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Discussion: Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Wuhan has been working with bats and coronavirus for many years - DNA manipulations, cloning.... - January 23, 2020
WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation
Sensitive studies in China were intended to pinpoint the source of the pandemic virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned.
Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn’t going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. “Their hands are really tied.”
In January 2021, an international team of experts convened by the WHO travelled to Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. Together with Chinese researchers, the team reviewed evidence on when and how the virus might have emerged, as part of phase one. The team released a report in March that year outlining four possible scenarios, the most likely being that SARS-CoV-2 spread from bats to people, possibly through an intermediate species. Phase one was designed to lay the groundwork for a second phase of in-depth studies to pin down exactly what happened in China and elsewhere.
But two years since that high-profile trip, the WHO has abandoned its phase-two plans. “There is no phase two,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but “that plan has changed”.
...
@mvankerkhove
· 53m
As said earlier, @WHO has not abandoned studying the origins of #COVID19. We have not, we will not.
We owe it to the people who died, families who have suffered, for all of us
so that we are better prepared the next time. More from @DrTedros
and me
Covid-19: WHO boss promises to do everything to get "an answer" on the origin of the virus
By SudOuest.fr with AFP
Published on 02/15/2023 at 6:12 p.m.
As of February 14, the WHO dashboard, which counts the victims of Covid-19, showed 6,841,152 officially recorded deaths and 756,135,075 confirmed cases.
The head of the World Health Organization personally pledged on Wednesday to do everything to obtain "an answer" on the origins of Covid-19, firmly denying reports that the organization has given up its investigation.
"There is a scientific and moral dimension to this problem and we must continue to push until we have the answer" on the origins of the pandemic which started in China at the end of 2019, declared Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during the the organization's weekly press briefing in Geneva.
He pointed out that he had recently sent an official email to a senior Chinese official again asking for Beijing's collaboration in trying to find where and when the Covid-19 virus started to spread until it became the worst pandemic in a century.
An article in the scientific journal Nature published this week claimed that the WHO had given up pursuing the second phase of the origins investigation because of the lack of cooperation from the Chinese authorities.
“Discreetly Suspended”
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly suspended the second phase of its long-awaited scientific investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges with attempts to conduct crucial studies in China,” writes Nature.
Quoted in the article, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, who has been in charge of the fight against the pandemic at the WHO since its inception, affirmed that this information was erroneous and the result "of an error in the way of reporting information”.
"The WHO has not abandoned the study of the origin of Covid," she said during the press conference; and to insist: “We have not abandoned any plan. We won't stop until we understand the origins… and it gets harder and harder because the more time passes, the harder it is to really understand what happened in these early stages of the pandemic ".
“We continue to ask for more cooperation and collaboration from our colleagues in China, to advance the studies that need to take place in China,” she added.
"...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party
(My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.) Never forget Excalibur.
From my perspective China will never admit responsibility. I have thought since the beginning that this pandemic was started by a lab escape and I have not changed my mind. https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/...271#post855271
In retrospect, a news story published by the science journal Nature in 2015 makes for chilling reading. It reported that scientists in the US had transferred a small piece of the genome from a coronavirus found in bats in China into a variant of Sars-CoV, the virus responsible for the outbreak of the lethal respiratory infection Sars between 2002 and 2003. The added genetic material encoded a so-called spike protein that enabled the Sars-like virus, which had been adapted to infect mice, to infect cells of the human respiratory tract too. “Our work”, wrote the scientists, led by epidemiologist Ralph Baric, “suggests a potential risk of Sars-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.”
“The virus in wild bats would need to evolve to pose any threat to humans,” Nature wrote—“a change that may never happen, although it cannot be ruled out.”
It is now generally accepted that Sars-CoV-2, the virus that caused the Covid pandemic, is a bat coronavirus, closely related to Sars-CoV and able to infect humans—a so-called zoonotic virus, capable of jumping host species—because of its spike protein. Had more attention been paid to the risk that Baric and colleagues identified, might the catastrophe have been avoided? ...
Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.
An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.
In an article published in Nature Medicine1 on 9 November, scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China. The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them. It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.
Although almost all coronaviruses isolated from bats have not been able to bind to the key human receptor, SHC014 is not the first that can do so. In 2013, researchers reported this ability for the first time in a different coronavirus isolated from the same bat population2. ...
Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says
U.S. agency’s revised assessment is based on new intelligence
By Michael R. GordonFollow
and Warren P. StrobelFollow
Updated Feb. 26, 2023 10:44 am ET
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.
The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.
The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.
The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.
