rhinolophus spp. in the Indochinese peninsula.
By Joel Achenbach washingtonpost.com
National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) February 2022
https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=44823
Air date:Monday, February 28, 2022, 12:00:00 PM
Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local 41 On-demand)
Category:National Science Advisory Board for BiosecurityRuntime:01:06:39
Description:The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) is scheduled to virtually convene on February 28, 2022, from 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. ET. The meeting will include a review of the charge to the committee and discussion of next steps for the committee.
For more information go to https://osp.od.nih.gov/biotechnology/national-science-advisory-board-for-biosecurity-nsabb/
Video is up for a recent (Feb 28, 2022) National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) public review of US government policies on dual use research of concern (DURC) and research with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPP/P3CO).
https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=44823
9:55 AM · Mar 2, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1499035660627419139
Nature (2022)Cite this article 620 Altmetric Metrics
The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 is unknown despite reports of various SARS-CoV-2-related viruses in Asian Rhinolophus bats1–4, including the closest virus from R. affinis, RaTG135,6 and in pangolins7–9. SARS-CoV-2 presents a mosaic genome, to which different progenitors contribute. The spike sequence determines the binding affinity and accessibility of its receptor-binding domain (RBD) to the cellular angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and is responsible for host range10–12. SARS-CoV-2 progenitor bat viruses genetically close to SARS-CoV-2 and able to enter human cells through a human ACE2 pathway have not yet been identified, though they would be key in understanding the origin of the epidemics. Here we show that such viruses indeed circulate in cave bats living in the limestone karstic terrain in North Laos, within the Indochinese peninsula. We found that the RBDs of these viruses differ from that of SARS-CoV-2 by only one or two residues at the interface with ACE2, bind more efficiently to the hACE2 protein than the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain isolated in early human cases, and mediate hACE2-dependent entry and replication in human cells, which is inhibited by antibodies neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. None of these bat viruses harbors a furin cleavage site in the spike. Our findings therefore indicate that bat-borne SARS-CoV-2-like viruses potentially infectious for humans circulate in Rhinolophus spp. in the Indochinese peninsula.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04532-4
Article written by Louis San France Televisions Posted on 01/25/2022 06:59Updateon 01/25/2022 12:37
Finally, the viruses discovered by Marc Eloit and his team nevertheless present an "important difference" with Sars-Cov-2: their genome lacks an element called "furin cleavage site", which makes it possible to increase the entry efficiency of Sars-CoV-2 into human lung cells and its pathogenicity. This "site" is fundamental since it makes the virus dangerous for humans. “It could have been acquired by Sars-CoV-2 during multiple passages in human cells” , remarks Marc Eloit. But that means "either successive passages without symptoms in humans, until this furin site is acquired, or passages in cell cultures in the laboratory", he says. The initially silent circulation of the virus in humans, because initially without or with few symptoms, is "theoretically possible" , explains the virologist. Not to mention that the caves in which bats live are frequented by humans: inhabitants of these regions go there to collect guano or sometimes consume these animals, and tourists visit these sites.
Alina Chan@Ayjchan
The Temmam et al. Laos bat virus paper is now past peer review㊗️ https://nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04532-4…
In a recent interview, the senior author said that the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2, not present in the Laos bat viruses, may have arisen naturally or in a lab.
https://francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/deux-ans-apres-le-debut-de-la-pandemie-de-covid-19-ou-en-est-l-enquete-sur-les-origines-du-sars-cov-2_4911225.html…3:13 PM · Feb 16, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1494042359830568964
By The Editorial Board Feb. 17, 2022 6:43 pm ET
Sharon Lerner February 20 2022, 7:00 a.m.
WITH THE GLOBAL death toll from Covid-19 approaching 6 million, the need to understand the origins of the pandemic is both pressing and grave. But the National Institutes of Health continues to withhold critical documents that could shed light on this question. This week, in response to ongoing litigation over public records related to coronavirus research funded by the federal agency, the NIH sent The Intercept 292 fully redacted pages rather than substantive material that could help us understand how the virus first came to infect humans.
https://theintercept.com/2022/02/20/nih-coronavirus-research-wuhan-redacted/
Despite bipartisan+scientific pressure to release info relevant to #OriginOfCovid, @NIH refuses to be transparent. In a rare non-redacted email from 2020, we see confirmation that pre-pandemic funding had involved samples from SE Asia sent to Wuhan.
