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Update: WHO team visits P4 lab in Wuhan Institute of Virology - February 2021

Dr JJackson has posted the most detailed summary that I've seen about the origins of the famous RatG13 virus sample, which puts its discovery and evaluation into context.
He also points out that reanalysis of older blood samples should hopefully give a better understanding of the origins and spread of the virus among people.
He notes that Peter Daszak's analysis suggests over a million bat to human CoV transmissions annually, overwhelmingly duds, but by the evidence, one was not.
To me, that is the murky part of the process, the Covid spike mutation is large and so very human specific that it seems implausible, even with a million plus tries annually.

That aside, I thank Dr JJackson for his very helpful input, I just wish he could present the actual facts as above on Fox News and such, sites where the WHO report is already getting dismissed simply because the messenger has no credibility with many.
 
Just to be clear I am not a Dr. nor do I have any qualifications I have just been learning for my own interest. Most of the information on this has come from TWiV interviews with Linfa Wang and Peter Daszak both of whom have been on multiple times both before and after the pandemic started.
www.microbe.tv/twiv
 
?J’ai d? enterrer mes rats vivants, raconte l’?leveur de 36 ans, qui vit dans un petit village du Guangdong, dans le sud de la Chine. J’ai creus? un trou et je les ai ensevelis. Je n’ai pas eu le choix: on m’a subitement interdit de les vendre et je n’avais plus les moyens de les nourrir.?

Depuis mars, quelque 20 000 ?levages ont mis la cl? sous le paillasson. Le manque ? gagner pour les ?leveurs atteint 11 milliards de yuans (1,4 milliard de francs).

https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/chine-cherche-se-defaire-passion-animaux-exotiques

un tout petit Monsieur
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/钟南山

Le rat de bambou a ?galement ?t? soup?onn? par Zhong Nanshan, le chef du groupe d'experts de haut niveau de la Commission nationale de la sant? de Chine , comme l'une des sources de la nouvelle pneumonie ? coronavirus , mais il n'y a aucune preuve claire pour le prouver

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8...AB%B9%E9%BC%A0

je me demande s'il n'avait vraiment pas de preuve

2006-2011: Pr?sident de l'Association m?dicale chinoise

c'est quand m?me mieux que prof de philosophie, non ?
 
American on World Health Organization coronavirus investigation team dismisses US intelligence
  • Peter Daszak suggests President Joe Biden was only sceptical about the WHO’s trip to Wuhan because he ‘has to look tough on China’
  • Observers have criticised the inclusion of Daszak as the WHO mission’s sole American because he was affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology
The lone American on the
World Health Organization
coronavirus fact-finding mission in China dismissed US intelligence on the virus’ origins and urged the Biden administration to trust the WHO’s work amid criticism that the organisation is insufficiently independent from Beijing.

The comments from Peter Daszak, president of the research organisation EcoHealth Alliance, came after the Biden administration said on Tuesday that the US would
not accept
the WHO’s findings without first independently verifying them with its own intelligence and conferring with allies.
In a series of tweets responding to a South China Morning Post report on the administration’s comments, Daszak suggested President
Joe Biden
was only sceptical about the WHO’s trip to Wuhan because he “has to look tough on China”....


According to the science magazine Nature, Daszak has professional ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and had funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) suspended last year as a result.

Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, said Daszak was “famous” for his prior relationship and cooperation with the institute in Wuhan.

“I think people have legitimate concerns coming to his objectivity and comments,” she said. “His comments will certainly make Beijing happy.”....:tiphat:https://www.scmp.com/news/china/art...nization-coronavirus-investigation-team-urges
 
Is Daszak a US citizen? I thought he was British. I don't think you need US citizenship to lobby for US taxpayer funding.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9244211/WHO-attacks-AMERICA-Wuhan-whitewash.html
...
His expertise, which includes a hand in more than 300 scientific papers, has won prominence in global scientific and public health circles. He has, however, been the target of abuse over his stance and had suspicious white powder sent to his home.

Yet he is accused of bullying opponents by those that have clashed with him, who include Colin Butler, honorary professor of environmental health at the Australian National University. Butler edited a scientific journal with Daszak for three years.

