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Coronavirus Research in Wuhan

#11
Yazata Online
(Mar 2, 2023 06:26 PM)C C Wrote: FBI Director supports the lab leak hypothesis, but there is no new evidence, and scientists still favor the spillover hypothesis.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-l...ses-again/

EXCERPT: . . . It is worth pointing out, however, that the lab leak theory has its origins in a lab-created bioweapon theory.

Bullshit.

Its origin was the result of knowledge that the disease first appeared within a mile of China's top Level-4 virology laboratory, where it was known by many virologists that gain-of-function research (funded in part by the United States) was taking place. The stated goal of this research was to genetically engineer animal coronaviruses to be infectious to humans. (See the grant application for that research in post #1 above.)

The purpose of this research was to better understand why some animal viruses jump over to humans, while most don't. The researchers wanted to better understand what genetic changes in the viruses facilitated the crossover, so as to be better able to assess naturally occurring animal viruses for their pandemic potential.

Quote:Very early on, and continuing at least through 2022, some scientists and others were hypothesizing that the virus was bioengineered as a weapon, which may then have either been deliberately or accidentally released.

I suppose that some people hypothesized about that. The WIV was known to be doing research for the Chinese military as well as for the Americans. But I don't think that the bioweapon hypothesis was taken very seriously, largely because a highly infectious virus like this wouldn't confine itself to just infecting an enemy, but would spread worldwide and would infect China too.

So the emphasis was always on an accidental release of coronaviruses that had been engineered to be infectious to humans, for the best of motives. We already knew that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing precisely that. (Again, see the grant proposal in post #1.)

Quote:This question can be primarily answered by examining the virus itself, looking for telltale signs of bioengineering. The book is basically closed on this question.

The "book is basically closed" only in the minds of those whose minds have already closed, to those whose purpose has always explicitly been to silence the lab-leak theory. The authors of the 'proximate origin' paper admit it themselves: "Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any kind of lab theory." And after the initial draft of the paper was rejected by Nature on February 20 because it gave too much credence to what the journal editor called 'conspiracy theories', along with the demand that consideration of the lab-leak hypothesis be removed before the paper would be publishable in that journal, one of the scientists wrote "We really, really wish that we could do that (that's how this got started) but unfortunately it's just not possible given the data."

But despite the scientific-integrity scruples, the paper was rewritten and resubmitted to include the conclusion that, in Steven Novella's words, "the book is basically closed on this question", that the lab-leak theory was simply "not plausible".

(CC might be interested to know that Nature is owned by the same German publisher that owns Scientific American and very likely has similar "woke" editorial policies to those the publisher has imposed on the latter publication. Just more ideological corruption of science.)

Quote:the evidence strongly supports a natural (not bioengineered) origin for the virus.

Except that doesn't appear to be true. Multiple leading viologists have testified that genetically engineering a virus genome leaves no telltale traces. You just have the result and the problem of explaining how it originated. After all, the observed 'gain-of-function' might have originated in a laboratory by cut-and-pasting genes (I think the evidence might arguably point to that) or by successive passage through animal hosts, with the most infectious variants selected each time to infect the next group of animals. Forced evolution in other words. Virologists do that too.

Quote:It seems that some of the bioengineered conspiracy theorists migrated over to the lab leak hypothesis, contaminating the debate with conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, earnest proponents of the lab leak hypothesis bristle at any suggestion that they are conspiracy theorists. Fair enough – but they have to understand the history and recognize that the lab leak side is rife with conspiracy theories.

That's just Steven Novella's excuse for ignoring the fundamental basis of the lab-leak theory. Though it is probably quite indicative of what his own motivation is. Battling the conspiracy theorists and their "woo"!!!

Quote:If we put all that aside and just take a look at the scientific question – what does the evidence say about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 – there are basically two ways to address the question. The first stems from virology, tracing the genetic sequence of the various strains of SARS-CoV-2 and trying to draw the lines back to its origin. We can also compare the genetic sequence to the most closely related viruses to try to piece together where the virus came from.