theintercept.comNIH Sent The Intercept 292 Fully Redacted Pages Related to Virus Research in WuhanThe NIH continues to withhold critical documents that could shed light on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.11:52 AM · Feb 20, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1495441207442513922
Biosecurity expert helping Government to prevent future pandemics claims ministers consider leak as most likely origin of Covid pandemic
The Prime Minister said that the UK biosecurity strategy would be refreshed to protect against 'natural zoonosis and laboratory leaks'
By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR 22 February 2022 • 7:00pm
Virus origin stories have always been prone to conspiracy theories. COVID disinformation has threatened research—and lives
Yujia Alina Chan, Shing Hei Zhan Author NotesMolecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 2022, msab327, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab327 Published: 12 November 2021 PDF Cite Permissions Icon Permissions
Compared with other SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs), SARS-CoV-2 possesses a unique furin cleavage site (FCS) in its spike. This has stimulated discussion pertaining to the origin of SARS-CoV-2 because the FCS has been observed to be under strong selective pressure in humans and confers the enhanced ability to infect some cell types and induce cell–cell fusion. Furthermore, scientists have demonstrated interest in studying novel cleavage sites by introducing them into SARSr-CoVs. We review what is known about the SARS-CoV-2 FCS in the context of its pathogenesis, origin, and how future wildlife coronavirus sampling may alter the interpretation of existing data.
COVID-19, furin cleavage site, virology, coronavirusIssue Section: Perspective Associate Editor: Sudhir Kumar
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/39/1/msab327/6426085?login=false
#WuhanVirus #BorisJohnson #Gravitas
Feb 23, 2022 WION
It's been 2 years since the Wuhan Virus pandemic struck. We still do not know how the virus from China originated. Was it leak from the Wuhan lab? Boris Johnson's government reportedly believes so. Listen in to Palki Sharma. #WuhanVirus #BorisJohnson #Gravitas
Biosecurity expert helping Government to prevent future pandemics claims ministers consider leak as most likely origin of Covid pandemic
The Prime Minister said that the UK biosecurity strategy would be refreshed to protect against 'natural zoonosis and laboratory leaks'
By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR 22 February 2022 • 7:00pm
Premiered Feb 23, 2022 Peak Prosperity
The Intercept news organization has been trying to gain some insight into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. They have had top submit FOIA requests to a very reluctant NIH that seems quite uninterested in sharing anything about their role in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The recent FOIA release is a case-study in guilty agency behavior. Out of 312 pages released, a full 297 of them were 100% redacted. Nada. Nothing. Well, when I won’t show you something, that means I am hiding something. I am 100% sure the NIH is hiding something here. Probably just a bad case of institutional embarrassment, but still, a hide. The NIH clearly funded activities related to Gain of Function at Chinese facilities, including the WIV. This we already know from prior releases. What are they hiding now that’s worse than that? Well, we can only guess. But now there’s also been great detective work to uncover how exactly the “furin cleavage site” (PRRA, baby!) got into SAR2. The precise genetic sequence is quite odd as it doesn’t appear anywhere else in the entire world of viruses or higher animals. But it does appear in several Moderna patents. We deserve answers as to how that might have come to be. After all, the entire world lost two years of proper living, and a bunch of draconian governmental programs were implemented. People lost livelihoods, children lost childhoods, and people lost lives. How are we *not* deserving or proper answers and, where appropriate, full accountability for anyone found to be responsible? Add it all up, and it's time for you to become more resilient. Join our tribe here and enter the best conversations about this subject on the internet: https://www.peakprosperity.com/its-ti... Links: https://theintercept.com/2022/02/20/n... https://www.muckrock.com/news/archive... https://www.muckrock.com/news/archive... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/... https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
By CONNOR BOYD DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE and LUKE ANDREWS HEALTH REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 09:17 EST, 10 February 2022 | UPDATED: 12:49 EST, 10 February 2022
Jan 2019: Scientists from the University of Science Technology of China collect 12 soil samples on King George Island, Antarctica, during study of penguin bacteria.
November 2019: Three workers at the Wuhan Insititue of virology fall sick with Covid-like symptoms, according to US intelligence
Dec 2019: The Arctic soil samples are sent to the Sangon Biotech laboratory in Shanghai, China, to be sequenced.
The Sangon Biotech laboratory also sequences samples from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dec 2019/early 2020: The samples are analysed and during the sequencing contaminated by a different sample from another project, likely through a barcode error at the lab.
The other sample contains a mutated version of Covid-19 and genetic material from monkeys and hamsters suggesting it is from lab testing.
Virologists say the variant is a descendant of the original Wuhan strain of Covid-19. Some experts believe it is an ancestor virus that is the bridge between bat coronavirus and Covid-19.
Dec 31 2019: China confirms its first cases of Covid after reports of mystery illness spreading since November 2019.
Early 2020: The Covid sequences are uploaded to an international database with in the dataset from the Antarctic soil sample , but not exactly clear when. They go unnoticed for over a year.
Jan 2021: Researchers at Lorand University and the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hungary discover three of the Antarctic soil samples contain traces of what may be an ancestral version of Covid, along with monkey and hamster DNA.
