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The Seeker Profile picture
@TheSeeker268
Jan 18, 2022 • 39 tweets • 16 min read • Read on X
It’s been more than 2 years since the world learned of the novel coronavirus outbreak, but the most important questions about its origin are still unanswered.

So here is a list of questions that grows more pressing by the day—this is going to be a long thread, so stick with me.
1/ One of the most enduring mystery: The 2012 Mojiang outbreak. Why weren't the cases reported in the China CDC statistics? Why did WIV leave out the miners from their papers? Why isn't the medical data/samples released for independent analysis? Why hasn't WHO resampled the mine?
2/ If RaTG13 really came from a fecal swab, how are the bacterial reads so low?

(There are so many anomalies wrt RaTG13 that it probably deserves a long separate thread.)
kamounlab.medium.com/the-triumphs-o…
preprints.org/manuscript/202…
preprints.org/manuscript/202…
arxiv.org/abs/2111.09469
3/ 7896-clade of viruses from Mojiang: Why did Yu Ping et al. didn’t disclose an entirely new lineage of SARS-like viruses that they had already characterized by 2019, and which at the time were the nine closest viruses to SARS-CoV-2?
4/ Why did Shi and others at WIV didn’t mention the furin cleavage site when they published their key Nature paper on the genomic analysis of SARS-CoV-2?

Alina Chan said it best:
**Any resemblance to actual proposals to insert furin cleavage site in SARS-like viruses is purely coincidental.
5/ The still missing “WIV15” live isolate. Why hasn’t WIV shared anything about it in their published papers?
6/ The pangolin papers: Why were four studies on pangolin coronaviruses all released within the same 2-3 days (Feb 18-20), and all using the same pangolin datasets?
7/ Where are the still missing Latinne et al. sequences? The first draft of Latinne et al. submitted in October 2019 might be informative.
8/ Why hasn’t WIV/EcoHealth shared any data on SARS-like viruses sampled post-2016?
From FOIA’ed documents and letters, we know that bat samples from Yunnan and SE Asian countries were being sent to WIV in the years leading up to the outbreak, providing the most plausible link between these habitats and Wuhan. ImageImageImageImage
9/ Why did Shi alter the title and keywords of WIV’s viral pathogen database sometime around December 30th? Two years on, why has the WIV databases never been shared with the international community? ImageImage
10/ How did China CDC miss the early COVID cases despite having completed the world’s largest direct reporting system for infectious disease by June 2019?
web.archive.org/web/2020030516…
web.archive.org/web/2021052200… ImageImage
11/ Why the official record of the 1st confirmed COVID case - with a reported onset date of November 17 - have never been made public?

As per SCMP which had access to the official data, 266 people were infected in 2019, including at least 9 in November.
scmp.com/news/china/soc…
12/ By mid-December, news of the Wuhan outbreak had reached several researchers, including Ron Fouchier, Ian Lipkin, Lawrence Gostin & Osamah Alwalid.

So, if it were known to certain communities, how can Chinese authorities have missed it? The official story doesn't make sense. ImageImageImageImage
13/ The December 11 spike in WeChat index for the term ‘novel coronavirus’. Kind of odd considering no one in China is supposed to have known about a 'novel coronavirus' outbreak back then.
14/ As per Zhang Dingyu, director of Wuhan Jinyintan hospital, WIV had received a virus sequence on Dec 27th. They compared the sequence and found a "high agreement" with a bat SARS-like coronavirus.

Wonder why WIV officials never mentioned this.
15/ WIV had produced its own reverse genetics system in 2017, making it possible to genetically engineer coronaviruses without leaving obvious traces. Did they make any further advances as envisaged in the 2017 WIV thesis?
Image
16/ 2017 WIV thesis: Did WIV go “determining in the laboratory whether recombination occurs after co-infection with different SL-CoV strains and what new strains may arise" post-2017?
It was quite possible that SARS-CoV-2 is a lab chimera which inadvertently infected a researcher, as Ralph Baric had postulated.
17/ Project DEFUSE: Did the Wuhan scientists carried out the project, even without funds from DARPA?
Without doubt, WIV had already carried out some experiments which were part of the DEFUSE proposal.
In 2018, WIV received several new research funding, and could’ve followed through on their plans. (These grant proposals would be the ideal documents to get.)

Anyone who thinks China needs US funding to do what they have been up to, has his head in sand.
18/ What happened to the China Virome Project for which funding was already made available in 2018? Work plans were ready by 2019 (PREDICT 2019 semi-annual report), and there were job adverts in mid-2019.
19/ Where are the published studies describing the experiments involving civets and humanized mice at WIV in 2019?
science.org/pb-assets/PDF/… Image
20/ EcoHealth grant document: "we will identify approximately 20 viruses that will be used for mouse infection experiments. This will require a total of 80 mice over the study period."

If you aren't wondering why we've read nothing of it, you need to be. Image
21/ Audit trail: “WIV will implemented an "audit trail" that tracks animals used in experimental investigations (Aim 3) from parents, through birth, shipment, experimentation, results, QC and analyses, providing outside researchers the ability to track experiments..” Where is it? Image
21/ Cell lines: WIV had established several cell lines for culturing live viruses.

As per the EHA grant, "records are maintained for each of the cell lines regarding the origin of the cell lines; when they were resuscitated; number of passages; all test results.." Where is it? ImageImageImageImage
Before WIV's NSDC database was scrubbed off the internet, it listed 57 types of cell lines. It's really high time for WIV/EcoHealth to disclose the different cell lines they were using.
Oops, I messed up the thread. It picks up here. (Should be #22)
23/ Where is this catalogue of novel SARSr-CoV strains “different from SARS-CoV with diversity ranges of 10-25%” in the spike protein?

As per the DEFUSE proposal, approximately 15-20 bat SARSr-CoV spike proteins were characterized per year.
Image
**Important to note, the difference in spike protein between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV is ~24%. Image
24/ EHA submitted its Y4 progress report in Sept 2020, 2 years after when the report should have been submitted. Why? Same for the Y5 report, which was submitted in August 2021, two years late.

Were there earlier versions that was replaced by EcoHealth?
25/ Why did EcoHealth make a wire transfer of $195K to Institute of Microbiology, CAS in 2019, although the institute wasn’t part of the NIH grant? ...but which incidentally was leading the 2018 CAS “Special Project”.
26/ WIV had a collaborative project with EcoHealth on ‘Viruses and Genetic Resource Database’. Did this database contain the >180 novel SARS-related viruses mentioned in the DEFUSE proposal?

This data is vitally important.
Image
27/ Private emails between top experts reveal that they had strong suspicions that the virus didn’t evolve naturally.But NIH leaders seeked to shut down public discussions of the possibility. In just 3 days following a teleconference, the experts told just the opposite in public.
Which brings me to the last question, and one of the most piquant: What made them change their mind so quickly? Why won’t the participants release the unredacted emails?

If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding it?
PS: There is practically no single reliable point that points to a purely zoonotic cause of the pandemic, while the circumstantial evidence of a lab-origin is overwhelming. The lab-origin theory, which wasn't taken seriously for a long time, must be pursued with vigor.
Might as well add this to the thread.

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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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