OK, but that sounds like a single line of research to me. Compare the various covid variants and try to determine what the original variant looked like, then compare that reconstruction to naturally occurring viruses to determine the likelihood that one of them crossed over.

Which might be difficult if the WIV virologists were using a naturally occurring animal virus as their 'backbone' and then engineering changes in it to make it more infectious to humans. (Which they state they were doing in their grant application.) In which case, similarity between covid-19 and a naturally occurring animal virus wouldn't be evidence against the lab-leak hypothesis at all.

Quote:When we do this the evidence currently favors the interpretation that SARS-CoV-2 is a spillover virus, a coronavirus that infects animals that crossed over to humans either through mutations or combining genetic material from human-infecting viruses in order to be pathogenic against humans.

Except that despite extensive searches all over China and elsewhere, covid-19 has never been observed in animals. So if it spilled over from animals, where are the animals that it spilled over from? Covid-19 has only been found in humans, after it first appeared in Wuhan less than a mile from the virology laboratory.

What's more, covid-19 possesses particular genetic features that make it more infectious to humans, that have never been observed in other members of the same coronavirus family of which covid-19 is a member. It's true that those features are observed in different sorts of viruses, but there's no evidence of naturally occurring transfer of those features into covid-19-like viruses.

Quote:The best animal candidates for hosts of the virus origin are minks, red foxes, and racoon dogs,all of which are sold in the Wuhan wet market.

I believe that the best (albeit imperfect) genetic match has been found in viruses isolated from Chinese pangolins. These are an Asian species of anteater which isn't sold in the Wuhan wetmarket and whose range in the wild is some 600 miles away.

Quote:Epidemiological evidence also traces the first infections back to the wet market.

That's just speculative. And it doesn't exclude the possibility that an infected WIV worker visited the nearby wetmarket and spread the disease to other humans there.

Quote:For this reason this is the most popular hypothesis among scientists.

Steven Novella's own motivation seems to be combatting what he insultingly called "conspiracy theories" up above. As is typically the case with self-styled "skeptics", he seems to have already believed that he knew what the truth was, and saw it as his mission to suppress any opinion that disagreed with his.

I think that just from their own email conversations about what they hoped to accomplish, the scientists who wrote the 'proximate origins' paper in less than two weeks (they obviously didn't do any laboratory research of their own) have revealed themselves as having all kinds of motives that go beyond pure science. Scientists are emotional and biased human beings, not idealized pure intellects. Like Steven, I see them as arguing for conclusions that they already favored for both political-ideological reasons (Trump had raised the lab leak theory so they felt they had to dismiss it) and for reasons of self-interest (they didn't want China offended and their own research collaborations in that country endangered, they didn't want more government restrictions placed on 'gain of function' research and they most emphatically didn't want the covid disaster blamed on virologists like them).

Quote:However, we have still not found the smoking gun original virus, so there is still a little room for questions...

That awfully big of you, Steven. Except that people are free to ask questions and to propose hypotheses whether you like it or not. Despite you having your blog, your being a Yale medical school neurologist, and despite you being a leading "skeptic", you still don't have the power to control other people's thinking. (Thank God!)
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#12
Yazata Online
Today it was revealed by Congress that a senior CIA whistleblower has told the House Select Subcommittee on the Covid Pandemic and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the CIA's seven person committee investigating Covid-19's origins initially concluded 6 to 1 with low confidence that Covid-19 was probably a lab-leak in Wuhan. But then pressure was applied from above and the six supporters of the lab leak theory were offered significant sums of money to change their positions before the committee's findings were made public.

https://www.scribd.com/document/67078287...rce=impact

https://nypost.com/2023/09/12/cia-tried-...tleblower/
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#13
Yazata Online
Another leaked document.

