Discussion: Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Wuhan has been working with bats and coronavirus for many years - DNA manipulations, cloning....

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.wsj.com/politics/nationa...-show-9bca8865

Chinese Lab Mapped Deadly Coronavirus Two Weeks Before Beijing Told the World, Documents Show
The lead time could have proved critical in combating pandemic, specialists say
By Warren P. Strobel
Jan. 17, 2024 7:00 am ET

WASHINGTON—Chinese researchers isolated and mapped the virus that causes Covid-19 in late December 2019, at least two weeks before Beijing revealed details of the deadly virus to the world, congressional investigators said, raising questions anew about what China knew in the pandemic’s crucial early days.

Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by a House committee and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus’s structure to a U.S. government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019. Chinese officials at that time were still publicly describing the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, as a viral pneumonia “of unknown cause” and had yet to close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, site of one of the initial Covid-19 outbreaks.

China only shared the virus’s sequence with the World Health Organization on Jan. 11, 2020, according to U.S. government timelines of the pandemic.

The new information doesn’t shed light on the debate over whether Covid emerged from an infected animal or a lab leak, but it suggests that the world still doesn’t have a full accounting of the pandemic’s origin....

...The Chinese researcher who submitted the virus sequence, Dr. Lili Ren of the Beijing-based Institute of Pathogen Biology, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. The institute is part of the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences...

...Melanie Egorin, HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislation, wrote last month to the committee’s chair, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), that Ren submitted the virus sequence on Dec. 28, 2019, to a genetic database, GenBank, run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The first known publication of the sequence of the Covid virus, called SARS-CoV-2, came on Jan. 11, 2020, after Chinese authorities shared the information with the World Health Organization. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says the virus sequence was shared with China’s equivalent of the CDC on Jan. 5 but not made known globally to scientists.

The sequence that Ren provided in December 2019 was never published and was deleted from the database on Jan. 16, 2020, after NIH asked her for more technical details and she didn’t respond, Egorin wrote. Then, on Jan. 12, NIH received and published a SARS-CoV-2 sequence from another source.

“The sequence published on January 12, 2020, was nearly identical to the sequence that was submitted by Lili Ren,” Egorin told the committee...

[Pathfinder]

E&C Investigation Uncovers Earliest Known SARS-CoV-2 Sequence Released Outside of China

Jan 17, 2024

Discovery that shows virus sequence existed two weeks earlier than previously known undercuts China’s timeline of events

Washington, D.C. — The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, led by Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA), uncovered that a SARS-CoV-2 sequence was submitted to GenBank, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) genetic sequence database operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), on December 28, 2019—two weeks before the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) first released the virus’s sequence.

The sequence was submitted by Dr. Lili Ren, an accomplished virologist at the Institute of Pathogen Biology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army. She is also a current subgrantee of non-profit EcoHealth Alliance on the same National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) grant as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has been debarred from receiving NIH grants for ten years for failing to provide laboratory records requested by NIH and for conducting research that “did lead or could lead to health issues or other unacceptable outcomes.”

Dr. Ren’s submission was missing some of the technical (not scientific) information required for publication on GenBank. She was notified by NIH staff on December 31, 2019, that her submission would be deleted without the additional information. Dr. Ren’s sequence is not the first instance of Chinese researchers attempting to delete early SARS-CoV-2 sequences posted to GenBank, but it is the earliest known one.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has confirmed that Dr. Ren’s December 28, 2019, sequence was nearly identical to the sequence later made public by the China CDC on January 10, 2020, which at the time was the first known sequence. China has consistently stated that it published the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 as soon as it was available.

"This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information. The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and our investigation has uncovered numerous causes for concern, including how taxpayers’ dollars are spent, how our government’s public health agencies operate, and the need for more oversight into research grants to foreign scientists. In addition to equipping us to better prepare for the next pandemic, this investigation’s findings will help us as policymakers as we work to strengthen America’s biosafety practices and bolster oversight of research grants,” said Chairs Rodgers, Guthrie, and Griffith.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The existence of a SARS-CoV-2 sequence days before the CCP acknowledged an outbreak, and more than two weeks before the China CDC release their sequence, calls into question how early the CCP knew about the virus and how long they withheld this information from the world, resulting in more deaths and wasting critical time to develop vaccines and treatments.
• The NIH’s system for monitoring GenBank submissions is insufficient as the United States had an early SARS-CoV-2 sequence in our possession and apparently had no idea.
• The Biden administration, the NIH, and HHS have obstructed and delayed Congressional investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, refused to produce this sequence for over seven months, and only released it to the Committee after the Committee threatened to subpoena the sequence.

