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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....

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  • #76
    Please help me understand this argument, for my sake and for the sake of other readers who are not virologists. I have read all the above posts. Then I wrote to my cousin, a former President of the Pasteur Institute. She sent me this paper from Nature Medicine. It seems to claim that there is irrefutable evidence that Covid 19 evolved by natural selection as a spillover. I am still confused about whether our pandemic virus is more likely from bats or from pangolins. OK, dear friends, could you please help me understand what evidence is irrefutable, and what seems to you today as being the logical zoonotic source of Covid 19? I think a clear history and argument, written for the intelligent public, would be a valuable contribution.
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    • #77
      With my posts on the topic I do not want to say that SARS-CoV-2 is 100 % for sure lab made. There is no definitive proof, like there is no definitive proof that it jumped, as virologists say, from bats to humans. Both possibilities should be taken really seriously in consideration but a possible synthetic origin of the virus is a taboo subject and it goes under censorship. With the article that you cite from Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 , some researchers claim that they proved that it is not possible that the virus is synthetic. But many researchers think that the arguments that they use are very questionable. It is also not possible to post comments online on the internet page of this paper and usually it is possible.

      I personally believe that some virologists might be concerned that if a synthetic origin of the virus will be ever proved, they will not be able anymore to do gain of function studies. This means to insert in a virus a piece from another virus that might increase pathogenesis, creating a new virus that it does not exist in nature. These studies have been carried out for many years in different countries on coronaviruses. They have been very controversial, because no lab is 100 % safe from leak. In USA they were banned for some years, but since 2017 they are again possible https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...006-9/fulltext
      And not only labs in China had problems of leakage https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/h...biohazard.html




      So, researchers should take a very serious investigation on all possible causes of SARS-CoV-2, mostly to avoid that it could happen again in future, if it is the case. Next virus could have 100% mortality rate.
      Last edited by Kathy; April 28, 2020, 05:34 PM.

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      • #78
        https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2...in-laboratory/

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        • #79
          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.

          Comment


          • JJackson
            JJackson commented
            Editing a comment
            Sharon while we have been in disagreement on some aspects of China's performance that is a excellent resume and very well argued, kudos.

        • #80

          Phylogeny and Origins of Hantaviruses Harbored by Bats, Insectivores, and Rodents
          • Wen-Ping Guo ,
          • Xian-Dan Lin ,
          • Wen Wang ,
          • Jun-Hua Tian ,
          • Mei-Li Cong ,
          • Hai-Lin Zhang ,
          • Miao-Ruo Wang ,
          • Run-Hong Zhou,
          • Jian-Bo Wang,
          • Ming-Hui Li,
          • Jianguo Xu,
          • Edward C. Holmes,
          • Yong-Zhen Zhang

          Abstract


          Hantaviruses are among the most important zoonotic pathogens of humans and the subject of heightened global attention. Despite the importance of hantaviruses for public health, there is no consensus on their evolutionary history and especially the frequency of virus-host co-divergence versus cross-species virus transmission. Documenting the extent of hantavirus biodiversity, and particularly their range of mammalian hosts, is critical to resolving this issue.

          Here, we describe four novel hantaviruses (Huangpi virus, Lianghe virus, Longquan virus, and Yakeshi virus) sampled from bats and shrews in China, and which are distinct from other known hantaviruses. Huangpi virus was found in Pipistrellus abramus, Lianghe virus in Anourosorex squamipes, Longquan virus in Rhinolophus affinis, Rhinolophus sinicus, and Rhinolophus monoceros, and Yakeshi virus in Sorex isodon, respectively. A phylogenetic analysis of the available diversity of hantaviruses reveals the existence of four phylogroups that infect a range of mammalian hosts, as well as the occurrence of ancient reassortment events between the phylogroups. Notably, the phylogenetic histories of the viruses are not always congruent with those of their hosts, suggesting that cross-species transmission has played a major role during hantavirus evolution and at all taxonomic levels, although we also noted some evidence for virus-host co-divergence.