Dec 23, 2021: The scientists publish a pre-print paper online, warning the contaminated samples could indicate the possible origin of Covid.
Jan 2022: Public access to the data is revoked after the pre-print is released and then restored a month later.
Chinese researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, near Shanghai, said they did not ask to have the data deleted or restored.
Feb 2022: Hungarian scientists publish a second pre-print suggesting the samples may be contaminated with an early version of Covid.
#AnthonyFauci #JohnBerman #NewDay
Jun 3, 2021 CNN
Dr. Anthony Fauci called criticism of his emails, which were revealed via a Freedom of Information Act request, where he was being thanked by the head of a medical company that is funding research at the Wuhan, China, virology lab for saying the Covid-19 origin was started by natural causes. #AnthonyFauci #JohnBerman #NewDay
BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL - 02/04/22 12:05 AM EST
Health expert says other COVID-19 variants 'pale in comparison' to delta
VOL. 6, NO. 4 / FEBRUARY 2022
Questions about the origins of COVID-19 are of more than academic interest.
https://inference-review.com/article/thunder-out-of-china
Feb 28, 2020 Coalition for the Life Sciences
What We Know about the Coronavirus Featuring Ralph Baric, PhD The University of North Carolina Wednesday, February 26, 2020 Cannon House Office Building Every day we hear a new report on the coronavirus. The reports range from the spread of the virus to the current mortality rates of victims of the virus. But what does science know about this virus? And is there hope for a treatment before the virus becomes even more deadly? Here is Dr. Ralph Baric, a leading epidemiologist, who has been working on finding a treatment for this virus. He discusses what we know and what we still don’t know about the coronavirus.
sheila@capitolsheila
🧵UNC's Ralph Baric briefed Capitol Hill staff back on Feb. 28, 2020, & in one hour:
NEVER mentioned he worked w/ Wuhan bio lab.
NEVER mentioned his chimeric novel bat virus work.
Repeatedly mentioned (his) Remdesivir, says it "works against SARS2.0."youtube.com
What We Know about the Coronavirus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE_H7dTqJXU&t=1s
Featuring Ralph Baric, PhD The University of North Carolina Wednesday, February 26, 2020 Cannon House Office Building Every da...2:33 AM · Feb 21, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/capitolsheila/status/1495662993018920964
Shi Zhengli has spent years at the Wuhan Institute of Virology researching coronaviruses that live in bats. Her work has come under fire as the world tries to understand where covid-19 came from.
by Jane Qiu February 9, 2022
On a foggy morning in early February last year, dozens of journalists from around the world gathered outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Some walked around to find the best camera position; others climbed a ladder to peer into the fenced-off compound, its tall red-brick buildings hidden behind a thick mist. Security guards in blue uniforms lined the winding driveway leading to the entrance.
The crowd was gathered because a team of international disease detectives selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to hunt for the origins of covid-19 was on its way to visit.
“They will be here in a minute,” a journalist working for Japan’s Tokyo Broadcasting System Television said after checking her phone. Her voice was brisk and slightly shaken; her eyes sparkled with nervous excitement. “My colleagues just told me. They’re chasing the WHO cars.”
Soon enough, the motorcade burst through the fog. As it approached the institute’s main gate, a journalist in a blue down jacket and white face mask sprinted alongside as if he were running for his life, pointing a video camera toward the cars, his rucksack bouncing up and down on his back. A dozen photographers flocked to the lead car, pushing against one another and forcing the convoy to a stop. The guards tried herding them away to get the cars moving again. “Comments, please!” several journalists shouted.
Inside the car, Peter Daszak—a disease ecologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that works with scientists around the world to study viruses in wildlife—was filming the scene on his cell phone.
He was a member of the WHO team, and when we’d spoken the week before, he'd cautioned that the Wuhan trip was just a first step in trying to figure out where covid-19 came from. “It can take years or even decades to find the cause of a new infectious disease,” said Daszak, who has collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for more than 15 years and is now himself caught up in the debate over the disease’s origins. “Sometimes we just never know.”
But the world wanted quick answers.
The institute holds a critical place in the story of the covid-19 pandemic. A leading center for coronavirus research, it was the first facility to isolate the new virus, and the first to sequence its genome. One of its labs, led by virologist Shi Zhengli, focuses on coronaviruses that live in bats, and has spent years sequencing viral genomes, isolating live viruses, and—through genetic mixing and matching—trying to understand how they may evolve to gain the ability to infect humans. Over the past 18 years, her team has collected more than 20,000 samples from bat colonies across China.
Shi’s work, which has earned her the nickname China’s bat woman, has been at the center of controversy. Some have suggested that her bat samples could be the source of the covid-19 virus, which scientists call SARS-CoV-2. They have claimed that the virus could have hitched a ride to Wuhan by infecting one of her team members in their fieldwork collecting samples from bats. Or, some speculate, the live viruses her team cultured in the lab, including—more worryingly—the ones they created by genetic tinkering, could be the source of the pandemic.