TIMELINE OF THE COMMITTEE’S INVESTIGATION:

• May 3, 2023: E&C Republicans Seek Data and Documents from NIH on Early COVID Cases
• CLICK HERE to read the letter.
• August 9, 2023: E&C Presses Unresponsive NIH for Answers about COVID Origins and Risky Research Projects
• CLICK HERE to read the letter.
• September 28, 2023: E&C Republicans Signal Intent to Issue Subpoenas as Biden Admin Stonewalls Crucial Investigations into Government Health Agency Actions
• CLICK HERE to read the letter.

DOCUMENTS:

• HHS’s Cover Letter
• Dr. Lili Ren’s December 28, 2019, SARS-CoV-2 submission to GenBank

https://energycommerce.house.gov/pos...tside-of-china

[Pathfinder]

Translation Google

A pangolin coronavirus decimates “humanized” mice: what do you need to know?

Published: January 29, 2024 10:44am EST

Author
Anne Goffard
Doctor, University Professor – Hospital Practitioner, University of Lille

Disclosure statement
Anne Goffard is a virologist at the University of Lille and a doctor at Lille University Hospital. She received funding from I-Site ULNE, ANR, CNRS and Lille University Hospital. She is deputy mayor of Lille in charge of Universities, Research, Students and Pandemic Risk Management.
...

A publication put online at the beginning of January 2024 on the BioRχiv site (pronounced, in Anglo-Saxon, “bioarchive”) caused a lot of ink to flow. It must be said that the story she tells is particularly intriguing.

Titled “Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR)” , it involves mice, pangolins, as well as a virus that is the cousin of an old acquaintance, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

In this scientific article not yet peer-reviewed (this is an important point to emphasize), researchers from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology report the results of their experiments. The latter consisted of infecting “humanized” mice with a virus derived from a coronavirus initially isolated in pangolins.

Result: a week later, 100% of the rodents were dead, the virus having invaded not only their lungs, but also their brains. How to interpret these results ? Should we be worried? Decryption.


Backtracking

To fully understand the context in which these experiments were carried out, we need to go back a few years. In 2020, precisely.

At that time, Chinese research teams were publishing pangolin coronavirus genome sequences. These came from viruses isolated from samples taken between 2017 and 2019, from animals seized during anti-smuggling operations. Before this discovery, no pangolin coronaviruses were known. However, the fact of having found coronaviruses in pangolins is not surprising, since these viruses infect mammals.

Two distinct strains were then isolated by the Chinese teams, after infection of cells in culture: the pCoV-GD01 strain (from a sample taken in 2019) and the GX-P2V strain (sample dated 2017).

Following the discovery of the two pangolin coronaviruses, other work was carried out to characterize them: complete sequencing of their genome, infection of different cell lines, infections of humanized animals. It was thus discovered that the genomes of these two viruses have significant homologies with that of SARS-CoV-2.

Remember that if the pangolin once appeared on the list of suspects that may have served as an intermediary between the natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 (still unknown, even if bats are suspected) and humans, it was later exonerated . Indeed, viruses with much closer sequences have been identified in certain bats (in particular the RaTG13 coronavirus, isolated from the horseshoe bat Rhinolophus affinis , which is found in particular in south-west China, more than 1,500 km from Wuhan, where the first SARS-CoV-2 infections probably occurred).

The conclusions of the studies carried out on the pCoV-GD01 and GX-P2V strains were published between 2020 and 2023, after peer review. In other words, scientists, experts in the field, but who did not participate in this work, analyzed these results and the way in which they were obtained, and judged them to be trustworthy.

It must be emphasized again that the new study has not yet undergone this evaluation process, which is the usual route for any “serious” scientific publication.

A new study that still needs to be verified
The work published in January 2024 is currently what we call, in scientific publishing jargon, a “preprint”: it has not yet been peer-reviewed. This is not abnormal, because BioRχiv, the site where it was deposited, is precisely intended to host such publications. They can, after having been uploaded, be the subject of comments.

This way of proceeding allows information to be circulated more quickly to specialists, who can comment on it, and sometimes also be used to establish the precedence of a discovery.

However, information contained in preprints (regardless of the site hosting it) should not be considered completely reliable until it has passed peer review and been published in a peer-reviewed journal. reading.

What information is contained in this new study?

Mutated pangolin viruses, sure, but not intentionally

During previous work, published in 2020 and 2023, the pangolin viruses that had been isolated were cultured on cells in the laboratory.

Over the course of these successive cultures, their genome underwent mutations, some of which were found to confer an advantage to the viruses that possessed them. These mutants therefore prospered, passing on their mutations to their descendants.

This natural phenomenon classically occurs when viruses are cultivated in vitro , whatever they may be: it has already been observed in the case of HIV or the hepatitis C virus, for example. Several selection mutants have been obtained in this way, but one of them is of particular interest to us.

Called GX-P2V (3'UTR), it has the particularity of having a genome amputated by 104 nucleotides, the “building blocks” of the RNA of which the genome of coronaviruses is made. This missing piece is normally located in the non-coding region located at one of its ends (3'UTR).

