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

[Pathfinder]

NIH adviser David Morens can’t recall if he deleted COVID records, laughs off Fauci FOIA evasions

By Social Links forJosh Christenson

Published May 22, 2024
Updated May 22, 2024, 6:42 p.m. ET
...
NIH senior adviser Dr. David Morens improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to dodge records requests, according to emails revealed in a memo by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which The Post obtained Wednesday.
...
“I ask you both that NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail [sic],” he emphasized again in a Nov. 18, 2021, email to EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak, whose organization was suspended this month from receiving federal funds for the next three years and who was himself proposed for debarment on Wednesday.

In the most shocking exchange, on May 28, 2021, NIH’s Office of the General Counsel instructed the agency’s FOIA office to “not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in an April 21, 2021, email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them,” read a June 16, 2020, email sent just two months after EcoHealth’s Wuhan grant was initially suspended.

“If i [sic] had to bet, i [sic] would guess that beneath Tony’s macho I-am-not-worried reaction he really is concerned,” Morens also wrote in an April 22, 2021, email about Fauci’s private worries over the EcoHealth grant.

On Oct. 5, 2021, in an email sent days before the NIH would acknowledge EcoHealth funded the risky virus experiments in Wuhan, Daszak leaned on Morens to have “the NIH FoIA [sic] group actually help reduce the scope and make some useful redactions” about the grant.
...
https://nypost.com/2024/05/22/us-ne...elp-fauci-ecohealth-evade-covid-transparency/

------------------------------
STAFF MEMORANDUM
TO: Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Republican Members
FROM: Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Republican Staff
DATE: May 22, 2024
RE: Allegations of Wrongdoing and Illegal Activity by Dr. David Morens, Senior
Advisor to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases former-Director,
Dr. Anthony Fauci

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/SSCP-Staff-Memo_Morens-5.22.pdf

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

House COVID panel demands access to Fauci’s private email, cell records after alleged ‘secret back channel’ communications

By Social Links for Josh Christenson
Published May 30, 2024
Updated May 30, 2024, 4:20 p.m. ET

A House subcommittee investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is demanding access to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal email and cellphone records after his ex-adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) testified to Congress last week that the pair had “secret back channel” communications.

House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), in a Wednesday letter to Fauci’s attorneys, asked for any private records from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present that the former NIAID director may be harboring about the origins of COVID.
...

https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/us-ne...-email-cell-phone-records-ahead-of-testimony/

--------------------------------------------
Link to the letter:

​https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024.05.29-Letter-to-Fauci-Re.-Gmail.pdf

 

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sask...alysis-that-points-to-animal-market-1.7386847

Where did COVID-19 originate? Saskatoon lab helps with genetic analysis that points to animal market
Study concludes that there's almost no chance the virus originated from a lab leak
Alexandre Silberman · CBC News · Posted: Nov 20, 2024 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 12 hours ago

A team of scientists, including one in Saskatoon, say they have strong evidence that the COVID-19 virus jumped from infected animals to humans, rather than originating from a laboratory leak.

The analysis of hundreds of genetic samples provides strong but circumstantial evidence that the pandemic's origin is connected to the wildlife trade in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, said Angie Rasmussen, a study co-author and virologist at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infection Disease Organization.

The study, published this fall in the journal Cell, shows the virus emerged at the market in Wuhan, China, at the same time as the pandemic began in the human population, suggesting it was the place of origin and linked to the live animals that were being sold there.

"It's very difficult to explain any other way, besides that virus was brought there with those live animals and it spilled over, twice actually, into the human population at the market," she said...
​

 

[sharon sanders]

Then how do they explain that in addition to humans domestic dogs were also fully adapted at the same time? At least one breed of dog are used in labs. Dogs were not "wildlife trade" at the Huanan market. As we are seeing H5N1 spread worldwide, there is a progression of infection in nature.

