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

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

    23:45 Feb 02 2021
    Chen Qingqing and Cao Siqi

    The WHO expert team visited the P4 lab inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) on Wednesday, a place that became target of a storm of Western public opinion following a massive smear campaign led by some US politicians. The visit came after days of intensive field work looking for the origins of the novel coronavirus.

    The WIV has played a crucial role in global scientific cooperation. In addition to being fully transparent in its operations, it has also refuted conspiracy theories and unproven allegations about its links to COVID-19.

    Peter Ben Embarek, the scientist leading the WHO team, confirmed with the Global Times that the experts visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the P4 lab in the institute on Wednesday.

    He told the Global Times in an earlier interview that the team would meet Shi Zhengli, a leading virologist from the lab, who has been dubbed “Bat Woman” due to her years of research in bats and viruses and achievements in this field.


    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Link to a couple of Wuhan Videos posted on Feb 3 2021 from the twitter account of

    Peter Daszak
    @EcoHealthNYC President.@theNASEM
    Forum on #microbialthreats Chair. Zoologist. Parasitologist. Ecologist. British. American.


    Here’s the press pack today at Wuhan Institute of Virology from our car. We’re trying to do our best to keep information flowing while being respectful of our hosts here in China & not preempting the work. We see you guys out there & appreciate your attention to this@WHO mission...

    VIDEOS HERE: https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak/stat...24574169255937

  • #2
    In my opinion a tour of the lab - a year later - is irrelevant. As to speaking with Shi Zhengli...how about an interview in a neutral country with her immediate family also safety outside China? The world knows about the "black jails" in China. link

    This attempted re-write of history will not work. The world is not stupid.

    Comment


    • JJackson
      JJackson commented
      Editing a comment
      Sharon I am sorry to take issue with your post again but I can not agree. What has been posted here purporting to be evidence of some kind of error and cover up of WIV involvement in the history of this pandemic does not survive even cursory examination. The attacks on WIV and Shi Zhengli are ad hominim if not backed up by evidence rather than just distrust and suspicion. Given the choice of believing her or some unsubstantiated claim by the US government I have to go with her as the more reliable of the two sources.
      Apologies again but I will continue to post things as I see them and on China you and I are sadly never likely to agree.

    • sharon sanders
      sharon sanders commented
      Editing a comment
      I do not take as truth anything that the US government says on face value either. I do not care what the official US government claim is on any topic.

  • #3
    No expert, but the circumstantial evidence does implicate the lab. For one, the famous 2013 sample was never reported until after the outbreak, plus there is no instance of any related outbreak between the collection site a thousand miles away and Wuhan, so biological transmission without human intervention seems implausible.
    Separately, apparently bats were held in collective cages at the Wuhan lab, presumably happily exchanging viruses. That there could then be an escape, by accident or inadvertence, does not seem a stretch.

    Comment


    • sharon sanders
      sharon sanders commented
      Editing a comment
      I think the WIV lab and the China CDC lab in Wuhan cooperate on many projects so I am not sure who did/does what. I think a collection of bats was housed at the CDC lab.

    • JJackson
      JJackson commented
      Editing a comment
      Etudiant
      I was not aware that WIV had an ABSL4 lab or a bat colony. I know a number of ABSL labs do have bats but they are all large fruit bats and the research was on Hendra and Nipha. SARS like viruses are in micro insectivorous bats which are very difficult to keep as they need to feed on the wing and their biology is very unusual as their resting heart beat is orders of magnitude lower than when active. If you meant the RatG13 sample this was a partial sequence generated to look at the RdRp protein and was of little interest at the time as it was normal at RdRp and no one knew, or had reason to suspect, that its odd insertion in Spike would have have an significance. The pandemic was the catalyst to dig out old sequences and generate more sequence data from old samples. WIV nor anyone else ever had a bat with RatG13 in it as it was a sample from bat guano collected in a cave and an RT PCR generated partial sequence. The only way WIV could have performed any lab experiments with it was to create the 30,000 NT strand from scratch and infect a bat with it then make over a thousand experimental changes until they found one that they could test on humans and that worked.
      To believe a BSL4 lab anywhere in the world would go to that much trouble on a Hail Mary play when every second of research time in a BSL4 lab is gold dust for the researchers takes conspiracy theories to a whole new level. The BSL4 lab is very highly respected by the community and has, or at least had, visiting US researcher working there who would have been aware if it was just a bio-weapons research lab or even if it had very poor safety standards. I would recommend any one watch this video on the BSL4 lab in Boston to see exactly what you have to do to reach BSL4 certification and just how difficult it is to get an accidental release. If you drop an empty petri dish on the floor you have to log it as a lab accident, if you use a BSL4 pathogen from the freezer you have to account for ever mg and the whole lab is ring fenced by a BSL3 area into which any escape would occur.