‘He probably sincerely believes in his work but he has built an empire around the idea that zoonoses [animal to human infections] are the most important thing in the world,’ said Butler.

‘He has also worked with the Wuhan Institute in what is reportedly gain of function research.’

Butler, a former WHO adviser who has worked in China, published a paper last month in the Journal Of Human Security highlighting inconsistencies in the lab’s response and ‘striking’ circumstantial evidence giving credence to the possibility that Covid-19 escaped from a lab – including the location of the outbreak in Wuhan...
 
As the National International Collaboration Center, WIV facilitate medium- and long-term international collaboration with the approach to strengthen science and technology ties with European countries, to extend its collaboration with developing countries, as well as to explore the model of collaboration with developed countries like U.S.A, and to enhance collaboration and dialog with relevant international organizations.
After years of development, we have establishes a lot of international partnerships.
USA
University of Alabama
University of North Texas
EcoHealth Alliance
Harvard University
The National Institutes of Health, the United States
National Wildlife Federation
Canada
International Development Research Center
Europe
Um? University
Novo Nordisk Research Centre
Universit? d’Aix-Marseille
University of Duisburg-Essen
Institut Pasteur, France
University of Southampton
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Campus Univ, Spain
St George's University of London
Wagenigen Agriculture University
Lyon P4 Laboratory, France
AFSSAPS
AFNOR
INSERM Jean Merieux
Asia
Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore
Biological Research Center, Defense Science and Technology Organization, Pakistan
National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Japan
Institution Novartis, Singapore
National Engineering and Scientific Commission, Islambad
Africa
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology
Kenya National Museum
Australia
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization
International Organizations
European Union
Food and Agriculture Organization, UN
World Health Organization
http://english.whiov.cas.cn/International_Cooperation2016/Partnerships/

_____________________________________________________________________
Does a Doctor/Scientist's citizenship really matter?
We have seen lots of discrediting done on research, scientists, etc this past year.
I suppose the bickering over the coronavirus will continue for those who choose.
 
Wikipedia has him as English but I am fairly sure he said had applied for and received US citizen ship.
 
"Does a Doctor/Scientist's citizenship really matter?
We have seen lots of discrediting done on research, scientists, etc this past year.
I suppose the bickering over the coronavirus will continue for those who choose."

Mary, I’m not bickering, are you? Straw man and ad hominem attacks aren't helpful in furthering sincere communication. I’m examining whether media reports are factual. I think the WHO team should have had a representative from the Americas. If Daszak is not a citizen of a country in North or South America, we were not represented in spite of being deeply affected by this pandemic.

When it comes to scientific qualifications and being free of conflicts of interest, I would have wanted a scientist like Richard Ebright to at least have been part of the team and able to share his independent opinion after the visit.
 
Mary, the article does not address his citizenship. I did. Please don't refer to me as 'girl' in the future.

PS: These were the points the article made. The discrediting is coming from Daszak.

WHO attacks AMERICA after Wuhan whitewash: Investigator says US Covid outbreak intelligence is ‘wrong on many aspects’ and President Biden wants ‘to look tough on China’

Peter Daszak, one of WHO's investigators in Wuhan, has launched an extraordinary attack on US intelligence
He told people 'not to rely too much' on information coming from America and instead to 'trust' Chinese data
It comes after WHO probe concluded virus did not leak from Wuhan lab as US officials have suggested and instead threw its weight behind theories emanating from Beijing that it was imported on frozen meats
But Daszak has long-standing ties to lab at the centre of leak theories after funding its research for a decade
He has also led efforts to downplay leak theories, starting as far back as February 2020 in letter to The Lancet
 
Last edited:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...rly-as-october-following-a-who-investigation/
Suspicions mount that the coronavirus was spreading in China and Europe as early as October, following a WHO investigation


awoodward@insider.com (Aylin Woodward) 1 day ago
A growing body of evidence suggests the coronavirus was spreading globally months before the first cases in a Wuhan market captured global attention last December.

The World Health Organization sent an international team to China in January to investigate the virus' origins and when it started circulating.

