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Post by ponto on May 27, 2021 20:18:34 GMT 10
Let the US/WHO investigate deeper just to settle the question as to how the virus originated it remains a known unknown though likely a animal source.
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Post by caskur on May 27, 2021 21:26:52 GMT 10
Let the US/WHO investigate deeper just to settle the question as to how the virus originated it remains a known unknown though likely a animal source. From hearing about the origin of the virus at the The Blue Cashew, way back in Feb 2020 and that it was from a Wuhan Lab next to a wet market, I think the Chinese scientists were studying SARS working for cure and someone (or all of them in the lab) contracted the virus and inadvertently took it outside, from there it infected a person or people. I don't think any of it was intentional. That is my strong hunch.
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Post by matte on May 27, 2021 22:42:26 GMT 10
Let the US/WHO investigate deeper just to settle the question as to how the virus originated it remains a known unknown though likely a animal source. Where is your evidence of that? How do you explain the Wuhan lab scientists falling ill in November 2019 with Covid-19 like symptoms? This was before it took off. I smell a Chinese Communist Party cover-up.
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Post by pim on May 28, 2021 0:17:36 GMT 10
You smell. Period.
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Post by ponto on May 28, 2021 6:03:03 GMT 10
"Available evidence suggests that SARS‑CoV‑2 has a natural animal origin.[46] Nonetheless, in the context of global geopolitical tensions, the origin is still hotly debated,[47] and, early in the pandemic, conspiracy theories spread on social media claiming that the virus was bio-engineered by China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,[48] amplified by echo chambers in the American far-right.[49] Some individuals, including American politicians and a small number of virologists, have questioned the prevailing evidence for the origin of the virus. This has led to calls in the media for further investigations into the matter.[50][51][52] Most virologists who have studied coronaviruses consider the possibility very remote,[53][54] and the March 2021 WHO report on the joint WHO-China study stated that such an explanation is "extremely unlikely".[55][33]"
"United States government Trump administration
On 6 February 2020, the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy requested the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a meeting of "experts, world class geneticists, coronavirus experts, and evolutionary biologists", to "assess what data, information and samples are needed to address the unknowns, in order to understand the evolutionary origins of COVID-19 and more effectively respond to both the outbreak and any resulting information".[103][104]
In April 2020, it was reported that the US intelligence community was investigating whether the virus came from an accidental leak from a Chinese lab. The hypothesis was one of several possibilities being pursued by the investigators. US secretary of defense Mark Esper said the results of the investigation were "inconclusive".[105][106] By the end of April 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the US intelligence community believed the coronavirus was not man-made or genetically modified.[107][108]
US officials[who?] previously denounced the WHO investigation as a "Potemkin exercise" and criticised the "terms of reference" allowing Chinese scientists to do the first phase of preliminary research.[109][110] On 15 January 2021, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that to assist the WHO investigative team's work and ensure a transparent, thorough investigation of COVID-19's origin, the US was sharing new information and urging the WHO to press the Chinese government to address three specific issues, including the illnesses of several researchers inside the WIV in autumn 2019, the WIV's research on "RaTG13" and "gain of function", and the WIV's links to the Chinese military.[111] On 18 January, the US called on China to allow the WHO's expert team to interview "care givers, former patients and lab workers" in the city of Wuhan, drawing a rebuke from the Chinese government. Australia also called for the WHO team to have access to "relevant data, information and key locations".[78]
In March 2021, the US State Department's former head investigator into the origins of COVID-19, David Asher, who worked under Republican and Democrat administrations, explained in more detail that based on US intelligence that a cluster of workers from Wuhan Institute of Virology fell sick in early to mid-November 2019. Multiple staff had to go to the hospital. Their symptoms were consistent with both COVID-19 and influenza. He stated that "you don't normally go to the hospital with influenza, especially a cluster of people. This is the most probable source of the outbreak."[112] The Wall Street Journal, however, notes that it is not unusual for people in China to go to the hospital with influenza. In contrast to the United States, primary care in China is often provided in a hospital setting.[113]
Biden administration On 13 February 2021, the White House said it has "deep concerns" about both the way the WHO's findings were communicated and the process used to reach them. Mirroring concerns raised by the Trump Administration, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated it is essential that the report be independent and "free from alteration by the Chinese Government".[114] On 14 April 2021, the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, and other officials of the Biden Administration, said that they had not ruled out the possibility of a laboratory accident as the origin of the COVID-19 virus.[115] On May 26, 2021 President Joe Biden directed the U.S. intelligence community to "redouble its efforts" in determining whether the origin of the COVID-19 virus came from a human contact with an infected animal or from an accidental lab leak, and to produce a report on the matter within 90 days.[116]
International policitians' calls for investigations In April 2020, Australian foreign minister Marise Payne and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison called for an independent international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.[117][118] A few days later, German chancellor Angela Merkel also pressed China for transparency about the origin of the coronavirus, following similar concerns raised by the French president Emmanuel Macron.[119] Britain also expressed support for an investigation, although both France and Britain said the priority at the time was to first fight the virus.[120][121]".....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19".