          Our phylogenetic analysis also suggests that hantaviruses might have first appeared in Chiroptera (bats) or Soricomorpha (moles and shrews), before emerging in rodent species. Overall, these data indicate that bats are likely to be important natural reservoir hosts of hantaviruses.

          snip

          Trapping of small animals and specimen collection


          Bats were captured with mist nets or harp traps in caves of natural roosts in Zhejiang Province in the spring of 2011, or in villages or caves in Hubei Province in the spring of 2012 (Figure 1). According to protocols described previously [47], insectivore animals were trapped in cages using fried foods as bait in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 2006 or in Yunnan Province in the autumns of 2010 and 2011. All animals kept were alive after capture. They were initially identified by morphological examination according to the criteria for bats described by Wang [48] and for insectivores by Chen [49], and further confirmed by sequence analysis of the mt-cyt b gene. All animals were anesthetized with ether before surgery, and all efforts were made to minimize suffering. Tissue samples of heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney and brain were collected from bats and insectivores for detecting hantaviruses.

          snip

          A total of 450 bats of eight different species were captured in Longquan city and Wenzhou city, Zhejiang Province in the spring of 2011 (Figure 1 and Table 1). Similarly, 155 bats representing eight species were captured in Hubei Province in the spring of 2012. A total of 81 insectivores (representing two species – Anourosorex squamipes and Suncus murinus) were captured in Lianghe county, Yunnan Province in the spring of 2010 and autumn of 2011. In 2006, two shrews (from the species Sorex isodon and Suncus murinus) were collected from Yakeshi city, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.


          more..



          https://journals.plos.org/plospathog...l.ppat.1003159



          ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------The origin, transmission and clinical therapies on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak – an update on the status
          Military Medical Research volume 7, Article number: 11 (2020) Cite this article
          • 205k Accesses
          • 19 Citations
          • 238 Altmetric
          • Metrics

          snip


          Conclusions


          The outbreak of COVID-19 swept across China rapidly and has spread to 85 countries/territories/areas outside of China as of 5 March 2020 [2]. Scientists have made progress in the characterization of the novel coronavirus and are working extensively on the therapies and vaccines against the virus. We have summarized the current knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 as follows: Firstly, the emerging pneumonia, COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, exhibits strong infectivity but less virulence, compared to SARS and MERS, in terms of morbidity and mortality. Originating from reservoir of bats and unknown intermediate hosts, SARS-CoV-2 binds to ACE2 with high affinity as a virus receptor to infect humans. Secondly, the susceptible population involves the elderly and people with certain underlying medical conditions, which requires more attention and care. Thirdly, so far, the supporting treatments, combined with potent antiviral drugs, such as remdesivir, chloroquine, or lopinavir/ritonavir, have been conducted with definite effect on treat COVID-19 patients, while solid data from more clinical trials are needed. However, questions remain vague and more studies are urgent to explore the transmission and pathogenicity mechanism of the emerging coronavirus. To make clear the evolutionary path from the original host to cross-species transmission so as to potentially limit the transmission to na?ve animals or humans. In addition, to uncover the mystery of the molecular mechanism of viral entry and replication, which provides the basis of future research on developing targeted antiviral drugs and vaccines.

          Given more than 80% of patients are confirmed in Hubei province, the hospitals and medical workers in Hubei are facing and bearing enormous pressure and severe challenge, including a high risk of infection and inadequate protection, as well as overwork, frustration and exhaustion [105]. Chinese Government and authorities have launched psychological intervention, and we sincerely hope that Chinese people and other countries overcome the epidemic as fast as possible.

          https://mmrjournal.biomedcentral.com...79-020-00240-0

          Comment


          • #81
            pr?alable : Merci Kathy, pour tes interventions lumineuses ...

            Je retiens de tout ceci:
            - que ces march?s humides ne sont pas la cause, mais devraient faire l'objet d'un suivi dans le cadre de ONE HEALTH qui d'ailleurs aurait permis de les disculper plus vite ( Messieurs les chinois ouvraient le bal car vous n' ?tes pas les seuls ...)
            - que la recherche virologique mondiale civile et ou militaire, directe et ou indirecte, est la cause de cette ?pid?mie.
            - que le su concernant, l'existence et la gestion de cellules et d'animaux transg?niques, con?us pour permettre le passage est bien trop peu ?clair?.
            - que la localisation de ces laboratoires ? risque, vu les accidents pass?s et visiblement pr?sent, ont certes vu leurs r?gles de gestion de risque ?voluer, mais, franchement, il ne devrait pas y avoir une nouvelle s?rieuse discussion sur leur localisation et leur gestion ?

