UPDATED🧵: A lot of new facts have emerged since I last did a thread on a possible lab escape of Covid-19, so I'm compiling some of the latest findings on the subject.
*All these are factual information which makes an unfettered investigation paramount*
A quick recap: It starts with an outbreak of severe unexplained pneumonia cases in 2012, which saw six miners hospitalized. Three of them died, and the cause for their illness was suspected to be due to "SARS-like CoV". The symptoms were almost indistinguishable from COVID-19.
In the past few months, it has been covered in most of the major media outlets, but here is the original post from May last year: (This thread is a goldmine )
From a 2016 PhD thesis supervised by Gao Fu, it became known that four of the miners had SARS positive antibodies. The author recommended a long-term sampling of the mine.
Note: The assay could be cross-reactive to different SARS-like CoVs.
In a nutshell: They haven't been forthcoming about their trips to the mine, the motive behind their trips, & all the CoVs they sampled. The project under which they sampled the mine (2013FY113500) was under review in Sep 2019, & the project database has been conveniently deleted.
2/ Many journalists have since tried to visit the mine, but were blocked under one pretext or another.
3/ On PREDICT, GVP & CVP: This is important because there was a renewed effort in 2018 to survey coronaviruses in South China, and find the viruses that could pass to humans.
The thing to note here, is that no data is available since the project started.
4/ On WIV Project Grants: This is vitally important because these are the specific research projects that WIV was actually doing prior to the outbreak:
- Determine the cross-species transmissibility of SARS-like coronaviruses between different hosts.
5/ On WIV Tenders: This is rarely discussed, and unless you've been following us, you've probably never heard of it -- critical WIV bio-safety installations were being upgraded/renovated in 2019, so something getting past the lab doesn't seem "unlikely".
9/ CAS Special Project 1: This is particularly noteworthy given that many of the WIV projects are thematically associated with this project, and can be explained in this context.
The project description is very interesting really:
In sum, whether or not the virus spilled over from WIV, there is an enormous information void surrounding these projects, and not only that but Chinese authorities and their western collaborators have gone to great lengths to prevent any further inquiry.
So whether you think lab origin is likely or not (it's a matter of opinion and IMO it's a reasonable and a better-supported theory, and I'm not even going into the genomic arguments), but these are uncontested facts, and it needs to be investigated thoroughly and honestly.
Bottom line: These are the specific research that was being done, review the records for these projects, examine lab operations, have direct access to the lab personnel, notebooks, tender documents, databases, stored virus samples and sequences, and resample the Mojiang mine.
Bonus: Timeline of Wuhan Institute of Virology projects and tenders (2018-2020)
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.
Ben Hu specialized in conducting experiments on humanized mice – in order to gain information about their potential transmissibility and danger to humans.
So I’ve been away for a while and probably for the first time, I think I’m behind the curve in the #OriginsofCOVID debate.
Some recent happenings led me back. Before I venture onto that, here’s a lil rundown, a repeat of sorts, of what I have been carrying with me all this time.
It’s late 2019 and hospitals in Wuhan were overflowing with patients having SARS-like symptoms. Strict measures were put in place to restrict the flow of information.
In early 2020, news started trickling out of China - and I distinctly remember watching it with horror.
Wuhan was far outside the hot zone where SARS-like coronaviruses of such kind had been previously identified.
Wuhan was also known to a specialized scientific community, as the home to an institute studying SARS-like viruses, especially the ones with pandemic potential.
One of the deeply under appreciated aspects of #OriginofCovid is that, according to EcoHealth docs, in 2018, WIV had over 180 viral strains that could bridge the gap between SARS2 and RaTG13/BANAL. Over 125 viral strains in the spike range of SARS2 (and could evade mAb/vaccines).
And thousands of samples from where the nearest relatives were found.
Add to this, the extensive US and Chinese state-funded projects in the 2018-19 timeframe, with the same kind of work (with live viruses in BSL-2 & -3) that could’ve led to SARS2.
Having some elementary knowledge of statistical probability, I would go so far as to say that while not impossible that some wild host brought it to Wuhan, the odds are like hitting a cosmic lottery.
So a number of other people have been saying the same thing—that they learnt of the Wuhan outbreak in early/mid-December 2019. See some examples below.
JP Prasad, who runs Alberta's supply procurement system "heard disturbing news about a 'strange flu' in Wuhan, in early December", and began stocking up on masks and equipments. edmontonjournal.com/opinion/column…
“Around December 20, 2019, I learned about the emergence of the coronavirus,” says a frontline doctor from a hospital in Xiaogan City, 66 kilometers away from Wuhan. archive.ph/MnZrn
- The precursor of SARS2 likely originated in bats in Yunnan/SE Asia.
- There is a direct and documented pathway from the regions where bats harbour these viruses to Wuhan, via WIV. Other ways of getting to Wuhan are possible.
- Wuhan Institute of Virology was the closest place where closely related viruses existed.
- We don’t know where the first cases occurred but it was first identified at the Huanan market after it came to the attention of the doctors in Wuhan in late December 2019.
- We don’t know when the outbreak really started but most studies indicate it was sometime between September and November 2019.
- Susceptible species were being sold at the Huanan market where some of the first (known) cases were identified.
Daszak examines his own coronavirus research in Wuhan, and issues a clean bill of health for himself. You’ll just have to read it… theintercept.com/2022/03/11/cov…
Daszak: humanized mice experiments weren't conducted by us.
So EcoHealth helped WIV import ans successfully breed humanized mice in 2018 and we are supposed to believe that they didn’t do that work although it was already funded by NIH?
Daszak: WIV did not receive viruses from Southeast Asia.