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Post by bender on May 28, 2021 7:05:11 GMT 10
Okay Matte you're starting to get a little excited and it's time to settle down.
Fauci and Swann have not stated that COVID-19 came out of a lab in Wuhan or anywhere else.
Yes Biden has ordered US Intelligence Agencies to look more deeply into the origins of COVID-19 as an extension of investigations he ordered soon after taking office and those investigations have coalesced around two theories.
A) COVID-19 was engineered, or
B) COVID has a natural origin.
The evidence is overwhelmingly tilted towards the natural origin theory. In the main this is because to create COVID-19 in a lab would require science that nobody possesses along with the fact that the similar diseases to COVID-19 (SARS and MERS) came from animal hosts to humans.
There are some other issues with COVID-19 that make it unlikely to be an engineered virus. It's mortality rate is extremely low for a candidate bioweapon, indeed it's mortality rate for a potential target population (ie military age men and women) is incredibly low. It's unsuited to be used as an area denial weapon and fairly basic PPE is able to prevent infection or transmission.
Just because we haven't found the host animal doesn't mean anything. Do you know how long they've been searching for the host animal for ebola?
I'm in favour of investigating everything to do with everything when it comes to this Virus. For mine, the fact that a series of similar virus have seeming emerged from China over the last 25 years means that the better our understanding is of what is happening the better placed we'll be to deal with the next one that emerges.
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Post by matte on May 28, 2021 8:44:04 GMT 10
I think Sharri Markson should bring forward the release of her investigative book on the Wuhan cover-up. All the information needs to be known.
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Post by pim on May 28, 2021 9:34:47 GMT 10
Yeah right, and Judas was framed. C’mon you god-botherers and happy clappers come clean. The whole Judas thing was a set up. The secret gospels of the Gnostics told the truth but they’ve been suppressed.
And what about the Roswell cover ups? What’s NASA hiding? And the moon landings were fake. Ask Toots!
And when are the health authorities gonna come clean about the health benefits of smoking?
Oh and the world is flat. What aren’t scientists telling us?
See? I can spout conspiracy theories with the best of them.
Matt, you’re just an anti vaxxer snake oil peddler. So STFU.
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Post by ponto on May 28, 2021 9:39:03 GMT 10
And how Murdoch and Sky News operates by influence...as with climate change, there to broadcast supposed expert opinion that has been broadly discredited by the real experts as junk and then distort the actual facts to influence the less academic as a political agenda.
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Post by matte on May 28, 2021 21:46:36 GMT 10
The ABC has pushed the Chinese line on this since th start of the pandemic, even their Media Watch TV show has ridiculed journalists who have methodically investigated and have been steadfast on this issue.
When will the ABC be punished by having their television broadcast licence put up for auction?
Reality has ‘confronted’ the ABC after dissing Wuhan lab leak theory
28 MAY 2021
SKY NEWS AUSTRALIA
Reality has “confronted” the taxpayer-funded ABC after it spent so long dissing the theory COVID-19 was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, according to Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“Yes, the Wuhan lab leak theory … is suddenly being taken seriously,” Mr Kenny said.
“Haven’t we been on a winner for truth and transparency on this show and across Sky News for backing Sharri Markson’s investigation of the origins of the pandemic.”
Mr Kenny said Media Watch’s Paul Barry has been “especially vindictive” in attacking Ms Markson’s scoops.
“The ABC has dug in all year, now reality has confronted them and it looks a lot like a mess of eggs on their faces,” he said.
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Post by fat on May 28, 2021 22:31:03 GMT 10
I am still having trouble seeing something becoming a fact - it either is or isn't.
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Post by matte on May 28, 2021 22:41:41 GMT 10
I am still having trouble seeing something becoming a fact - it either is or isn't. It is a fact, the evidence points to it being a fact.
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Post by ponto on May 29, 2021 4:29:21 GMT 10
Sky News is anti Australian pro Murdoch empire and are merely a yankee Trumpo wannabe cheer squad where remote possibility becomes fact influencing the people with misinformation, making them dangerous muppets.
Media Watch
Where did COVID-19 come from? And is the Wuhan Institute of Virology to blame?
Broadcast: Mon 4 May 2020, 9:15pm
Published: Mon 4 May 2020, 9:47pm
More Information
Read the response from Sharri Markson here.
Read the response from a CSIRO spokesperson here.
Transcript
minus
NATALIE BARR: Two Chinese scientists who studied bats in Australia are being looked into by world intelligence organisations as part of a probe into the origins of the coronavirus.
- Sunrise, Channel Seven, 28 April, 2020
Hello, I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch.
And with three and a half million coronavirus cases worldwide, and almost a quarter of a million dead, we all want to know how the deadly disease got loose.
