By Investigating Itself The US Can Answer Many Of The Key COVID19 Origin Questions

by Jonathan Latham

by Jorge Casesmeiro Roger

On May 26 U.S. President Biden gave U.S. Intelligence agencies 90 days to report findings about the possible Wuhan lab origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.

One component of this investigation, having subpoena power, should focus on the “U.S./Wuhan GoF controversy”. This is the hypothesis that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded risky research into coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), especially during the federal GoF Pause imposed in 2014 under the Obama Administration, and also under the P3CO Framework established by the Trump Administration in 2017. Such a connection, it should be noted, does not automatically imply culpability if a lab escape is proven.

In recent months, an increasing number of official and media sources have drawn attention to this debate. On January 15 2021 it was mentioned in a disputed Department of State Fact Sheet (point 3.3) released by the last Administration. Since then, at least three separate Congressional representatives have addressed the issue in letters to the Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) Principal Deputy Inspector General, the Director of the NIH, and the President of the EcoHealth Alliance.

Although there have been some answers to a number of questions, it has not been enough to shut down debate.

The first of three open letters from 26 world scientists, released on March 4, was titled “Call for a Full and Unrestricted International Forensic Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19”. These scientists demanded complete transparency with “full or significant access to all sites, records, samples, and personnel of interest” [see § 3.6.2] and “All laboratories and institutions, Chinese or international, known to have worked on coronaviruses or shared facilities or equipment with groups that worked on coronaviruses” (bold added).

One of the signatories of this open letter, biosafety expert, molecular biologist and laboratory director Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University tweeted about President Biden’s recent announcement:

“Over the next 90 days, this investigation should examine any and all information on the Wuhan Institute of Virology held by NIH, USAID, DoD, DHS and NSF. The list also includes the nonprofit organization Ecohealth Alliance, which channeled U.S. funding to the Wuhan lab”.

He later added:

“Many threads of investigation are available in the U.S. and would be accessible to a Congressional inquiry with subpoena power. / At EcoHealth. At funding agencies (USAID, DTRA, DARPA, DHS, and NIH). At publishers (Springer – Nature and Lancet). / No cooperation from China needed”.

Francis collins and anthony fauci
Francis Collins (NIH) and Anthony Fauci (NIAID)

This “Full and Unrestricted National Forensic Investigation” should be carried out immediately, to show the world the same transparency that US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, requires from China’s government. As he said last Sunday in an interview aired on HBO, asked about the possibility that ‘Beijing’ is covering up a lab leak in Wuhan:

“We have to get to the bottom of what happened. There is accountability. But the most important reason we have to get to the bottom of this is that’s the only way we are going to be able to prevent the next pandemic or at least do a better job in mitigating it”.

A US investigation becomes even more imperative given the directors of the principal agencies implicated in the Wuhan controversy (the NIH and the NIAID) have firmly and formally denied any involvement. In a Senate hearing on May 11, NIAID Director Fauci declared [min. 59:49]:

“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology”.

Subsequently the NIH Director declared in a statement on 19 May:

“Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans”.

Lawrence Tabak, Principal Deputy Director of the NIH further denied any involvement in his response on 21 May to the aforementioned Congressional letters.

The discrepancy between these official statements, and the opinions of relevant experts and the amount of evidence suggesting the contrary, is disturbing. In response to the NIH’s Director statement from 29 May, Dr. Ebright declared in an interview:

“The statement by the NIH Director is demonstrably false. The NIH Director either is uninformed, or is misinformed, or is seeking to mislead (any one of which should be a disqualification for continuation in his position).

The NIH Director now even is denying that the 2015 Nature Medicine paper by UNC and WIV reporting construction of a novel chimeric coronavirus with spike gene from a bat SARS-related coronavirus with genomic backbone from SARS-CoV –a paper that for six years has been deemed to epitomize the highest-risk subset of gain of function research– was gain of function research”.

There is nevertheless a debate over the definition of GoF. Molecular biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Broad Institute (MIT-Harvard) Alina Chan is another signatory of both the Wall Street Journal/LeMonde open letter, and the influential May 14 Science Magazine Open Letter “Investigate the origins of the Covid-19”. As the biotechnology expert Jamie Metzl notes, “Alina Chan, whom I greatly respect, makes the definitional argument supporting the Fauci/Collins assertions in this important Twitter thread”. A thread contradicted by Dr. Ebright in a May 19, 2021 section of Metzls’ updated calendar “Origins of SARS-CoV-2”.

Technicalities aside, perhaps it was the biological weapons expert Milton Leitenberg of the University of Maryland who made the most resounding conclusion when he said to the Financial Times on 28 May; “Whatever we classify this work as, it should not have been taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology”.

Further evidence supporting the need for additional scrutiny was reported in The Australian on May 28 by Sharri Markson of Sky News, Australia :

“An investigation by The Weekend Australian has also confirmed Dr Fauci, the director of the Nat­ional Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], did not alert senior White House officials before lifting the ban on gain-of-function research in 2017 (…) Multiple Trump administration officials told The Weekend Australian Dr Fauci had not raised the issue of restarting the research funding with senior figures in the White House (…) The Weekend Australian has also confirmed that neither Mike Pompeo, the then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, nor National Security Council member Matthew Pottinger, was briefed”.

An unidentified source, cited as an ‘official’, is also quoted: “It kind of just got rammed through. I think there’s truth in the narrative that the (National Security Council) staff, the President, the White House Chief-of-Staff, those people were in the dark that he was switching back on the research”.

This generates many questions. Who are these multiple officials? Were the CIA Director, the National Security Council staff, the President and/or the White House Chief-of-staff supposed to be briefed? What was the procedure? Or was there even a procedure in place? Who wrote the 2014 Pause document? Who was supposed to provide oversight? And if the maneuver was inappropriate, why was it not reversed when the NIH made it public?

The fact is that in December 2017 the NIH, of which the NIAID is a part, announced it would resume funding gain-of-function research. This was officially flagged by the NIH Directors Office on December 19, 2017 (with the clear headline “NIH Lifts Funding Pause on Gain-of-Function Research”). This change was immediately reported by the New York Times on the same day with the striking headline: “A Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted”. If none of the abovementioned CIA, National Security Council or White House officials were briefed before the funding pause was lifted, they should have known about it immediately after it came into effect.

Moreover, in a January 21, 2018 NIAID Advisory Council open meeting, NIAID Director Fauci addressed the resumption of government funding for GoF research (and the new December 19, 2017 P3CO Framework) which he defines as “research that might be anticipated to create, transfer, or use enhanced potential pandemic pathogens” (min. 44). Did anyone raise concerns, publicly or privately, and can they prove it? Did they address their concerns to leadership at the NIH, NIAID or other agencies? Did they suggest or try to reverse by any means the NIH decision? Shouldn’t this expand the range of candidates for accountability?

Markson’s sources nevertheless strengthen some timely conclusions that Dr. Ebright expressed in the aforementioned interview:

“The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have systematically thwarted efforts by the White House, the Congress, scientists, and science policy specialists to regulate GoF research of concern and even to require risk-benefit review for projects involving GoF research of concern”.

And:

“In 2014, the Obama White House implemented a ‘Pause’ in federal funding for GoF research of concern.  However, the document announcing the Pause stated in a footnote that: ‘An exception from pause may be obtained if head of funding agency determines research is urgently necessary to protect public health or national security’. Unfortunately, the NIAID Director and the NIH Director exploited this loophole to issue exemptions to projects subject to the Pause –preposterously asserting the exempted research was ‘urgently necessary to protect public health or national security’– thereby nullifying the Pause”.

Furthermore:

“In 2017, the Trump Administration announced a Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight (P3CO) Framework that implemented a requirement for risk-benefit review of GoF research of concern. However, the P3CO Framework relies on the funding agency to flag and forward proposals for risk-benefit review.  Unfortunately, the NIAID Director and the NIH Director have declined to flag and forward proposals for risk-benefit review, thereby nullifying the P3CO Framework”.

These statements by Dr. Ebright seem truly alarming in the wake of the current pandemic and need to be followed up.

Ebright was also cited by the Fox News anchor on Tucker Carlson Tonight. In an opinionated piece, Mr. Carlson presented accusatory conclusions where there are only hypotheses. He then requested “a criminal investigation into Tony Fauci’s role in this pandemic”.

Did the directors of the NIH and NIAID break the law when they systematically thwarted efforts by the White House, Congress and the scientific community to implement the 2014 GoF Pause and the 2017 P3CO Framework? Was the recent NIH official statement and was Fauci’s NIAID Senate testimony about their role in Gain-of-Function funding, false or intentionally misleading? If this were the case, Title 18 § 1001 of the U.S. Legal Code has this to say:

“(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully- (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;(…)”.

It would be an astonishing and shocking situation. A good way to know if it is true is to have a presidential mandate for a full and unrestricted national investigation, with subpoena powers, into the U.S./Wuhan GoF controversy. Now. The 90 days are running out.

Even if the Wuhan lab turns out not to be the source of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, or U.S. Gain-of-Function funding played no role, it still would not change the urgency of a national investigation.

Are GoF experiments really worth the risk?

High-risk experiments with potential pandemic pathogens are a Pandora’s box, that much we know. The Cambridge Working Group has long warned that these studies could provoke a pandemic. Maybe the NIAID Director still thinks that the risk is worth it. As The Australian also recalls:

“America’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus, Anthony Fauci, argued [in this Sep-Oct 2012 paper] that the benefits of experimenting on contagious viruses–manipulating and heightening their infectious potency–was worth the risk of a laboratory accident sparking a pandemic”.

Furthermore:

“In previously unreported remarks, Dr. Fauci supported the contentious gain-of-­function experiments that some now fear might have led to an escape from a Wuhan laboratory causing the Covid-19 pandemic, calling them ‘important work’”.

