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Update: WHO team visits P4 lab in Wuhan Institute of Virology - February 2021

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  • sharon sanders
    commented on 's reply
    JJackson - I am just stating the official standard for the US. I am not saying what happens in practice. I am not comparing the US to any other country. I am not an apologist for the US. Obviously labs in the US screw up and I am not paid to pretend it does not happen. I have no idea what China does or does not do, in practice, compared to international standards.

  • JJackson
    commented on 's reply
    Etudiant re. "Plus it seems disingenuous at best for China to object to being investigated when the outbreak clearly began in China." No other country has ever had to be 'investigated' after it detected and reported a zoonotic outbreak within its boarders nor would they allow it. The world's nation states were careful to make sure the WHO could not do this, again if you interest in exactly what the WHO is allowed to do please see this thread. https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/...-reveres-posts post #1 and #12 being the most relevant.

    Also consider the following hypothetical - a zoonotic event happened to occur in the US and the WHO put together an international team of experts to 'investigate' while the international press were howling that it was a US bio-weapons escape. The team included scientists from China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela and were demanding free access to all military and civilian BSL facilities, personnel and documentation. How do you think the US, or any other country, would react? Even if it was couched as a fact finding mission with US scientist included I can not see the US being as accommodating as China has been.

  • JJackson
    commented on 's reply
    Etudiant this is not a correct representation of the process. What occurred is well documented in this thread.

    Mike Coston's AFD post can be found as post #138 and my reply at #139 in which I make my position regarding GOF clear.
    In brief the NSABB in the US tried to censor the publication of two scientific paper in 2012, which they could do because they were part funded by NIH grants. This lead to a temporary halt in NIH funding of all GOF work and a voluntary halt on publication of such work while attempts were made to reach an international consensus on what should be publishable. After 8 years and many reviews the work was published in full and GOF funding has resumed but with some modification in the review of NIH grant application procedures.

  • Mary Wilson
    commented on 's reply
    JJackson commented, "Remind which country found smallpox in a locked cupboard."
    The U.S. Just Found Some Rogue Smallpox In a Closet, No Big Deal
    On Tuesday, the CDC announced that it found vials of a smallpox-causing virus in a lab's storage room.
    JULY 8, 2014

  • Mary Wilson
    commented on 's reply
    Years back (2000's) a family member had been working an a lab which received a U.S. government contract to work with Anthrax in their lab. He/She quit because of personal knowledge lab staff may not follow 100% necessary protocol to ensure the safety of the environment.
    Human Error is all that it takes to create a bombshell.
    __________________________________________________ _
    Safety Precautions and Operating Procedures in an (A)BSL-4 Laboratory: 1. Biosafety Level 4 Suit Laboratory Suite Entry and Exit Procedures

    __________________________________________________ __
    Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens
    January 2020

  • JJackson
    commented on 's reply
    Sharon do you have any reason to believe that that is not true for BSL facilities in other countries or that the safety procedures are higher in the US? Remind which country found smallpox in a locked cupboard.

  • JJackson
    commented on 's reply
    Emily I assume you would not make a statement like that unless you had some evidence to back it up - please do share. Can I assume that you don't think it was a US military bio-weapon unleashed on an innocent Chinese civilians?

  • sharon sanders
    commented on 's reply
    In the US nothing leaves a BSL 3 or 4 unless it is incinerated or chemically inactivated. Also, a building that houses at BSL 4 lab probably has some areas in the building that are operating at lower levels, like a BSL 2 lab, for instance.

  • JJackson
    commented on 's reply
    Nothing in a BSL3 or 4 ever leaves the lab it is incinerated

  • sharon sanders
    replied
    Also, once lab animals have been used, like dogs, for instance, they sometimes are adopted as family pets by lab workers, friends, etc. I am not saying this happened in this situation. I do not know.

    Early on in the pandemic, in Hong Kong, there were documented instances where humans transmitted COVID-19 to their dog and cat. They were asymptomatic and apparently fully adapted.

    Please see: HK: Pet cat/dog tests positive for COVID-19 virus

    Leave a comment:


  • etudiant
    replied
    If this is a correct representation of the process, it does not seem sensible. Something deemed too dangerous for a US lab is outsourced to a recently built facility in China. This CDC decision is one of which they should be ashamed.
    Separately, does anyone know what kind of lab animals were used to test these GOF virus constructs? There should have been documentation of the procedures based on the work done under US sponsorship.
    One could imagine a lab worker selling used animals on the side to the nearby wet market.

    Leave a comment:


  • Emily
    commented on 's reply
    China didn't totally clean the market. They left (or planted?) a couple of frozen red herrings behind.