And last Tuesday, this exclusive report from The Daily Telegraph’s Sharri Markson, which was seized on by TV and radio news, gave us a pretty good steer on who is to blame:
BAT MAN
EXCLUSIVE
Chinese scientists linked to virus probe worked in Australia
- The Daily Telegraph, 28 April, 2020
Markson’s front-page splash in the Tele was such a hot story that Melbourne’s Herald Sun ran an almost identical version, telling readers it could reveal that the Five Eyes intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US were, quote:
… understood to be looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou, and fellow scientist, Shi Zhengli, as they examine whether COVID-19 originated from a wet market or whether the naturally-occurring virus may have been inadvertently released from a level four laboratory in Wuhan.
- The Daily Telegraph, 28 April, 2020
Inside the paper, headed “AUSSIE LINKS TO BAT LAB DUO”, was a double-page spread, with pictures of the high-security Wuhan lab and the scientists who’ve been studying bat viruses there, similar to the one causing COVID-19.
And while it wasn’t stated, the implication was clear. Not least to some TV reporters following it up that these scientists may have screwed the world by letting the virus get out:
BRENDAN SMITH: Of course, when COVID-19 first broke out it was believed that it originated from the Wuhan wet markets. But it’s now been, now been revealed, rather, that it could have actually accidentally been released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
- First Edition, Sky News, 28 April, 2020
So, how likely is it that the virus escaped from that Chinese lab?
Well, in short, it’s not. Despite concerns expressed by the Americans in 2018 about lax standards. And despite what President Trump has been saying.
And in her follow-up next day, Markson, pretty much admitted that, telling readers:
In the upper echelons of the Morrison government it is now considered unlikely the naturally-occurring, highly-infectious coronavirus came from a laboratory ...
- The Daily Telegraph, 29 April, 2020
And adding:
… in the early days of the outbreak the probability was initially placed at around 50 per cent … but this was swiftly downgraded to a five per cent chance as more became known about the virus.
- The Daily Telegraph, 29 April, 2020
As you can see from that headline, Markson also admitted the lab claims were three months old.
So why did the lab escape theory still dominate the story, especially when virus experts had dismissed it three days earlier in The Sydney Morning Herald?
COVID-19 ‘did not come from lab’
The evidence is “overwhelming” that the virus that causes COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans, rather than escaping from a laboratory, virus experts say.
- The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April, 2020
Sharri must have missed that bulletin.
And the fact that the virus wreaking havoc across the world, SARS CoV-2, is not one the Wuhan lab was known to be working on.
And while one of its bat viruses, RaTG13, is closely related, sharing all but 4 per cent of the genetic material, that is a significant gap:
Four per cent does not sound like a lot, but for a virus it is a huge difference – huge enough to conclusively signal RaTG13 did not become SARS-CoV-2.
- The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April, 2020
Or, as bat virus expert Dr Josh Hayward from the Burnet Institute put it:
"It’s like saying ‘I know your closest relative, and it’s your fourth cousin," …
- The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April, 2020
The biggest difference between those two virus cousins — and a vital one — is that Wuhan’s RaTG13 does not have the capacity to infect humans.
So, not only would it have needed to escape from the lab, it would also have needed to rapidly mutate or to have been engineered by the Chinese scientists.
And while the Wuhan lab does do such things, the world’s top virus experts from the US, UK and Australia, writing in Nature, rule it out in this case:
Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.
- Nature, 17 March, 2020
One of those experts, Sydney University's Professor Eddie Holmes, who helped map the genome of SARS-CoV-2, went even further last month, with a statement to say:
There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans, originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
- Professor Eddie Holmes, Evolutionary virologist, University of Sydney, 16 April, 2020
And the CSIRO — where the two Chinese scientists once studied bat viruses — agrees, telling Media Watch:
Research of the genome has found no evidence of laboratory manipulation and there is no published evidence of this virus having been previously identified.
- Email, CSIRO spokesperson, 1 May, 2020
Last month Professor Holmes also had this to say in a webcast:
EDDIE HOLMES: … there are a number of really clear reasons to believe this is not in any way a lab construct or a lab escape ...
It looks for all the world, and I’m certain it is, a natural coronavirus that’s come from an animal in a natural setting. There’s nothing in there at all that is a signature of laboratory manipulation. So I think you can pretty safely put that, those conspiracy theories to bed.
- Australian Academy of Science, 31 March, 2020
So, given all those expert doubts, was this sensational treatment really justified?
BAT MAN
EXCLUSIVE
- The Daily Telegraph, 28 April, 2020
We think not.
We also think Markson should have told readers that almost every virus expert had dismissed the lab escape theory.
And we believe this get out, in the middle of the story, that the Tele’s not suggesting the two scientists were responsible for the outbreak, is insufficient.
Meanwhile, does anyone still believe? Well, yes they do. President Trump for one:
JOHN ROBERTS: … have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?
DONALD TRUMP: Yes I have, yes I have.
- CNBC, 30 April, 2020
And what is the evidence? He refused to say.
As did the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who in a confused and contradictory interview, repeated the claim to ABC America:
MIKE POMPEO: I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.
- ABC (America), SBS, 4 May, 2020
Clearly the lab escape story is one the Trump administration wants to be true.