 

[sharon sanders]

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sask...alysis-that-points-to-animal-market-1.7386847

Where did COVID-19 originate? Saskatoon lab helps with genetic analysis that points to animal market
Study concludes that there's almost no chance the virus originated from a lab leak
Alexandre Silberman · CBC News · Posted: Nov 20, 2024 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 12 hours ago

A team of scientists, including one in Saskatoon, say they have strong evidence that the COVID-19 virus jumped from infected animals to humans, rather than originating from a laboratory leak.

The analysis of hundreds of genetic samples provides strong but circumstantial evidence that the pandemic's origin is connected to the wildlife trade in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, said Angie Rasmussen, a study co-author and virologist at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infection Disease Organization.

The study, published this fall in the journal Cell, shows the virus emerged at the market in Wuhan, China, at the same time as the pandemic began in the human population, suggesting it was the place of origin and linked to the live animals that were being sold there.

"It's very difficult to explain any other way, besides that virus was brought there with those live animals and it spilled over, twice actually, into the human population at the market," she said...
​

Sure. The only group with access to the market were China officials. I suggest that the data used by the above paper analyzed input from data generated by China officials who had exclusionary access to the site.

Check the affiliations of the below authors.


snip

"The investigators used full personal protective equipment during the sampling in the market. Commercially obtained swabs and virus preservation solution were used for the sampling (Disposable Virus Sampling Tube, V5-S-25, Shen Zhen Zi Jian Biotechnology). For environmental samples, sampling swabs were used to swab the floors, walls or surfaces of objects and then preserved in virus preservation solution.

For animal samples, depending on the type of animal and whether it was alive or frozen, pharyngeal, anal, body surface and body cavity swabs or tissue samples were collected for RT-qPCR. Generally, for live animals and frozen full bodies, three samples, including pharyngeal, anal and body surface swabs, were collected for each individual animal. For animal bodies after ‘bai tiao’ preparation (remaining parts of poultry or livestock after removal of hair and viscera), body cavity swabs were collected.

Drain samples were collected using virus sampling swabs to probe into the silt at the bottom of drainage channels in the market. Wastewater and silt samples were preserved in virus preservation solution. For the sewage well (for the drain water), a container was used to take a silt–water mixture from a location near the bottom of the well, and an appropriate amount of sample was collected by using virus sampling swabs and then preserved in virus preservation solution.

Nucleic acid extraction and SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR assay


A virus nucleic acid extraction kit (Xi’an Tianlong) was used to extract viral nucleic acid from samples using an automated nucleic acid extraction instrument according to the manufacturer’s instructions. RT-qPCR was carried out on extracted nucleic acid samples with a SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid assay kit. The reagent brands used include BioGerm (40/38; cycle number/cutoff value), DAAN (45/40) and BGI (40/38).

Virus isolation


Virus isolation was carried out in a biosafety level-3 laboratory in the National Institute for Viral Diseases Control and Prevention, China CDC. Samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR collected on 1 January 2020 were cultured in both Vero E6 and Huh7.5 cells on 11 January 2020. The cells were cultured in 24-well cell culture plates with DMEM basal medium containing 10% fetal bovine serum and 1% penicillin-streptomycin in an incubator containing 5% CO[SUB]2[/SUB]. Homogenate supernatant was inoculated when the monolayer cell culture was about 90% confluent and adherent to the wall. The medium used was DMEM basal medium containing 2% fetal bovine serum. Three blind passages were carried out for each sample. The growth and morphological changes of the cells were observed under a microscope every day. The culture supernatant and cell pellet of each passage were collected for RT-qPCR. The morphology of viral particles in the cell sections and the supernatant were firstly observed by transmission electron microscopy, on 22 January 2020.