Another particularity of this mutant: the authors discovered that when they used it to infect mice, all of the sick animals died in 7 to 8 days. In dead animals, a significant amount of viral RNA was found in the lungs and brain. According to the authors, it was probably the brain damage that killed the rodents.

However, the infected mice were not just any mice, but so-called “humanized” mice. In other words, mice genetically modified to produce, on the surface of their cells, the human ACE2 receptor. The same one that allows the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus at the origin of the 2020 pandemic to recognize human cells and infect them…

When the researchers further analyzed the GX-P2V(3'UTR) genome, they found the presence of mutations in the ORF1ab, S, and N genes. ORF1ab is a part of the genome conserved in coronaviruses, which helps produce proteins essential to the life cycle of these viruses. The S gene codes for the Spike protein (the “key” which allows the coronavirus to enter the cells it infects, by interacting with a receptor located on their surface). Finally, the N gene is used to produce the nucleocapsid protein, which is associated with and protects the genetic material of the virus. This latter protein is usually very immunogenic (capable of inducing an immune response).

Let us remember again that this study is currently being reviewed by peers, and that the comments of the members of the reading committee are not yet known.

If we confine ourselves to the information contained in the preprint, the Chinese team seems to have characterized a pangolin coronavirus capable of infecting humanized cells in mice, with the consequences of severe lung and especially brain lesions. A capacity that is not common among coronaviruses.

However, it should be noted that this study has several limitations.

The first, and not the least, is that these results are in contradiction with the results of another study, previously published by a Chinese team (published in a peer-reviewed journal, therefore having passed the evaluation by pairs). This work demonstrated that the GX-P2V mutant was responsible for mild infections in humanized mice .

We can certainly assume that this contradiction could be linked to increased virulence of the GX-P2V(3'UTR) mutant, different from its "parent", GX-P2V. However, it is currently difficult to be certain, because the infected mice in the new study appear different from those used in other studies. Produced by a Chinese company (Beijing SpePharm Biotechnology Company), we do not know their particularities well. Perhaps they would also have reacted differently to GX-P2V infections... This is one of the comments that the reviewers could make to the authors: why not use the mice usually used in animal research?

It might also be interesting to know how these humanized mice would react to SARS-CoV-2 infection (as severely? More or less severely?). No comparison is presented in the study.

Furthermore, this work concerns a selection mutant, not a natural virus. Selection mutants arise when culturing viruses in vitro, in the absence of pressure from the host immune system. It is therefore unclear how this virus would behave if confronted with the natural pressure of the human immune system.

Additionally, the infections were carried out on humanized mice expressing the human ACE2 receptor, which is not a natural model either. Naturally, in fact, mice express an ACE2 receptor which is not recognized by SARS-CoV-2, they are therefore not infected by this virus. By humanizing mice, we force their organism to express the human ACE2 receptor (hACE2): the rodents therefore become susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. However, the distribution of hACE2 on their tissues or the quantity of receptors expressed are probably overestimated compared to what is observed in humans.

Finally, animal models have long been used to try to understand diseases, to test vaccines, drugs, etc. But even if the disease developed by the animal resembles that observed in humans, the model can never be directly transposed. During viral infections, for example, viral proteins interact with cellular structures, which are species specific. The results obtained in an animal model must therefore always be considered with caution.

The questions posed by this study

Beyond the purely "biological" questions which persist concerning the specificities and the potential dangerousness of this "shortened" GX-P2V virus, this work is an opportunity to return to a debate which continues to agitate the scientific community: that of “gain of function” experiments, which involve manipulating viruses to intentionally make them more virulent.

It should be noted that in the present case, this study aimed to characterize the properties of a mutant virus obtained incidentally in the laboratory: this was not produced following intentional manipulation.

Gain-of-function experiments consist of evolving the virus studied artificially in order to give it new properties. This may, for example, be the ability to infect a new host species that it did not previously infect. The idea is then to analyze the modifications which allowed it to acquire these new capabilities.

To achieve this, we can either introduce new genes into the genome of the virus, by modifying it using genetic editing tools (such as CRISPR technology), or by cultivating it under certain conditions (with antiviral drugs, to make emerge from resistant mutant viruses, for example), or by simply cultivating it on cells, for several generations, and selecting the viruses presenting the characteristic that we want to study (increased virulence, for example; we “accelerate” and we are, in a way, directing natural evolution).

In 2014, an American team had already sparked controversy by constructing a chimeric flu virus that was part avian flu, part Spanish flu . The scientific community then mobilized to ban these experiments.

Controversy still exists among scientists about this type of experimentation. Some consider that they are essential to advance knowledge, better understand the dangers posed by the evolution of certain viruses, and enable the development of vaccines or drugs. Others claim that this type of work should be banned, because it represents too great a risk for humanity: we are never safe from a handling error which could lead to the dissemination of a virus thus modified .