  • #4
    China bat caves need exploring in search for COVID origins, WHO team member says

    FEBRUARY 4, 20215:03 AM. UPDATED 9 HOURS AGO
    By David Kirton, David Stanway

    WUHAN, China (Reuters) - A member of the World Health Organization-led team searching for clues to the origins of COVID-19 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan said work was needed to try to trace genetic elements of the virus in bat caves.

    Peter Daszak, a zoologist and animal disease expert, said the team in Wuhan had been receiving new information about how the virus, first identified in the city in late 2019, led to a pandemic. He did not elaborate but said there was no evidence to suggest it emerged from a lab.

    The origin of the coronavirus has become highly politicised following accusations, especially by the United States, that China was not transparent in its early handling of the outbreak. Beijing has pushed the idea that the virus originated elsewhere.

    ... It is unclear whether China is currently sampling its many bat caves, but viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 had previously been found in the southwest province of Yunnan.

    He said the team in Wuhan had been receiving new information about how the virus led to a pandemic, but did not elaborate.

    “I’m seeing a picture coming through of some of the scenarios looking more plausible than before,” he said.





    Comment


    • #5
      Honestly...what are we doing here if we faithfully believe what any government says? We should just close down the site except for a front page with all of the gov links.

      I do not believe anything from any government without corroborating evidence and everything has to pass the "smell test".

      Remember the idea that media is the 4th estate? Remember before cancel culture became popular? Well...I do and I take it seriously.

      We are the watchdogs.

      There is a lot of money and power at stake in this pandemic. Do not forget it.

      Always question.




      Comment


      • #6
        This is what we are doing here:

        We are presenting sources of information, in hopes that someone will be enlightened as to what this CoVid-19 virus may be all about.

        Governments, money, have always been around. Its not just playing a role in this current pandemic

        We have to believe in the vaccines being developed by many countries.
        We have to hope that this pandemic will eventually get under some kind of control for all nations.
        Yes, it is a rocky road, but if we do not try, we are doomed.
        And we, all of us, are not quitters.

        If it weren't for FluTrackers website, where would we get out information from?
        --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        TO CLARIFY MY ABOVE STATEMENT:

        "We have to believe in the vaccines being developed by many countries.
        We have to hope that this pandemic will eventually get under some kind of control for all nations.
        Yes, it is a rocky road, but if we do not try, we are doomed.
        And we, all of us, are not quitters."


        The usage of the word "We" pertains to all of us, all the people in the world, everyone on earth.
        It did not mean to indicate this particular website.
        My apologies to anyone who may have misunderstood my words.

        Last edited by Mary Wilson; February 4, 2021, 09:44 PM.

        Comment


        • sharon sanders
          sharon sanders commented
          Editing a comment
          FluTrackers does not advocate for any vaccines, medicines, therapies, treatments, supplements, etc. If you have any questions about these please contact your medical practitioner.