And The New York Times claims Trump officials have been pressing US intelligence agencies — unsuccessfully — to find evidence for it.
Last week, the US Director of National Intelligence said it was still looking but declared that it agreed with, quote:
… the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 30 April, 2020
And on Friday, our Prime Minister also came down strongly against the Wuhan lab theory:
SCOTT MORRISON: What we have before us doesn’t suggest that that is the likely source. There’s nothing that we have that would indicate that was the likely source.
- ABC News Channel, 1 May, 2020
But none of that was enough to persuade Rowan Dean on Sky News who, on Friday, said that the virus almost certainly did escape from the Wuhan lab and that President Trump was to be congratulated:
ROWAN DEAN: … everything points now to it actually having come from a viral laboratory, there's two of them in Wuhan ...
… it's always been likely or certainly possible that the virus somehow escaped, either accidentally or heaven forbid deliberately, from one of these viral laboratories.
- Credlin, Sky News, 1 May, 2020
The lab escape, of course, is not the first theory to blame China. Nor the most unlikely.
As viewers of Media Watch will recall, Bronwyn Bishop told Sky in March that the virus was a biological weapon deliberately released by the Chinese government.
And China has made similar accusations against America, as has US conspiracy theorist George Webb, who blamed America for creating the virus at a biological weapons facility and identified a cyclist in the US Army reserve as Patient Zero, claiming she took the infection to Wuhan last October to the world military games.
China, of course, loved that story:
China Is Now Blaming a Lone U.S. Cyclist For Coronavirus
- Vice, 27 March, 2020
Meanwhile, Wuhan lab conspiracy theorists point to this video, “I Found The Source of the Coronavirus”, viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube, which claims Patient Zero was infected in the Wuhan lab:
VOICEOVER: Huang Yan Ling was a researcher in the lab working on the virology of bats with Shi Zhengli and she’s missing. Most people believe her to be patient zero and most people believe she’s dead.
Everyone on the Chinese internet is searching for her, but most believe that her body was quickly cremated and the people working at the crematorium were perhaps infected.
- laowhy86, YouTube, 1 April, 2020
Most people? I think he means most conspiracy theorists on the internet.
But the case of Huang Yan Ling did get a mention in the Telegraph over the weekend as “THE LAB WORKER WHO DISAPPEARED”, in another Markson scoop.
Stretching over five pages in all, with four inside the paper, its front page proclaimed:
WORLD EXCLUSIVE
CHINA’S BATTY SCIENCE
Bombshell dossier lays out the case against the People’s Republic
- The Daily Telegraph, 2 May, 2020
Markson appears to have got the drop on this dossier from someone close to the government, who believes China should be brought to account for the pandemic that has so damaged the world.
And it is disturbing stuff, detailing experiments on bat viruses which have been conducted in the Wuhan lab and raising questions about whether they’re safe.
It’s a great get by Markson.
And we congratulate her for making it quite clear that, despite everything, the Australian government still believes:
… the virus most likely originated in the Wuhan wet market but that there is a remote possibility — a 5 per cent chance — it actually leaked from a laboratory.
- The Daily Telegraph, 2 May, 2020
Sharri Markson told Media Watch:
I have been very careful to point out in every story on this topic that the Morrison Government's position is that it is unlikely the virus accidentally escaped from a lab, unlike the position of the US Government.
- Email, Sharri Markson, National Political Editor, The Daily Telegraph, 1 May, 2020
That, of course, won’t stop people like Sky’s Rowan Dean insisting it must be true.
And nor will this report in last week’s Sydney Morning Herald that Australian intelligence have found no evidence to support the theory.
As one “senior source” admitted to the paper:
"We can't rule it out, we can't rule out a lot of things ... It's hard to prove a negative".
- The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April, 2020
It is indeed. Which is why conspiracy theories like this are so hard to kill.
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Post by ponto on May 29, 2021 8:16:36 GMT 10
This China hooplah is all about Trump getting his fan base back again, and when all the yanks have been vaccinated and the threat from weakens the US people will soon forget and move on.
The Wuhan Lab and the Gain-of-Function Disagreement
By Lori Robertson
Posted on May 21, 2021
THIS ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE IN BOTH ENGLISH AND ESPAÑOL
English
A disagreement between Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci has put $600,000 of U.S. grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology back into the spotlight, while making “gain-of-function” research a household term — all amid calls for more investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
At issue is whether the National Institutes of Health funded research on bat coronaviruses that could have caused a pathogen to become more infectious to humans and, separately, if SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes the disease COVID-19 — transferred naturally from bats to humans, possibly through an intermediate host animal, or if a virus, a naturally occurring one or a lab-enhanced one, was accidentally released from the Wuhan lab.
There are a lot of unknowns, speculation and differences of opinion on these topics. But let’s start with what we do know: In 2014, the NIH awarded a grant to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance to study the risk of the future emergence of coronaviruses from bats. In 2019, the project was renewed for another five years, but it was canceled in April 2020 — three months after the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S.
