"That would mean China bears some accountability for the outbreak.. that would also mean the U.S. govt had a big role in supporting the research that resulted in the pandemic.. If Redfield is right, the current response plan could greatly increase..the risk of another pandemic."
"We must begin a difficult, uncomfortable conversation about this investigation’s scope and the vast implications if the theory is true..the entire genre of research..known as gain-of-function research.., needs to be thoroughly reexamined." says @R_H_Ebright.
"The very fact that it could have been of laboratory origin, even if that cannot be substantiated, means we need to understand that there is risk in this research that may have triggered the current pandemic and surely could trigger a future pandemic,” said @R_H_Ebright.
On GVP, he says "The plan is, having failed to predict and having possibly triggered the current pandemic, to increase the scale six times...But most scientists involved in virus research are beholden to the current system & therefore silent or defensive."
Only after the sequence identity of RaTG13 with BatCoV/4991, and the miners pneumonia connection was pointed out several times, Shi and her team confirmed this nine months later in an addendum to their original @nature article.
SARS-CoV-2 is thus related to a coronavirus that caused six cases of SARS-like pneumonia in miners, as early as in 2012, and from which samples were collected and stored in the institute in Wuhan.
What is certain is that bats and other animals, were and are kept in the Wuhan labs, and that they have one of the world's most extensive collections of bat coronaviruses.
It is also certain that WIV received funding from the NIH to study and work specifically on SARSr-CoVs collected from South China, and which had the potential to jump over to humans.
It is also proven that one of the WHO team member orchestrated statements and and carried out maneuvers to distort the search for what really happened. So there's that.
This is an excellent dissection of the faulty reasoning in the 'Proximal Origin' paper, and they lay out the reasons why lab spillover of Covid-19 remains a possibility and should not be excluded.
Some choice quotes: "The authors only prove the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is not ideal for binding to human ACE2 receptors. This doesn’t tell us anything about whether the virus was actually manipulated, or for which purpose."
They don't "take into consideration more recent literature — new techniques to engineer coronaviruses have emerged after 2014 – or even the possibility that unpublished techniques could have been used to engineer SARS-CoV-2." ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Daszak: We met with them. We said, "Do you audit the lab?" And they said, "Annually." "Did it you audit it after the outbreak?" "Yes." "Was anything found?" "No." "Do you test your staff?" "Yes."
Daszak: "We didn't see any evidence of any false reporting or cover-up in the work that we did in China."
No waaay...
False reporting or cover-up in China??????? It's not like there are plenty of motive on their part to cover it up!!!!
No Waaaaayyy....
"If the virus originated in animals, one of the mysteries has been: how did it travel the thousand miles from the bat caves in southern China to Wuhan?"
Professor Didiar Sicard: "the WHO mission in China is just a sham.. I was very shocked that people agreed to take on this mission, especially since there are conflicts of interest." franceculture.fr/amp/sciences/d…
"I find that when the WHO agrees to carry out an almost supervised mission, it is a little as if the killer was participating in the investigation into the crime, and that it was he who decided whether the police should open such and such a door!"
"They always remind us that we cannot rule out the laboratory trail.. This is why international teams free to do so should carry out real investigative work. It's not just about going to a lab, making a visit and asking, “So what were the precautionary measures you were taking?""
Filippa: “This was not an independent investigation. This was a joint China-WHO investigation, which means it was very political from the start. You see it in the terms of the agreement. This can be seen in the selection of the team's experts."
Metzl: "since one of the main possible theories is an accidental escape from the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, any scientist who has been involved in this type of collaboration should not be part of the investigation."