Just before the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan outbreak, the WHO Global Preparedness Monitoring Board’s September 2019 annual report of which Anthony Fauci was a member, alerted in at least four different sections that a pandemic due to a lab leak or bioweapon attack was a plausible scenario (bold added):

“Countries, donors and multilateral institutions must be prepared for the worst. A rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen (whether naturally emergent or accidentally or deliberately released) poses additional preparedness requirements” (p. 8).

More:

“In addition to a greater risk of pandemics from natural pathogens, scientific developments allow for disease-causing microorganisms to be engineered or recreated in laboratories. Should countries, terrorist groups, or scientifically advanced individuals create or obtain and then use biological weapons that have the characteristics of a novel, high-impact respiratory pathogen, the consequences could be as severe as, or even greater, than those of a natural epidemic, as could an accidental release of epidemic-prone microorganisms” (p. 27).

Once more:

“Preparedness and response systems and capabilities for disease outbreaks are not sufficient to deal with the enormous impact, rapid spread and shock to health, social and economic systems of a highly lethal pandemic, whether natural, accidental or deliberately released (p. 28).

And again:

“A rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen (whether naturally emergent or accidentally or deliberately released) poses additional preparedness requirement” (p. 30).

Dr. Fauci knew in advance that a lab origin pandemic was plausible. Now former Food and Drug Administration chief, Scott Gottlieb, says that “Fauci briefed world leaders on the possibility the virus came from a Wuhan lab last spring”. According to a June 6 Forbes report, Gottlieb said last Sunday:

“I was told at the time back in the spring that Dr. Fauci had gone over to a meeting with world health leaders in Europe around the World Health Assembly (…) At this meeting, Fauci briefed world health leaders on the information U.S. officials were looking at, including ‘that this could have been a potential lab leak, that this strain looked unusual’”.

Does the NIAID Director still think that the risk is worth it? And if the possibility of a lab origin pandemic was so obvious to him, has he been thwarting efforts to investigate a lab origin and making false statements, or just seeking to mislead? And why have the “world health leaders” that he apparently informed not spoken out?

Yes, science can makes us wiser and safer, but if we want wisdom and safety those are the values that must be rewarded. This is therefore not just a technical debate. It raises deep public policy, legal, ethical and cultural questions. The world has a right to know the truth. As Louis Brandeis once said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Especially under penalty of perjury.

The author is a freelance journalist and author based in Spain. Regular contributor for El Imparcial newspaper and Cadena Cope radio station. He has three published books, one of them cataloged by the U.S. Library of Congress.

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Comments 42
  • It goes even deeper. I think there is a whole additional sphere of interaction between the Chinese BSL-4s and the USG that predates the Daszak business and the right’s present preoccupation with Fauci.

    From personal knowledge, I can say that the early 2010s, the US defense and intelligence agencies (including DOE) were deeply concerned and working hard to intertwine themselves with the Chinese BSL-4 labs, to gain intelligence and influence. The Chinese BSL-4 construction binge was, of course, at least partly in response to the US’ own binge in the post-Anthrax letters 2000s.

    This other layer of relationships, between DOD and intel agencies and the Chinese facilities has not bee publicly explored.

    Also that of France. It built the lab and undoubtedly left assets and relationships there.

  • Just as President Richard Nixon’s signing of an international treaty to cease researching biological weapons did not stop the CIA or its contractors like Battelle from continuing that research with anthrax, President Obama’s ban on gain-of-function in the U.S. is not a guarantee that it did not continue at USAMRID Fort Detrick, Dugway Utah or at many other U.S. labs. In fact, a spokesperson from the Chinese government said the COVID could have come out of a U.S. lab and brought to Wuhan. If we expect transparency from China, it is only fair that we demand the same from U.S. labs. In order to encourage independent inspections of Chinese labs, we should demand the same of all U.S. labs. This is important because the U.S. reportedly used bacterial weapons against North Korea and China in 1952: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-long-suppressed-korean-war-report-on-u-s-use-of-biological-weapons-released-at-last-20d83f5cee54
    And just as the FBI “botched” the anthrax investigation, there is no guarantee that a U.S. investigation of US involvement with COVID development won’t be “botched.” In fact, whenever the “security” of the U.S. government is involved, any self-investigation is likely to be “botched” as proven by the 9/11 Commission which ignored that the greatest crime in U.S. history was not analyzed so future high buildings might be designed to resist plane crashes. The U.S. authorities allowed 9/11 material evidence to be quickly destroyed, which is a federal crime, and so a post-mortem forensic study was not possible. The Commission did not even mention that WTC #7 fell down and two Commissioners said later that the investigation was flawed.

  • As the author of “America’s Betrayal Confirmed” (2020) that represents a thorough and definite critical study on 9/11, I doubt that an investigation conducted by state authorities about possible state crimes is possible. Should a state crime be endorsed by the political leadership, only a revolution or a military defeat of the regime can lead to a true investigation.

  • What exactly did Dr Kristian Andersen find that caused him write to Dr Fauci that he had found things in SARS-Cov-2 that

    “(potentially) look engineered.” ?

    and what did Dr Andersen later find that made him publicly change this view in print ?

    Note sometime later Dr Andersen received a $1.8million NIH grant to fund his research.

    It is clear from unearthed emails Dr. Anthony Fauci was told in Jan 2020 by Virologist Kristian Andersen, a professor at Scripps Research Institute that

    “On a phylogenetic tree the virus looks totally normal and the close clustering with bats suggest that bats serve as the reservoir.

    The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered”

    The virologist later added in his email to Dr. Fauci:

    “We have a good team lined up to look very critically at this, so we should know much more by the end of the weekend.”

    Andersen also noted that following discussions with his team that they

    “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.”

    In a paper entitled “proximal Origin” from March 17, 2020, Andersen would go on to state the exact opposite in Nature where he claimed COVID-19 was not created in a lab or “purposefully manipulated.”

    Reportedly five months after his paper was published, Andersen received $1.88 million from the Centers for Research in Emerging Infection Diseases (CREID) funding doled out by the NIH.

    https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/06/07/virologist-who-emailed-fauci-covid-19-could-be-engineered-deletes-5k-tweets-then-entire-account-1085366/

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-establishes-centers-research-emerging-infectious-diseases

    The Coordinating Center, 10 CREIDs, principal investigators, Center name, research regions and grant numbers are:

    Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California
    West African Emerging Infectious Disease Research Center (WAEIDRC)
    West Africa; 1 U01 AI151812-01

    Peter Daszak, Ph.D., EcoHealth Alliance, Inc., New York City
    Emerging Infectious Diseases-South East Asia Research Collaboration Hub (EID-SEARCH(link is external))
    Southeast Asia; 1 U01 AI151797-01

    Eva Harris, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
    American and Asian Centers for Arboviral Research and Enhanced Surveillance (A2CARES)
    Central and South America, South Asia; 1 U01 AI151788-01

    Christine K. Johnson, VMD, Ph.D., University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine
    EpiCenter for Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence (EEIDI(link is external))
    Central Africa and South America; 1 U01 AI151814-01

    M. Kariuki Njenga, DVM. Ph.D., Washington State University, Pullman
    Center for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases-East and Central Africa (CREID-ECA)
    East and Central Africa; 1 U01 AI151799-01

    Anavaj Sakuntabhai, M.D., Ph.D., Institut Pasteur, Paris
    Pasteur International Center for Research on Emerging Infectious Diseases (PICREID)
    West and Central Africa and Southeast Asia; 1 U01 AI151758-01

    Nikos Vasilakis, Ph.D., University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston
    Coordinating Research on Emerging Arboviral Threats Encompassing the Neotropics (CREATE-NEO(link is external))
    Central and South America; 1 U01 AI151807-01

    Wesley C. Van Voorhis, M.D., Ph.D., University of Washington, Seattle
    United World Antiviral Research Network (UWARN)
    South America, West and South Africa, Middle East, and Asia; 1 U01 AI151698-01

    David Wang, Ph.D., Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
    Center for Research in Emerging Infectious Disease-Epidemiology, Surveillance, Pathogenesis (CREID-ESP)
    Asia, East Africa; 1 U01 AI151810-01

    Scott C. Weaver, Ph.D., University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston
    West African Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases (WAC-EID)
    West Africa; 1 U01 AI151801-01

    Donald Brambilla, Ph.D., RTI International, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
    Tony Moody, M.D., Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina
    CREID Coordinating Center; 1 U01AI151378-01

  • Is the information on the genetics of Covid-19 set out in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal correct ?

    If it is correct how likely is it the US and UK military biological warfare researchers or others like Dr Kristian Andersen will have also seen this and reported it to Dr Fauci or the military ?

    WSJ op-ed cited and quoted in the Epoch Times selected quotes below

    A June 6 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, penned by two experts, argued there existed “damning” scientific evidence supporting the theory that Covid-19 didn’t make a natural jump from animal to human, but was bio-engineered in a Chinese lab.

    Dr. Steven Quay, who holds both a master’s and a doctorate degree from the University of Michigan, and Richard Muller, emeritus professor of physics at the University of California–Berkeley, said that two key pieces of evidence …..

    “The presence of the double CGG sequence is strong evidence of gene splicing, and the absence of diversity in the public outbreak suggests gain-of-function acceleration. The scientific evidence points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory,” the pair wrote.

    Quay and Muller wrote that the most common genome pairing used in gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses is CGG-CGG, or double CGG, which is spliced into a “prime location” in the genome, spurring the production of two arginine amino acids in a row and boosting a virus’s lethality.

    “In the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally,” they wrote. “That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.”

    But in lab-based gain-of-function experiments, the CGG sequence is the pair of choice, they said.

    “That’s because it is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it,”
    the scientists wrote.

    “An additional advantage of the double CGG sequence compared with the other 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits the scientists to track the insertion in the laboratory.”