Metagenomic sequencing


Metagenomic sequencing was conducted at the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, China CDC and Wuhan BGI. Nucleic acid was extracted using Qiagen’s viral RNA microextraction kit. An enrichment kit (HWTS-C002-16-BGI, BGI, China) was used on 33 samples to improve the sensitivity of viral RNA detection. The kit is based on a probe pool that targets the human ribosomal RNA sequence. The probe pool comprises multiple oligonucleotide fragments, and viral RNA enrichment is accomplished through a sequence of steps including probe hybridization, RNAse H digestion, DNAse I digestion and magnetic bead purification. This specific treatment was chosen based on the low CT values (<30) of internal control (human genes) observed in these samples, indicating a relatively high abundance of human genes. However, the remaining samples did not undergo this treatment. Extracted RNA was reverse transcribed into cDNA and segmented into 150–200 base pairs by enzyme digestion. After repair, fitting, purification, PCR amplification and purification, the sample concentration was assayed by DNBSEQ-T7, and an average output of more than 200 million reads was obtained. Sequencing data were compared with those in a SARS-CoV-2 database to determine whether the samples contained SARS-CoV-2 sequences. For the seven complete SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences, three sequences from environmental samples (Env_0020_seq01, Env_0313_seq02 and Env_0354_seq03) were obtained from DNBSEQ-T7, and four sequences from cell supernatants of Env_0313, Env_0354 and Env_0126 (Fig. 3) were obtained from the NextSeq 550 platform. A few samples were resequenced using a multiplex PCR approach, including Env_0020_seq01, Env_0313_seq04, Env_0313_seq05, Env_0126_seq06 and Env_0354_seq07 (Supplementary Tables 3 and 4), as described previously[SUP]30[/SUP]. Briefly, the nucleic acid was extracted using Qiagen’s viral RNA microextraction kit. The multiplex PCR comprised a set of 102 oligonucleotide primer pairs and the amplicons generated by the primer pairs spanned the target genome. All raw data related to the genomes, including any partial genomes that were sequenced, were fully reported and deposited to the public database (Supplementary Tables 3 and 4).

Virus genome assembly and phylogenetic analysis


Raw reads were adaptor- and quality-trimmed with the Fastp (version 0.20.0) program. The clean reads were mapped to the SARS-CoV-2 reference genome (GenBank: NC_045512) using Bowtie2. The assembled genomes were merged and checked using Geneious (version 11.1.5) (https://www.geneious.com). The coverage and depth of genomes were calculated with SAMtools (version 1.10) based on SAM files from Bowtie2.

Reference genomes, IVDC-HB-01 (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data: EPI_ISL_402119) and Wuhan-Hu-1 (GenBank: NC_045512), were used as a query. Multiple sequence alignment of the SARS-CoV-2 sequences obtained from this study and reference sequences were carried out with Mafft (v7.450). Phylogenetic analyses were carried out using RAxML v8.2.9 with 1,000 bootstrap replicates, using the GTR nucleotide substitution model and the Gamma distribution.

Bioinformatic analysis of the species abundances


Kraken2 (version 2.1.2)[SUP]31[/SUP] was used for species classification with the option --confidence 0.1. Sequences of all species in the Nucleotide (nt) database were used for generating the index. bracken (version 2.5) was used for re-evaluating species abundance. The matrix of species was obtained by using the pavian algorithm[SUP]32[/SUP]. The ggplot2 package in R was used for plotting. Read counts of each genus were used for further analysis and plotting. Raw counts for four domains (Archaea, viruses, Eukarya and Bacteria), SARS-CoV-2 and the Homo genus were used to generate a heatmap (Fig. 4b). Two-tailed unpaired t-test was used for identification of differential genus between SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR-positive and SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR-negative samples.

For the analysis of the Chordata genus characterization, the reference was generated using the sequence of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I in the BOLD system[SUP]33,34,35[/SUP]. RNA-seq samples were mapped to the reference sequences by the Bowtie2 (ref. [SUP]36[/SUP]) algorithm with the default settings. Read counts of each genus were calculated by samtools[SUP]37[/SUP]. Read counts exceeding 20 were used as a cutoff for the identification of positively enriched genus. Fisher’s exact test was used for comparing the differential genus in the Mammalia class between SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR-positive and SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR-negative samples.

Ethics


The sample collection was determined by the China CDC to be part of the emergency response to the outbreak of pneumonia of unknown aetiology and therefore was exempt from institutional review board assessment."