A scenario which, let us remember, cannot be completely ruled out in the case of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, even if no solid evidence has so far been able to support the thesis of a laboratory accident. Since its emergence in 2019, the question of biosecurity of virology laboratories and infrastructures intended to study the most dangerous viruses, particularly in China, remains relevant. The World Health Organization is responsible for this, however its experts continue to encounter difficulties in gathering all the information necessary to elucidate the origins of SARS-CoV-2, information that we still do not have.

To conclude, let us emphasize that in France, as well as in Europe and the United States, gain-of-function experiments on the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus are prohibited. However, the work presented in the publication discussed here would likely not have fallen under this ban, as the mutated virus was not intentionally mutated.

Peer evaluation of these results, as well as possible replications of this work, will make it possible to determine whether there is really a need to monitor the GX-P2V(3'UTR) variant more closely.

One thing is certain: the question of the circulation of viruses between species and the risks of viral emergence remains more than ever raised, particularly in our time, when globalized exchanges are combined with profound environmental changes. Remember that more than two thirds of epidemic outbreaks originate from the passage of a pathogen from animals to humans ...

http://theconversation.com/un-coronavirus-de-pangolin-decime-des-souris-humanisees-que-faut-il-savoir-222065

--------------------------------------
Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin Coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR)

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...01.03.574008v1

[Pathfinder]

Use of a risk assessment tool to determine the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Xin Chen, Fatema Kalyar, Abrar Ahmad Chughtai, Chandini Raina MacIntyre

First published: 15 March 2024 https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.14291

Abstract

The origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is contentious. Most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but definitive evidence such as an intermediary animal host is lacking. We used an established risk analysis tool for differentiating natural and unnatural epidemics, the modified Grunow–Finke assessment tool (mGFT) to study the origin of SARS-COV-2. The mGFT scores 11 criteria to provide a likelihood of natural or unnatural origin. Using published literature and publicly available sources of information, we applied the mGFT to the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The mGFT scored 41/60 points (68%), with high inter-rater reliability (100%), indicating a greater likelihood of an unnatural than natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. This risk assessment cannot prove the origin of SARS-CoV-2 but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.
...

4 DISCUSSION

We used an established risk analysis framework based on the mGFT for differentiating natural and unnatural epidemics, to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several studies have dismissed a lab accident as unlikely (Alwine et al., 2023; Andersen et al., 2020; Worobey et al., 2022), but our analysis indicates that both theories of origin are equally plausible. A range of different lines of evidence are required, including phylogenetics, epidemiology, seroepidemiology, and intelligence. The gathering of intelligence may include open source, signals or satellite intelligence, political factors, as well as other “detective work” to piece together the complex question of the origin of SARS-COV-2. This would include full records of viruses housed at the relevant laboratories, of experiments conducted, and records of accidents and illness, among staff. The question of origin cannot be answered solely by phylogenetic analysis, as viruses resulting from gain-of-function research using serial passage in an animal model cannot easily be distinguished from naturally emerged ones. Even viruses created by reverse genetics may be difficult to identify.

Definitive proof of a laboratory leak or natural origin may never be obtained, but risk analysis tools such as the mGFT allow a systematic approach to estimating the likelihood of either origin. The debate about the origins of SARS-COV-2 has been focused largely on medical evidence but not on other intelligence, which is key to identifying unnatural epidemics. The large volume of private communications released under Freedom of Information requests also adds further insights (Kopp, 2023), such as the discrepancy between the public and private views of influential virologists.

The epidemiological evidence needs to be broader than simply the Huanan seafood market, and all data, including outlier data, should be examined. This may include detailed epidemiological analysis of scientists who reported becoming sick at WIV as well as athletes who attended the World Military Games in October 2019, and testing of stored sera collected between October and December 2019 in these athletes. It may also include further analysis of data from countries that had evidence of the virus being present earlier than December 2019, such as Italy, France, and Spain (Carrat et al., 2021; Chavarria-Miró et al., 2021).

Laboratory accidents are common (Gillum, Krishnan, & Byers, 2016), and if the pathogen in question is highly contagious, one infected lab worker can set off an epidemic in the community (Blacksell et al., 2023). The fact that the first cluster of cases was in the vicinity of a world-leading coronavirus laboratory known to be experimenting on SARS-like viruses, as well as a second lab that was also working on coronaviruses, cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. Well-known examples of consequential lab-origin epidemics include the accidental leakage of weaponized anthrax at a Soviet bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk (The National Security Archive, 2001), the 1977 Russian influenza pandemic (Rozo & Gronvall, 2015), and more recently, a substantial leak of aerosolized Brucella from a pharmaceutical plant in China in 2019 (Lina, Kunasekaran, & Moa, 2021). A common theme in such accidents has been denial and cover-up. This occurred in the Sverdlovsk accident, which was declared a natural outbreak by the Soviets and also by the US experts—it was only a confession by Boris Yeltsin after the fall of the Soviet Union that revealed the truth about this deadly accident (The National Security Archive, 2001). The 1977 Russian influenza epidemic is now accepted as likely the result of incomplete attenuation of live virus influenza vaccines, but an unnatural origin was denied for almost 30 years (Rozo & Gronvall, 2015).