      • #7
        JJackson commented
        Yesterday, 08:53 AM
        Etudiant
        I was not aware that WIV had an ABSL4 lab or a bat colony. I know a number of ABSL labs do have bats but they are all large fruit bats and the research was on Hendra and Nipha. SARS like viruses are in micro insectivorous bats which are very difficult to keep as they need to feed on the wing and their biology is very unusual as their resting heart beat is orders of magnitude lower than when active. If you meant the RatG13 sample this was a partial sequence generated to look at the RdRp protein and was of little interest at the time as it was normal at RdRp and no one knew, or had reason to suspect, that its odd insertion in Spike would have have an significance. The pandemic was the catalyst to dig out old sequences and generate more sequence data from old samples. WIV nor anyone else ever had a bat with RatG13 in it as it was a sample from bat guano collected in a cave and an RT PCR generated partial sequence. The only way WIV could have performed any lab experiments with it was to create the 30,000 NT strand from scratch and infect a bat with it then make over a thousand experimental changes until they found one that they could test on humans and that worked.
        To believe a BSL4 lab anywhere in the world would go to that much trouble on a Hail Mary play when every second of research time in a BSL4 lab is gold dust for the researchers takes conspiracy theories to a whole new level. The BSL4 lab is very highly respected by the community and has, or at least had, visiting US researcher working there who would have been aware if it was just a bio-weapons research lab or even if it had very poor safety standards. I would recommend any one watch this video on the BSL4 lab in Boston to see exactly what you have to do to reach BSL4 certification and just how difficult it is to get an accidental release. If you drop an empty petri dish on the floor you have to log it as a lab accident, if you use a BSL4 pathogen from the freezer you have to account for ever mg and the whole lab is ring fenced by a BSL3 area into which any escape would occur.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqAj...ature=youtu.be

        ----------------------------------------------------------

        Thanks for the very interesting lab tour video.

        So can't the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan operate as a BSL-3 too? SARS work with animals can be done in a BSL-3 I believe. BSL-4 level precautions are not required. link The CDC lab in Wuhan is a BSL-3? There are two high level labs in Wuhan - the CDC lab and WIV.

        Humans make mistakes.



        Human error in high-biocontainment labs: a likely pandemic threat
        By Lynn Klotz | February 25, 2019

        snip

        Among other things, the GAO report called attention to a well-publicized incident in which a Defense Department laboratory “inadvertently sent live Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to almost 200 laboratories worldwide over the course of 12 years. The laboratory believed that the samples had been inactivated.” The report describes yet another well-publicized incident in China in which “two researchers conducting virus research were exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus samples that were incompletely inactivated. The researchers subsequently transmitted SARS to others, leading to several infections and one death in 2004.”

        The GAO identified three recent releases of Ebola and Marburg viruses from BSL4 to lower containment labs due to incomplete inactivation.

        A fourth release in 2014 from the CDC labs occurred when “Scientists inadvertently switched samples designated for live Ebola virus studies with samples intended for studies with inactivated material. As a result, the samples with viable Ebola virus, instead of the samples with inactivated Ebola virus, were transferred out of a BSL-4 laboratory to a laboratory with a lower safety level for additional analysis. While no one contracted Ebola virus in this instance, the consequences could have been dire for the personnel involved as there are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for this virus.”

        The CDC has issued a report on this mixup, and the steps they have taken to avoid this particular error in the future.

        All these incidents confirm the role of incomplete inactivation that would lead to an increased likelihood of release into the community from a BSL2 lab. These are all human errors, some involving BSL4 pathogens. Along with the observation that other human errors are the cause of more than two-thirds of potential exposures in BSL3 labs, it is clear that state-of-the-art laboratory design will not prevent release into the community.

        https://thebulletin.org/2019/02/huma...ndemic-threat/

        Comment


        • JJackson
          JJackson commented
          Editing a comment
          Re ABSL4. I do not fully understand exactly which lab you need for each type of experiment but they seem to come in two flavours either you can house the animals in cages and be separated by a barrier, as in cabinet work, or the work directly with the animals reliant on your suit. The bat lab in Australia is very large and can take horses (intermediate host for Hendra) and pigs (for Nipah) simultaneously and for this I assume they need the latter. For mice I can envisage most work could be done with the caged/barrier method.

