COVID: summary of lab-origin hypothesis:

1) Pandemic caused by bat SARS-like coronavirus emerged in Wuhan--city 1,000 km from nearest wild bats with SARS-CoV-2-like coronaviruses, but that contains labs conducting world's largest research program on bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
2) In 2015-2017, scientists and science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was conducting and contemplating research that posed an unacceptable risk of lab accident and pandemic (nature.com/articles/natur…;
nature.com/articles/natur…),
3) In 2017-2018, WIV constructed a novel chimeric SARS-like coronavirus that was able to infect and replicate in human airway cells and that had 10,000x enhanced viral growth and 4x enhanced lethality in mice engineered to display human receptors on cells.
4) In 2018, in an NIH grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct more novel chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses, targeting chimeras that replace natural spike gene with novel spike genes encoding spikes that have higher binding affinities to human cells.
5) Also in 2018, in a DARPA grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct novel "consensus" bat SARS-like coronaviruses, and to insert furin cleavage site (FCS) sequences at the spike gene S1-S2 border of bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
6) In 2017-2019, WIV constructed and characterized novel SARS-like coronaviruses at biosafety level 2, a biosafety level patently inadequate for work with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and patently inadequate to contain a virus having transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2
7) In 2019 a novel SARS-like coronavirus having a spike with high binding affinity for human cells, and having an FCS at the spike S1-S2 border--a virus having the properties set forth in the 2018 WIV NIH and DARPA grant proposals--emerges on the doorstep of WIV.
8) SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of more than 100 known SARS-like coronaviruses that contains an FCS. This is a feature that does not rule out a natural origin, but that is more easily explained by a lab origin. Especially since insertion of FCS had been explicitly proposed in 2018.
9) The FCS of SARS-CoV-2 has codon usage unusual for bat SARS-related coronaviruses and has an 8-of-8 amino-acid-sequence identity to the FCS of human ENaCa. These are features that do not rule out a natural origin, but that are more--much more--easily explained by a lab origin.
10) In 2020-present, WIV and its funders/collaborators at EcoHealth Alliance have withheld information, misrepresented facts, and obstructed investigation...even though, if not connected to origin, they most easily could clear their name though cooperation with investigation.
All statements in all posts are demonstrable facts.

Sources for posts 1-2 include the following:

1) Shi Zhengli interview at science.org/pb-assets/PDF/…

2) nature.com/articles/natur…;
nature.com/articles/natur…

3) NIH documents at theintercept.com/document/2021/… and republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/upl…
Sources for posts 4-7 include the following:

4) NIH documents at theintercept.com/document/2021/…

5) DARPA documents at documentcloud.org/documents/2106…

6) Shi Zhengli interview at
science.org/pb-assets/PDF/…

7) nature.com/articles/s4158…

8)
More complete information, and more sources, are provide in Appendix 1 of US Senate testimony at hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
(The rationale for reposted thread is that some have requested minor revision of wording and listing of sources. Was happy to comply.)

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More from @R_H_Ebright

Sep 5
COVID: summary of lab-origin hypothesis:

1) Pandemic caused by a bat SARS-like coronavirus emerged in Wuhan--a city 1,000 miles from nearest wild bats with SARS-like coronaviruses, but that contains labs conducting world's largest research program on bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
2) In 2015-2017, scientists and science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was conducting and contemplating research that posed an unacceptable risk of lab accident and pandemic (nature.com/articles/natur…;
nature.com/articles/natur…),
3) In 2017-2018, WIV constructed a novel chimeric SARS-like coronavirus that was able to infect and replicate in human airway cells and that had 10,000x enhanced viral growth and 4x enhanced lethality in mice engineered to display human receptors on cells.
Read 11 tweets
Sep 2
"Richard Ebright..believes..wildlife monitoring could actually increase the risk of an outbreak. 'The possibility that sars-CoV-2 entered humans as a direct result of the activities of PREDICT..cannot be excluded,' he told me."

newyorker.com/science/annals…
"As for whether the Global Virome Project will improve on PREDICT’s efforts, he said, “expanding a program that at best was an expensive failure would be frank insanity. One could not possibly invest research funding less wisely.”
"In an ideal world, viruses would be predictable. We would discover..new one.., analyze it.., determine..pandemic potential..But looking at..virus in..lab will tell you only so much. Even if it appears to have all the..pieces..that’s only part of..picture, Mark Denison..told me"
Read 10 tweets
Aug 30
Structural basis of Rho-dependent transcription termination

(Preprint by our laboratory. Posted 08/28/22.)

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
"Functional Rho pre-termination complexes contain a closed-ring Rho hexamer, have RNA threaded through the Rho channel, have 60 nt of RNA interacting specifically with the exterior of Rho and 6 nt of RNA interacting specifically with the Rho channel...."
"....have Rho oriented relative to RNA polymerase such that ATP-hydrolysis-dependent translocation by Rho exerts mechanical force on RNA polymerase, and have transcription elongation factor NusG bridging Rho and RNA polymerase...."
Read 4 tweets
Aug 29
"The lack of new antibiotics..has been an ongoing issue..Best practices include prescribing them sparingly and using..older ones first to preserve..effectiveness of..newer ones. Those protocols are mismatched with the..profit model for pharmaceuticals."

post-gazette.com/news/politics-…
"'The current drug market dynamics, which is..based on getting reimbursed based on..volume of sales..doesn't work for antibiotics,' said David Hyun..at..Pew Charitable Trusts. 'That is the main reason..major pharmaceutical companies have left..field of antibiotic development.'"
"Currently, antibiotics take 10 to 15 years, and about $1.3 billion, to bring to market. Some companies have gone bankrupt in the process, and 'many potentially lifesaving drugs end up falling into an antibiotic valley of death,' Pew researchers wrote."
Read 5 tweets
Aug 29
"Fauci sits at the..top of America’s biodefence infrastructure. And contrary to the notion..he is a..string-puller of the Democratic party, it was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who not only put Fauci there but created the..framework..[he] commands."

unherd.com/2022/08/how-di…
"Few people in America today are as..polarising as Anthony Fauci. For the Left, Fauci is a..cool-headed scientist..On the Right, he is a Deep State operative who destroyed..lives..The reality is that both narratives fundamentally misunderstand the position Fauci occupies"
"To understand the rise of Fauci, and his legacy as he retires this year, we must return to the first months of the 2000s, when a hawkish new administration was settling into power."
Read 24 tweets
Aug 25
@martinenserink @sciencecohen Yes. A post-truth dispatch foprm @sciencecohen.

Assertion:
"FACT: Neither Carlson nor anyone else has presented evidence that Fauci has committed any crime."

Reality:
Fauci lied to Congress on multiple occasions, and lying to Congress is a crime.
@martinenserink @sciencecohen Assertion:
"FACT:..[T]the engineered viruses were distant relatives of SARS-CoV-2 and could not have been manipulated to create it"

Reality:
"NIH has received no information on novel..SARS-related viruses constructed by EcoHealth..and its Wuhan partners subsequent to,,2018..."
@martinenserink @sciencecohen "....[T]herefore..the NIH cannot rule out the possibility that the project created a proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2, and cannot even rule out the possibility that the project used NIH funding to create a proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2."

hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
Read 6 tweets

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