    “At the minimum, this fact—that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers—implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.”

    Quay and Muller said the second key piece of evidence that supports a lab leak theory has to do with the genetic diversity of the CCP virus compared to the coronaviruses that caused SARS and MERS

    SARS and MERS, which were confirmed to be of natural origin, “evolved rapidly as they spread through the human population, until the most contagious forms dominated.”

    Yet the CCP virus “appeared in humans already adapted into an extremely contagious version,” the pair noted, with no significant mutations occurring in the virus until months after the outbreak.

    “Such early optimization is unprecedented, and it suggests a long period of adaptation that predated its public spread,” they wrote, arguing that there’s only one way this could be achieved, namely through “simulated natural evolution” by growing the virus on human cells under lab conditions.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-point-to-damning-gene-splicing-evidence-of-likely-lab-origin-of-ccp-virus_3847591.html

    Further quotes cited in theblaze.com

    “Although the double CGG is suppressed naturally, the opposite is true in laboratory work”

    Quay and Muller pointed out. “It was this exact sequence that appears in CoV-2. Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG. Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?”

    “At the minimum, this fact — that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers — implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape,” the experts added.

    they warned. “It appeared in humans already adapted into an extremely contagious version. No serious viral ‘improvement’ took place until a minor variation occurred many months later in England.”

    https://www.theblaze.com/news/new-damning-report-shows-covid-19-likely-lab-engineered

    • 1) Re: “The presence of the double CGG sequence is strong evidence of gene splicing”
      I am reluctant to rest so much weight on a tiny handful of nucleotides.
      2) On the other hand, re: “the absence of diversity in the public outbreak suggests gain-of-function acceleration”
      this is very important and highly suggestive. Pretty much all known zoonotic outbreaks feature multiple crossovers from the intermediate species to humans, yet SARS2 seems only to have had ne. This very much suggests a lab leak.
      3) ““It appeared in humans already adapted into an extremely contagious version” This too is compelling to me. How can an entire virus (as opposed to small parts of one) be so well adapted to humans without having been through some kind of evolutionary adaptation process? Probably in whole humans and not just one or a few cell types. This is the only known way to achieve such a high degree of fit with humans.
      To us, this data is therefore not consistent with cut and paste splicing of the virus (esp since we dont agree with point one). But since it does imply a lab leak (point 2) and human adaptation (point 3) this all supports evolution in the miners, followed by a lab leak. It was for exactly these reasons (and many more) that we proposed the Mojiang Miners Passage theory. Read more at:
      A Proposed Origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic
      https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/a-proposed-origin-for-sars-cov-2-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/

  • Thank you Jonathan

    Assuming a Mojiang Miners Passage event fully or partly created Covid-19, and that seems likely as the Chinese will not share the data or the Mojiang Miners tissue or virus samples they still have

    1. How crucial to easily infecting humans is the CCUCGGCGGGCA / CGG-CGG sequence?

    The Daily Mail seems to imply that without the 12 unique letters CCUCGGCGGGCA (that include CGG-CGG) the Covid-19 spike protein would not bind easily to human cells and infect people

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9658851/Genome-sequencing-certainly-proves-COVID-deliberately-lab-experts-claim.html

    2. Assuming that CCUCGGCGGGCA is a key part of making Covid easy to transmit in people

    and this fully or partly happened during the Mojiang Miners Passage process / hospital stay

    could this MMP process have been further extended in a lab by

    A. repeatedly infecting ferrets (as previously used for GOF studies) or

    B. through some alternative animal proxy GOF process such as

    further repeatedly culturing the Mojiang Miners Virus / RaTG13 in a lab using the miners cell tissue / RaTG13 virus samples (not spliced) in a petri dish in some solution with human cells and a suitable virus sequence etc

    3. Is it significant or a red herring that

    “In the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG [and I assume the CCUCGGCGGGCA combination] has never been found naturally,”

    And so

    “That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.”

    Unless it happened through an intense Mojiang Miners Passage type animal based event

    4. Finally if is it true that CGG-CGG

    “…… is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it”

    has it ever been inserted by some animal Mojiang Miners Passage / animal simulated gain of function process in live animals or in a lab cell culture acting as an animal proxy as opposed to gene insertion via gene splicing etc

    I am sure you can see where I am coming from

  • Thanks for the comment Adam. Just to put in context,

    Dr. Quay MD PhD is part of DRASTIC twitter team and was signer of the Paris group 3 Open Letter’s that called for a full investigation on Covid origin: in Wall Street Journal/Le Monde (March 4, 2021), New York Times (April 7, 2021) and Washington Post (April 30, 2021).

    Quay is the author of a preprint Bayesian Analysis (first version January 29 at Zenodo)that concludes a lab origin in a 99,8% chance. Last May 24 he briefed US Congress about his research.

    I conducted an interview with him last February, published in Spain. The English version is in his website: https://drquay.com/el-imparcial-interview/

    Regarding the CGG-CGG sequence Dr. Quay says there:

    <>.

    – Updates of Dr. Quay’s work at:

    Bayesian Analysis: https://zenodo.org/record/4477081#.YMHfjkztbIX
    Twitter account: https://twitter.com/quay_dr

    – The 3 Open Letter’s of the so called Paris group:

    March 4 WSJ: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/COVID%20OPEN%20LETTER%20FINAL%20030421%20(1).pdf
    April 7 NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/07/science/virus-inquiries-pandemic-origins.html
    Abril 30 WP: https://jamiemetzl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Open-Letter-to-the-World-Health-Organization-and-the-Members-of-its-Executive-Board-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0Tw2nxN6OLUA5G2DHS7MlyZyz0wTQiN4C5GZD5NTBjOHUdWIyNqxGq_mo

  • Dr. Steven Quay MD PhD on the CGG-CGG sequence*:

    “The two codons in SARS-CoV-2, the two three letter words for arginine, are the least frequently used codons in all coronaviruses in the entire world: the CGG codon. Coronaviruses hate the CGG codon. And in Covid-2 there is two of them together. I looked at 580.000 codons in other coronaviruses and I didn’t find a single CGG-CGG pair. Not one. So nature doesn’t use those codons. But what happens in the laboratory? Now, when a scientist wants to put an arginine into a genetic code they buy the DNA, the RNA, and they drop it in. And what is their favorite arginine codon? CGG. So the codon that nature never uses, and the codon the laboratory always uses, is the one found in SARS-CoV-2”.

    * February 24, 2021 interview: https://drquay.com/el-imparcial-interview/

    Further info in a section of his abovementioned Bayesian Analysis; section titled: “Rare usage of CGG single codons & no CGG-CGG pairs”.

  • Kristian G Andersen needs to make all his communications with Fauci, as well as with the co-authors of his ‘proximal origin’ Nature paper publicly available. He has given explanations about his change of mind about the virus’s origin on Twitter but they are weak and evasive.

    He took part on a 3 Feb 2020 (2 days after his email to Fauci) meeting organised by the National Academies of Sciences which was attended by officials from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services. Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric and Fauci himself were also present. The recording/minutes of that meeting also need to be made available for public scrutiny.

  • Jorge

    Thank you for the response and clarifications you provided. It was helpful to know more about Dr Quay

    Your info was very clear and your interviews with Dr Quay and Dr Ebright informative.

    The CGG-CGG / CCUCGGCGGGCA sequence ideas are new to me

    From the links you included I could not work out if CGG-CGG is really critical to spreading Covid-19

    (or just an interesting aside that some people could/want to link to different types lab GOF work)

    How the CGG sequence got into Covid seems less important unless it is so unusual that it would show up only in a Chinese Mojiang Miners situation or in GOF work. That seems to be Dr Quay’s case.

    [I assume it connot be determined from studying RaTG13 and Covid-19 sequences when CCG-CGG entered the Covid-19 sequence ?]

    So is it your opinion or Jonathan’s that

    any group of reasonable experts have reasonably shown that without the CGG-CGG / CCUCGGCGGGCA sequence Covid-19 would not be easily transmitted in humans

    or

    is it known what else makes Covid transmit so easily other than the claims about the CGG sequence?

    I read Jonathan and Allison’s Mojiang Miners work when it first came out last year and posted about it at around that time.

    In early 2020 I read Professor Petrovsky views on Covid-19s origins mostly in unpublished research updates or comments about how Covid gain of function could be done in a lab without requiring gene editing or splicing and so GOF could not be ruled out but was not proved

    I later saw these comments quoted in some papers and saw how reasonable info/comments get delayed or distorted etc.

    This led me to look into the subject early on, found the Mojiang Miners Theory, some of the DRASTIC and Jamie Metzl comments and some other reasonable ideas.

    I hope you and ISN keep up the good work and the open discussions about Covid and the range of other human, plant and animal health and agricultural issues plus toxins and GMOs that you bring to the light

    Thank you

  • I can now see from an El Pais article of May 2020 that the CGG-CGG issue was identified by Feb 2020 as the way Covid spread so easily.

    Previously I assumed the spike efectiveness I had read about evolved through GOF or by chance.

    I did not read about the CGG-CGG factor or at least did not take it on board

    It seems clear Dr Quay feels chance was unlikely. I assume thats why he says lab GOF is 99% the origin of CGG-CGG

    The main difference between SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses is the appearance of 12 extra letters in its genome.

    The experts flag up this extremely short sequence as the main culprit regarding its virulence.

    “We think that this insertion [of the 12 letters] allows the virus to enter into a larger spectrum of cells. This will probably favor the dissemination of the virus in the infected patients, and thus is probably key for the pathogenesis,” says French virologist Etienne Decroly, from Aix-Marseille University.

