Three years on, Covid lab-leak theories aren’t going away. This is why
Are they just fringe conspiracies—or could they be something more?
January 25, 2023
By Philip Ball
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? ...
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(This may be the Nature 2015 study that is referred to in the above post.?)
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
Published12 November 2015
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2015.18787
Declan Butler
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. ...
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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 -
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Translation Google
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.
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Apparently WHO denies....Originally posted by Pathfinder View Post
Video rebuttal at twitter link.......
Maria Van Kerkhove
@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 meLeave a comment:
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14 February 2023
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”.
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The Other Lab in Wuhan: The German-Chinese “Laboratory for Virus Research”
By Robert Kogon December 19, 2022
The “lab-leak” theory is enjoying a strong revival at the moment, thanks in part to Elon Musk having obliquely endorsed it in a Tweet while clearly point the finger at Anthony Fauci: “As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people.”
This despite the fact that an article in Science appeared to have already put the theory to rest over a year ago by showing that the initial cluster of Covid-19 cases in Wuhan was located on the opposite (left) bank of the Yangtze River from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is commonly supposed to be the pandemic’s epicenter according to the “lab-leak” theory.
But unbeknownst to most observers, there was in fact another infectious diseases lab in Wuhan, the German-Chinese Joint Laboratory of Infection and Immunity, and it is located on the same side of the river in the cluster...
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Government source.
Beijing releases specific rules on COVID-related experiments to enhance lab biosafety
By Global Times
Published: Feb 01, 2023 07:24 PM
Updated: Feb 01, 2023 08:32 PM
Beijing released specific rules on experiments relating to COVID-19 and banned any activities that fall beyond regulatory approval, the capital's health authority said in a newly released notice, in a move to further strengthen COVID-19 laboratory biosafety.
Activities such as novel coronavirus cultivation, experiments on animal infection and nucleic acid testing can only be carried out after receiving approval from the National Health Commission (NHC) or Beijing Municipal Health Commission, the capital's commission said in the notice.
Special storerooms shall be set up to store COVID-19 strains and samples and those storerooms should be guarded by at least two personnel and two locks and equipped with monitoring equipment, the notice read.
more...
zhttps://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1284608.shtml
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Source: https://www.city-journal.org/emails-...al-covid-story
Proximal Orchestrations
Newly released emails cast more doubt than ever on the official story of Covid-19 as a naturally occurring virus.
Nicholas Wade
December 4, 2022 Covid-19
The scientists who assured the world that the Covid-19 virus could not have been engineered in a laboratory based their pivotal decision on a single piece of flawed evidence. Their discussion of the scientific facts was interspersed with frequent speculation about the public impact of their findings. Theirs was no openminded search for the truth; one scientist expressed his determination from the start to disprove the possibility of a lab leak. In the rush to publish their predetermined conclusion, they ignored a critical viral feature that points to manipulation.
These departures from customary scientific procedure are evident from a new batch of emails released to Jimmy Tobias, a freelance writer, after litigation to block the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from making extensive redactions. The emails were exchanged principally between Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a branch of the NIH, and Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a large medical research foundation in London. Other participants were Francis Collins, then director of the NIH, Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientist to the British government, and two groups of virologists, one largely U.S.-based and the other from Europe.
The new emails date from the first nine days of February 2020. They record the participants’ discussions of how to frame a report discrediting the idea that the Covid virus, SARS-CoV2, could have escaped from a lab. Just such a proposal had been outlined by the American virologists in a January 31 email to Fauci. Strangely, two of the American group soon began to lead the charge against their own proposal. Their efforts led to preparation of an article, overseen by Farrar, Fauci, and Collins, in which the American virologists reversed themselves entirely, declaring it impossible that the virus could have been engineered. The article, known as the Proximal Origins paper, was posted in near-final form as soon as February 17. It was published in the journal Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, and proved widely influential in promoting the view that SARS-CoV2 had evolved naturally.
The emails begin with vigorous statements by the American virologists explaining their initial view that the virus had indeed been concocted in a laboratory. Mike Farzan of Scripps said that he was “bothered by the furin site” and had “a hard time explaining that as an event outside the lab.” The SARS-CoV2 genome, some 30,000 nucleotide units in length, contains a 12-nucleotide insert, known as a furin cleavage site, which greatly enhances its infectivity. Closely related viruses frequently exchange genetic material, so it would be easy to see SARS-CoV2’s furin cleavage site as having a natural origin if any other viruses in its group possessed one. But none does. Hence Farzan’s perplexity and his inference that the furin site must have been engineered into the virus...Leave a comment:
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Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/e...origins-report
Editor’s Note: A Review of Criticisms of a ProPublica-Vanity Fair Story on a COVID Origins Report
by Stephen Engelberg
Nov. 30, 11 a.m. EST
On Oct. 28, ProPublica and Vanity Fair published a story about an interim report on the origins of COVID-19 released by the Republican oversight staff of a Senate committee. The interim report was the product of a far-reaching investigation into the question of how the pandemic began, and we wanted to give readers an inside view of the team’s work and share independent experts’ views of its findings.
The debate over COVID-19’s origins has been contentious from the start, and the report’s conclusion that the pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident” triggered criticism. Scientists, China observers and others questioned the Senate team’s findings and our reporting about them.
Over the past several weeks, reporters and editors at both publications have taken a hard look at those criticisms.