All eyes were on the WHO, the leading international public health agency, to probe covid-19’s origins. The team’s mission was to examine when and where the outbreak had started and how the new virus crossed over to humans. The report, which was released last March, concluded it was “extremely unlikely” that covid-19 could have been caused by a lab accident. The situation the team ranked most likely was that it had jumped from bats to humans via some intermediary animal. Their results, supported by research published in peer-reviewed journals and by ongoing studies, suggest that the pandemic probably started at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in central Wuhan, where live mammals were sold and where most of the early covid-19 cases emerged.
Not everybody agrees, but the majority of virologists and infectious-disease experts, especially those working directly on the origins question, lean toward that theory, barring the emergence of new evidence that persuades them otherwise.
Spillover from animals to humans “was how almost every major epidemic got started in the past decades,” says Shi’s longtime collaborator Linfa Wang, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Duke–National University of Singapore Medical School and a member of the WHO team that in 2003 investigated the origins of SARS, a deadly infectious disease caused by a coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-1. That illness sickened 8,000 people worldwide and killed nearly 800 between 2002 and 2004. “It’s a common and well-documented pathway,” he says.
But one year after the WHO’s visit to Wuhan, the disease detectives have yet to find the guilty animal or other indisputable evidence of natural origins. Critics also question the conclusion of the agency’s mission team partly because one of its members, Daszak, who is a prominent advocate of the natural origins theory, has potential conflicts of interest. Speculation over the possibility of a lab accident has surged. Inflaming the suspicions are concerns over biosafety procedures at the Wuhan lab, political tensions between China and the US, and a general sense that the Chinese government is not to be trusted.
By trying to understand the process and context of Shi’s work—and to find out who she was—I wanted to learn what role, if any, China’s bat woman had in the origins of covid-19.
Scientists like David Relman, an expert on microbiology and biosecurity at Stanford University, are dismayed at the way the lab leak theory has been dismissed. He helped organize a group of 18 scientists to sign a letter published in Science last May calling for further investigation of a possible accident. (At least two of those involved later sought to distance themselves from the letter after seeing how it had been used to promote the lab leak theory.) Soon afterwards, President Joe Biden directed the US intelligence community to intensify its probe into the pandemic’s origins. The declassified report released in October shows that it reached no firm conclusion.
In December 2020, a month before the WHO visit, I too embarked on a search for answers. I talked to dozens of top scientists and biosafety experts worldwide. I spent six weeks in Wuhan, where I interviewed Shi and her team for a total of more than 40 hours. I had a private meeting with three members of the WHO mission. I visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology half a dozen times, often on the spur of the moment, and went with the scientists on a virus-sampling trip to a bat cave. By trying to understand the process and context of Shi’s work—and to find out who she was—I wanted to learn what role, if any, China’s bat woman had in the origins of covid-19.
Probing covid-19’s origins will not only help us understand how coronaviruses work but shine a bright light on the human behaviors—including the types of scientific research—that risk causing a pandemic in the future.
Like the WHO team, I have not gone through Shi’s freezers or lab books, and therefore I cannot prove or disprove whether activities associated with her research caused the pandemic. It’s more about providing additional perspectives—having Shi and her team tell their side of the story on the record, and in the most detail to date, so that the world can better understand how this deeply entrenched controversy has come about and how we can move forward.
.The findings, say virologists such as Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney, have provided valuable insight into the evolutionary history of coronaviruses and the way they generate genetic variants.
Whenever the team found a bat relative of SARS-CoV-1, Shi says, she asked the same questions: How threatening is it to other animal species, including humans? What would it take for the virus to become one that, like SARS-CoV-1, can cause major epidemics?
It was here, on January 5, 2020, that Yang first successfully isolated SARS-CoV-2 from a patient sample—the first isolate of the new coronavirus.
.The virus was 95% identical to SARS-CoV-1. The team named it WIV1 to indicate that it was isolated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Their study, published in Nature in 2013, provided strong evidence that SARS-CoV-1 originated in bats.
In all his years of work, Yang has managed to isolate only three bat coronaviruses—all of them close relatives of SARS-CoV-1. More recently, the team managed to synthesize three bat coronaviruses from their genomic sequences. All six are close relatives of SARS-CoV-1. None of them, said virologists MIT Technology Review spoke to, could have been the source of SARS-CoV-2: they’re just too different.
There was, however, one other virus in a bat sample that is a lot closer to SARS-CoV-2—96% identical. It has its own curious origin story, and in some parts of the scientific community and beyond, it’s become a prime suspect in the hunt for the pandemic’s origins. It’s called RaTG13.