This study has several limitations that need to be considered. First, the mGFT tool was previously applied to smaller outbreak scenarios (Chen et al., 2019, 2020), and this is the first time it has been applied to a pandemic. Secondly, the tool was originally designed to detect biowarfare, not laboratory leaks or accidents. In this study, the criteria were interpreted to differentiate between natural origins and laboratory leaks. Therefore, this interpretation may require further testing and training of the tool. Additionally, when using this tool in a pandemic, higher scores are usually assigned to the criteria of “epidemic intensity” and “unusual rapid spread,” which can lead to an overall high score and a likely conclusion of unnatural origin. In addition, subjectivity may exist during the scoring process. To minimize the subjectivity, the initial risk assessment was completed by two researchers and reviewed by another two experts, with IRR measuring the agreement level (Glen, 2023). We achieved agreement with the criteria assessment and final scoring. Nonetheless, we were conservative in our scoring, and the tool provides a risk analysis framework that can be applied to differentiate between natural and unnatural epidemics. The strengths of this study include a more comprehensive analysis of factors ranging from traditional virology, epidemiology, and medical factors to situational and other intelligence.

The American Biological Safety Association catalogs laboratory accidents and shows them to be exceedingly common, usually as a result of human error (Gillum et al., 2016; Rozo & Gronvall, 2015). Unnatural epidemics arising from such accidents do occur (The National Security Archive, 2001), but to identify them, the question of origin must first be asked. It follows that if the question of unnatural origin is never asked, unnatural epidemics will never be identified. In an age of vastly enabled and accessible technology in genetic engineering and synthetic biology, it is increasingly important to investigate the origin of epidemics and to apply risk analysis tools to gathered intelligence (MacIntyre et al., 2017). We can have more control over the prevention of epidemics that arise from human error than those that arise in nature, because safety systems, training, processes, and risk analysis can be used to improve biosafety. In conclusion, an unnatural origin of SARS-COV-2 is plausible, and our application of the mGFT suggests it is equally or more probable than a natural origin, although both remain possible. The mGFT is highly sensitive in distinguishing between natural and unnatural origins (Chen et al., 2019) and should be included in the toolbox of outbreak investigations.
...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.14291

[Pathfinder]

Translation Google

China obstructed investigation, concludes Associated Press

Secrecy surrounds the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Even when Chinese authorities began researching the origins of the virus is unclear. The first publicly known investigation of the coronavirus took place on December 31, 2019, when scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control visited the Wuhan market where many COVID-19 cases surfaced.

Posted at 8:48 a.m.
DAKE KANG AND MARIA CHENG
Associated Press

The AP relied on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents, leaked recordings and dozens of interviews that show the freeze began much earlier than previously thought ― as early as first weeks of the epidemic ― and that this was due to political and scientific infighting in China as much as accusations made internationally.

Crucial initial efforts were hampered by Wuhan bureaucrats who misled the central government, which silenced Chinese scientists and subjected UN officials to organized visits, as well as by the World Health Organization itself, which may have compromised early opportunities to gather essential information, according to internal documents obtained by the PA.

The secret from the start

Secrecy surrounds the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Even when Chinese authorities began researching the origins of the virus is unclear. The first publicly known investigation of the coronavirus took place on December 31, 2019, when scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control visited the Wuhan market where many COVID-19 cases surfaced.


But WHO officials learned about an earlier inspection of the market on Dec. 25, 2019, according to a recording of a confidential WHO meeting provided to the AP. In the recording, the WHO's top virus expert, Peter Ben Embarek, tells colleagues that Chinese officials that day were "looking at what was for sale in the market, whether all sellers had licenses ( and) whether there was an illegal trade (in wildlife).”

Mr. Ben Embarek adds that the investigation was “not routine” and that the WHO would “try to understand what happened”. Such an investigation has never been publicly mentioned by Chinese authorities or the WHO.

The WHO assured in an email that it was "not aware" of any investigation on December 25, 2019. Other experts said any market visit that day would be important, particularly if animal samples were being taken because they could provide critical evidence of how COVID-19 jumped to humans.

Punish scientists

Zhang Yongzhen was the first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus. A day after writing a memo urging health authorities to act quickly, China's top health official ordered his laboratory closed.

“They used their official power against me and our colleagues,” Mr. Zhang wrote in an email forwarded to AP by Edward Holmes, an Australian virologist.

Among Chinese doctors and scientists, the feeling that Beijing was looking for a scapegoat grew. The government has opened investigations into top health officials, according to two former and current employees of China's Center for Disease Control (CDC) and three other people with knowledge of the matter. According to two of these people, Chinese CDC staff were encouraged to report colleagues who had mishandled the outbreak to the Communist Party's disciplinary bodies.