Assuming that it's real (I'm not 100% convinced of that), this document provides lots of context for the grant proposal in post #1, revealing it as associated with another project that included many of the same people, initially funded by the US Dept of Defense through DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The goal was (contra Novella) not to create a "bioweapon" per-se, but to somehow mass vaccinate animal populations that might be reservoirs of spillover zoonotic diseases. I've just skimmed this 250 page document (much of it is redacted, wonder what that is all about?) but the idea seems to have been to spread genetic engineered biomaterials (by aerosol or whatever) in batcaves to introduce the spike proteins etc. that make viruses dangerous to humans, in hopes of inducing the bats to develop stronger immunity to viruses bearing those features. Basically the same principle used in human vaccines.

The reason the US Department of Defense was allegedly involved is because American soldiers fighting in some parts of the world are subject to contracting local diseases which take a heavy toll on their combat effectiveness. So the goal of the research was to explore the possibility of making local animal populations less likely to produce spillover viruses that infect humans. That's probably what attracted the attention of the Ecohealth Alliance, since it promised to reduce the prevalence of these kind of diseases in the general population at large, not just soldiers (a worthy goal). So DARPA allegedly funneled its funding through Ecohealth, which had a wide network of affiliated virologists, including the WIV which was already performing its NIH funded gain-of-function through Ecohealth (see the grant application in post #1). The research in these new leaked documents would fit in nicely with that.

So bottom line, if what this document says is true, they appear to have been introducing precisely those features into native bat populations (furin cleavage sites and particular spike proteins) that make Covid-19 unique and so infectious to humans! The same features that were identified and tested by WIV's NIH funded gain-of-function research (described in post #1). The idea was to increase bat immunity to viruses with those features, but might have had the unintended result of introducing those features into coronaviruses already multiplying in the bats. Precisely the opposite of what was intended.

I'm still skeptical of this new hypothesis since to this point, the Covid-19 virus still hasn't been found in any wild animals, whether in China or elsewhere. If these experiments were inducing wild bat populations to develop Covid-19 virus loads, we would expect to see some evidence of it today in wild bat populations. It does suggest that even if this was a spillover zoonotic virus passed to humans in the Wuhan wetmarket as Steven Novella insists it must have been (anything else is a "conspiracy theory") that still wouldn't prove that it arose naturally and wasn't the product of genetic engineering by the very same people. (Got them coming and going.)

There's lots more interesting stuff in this document. One that caught my eye was proposals to use aerosol sprays from aircraft to innoculate wild animal populations against animal diseases of potential spillover threat to humans. Our chemtrails enthusiasts will love reading that!

https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/202...-1-235.pdf
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#14
Syne Offline
Even if they did develop it for that purpose, we might not be finding it in wild animals because it leaked from the lab before they could administer it.
If they had, certainly plenty of governments were highly motivated to find it. Since they didn't, it either wasn't administered or wasn't developed for that purpose.

My leaning is that a lot of "pure research" doesn't even need a stated purpose. They do it just because they can.
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#15
Yazata Online
The Chinese have revealed that they have produced a 100% fatal (at least in mice) variant of covid.

A 100% fatal disease that spreads as easily as the common cold, currently being researched in laboratores with a past history of terrible laboratory safety?

What could possibly go wrong??

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/...008v1.full
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#16
C C Offline
Where did covid come from?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-did-c..._permalink

New documents bolster the theory that it not only escaped from a laboratory but was developed in one.

INTRO: In the four years since the SARS-CoV-2 virus was unleashed on the world, data have steadily accumulated supporting the hypothesis that it emerged from a laboratory. The latest information, released last month, makes a formidable case that the virus is the product of laboratory synthesis, not of nature.

This startling fact will probably take some time to sink into the national consciousness, given the mainstream media’s sustained inability to report the issue objectively. Editors have failed to think beyond the extreme politicization that requires liberals to oppose the lab-leak hypothesis. Science journalists are too beholden to their sources to suspect that virologists would lie to them about the extent of their profession’s responsibility for a catastrophic pandemic.

Here are some salient facts that haven’t been clearly reported to readers of the mainstream press... (MORE - details)

PAPERS:

Project DEFUSE
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/...e-proposal

DEFUSE (analysis)
https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/202...dacted.pdf

Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/...1.full.pdf
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