In late April 2012, a strange disease emerged from an abandoned copper mine near the town of Tongguan in Mojiang county, a region in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan. Six workers who had been cleaning up bat guano in the mine fell ill with pneumonia-like symptoms—coughs, headaches, fevers, and aching limbs—and were admitted to a hospital in Kunming, the provincial capital. One died in 12 days, and two recovered in a month, followed by another death on June 12.
A week later, the country’s leading respiratory clinician, Zhong Nanshan, joined a clinical consultation remotely with colleagues at the Kunming hospital to determine how to treat the remaining two Mojiang patients. Zhong, the former director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, had played an instrumental role in the fight against SARS. He noted that the miners’ lab tests and CT scans were uncannily similar to those of patients with SARS, which hadn’t been seen since 2004. The clinicians in Kunming, he told me, suspected that a fungus had caused their illness—because cave-associated fungal infections happen in Yunnan every now and then—but Zhong thought a virus might be involved. He asked Shi’s team to test the patient samples for viral infections, but they couldn’t find any evidence of infection by coronaviruses or other known viruses.
In 2020, with the pandemic raging, some scientists—including Stanford’s Relman—wondered if Shi had been wrong. Perhaps, they say, a SARS-like coronavirus was to blame. Perhaps there was even a link between the disease that affected the Mojiang miners and covid-19.
That suspicion was bolstered in May 2020, when the anonymous owner of the Twitter handle @TheSeeker268—who claimed to me in Twitter texts that he is a 30-year-old man trained in architecture and filmmaking and lives in the Indian city of Bhubaneswar—dug up a 2016 PhD thesis by Huang Canping from the Chinese internet. Huang was a student of George Gao, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, and his thesis cited the Wuhan Institute of Virology as claiming that four of the Mojiang miners had antibodies against SARS-CoV-1. Scientists like Monali Rahalkar, a microbial ecologist at the MACS Agharkar Research Institute in Pune, India, and a strong proponent of the lab leak theory, said that this suggests the miners were infected by a SARS-like coronavirus. Social media and the press teemed with suspicion that Shi tried to hide the fact.
The scientists directly involved in the work deny that speculation. Shi said her team did not find such antibodies, although she said some early tests did produce false positives that were corrected when the assays were fully validated. MIT Technology Review has been unable to locate Huang, but Gao said his lab never analyzed the miners’ antibody status, and that Huang’s statement—possibly based on the false-positive results, which Shi discussed at an internal meeting in 2012—was erroneous. After covid-19 struck, Shi’s team went back to the Mojiang samples to look for traces of SARS-CoV-2 proteins and found none.
“Many pathogens can cause pneumonia-like symptoms similar to SARS and covid-19," Zhong told me. Some local clinicians, he adds, still suspect it was a fungus that had sickened the miners. “It remains a mystery to this day.”
It’s not unusual for respiratory illnesses to have an unknown cause, but even though Shi couldn’t figure out what had sickened the Mojiang miners, her instinct told her that something interesting might be going on. “What viruses were lurking in the cave?” she remembers wondering. Between 2012 and 2015, her team undertook more than half a dozen trips to the mine shaft, about 1,100 miles from Wuhan, and collected 1,322 bat samples.
They looked for the coronavirus-specific RdRp gene, and when they found it, they investigated further. In the end, the bat samples turned out to contain nearly 300 coronaviruses. Nine belonged to the same group of viruses as SARS-CoV-1—known as beta-coronaviruses—even though their RdRp genes were quite different: they were “distant cousins,” Shi told me.
“Why are you so different?” Shi wondered, but eventually she put the sample back in the freezer.
Eight of the nine were closely related to each other, but one—from a single fecal sample labeled “4991”—had a very distinct genomic signature. “Why are you so different?” Shi wondered, but eventually she put the sample back in the freezer. Her work was to look for bat viruses that could potentially cause SARS-like epidemics, and none of the Mojiang sequences appeared to be “directly relevant to our inquiry,” she told me. “So they were not the focus of our research.”
In 2018, though, 4991 was brought back out again. The Wuhan Institute of Virology had bought a new desktop sequencing machine, which made it much faster and cheaper to get a complete view of a virus’s genomic secrets, and 4991 was among the first batch of samples to be sequenced with the new device. The analysis confirmed that the virus residing in the sample was very different from SARS-CoV-1; they are 80% identical to each other across the genome. (The genomes of the other eight Mojiang viruses, which were sequenced after the pandemic, show they are only about three quarters identical to both SARS and covid-19 viruses across the genome.) It was always interesting to find new viruses, but there didn’t seem to be anything special for the researchers to write up, Shi said: “It didn’t seem to be a remarkable virus.”