          Humans are the weak link in all these systems and they are made as idiot/tamper proof as we can. In addition to the list of lab errors you have catalogued there is the US researcher who post anthrax around the country and the Baxter lab in Austria that shipped HP H5N1 to several European labs labelled as seasonal H3N2 which was well covered here.

          What is the alternative to these labs? It is miraculous that we have one highly effective vaccine, let alone several, to a disease we did not have a sequence for a year earlier. The first vial was made 66 days after the sequence release. None of this would have been done if the basic research had not already been done with SARS-1 and MERS, and various modified versions of these viruses, in high containment facilities and we would have had to start from scratch with no safe way of working with SARS-2. The result would have been years of delay and millions of additional deaths. If you think you have a vaccine candidate you have to try it in cell culture and if it works small infected mammals then primates. At each level it may well fail as you get closer to a true human test and each level needs different containment only then can you go to phase 1, 2 and then 3 human trials. Any experiment, even outside BSL labs, has to be agreed with a safety officer who will need to know all the reagents you are planning to use, how they are to be stored & handled who will have access to them, how the experiment is to be performed etc. etc.

      • #8
        WHO continues probe into initial coronavirus spread in Wuhan, finds key clues into role of seafood market

        By: FE Online |
        February 7, 2021 5:40 PMThe purpose of this mission is to understand how the virus transmitted from animals to humans.

        .....While team experts have said that they have uncovered important clues, they have refused to elaborate on what these clues are until the official is released, likely some time this month. The purpose of this mission is to understand how the virus transmitted from animals to humans, since the closest known relative of this virus came from bats who are not even native to Wuhan. WHO wanted to understand what happened in Wuhan so such a widespread outbreak can be prevented in the future....

        ......The experts stated that they have three different threads as a part of the investigation. One of them came from the genetic sequencing data that is trying to identify the links of similarities between the patients and wildlife, the second being important insights from the visit to Huanan fresh produce market where seafood is sold majorly. This market was the early focus of the outbreak of cases, which were reported in workers and shoppers, indicating that the virus jumped from the seafood sold here to the patients who consumed it. The third thread is the fact that the earliest cases reported of the virus had no link to the market, which led to the undermining of this theory....https://www.financialexpress.com/lif...arket/2189887/
        CSI:WORLD http://swineflumagazine.blogspot.com/

        treyfish2004@yahoo.com

        Comment


        • #9
          Health experts find evidence of origins of coronavirus during investigation in China


          They said 'they can't rule anything out'
          • Matt JarramSenior Digital Reporter and Crime Correspondent
          • 14:11, 7 FEB 2021
          ....British zoologist Peter Daszak told CNN his team of investigators had submitted a list of places to visit and people to speak to, receiving no opposition from the Chinese authorities.

          He added that evidence has been found about the virus' origins and is being "pieced together,
          " reports The Mirror.

          He said: "We are not running rogue here, we are talking to our hosts. We are in a foreign country, we are guests of China right now.

          "This is a good, collaborative, scientific approach to understanding more about the origins of Covid."

          When asked if it was possible that virus was engineered from within Wuhan's Institute of Virology lab, he replied: "There's no evidence of that at all - but it something that we talked about with people at Wuhan lab.
          .......

          ......https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/...rigins-4976841
          CSI:WORLD http://swineflumagazine.blogspot.com/

          treyfish2004@yahoo.com

          Comment


          • #10
            The Feb 5 input by JJackson is significant imho, as it suggests that the RatG13 virus was just one of many collected during the expedition that was studying a fatal viral disease outbreak in southern China. Moreover, his comment suggests this virus was not fully sequenced until after the epidemic raised its profile. If all of that is correct, it would be very reassuring.
            The concern is of course that several people died in 2013, the Institute was charged with finding out why and their team collected fecal samples, one of which carried a virus fairly closely analogous to the Covid 19 vector..
            Obviously people were concerned about a potential pandemic and researchers were actively pursuing 'gain of function' experiments on potentially hazardous viruses to understand what we might need to cope with in the future, The CDC funded part of the lab afaik for exactly this reason.
            So there are two scenarios, one where the Institute recovers a lot of fecal samples with many viruses, one of which is a close match to the Covid 19 virus, but they only find out later.
            The other is where they know that there is a lethal virus, because it has killed several locals, they pick up samples and then work on the most promising, presumably including the RatG13, to improve their functionality. Then an accident happens, human error or just sloppiness and we get where we are.
            My money is on the latter scenario, simply because that is the one that explains the lack of plausible animal intermediary as well as the frantic efforts by the Chinese leadership to sanitize the Institute files. But of course that might be a mistaken view, JJackson is vastly more knowledgeable in this space than am I, but the lack of cooperation of the Chinese leadership is telling, imho.