As criticism of China intensified, the Chinese government deflected responsibility. Instead of firing health officials, he declared the fight against the virus a success and closed investigations into those responsible, with few job losses.

“There have been no real reforms, because reform means admitting fault,” said a public health expert in contact with senior Chinese health officials, who asked not to be identified because of the nature sensitive to the issue.

Politicians have taken control

Early on, Chinese scientists were silenced and politicians took control.

While the WHO negotiated with China to send a COVID-19 fact-finding mission in early 2020, it was the Chinese Foreign Ministry, not the scientists, who decided the terms. China refused to grant a visa to the WHO's Ben Embarek, who was the agency's leading animal virus expert at the time. According to draft agendas obtained by AP, the itinerary removed almost all items related to the search for origins.

The WHO visit was entrusted to Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist close to senior Chinese officials who is widely seen as defending the party line and not science-backed policies, according to nine people familiar with the situation, who declined. to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. Mr. Liang also ordered that the Wuhan market be disinfected before samples could be taken and promoted an implausible theory that COVID-19 came from frozen food imported into China.

On a train trip with Dr. Bruce Aylward, Senior Advisor to WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Mr. Liang pressured the UN agency to praise China’s response in its public report. The new section was so flattering that his colleagues emailed Mr. Aylward suggesting that he “cut it a little”.

Toxic atmosphere

When the WHO visited Wuhan again in January 2021, the hunt for origins had become highly politicized. Mr. Liang, the Chinese official in charge of the two previous WHO visits, organized market workers to tell WHO experts that no live wild animals were being sold and removed from the report recent photos of wild animals in the market.

The WHO team concluded that a laboratory leak was "extremely unlikely." Months later, the WHO chief said it was "premature" to dismiss the lab leak theory and called on China to be more transparent, infuriating Chinese officials .

According to a letter obtained by the AP, China has told the WHO that any future missions to find the origins of COVID-19 should take place elsewhere. Since then, global cooperation has ground to a halt.

According to ten researchers, medical experts and health officials, Chinese scientists are still under great pressure. Researchers who have published papers on the coronavirus have had problems with Chinese authorities. Others have been barred from traveling abroad to attend WHO conferences and meetings.

The director of the China CDC's Institute of Viral Diseases was forced to retire due to the release of sensitive commercial data, according to a former China CDC official who declined to be named, fearing repercussions.

“It has to do with the origins, so they are still worried,” the official said. If you try to get to the bottom of it, what will happen if it turns out that the product comes from China? »

https://www.lapresse.ca/international/asie-et-oceanie/2024-04-22/covid-19/la-chine-a-fait-obstruction-a-l-enquete-conclut-l-associated-press.php

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

Toxic: How the search for the origins of COVID-19 turned politically poisonous

BY DAKE KANG AND MARIA CHENG
Updated 7:09 AM CST, April 22, 2024

BEIJING (AP) — The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has gone dark in China, the victim of political infighting after a series of stalled and thwarted attempts to find the source of the virus that killed millions and paralyzed the world for months.

The Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation found. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.

The investigation drew on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents and dozens of interviews that showed the freeze began far earlier than previously known and involved political and scientific infighting in China as much as international finger-pointing.

As early as Jan. 6, 2020, health officials in Beijing closed the lab of a Chinese scientist who sequenced the virus and barred researchers from working with him.

Scientists warn the willful blindness over coronavirus’ origins leaves the world vulnerable to another outbreak, potentially undermining pandemic treaty talks coordinated by the World Health Organization set to culminate in May.

At the heart of the question is whether the virus jumped from an animal or came from a laboratory accident. A U.S. intelligence analysis says there is insufficient evidence to prove either theory, but the debate has further tainted relations between the U.S. and China.
...
https://apnews.com/article/china-covid-virus-origins-pandemic-lab-leak-bed5ab50dca8e318ab00f60b5911da0c

[sharon sanders]

FluTrackers on April 28, 2020, 07:21 PM, post #80 on this thread link

You can judge the amount of work by the volume of publications especially those with high citations. It’s indisputable that Wuhan has worked on this since at least mid-2000s, and some really groundbreaking work has come out of that team in recent years. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was a BSL3 lab that upgraded to BSL4 in 2018, but by checking author affiliations, we know that some of the work involving dissection of bats to recover e.g. hantavirus is done at the Wuhan CDC (WHCDC) lab which is only BSL2 but which is <300m from the seafood market, plus also being right next door to the hospital with first major HCW outbreak in Dec, from asymptomatic neurosurgical patient.

In fact, this is a district with a large number of hospitals, and one can just as easily say the outbreak started with patients that arrived in those hospitals in that district, people who worked, lived, went to market there. Everything, market, lab, hospitals, are within 1km of each other, except for the WIV lab which is 9 miles away.