It was so unremarkable, in fact, that it was expendable: In their attempts to piece together its genomic makeup, the scientists used up all the sample. By 2018 the virus existed only as a sequence in the Wuhan institute’s database.
In most cases, that would be the end of the story: the obscure, irrelevant virus would fade into oblivion. Except that it didn’t.
At 5:30 in the morning on January 2, 2020, Si Haorui, a student on Shi’s team, headed toward the institute to start his day’s work. It was cold, and the white cloud of his breath danced around as he walked on the dark, empty street.
Si is not a morning person. He rarely emerges before 10:30. But on that frigid January morning, he had a battle to fight. Two and half days earlier, clinicians at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, the city’s infectious-disease center, had sent samples to the virology institute for urgent analysis.
They were from seven patients in serious condition who had been recently hospitalized for a mysterious pneumonia.
The following day, December 31, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued its first public statement about the outbreak, saying it was probing the cause of 27 pneumonia cases. Shi’s lab was among the first to officially investigate the illness, and Si was part of the team racing to pinpoint the cause. Working around the clock, team members had found coronavirus RdRp genes in five out of the seven patients’ samples; their next step was to sequence the viral genome. “That’s my specialty,” said Si, a slim man in his mid-20s whose eyes curve into two arcs when he smiles, the day we met at the institute’s sequencing facility. “I knew the stakes were high. I didn’t want to screw up.”
(Shi’s lab was one of the four teams designated by China’s National Health Commission to work in parallel to pin down the cause of the new disease. This was a high-profile assignment, and only the commission had the authority to declare outbreaks of an emerging infectious disease and to release the relevant information.)
Stepping into the sequencing room felt like being a soldier stepping onto the battlefield, Si recalled. He had laid out his weapons the night before—the software he had tweaked for piecing together the genomic sequence of unknown pathogens. The machine was still running, busy reading short fragments of the genetic material from the bugs in those patients’ samples. The low humming sound of the machine filled the room. Si’s eyes were fixated on the sequencer. It reached the final stage of sequencing. It began processing the files. It took forever. Time seemed to stand still. Eventually it was done, and with a slightly shaky hand, he inserted a flash disk and copied the files over. He bolted upstairs to his office, where he could link to the institute’s supercomputer for the analysis.
By 8:30 a.m., the genomic makeup had emerged. One sequence, now known as WIV04, was almost complete and of high quality: it was a coronavirus.
Shi entered the sequence into the institutional and international databases to see if it was new. The closest match was the sequence from sample 4991, which the team had taken from Mojiang in 2013. The virus, no longer obscure or irrelevant, now deserved an official name. The team called it RaTG13—Ra for the bat species it was found in, Rhinolophus affinis; TG for Tongguan, the town where it was found; and 13 for the year of its discovery. It was, as they reported in Nature a month later, 96% identical to the coronavirus found in the new patients.
The fact that RaTG13 is so similar to SARS-CoV-2 has aroused suspicion. Critics like Alina Chan—a molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts—wonder why Shi’s Nature paper published in February 2020 didn’t mention that RaTG13 came from the Mojiang mine where people had come down with the mysterious pneumonia. Chan, who leans strongly towards the lab leak theory, has helped it spread far and wide, and signed the Science letter calling for further investigation of the possibility. She said in Viral, a book she co-authored with the British science writer Matt Ridley, that the Wuhan institute had been “economical with the truth” about this.
The whistleblowing scientist who advanced the lab-leak theory plans to change her name and disappear, but only after a book deal.
Shi attempted to head off this kind of suspicion by publishing an addendum detailing her Mojiang studies in Nature in November 2020 to show that the team had not detected any sign of coronavirus infection in the miners’ samples. But that didn’t help squelch the speculation.
The overall similarity between the two viruses, however, is not evidence that RaTG13 is the source of covid-19, according to an article published in Cell last September, authored by two dozen or so leading virologists and infectious-disease experts. The two viruses may be related, but they sit on different evolutionary branches that diverged half a century ago, says David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow in the UK. “RaTG13 couldn’t have naturally morphed into SARS-CoV-2,” he says. Neither could anybody have used RaTG13 as the backbone to engineer SARS-CoV-2, as some proponents of the lab leak theory have argued: the two viruses are different in 1,100 or so nucleotides spread across their whole genomes—a gap too large for any realistic effort. Making SARS-CoV-2 from RaTG13, says virologist Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, “would have required a feat of unprecedented genetic engineering.”
Meanwhile, evidence for the natural origins theory continues to mount. In the past year, several teams independent of the Wuhan institute have uncovered more than a dozen close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 in China, Japan, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. In a preprint paper posted in September 2021, a team of Laotian and French scientists reported the discovery of viruses in Laos that, according to Robertson, shared a common ancestor with SARS-CoV-2 as recently as a decade ago. These new discoveries are evidence that SARS-CoV-2 most likely evolved in the wild, says Robertson, who was not involved in the study. “We are closing in on the SARS-CoV-2 progenitor,” he says.