            En tout cas: cette situation ne donne envie que d'une chose:

            limiter et ou supprimer bien ou tous les cr?dits et aussi, car cela est pire, tous les appels aux dons pour la recherche virologique, parce que franchement ils sont collectivement indigne, ? ce stade, de recevoir le moindre centime...


            Je serai heureux d'avoir ? me d?dire . Entre temps que toutes ces grosses t?tes expliquent le pourquoi de la diff?rence de chiffres entre la Chine et ailleurs ce sera plus productif et surtout beaucoup plus sain...


            j'ai ?crit recherche mondiale, car dans ce monde l?, tr?s tr?s petit, on ne peut, exister sans au minimum, le savoir des autres... Enfin, c'est toujours d?solant de lire que des personnes qui se pr?tendent des scientifiques n'ont pas publi? ceci ou cela.

            Ce qui ne se publie pas, c'est de la science ?

            Comment


            • #82
              Originally posted by sharon sanders View Post
              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.

              Comment


              • #83
                Bonjour,
                n'est pas l'?ditrice en chef d'un tel lieu qui veut ...

                Il existe un tuto pour expliquer comment mettre un like ? votre message ?

                Comment


                • Emily
                  Emily commented
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              • #84
                Originally posted by Emily View Post

                Originally posted by Pathfinder View Post

                Translation Google

                EXCLUSIVE - The thesis of a manipulated virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory: the pavement in the pool of Pr Luc Montagnier

                By Th. B.
                ...
                Posted on 04/16/2020 at 6:00 p.m. | |

                THE ESSENTIAL

                Professor Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize laureate, says that SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated virus accidentally released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China
                Chinese researchers reportedly used this coronavirus as part of work to develop an AIDS vaccine
                HIV DNA fragments allegedly found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome

                We knew the Chinese version of the emergence of the coronavirus more and more undermined, but here is a thesis that tells a whole different story about the Covid-19 pandemic already responsible for more than 120,000 deaths in the world. According to Professor Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for having "co-discovered" the HIV causing the AIDS epidemic with Fran?ois Barr?-Sinoussi today affirmed that SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated virus and accidentally left a laboratory in Wuhan, China during the last quarter of 2019. This laboratory known to work on coronaviruses, according to Professor Montagnier, sought to use one of these viruses as an HIV vector as part of the looking for an AIDS vaccine!

                "With my colleague, the bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we looked closely at the description of the genome of this RNA virus," explained Luc Montagnier, interviewed by Dr. Jean-Fran?ois Lemoine for the daily audio journal of Pourquoi Doctor , adding that others had already explored this track: "Indian researchers had already tried to publish the results of analyzes showing that this genome harbored sequences of another virus which is ... HIV, the virus of AIDS, but they were forced to retract, the pressures were too strong! ".

                "To insert an HIV sequence into this genome, you need molecular tools"
                [snip]



                Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection represents one of the major health threats in the developing world. The costly treatment of infected individuals with multiple highly efficient anti-HIV drugs is only affordable in industrialized countries. Thus, an efficient vaccination strategy is requi …

                ETA:
                Clin Dev Immunol. 2006 Jun-Dec;13(2-4):353-60.
                Towards a coronavirus-based HIV multigene vaccine.

                Eriksson KK1, Makia D, Maier R, Ludewig B, Thiel V. End ETA, Emily



                HIV gp120 and gag discussed above and in retracted study.

                We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus.

                "Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature."

                It would be a total screw-up to mix up a common cold virus and a novel bat virus.
                But perhaps an unstable vector?


                Gene Delivery
                Coronaviruses as Vectors: Stability of Foreign Gene Expression
                Cornelis A. M. de Haan, Bert Jan Haijema, David Boss, Frank W. H. Heuts, Peter J. M. Rottier
                DOI: 10.1128/JVI.79.20.12742-12751.2005
                ABSTRACT

                Coronaviruses are enveloped, positive-stranded RNA viruses considered to be promising vectors for vaccine development, as (i) genes can be deleted, resulting in attenuated viruses; (ii) their tropism can be modified by manipulation of their spike protein; and (iii) heterologous genes can be expressed by simply inserting them with appropriate coronaviral transcription signals into the genome. For any live vector, genetic stability is an essential requirement. However, little is known about the genetic stability of recombinant coronaviruses expressing foreign genes...