The conventional wisdom was bats are the natural reservoir, but bat CoV are not well adapted enough to jump directly to humans, and an intermediate host is required (e.g. civets or camels for MERS). So when a new virus of such transmissibility appears, one of the most urgent things to do is to try and find the intermediate host, because you know, it could still be spreading. Suspicions were first aroused because of the unusual behavior of the Wuhan authorities. Guan Yi was the HKU expert (top 11th cited in microbiology in world) who uncovered the connection with civets in 2003. He went to Wuhan mid-January and then gave an extraordinary interview, that a) the market was shut and decontaminated b) he was denied access to market or any environmental samples taken c) he knocked on several doors of scientific community but "epidemiology experts and scientists do not seem to be welcomed in the city."

That is a red flag, and it's been reinforced by the fact that Chinese researchers don’t seem particularly keen to work on this either. Wuhan is a center of expertise on this very subject, it’s inconceivable that they would decontaminate the market without taking animal samples. That’s like a researcher’s dream to be the first to identify the source. So either they were actively stopped, or they did take samples but kept quiet. (Raw data from environmental as opposed to animal samples have since been shared privately between researchers but not published, and it appears that these are poorly labelled with regards to where exactly they were taken. These partial sequences match patient samples, so they could well be from human shedding only.) The other thing is, even if that market was closed, it would be reasonable to go and take samples from other wildlife markets, because the stuff was being sold on the streets all through January. Nobody has published anything, even though a ton has been published on all other aspects of this outbreak, including from WIV scientists. The data from market surveillance is so important that even negative results would have been useful (perhaps too useful).

I’m skeptical in general with the bioweapons theory because it’s hard to control a respiratory virus, but I looked into some of these allegations, specifically that the virus may have been subject to human engineering because certain mutations seem suspiciously well adapted to humans or appear to be similar to other sequences from other viruses. But here’s the thing. There’s still a vast universe of bat CoV that’s not yet mapped, but the ones already sequenced show a great deal of heterogeneity and recombination (i.e. these viruses in the wild are mixing and exchanging genetic materials all the time), plus if you dig deeper, there’s published data that some of these specific regions are in fact found in wild-type bat-CoV, so it isn’t as unusual as some would make out, to find such features. Plus, it’s a basic requirement that a virus has to acquire human adaptations to be capable of h2h transmission, so it just seems circular logic to assert human intervention on such grounds alone.

With the 2003 virus, it was found that viruses found in humans and civets were very similar, with a mutation that allow the virus to bind to human-type ACE2 receptors, which was absent from the corresponding bat SLCoV. Since then many labs have done sampling of bat CoV from all over China. Despite diversity, not one sample showed the human-adapted receptor binding domain RBD, so it was believed that bat CoV would have difficulty infecting humans without adaptation via an intermediate host. Secondly, nobody had ever isolated a live bat-SL-CoV, one that could be grown in cell culture.

All that changed in 2013 when the WIV published a study, based on 5 years of surveillance of a particular bat population in Yunnan. link They found a bunch of bat-SL-CoV and published 2 representative sequences. For the first time, these had the human-adapted RBD mutation. Also, they were able to isolate a live virus, now called WIV1, with which they were able to do experiments. Prior to this experiments were done with genetically engineered viruses using the sequence under investigation on a backbone of a virus that’s lab-adapted to infect e.g. mice but is otherwise harmless. This is common practice. But now they had this wild-type virus with a human-adapted RBD, which is a whole different ballgame. On top of that, they took samples from villagers and found some of them had antibodies to this wild-type bat virus, thus showing that no intermediate host is required for human infection, although no evidence of h2h was found. All sorts of alarm bells started ringing and other labs started collaborating; one paper was explicitly titled SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence.by researchers from N Carolina, Harvard, FDA, Switzerland, a whole who’s who of this field. link

Amazingly before 2002 the WIV lab was an agricultural lab (insect-borne viruses and pesticide testing), but converted to work on human pathogens in 2003, the same year during which approval was given to convert from BSL3 to BSL4. That seems a degree of haste, but in line with China government policy on rapid expansion of biotech sector. By the time construction was finished in 2015 (but before certification for actual research 2018) 3 other BSL4 were in various stages of completion. This is reminiscent of Chernobyl, when the Soviets brought nuclear power plants online without prototype and without sufficient time for the first one to be robustly tested. It doesn’t help that the French institute that was supposed to build the lab had its contract prematurely terminated and the Chinese finished the work on its own (having copied/stolen the plans to build the other 3). This hastiness is reckless, but also prompts suspicion of dual use intentions, because one can always do with more power plants, but the amount of civilian, medical research that requires such capabilities is kind of limited. SARS itself requires only BSL3, but experiments with non-human primates would require BSL4. In the 2013 paper and others that followed, they described transmission experiments in mice with WIV1 plus some chimera viruses with the human ACE2 affinity. The next logical step from rodents would be primates, but even smaller mammals they were using such as raccoon cats (simulating civets) would have been perfectly adequate intermediate hosts that could, if biosecurity was lax, result in a human-adapted virus escaping the lab. We already know that the 2003 virus escaped numerous times from a Beijing lab. Bear in mind their own finding, that you don’t even need an intermediate host.