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

source:

• Article
• Published: 05 April 2023

Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 at the Huanan Seafood Market

• William J. Liu,
• Peipei Liu,
• Wenwen Lei,
• Zhiyuan Jia,
• Xiaozhou He,
• Weifeng Shi,
• Yun Tan,
• Shumei Zou,
• Gary Wong,
• Ji Wang,
• Feng Wang,
• Gang Wang,
• Kun Qin,
• Rongbao Gao,
• Jie Zhang,
• Min Li,
• Wenling Xiao,
• Yuanyuan Guo,
• Ziqian Xu,
• Yingze Zhao,
• Jingdong Song,
• Jing Zhang,
• Wei Zhen,
• Wenting Zhou,
• Beiwei Ye,
• Juan Song,
• Mengjie Yang,
• Weimin Zhou,
• Yuting Dai,
• Gang Lu,
• Yuhai Bi,
• Wenjie Tan,
• Jun Han,
• George F. Gao &
• Guizhen Wu

​
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06043-2#change-history

​

 

[Pathfinder]

The origin of Covid-19, part 1: Evidence for and against an origin at the wet market

KerikBalm
...
Nov 19, 2024
Here I take a critical look at the evidence for and against one or more spillovers of SARS-CoV-2 at the wet market, and generally find that the evidence actually does not point to a wet market origin.
...
​

 

[Pathfinder]

Trump's Former CDC Chief Suggests US Origin for COVID: 'Can't Prove That'

Published Nov 19, 2024 at 7:18 AM EST

By Jess Thomson
Science Reporter
...
Robert Redfield, who headed the CDC during Trump's first administration, told author and podcaster Dana Parish during a 90-minute interview on her 3rd Opinion podcast released on November 14 that he believes that the SARS-CoV-2 virus—which causes COVID-19—was developed as part of a "biodefense program" in a lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
...
Around the 44:30 mark in the interview, Redfield stated that he thinks the virus was "intentionally engineered as a part of a biodefense program," by the U.S. Parish then asked what role the U.S. played in the origins of the virus, to which Redfield responded: "Substantial."

"When you look at the accountability for China, their accountability is not in the lab work and in the creation of the virus. Their accountability is not following the international health regulations after they realized that they had a problem. And allowing people like me at CDC to come in and to help them within 48 hours like they were obligated to, based on the treaty. But the U.S. role was substantial," he said.

"One is they funded the research both from NIH [National Institutes of Health], the State Department, USAID, and the Defense Department. All four of those agencies helped fund this research. Secondly, the scientific mastermind behind this research is a guy named Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, and he was very involved in this research. I think he probably helped create some of the original viral lines, but I can't prove that. But he was very involved."
...
"In August, September, the initial cases of COVID in Wuhan began. Clearly, by the middle of September, there was a significant problem. OK, because—and I can't remember the exact date. I think it's in the public domain now, it was classified, but I think it was Sept. 19—but they did three things," Redfield said.

"They changed the leadership of the lab. So it was a dual-use lab. They changed it from civilian to military. So the military was now put in charge of the lab. They did something highly irregular, which is they deleted the research sequences of COVID viruses that they had done years before. So the whole database was deleted."
...
https://www.newsweek.com/covid-19-l...rolina-cdc-head-robert-redfield-trump-1987571
-------------------------------------
You can view Dana Parish's entire interview with former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield here:

Dana Parish

@danaparish


I am thrilled to bring you this fascinating, shocking interview with former CDC Director, Dr. Robert Redfield. I almost fell off my seat a number of times. We cover a lot of ground in these 90 minutes, in which he shatters the establishment narratives on everything from Covid origins, Covid vaccines, mandates, early treatment, & LongCovid, to the sweeping government censorship that led to the public being deceived on a massive scale. He is also, to my knowledge, the first CDC Director to go on the record about chronic Lyme, an enormously fraught medical/ political scandal with overlap to Covid. Some of the questions asked were sent to me by you. I was surprised by the number of scientists who reached out wanting clarity or validation, mostly around Covid vaccines and long Covid. I did my best to get it all in. Am eager for your thoughts and reactions. Here is the full interview, followed by a of clips. The interview can also be found in my newsletter and YT channel (see linktree in bio)! Please support my work in sharing unadulterated, exclusive content like this by subscribing to my newsletter & YT channel!​

11:38 AM · Nov 14, 2024

 

[JJackson]

Then how do they explain that in addition to humans domestic dogs were also fully adapted at the same time? At least one breed of dog are used in labs. Dogs were not "wildlife trade" at the Huanan market. As we are seeing H5N1 spread worldwide, there is a progression of infection in nature.