            Comment


            • JJackson
              JJackson commented
              Editing a comment
              etudiant
              I do not think RatG13 came from the cave where the farmers collecting guano for their fields got ill. I think the RatG13 sequence was collected by Ecohealth alliance who were not looking for SARS but Nipah. The sequences were checked for Nipah but none was found so the expedition was deemed a washout. About 2 years later Linfa Wang working at the ABSL lab in Australia phoned Peter Daszak to say he had been working on the RNA found in the guano and discovered they had found the most SARS like sequences discovered in the wild to date.
              Daszak in collaboration with WIV also found from sero-prevalence data, from small clinics they had trained to do the work, in the areas around the caves that there are likely to be over a million bat to human CoV jumps annually which just go nowhere. SARS1, MERS and SARS-2 all have a very large, but different, insertions in the spike protein which includes a RBD that can bind to a human receptor. This is not normal, or needed, in the bat host and is therefore very rare. All those dud bat to human jumps are likely to be of bat alpha or beta CoVs that had normal, for bats, spikes that could not bind efficiently. Unfortunately someone met one with some variant of this addition in 2003 and again in 2019 which could sustain h2h.
              If I had to make a guess, and it could only be a guess, how it got from bats to humans it would have been directly bat to human via droppings. It may have stuttered in humans for a while until one of its quasi-species hit lucky and all the sequences we have found to date flow from that one individual. Wuhan, WIV and the fish market are a bit of a red herring as it is where the first cluster large enough to attract attention against the background of undiagnosed pneumonia was found. We are already beginning to see the date for early cases being pushed further back in various countries as pre-pandemic blood samples are being PCRed with SARS-CoV-2 primers, this is already beginning to show SARS-2 silently spreading before Wuhan told us about it and with a bit of luck we may able to generate sequences showing us what it looked like before WH01 which is the current route sequence of the phylogenic tree. This process will continue and hopefully Ecohealth Alliance will be able to get back into the caves to find out just how many bats do carry beta-CoVs with RatG13 like insertions. To date RATG13 is still the closest bat sequence to SARS-1 but I expect that to change once we start to look again.
              Last edited by JJackson; February 9, 2021, 10:04 AM.

          • #11
            Expected result....

            So over 2 million human deaths without any animal intermediary identified. After a year the best scientists in the world can not identify and prove an animal host. This does not make any sense.

            I assume we are the host.



            WHO says Covid ‘most likely’ originated in animals and spread to humans, dismisses lab leak theory


            PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 9 20216:19 AM ESTUPDATED TUE, FEB 9 20217:51 AM EST


            snip


            He added it was not yet possible to pinpoint the animal intermediary host for the coronavirus, describing the findings after nearly a month of meetings and site visits as “work in progress.”

            “In terms of understanding what happened in the early days of December 2019, did we change dramatically the picture we had beforehand? I don’t think so,” Ben Embarek said.

            snip

            “The laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population,” Ben Embarek said. “Therefore, [it] is not in the hypotheses that we will suggest for future studies.”