                Machine translation:
                《Journal of Virology》 2012-03 Research progress of coronavirus vector Yang Yang Tan Wenjie
                Abstract: With the development of directed recombination technology and reverse genetics system, it is possible to use the unique transcription mechanism of coronavirus to express foreign genes. Two types of coronavirus-based expression vectors have been developed, namely helper virus-dependent expression vector systems and single genome expression vector systems. By modifying the coronavirus infectious cDNA, high-efficiency (50 μg / 106 cells) and stable (30 generations) expression of foreign genes can be obtained. In addition, the following characteristics of coronavirus vectors make it a very attractive vector:
                ① by deleting non-structural genes and group-specific genes, coronavirus can be transformed into avirulent virus;
                ② through the modification of S protein Change the tissue and species tropism of coronavirus, so as to direct the expression of foreign genes to different tissues and organs or species. Therefore, coronaviruses are very promising vectors for vaccine development and gene therapy.
                [Author Unit]: Institute of Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; [Fund]: National Ministry of Science and Technology 973 Project (2011CB504704) Major Special Project on Infectious Diseases (2009ZX1004-705) [Classification number]: R373.1
                _____________________________________________

                Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.

                i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed

                "...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.

                Comment


                • #85
                  China state media refutes lab origination theory. Again, FluTrackers is not political. We post denials.

                  My bolding in text.


                  Spray poison to create rumors! Pompeo was named for the fifth time by "Newscast"


                  May 04, 2020 21:19 Beijing Daily Client





                    Original title: spray poison to create rumors! Pompeo was named for the fifth time by "Newscast"

                    On May 3, U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo accepted an interview with ABC, claiming that "there is a lot of evidence" that the new coronavirus came from a laboratory in Wuhan, but could not produce substantive evidence. Change, not hesitate to "dump the pot in China" by means of rumours.
                    Today, "News Network" broadcast comments to fight back, the words are rare and harsh. The comment said, "Evil Pompeio is rampant in front of science!" This is the fifth time in a row that Pompeo has been criticized by the name "Newscast".
                    Pompeo changed his tone many times
                    Self-contradictory rumors without bottom line
                    On the 3rd, US Secretary of State Pompeo accepted an interview with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), stating that "there is a lot of evidence" that the new coronavirus came from a laboratory in Wuhan, but did not mention where the evidence was. "The best experts currently believe that (viruses) are artificial, and I have no reason not to believe them now.
                    However, Pompeo's remarks were "slapped" by the U.S. intelligence service he once worked with. On April 30, the United States Intelligence Community, which led 16 intelligence agencies across the United States, first spoke about the origin of the virus and agreed with a broad consensus in the scientific community that the new coronavirus "is neither artificial nor genetically modified."
                    When pointed out this contradiction, Pompeo again called "Tai Chi": "I have read the report of the intelligence department, and I have no reason to think they are wrong."
                    It is worth mentioning that Pompeo's tone of origin about the virus changed suddenly within three days. In an interview with the American media on April 30, he still said: "We don't know if the (virus) comes from the Wuhan Virus Research Institute, the seafood market or somewhere else, we have no answer."
                    Now Pompeo suddenly says there is "a lot of evidence", it seems that he is echoing Trump. At a press conference on the 30th, the US president insisted that "there is evidence that the virus came from the Wuhan Laboratory", but he kept silent about the virus "whether it was artificial" and said, "I cannot tell you what the evidence is."
                    At a press conference on May 3, Trump went further without evidence, insisting that "I think they (Wuhan Research Institute) made a terrible mistake, but they didn't want to admit it."
                  Trump claimed on the 30th that he "has evidence to believe that the virus came from the Wuhan Laboratory", but cannot say video screenshots


