Thread by @EpochTimes

News Analysis🔎Shi Zheng-li, director of the #WuhanLab, is the common thread through which many key #GainOfFunction experiments on coronaviruses are connected.

Her work shows a curious pattern of deception tracing through her publications. (Thread👇) theepochtimes.com/scientists-obf…

In 2002, the #SARS outbreak resulted in the deaths of 774 people worldwide.

The SARS outbreak would prove to shape Shi’s career, moving from field research to work in level 2 biosafety labs before culminating in gain-of-function experiments in the #WuhanLab.

Her search for the originating source of the #SARS outbreak began in 2004.

Shi’s early research was captured in a 2005 article in which she reported that “that species of bats are a natural host of coronaviruses closely related to those responsible for the SARS outbreak.”

Shi and her team would continue their search for the source of the 2002 outbreak for years and the samples her team collected were sent back to the #WuhanLab for analysis and further experimentation.

In 2011 and 2012, Shi and her team conducted a “12-month longitudinal survey” of a colony of horseshoe bats “at a single location in Kunming city, Yunnan province, China.” This single location was Shitou Cave.

While Shi and her team were conducting their survey at Shitou Cave, an unrelated group of 6 workers began clearing bat excrement from a copper mine shaft in Mojiang, Yunnan—approximately 200 miles away from Shi’s group—according to The Sunday Times.

In April 2012, according to @WSJ, these 6 workers became seriously ill from a pneumonia-like disease that resulted in the deaths of 3 of the men.

Notably, all of the public reports state that the mine shaft was abandoned, but none of these same reports explain why the 6 miners…

…were there to clean the shaft out.

There was no media mention of this strange, isolated outbreak, and as the Sunday Times notes, there “appears to have been a media blackout” surrounding the entire incident.

Shi and her team abruptly shifted both their focus and location and spent the next 2 years collecting samples from bats located in the mine at the Mojiang location.

A virus allegedly found in one of these samples was later revealed to be the closest known match for #COVID19.

The more complete tale unfolds in an examination of 5 articles in Western science journals which Shi and her research collaborators published between 2013 and 2020.

Their 2013 paper specifically noted the possibility of direct transmission to humans from bats.

The paper also referred to the “first recorded isolation” of a live #SARS-like coronavirus known as WIV1—apparently shorthand for Wuhan Institute of Virology 1.

The virus was isolated from fecal samples taken from the horseshoe bats.

By this time, Shi had spent almost two years collecting bat samples from the Mojiang Mine.

In her scientific papers, notably, no mention is made of the mine, the 2012 outbreak, nor of the miners or their deaths.

More specifically, Shi’s 2013 paper, along with a follow-up paper in November 2015, appeared to intentionally conceal her years-long work at the Mojiang Mine along with the crucial fact that the mine was the true source for the closest known relative to #COVID19.

A 2015 article by Shi noted that “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence.”

The researchers stated that their work “suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.”

In a follow-up article, Shi admitted that she obtained a virus called RaBtCoV/4991 from 276 bat fecal probes that “were sampled in a mineshaft in Mojiang.”

As we now know, the RaBtCoV/4991 virus has been shown to be the closest known match for #COVID19.

Of the many articles written regarding their multi-year work, only the 2016 piece acknowledges the existence of the Mojiang Mine.

And, again, nowhere does Shi or her team make any mention of the actual outbreak and the deaths of 3 of 6 infected miners.

Shi’s years-long possession of the virus found in the Mojiang Mine was suddenly highlighted on Feb. 3, 2020, when Shi and her collaborators published a new article, stating that scientists at the #WuhanLab had a close match to the virus that causes #COVID19.

In November 2020, as more facts were uncovered in relation to #COVID19’s origin, Shi suddenly added an addendum to her February 2020 article, finally admitting that the virus’s closest known relative had come from the Mojiang Mine.

Notably, Shi’s 2020 article also alleged that the #Pandemic had “started from a local seafood market.”

That false claim, which has been disproven, was not addressed in Shi’s addendum.

Although it is not yet known precisely why Shi obscured the true origins of RaBtCov/4911 and obfuscated her 2013 discovery, it is undeniable that Shi quietly kept the closest known relative to #COVID19 in her #WuhanLab for at least 7 years.

/END/ theepochtimes.com/scientists-obf…