    Decroly sounded the alarm on February 10, when many were still seeing the epidemic as an exotic problem specific to the distant Chinese city of Wuhan. At that stage only one person had died outside of China. But, according to Decroly, the new virus’s spike proteins had an additional element that distinguishes it from the spike proteins of other similar coronaviruses – the site where it could be cut by the furin enzyme turned it into a lethal weapon. “The furin cleavage site is one of the reasons why SARS-CoV-2 is so transmissible,” agrees Fang Li, a virologist from the University of Minnesota who has just published a report in the scientific journal PNAS on the virus’s “amazing strategies” for entering human cells by circumventing the immune system.

    https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/05/18/ciencia/1589818040_544543.html

    Assuming RaTG13 as the origin for the Covid virus is it possible to estimate the probabilty of a mutation to include the 12 letter sequence CCUCGGCGGGCA by

    1. chance

    2. a Mojiang Miners Passage event

    3. animal GOF in a lab

    4. lab GOF repeatedly culturing the virus with human cells / suitable viruses (not forced gene editing)

  • Thanks again Adam,

    El País article seems very instructive (better late than never). Notice that Decroly, by the way, was another signer of the Paris Group.

    I have no technical skills to go through this. When Jonathan (who holds a PhD in Virology) says “I am reluctant to rest so much weight on a tiny handful of nucleotides” I have to take it seriously.

    Said that, this also reflects that we are in absence of proof. As Ruth Etzioni beautifully said: “When evidence is lacking, uncertainty reigns, and it becomes natural to start thinking in terms of probabilities” (March 29, 2021) https://timmermanreport.com/2021/03/flying-blind-on-the-origin-of-a-pandemic/

    In this framework, Dr. Ebright considered(quoted ISN interw. March 24, 2021): “At this point in time, there is no secure basis to assign relative probabilities to the natural-accident hypothesis and the laboratory-accident hypothesis”.

    He might be right. But how did he arrived to such a conclusion? If we have to think in terms of probability, isn’t Statistics the most rigorous way to do it?

    Dr Quay did this with 26 pieces of evidence. And yes Adam, the FCS insertion (pages 80-82) and the codon usage (pages 83-87 + 88-91) are two of the three items that really reverse the 98,8% initial zoonotic hypothesis into a 99,8% chance of being a lab derived virus.

    Are there secure basis to assign relative probabilities? Why? And what are this secure bases? Where exactly is Dr. Quay Bayesian Analysis wrong? This I wonder. Not to mention that according to him (I cant find the tweet now) there are 4 or 5 more bayesian analysis on the subject, all pointing to a lab source.

    More Dr. Quay’s thoughts about SFC & CGG (June 6):
    https://twitter.com/quay_dr/status/1401529900482265097
    https://twitter.com/quay_dr/status/1401522077207650310
    https://twitter.com/quay_dr/status/1401522074670174214
    https://twitter.com/quay_dr/status/1401516756150095872
    https://twitter.com/quay_dr/status/1401516754346528776

  • Thought #1: Conclusive evidence of deliberate human genetic manipulation of the SARS-Cov-2 virus would prove a lab leak.

    Thought #2: Insufficient evidence to conclude that there was deliberate human genetic manipulation of the SARS-Cov-2 virus itself does not disprove a lab leak.

    Thought #3: By what plausible sequence of events could a naturally-occurring coronavirus resembling SARS-CoV-2, isolated in a lab, come to be SARS-Cov-2, in which the sequence does not involve deliberate use of recombinant DNA to create this pathogen? But bearing in mind that this naturally-occurring coronavirus resembling SARS-CoV-2 might be being handled (deliberately or accidentally) in a context where recombinants are also present.

    As I see the landscape today, there is too much fixation on Thought #1 … and I fear that if this theory of the significance of these nucleotides is disproven, that this will be misinterpreted as strong or even conclusive evidence of a natural origin.

  • I said: “Are there secure basis to assign relative probabilities? Why? And what are this secure bases? Where exactly is Dr. Quay Bayesian Analysis wrong?”-

    I meant: “(…) Why NOT? (…)”.

  • Thanks for this comment Edward,

    Regarding BSL-4 there is a good world tracking tool recently aired by biosecurity experts Drs. Lentzos & Koblentz:https://www.globalbiolabs.org/

    According to it China has three BLS-4: one operational since 2016, another since 2018 and the last one planned.

    1.- Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Beijing China).
    Date BSL4 was established: Uknown. Status: Planned.

    2.- Chinese National High Containment Facilities for Animal Diseases Control and Prevention (Harbin Veterinary Research Institute).
    Date BSL4 was established: 2018. Status: Operational.

    3.- Wuhan Institute of Virology (institutional affiliation: Chinese Academy of Sciences).
    Date BSL4 was established: 2015 (constructed) 2016 (operational). Status: Operational.

  • Thank you Jorge and Edward.

    If the 12 letter sequence CCUCGGCGGGCA is so important to Covids human transmission shouldnt we be looking into the probability of this mutating with other existing coronaviruses and making them more lethal ?

    It would seem that assessing the probability of how the CGG-CGG sequence could have mutated with RaTG13 to produce Covid is a starting point for research on how to stop a CGG-CGG mutation with other existing human, bat and animal coronaviruses from Covid-19 which I assume will now be more likely given Covid-19 is widespread

  • There seem to be two / three things going on that need to be separated and admitted regardless of which particular prejudice people have on Covids origins or solution in order to get some form of more rational and reasonable discussion going on how we get out of this situation

    A. Covid Macro – big picture related to public statements and disinformation by pro / anti zoonotic origin and research by independent parties.

    B. Covid Micro – the scientific data showing why zoonotic or non zoonotic origin is or is not likely

    C. Covid Politics and Covid Pharma

    A Macro and Micro debate about what treatments should be used and the Micro data supporting the treatments has been fostered by big pharma and the big health bodies.

    These parties have objected to license sharing and/or extensive trials of existing drugs such as Ivermectin despite positive trials showing it preventing hospital workers catching Covid and reducing patient symptoms especiallly when given early on

    These ABC matters have got bundled into one big mess which needs to be separated

    An open sharing of ideas and information helps clarify misunderstandings and habitual assumptions or prejudice plus helps focus on what areas need more clarification or lack supporting data.

    We can then decide on the best solution or set of solutions to resolving Covid and future pandemics or other non medical events of a global nature

    This approach has not been popular – why ?

    In this day and age disinformation of opinions that do not agree with our own group think seems to be more important to most than an open view in which people discuss reality.

    The result is that solutions are ignored or delayed in favor of special interest groups

    Maybe its always been this way – that does not mean it should not be changed

    Maybe its time for a truth and reconcilation style commission where all are given and indemnity and job compensation for disclosing anything material by a fixed date about Covids origin.

    Is it time for such an approach ?

    If there is no data supporting a non zoonotic origin then there is nothing to stop this approach being accepted.

    It will also send a message that disclosure is always an option and discourage future cover ups even if none has occurred this time

    Others may be less willing to be open because

    1. Many are involved with GOF or virus research that would be stopped/reduced and controlled if a non zoonotic origin were likely

    2. The state actors such and China, the NIH / Dr Fauci and others in the US would also suffer blowback if a lab leak origin was accepted as a real possibility

    3. It seems clear that the NIH / Dr Fauci has faciliated GOF research and the circumvention of restrictions on GOF and Dr Fauci’s attempts to define NIH supported research as not GOF seems to be from a Dr Strangelove world given the published research and historic statements by Dr Fauci

    4. These groups have used their influence to shape and control the Covid response and debate plus the flow of data and information on origins and treatment

    5. There seems little doubt that Covid and/or its closest viruses have been associated with certain unusual characteristics or places / events / people

    Such as

    rapid human tranmission without the early stage mutation normal in a zoonotic virus

    links to GOF research

    repeated hiding, non disclosure and deliberate distortion until now of research including human medical tests and other matters such as the Mojiang Mines and Miners which are linked to Covid via its nearest known natural virus

    the connection to the Mojiang Mines and the role of Prof Shi from WIV and George Gao Head of Chinese CDC who in different ways supervised Conornavirus / Covid / Mojiang Mine linked research via
    numerous PhDs plus know of or are closely linked to other public and private research papers on these matters none of which they disclosed (how many more remain to be disclosed or found) and they still have not come forward to explain this

    a refusal by the Chinese authorities to allow independent parties to view data and human blood and tissue samples and data from 2012 or 2019

    All this seems very similar to the Chinese approach to covering up the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.

    Let be clear that the West also covers up its actions and this is not just about China

    Isnt it time to change ?

  • Dear Adam,Jonathan and Edward,

    I shared by with Dr. Quay our comments on the CGG sequence. I asked him if he’d be comfortable with my sharing his answer. Here is the text of his e-mail, with his permission:

    “Since completing my Bayesian analysis the WHO published their report. Evidence within the report only strengthens the hypothesis that this did not begin in nature. Despite finding SARS1 and MERS in 90% of the markets where the intermediate host was being sold, and despite the fact that Dr. Andersen and colleagues predicted the virus would have to be in a high prevalence in the community to produce this pandemic, the WHO reports that over 80,000 animals, representing hundreds of species, in all 31 provinces of China all tested negative for the virus. The only place they didn’t test any animals was from inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And despite finding evidence of a 1% to 4% incidence of pre-epidemic human infection in the communities where SARS1 and MERS began, there was no evidence of infection in 10,000 stored blood specimens from before December 2019. And finally, after determining the gene sequence of over 1.9 million viruses, there is no genetic signal that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in any animal host in nature. Had this information been available to me it would have only strengthened my conclusion that this came from a laboratory.”

    [Dr. Steven Carl Quay MD PhD, June 12, 2021].

  • Jorge – thank you for the update from Dr Quay which he has also tweeted.