                    The New York Times quoted people familiar with the situation as saying that since the outbreak, Pompeo, who had served as the director of the CIA, has taken the lead to pressure US intelligence agencies to force the virus to be related to the Wuhan laboratory. However, from the follow-up development, it clearly failed.
                    Four reasons for American experts to refute
                    WHO emphasizes that viruses come from nature
                    Regarding the conspiracy theory about "laboratory leaking virus", Yuan Zhiming, director of Wuhan P4 Laboratory, made it clear in an interview with Reuters on April 28 that the laboratory has advanced protective facilities and strict measures to ensure the safety of personnel and the environment And is committed to information transparency.
                    There are also scientific researchers in the United States. Jonna Mazet, a professor at the University of California at Davis and an expert in epidemiology and disease ecology, has worked with researchers in the Wuhan P4 laboratory including Shi Zhengli. She told "Business Insider" on May 2 that the two sides have worked together to develop very strict safety standards, "It is extremely unlikely that a laboratory accident will leak", and gives four reasons:
                    First, the gene sequence of the new coronavirus does not match other coronavirus samples known in the laboratory. Shi Zhengli made this clear in his April 27 article in Scientific American. Mazete said: "I recently spoke with her (Shi Zhengli), and she was absolutely certain that the (new crown) virus had never been identified before the outbreak."
                  "Business Insider" reported on May 2 local time


                    Second, the laboratory adopted very strict safety standards, including additional personal protective equipment and thorough disinfection of laboratory equipment. Any samples taken from bats will undergo special treatment to ensure that researchers are exposed to non-infectious and inactivated samples.
                    The third point is that the epidemic caused by animal-to-human transmission has a long history, and the new coronavirus is the latest and the seventh in the past century. Experts believe that the virus is more likely to be transmitted to humans through the intermediate host of animals than the leak, just like the previous Ebola and "SARS" epidemic. Chinese researchers discovered in February that 96% of the new coronavirus gene sequences are similar to bat virus strains.
                    Finally, Mazette mentioned that ordinary people are more susceptible to viruses than laboratory researchers. Shi Zhengli's team wears protection when searching for bat samples in caves and in the wild. Tourists, hunters, poachers, or people who trade in food are less protected in the same environment and are more likely to be infected. Peter Daszak, the head of the non-governmental organization Eco-Health Alliance, revealed that his colleagues' survey in Southeast Asia found that between 1 million and 7 million people are exposed to the risk of animal-to-human diseases every year.
                  Mazet chart from social media


                    Mazete believes that the most important thing before the epidemic is cooperation, and the US government's "dump pot" and the "circulated laboratory leak theory" that have been circulated may hinder future scientific cooperation and information sharing between China and the United States. This is very important for the traceability, prediction and prevention of the next outbreak of the new coronavirus.
                    In response to a few politicians advocating the new coronavirus "virus laboratory in Wuhan", the head of the World Health Organization's health emergency project, Michael Ryan, said at a press conference on May 1 "Where did the new coronavirus found in Wuhan come from We constantly listen to the opinions of countless scientists who have studied gene sequences and viruses, and we are pretty sure that this virus originated from nature.
                    "News Network" Yanci hit back
                    Pompeo was named for the fifth time
                    On May 4, Pompeio's fallacy, "Newscast" broadcast comments to fight back, the words are rare and harsh. The comment said, "Evil Pompeio blasts poison in front of science!"
                    In the face of the unanimous conclusion that the emerging new coronavirus in the global scientific community stems from nature, American politicians may not find the "new material" that smears China, and they lie rashly and repeatedly spread "laboratory virus leaks" and "man-made viruses" Wait for rumors. U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo recaptured his self-made lies in an interview with the media on the 3rd, saying that "there is a lot of evidence that the (virus) is from the Wuhan laboratory"
                    Ironically, just when US politicians claimed to "see evidence", the US National Intelligence Director's Office issued a statement saying that "the new virus is not artificial or genetically modified."
                    In fact, the so-called "conspiracy theory" that the virus originated in the laboratory was rejected by people in the international scientific community and the public health community at the outset. "The epidemic is a natural disaster" is already a consensus of the international community. More and more scientific studies strongly refute the "conspiracy theory" of the origin of the virus.
                    There is a sinister plot behind the American political politician's political slapstick.
                    Unjust is doomed to destruction. Whether it's a decision-making mistake that led to a major defeat in this national defense epidemic, or a "political virus" that undermines global cooperation, the actions of American politicians are writing an ugly stroke in history. If you let evil politicians like Pompeo continue to swindle and cheat, America's "greatness again" may only be a joke!
                    It is worth noting that this is the fifth time that Pompeo has been criticized by the name "Newscast". From April 27 to April 30, "Newscast" broadcasted six blockbuster comments in a row, of which five of the protagonists were Pompeo. Of the 5 articles, 4 articles directly clicked on the name "Pompeo"-
                    On April 27, " International Review: Pompeio, who spread the" political virus ", is turning himself into a human enemy ."


