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The Seeker Profile picture
@TheSeeker268
Oct 7, 2020 • 36 tweets • 12 min read • Read on X
A thread on the origins of COVID-19, and a possible bio-containment failure at one of the Wuhan labs.

I feel there are facts not enough people know about, so I decided to summarise the important & interesting ones in this post.
Like every stellar suspence thriller, it starts with mysterious deaths that needs to be solved.

To solve this puzzle, we must go back to April 2012, in Mojiang county, where six miners contracted a SARS-like pneumonia, and three of them died.

In the same month & year of the outbreak, there was an USAID/PREDICT bat sampling project in Mojiang. (I strongly suspect they were the one's who hired the miners to clean the mineshaft for one of their project.)

In July 2012, a few months after the mineshaft pneumonia outbreak, their was a 6-month disease control work in Mojiang county.
web.archive.org/web/2020060810…
More high profile visits to Mojiang by China CDC officials were made later on:
web.archive.org/web/2020060810…
web.archive.org/web/2020060810…
(Was there a bigger outbreak that they were trying to control?)
Oddly enough, the atypical pneumonia cases among the miners didn't make it to the official CDC statistics for 2012, which definitely suggests a cover-up to me.

In another case, a Thai tourist in Yunnan died of multiple organ failure caused by "unexplained pneumonia" in 2013. The symptoms were similar, and he was admitted to the same hospital for treatment as the miners.

Even this case wasn't included in the official China CDC statistics.

archive.is/8YUge
Around the same time, China's Ministry of Science & Technology initiated a project (2013FY113500) to identify and investigate viral pathogens and its relation with major infectious diseases.

A multi-year bat surveillance project was carried out in that exact mine by multiple labs across China (including WIV & China CDC).

You can read this in significant more detail, here:

The medical thesis (2013):
PhD thesis (2016):
The 2013 medical thesis, from a Kunming Medical University doctor who treated the miners, concluded that the pneumonia was caused by SARS-like coronavirus from Rhinolophus sinicus.

The miners' pneumonia cases were clinically virtually identical to COVID-19.

Other essential parts of the mystery, like when was the last trip to the mineshaft, how many samples were collected, and how many were cultured/isolated, remain elusive.

WIV was asked to provide the samples for RaTG13, but they declared that they no longer have it.
To add to this mystery, the viral database for Project 2013FY113500 has been taken down, exactly what I would hope if they had something to hide.



(Archived version of the database: web.archive.org/web/2020042021…)
Next clue in the mystery, Project 2013FY113500 was under review by China's MoST before a 30 September deadline, last year. Part of it was *state secret*

A detailed summary of a proposed spillover event during this review of samples, can be read here:

As per another MoST tender over 11 July-13 Sept 2019, winners were required to identify 5 major novel viral pathogens from wild animals and carry out a biosecurity risk assessment by testing them on small animals.

Access to WIV pathogen database was restricted on Sep 12, coinciding with the last day of the tender.

WIV still hasn't explained why did they restrict access to their pathogen databases.
All of these leads me to suspect that there was a possible bio-containment failure at one of their labs around Sept-Oct 2019. Factor these:

Mysterious blips in Google search for the terms Coronavirus and SARS, in Hubei province in September 2019

psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/long…
There was a tender for an "Emergency" purchase of virus detection kits in September last year. It contains orders for 40,500 PCR kits (including for Coronaviruses).

Two tenders by Wuhan CDC for disposing 2.5 Tons (2 + 0.5) of hazardous bio-chemical waste from their labs (it's a lot!!)

whcdc.org/index.php/view…

whcdc.org/view/11192.html
They mention that the warehouses of the two companies which had relevant disposal qualifications had a fire in 2019, and had their license suspended.

(Where was the waste disposed off? Did they dispose it safely?)
On September 6, the Zhifang STP in Wuhan was officially shut down, & the sewage from the plant was directly transferred to the Jiangxia STP for advanced treatment. The Jiangxia STP is in very close proximity to the WIV lab complex.