The team assessed medical records from more than 230 clinics across Hubei - the province where Wuhan is located - to look for clues. More than 90 patients in the province were hospitalized with pneumonia or coronavirus-like symptoms in October and November 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

This finding lends credence to other research from China that shows people were getting sick in Wuhan in November and early December. One analysis, based on satellite images of Wuhan hospitals and online searches for COVID-19 symptoms in the area, suggested the virus may have started circulating there as early as late summer...
 
When it comes to trying to discredit statements or positions taken by scientific data, individual scientists or nation states the data coming out of China from the outset has suffered from repeated attacks in the Western press with the US and US president leading the charge.

Emily I do not know why you would prefer R Ebright on a team looking at the origin of SARS-CoV-2 as I have never heard of him or seen his name in anything I have read, I had to look him up. Wikipedia shows an impressive body of work but with little relevance to the question of viral emergence, neither virus or zoonosis appear anywhere. P Daszak on the other hand is an epidemiologist who has worked on bat corona virus zoonosis in China and is probably one of the 5 best suited people on the planet to have on this team. The fact that he has knows and has worked with WIV I would view as a distinct plus as they are the experts. I have to agree with Daszak that the US intelligence report which attempted to blame WIV and the Chinese was a work of fiction that wove suspicion into a hypothesis that failed to pass the laugh test. It was a sad attempt to allocated blame with no hard evidence underpinning it.
 
JJackson, I see the investigation of the pandemic origin as sad and lacking, but nothing laughable about it. The fact that Ebright is not well known is testimony to how suppressed the issue of laboratory safety is.

https://sas.rutgers.edu/news-a-even...-leading-critic-of-labs-that-handle-pathogens
Richard H. Ebright has been known for his research at Rutgers University in two key areas: bacterial RNA synthesis and antibacterial drug discovery.

But readers of the New York Times, Washington Post, and other national news media may recognize Ebright’s name for another reason: This molecular biologist has emerged as a leading critic of safety and security practices at laboratories that conduct research on pathogens.

In 2014, Ebright testified before Congress after a spate of accidents at federal labs, including one in which personnel at the Centers for Disease Control were exposed to anthrax. He has continued to speak out over the last two years about what he describes as a dangerous lack of oversight.

Ebright, a Board of Governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, recently was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In the interview below, he talks about the origins of the problems and what it will take to solve them...
 
China Refuses to Give WHO Raw Data on Early Covid-19 Cases

Officials withhold personalized information on patients that could help determine pandemic’s origins

Lab Theory ‘Extremely Unlikely’: What WHO Team Learned in Wuhan

Lab Theory ‘Extremely Unlikely’: What WHO Team Learned in WuhanThe World Health Organization’s mission to Wuhan said the coronavirus most likely spread naturally to humans through an animal. WSJ’s Jeremy Page reports on what scientists learned during their weekslong investigation. Photo: Thomas Peter/Reuters
By
Jeremy Page
and
Drew Hinshaw
Feb. 12, 2021 12:23 pm ET
BEIJING—Chinese authorities refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw, personalized data on early Covid-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China, according to WHO investigators who described heated exchanges over the lack of detail.

The Chinese authorities turned down requests to provide such data on 174 cases of Covid-19 that they have identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. The investigators are part of a WHO team that this week completed a monthlong mission in China aimed at determining the origins of the pandemic.

Chinese officials and scientists provided their own extensive summaries and analysis of data on the cases, said the WHO team members. They also supplied aggregated data and analysis on retrospective searches through medical records in the months before the Wuhan outbreak was identified, saying that they had found no evidence of the virus.

But the WHO team wasn’t allowed to view the raw underlying data on those retrospective studies, which could allow them to conduct their own analysis on how early and how extensively the virus began to spread in China, the team members said. Member states typically provide such data as part of WHO investigations, said team members.

“They showed us a couple of examples, but that’s not the same as doing all of them, which is standard epidemiological investigation,” said Dominic Dwyer, an Australian microbiologist on the WHO team. “So then, you know, the interpretation of that data becomes more limited from our point of view, although the other side might see it as being quite good.”..:tiphat:https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-refuses-to-give-who-raw-data-on-early-covid-19-cases-11613150580
 
...The World Health Organization just gave China’s dictators a huge public relations victory in the COVID-19 pandemic, consistent with how it has bowed to them from the start.