EcoHealth ultimately received $3.7 million over six years from the NIH and distributed nearly $600,000 of that total to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a collaborator on the project, pre-approved by NIH.
The grant cancellation came at a time when then-President Donald Trump and others questioned the U.S. funding to a lab in Wuhan, while exaggerating the amount of federal money involved.
Wuhan, of course, is where the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic emerged in late 2019.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has studied bat coronaviruses for years and their potential to ultimately infect humans, under the direction of scientist Shi Zhengli, as the Scientific American explained in a June 2020 story. Such zoonotic transfer — meaning transmission of a virus from an animal to a human — of coronaviruses occurred with the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, which led to global outbreaks in 2003 and 2012. Both viruses are thought to have started in bats, and then transferred into humans through intermediate animals — civets and racoon dogs, in the case of SARS, and camels in the case of MERS.
Experts have suspected the SARS-CoV-2 virus similarly originated in bats. Researchers in China — including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — have said the virus shares 96% of its genome with a bat virus collected by researchers in 2013 in Yunnan Province, China. (While that’s quite similar, Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa who studies coronaviruses and a pediatric infectious disease physician, told us it would be “impossible” to take such a virus and make the kind of changes required to turn it into SARS-CoV-2 in a lab. One would need a virus that’s 99.9% similar, and “in theory it might work.”)
An article published in Nature Medicine in March 2020 said that the virus likely originated through “natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer,” or “natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer.” The researchers, who analyzed genomic data, said SARS-CoV-2 “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” While they said an accidental laboratory release of the naturally occurring virus can’t be ruled out, they said they “do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
In an April 2020 statement, University of Sydney professor Edward Holmes, who was involved in mapping the genome of SARS-CoV-2, responded to “unfounded speculation” that the bat virus with 96% similarity was the origin of SARS-CoV-2. He said: “In summary, the abundance, diversity and evolution of coronaviruses in wildlife strongly suggests that this virus is of natural origin. However, a greater sampling of animal species in nature, including bats from Hubei province, is needed to resolve the exact origins of SARS-CoV-2.”
The U.S. Intelligence Community said in an April 30, 2020, statement that it “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” and that it “will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
The zoonotic transfer theory hasn’t been proven; for example, no intermediate animal host, as was the case for SARS of MERS, has yet been identified. Lab-accident theories haven’t been proven either — whether a lab worker could have been infected by a naturally occurring virus and then transmitted it outside the lab, or, as Paul and others suggest, a lab-manipulated virus could be the origin.
But recently there has been renewed debate over the origin. On May 14 the journal Science published a letter from 18 scientists calling for “more investigation” to determine how the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began. “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,” they wrote. “Knowing how COVID-19 emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks.”
Jesse Bloom, one of the organizers of that letter, who studies viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told us in an email: “We know that SARS-CoV-2 is similar to other coronaviruses that circulate in bats, so the deep origins of the virus are definitely from bat coronaviruses. As far as the immediate proximal origins, we simply don’t know the details.”
Bloom said zoonotic transfer either directly from a bat to a human or through an intermediate host animal is possible, as is a lab accident from research of similar viruses. “Because we don’t know the details for either of these scenarios, it’s not possible to say whether a hypothetical lab accident would have involved a virus exactly identical to that isolated in nature, or one that had been grown or somehow modestly manipulated in a lab. At this point, all of these are hypothetical scenarios, and while different scientists may have different guesses at how likely each scenario is, we need more information before anyone can be certain.”
The scientists are hardly alone in calling for more investigation.
As the letter noted, the U.S. government, along with 13 other countries, also had called for more inquiry into the origins in a March statement this year.
“It is critical for independent experts to have full access to all pertinent human, animal, and environmental data, research, and personnel involved in the early stages of the outbreak relevant to determining how this pandemic emerged,” the statement said. “With all data in hand, the international community may independently assess COVID-19 origins, learn valuable lessons from this pandemic, and prevent future devastating consequences from outbreaks of disease.”
The European Union made a similar statement. Both came in response to the release of a report by an international team convened by the World Health Organization. That report said a laboratory leak of a virus, involving “an accidental infection of staff,” was “an extremely unlikely pathway,” but the WHO director-general said that he didn’t believe the evaluation “was extensive enough.”
China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology on Feb. 3, when members of the World Health Organization-convened team investigating the origins of the coronavirus visit. Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images.
“Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the day the report was publicly released on March 30. “Let me say clearly that as far as WHO is concerned all hypotheses remain on the table.”
In a May 11 Senate hearing, Paul raised the issue of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and said some in the government weren’t interested in investigating the lab-leak theory. The Kentucky senator said that “government authorities, self-interested in continuing gain-of-function research say there’s nothing to see here.” He went on to assert a tie between U.S. researchers and the Wuhan Institute of Virology and accused them of “juicing up super-viruses,” asking Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, if he still supported “the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan.”