H5N1 is an avian virus which necessitates significantly more adaption to propagate widely in mammals. Sars-cov-2 was mammalian adapted to begin with and already infecting pangolins and bats, it is not well adapted to dogs but seems well adapted to white tail deer, mink and to a lesser extent, raccoon dogs, cats, hamsters, house mice, Egyptian fruit bats and deer mice. ​

 

[sharon sanders]

H5N1 is an avian virus which necessitates significantly more adaption to propagate widely in mammals. Sars-cov-2 was mammalian adapted to begin with and already infecting pangolins and bats, it is not well adapted to dogs but seems well adapted to white tail deer, mink and to a lesser extent, raccoon dogs, cats, hamsters, house mice, Egyptian fruit bats and deer mice. ​

Humans were immediately able to infect their dog pets with SARS-Cov-2.

Generally nature takes awhile to cross species. Not overnight.

 

[JJackson]

Dogs and cats living with infectious humans are soft targets for reverse zoonosis, but neither have been able to sustain transmission chains in the way mink and white tailed deer have. In the later cases the extended transmission chain has enabled the virus to adapt and become host specific. If you think it was lab derived, either in the US or China, then a stronger argument would be it was passaged in ferrets, but in that case I would expect it to carry the mink specific mutations that developed in Europe.

 

[sharon sanders]

I will let JJackson have the last word here on this point. He passed away suddenly this week so therefore he can not respond to any point that I make. I thank him for the vigorous debate throughout this thread. Rest in peace my dear friend.

 

[Pathfinder]

Press Release

Published: Dec 4, 2024

Wenstrup Delivers Remarks at COVID Select’s Final Report Markup, Releases Recommendations for a Path Forward


WASHINGTON — Today, Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) delivered remarks at a markup of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic’s final report titled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.” Chairman Wenstrup explained how this 520-page report is the culmination of years of hard work and dedication to uncover the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic for the American people. The report will serve as a road map for Congress, the Executive Branch, and the private sector to prepare for and respond to future pandemics. Chairman Wenstrup also recognized Select Subcommittee staff, witnesses, and whistleblowers for their dedication to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in America’s public health system.

During today’s markup, Chairman Wenstrup submitted recommendations for improving public health and pandemic response to the Congressional Record. See the Select Subcommittee’s final recommendations here.

An updated version of the full final report was also offered as an amendment in the nature of a substitute. See the Select Subcommittee’s updated final report here.

In support of the final report, the Chairman released all previously unreleased interview transcripts and the report’s supplementary materials. The transcripts can be found below and the supplementary materials can be found in eight parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8

Transcribed Interviews and Depositions:

• Dr. Kristian Andersen
• Dr. Hugh Auchincloss
• Dr. Ralph Baric
• Dr. Francis Collins
• The Honorable Andrew Cuomo
• Dr. Peter Daszak
• Ms. Melissa DeRosa
• Dr. Emily Erbelding
• Dr. Michael Farzan
• Dr. Anthony Fauci
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
• Mr. Greg Folkers
• Dr. Robert Garry
• Ms. Beth Garvey
• Dr. James Gimlett
• Mr. F. Gray Handley
• Dr. Peter Hotez
• Mr. Bradley Hutton
• CDR Jean-Paul Chretien
• Ms. Farrah Kennedy
• Ms. Linda Lacewell
• Dr. Clifford Lane
• Dr. Michael Lauer
• Dr. Ian Lipkin
• Dr. James Malatras
• Dr. Gretta Massetti
• Ms. Margaret Moore
• Dr. David Morens
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
• Ms. Kelly Nedrow
• Mr. Garreth Rhodes
• Mr. Lawrence Schwartz
• Dr. Erik Stemmy
• Dr. Jeffrey Sturchio
• Dr. Lawrence Tabak
• Ms. Marla Ucelli-Kashyap
• Dr. Janet Woodcock
• Dr. Howard Zucker

THUMBNAIL OF BRW TALKING

Below are Select Subcommittee Chairman Wenstrup’s remarks as prepared for delivery:

Before I get started, I would like to introduce some articles for the record that are exemplary of the Select Subcommittee’s finding that a lab leak is the most likely origin scenario, that the Chinese Communist Party was conducting dangerous research, and this type of dangerous research was notionally supported by the NIH.