  • Emily
    replied
    The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded bat-coronavirus research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to the tune of US$3.7 million, a

    Why US outsourced bat virus research to Wuhan
    US-funded $3.7 million project approved by Trump's Covid-19 guru Dr Anthony Fauci in 2015 after US ban imposed on 'monster-germ' research
    by Christina Lin April 22, 2020

    ...
    As such in October 2014, because of public health concerns, the US government banned all federal funding on efforts to weaponize three viruses ? influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
    ...
    In the face of a moratorium in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci ? the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and currently the leading doctor in the US Coronavirus Task Force ? outsourced in 2015 the GOF research to China?s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab to continue receiving US government funding.

    The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic.

    It is understandable that the Chinese lab likely struggled with safety issues given the fact US labs share similar problems, and indeed in January 2018 the US Embassy in Beijing sent cables warning about the safety of the Wuhan lab and asked for help.

    Additionally, the embassy warned that researchers ?showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus,? meaning bat coronaviruses can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases.
    ...
    Nonetheless, it is unclear what the legal ramifications would be if the virus was indeed leaked from a Chinese lab, but as a result of a research project that was outsourced and funded by the US government.

    Also, if there was a government ban in 2014 on federal funding being used for GOF research, what are the federal compliance and ethical issues surrounding the fact that the NIH still gave federal funding instead of private funding to the Wuhan lab to continue the experiments?

    Moreover, could some strains of the coronavirus have originated in US labs, given the fact the US government lifted the ban in December 2017 on GOF research without resolving lab-safety issues?
    ...
    The NSABB has given the HHS a framework to assess proposed research that would create pathogens with pandemic potential, such as research on genetically altering a virus to infect more species, or recreating a pathogen that has been eradicated in the wild, such as smallpox.

    However, vaccine development and epidemiological surveillance do not automatically trigger an HHS review. In the postmortem of the Covid-19 pandemic, this is likely a dangerous loophole that could be exploited with no oversight, and should probably be brought under HHS review in order to protect public health better in the future.

    Leave a comment:


  • etudiant
    replied
    Originally posted by JJackson View Post
    I have spent some time reading your comments and following your links since my earlier post.
    While Flutrackers has always tried to stay away from the politics prior to this out break but the posts in the two threads I have taken exception to are at heart political and not science based. I may have been naive but I had assumed going into this pandemic that if posters had linked to these types of posts they would have done so with an explanation of why they were ridiculously political and not based on any rational examination of the data or science. I abhor censorship and propaganda and do not want to infringe on the right of anyone to say what they think but I know from what the regular commenters here have written in the past that most of you have a good understanding of what is possible and likely. I would recommend this Chatham House zoom meeting involving 3 of the SARS-CoV-2 origins team which was in the twitter links Mary provided as it clearly explains what the team did and what they found. It is impossible to prove there was no lab escape but it is the least likely of all the possible origins according to the team. I do not know where the claims of Gain-of-function experiments came from but to the best of my knowledge there were none and the team had no difficulty getting the data they asked for. They submit a list of all the places they wanted to visit and all the people they wanted to talk to and not one of them was blocked. The data that had been available on the WIV site, and was taken down, was due to 3000 attempts to hack the site and for no other reason.
    If anyone still thinks that the 1000 or so Chinese who compiled all the data they wanted, and all of the international team who reviewed it, were part of a conspiracy then short of psychiatric help I do not know what to suggest.
    Breggin's post is an example of the lunacy that seems to be prevalent.

    He starts with an unfounded and libellous assertion and goes down hill from there - the man is a redacted.
    I have a problem reconciling the ChathamHouse Zoom discussion with the reality that China went the extra mile to sterilize the Wuhan wet markets as well as the WHI files some months previously.
    It may be seen as a fully open discussion, but only after after all the potentially discrepant evidence has been disappeared.
    Plus it seems disingenuous at best for China to object to being investigated when the outbreak clearly began in China.
    All cases in other countries were from Chinese contacts. I assume that China looked hard for a counter example, but there were none.

    I would note that if this site were prone to conspiracy theories, it would consider the possibility that this virus was just the test article, showing that China is vastly better positioned to handle a virus outbreak than any other country on earth. The really dangerous model would be the subsequent release.

    Leave a comment:


  • sharon sanders
    replied
    I will say it again. My opinion about what and how China discloses their disease status is not based on any political bias. I do not know much about their political system but it appears to be an oligarchy. The US has gone down the drain and is apparently an oligarchy now too.

    I do not believe anything unless I can get some independent verification. China does not willingly admit to "bad news" in their disease situations. This is my opinion after 15 years of following them. No politics necessary.

    We can argue all we want about this on FluTrackers but the reality is that there will be a world court about this pandemic and we will see what is exposed then. Bottom line. It would be naive to think that are not cover-ups on many different levels. Sure there are. A lot of lives have been lost. And there will be hell to pay for it - around the world.


    Leave a comment:

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