                    On April 28, " International Sharp Review: Pompeo carrying" Four Deadly Sins "has broken through the bottom line of being a man ", " Xinhua Times Review: Pompeo's Absurd Logic Contains Distress ".


                    On April 29, " People's Daily Bell Article: How long will such a poor performance last?" "," International Sharp Review: How many American politicians eager to "scratch the pot" want to hide the truth of the epidemic? ".


                    On April 30, " International Sharp Review: An attempt to intimidate WHO's Pompeo is clamoring for the world ."


                    Viruses are the common enemy of all mankind. The United States has not pinpointed its true enemies, but has blindly attacked and discredited other countries. Pompeo's "spraying" diplomacy is tantamount to solving problems and will only cause more people to lose their lives. Using countless fresh lives as a bet to win votes for re-election, this approach is not only short-sighted, it is also called evil!



                  https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2020-05-0...i1327314.shtml

                  Comment


                  • #86
                    This TWiV discusses the lab escape https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-609/ from 11:50 to about 23:00. It is a discussion and interview with Susan Weiss who has been working on corona viruses for 40 years.

                    Comment


                    • #87
                      est-ce une pi?ce de ce dossier:
                      "Selon elle, si la d?cision fut ?difficile? ? prendre, elle ?tait in?vitable pour ?assurer la s?curit? du personnel charg? des animaux, et pour le bien-?tre des colonies conserv?es?."

                      ...
                      Des milliers d’autres, aux Etats-Unis et ? travers le monde, ont drastiquement r?duit, ces derni?res semaines, leur population de rongeurs, en interdisant leur reproduction, en gelant les achats et, en dernier recours, en euthanasiant les populations jug?es non essentielles.
                      ...
                      A ce jour, seuls les rongeurs – qui repr?sentent 95% des exp?rimentations animales et ne sont pas prot?g?s par la loi f?d?rale am?ricaine sur le traitement des animaux de laboratoire – ont ?t? euthanasi?s. Chiens, chats, reptiles et primates semblent ?pargn?s.
                      ...
                      Pour Shalin Gala, de Peta, le simple fait que les chercheurs consid?rent, en ces temps de Covid-19, que certains animaux puissent ?tre euthanasi?s parce que jug?s ?non essentiels? est la preuve que ces animaux n’auraient jamais d? se retrouver dans un laboratoire. Selon lui, ?90% des r?sultats prometteurs dans la recherche scientifique de base – impliquant pour la plupart des exp?riences sur les animaux – n’aboutissent pas ? des traitements efficaces pour les humains?.
                      ...
                      https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/tris...temps-pandemie

                      Comment


                      • #88
                        TWIV 609
                        Susan Weiss is hard to understand for me, speaks quickly.
                        Paper by Co-Weiss about lab-escape ?,
                        human-made is rediculous.
                        Idiots.(Rich?)
                        probably an intermediate species
                        they'll probably find it out
                        oc43 from rodents , alphacoronaviruses in bats in US
                        23:50 asymptomatic
                        32:50 immunity (no mention of the Charite, common cold immunity)
                        ----------------------------------------------------
                        my (gsgs) evidence for a lab escape :
                        Shi's concern before she say the sequences that it may have come from the lab
                        Wuhan location , coincidence ? How many cities in China
                        Oct.2019 the Holmes et.al. Yunnan mission ended , coincidence ?
                        can't find the source in animals in Wuhan
                        secrecy, no international examination, no reports about safety, figuring out things
                        we never had a coronavirus pandemic before --> only happens by research
                        TWIV = biased, history, concerned about the research-community, not the rest of mankind -
                        "Fouchier Kawaoke" in 2012ff ]
                        I'm at 30% research-related , 70% natural (Australia said 5%:95%) , Pompeo ~80:20 ??)
                        ----------------------------------------------------

                        42:00 furin probably nor responsible for pathogenity
                        2 cleavage sites
                        MHV=mouse hepatitis virus ?
                        replication cycle <12h
                        59:22 ; 382-deletion, <1min
                        1:03: sars3,4,... yes
                        1:05 how many viruses to infect
                        Drosten : >100000 needed
                        MHV : 1 in the brain , 1000 in the liver
                        1:08:30 summaries TK's comments Kiki's: Chiki's?