With all that in mind, now check this out. In Jan, scientists studied the new virus in comparison to known sequences in the public database, and found some that were 89% match. And then, a bomb shell. The WIV lab published that the closest match 96% is actually a sequence RaTG13, from their own collection from the 2013 Yunnan studies. At first it was mystifying, because the paper did not give citations for RaTG13. Turns out this sequence was submitted to GISAID database (for researchers) only on Jan 27 2020, by the very same WIV lab! In other words, the closest match for this pandemic virus is a sample they’ve had in their lab but left unpublished all these years. Now, having a sequence is not the same as having a virus, and not publishing all your findings is not necessarily a sign of nefarious intentions, but at a minimum it shows that the same set of samples that produced the by-now well studied WIV1 group, also contained all along the closest one to this pandemic virus. And, as we know, they’ve been working hard at this, doing all sorts of experiments, all along.

One can still stick with the eating wildlife story, as many still do, and I can’t discount it, but what’s the statistical probability that this once-in-a-century virus would emerge, of all places, out of the millions of wet markets in China, in the exact same city that is on the forefront of this research, that hosts the lab with the closest sequence?

The possibility of lab escape is not hot air, with the WIV, but there’s also the WHCDC. On the surface, they appear to be working on viruses that do not require higher biosafety (BSL2 = general hospital precautions), but who knows?. I read one paper from that lab on hantavirus, and it is concerning, because for this study they were capturing wild animals, a total of 450 bats, 81 insectivores and 2 shrews from different provinces, all kept alive in cages until they were dissected. So if we were to ask, where in the city of Wuhan could you find large numbers of bats kept in close proximity with other wild animals so that the virus could cross species, well, by all accounts, no bats were found in the wet market, but lo and behold, you can find these exact conditions in the WHCDC lab. The bats in the study were from different provinces including Yunnan although not from same region as the 2013 samples, but some were of the same genus that carried RaTG13. So while they might have thought they were working on the hantavirus, did they not realize that CoV was also in there, being shed all over the place? And that’s just one study; I’m sure that line of work has been ongoing for some years.

We know that in the wild mixing and recombination among bat SL-CoV is very common, but the diversity at one single location is still limited geographically. Plus RBD is never the whole story, and even 96% similarity is quite a ways off from human adaptation. For a bat virus to get to h2h, most likely several changes are needed. It’s likely these mutations already exist in the wild, but not necessarily in the same virus, and most importantly not in the same geographic location. One particular mutation may be prevalent in a cave in Yunnan, but another may exist only in Zhejiang or elsewhere, so they would not have a chance to meet and mix, except now they’re being collected and brought together, not just as blood or swab samples as in the WIV study, but as live animals. Bats are naturally sequestered in their habitats, but when you remove them and put them together with those from other locations, and/or with other animals, you drastically increase the chance of mixing until eventually you hit the (pandemic) jackpot. And if you do that in a metropolis with 11 million people that’s also a transport hub, as opposed to a remote cave in Yunnan, and only under BSL2, technically you may not be deliberately making a bioweapon, but you ought to be accountable for the consequences just the same. Just saying.

More on biosafety. One author of the hantavirus paper, who also published other work in collaboration with WIV on CoV (working in both labs appears to be a common practice), had gotten some national fame for working on bat viruses, having described in media interviews being splashed with bat blood, and being peed on by bats in caves. On both occasions, he recounted having to self-quarantine for 14 days, so they understood perfectly well their exposure risk. I’m not sure, though, that BSL2 containment measures are sufficient for say, disposal of contaminated waste with such pathogens. I’m not just talking about carelessness and lack of adherence to protocol, both rampant in China. There’s also a whole underground industry of re-packaging medical waste to be sold as new, from syringes, IV sets to bandages and test swabs. Also the sale of ‘surplus’ experimental animals for meat, which in one officially reported case resulted in millions in profit. So biological waste is one entirely plausible route, for a virus with pandemic potential, to leak into the community.

Another equally plausible but less dramatic possibility would be quite simply someone got infected but was either asymptomatic or had such mild symptoms that they never got tested, but nevertheless infected others, as we now know happens frequently with this virus. The seemingly explosive transmission at the wet market is likely to be a super-spreader event, which has happened so many time all over the world that it should no longer be a curiosity, and certainly not an indicator of origins.

Main stream media was part of the cabal that dismissed and ridiculed any early ideas that a lab escape was the possible origin.

Now - FOUR years later......