I ask unanimous consent for a 2005 statement from the State Department that says China has a bio-weapons program. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent for a 2015 article by Dr. Ralph Baric and Dr. Zhengli Shi where they created a chimera of two bat-borne coronaviruses that gained function. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent for a 2017 article by Wuhan Institute of Virology research Dr. Ben Hu where he created multiple chimeras of coronaviruses under BSL-2 conditions at the WIV. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent for a 2011 article by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins that stated “…important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory.” Without objection, so ordered.

And I ask unanimous consent for a 2012 paper written by Dr. Fauci that stated that the benefits of gain of function research outweigh the risks. Without objection, so ordered.

I want to thank all of those that voluntarily presented to the committee to give honest and forthright testimony.

This Report is the culmination of years of work and dedication.

The Select Subcommittee held bad actors accountable, drove actual change in our public health agencies, and provided a road map for what to and what not to do.

I could go on and on about the findings in this Report, but I think I will let the 500 pages, and 2,000 footnotes speak for themselves.

Today, we are also releasing all previously unreleased interview transcripts and supplementary materials.

We, as a subcommittee, are also grateful to whistleblowers that courageously, through long hours and dedication, provided important evidence that we may not have found.

Thanking the hard work of the professional staffers on this subcommittee is a must. Our staff was an extraordinary group of hardworking patriots seeking to fight for (my favorite Superman motto) truth, justice and the American way.

Mitch Benzine, Staff Director

Eric Osterhues, Chief Counsel

Jack Emmer, Senior Counsel

Madeline Brewer, Counsel

Peter Spectre, Professional Staff Member

Anna Blake Langley, Professional Staff Member

Liz Lyons, Communications Director

Olivia Coleman, Press Secretary

Marie Policastro, Director of Operations and Member Services.

In one scenario, years from now, people perhaps will have long forgotten what we did here.

If our work leads to a trustable system that is able to complete our goals of predicting, preparing, protecting and preventing the next pandemic, reward enough.

May God be with us and out future generations of Americans.

###
​
https://oversight.house.gov/release...-releases-recommendations-for-a-path-forward/

 

[sharon sanders]

Thank you again to everyone who stayed with us. It was always clear the the chances of a natural disease outbreak within a short distance from 2 labs (CDC + military) that were actively experimenting with the same family of viruses was extremely remote. The numbers never have supported a natural outbreak in the Wuhan live market.

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

Behind Closed Doors: The Spy World Scientists Who Argued Covid Was a Lab Leak

The idea that the pandemic’s origins lie with a research facility in China was once labeled a conspiracy theory

A former FBI scientist recounts how the disagreements within the intelligence community over whether Covid-19 was the result of lab leak ran deeper than is publicly known.


By Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel

Updated Dec. 26, 2024 12:01 am ET

A car and driver had been readied to whisk Jason Bannan from FBI headquarters early one morning in August 2021 to brief the White House on a novel virus that was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and had stopped the world in its tracks.​

https://www.wsj.com/politics/nation...lab-leak-theory-dfbd8a51?mod=latest_headlines

 

[sharon sanders]

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.

Originally published on April 28, 2020, 07:21 PM and I still feel this to be true today.

Years later some research has been published about the market (2023) link. YEARS later and with no independent verification. Not professionally acceptable.

 

[Pathfinder]

World Health Organization (WHO)
@WHO

Five years ago on 31 December 2019, WHO’s Country Office in [HASHTAG="c1782"]China[/HASHTAG] picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, China.

In the weeks, months, and years that unfolded after that, #COVID19 came to shape our lives and our world.