There were multiple on-site lab safety inspections at Wuhan, during September last year.

archive.is/Ppwqs

archive.is/bxbRW

archive.vn/sp7WR#selectio…

archive.vn/D1SR7#selectio…
On Oct 2019 Hubei Health Commission gave license approval to numerous companies in Wuhan for making/procuring disinfectants, Sodium Hypochlorite, Pipelines, and Pipe fittings

They also released a new biosafety law in October last year.

asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks…
On Nov 2019, there was a tender for (among other things) Waste liquid sensing system with high sealing performance and automatic alarm

In Dec 2019, China's new "vaccine management law" was officially implemented in all BSL-3 & above labs

(Were the new biosafety laws, regulations, and on-site lab inspections a reaction to a probable spillover event?)
Phylogenetic studies also point towards the COVID-19 outbreak starting around Sept-Oct last year.

cam.ac.uk/research/news/…

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

preprints.org/manuscript/202…
There are serious doubts about RaTG13 and Pangolin CoVs, and the shady process by which they suddenly appeared.





And we have a virus extremely adapted to humans without any close intermediate version, neither in humans, nor in the animals.

Today, we have no plausible hypothesis to explain how the virus could have appeared in Wuhan in a natural way. But the fact that the epicenter was Wuhan, in close proximity to several virology labs specializing in CoVs, it is conceivable that the virus spilled from a laboratory.
There is no proof of a lab spillover, but the hypothesis is supported by robust circumstantial evidences and a long pattern of scientific misconduct by China-based researchers.
Scientific, media and forensic community needs to verify the possibility of a laboratory spillover.

Whichever side of the debate you stand on, I hope it mas more to do with fact-based science than your political beliefs. /End

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More from @TheSeeker268

The Seeker Profile picture
Nov 13
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. 🧵 Image
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.
Read 8 tweets
The Seeker Profile picture
Jun 26
🚨We obtained Hu Bingjie's 2018 WIV thesis, titled 'Evolutionary Mechanism of Adaptation of Bat SARS-like Coronaviruses to Host Receptor Molecules'

Key Findings: WIV is holding back 5 bat ACE2 sequences from Yunnan — 3 likely from Mojiang and 2 from Chuxiong.
Image
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…
Image
Of note: R. pusillus has been proposed as a likely host of SARS2’s progenitor.


ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…



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Read 10 tweets
The Seeker Profile picture
Jun 13
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…
Image
Read 10 tweets
The Seeker Profile picture
May 24
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.
Read 7 tweets
The Seeker Profile picture
May 21
🧵Thread on a project undertaken by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in collaboration with Chinese military researchers and other institutes. You've probably never read it before, in detail.

This thread requires patience and time, from those who are really interested.
So, the ‘major project’ as it was called, was launched in 2012, and funded by China’s state-run NSFC.

It was named: ‘’Discovery of animal-derived pathogens and their pathogenicity to humans” (Grant no. 81290340). archive.is/9c4Z8
Image
The project had 5 subject leaders: Shi Zhengli, Guodong Liang, Zhang Yongzhen, Cao Wuchun, and Xu Jianguo, with Xu Jianguo leading the charge.

This plan involved collecting samples from bats, rats, ticks, and mosquitoes over five years (2013-2017) .... archive.is/Q8Bb4
Image
Read 41 tweets
The Seeker Profile picture
Jun 20, 2023
WSJ has confirmed the names of the sick Wuhan researchers. This is perhaps the most important additional clue that has come to light. This also fits with all the other insights we have.

I’ll just try to put some perspective.
Ben Hu was part of the original DEFUSE proposal, and they planned to incorporate furin cleavage sites into SARS-like coronaviruses.

I think everyone knows this by now.
Ben Hu specialized in conducting experiments on humanized mice – in order to gain information about their potential transmissibility and danger to humans.
Read 9 tweets

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