    The simple standout point for me from Dr Quay’s recent comments that the zoonotic origin supporters and the Chinese need to address is that

    “despite finding evidence of a 1% to 4% incidence of pre-epidemic human infection in the communities where SARS1 and MERS began, there was no evidence of infection in 10,000 stored blood specimens from before December 2019”

    It does not seem plausible that there was no Covid in all 10,000 Chinese blood samples prior to Dec 2019 as we know that

    1. Covid has now shown to be circulating at very low levels in Italian lung cancer related blood tests from Sept 2019 and these rates only doubled by Feb 2020

    2. Covid did not show up materially – in 2020 reviews of old European sewage samples tested – prior to Dec 2019 but China has not shared similar data

    3. Mr Embarek of the WHO said in 2021 the Chinese presented his team with 174 cases of coronavirus in the Wuhan area in December 2019 based on symptoms and hospitalization
    (while Italian data for a general population cancer study ie not for those who were clearly Covid patients shows nothing similar to Chinese data)

    This he says suggested there could have been 1,000 cases of the disease in Wuhan by December 2019

    4. Given the Italian data is open to review and provides some idea of Italian pre-epidemic history saying there is no Chinese pre-epidemic data before Dec 2019 lacks credibility

    5. Wuhan remains the most likely point of Covid origin based on patient numbers and timelines until China fully discloses its 2019 data and samples for independent review

    6. Italian Cancer blood test data

    No hospitalizations reported but over 6 months they found COVID-19 antibodies in 111 of 959 people, or nearly 12%.

    About 14% of the positive blood samples were drawn in September,

    with a cluster of cases (about 30% of the positives) popping up during the second week of February.

    https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201115/covid_19_circulated_in_italy_earlier_than_thought

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/wuhan-covid-variants-december-2019-who-investigation-b1802393.html

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/health/coronavirus/virus-already-in-italy-by-december-waste-water-study-finds-1.4991172

    https://theconversation.com/was-coronavirus-really-in-europe-in-march-2019-141582

    From genetic sequence testing it seems Covid may have first entered the human population in August/September 2019 and that matches up with the Italian cancer test blood data.

    If Covid escaped from a lab either because of WIV research on Mojiang Miners based samples or GOF created in a WIV lab it would seem that an escape event happened in July or August 2019 and then slowly spread.

    Jonathan has covered the fact that there were no material early mutuations of Covid and why this is so unusual

    https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/coronavirus/headline_722109_en.html

    Until China opens up its historic human samples from 2019 and the 2012 Mojiang Miners China remains the most likely origin of Covid

    What we know for now is various countries have shown some pre-epidemic data exists from Sept 2019 on

    The Chinese however say

    they cannot find a Covid zoonotic origin and

    there is no meaningful data from human blood samples before Dec 2019

    but will not let any independent review be carried out

    The CGGCGG sequence question remains one that appears very important to understand and should be moved forward without stopping meaningful simple disclosure of China’s pre-epidemic Covid distribution data pre Dec 2019

  • I’d be seeing where the pharmaceutical companies fitted into all of this bat virus pandemic/bioweapon research. Their twitter trolls are wild on any vaccine inquiry.

  • The interconnections between various research parties and Prof Shi could do with some detailed explanations

    Questions and comments on investigating the origins of Covid-19

    A number of western researchers go back a long way at least to 2006 or so and connect directly or indirectly with Prof Shi from the times she was a research student onwards

    These parties continued to work closely with Zhengli Shi as she progressed to become Prof Shi at Wuhan and they then have been pro the zoonotic origins

    Some of these people include Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric and Edward C Holmes of UNSW

    https://staff.med.unsw.edu.au/event/neuroscience-non-communicable-diseases-webinar-professor-zhengli-shi-director-center-emerging

    Questions

    Who supervised Zhengli Shi’s work while she was a student studying in Australia at the Geelong research facility

    and

    who funded her

    and

    did Shi’s Australian research continue after this time in 2006.

    What papers were published based on the Shi Geelong work ?

    Shi spent three months in 2006 as a visiting scientist at the CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness laboratory, a high-containment facility, in Geelong in Victoria. She conducted research in links between the SARS virus and bats. Her colleague Zhou completed his doctorate at the same facility between 2011 and 2014.

    https://7news.com.au/news/world/australian-csiro-in-geelong-linked-to-coronavirus-bat-laboratory-theory–c-1002195

    Some of the Research Papers etc with Shi party connections

    Cross-species virus transmission and the emergence of new epidemic diseases 2008

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18772285/

    Authors include
    Edward C Holmes and Peter Daszak

    Below is a 2006 paper written by Daszak and Zhengli Shi et al

    Searching for the natural reservoir of the SARS

    https://publons.com/publon/11279391/

    Author Information
    Addresses:

    [ 1 ] Dept Primary Ind & Fisheries, Brisbane, Qld, Australia
    Show the Organization-Enhanced name(s)
    [ 2 ] CSIRO Australian Anim Hlth Lab, Geelong, Vic, Australia
    Show the Organization-Enhanced name(s)
    [ 3 ] Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Zool, Beijing 100080, Peoples R China
    [ 4 ] Consortium Conservat Med, New York, NY USA
    Show the Organization-Enhanced name(s)
    [ 5 ] Wuhan Inst Virol, Wuhan, Peoples R China

    Another paper is by Daszak and Shi paper from 2017

    https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698

    Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus

    Ben Hu, Lei-Ping Zeng, Xing-Lou Yang, Xing-Yi Ge, Wei Zhang, Bei Li, Jia-Zheng Xie, Xu-Rui Shen, Yun-Zhi Zhang, Ning Wang, Dong-Sheng Luo, Xiao-Shuang Zheng, Mei-Niang Wang, Peter Daszak, Lin-Fa Wang, Jie Cui, Zheng-Li Shi

    https://www.springer.com/journal/10393/editors

    Official journal of EcoHealth Alliance

    View the list of connected parties… here are the first 3 names but there are maybe 100 more names listed

    Editor-in-Chief
    Peter Daszak
    EcoHealth Alliance, New York, USA

    Executive Editors
    Martyn Jeggo
    Geelong Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Melbourne, Australia

    Fang Jing
    Institute for Health Sciences, Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China

    The Mojiang Miners were treated by Dr Li Xu who then wrote a Thesis on Six Miners from Mojiang as a postgraduate student of Kunming Medical University

    The miners were admitted to the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University on 26-27 April 2012.

    2005 Conference

    Changing Host Ranges of Viruses Leading to Emergence of New Pathogens
    September 6 – 8, 2005 • Washington, DC

    Holmes, Daszak and Baric

    https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/asp/html/conferences/conferences/virus20050906.html

  • Prof Zhengli Shi CV

    The extensive list of papers includes many with Peter Daszak going back to 2005. There are around 20 references to Daszak in Prof Shi’s CV

    https://www.ws-virology.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Zhengli-Shi.pdf

    https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.ws-virology.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Zhengli-Shi.pdf

    The questions in the link below and refer to Prof Shi’s actions including changing database info on the 30th Dec 2019 while on an overnight train to Wuhan

    See questions in link below

    https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open-letter-to-the-who-covid-19-international

    Sample of questions

    12. Why have antibody tests (IgM & IgG) used to identify infected humans & animals in Wuhan between Sep-Dec 2019 not been made public?

    15. In light of the confirmed report of the November 17th Covid-19 patient published in the SCMP, why is that patient not officially acknowledged?

    34. Why were the description and many keywords in the online SQL version of the WIV database altered by Professor Zhengli Shi on Dec 30th while she was returning from Shanghai to Wuhan on the night train?

    With links in webarchive

    https://web.archive.org/web/20200507214518/http://csdata.org/p/308/

  • This is looks like the Australian Research involving Zhengli Shi from 2006

    Determination and application of immunodominant regions of SARS coronavirus spike and nucleocapsid proteins recognized by sera from different animal species

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7094251/#__ffn_sectitle

    Published online 2007 Dec 17. doi: 10.1016/j.jim.2007.11.009
    PMCID: PMC7094251
    PMID: 18191140

    Authors

    Meng Yu,a Vicky Stevens,a Jody D. Berry,b Gary Crameri,a Jennifer McEachern,a Changchun Tu,c Zhengli Shi,d Guodong Liang,e Hana Weingartl,b Jane Cardosa,f Bryan T. Eaton,a and Lin-Fa Wanga,

    a CSIRO Livestock Industries, Australian Animal Health Laboratory, Geelong, Victoria, Australia
    b National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, CFIA, Winnipeg, Canada
    c Institute of Veterinary Sciences, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Changchun, China
    d Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
    e Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China
    f Institute of Health and Community Medicine, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia

  • The link to the initial study referred to above of 2016 involving

    George F Gao
    Canping Huang
    Edward C. Holmes
    Lin Lu

    Which was followed up on with a 2 year study also linked above. Note the follow up research study did not require Edward Holmes or Huang input

    This initial study with, Gao, Holmes, Lu and Huang is titled

    A Bat-Derived Putative Cross-Family Recombinant Coronavirus with a Reovirus Gene

    https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005883

    Comment

    Although the virus is similar to Rousettus bat coronavirus HKU9 (Ro-BatCoV HKU9) in genome characteristics, it is sufficiently distinct to be classified as a new species according to the criteria defined by the International Committee of Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV).

    More striking was that Ro-BatCoV GCCDC1 contained a unique gene integrated into the 3’-end of the genome that has no homologs in any known coronavirus, but which sequence and phylogeny analyses indicated most likely originated from the p10 gene of a bat orthoreovirus.

    Subgenomic mRNA and cellular-level observations demonstrated that the p10 gene is functional and induces the formation of cell syncytia.

    Therefore, here we report a putative heterologous inter-family recombination event between a single-stranded, positive-sense RNA virus and a double-stranded segmented RNA virus, providing insights into the fundamental mechanisms of viral evolution.