Our examination affirms that the story, and the totality of reporting it marshals, is sound...Leave a comment:
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Published December 1, 2022 2:39pm EST
Fauci says 'it's very important' to learn COVID origin, explains what to do if lab leak theory proven true
...
Ronn BlitzerBy Ronn Blitzer | Fox News
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"As you know, there's this debate of whether it is a lab leak from something that was going on in a Chinese lab or a natural occurrence."
Fauci added that data in peer reviewed journals "strongly indicate but don't absolutely prove" that it came from a natural occurrence, specifically going from a bat to an "intermediary host" and then to a human. He then acknowledged that "there's also the possibility… that we don't know precisely what the origin is. It could have been something like studying a virus that they got out of the environment and perhaps having it leaked out into the community."
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He then described what steps could be taken if the lab leak theory is proven true.
"If it turns out that it's a lab leak, then you want to do everything you can to have a lot of restrictions and guidelines about the kinds of things that could be done in the lab," Fauci said.
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‘Gain of function’ research can create experimental viruses. In light of COVID, it should be more strictly regulated – or banned
Published: November 14, 2022 9.07pm EST
Colin D. Butler
Honorary Professor, Australian National University
The United Nations Environment Programme recently published a scientific review that looks at environmental threats and risks in light of the COVID pandemic. It analyses links between human infectious diseases and nature and what we know about how diseases (zoonoses) can transfer from animals to humans.
The report (which I wrote) argues laboratory procedures (including “gain of function” research) should be recognised as one potential driver of zoonotic “spillover”...Leave a comment:
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Sen. Cotton to Newsmax: White House Attempting to 'Silence Dissent'
By Luca Cacciatore | Wednesday, 02 November 2022 06:23 PM EDT
Sen. Tom Cotton told Newsmax that the Biden administration is still attempting to "silence dissent" through Big Tech even after tabling the Department of Homeland Security's disinformation board.
During a Wednesday interview on "Rob Schmitt Tonight," the Arkansas Republican recalled his own experiences in receiving backlash for questioning the accepted narrative on COVID-19's origins.
"In the earliest days of the pandemic, when I was trying to ring the alarm ... I said ... 'This probably didn't originate in a food market in Wuhan. If anything, it likely originated in the labs of Wuhan where they are researching coronaviruses,'" Cotton explained.
But President Joe Biden and top Democrats claimed that "it was nativist and xenophobic and racist when in reality most people ... look at the facts now and say, 'It almost certainly came from those labs,'" he added...Leave a comment:
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Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-di...port-1.1839434
1h ago
China Dismisses ‘Fabricated’ Virus Leak Theory Revived by Report
Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- China lashed out at a report about a lab in the city of Wuhan where the coronavirus first appeared, saying it was driven by politics in the US.
“US politicians are rehashing the lab-leak theory to smear China in disregard of facts,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday at a regular press briefing in Beijing. “Such acts are driven by ill-intentions. This will only hamper science-based origins tracing and undermine international anti-Covid cooperation.”
The Asian nation has “made it clear on multiple occasions that the lab-leak theory from Wuhan is nothing but a lie fabricated by anti-China forces for political purposes and it has nothing to do with science,” he said.
Vanity Fair and the investigative news outlet ProPublica published an article on Friday that alleged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was more troubled than previously known. It also says Chinese President Xi Jinping may have been briefed on problems at the facility in November 2019, months before the virus was first detected in Wuhan.
Zhao sidestepped a question about Xi and the lab at the press briefing...Leave a comment:
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Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022...tion-wuhan-lab
COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge biotech facility at the center of swirling suspicions about the pandemic’s onset, was far more troubled than previously known, explosive documents unearthed by a Senate research team reveal. Following the trail of evidence, Vanity Fair and ProPublica provide the clearest picture yet of a laboratory institute in crisis.
By Katherine Eban and Jeff Kao
October 28, 2022
Toy Reid has always had a gift for languages—one that would carry him far from what he calls his “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina. In high school, Spanish came easily. At nearby Furman University, where he became the first person in his family to attend college, he studied Japanese. Then, “clueless but curious,” as he puts it, he channeled his fascination with the Dalai Lama into a master’s degree in East Asian philosophy and religion at Harvard. Along the way, he picked up Khmer, the national language of Cambodia, and achieved fluency in Chinese.
But it was his career as a China specialist for the Rand Corporation and as a political officer in East Asia for the US State Department that taught him how to interpret a notoriously opaque language: the “party speak” practiced by Chinese Communist officials.
Party speak is “its own lexicon,” explains Reid, now 44 years old. Even a native Mandarin speaker “can’t really follow it,” he says. “It’s not meant to be easily understood. It’s almost like a secret language of Chinese officialdom. When they’re talking about anything potentially embarrassing, they speak of it in innuendo and hushed tones, and there’s a certain acceptable way to allude to something.”
For 15 months, Reid loaned this unusual skill to a nine-person team dedicated to investigating the mystery of COVID-19’s origins. Commissioned by Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the team examined voluminous evidence, most of it open source but some classified, and weighed the major credible theories for how the novel coronavirus first made the leap to humans. An interim report, released on Thursday by the minority oversight staff of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”
As part of his investigation, Reid took an approach that was artful in its simplicity. Working out of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, and a family home in Florida, he used a virtual private network, or VPN, to access dispatches archived on the website of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). These dispatches remain on the internet, but their meaning can’t be unlocked by just anyone. Using his hard-earned expertise, Reid believes he unearthed secrets that were hiding in plain sight....Leave a comment:
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