Fauci responded that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
In a subsequent interview on “Fox & Friends” on May 13, Paul said he didn’t know whether SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab. “Nobody knows,” he said. But he posited that if it did, Fauci, among others, “could be culpable for the entire pandemic,” adding, “I’m not saying that happened. I don’t know.”
Paul made the money-is-fungible argument, saying the NIH gave money to the lab, regardless of what that particular grant funded. But then asserted that NIH funding furthered risky gain-of-function research. The answer to the question of whether it did or didn’t depends on whom you ask and their definition of gain-of-function.
Hours after his May 11 exchange with Paul, Fauci said at a fact-checking conference hosted by PolitiFact.com that it would “almost be irresponsible” to not collaborate with Chinese scientists given that the 2003 SARS outbreak originated in China. “So we really had to learn a lot more about the viruses that were there, about whether or not people were getting infected with bad viruses.”
He called the EcoHealth collaboration “a very minor collaboration as part of a subcontract of a grant,” and said Paul conflated that with the claim that “therefore we were involved in creating the virus, which is the most ridiculous, majestic leap I’ve ever heard of.”
Fauci said he wasn’t convinced that the coronavirus developed naturally. “I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened.”
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson raised these issues on his show on May 11, saying: “The guy in charge of America’s response to COVID turns out to be the guy who funded the creation of COVID. We’re speaking of Tony Fauci and the gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan laboratory that the U.S. government with his approval paid for.” There’s no evidence that the Wuhan laboratory, with or without funding from an NIH grant, created SARS-CoV-2.
The night before, Carlson referred to a May 2 article on Medium by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade. In that piece, Wade wrote about “two main theories” of SARS-Co-V-2’s origin: “One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped.” Wade asserted that the “clues point in a specific direction” — a lab-leak. But he said at the outset: “It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof.”
Gain-of-Function
Gain-of-function is a term that could describe any type of virology research that results in the gain of a certain function. But the type that’s controversial, including among scientists, is research that causes a pathogen to be more infectious, particularly to humans.
In 2014, the U.S. government put a pause on new funding of gain-of-function research, which it defined this way: “With an ultimate goal of better understanding disease pathways, gain-of-function studies aim to increase the ability of infectious agents to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility.” A 2016 paper on the ethics of gain-of-function research said: “The ultimate objective of such research is to better inform public health and preparedness efforts and/or development of medical countermeasures.”
The pause — intended to provide time to address concerns about the risks and benefits of these studies — applied to certain research on influenza, MERS and SARS.
“Specifically, the funding pause will apply to gain-of-function research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route,” the White House said in an Oct. 17, 2014, announcement.
As a Nature article at the time explained, there had been fierce debate among scientists on exactly what research should be deemed too risky. And some confusion on where the line would be drawn for this pause.
“Viruses are always mutating,” the article said, “and [Arturo] Casadevall [then a microbiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City], says that it is difficult to determine how much mutation deliberately created by scientists might be ‘reasonably anticipated’ to make a virus more dangerous — the point at which the White House states research must stop.”
In July 2014, a group of scientists and experts called the Cambridge Working Group issued a statement calling for such a pause of “[e]xperiments involving the creation of potential pandemic pathogens … until there has been a quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation, as well as comparison against safer experimental approaches.”
Well over 300 scientists have since signed on to the statement, which expressed concern about the risk of accidental infection in lab studies that created “highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza.”
The debate over this type of research dates back to at least 2011, when research was done on flu strains made to spread in ferrets.
Paul cited the Cambridge Working Group in his May 11 and 13 remarks. But the group has not made “any statement … about work in Wuhan,” Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and one of the founder members of the group, said on Twitter.
Lipsitch further said that some members of the working group “may categorically oppose all GOF studies that enhance virulence, transmission, or immune escape. My personal view is that some such studies can be justified on risk-benefit grounds, while those on flu to date cannot.”
On Dec. 19, 2017, the U.S. government’s pause, or moratorium, was lifted. The Department of Health and Human Services announced a framework for evaluating whether funding should be granted for research involving “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens,” or PPPs. It said research on PPPs was “essential to protecting global health and security,” but the risks needed to be considered and mitigated.
The framework defined a “potential pandemic pathogen” as one that was both “likely highly transmissible and likely capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations” and “likely highly virulent and likely to cause significant morbidity and/or mortality in humans.” And an enhanced PPP was a PPP “resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.”
The framework said enhanced PPPs don’t include “naturally occurring pathogens that are circulating in or have been recovered from nature.”
EcoHealth Grant
So, did the NIH’s grant to EcoHealth fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab? There are differing opinions on that. As noted above, whether research is “likely” or “reasonably anticipated” to enhance transmissibility can be subjective.
EcoHealth and the NIH and NIAID say no. “EcoHealth Alliance has not nor does it plan to engage in gain-of-function research,” EcoHealth spokesman Robert Kessler told us in an email. Nor did the grant get an exception from the pause, as some have speculated, he said. “No dispensation was needed as no gain-of-function research was being conducted.”