  • Article by George F Gao from 2018

    with reference to pandemics, Spanish Flu etc and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as George Gao’s funding by the Chinese Govt

    Leading Edge Commentary

    From ‘‘A’’IV to ‘‘Z’’IKV: Attacks from Emerging and Re-emerging Pathogens

    George F. Gao – 1,2,

    *1 Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), China

    2 CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),

    China*Correspondence:[email protected]

    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.02.025100

    Years after the infamous ‘‘Spanish flu’’ pandemic, the 2017–2018 flu season has been severe,with numerous infections worldwide. In between, there have been continuous, relentless attacksfrom (re-)emerging viruses. To fully understand viral pathogenesis and develop effective medicalcountermeasures, we must strengthen current surveillance and basic research efforts

    https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0092867418301697?token=085F61C2108736F7BAD2B901A3C486CFE335862FA51722EF61F5D95D179B3B36AADA31E21CEC703597E21F959AB83B2F&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20210617060305

  • Here is a link to a site I just found that has collated info on the links between people like George F Gao, Prof Linfa Wang [ex CSIRO] (‘batman’), Prof Zhengli Shi (‘batwoman’), Peter Daszak, Prof Ralph Baric, Dr Fauci et al

    The title of the website is a little strange however the links and info it provides seems from first glance to be mostly ok with tweets from Peter Daszak about his 15+ year relationship with Prof Shi and from the 31st December 2019 about the new outbreak in Wuhan

    While many of the interactions seem normal it does show how long and how closely connected these people are to each other, plus many of the quoted researchers and coronavirus experts

    https://civilianintelligencenetwork.ca/2021/05/27/shi-zhengli-director-of-the-wuhan-bsl4-lab-runs-a-globalist-operation-flying-a-false-chinese-flag/

    This type of info is getting filtered out of searches so at least its here as a reference which can be reviewed and checked

  • I might be the last to hear… I laughed out loud on discovery that the “Prefusion Coronavirus Spike Protein” was invented by a guy at NIAID, with co-inventors at NIAID, Scripps & Geisel. This technology is used in both the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna covid-19 vaccines.
    The description of this technology reads…
    “Coronaviruses (CoVs) can cause severe respiratory disease with high fatality rates in humans. The 2002-2003 SARS-CoV epidemic resulted in 8098 cases and 744 deaths, and MERS-CoV, which emerged in 2012 has resulted in 2144 cases and over 750 deaths as of March 2018. Currently, there are no effective prophylactic or therapeutic measures, AND BECAUSE OTHER COVS ARE POISED TO EMERGE AS NEW HUMAN PATHOGENS, THERE IS A NEED TO DEFINE A GENERAL COV VACCINE SOLUTION [emph added].” Patent applications filed 2016 & 2017. US patent 10,960,070 granted 30 March 2021

    The joy of knowing that a new CoV is poised to emerge because your organisation is funding the gof research.
    https://www.ott.nih.gov/bundle/tab-3261

  • So at the time of resuming the funding of gain of function work in December 2017 they’d already finished the proof of technology work on the vaccine spike protein solution. For example…
    https://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/E7348?ijkey=16d0ef5d537760df1e1e274901317e0d2ce7b901&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

  • “License to NIH Spike Protein Technology Needed in COVID-19 Vaccines Demonstrates “Available to the Public on Reasonable Terms” Requirement”
    https://www.keionline.org/35746

  • Madeleine the vaccine info got me thinking

    Its interesting that nobody has published timelines or info on research done about coronavirus vaccines / the parties connected with vaccines and GOF etc

    I did a bit of digging around and below is what I found on coronavirus vaccine / GOF type research parties.

    Drs Yusen Zhou, Shibo Jiang, Lanying Du, Fang Li and Ralph Baric plus a few other names.

    It seems Yusen Zhou and Lanying Du are married and

    Dr Zhou died 3 months after filing a Covid vaccine patent in Feb 2020

    Drs Du and Jiang had a $4.1m 5 year NIH grant to 2022/23 to study MERS vaccines – funds split approx. 50/50 and patented a MERS vaccine prior to the grant

    https://www.nybloodcenter.org/news/articles/dr-lanying-du-receives-first-nih-grant-mers-vaccine/

    Right before the pandemic,

    Drs Zhou, Zhengli Shi and other exvlysively Chinese scienists (4 more in China and the rest in USA – 13 total) including Drs Lanying Du and Fang Li

    were working on COVID type vaccine research

    Their paper, titled Molecular Mechanism for Antibody-­Dependent Enhancement of Coronavirus Entry, was submitted to the Journal of Virology on November 27, 2019

    Could not see where the research was done.

    See research paper link and comments on Dr Zhou later below

    In 2017 Drs Yusen Zhou, Shibo Jiang, Lanying Du, Fang Li patented a vaccine for MERS based on tests on mice –

    https://patents.justia.com/patent/20190328865

    A press release says the vaccine process can also be used against SARS and other coronaviruses

    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nybc-scientists-partner-in-new-discovery-for-development-of-mers-vaccines-300369672.html

    I found the paper below that links as joint authors Ralph Baric, Zhengli Shi, Shibo Jiang, Lanying Du, Fang Li in 2015

    Title – Two Mutations Were Critical for Bat-to-Human Transmission of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus

    https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.01279-15

    We examined the capability of the mutant HKU4 spike to mediate viral entry into three types of human cells
    ……… the reengineered hPPC and hECP motifs enabled HKU4 spike to be activated by human endogenous…… These results reveal that HKU4 spike needs only two single mutations at the S1/S2 boundary to gain the full capacity to mediate viral entry into human cells.

    Next see Ralph Baric paper from 2015 titled

    SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence

    https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048

    In 2015 Ralph Baric patented a chimeric coronavirus spike protein for treating and/or preventing a disease or disorder caused by a coronavirus infection.

    It looks like a design for a Chimeric Spike based CoV Vaccine

    https://patents.justia.com/patent/9884895

    Ralph Baric also patented a test to detect a coronavirus and their sub group

    Note Prof Baric paper of 2005

    Humanized mice develop coronavirus respiratory disease

    https://www.pnas.org/content/102/23/8073

    The research on coronavirus vaccine development Prof Baric is doing is set out towards the end of the link below

    https://alumni.unc.edu/news/ralph-baric-on-the-front-lines-of-coronavirus-for-three-decades/

    Prof Baric is also linked to Covid treatments Remdesivir and EIDD-2801 which is linked to possible birth defects and shelved but re-introducrd after Covid-19

    https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/emails-offer-look-whistleblower-charges-cronyism-behind-potential-covid-19-drug

    Also see Drs Yusen Zhou, Shibo Jiang, Lanying Du, Fang Li joint vaccine related research papers at end

    dated 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 2016, and 2009. There may be others

    The speed of the Dr Zhou Feb 2020 Covid patent application is noted

    “This is something we have never seen achieved before, raising the question of whether this work may have started much ­earlier,” said Prof. Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University

    Patent Timeline Comments from internet

    Moderna was able to design the sequence for their COVID-19 vaccine just two days after Chinese officials released its genetic sequence on Jan. 11, 2020 – filing for their first related patent in March, two months later.

    So, assuming an expert would need approximately two months to go from genomic sequence to patent application, it implies that China withheld the genetic sequence for a month before its Jan. 11 public release. Or, Zhou may have had more of a ‘head start’ than that.

    Zhou had been working on Coronavirus vaccines for many years

    We may never know the full extent of Zhou’s role in all of this, he and Zhengli Shi were working on a COVID type vaccine right before the pandemic.

    Per the Weekend Australian:

    Right before the pandemic, Zhou and three other scientists from the PLA-run Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology – Yuehong Chen, Lei He and Shishui Sun – partnered with two Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists – Dr Shi and Jing Chen – and eight Chinese scientists now based in the US including Drs Lanying Du and Fang Li

    Their paper, titled Molecular Mechanism for Antibody-­Dependent Enhancement of Coronavirus Entry, was submitted to the Journal of Virology on November 27, 2019, and was published on February 14, 2020.

    https://covid19.elsevierpure.com/en/publications/molecular-mechanism-for-antibody-dependent-enhancement-of-coronav

    “Our study reveals a novel molecular mechanism for antibody-enhanced viral entry and can guide future vaccination and antiviral strategies. ……. Here we identify a novel mechanism for ADE: a neutralizing antibody binds to the surface spike protein of coronaviruses like a viral receptor, triggers a conformational change of the spike, and mediates viral entry into IgG Fc receptor….. We further evaluated how antibody dosages impacted viral entry into cells …… This study reveals complex roles of antibodies in viral entry and can guide future vaccine design and antibody-based drug therapy.”

    Interesting timing…

    Its clear previous coronavirus vaccines were worked on unsuccessfully and some research cancelled due to effects on the livers of ferrets tested / adverse reactions.

    https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/12/sars-vaccine-linked-liver-damage-ferret-study

    Prof Petrovsky was involved with developing other previous coronavirus vaccines for humans and animals and also with current SARS and Covid-19 vaccine development and research

    The key players so far seem to be

    Drs Zhengli Shi, George Gao, Tony Fauci, Linfa Wang, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric

    Next come

    Drs Edward C.Holmes, Canping Huang, Lin Lu

    Then with vaccine people there are

    Drs Yusen Zhou, Shibo Jiang, Lanying Dun, Fang Li and Ralph Baric

    Dr Zhou was a decorated military scientist for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who worked alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology as well as US scientists, filed a vaccine patent on Feb. 24 2020, Zhou got funding from the National Institutes of Health — raising fears the Covid-19 vaccine was being studied even before the pandemic became public, according to a new report

    The patent — lodged by the “Institute of Military Medicine, Academy of Military Sciences of the PLA” —

    https://nypost.com/2021/06/04/chinese-scientist-filed-covid-vaccine-patent-after-contagion-emerged-report/

    The studies below involved

    Authors Yusen Zhou, Shibo Jiang, Lanying Du, Fang Li et al

    Characterization of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of 2019 novel coronavirus: implication for development of RBD protein as a viral attachment inhibitor and vaccine – March 2020

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0400-4 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32203189/

    Advances in MERS-CoV Vaccines and Therapeutics Based on the Receptor-Binding Domain Yusen Zhou et al. Viruses. 2019
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30646569/

    Prospects for a MERS-CoV spike vaccine Yusen Zhou et al. Expert Rev Vaccines. 2018 Aug.