                        I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
                        my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

                        Comment


                        • #89
                          Sharon, you wrote that long post #79 ? Alone ? or "we" = some flutrackers consensus . I haven't yet read all of it, mostly looks OK

                          the RaTG13 is still decades away, the market disinfection was presumably just Wuhan safety concern, did Beijing order it ?
                          I'm interested in expert panflu damage estimates
                          my current links: http://bit.ly/hFI7H ILI-charts: http://bit.ly/CcRgT

                          Comment


                          • #90
                            Originally posted by bertrand789 View Post
                            est-ce une pi?ce de ce dossier:
                            "Selon elle, si la d?cision fut ?difficile? ? prendre, elle ?tait in?vitable pour ?assurer la s?curit? du personnel charg? des animaux, et pour le bien-?tre des colonies conserv?es?."

                            ...
                            Des milliers d’autres, aux Etats-Unis et ? travers le monde, ont drastiquement r?duit, ces derni?res semaines, leur population de rongeurs, en interdisant leur reproduction, en gelant les achats et, en dernier recours, en euthanasiant les populations jug?es non essentielles.
                            ...
                            A ce jour, seuls les rongeurs – qui repr?sentent 95% des exp?rimentations animales et ne sont pas prot?g?s par la loi f?d?rale am?ricaine sur le traitement des animaux de laboratoire – ont ?t? euthanasi?s. Chiens, chats, reptiles et primates semblent ?pargn?s.
                            ...
                            Pour Shalin Gala, de Peta, le simple fait que les chercheurs consid?rent, en ces temps de Covid-19, que certains animaux puissent ?tre euthanasi?s parce que jug?s ?non essentiels? est la preuve que ces animaux n’auraient jamais d? se retrouver dans un laboratoire. Selon lui, ?90% des r?sultats prometteurs dans la recherche scientifique de base – impliquant pour la plupart des exp?riences sur les animaux – n’aboutissent pas ? des traitements efficaces pour les humains?.
                            ...
                            https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/tris...temps-pandemie
                            Most of the mass culling of laboratory mice going in the U.S. seems due to the inability to properly look after them because of staff shortages. I found an article in English about this:
                            https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...virus-pandemic
                            ...And Hutchinson says he hopes his efforts at Johns Hopkins to preserve as many mice as possible will help scientists rapidly return to their research. “It puts more strain on our staff to be ready for that, but we’ve had Nobel Prize winners volunteer to come in and clean cages just to keep things running,” he says. “If we have to shelter in place, we’ve got cots and food here just in case.
                            But at some labs scientists are getting orders from administrators to cull their mice even though it seems that they are not short staffed.

                            Shin, a microbial immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, had to deliver the bad news to her lab manager: Euthanize 200 mice—more than three-quarters of their research animals—as quickly as possible. Many of the rodents had come from Europe and Asia, and it had taken years to obtain them and breed them for the genotypes the lab needs to study how the immune system responds to bacterial invaders. “It was heartbreaking,” Shin says, “scientifically and emotionally.”
                            I've wondered about a novel bat coronavirus get out of control and infecting mice with humanized immune systems being used for HIV research.

                            They have mice like that in labs, including in Wuhan:

                            CCR5 editing by Staphylococcus aureus Cas9 in human primary CD4+ T cells and hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells promotes HIV-1 resistance and CD4+ T cell enrichment in humanized mice

                            FIG. 6 shows the detection of the activity of the N6-CAR transduced CD8+ T lymphocytes of the present invention in killing HIV-infected cells in humanized mice.
                            _____________________________________________

                            Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins and Government Response to Pandemic.

                            i love myself. the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution ever. ---- nayyirah waheed

                            "...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.

                            Comment

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