But even if none of the bat coronavirus samples from Shi’s team are to blame for the pandemic, they aren’t the only viruses the scientists work with. Part of their research involves studying how the machinery of viruses works; and that has involved genetic mixing and matching of different pathogens to probe the function of viral genes. Could one of those chimeric viruses have been the source of the pandemic? To find out, I needed to talk to Shi.
The findings, published in Nature Medicine in 2015, were surprising. It turned out that both the synthesized SHC014 and the SARS-CoV-1-SHC014 chimera were able to infect human cells and make mice sick. Both were less lethal than SARS-CoV-1, but—worryingly—existing drugs and vaccines that worked against SARS were unable to counter their effects.
Meanwhile, Shi’s team was attempting similar tinkering in her own lab in a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which aimed to probe the genetic ingredients that could allow bat viruses to cause SARS-like diseases in humans. But while Baric focused on the human pathogen SARS-CoV-1 in the Nature Medicine paper, Shi used only its bat relatives—mostly WIV1, the first bat coronavirus the team had isolated. Their real-world risk to humans was unknown. By the time the pandemic broke out, her team had created a total of a dozen or so chimeric viruses by swapping WIV1’s spike with its counterpart from newly identified sequences of bat coronaviruses, only a handful of which could infect human cells in a petri dish.
There were more surprises in store. In an unpublished experiment, released by the NIH in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The Intercept, the researchers tested the ability of three such chimeras to infect mice expressing human ACE2. Compared with their parental strain, WIV1, the three chimeric viruses grew a lot more quickly in the mouse lungs in the early stage of the infection, but WIV1 caught up by the end of the experiment.
The differences surprised Shi, but what puzzled her the most was that the chimera causing the most weight loss in infected mice—an indicator of its pathogenicity—was WIV1-SHC014, whose spike was most dissimilar to that of SARS-CoV-1. The one whose spike was most similar had no effect on the animals’ weight.
The results from genetic studies in both Baric’s and Shi’s labs—both collaborating with the New York–based EcoHealth Alliance—have provided compelling evidence that the spike protein is not the only factor in whether a virus can make an animal sick, researchers say. “We can’t assess the emergence potential of viruses using only pseudovirus assays or predictions based on genomic sequences and molecular modeling,” Shi told me.
None of the chimeras created in Shi’s labs was closely related to SARS-CoV-2, and therefore, none could have been the cause of the pandemic. But it does seem that the team created at least one chimeric virus, WIV1-SHC014, with a functional gain—that is, increased pathogenicity—relative to the parental strain, WIV. Critics like Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, regard this as the type of gain-of-function research that ought to be subject to strict regulatory oversight. But Shi says that in none of those studies—including her collaborations with Baric and with EcoHealth—did the teams intend to create more dangerous viruses. None of the chimeras had been reasonably anticipated at the time of proposal to have increased transmissibility or pathogenicity in mammals.
According to an NIH spokesperson, the grant Shi jointly applied for with the EcoHealth Alliance—the only one with a sub-award to the Wuhan institute—“was reviewed and determined by experts to fall outside the scope” of its regulatory framework for gain-of-function research.
Last September, NIH announced an award of $36.3 million to further such work. Discovering novel viruses in the wild and using genetic techniques to probe their function in the lab, researchers say, could point toward ways of mitigating and treating future disease outbreaks similar to SARS and covid-19.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/09/1044985/shi-zhengli-covid-lab-leak-wuhan/
Jan 20, 2022 Forbes Breaking News
At today's House Select Committee on the Coronavirus, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) slammed President Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci over their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Adriana CohenJanuary 28, 2022 6:44pm Update
https://nypost.com/2022/01/28/why-hasnt-fauci-been-fired-and-put-under-fbi-investigation-yet/
By Benjamin Hall , Michael Lee | Fox News
Dr Gagandeep Kang pointed out that heath experts earlier were worried about Omicron because of the number of mutations. (Screenshot from Rajya Sabha TV)
A LITERATURE REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWNS ON COVID-19 MORTALITY RTALITY SAE./No.200/January 2022 /October 2021 Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung, and Steve H. Hanke
The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise
Why doesn’t the NIH want you to read this report about the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
#FOIA https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Ping-Chen-WIV-trip-report.pdf…11:02 AM · Feb 1, 2022
https://twitter.com/garyruskin/status/1488543299317075972
https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Ping-Chen-WIV-trip-report.pdf
BY AMY JONES Thursday, 3 February 2022
https://unherd.com/thepost/spare-a-thought-for-the-covid-never-enders/
By JIM GERAGHTY
February 3, 2022 10:16 AM
As of this writing, more than 5.6 million people around the world have perished from Covid, and 354 million have been infected.