The NIAID told the Wall Street Journal: “The research by EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. that NIH funded was for a project that aimed to characterize at the molecular level the function of newly discovered bat spike proteins and naturally occurring pathogens. Molecular characterization examines functions of an organism at the molecular level, in this case a virus and a spike protein, without affecting the environment or development or physiological state of the organism. At no time did NIAID fund gain-of-function research to be conducted at WIV.”
And in a May 19 statement, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said that “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.”
Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and a critic of gain-of-function research, told the Washington Post that the EcoHealth/Wuhan lab research “was — unequivocally — gain-of-function research.” He said it “met the definition for gain-of-function research of concern under the 2014 Pause.” That definition, as we said, pertained to “projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route.”
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, said in a lengthy Twitter thread that the Wuhan subgrant wouldn’t fall under the gain-of-function moratorium because the definition didn’t include testing on naturally occurring viruses “unless the tests are reasonably anticipated to increase transmissibility and/or pathogenicity.” She said the moratorium had “no teeth.” But the EcoHealth/Wuhan grant “was testing naturally occurring SARS viruses, without a reasonable expectation that the tests would increase transmissibility or pathogenicity. Therefore, it is reasonable that they would have been excluded from the moratorium.”
Chan, who has published research about the possibility of an accidental lab leak of the virus, also said: “But we need to separate this fight about whether a particular project is GOF vs whether it has risk of lab accident + causing an outbreak.”
The University of Iowa’s Perlman told us the EcoHealth research is trying to see if these viruses can infect human cells and what about the spike protein on the virus determines that. (The spike protein is what the coronavirus uses to enter cells.) The NIH, he said, wouldn’t give money to anybody to do gain-of-function research “per se … especially in China,” and he didn’t think there was anything in the EcoHealth grant description that would be gain of function. But he said there’s a lot of nuance to this discussion.
“This was not intentional gain of function,” Perlman said, adding that in this type of research “these viruses are almost always attenuated,” meaning weakened. The gain of function would be what comes out of the research “unintentionally,” but the initial goal of the project is what you would want to look at: can these viruses infect people, how likely would they be to mutate in order to do that, and “let’s get a catalog of these viruses out there.”
Perlman also said that making a virus that could infect human cells in a lab doesn’t mean the virus is more infectious for humans. Viruses adapt to the cell culture, he said, and may grow well in a cell culture but then, for instance, not actually infect mice very well.
Back in February, MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt told PolitiFact.com that a 2017 paper published with the help of the EcoHealth grant involved, as PolitiFact described it, “certain techniques that … seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function research.” But Esvelt said “the work reported in this specific paper definitely did NOT lead to the creation of SARS-CoV-2,” because of differences between the virus studied and SARS-CoV-2.
In the May 11 hearing, Paul also pointed to the work of Ralph S. Baric, a professor of epidemiology and a microbiologist who studies coronaviruses at the University of North Carolina. Paul described Baric’s research as “gain of function” in collaboration with the Wuhan lab. A 2015 paper by Baric, Shi and others, published with NIH funding in the journal Nature Medicine, examined the potential of SARS-like bat coronaviruses to lead to human disease. Researchers created a “chimeric virus” with the spike protein of the bat coronavirus and a mouse-adapted SARS backbone and found viruses could replicate in human airway cells. The study said “the creation of chimeric viruses … was not expected to increase pathogenicity.”
Fauci told Paul at the hearing: “Dr. Baric does not do gain-of-function research, and if it is, it’s according to the guidelines and it is being conducted in North Carolina, not in China.”
In a statement to us, Baric said: “Our work was approved by the NIH, was peer reviewed, and P3CO reviewed,” meaning reviewed under the HHS 2017 framework. “We followed all safety protocols, and our work was considered low risk because of the strain of coronaviruses being studied. It is because of our early work that the United States was in a position to quickly find the first successful treatment for SARS-CoV-2 and an effective COVID-19 vaccine.”
Kelsey Cooper, Paul’s communications director, told us “there is ample evidence that the NIH and the NIAID, under his direction, funded gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” citing Ebright’s statements. “In light of those facts, the question Dr. Paul asked was whether the government has fully investigated the origin of the disease, which it clearly has not. This research and the lab should be thoroughly investigated and opened to public scrutiny.”
Perlman told us that he thought Fauci’s response in the May 11 exchange was correct — that no money was given for gain-of-function research. But, he added, there’s a scientific discussion to be had on the benefits and risks of research making recombinant viruses, which involves rearranging or combining genetic material. The politicization of the issue, Perlman said, “doesn’t do anybody good.”
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over our editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.
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Post by caskur on May 29, 2021 15:21:42 GMT 10
Ever heard of CliffNotes?
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Post by Stellar on May 29, 2021 15:24:30 GMT 10
The plot thickens ...
An explosive new study claims Covid-19 was created by Wuhan scientists who then covered their tracks by “retro-engineering” versions of the virus to make it appear it evolved organically from animals.
The study’s authors, British oncology expert Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sørensen, further claim evidence of the cover-up have been ignored by academics for a year.