    MERS-CoV spike protein: a key target for antivirals – 2017

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27936982/

    Introduction of neutralizing immunogenicity index to the rational design of MERS coronavirus subunit vaccines

    https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/introduction-of-neutralizing-immunogenicity-index-to-the-rational

    A recombinant receptor-binding domain of MERS-CoV in trimeric form protects human dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (hDPP4) transgenic mice from MERS-CoV infection

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27750111/

    The spike protein of SARS-CoV–a target for vaccine and therapeutic development – 2009

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19198616/

    It would be interesting if you, Jorge, Jonathan or anyone else has input about the pre 2020 vaccine research over lap with coronavirus GOF and other coronavirus research generally and who was involved with both vaccine and GOF research

    I guess George Gao and Tony Fauci will have knowledge of both research arms ?

    From April 2020 –

    I remember reading this when it came out and thinking something does not add up as only Prof Petrovsky seemed to have done any serious lab research on the virus but all were commenting

    https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-did-covid-19-come-from-a-lab-in-wuhan

  • Here are some more links to sites setting out comments for and against lab origin.

    These CCNS and WSWS sources demonstrate that political factors need to be filtered out of the commentary

    However the fact that various people have worked on coronavirus vaccines and GOF for from the early 2000s does not seem to be disputed nor that there is a lack of transparency about this work.

    The information provided shows why it may be of concern.

    The anti lab theory site WSWS is a well known for its socialist political opinions

    probably reasonably WSWS calls into question the Wall Street Journalists who broke the official lab leak story and their role in previous Gulf War disclosures,

    mentions RaTG13 but fails to explain that Prof Shi did not disclose her 2017/18 gene sequencing of RaTG13 or her later 2020 updates on the Mojiang Miners,

    gives comments supporting Kristen Andersen’s natural origin statements including that Covid-19 was not well suited to human infection early, only mutated later on and jumps easily to certain animals.

    These last points I find hard to relate to the data from China and elsewhere.

    First Prof Petrovsky makes clear in Covid-19 vaccine related research that it did seem to bind too well to human ACE2 and that it was very odd that there were no early mutations of the virus or animal host found

    Secondly the Chinese have said they can find no Covid-19 in the

    10,000s of animal blood samples reviewed from prior to Covid-19 so any jumping to animals seems to have happened after human infection and

    the Chinese say the human outbreak appears to have been very sudden with no infections prior to Decemeber 2019

    Note – The style of the WSWS article looks similar to that of the CCNS article and could be a response

    The WSWS links make no attempt to explain the vaccine or GOF research prior to 2020

    The pro lab CCNS links set out the lab work done since 2002, how this may show a lab origin and connect back to joint Chinese PLA research with NIAID funding for GOF and vaccine research

    WSWS Comments

    In response to the WSWS’s question regarding assertions made by scientists on the SARS-CoV-2’s genetic stability in humans, Dr. Andersen explained,

    “When it [SARS-CoV-2] spilled over, it is incorrect to say it was ‘well adapted to humans.’

    We know this because
    1) The emergence of variants of concern and human adaptation that is ongoing,
    2) the virus can jump between species with no evolution—e.g., mink, and 3) Pangolin CoVs bind even stronger to human ACE2 receptors.”

    To be continued

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/22/sci2-j22.html

    The pro lab theory CCNS links come from a retired US Army Colonel / Researcher quoted by sites on the political right of which CCNS is one

    CCNS

    CCNS cites many papers including one from 2007 with Authors including
    Lanying Du 1, Yusen Zhou, Shibo Jiang

    It appears this was before Lanying Du came to live in USA as she was part of HK University, China

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17533109/

    https://ccnationalsecurity.org/the-chinese-military-its-links-to-u-s-funding-and-the-laboratory-origin-of-covid-19/

    Experiments that may have led to the presence of COVID-19’s furin polybasic cleavage site

    In 2004, during the first SARS pandemic, an important patent entitled “INSERTON OF FURIN PROTEASE CLEAVAGE SITES IN MEMBRANE PROTEINS AND USES THEREOF” was filed.

    As of today, there have only been twenty-three scientific citations of that patent. One is by Shibo Jiang and his Chinese military-trained colleague Shuwen Liu.

    In 2005, Shibo Jiang together with his colleagues Yuxian He and Yusen Zhou from the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing, China, stated there was no observed cleavage between the S1 and S2 components of the first SARS virus.

    By 2007, the same group of military investigators led by Shibo Jiang concluded that cleavage, in fact, did occur in the first SARS virus and it was correlated with infectivity.

    In 2009, a research group from Cornell University confirmed the correlation between cleavage sites and SARS infectivity.

    Then, in 2013, came what many might consider the smoking gun.

    Despite having the innocuous title “SIMULTANEOUS EXPRESSION OF DISPLAYED AND SECRETED ANTIBODIES FOR ANTIBODY SCREEN,” Shibo Jiang and his military-trained colleague Shuwen Liu, demonstrated the artificial insertion of a furin polybasic cleavage site similar to that found in the COVID-19 virus.

    That study was directly funded by the Chinese government and a private Chinese biotech company, while Shibo Jiang was also being funded by Fauci’s NIAID.

    Perhaps coincidentally, between 2012 and 2020, Lixin Zheng, a scientist working in Fauci’s own NIAID laboratories, was conducting joint research with the PLA’s Third Military Medical University, Chongqing 400038, China.

    The PLA’s Third Military Medical University in Chongqing has long been considered a focal point of coronavirus research.

    Chinese whistleblower Dr. Li-Meng Yan claims that the COVID-19 virus originated in laboratories overseen by China’s PLA, using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21 collected from Zhoushan, China and used as the viral “backbone” for genetic engineering.

    Those bat coronaviruses were originally isolated and characterized between July 2015 and February 2017 under the supervision of the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, China and the Research Institute for Medicine of the PLA Nanjing Military Command.

    Shibo Jiang has collaborated with the PLA Nanjing Military Command and the Wuhan Institute of Virology has multi-level links to the PLA and both are connected to each other.

    To be continued.

    *Note added below by author the day after initial publication:

    One scenario for the onset of the pandemic could have been an accidental direct release of the COVID-19 virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

    Another possibility involves an accident related to vaccine development.

    Many vaccines contain live, but “attenuated” viruses, that is, weakened viruses insufficient to cause disease, but similar enough to an actual infection to initiate an immune response and the production of antibodies.

    Live-attenuated vaccines are used for childhood diseases like measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. Because live-attenuated vaccines are so similar to the natural infection, they produce a strong and long-lasting, even a life-time immune response.

    Live-attenuated vaccines can also be less expensive and more quickly produced, but they can be risky if the attenuated virus “reverts” back to its pathogenic state.

    During the 2002-2004 SARS pandemic, the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted tests of an inactivated SARS virus vaccine on rhesus monkeys.

    It is possible that the COVID-19 pandemic began when a live attenuated vaccine for the laboratory-created COVID-19 virus reverted back to its pathogenic state in presumed immunized individuals or laboratory animals.

    An earlier CCNS article covers George Goa and the connections to Chinese miitary research going back to 2002

    CCP scientist linked to both the Chinese military and the highest levels of U.S. research programs is Dr. Gao Fu, also known as George F. Gao, a virologist and immunologist, who has served as Director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC).

    In 2019, he was elected a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine.

    Gao Fu is a long-time research partner of China’s military with whom he published in 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

    Gao Fu’s colleague at the CCDC, Dr. Wenjie Tan, is not only linked to Shibo Jinag and Yusen Zhou, but is a close collaborator of Dr. Zhenhong Hu from the General Hospital of Central Theater Command of the PLA in Wuhan.

    Zhenhong Hu conducted research with the Third Military Medical University from where the bat backbone of the COVID-19 virus is alleged to have originated.

    The Third Military Medical University was also Major General Wei Chen’s place of employment for five years.

    It is perhaps no coincidence that, according to patient data, the epicenter of the outbreak during its earliest phase was the General Hospital of Central Theater Command of the PLA (map coordinates 30.53148, 114.34356).

    https://ccnationalsecurity.org/yes-covid-19-was-a-biological-attack-by-the-chinese-communist-party/

  • Early 2020 Chinese Covid-19 research on shrews and ferrets related to RaTG13 modelled 47 animals to see which were the best suited to infection by RaTG13.

    WIV web-archived data shows the WIV stated it has over 3000 animal cages including 12 for bats and 12 for ferrets, and Prof Shi was featured in a 2009 published article which details her feeding captured bats in her lab.

    I will post the web links separately

    The 2020 RaTG13 paper was then withdrawn for further review though it was never stated the results were incorrect

    It stated

    “Interestingly, our results revealed that …(tree shrew) and …(ferret) obtained the top-two best binding free energies as compared to other species
    (ΔG: -678.22 kcal/mol for tree shrew;
    ΔG: -665.86 kcal/mol for ferret;”

    (ie Better than pangolins)

    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.025080v1.full

    Prof Ebright referred to this paper in 2020

    Does this Chinese RaTG13 research imply passaging of RaTG13 to Covid-19 could have been easily achieved via the Mojiang Miners or in lab animals?