... U.S. officials declined to give details on the fresh intelligence and analysis that led the Energy Department to change its position. They added that while the Energy Department and the FBI each say an unintended lab leak is most likely, they arrived at those conclusions for different reasons.
...
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning’s Regular Press Conference on February 27, 2023
...
AFP: The US Energy Department said on Sunday that they have new evidence indicating that COVID most likely arose from a laboratory leak from China. What’s your response?
Mao Ning: The origins-tracing of SARS-CoV-2 is about science and should not be politicized. China has always supported and participated in global science-based origins-tracing. “A laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely” is a science-based, authoritative conclusion reached by the experts of the WHO-China joint mission after field trips to the lab in Wuhan and in-depth communication with researchers. It was accurately recorded in the mission’s report and has received extensive recognition from the international community.
Certain parties should stop rehashing the “lab leak” narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing origins-tracing.
...
Basically the story is that the project that led to the sars-cov-2 lab escape was an ill-conceived intelligence operation to learn more about what was going on at the Wuhan lab. The Baric expertise in engineering coronaviruses was given to researchers in China to gain access to the lab.
Former Senior Executive at EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Andrew Huff, joins Del in studio to discuss his new book, The Truth About Wuhan, his firsthand account of the overwhelming corruption that led to the emergence of COVID-19, and the alleged cover-up orchestrated by the highest levels of US health regulators.
#TheTruthAboutWuhan #AndrewHuff #EcoHealthAlliance
POSTED: February 6, 2023
"...there’s an obvious contest that’s happening between different sectors of the colonial ruling class in this country. And they would, if they could, lump us into their beef, their struggle." ---- Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Socialist Party
(My posts are not intended as advice or professional assessments of any kind.) Never forget Excalibur.
Here is a reading list about what is known and not known about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, accidents and leaks at biosafety and biowarfare laboratories, and the health risks of gain-of-function (GOF) research, which aims to increase the host range, transmissibility, infectivity or pathogenicity of potential pandemic pathogens.
Here is a reading list about what is known and not known about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, accidents and leaks at biosafety and biowarfare laboratories, and the health risks of gain-of-function (GOF) research, which aims to increase the host range, transmissibility, infectivity or pathogenicity of potential pandemic pathogens.
I was warned several times in 2020 that this thread was going to ruin FT's reputation. I replied that we were not going to stop posting and not publishing this thread would ruin FT's reputation.
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing – 3 March 2023
3 March 2023
...
Over the past few days there has been renewed attention on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we have said before, if any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it is essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community – not so as to apportion blame, but to advance our understanding of how this pandemic started, so we can prevent, prepare for and respond to future epidemics and pandemics.
I wish to be very clear that WHO has not abandoned any plans to identify the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, contrary to recent media reports and comments by politicians.
In 2021, WHO established the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, or SAGO.
In its report last year, SAGO identified key studies that must be done in China and elsewhere to verify or eliminate the various hypotheses for the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
WHO continues to call for China to be transparent in sharing data, and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results. To that effect, I have written to, and spoken with, high-level Chinese leaders on multiple occasions, as recently as just a few weeks ago.
Until then, all hypotheses on the origins of the virus remain on the table.
At the same time, the continued politicisation of the origins research has turned what should be a purely scientific process into a geopolitical football, which only makes the task of identifying the origins more difficult.
And that makes the world less safe.
Understanding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic remains a scientific imperative, to inform measures to prevent future epidemics and pandemics, and a moral imperative, for the sake of the millions of people and their families who have lost their lives to COVID-19, and those who continue to live with post-COVID-19 condition.
WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation
Sensitive studies in China were intended to pinpoint the source of the pandemic virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned.
Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn’t going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. “Their hands are really tied.”
In January 2021, an international team of experts convened by the WHO travelled to Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. Together with Chinese researchers, the team reviewed evidence on when and how the virus might have emerged, as part of phase one. The team released a report in March that year outlining four possible scenarios, the most likely being that SARS-CoV-2 spread from bats to people, possibly through an intermediate species. Phase one was designed to lay the groundwork for a second phase of in-depth studies to pin down exactly what happened in China and elsewhere.
But two years since that high-profile trip, the WHO has abandoned its phase-two plans. “There is no phase two,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but “that plan has changed”.
...
WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation
...
EDITOR’S NOTE 3 March 2023
Nature stands by the accuracy of this article, which representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) have publicly disputed. Nature has carefully reviewed e-mail exchanges and recordings of on-the-record interviews with WHO spokespeople between November 2022 and February 2023. We can find no inaccuracy and have engaged in good faith with representatives of the WHO over their concerns.