A WHO scientific team that was finally allowed into Wuhan and the live animal market where the first cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed more than a year ago, has emerged after a two-week visit to announce everything China’s dictators could have wanted.


First, they said they still don’t know the origin of the pandemic, not surprising since that would have been hard to determine if they’d been allowed into China to do research back in January 2020 at the start of the outbreak, as opposed to more than a year later......That goes back to the start, when WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was praising China for its openness and transparency, while Chinese authorities were arresting doctors in Wuhan who were accurately telling their colleagues that COVID-19 was spreading by human transmission.

Instead, the WHO used its Twitter account to publicize China’s official claim at the beginning of the pandemic that there was no clear evidence COVID-19 was capable of human transmission, which was wrong.....:tiphat:https://edmontonsun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-who-hands-china-a-pandemic-win
 
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced that, through its investigation in China into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, it determined it was “extremely unlikely” that COVID-19 originated from a lab environment.

The WHO made the announcement after visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has been at the center of the “lab-leak” theory which posits that COVID-19 may have originated from a lab after being genetically modified as a part of “gain-of-function research.” Later the same week, the WHO backtracked, saying that “all possibilities” were still on the table regarding the origin of the virus.

...The conflicts of interest casting a shadow over the investigation have been well documented. Investigative :magnify:team member Peter Daszak was responsible for funneling National Institutes of Health grant money to the WIV. House Republicans concluded that the WHO enabled China’s coverup of the early stages of the pandemic. The WHO has routinely praised China for its “transparency” in dealing with the pandemic, a notion which is harshly contradicted by reality....:tiphat:https://dailycaller.com/2021/02/12/...-covid-19-coronavirus-origin-lab-leak-theory/
 
On WHO trip, China refused to hand over important data
  • 1 HOUR AGO
BEIJING (NYTIMES) - Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, independent investigators for the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Friday (Feb 12).

The investigators, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan,said disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.

China's continued resistance to revealing information about the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, the scientists say, makes it difficult for them to uncover important clues that could help stop future outbreaks of such dangerous diseases.

"If you are data focused, and if you are a professional," said Dr Thea Kolsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, then obtaining data is "like for a clinical doctor looking at the patient and seeing them by your own eyes."

For 27 days in January and February, the team of 14 experts for the WHO led the mission to trace the origins of the pandemic. Several say their Chinese counterparts were frustrated by the team's persistent questioning and demands for data.

Chinese officials urged the WHO team to embrace the government's narrative about the source of the virus, including the unproven notion that it might have spread to China from abroad, according to several members of the team. The WHO scientists responded that they would refrain from making judgments without data.....

And they were criticised already for handing the Chinese side a public relations victory at a closing news conference by endorsing the contentious idea that the virus might have spread by frozen food products....
LONG STORY..:tiphat:https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/e...rip-china-refused-to-hand-over-important-data
 
U.S. Expresses ‘Deep Concerns’ Over China Withholding Data From Pandemic Investigators

National security adviser says it is imperative World Health Organization report be free of China’s intervention

By
Alex Leary
Feb. 13, 2021 11:53 am ET

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration issued a formal statement criticizing China over refusing to provide World Health Organization pandemic investigators with data on early Covid-19 cases that could help explain how the virus spread.

“We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the Covid-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement issued on Saturday. “It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government.”

“To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make available its data from the earliest days of the outbreak,” Mr. Sullivan said.

more...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-exp...rs-11613235225
 
I am just reading some of the comments in post #16.......

1) Citizenship can be a factor because a scientist is beholding to the laws of their country. For instance, a person who is a citizen of China can commit the crime of destabilizing the social order even if that citizen is not in China at the time. It is a serious law and violations can result in incarceration. It is fair to discuss citizenship in this regard.
2) ALWAYS follow the money. Most people are dependent on money for food, housing, etc. Generally they will respond to those that have paid their bills.
3) I never believe a sole scientific opinion. From experience I have learned that for every scientific opinion, there is an opposing one. I try to assemble a preponderance of opinions/evidence.
4) Use your common sense.
 
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