    China says there are no obvious earlier animal hosts for Covid

    Tree Shrews and Ferrets are used to replicate human patients in GOF, vaccine and other medical trials

    So does this 2020 study indicate its not a big step to get passaging in or to humans either

    within the Mojiang Miners or,

    via shrews/ferrets in a lab or

    via a combination of both Miners and animal lab passaging.

    The lack of Chinese sharing of the samples and data which they admit they have, even from the 2012 Mojiang Miners, and the lack historic transparency seems to be the biggest issue in the short term.

    Limited Chinese 2020 Covid-19 research below – very short comment paper on lab origin of Covid-19

    https://www.docdroid.net/EZUN6cB/originsof2019-ncov-xiaob-res-pdf#page=2

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6177411/#__ffn_sectitle

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744920/#bies202000240-note-0003

    Prof “Ebright noted that [this]… earlier study on ACE2 receptor binding found that a bat coronavirus similar to the COVID-19 virus had strong binding power with the ACE2 of tree shrews and ferrets, …… [and] used the gene sequence… reported by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, called RaTG13.”

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-virus-researchers-uncover-evidence-implying-covid-19-was-created-in-a-lab

    • One possibility that you ask about, Adam, is if they could have used ferrets or tree shrews? This is a very complex question. One way to think about this is to say it depends what you think they wanted to achieve. If they wanted to make a highly human-proficient virus then one might choose to passage different parts of the virus in different animals for safety’s sake. One could optimise the spike in humanised ACE2 transgenic mice but passage the rest of the virus in a system that was more human (or mimicked a human); e.g. human cell lines. Retrospectively we know the SARS2 virus easily infects mink. Maybe they passaged it in mink for some reason? But we have to bear in mind that they wouldnt necessarily know all that when they made it. We cannot predict in what species a novel recombinant virus will do well in. I dont think SARS One ever infected mink (it would be good if someone could research this question). But that still leaves the question of why would they want to make a highly adapted human pathogen? From this discussion one can see though that everything depends on everything else but with so many possibilities available to them it is worrying to consider, since coronaviruses recombine very easily, that the key event was just inadvertent lab contamination which led to a recombinant virus that no one even made intentionally. One doesn’t have to be particularly sloppy. According to Nikolai Petrovsky (Flinders University) viruses just show up in tissue culture from who knows where. It is probably only because he is a virologist that he even detects their presence. (I am assuming Petrovsky’s people are careful here but his statement is backed up in the scientific literature). Having toyed with the logic a little bit, am tempted to say, though, that whatever else, the researchers at the WIV didn’t mean to make this virus. Unless they wanted a weapon (and it wouldnt be a very good one) what purpose would it serve? This brings us back to the opening question/answer, what might they have been trying to do? It seems like Shi and Daszak have a fixation for measuring and optimising spikes to estimate emergence potential and showcase their pandemic fears. One can do that most obviously in human cells or ACE2 transgenic humanised mice but many other ways too, at least in principle. Human ACE2 transgenic mink? If such an optimised spike recombined with a bat virus they collected from the wild (through contamination) or that one of their collectors became infected with (just transiently) that might well be enough. When one brings all these viruses in and then do GOF research in the same facility it turns the WIV into a vast mixing bowl.

  • A web-archive post of a 2009 published article about Prof Shi shows that since at least 2009 the WIV / Prof Shi has herself captured, kept and fed live bats in her labs for experiments.

    Author: Lu Wei and Liu Zheng
    Source: Science Times Release time: 2009-3-10 22:18:59 Shi Zhengli: A Female Scientist Accompanied by Viruses

    Life is frugal but full of sentiment

    In the eyes of colleagues, Shi Zhengli’s life is very frugal.

    If you don’t travel on business, you can basically see her in the office or laboratory.

    Zhang Huajun said:

    “The research team captured a few bats from the wild to be used as experimental animals.

    They need to be fed every day.

    This Spring Festival, the students went home for a holiday, and Teacher Shi silently undertook the task of raising bats.”

    For this matter, many No one knows until now.

    Although engaged in a lot of monotonous scientific research every day, Shi Zhengli “is a very emotional person.”

    Her assistant told reporters,

    “Once, when she came back from a business trip in France, she brought back a lot of cheese and wine and shared it with everyone at a regular meeting on Friday”;

    “During the holidays, she would invite colleagues and students to her home to make bags. Dumplings, or go out to dinner”…

    In life, Shi Zhengli also has many hobbies.

    Her students revealed:

    “Ms. Shi has a very good voice and likes to sing sopranos, especially “Qinghai-Tibet Plateau” is very good!”

    “Science Times” (2009-3-11 A2 domestic)

    https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4130431

    https://web.archive.org/web/20190207020202/http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2009/3/216816.html

    “An archived website from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Laboratory Animal Resources stated: “The Wuhan Institute of Virology … has 126 cages for Japanese white rabbits, 340 cages for SD and Wistar rats, …. and genetically engineered mice. There are 3268 cages, 12 ferrets, 12 bats, …..”

    https://news.yahoo.com/evidence-mounts-wuhan-lab-studied-193700731.html
    https://web.archive.org/web/20210602165022/http://www.lar.ac.cn/members?member=15

  • Jonathan

    It seems that SARS-1 did infect Mink – links below

    and that

    Prof Zhengli Shi wrote a paper that confirmed this SARS-1 Mink infection in 2007/8

    As I read it from the summaries Prof Shi tested about 30+ species including Mink and bats to confirm their SARS1
    infection

    This Mink / Zhengli Shi 2008 paper is referenced in a Nature article which also mentions a 2004 paper on SARS-1 and Mink by others

    that states human/mink lung tissue was used in labs around 2004 or earlier

    The 2004 paper highlights in the middle of the Mink related comments that for various reasons

    “the practices of diagnostic laboratories should be examined to ensure appropriate biosafety precautions”

    The 2004 paper seems to have more to do with lab testing

    I have not accessed either paper and could not comment meaningfully beyond the summaries

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2787-6

    Mink
    The mink (Neovison vison), which is a member of the Mustelidae, has previously been shown to be susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV [62];

    Apart from masked palm civets and bats, 29 other animal species had been tested for the SARS-CoV, and the results are summarized in this paper.

    62.
    Shi, Z. & Hu, Z.
    A review of studies on animal reservoirs of the SARS coronavirus. Virus Res. 133, 74–87 (2008).

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168170207001050

    The Nature article states that a 2004 paper by other researchers states

    “mink lung epithelial cells and lung-derived cells could also be infected with SARS-CoV”[63]

    63.
    Gillim-Ross, L. et al. Discovery of novel human and animal cells infected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus by replication-specific multiplex reverse transcription-PCR. J. Clin. Microbiol. 42, 3196–3206 (2004).

    The 2004 paper states

    “Mink lung epithelial cells (Mv1Lu) and R-Mix, a mixed monolayer of human lung-derived cells (A549) and mink lung-derived cells (Mv1Lu), are used by diagnostic laboratories to detect respiratory viruses (e.g., influenza virus);

    they were also infected with SARS-CoV, indicating that the practices of diagnostic laboratories should be examined to ensure appropriate biosafety precautions.

    Mv1Lu cells produce little SARS-CoV compared to that produced by VeroE6 cells, which indicates that they are a safer alternative for SARS-CoV diagnostics”

    https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JCM.42.7.3196-3206.2004

    I am thinking about your other comments on why and what Drs Shi and Daszak may have been doing and have some thoughts / questions which I will post separately

    Hope the above info helps

    Thank you

  • Jonathan

    It seems best to split things up into 2 posts

    This second post being a simple question based on the question you asked in your last post

    The previous post post has supporting info

    You previously asked

    Q1. Why would Drs Shi and Daszak want to make a highly adapted human pathogen?

    Could you comment on the answer to this being to create a human coronavirus to use to develop a general or specific human coronavirus vaccine ?

    Given Drs Shi and Daszak’s fixation for measuring and optimising spikes to estimate emergence potential and showcasing their pandemic fears this seems to make sense as the logical extension of their work

    Daszak is quoted in a Dec 2019 podcast as saying

    “The logical progression for vaccines is, if you’re going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use Pandemic SARS, but let’s try to insert some of these related disease and get a better vaccine.”

    https://youtu.be/IdYDL_RK–w

    https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4104828

  • Below is a PDF link to DRASTIC data and references on the WIV

    Page 66 and 67 covers early patient genome sequences in Covid patient BALF samples sent to the WIV. The sequences include non SARS viruses.

    DRASTIC says the way this sequence data is distributed in certain samples, and not generally, implies WIV lab contamination of these patient samples

    These genetic sequences included the Nipah Virus and Adenovirus Vaccine.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350887648_3_WUHAN_LABORATORIES_BAT_RESEARCH_AND_BIOSAFETY

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Billy-Bostickson/publication/350887648_3_WUHAN_LABORATORIES_BAT_RESEARCH_AND_BIOSAFETY/links/60786244881fa114b406b720/3-WUHAN-LABORATORIES-BAT-RESEARCH-AND-BIOSAFETY.pdf

  • Richard H. Ebright – 7 Sep, 10 tweets, 2 min read
    https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1435053506474377218
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1435053505169944579.html

    “NEWLY RELEASED documents provide details of US-funded research on..coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology..The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing..work of..EcoHealth Alliance..at the Chinese lab..”
    (…)
    The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.

  • Not a single comment here acknowledging the GOF research done at The U of N. Carolina under the sole approval of Fauci and as an exception to a ban on funding of such work. Someone even cites the Falun Gong (main credo: anti-“race-mixing”) rabidly anti-China Epoch Times as a source for anything. This quote to me is part of the coverup on how that the US is a main suspect for a bioweapon: “Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans”. lethality for humans Of course they can deny it was for humans since the paper never mentioned that was an objective. But then to deny that work was GOF at all-that’s got lying denial written all over it. What happened to the resulting chimeric strain? The Biolabs in Ukraine are a suspected destination.

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