The soon-to-be released journal article, which has been obtained by the Daily Mail, challenges the prevailing “natural origin” theory of Covid-19, that the virus jumped naturally from bats to humans at a wet market in Wuhan.
It comes as US President Joe Biden orders the intelligence community to “redouble” efforts to determine the cause of Covid-19, including the theory it escaped from a Wuhan lab, which China denies.
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Post by Stellar on May 29, 2021 15:31:48 GMT 10
Further from News.com .... Prof Dalgleish is a professor of oncology at St George’s University in London who worked on the breakthrough “HIV vaccine” and Dr Sørensen is a virologist and chairman of the pharmaceutical company Immunor that has developed a Covid-19 vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19, the Daily Mail reports. They claimed that when analysing Covid-19 samples to develop a vaccine last year, they noticed “unique fingerprints” that could only be attributed to laboratory manipulation — but their attempts to publish their findings at the time were rejected by major scientific journals. After further study, Prof Dalgleish and Dr Sørensen released a new 22-page report, which will be published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery in days, and concludes “SARS-Coronavirus-2 has no credible natural ancestor” and that the virus was created in a lab “beyond reasonable doubt”. They said after pouring through experiments conducted at the Wuhan lab between 2002 and 2019, they found evidence Wuhan scientists took a natural coronavirus “backbone” found in cave bats and spliced onto it a new “spike”, which became Covid-19. A key clue was a row of four positively-charged amino acids on the SARS-Cov-2 spike. The scientists said even a row of three amino acids was rare to find in nature — as they tended to repel each other, like magnets — so it was “extremely unlikely” to find a row of four in a naturally occurring organism. Honestly, you'd have to ask what was going on in this building! Knowing the CCP anything is possible!
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Post by ponto on May 30, 2021 10:03:34 GMT 10
It rema9ns there is no definitive proof one way or the other...China bashing Lab escape or Natural zoological occurrence as has been in the past.
Well they will have a probe and lookabout into the virus conclude its a wait and see.
Labs are working on viruses all around the world and escapes have happened in the past, and another consideration is that some rouge country may use viruses as weapon in war....so its important to be aware that getting used to the idea of vaccinations and wearing mask is a necessary part of future survival or face death as a consequence.
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Post by Stellar on May 30, 2021 10:33:23 GMT 10
And once again the Australian propaganda arm of the CCP speaks out in a futile attempt to quell any unfavourable comments as to their unconscionable involvement in exporting this virus to the world.
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Post by matte on May 30, 2021 11:05:10 GMT 10
The virus has hallmarks of human manipulation. It is why a lot of scientists around the world are unconvinced at the animal to human jump.
The virus did come from an animal, but it has undergone unnatural modification.
This is totally possible these days. A lot of scientists say it is simple to do with our knowledge of RNA and DNA these days.
The fact they can isolate the section of the virus that creates the spike protein, then modify another virus to replicate it for use in vaccines, is evidence of that.
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Post by ponto on May 30, 2021 12:49:43 GMT 10
A few scientists is not a lot or majority science consensus the lab theory is a possibility and because they can doesn't necessarily mean that they did.
There is no proof one way or the other and the investigation continues before conclusions can be made.
While its possible to splice DNA onto genome sequences, that splicing leaves tracks and a weakened virus not a stronger virus.
If it was an accidental release then that makes it not a conspiracy to release a nasty pathogen upon the world, considering also that research into novel virus is necessary work how does one punish China for a accidental release into a field work that needs inevstigation.
It may have been a researcher going to bat caves picked up the virus there and brought it back to Wuhan, or possibility the Sar's variant lay dormant in someone until it mutated in Covid variant....there are many possible theories.
The China bashers will point the finger at Wuhan lab then because of this China bashing its is uncertain if that the lab theory is just being politically motivated or indeed it did come from the lab.
Bottom line is nothing is conclusive.
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Post by caskur on May 30, 2021 13:57:02 GMT 10
Let the US/WHO investigate deeper just to settle the question as to how the virus originated it remains a known unknown though likely a animal source. I knew I was closer to the truth...
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Post by ponto on May 30, 2021 16:39:36 GMT 10
No proof...speculation.
Experts have suspected the SARS-CoV-2 virus similarly originated in bats. Researchers in China — including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — have said the virus shares 96% of its genome with a bat virus collected by researchers in 2013 in Yunnan Province, China. (While that’s quite similar, Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa who studies coronaviruses and a pediatric infectious disease physician, told us it would be “impossible” to take such a virus and make the kind of changes required to turn it into SARS-CoV-2 in a lab. One would need a virus that’s 99.9% similar, and “in theory it might work.”)
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Post by caskur on May 30, 2021 21:05:07 GMT 10
just watch the vid 3 or more times... it is the only real truth you will ever get.
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Post by ponto on May 31, 2021 6:32:47 GMT 10
Possibility opinion jumping to conclusions isn't necessarily fact, if it is then the lab scenario its more likely a scientist going to the bat caves then came back infected.
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