The first great mystery of this pandemic is how it got started — a question that must be answered to adequately prepare us for another pandemic in the future.
The second great mystery of this pandemic is why so many powerful people don’t seem to feel any sense of urgency about solving the first great mystery.
This article appears as “Made in China” in the February 21, 2022, print edition of National Review.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/02/21/the-lab-leak-origin-of-covid/#slide-1
MARIO LOYOLA
Telegraph reports Jeremy Farrar, Wellcome Trust director, said the lab leak theory ruined international co-operation and shut the door on identifying animal origins.. Because when you're accused of a lab leak, you hide evidence of a natural #OriginOfCovid
5:20 PM · Feb 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
telegraph.co.uk
Covid lab leak theories ‘have put world at risk of a new pandemic’
Leading British scientist warns misinformation over origins of the virus ruined international co-operation on preventing future outbreaks
August 27, 2020
Mara Hvistendahl, Sharon Lerner January 20 2022, 5:42 p.m.
THE FBI SOUGHT National Institutes of Health grant documents covering bat coronavirus research in Wuhan in spring 2020, according to emails obtained by The Intercept. The emails, released through ongoing litigation between The Intercept and the NIH, detail internal NIH conversations involving the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on research. The emails also contain previously unreported requests the agency made of EcoHealth Alliance as a condition for restoring a grant funding its research. While unable to provide some of the information requested by the agency, Peter Daszak, EcoHealth’s besieged president, fought fiercely to save the grant.
https://theintercept.com/2022/01/20/coronavirus-research-china-ecohealth-fbi/
Looks like FBI was the only intel agency to look into EcoHealth-Wuhan Institute of Virology reports. Makes sense that they assessed a lab #OriginOfCovid with moderate confidence. Question is did other agencies see these reports before origin assessment?
9:13 PM · Jan 20, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1484348293043736584
Two years ago tomorrow, the first confirmed cases of a mysterious virus washed up in Europe from China. There were two in Paris and one in Bordeaux: all people who had travelled from Wuhan. It was only a matter of time before it hit the UK.
Around the same time, across the Channel in his Oxford home, one of the UK’s leading scientists, Sir Jeremy Farrar, sat with his wife in the kitchen contemplating the ramifications of what was slowly unfolding.
Madeleine Spence Sunday January 23 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Jan 21, 2022 Forbes Breaking News
At a House Republican press briefing on Wednesday, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) spoke about Covid-19.
Origins of Covid-19 -an investigation of The Wuhan Institute of Virology
August 2021
HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE REPORT MINORITY STAFF LEAD REPUBLICAN MICHAEL T. MCCAUL ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
Based on the material collected and analyzed by the Committee Minority Staff, the preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019. The virus, or the viral sequence that was genetically manipulated, was likely collected in a cave in Yunnan province, PRC, between 2012 and 2015. Researchers at the WIV, officials within the CCP, and potentially American citizens directly engaged in efforts to obfuscate information related to the origins of the virus and to suppress public debate of a possible lab leak. It is incumbent on these parties to respond to the issues raised herein and provide clarity and any exonerating evidence as soon as possible. Until that time, it must be assumed General Secretary Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, prioritizes preserving the Party over the lives of its own people and those around the global suffering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://gop-foreignaffairs.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ORIGINS-OF-COVID-19-REPORT.pdf
Jan 11, 2022 The Hill
Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky discuss a breaking announcement from Congressional Republicans
Peter Daszak asked for US-funded virus data to be withheld, FOIAed by @USRightToKnow "It's extremely important that we don't have these sequences as part of our PREDICT release.. Having them as part of PREDICT will being very unwelcome attention" https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/China-GenBank-sequences.pdf
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1480692123922055173
https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/China-GenBank-sequences.pdf
You Retweeted Jamie Metzl@JamieMetzl
Perhaps my biggest concern regarding these previously private emails revealed today is that some of the leading experts who’ve fought vigorously against the #COVID19 lab incident hypothesis & suppressed debate had actually thought a lab origin to be a very real possibility. Quote Tweet
Oversight Committee Republicans
@GOPoversight · Jan 11
To read excerpts of emails released today, click here. https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Letter-Re.-Feb-1-Emails-011122.pdf…Show this thread
11:22 PM · Jan 11, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/JamieMetzl/status/1481119326782607360
Transcripts of the early 2020 exchanges on the #OriginOfCovid among leading scientists in the US & Europe show they were privately worried about a lab origin of Covid-19. Yet, publicly they authored Proximal Origin, which dismissed lab origin hypotheses.
https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Letter-Re.-Feb-1-Emails-011122.pdf…11:59 AM · Jan 11, 2022·
https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1480947600199229444