We would like to highlight the following information for clarity: as stated in the article, phase two of the SARS-CoV-2 origins investigation is no longer being pursued by the WHO; the WHO continues to investigate the origins of the virus through the establishment of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) and other diplomatic efforts.
... UPDATES & CORRECTIONS
Update 03 March 2023: An editor’s note was added to this article after initial publication to affirm the article’s accuracy in response to a dispute.
They show he “prompted” or commissioned — and had final approval on — a scientific paper written specifically in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Eight weeks later, Fauci stood at a White House press conference alongside President Donald Trump and cited that paper as evidence that the lab leak theory was implausible while pretending it had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.
“There was a study recently,” he told reporters on April 17, 2020, when asked if the virus could have come from a Chinese lab, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences … in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.
“So, the paper will be available. I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you.”
... The question of why Fauci went to such an effort to obscure the origins of COVID-19 is a major focus of the GOP-led committee.
...
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning’s Regular Press Conference on March 6, 2023
...
CCTV: WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the “WHO continues to call for China to be transparent in sharing data”, adding that continued politicization of the origins research will make the task harder. What is your comment?
Mao Ning: China has actively supported and participated in global science-based COVID origins-tracing since day one. In the meantime, we have been firmly opposed to all forms of political manipulation on this issue. Since COVID-19 hit, China has twice received WHO experts to work together on origins-tracing, which led to a science-based, authoritative joint report and laid a solid foundation for global origins-tracing. After the WHO established the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins on Novel Pathogens (SAGO), China recommended experts to join the group and organized events for Chinese experts to share research findings with the WHO Secretariat and SAGO. China has shared more data and research findings than any other country and contributed the most on origins-tracing.
Tracing the origins of the virus is a matter of science. This study should be and can only be conducted jointly by scientists around the world. For some time, the US has been politicizing, weaponizing and instrumentalizing the issue. The US has been spreading myths such as the “bio weapon” theory and “lab leak” theory without any supporting evidence, which has seriously poisoned the atmosphere for science-based global origins-tracing.
Identifying the origins of COVID is the common responsibility of all countries in the world. Experts of the WHO-China joint mission, after field trips to the lab in Wuhan and in-depth communication with researchers, reached the conclusion that “a laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely”, and recommended that “related traceability research” should be conducted in “countries and regions” worldwide. The US, however, ignored these science-based conclusions and recommendations and kept pressurizing WHO into repeatedly demanding origins-tracing in China. It is quite clear what the US is trying to achieve. While claiming to take origins-tracing seriously, the US has never invited WHO expert groups to the US for joint study, or shared any early data. Instead, it has turned a blind eye to the world’s concerns about US bio-military bases at Fort Detrick and around the world.
Politicizing origins-tracing would only hamper science-based cooperation on the issue, disrupt united effort to combat the pandemic, and undermine global health governance mechanisms. We hope the WHO Secretariat will take a science-based, objective and just position, not let politicization get in the way, and carry out the origins-tracing study in the US, among other countries, and play a positive role in science-based global origins-tracing. We once again urge the US side to immediately stop political manipulation on this issue, respond to the world’s legitimate concerns soon, voluntarily share the data of suspected early cases in the US with the WHO, disclose information about its bio-labs at Fort Detrick and around the world, and give people of the world the truth they deserve.
...
Ex-CDC chief: Fauci ‘sidelined’ me from COVID debate for backing lab leak theory
By Josh Christenson
March 8, 2023 11:01am
Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield told lawmakers Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci “sidelined” him from internal debates about the origin of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic, saying the former White House chief medical adviser did not appreciate Redfield’s support for the so-called “lab leak theory.”
“This was an a priori decision that there’s one point of view that we’re going to put out there, and anyone who doesn’t agree with it is going to be sidelined,” Redfield said at a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. “And as I say, I was only the CDC director, and I was sidelined.”
Redfield, 71, told Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) that his support for the theory that the coronavirus accidentally emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China — rather than jumping from animals to humans — likely prompted his exclusion from high-level discussions of the outbreak.
“I think I made it very clear in January [2020] to all of them why we had to aggressively pursue this,” he said. “And I let them know as a virologist that I didn’t see that this was anything like SARS or MERS. … And they knew that was how I was thinking.”
Redfield added that he was not aware that Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins had convened a conference call on Feb. 1, 2020 to discuss the worldwide outbreak until internal emails were published by the Washington Post and Buzzfeed News in June 2021.
...
Redfield told Comer his support for the theory that the coronavirus accidentally emerged from a laboratory in China likely prompted his exclusion from high-level discussions of the outbreak.
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