At WHO, we went to work immediately as the new year dawned. WHO employees activated emergency systems on 1 January 2020, and informed the world on 4 January.

By 9-12 January, WHO had published its first set of comprehensive guidance for countries, and on 13 January, we brought together partners to publish the blueprint of the first SARS-CoV-2 laboratory test.

All along, we convened experts and ministries of health from around the world, gathered and analysed data, and shared what was reported, what we learned and what it meant for people. Read about WHO’s actions here: https://bit.ly/3neFefP

As we mark this milestone, let’s take a moment to honour the lives changed and lost, recognize those who are suffering from COVID-19 and #longCOVID, express gratitude to the health workers who sacrificed so much to care for us, and commit to learning from COVID-19 to build a healthier tomorrow.

We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative.

Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.

Today, as often, we pose this question: “is the world better prepared for the next pandemic than we were for COVID-19?”
@DrTedros
responds ​

(Video)

10:32 AM · Dec 30, 2024​
​

 

[sharon sanders]

World Health Organization (WHO)
@WHO

Five years ago on 31 December 2019, WHO’s Country Office in [HASHTAG="c1782"]China[/HASHTAG] picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, China.

In the weeks, months, and years that unfolded after that, #COVID19 came to shape our lives and our world.

At WHO, we went to work immediately as the new year dawned. WHO employees activated emergency systems on 1 January 2020, and informed the world on 4 January.

By 9-12 January, WHO had published its first set of comprehensive guidance for countries, and on 13 January, we brought together partners to publish the blueprint of the first SARS-CoV-2 laboratory test.

All along, we convened experts and ministries of health from around the world, gathered and analysed data, and shared what was reported, what we learned and what it meant for people. Read about WHO’s actions here: https://bit.ly/3neFefP

As we mark this milestone, let’s take a moment to honour the lives changed and lost, recognize those who are suffering from COVID-19 and #longCOVID, express gratitude to the health workers who sacrificed so much to care for us, and commit to learning from COVID-19 to build a healthier tomorrow.

We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative.

Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.

Today, as often, we pose this question: “is the world better prepared for the next pandemic than we were for COVID-19?”
@DrTedros
responds ​

(Video)

10:32 AM · Dec 30, 2024​
​

Our thread - dated December 30, 2019:

China - Original COVID-19 coronavirus news thread: weeks 1 - 4 (December 30, 2019 - January 25, 2020)
​

 

[Pathfinder]

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning’s Regular Press Conference on December 31, 2024

Updated: December 31, 2024 18:25

​
...
AFP: Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on China to share COVID-19 data and provide access to help understand the origins of the virus. They called it a moral and scientific imperative. Does the Foreign Ministry have any response to this call from WHO? 

Mao Ning: Since the outbreak of COVID-19 five years ago, China has shared information on the outbreak and genome sequence of the virus with WHO and the international community at the earliest time possible, and has shared with others our control and clinical experience without reservation, making great contribution to the global effort of fighting against COVID-19.

On the origins-tracing of COVID-19, China follows the spirit of science, openness, and transparency, actively supports and participates in global science-based origins-tracing, and firmly opposes any form of political manipulation. China is the only country that has invited more than once WHO expert groups to come into the country to conduct joint origins study. China is also the only country that has organized multiple events for its experts to share progress on origins-tracing with WHO. On the  origins-tracing of COVID-19, China has shared more data and research findings and contributed more to worldwide COVID-19 origins study than any other country. WHO experts said on multiple occasions that the Chinese side granted full access to all sites, personnel and material they requested when conducting study in China, and that the level of openness and transparency in China is what they hadn’t expected. 

The international science community is now providing increasing clues that point possible COVID origins to various parts of the world, and a global perspective is needed to carry out origins-tracing work in multiple countries and regions. China stands ready to work with all parties to continue advancing global science-based origins-tracing study and make active contribution to better guard against infectious diseases in the future.
...

https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/fyrbt/lxjzh/202412/t20241231_11524824.html
​

 

[sharon sanders]

No. Actually the spokesperson is lying. The Wuhan market was cleaned up immediately with no outside observers. Only YEARS later did the China government disclose some information about the outbreak circumstances.