            The team had reached the conclusion that a lab leak should be regarded as extremely unlikely “on the basis of a serious discussion and very diligent research,” added Liang Wannian, head of the expert Covid panel at China’s National Health Commission.


            https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/09/who-...-pandemic.html

            Comment


            • #12
              No indication of COVID-19 virus in Wuhan before December 2019: WHO team

              Updated : February 09, 2021 05:14 PM IST
              The team arrived in Wuhan on January 14 and visited key sites like the Huanan seafood market and Wuhan Institute of Virology
              It’s unlikely that any substantial infection of SARS-CoV2 took place between October and December 2019, an expert said....Liang Wannian, an expert with China’s Health Commission, said that unpublished data suggests that virus that causes COVID-19 could have been circulating in other regions several weeks before the first reported cases in Wuhan at the end of 2019.

              Wannian added that the records of 76,000 episodes in Wuhan health centres were analysed. “It’s unlikely that any substantial infection of SARS-CoV2 took place between October and December 2019,” he said....https://www.cnbctv18.com/healthcare/...am-8257691.htm
              CSI:WORLD http://swineflumagazine.blogspot.com/

              treyfish2004@yahoo.com

              Comment


              • #13
                recherche chez l'animal en Chine c'est pour rire.

                " Ainsi, d'apr?s Xiong Fuqiang, chef adjoint du Parti de l'Ecole de m?decine v?t?rinaire de l'Universit? agricole de Nanjing, jusqu'? 10 000 ?tudiants sortent dipl?m?s dans cette sp?cialit? chaque ann?e en Chine, mais il manque encore plus d'1 million de v?t?rinaires."

                Selon des sources de l'industrie, de plus en plus d'étudiants chinois choisissent la médecine vétérinaire comme carrière, non seulement du fait de la hausse des salaires mais aussi du fait de la demande croissante en soins pour les animaux.


                Donc, comme ils avouent qu'il leur en manque plus d'un million, on leur envoie un prof de philosophie.

                La profession de v?t?rinaire en Chine c'est pour faire les papiers dans un bureau ?

                Comment


                • #14
                  Dr JJackson has posted the most detailed summary that I've seen about the origins of the famous RatG13 virus sample, which puts its discovery and evaluation into context.
                  He also points out that reanalysis of older blood samples should hopefully give a better understanding of the origins and spread of the virus among people.
                  He notes that Peter Daszak's analysis suggests over a million bat to human CoV transmissions annually, overwhelmingly duds, but by the evidence, one was not.
                  To me, that is the murky part of the process, the Covid spike mutation is large and so very human specific that it seems implausible, even with a million plus tries annually.

                  That aside, I thank Dr JJackson for his very helpful input, I just wish he could present the actual facts as above on Fox News and such, sites where the WHO report is already getting dismissed simply because the messenger has no credibility with many.

                  Comment


                • #15
                  American on World Health Organization coronavirus investigation team dismisses US intelligence
                  • Peter Daszak suggests President Joe Biden was only sceptical about the WHO’s trip to Wuhan because he ‘has to look tough on China’
                  • Observers have criticised the inclusion of Daszak as the WHO mission’s sole American because he was affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology

                  The lone American on the
                  World Health Organization
                  coronavirus fact-finding mission in China dismissed US intelligence on the virus’ origins and urged the Biden administration to trust the WHO’s work amid criticism that the organisation is insufficiently independent from Beijing.

                  The comments from Peter Daszak, president of the research organisation EcoHealth Alliance, came after the Biden administration said on Tuesday that the US would
                  not accept
                  the WHO’s findings without first independently verifying them with its own intelligence and conferring with allies.
                  In a series of tweets responding to a South China Morning Post report on the administration’s comments, Daszak suggested President
                  Joe Biden
                  was only sceptical about the WHO’s trip to Wuhan because he “has to look tough on China”....


                  According to the science magazine Nature, Daszak has professional ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and had funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) suspended last year as a result.

                  Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, said Daszak was “famous” for his prior relationship and cooperation with the institute in Wuhan.

                  “I think people have legitimate concerns coming to his objectivity and comments,” she said. “His comments will certainly make Beijing happy.”....https://www.scmp.com/news/china/arti...ion-team-urges
                  CSI:WORLD http://swineflumagazine.blogspot.com/

                  treyfish2004@yahoo.com

                  Comment

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