“You can engineer a virus without leaving any trace. However, the answers you are looking for can only be found in the archives of the Wuhan laboratory." - Ralph Baric speaks for the first time in Italy in an interview granted to @Presa_Diretta
So you rule out that SARS-CoV-2 is a laboratory chimera?
"Not with the viruses that have been sequenced and reported to date."
Are the databases public?
“Yes, the sequences can be downloaded. But then, I can't know if the researchers publish every single sequence."
"In the databases were the sequences of a large number of SARS-like bat coronaviruses identified in China - explains Baric - And in that huge basin, one could imagine that there were strains that could have grown well in human cells.."
Could SARS-CoV-2 have come out of the Wuhan laboratory?
Perhaps we will never know, because the international investigation, which has been underway for months, has never started. And the Wuhan databases have disappeared.
In the archives of the network, we discovered that Professor Shi had made available to the scientific community a very rich database specialized in bat & rodent viruses that contained data on more than 20,000 samples & viruses collected over the years in different parts of China.
It reported very detailed information: the GPS coordinates of the sampling location, the type of virus found, whether the virus had been sequenced or isolated (ie grown in cell cultures).
The database provided for password access to consult data relating to viruses not yet published, with the only obligation not to disclose the information until the date of publication.
However, since June the entire page has been removed from the web. Even, according to a portal that monitors China's science databases, the data was inaccessible as early as September 12, 2019.
Why? What experiments were done in Wuhan?
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Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, co-authors of the Proximal Origins paper had testified that they had met with CIA agents. science.org/content/articl…
Just came across something striking: Wuchun Cao, a serving Colonel in the Chinese PLA, was a key presenter in the China Virome Project (part of the Global Virome Project).
This is really interesting. 🧵
If you've been following this story, the 'China Virome Project (CVP)' might ring a bell. For those who haven’t, here’s some background from @mattwridley and me: unherd.com/2022/04/did-vi…
So, what’s a PLA scientist like Wuchun Cao doing here?
For context, he was involved in a 'major project' with Shi Zhengli and now serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee at WIV.
The project was focused on identifying the next pandemic pathogen.
Interestingly, all the three unpublished ACE2 sequences (likely from Mojiang) are from R. pusillus.
According to EHA's R01 renewal, R. pusillus (Rpu) was among the most sampled species of bats. Yet, WIV has published next to nothing on Rpu's so far. ecohealthalliance.org/wp-content/upl…
Of note: R. pusillus has been proposed as a likely host of SARS2’s progenitor.
1/ Just musing here, but when the Mojiang miners died clearing bat droppings, it stands to reason that WIV would have left no stone unturned to investigate the cause, especially after they made advancements in NGS, genetically engineered cell lines and reverse genetics in 2017-18
2/ Li Xu, 2013: “the analysis of these 6 cases of unknown pneumonia..may be considered as follows: caused by "SARS-like CoV"
Wang, 2014: “it is likely that the 6 miners were infected with the pathogen carried by bats”
Canping, 2016: “4 people carried SARS virus IgG antibodies”
3/ WIV, 2017: “establish genetically engineered cell lines dedicated for virus isolation which will provide significant improvement over current cell lines..without having to relying on cytopathic effect (CPE) as all current methods do.” web.archive.org/web/2021081821…
Theory: In 2017, US lifted the #GoF moratorium. Subsequently, EcoHealth, through their DEFUSE proposal provided the WIV and parts of Chinese military with the necessary action plans and work protocols to create enhanced viruses. One of these enhanced viruses escaped the Wuhan lab
I'm not implying anything insidious here. My proposition is: WIV conducted the DEFUSE work using their own funding, with the involvement of Chinese military.
Did NIH fund this research? No.
Did NIH funding support the research? Likely, yes.
Did NIH know about it at the time? Idk
EHA/NIH funded research at WIV, which successfully modified bat coronaviruses previously unable to infect humans, and successfully modifed them to make them even more infectious in human-like cells.