They are trying to re-write history. Probability and statistics do not support their allegations that SARS-Cov-2 developed and broke out in "various parts of the world".

Ridiculous. This is what you get with a dictatorship operating with a closed press.

 

[Pathfinder]

Translation Google

China quietly marks fifth anniversary of first Covid death

Jan 11, 2025 at 11:28 (UTC) Updated on Jan 11, 2025 at 11:32 (UTC) By AFP By Matthew Walsh, with Jeff Li in Hong Kong © 2025 AFP

The fifth anniversary of the first known death linked to the Covid-19 virus passed unnoticed in China on Saturday, with no official commemoration in a country where the pandemic remains a taboo subject.

On January 11, 2020, health authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan announced that a 61-year-old man had died from complications of pneumonia caused by a previously unknown virus.

The revelation came after authorities reported dozens of infections over several weeks with the pathogen later named SARS-CoV-2 and believed to cause the COVID-19 disease.

It then triggered a global pandemic that has so far killed more than seven million people and profoundly altered ways of life around the world, including in China.

On Saturday, Beijing's tightly controlled state media did not hold an official commemoration.

The ruling Communist Party has shut down public debate and avoided any discussion of the draconian restrictions since it radically abandoned them in late 2022.

On social media, many users seemed to be unaware of the anniversary. A few videos circulating on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) mention the date but repeat the official version of events.

"Time passes"

On the popular Weibo platform, users who gravitate toward the former account of Li Wenliang -- the whistleblower doctor who was investigated by police for spreading early information about the virus -- did not directly reference the anniversary.

"Dr. Li, another year has passed," one comment read on Saturday. "Time flies so quickly."

Online commemorations were also few in Hong Kong, where Beijing largely stifled opposition voices when it imposed a sweeping national security law on the semi-autonomous city in 2020.

Unlike other countries, China has not erected large monuments to those who lost their lives during the pandemic.

Little information has been released about the identity of the first Covid victim, other than that she was a frequent visitor to a Wuhan seafood market where the virus is believed to have circulated during the initial outbreak.

In the days after his death, other countries reported their first cases of the disease, showing that official efforts to contain its spread had failed.

China was subsequently criticized by Western governments for allegedly covering up the early transmission of the virus and erasing evidence of its origins, although Beijing has vehemently maintained that it acted decisively and transparently.

According to the WHO, China has officially reported nearly 100 million Covid cases and 122,000 deaths to date, although the true number will likely never be known.

https://information.tv5monde.com/sc...nniversaire-de-la-premiere-mort-liee-au-covid

 

[Pathfinder]

Why Was Dr. Fauci's Pardon Backdated to 2014?

Published Jan 21, 2025 at 1:32 PM EST

As one of his final acts before leaving the Oval Office, Joe Biden issued a sweeping preemptive pardon for Dr. Anthony Fauci, shielding the nation's former top infectious disease expert from possible legal scrutiny in the future.
...
While many assumed the pardon was engineered to shield Fauci, often referred to as "America's doctor," from MAGA retribution, the act of clemency raised eyebrows for another reason: Biden backdated the pardon to 2014, a date nearly six years before the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 emerged.

...The executive order, which covers actions dating back to January 1, 2014, ostensibly shields Fauci from allegations tied to U.S.-funded gain-of-function research in addition to his work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also protects him from retribution related to the theory, still unconfirmed, that COVID-19 "leaked" from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first identified, and that the U.S. government had knowledge of this at the time.
...

https://www.newsweek.com/anthony-fauci-pardon-gain-function-covid-china-2018478
​

 

[sharon sanders]

The intelligence agencies always knew......

Period.

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



C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins


A new analysis that began under the Biden administration is released by the C.I.A.’s new director, John Ratcliffe, who wants the agency to get “off the sidelines” in the debate.

Listen to this article · 7:21 min​


The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.

But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.

There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift, officials said. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months.

The analysis, however, is based in part on a closer look at the conditions in the high security labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak, according to people familiar with the agency’s work.
​

more...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/cia-covid-lab-leak.html