The research group of former PLA scientist Yigang Tong has published a new paper showing a "pangolin" coronavirus (GX_P2V) variant is 100% fatal to hACE2 mice likely due to infection of the brain.
Although previous studies the group did (including a collaboration with WIV) did not show this lethality, they now suggest that mutations gained through passaging in cell culture may have resulted in a far more lethal variant.
But the provenance of this virus is still dubious. Did it really come from pangolins?
Although the paper offers references regarding the identification and isolation of GX_P2V there is no info in these on who isolated it, when and how.
A Tong paper from Feb 2020 suggests Tong's group (though it's written in the passive voice). But it references the Tommy Lam/Eddie Holmes paper as the source. And their paper doesn't say either.
Between 2016-2019 when AMMS isolated the pangolin coronavirus, Tong was working on a major secret research project with a USD 5 million budget.
The main duties of his new recruit include "optimization of coronavirus GX_P2V virus infection system" 😬
Perhaps this new potentially human lethal version indicates the optimization was successful?
Interestingly Yigang Tong has been quite insistent that Racoon Dogs and Huanan market were NOT the source of SARS-CoV-2. This is consistent with George Gao's comments on the subject. Clearly China's official line is still that pangolins are to blame.
SARS spread to 31 countries, caused 800 deaths. But there were only ~8500 reported infections, and the epidemic was over in a few months. How is this possible?
SARS was nowhere near as infectious as SARS-CoV-2. Transmission was by fomite and large respiratory droplets from symptomatic patients. SARS was not airborne Most transmissions were between family members, or between patients and carers. Almost all large clusters were in hospitals and due to poor infection control when a patient with unknown respiratory disease presented.
But there are 3 important exceptions: mysterious super-spreading events that resulted in lasting confusion over the nature of SARS. These have defied any attempts by scientists and authorities to explain, but may have more readily if bioterrorism had been considered...
1) The Hotel Metropole.
This event spread SARS to Canada, Singapore and Vietnam and elsewhere in Hong Kong. The vast majority of all confirmed cases emanate from this event. A purported index patient managed to infect 20 other people in 13 rooms on the one floor. But no-one else in the hotel was infected, including any of the ~250 staff.
The index case was a visitor from Guangdong, said to be a doctor traveling with his wife. He checked in at 5pm and stayed in Room 911. He took himself to a hospital the next morning, was taken straight to ICU and intubated. He died two weeks later. His wife returned to Guangdong.
A WHO team from Canada later conducted a forensic examination of the hotel. They found traces of SARS genetic material on the carpet outside Room 911, and in an air conditioning inlet above the elevator lobby, but found no traces in any of the rooms. The rooms were positively pressurized, suggesting transmission must have occurred in the hallway.
Official explanation: There isn't one. HK Health Director Margaret Chan suggested everyone stood in front of the elevator together and someone coughed. Presumably this was intended as a joke.
Proposed explanation: The room number wasn't a 1 in 500 coincidence, but a reference to the 9/11 attacks. The anthrax letters a year earlier had also referred to 9/11. This was not only an act of bioterrorism but *intended* to be seen as part of a series, and so generate terror of future incidents. To disseminate the virus some kind of basic aerosolization device was used. It may have been as simple as spilling it on the hallway carpet and dispersing it with a fan or blow-dryer.
2) The Amoy Gardens.
In this incident 320 people were infected in 15 separate towers of a high-rise estate. Some of these towers were 100m downwind of the presumed index case.
Official explanation: A 33-year old man from Shenzhen who was being treated for renal disease in Hong Kong caught SARS at the Prince of Wales hospital. He visited his brother, who lived at the estate. He had diarrhea and used the toilet. Because of faults in the sewage system, aerosols generated by the flush spread to other neighboring apartments in his tower. Other infections were secondary, the result of people from different towers mingling in common areas.
Alternative explanation: The official explanation has already been demolished by others who pointed out that the cases from various towers had symptom onset dates that were too close together to have been caused by secondary infections. But they aren't able to adequately explain how a toilet flushing is able to generate an aerosol plume that can infect hundreds of people 120m away in a breeze.
Proposed explanation: An aerosolization device was sited in a nearby construction site and blown towards the towers with a fan and the prevailing breeze. A rudimentary truck mounted aerosolization device was used to attack an apartment block in 1994 by Aum Shinrikyo.
I recently posted a thread about the Metropole Hotel incident which started the SARS epidemic when 20 people were infected by an index case staying in room 911. Most think the room number is just a coincidence - I don't. 🧵
For one, there are nearly 500 rooms in the hotel, so it's a very unlikely co-incidence. Secondly, it came soon after another bioterrorism incident - the anthrax killings - in which 911 was referenced by the terrorist/s to assert a link, genuine or not.
Some more context...
In 1999, the PLA published a book by two senior Airforce colonels. The title translates as "war without bounds", or "Unrestricted Warfare". The authors recognize the technical superiority of the US military, and propose a hybrid style of warfare using unconventional tactics.
How SARS exploded around the world: Mystery of the Hotel Metropole
Almost all SARS cases globally stemmed from a single super-spreader event which happened at Hong Kong's Hotel Metropole.
How it happened remains a mystery. Was this an act of bioterrorism?
The index case was Dr Liu Jianlun a doctor from the mainland who worked at Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen hospital. For weeks there had been rumors of an atypical pneumonia circulating in Guangdong. PRC authorities suppressed discussion of it claimed it was treatable with antibiotics.
A few days before arriving in HK, Liu had mild flu symptoms but felt well enough to travel. In HK he spent the day sightseeing with his sister and brother-in law. Liu and his wife checked into room 911 at Hotel Metropole at 5pm. The next morning he checked himself into hospital.
There are interesting parallels between this incident and earlier incidents in France and Canada, and I suspect it's an act of Chinese espionage. Though we don't know much detail but it is said to have happened after a freezer broke down.
In 2014 when Institut Pasteur "lost" 2400 SARS samples, it also happened after a freezer broke down. The samples were moved to a temporary freezer in a less secure area many groups had access to. Boxes of vials started to go missing, eventually the entire freezer. No paperwork.
This is almost exactly what the Institut Pasteur director at the time, Christian Brechot, told the media. Brechot didn't mention that the freezer vanished too.
On Feb 4, 2020 the former head of Canada's National Microbiology Lab collapsed and died while at a conference in Kenya. His death attracted little interest from "conspiracy theorists". Timing aside, links to SARS-CoV-2 seemed tenuous🧵
@RealAndyLeeShow Plummer was head of CNML from 2000 until 2014, when he retired at 60. He was an alcoholic, a habit acquired while doing HIV work in Africa.
Xiangguo Qiu, the scientist at the center of recent allegations of espionage, joined CNML in 2003, her husband Keding Cheng in 2006.
The allegations against Qiu and Cheng are extensive, if somewhat vague.
The shipments of Ebola and Nipah isolates to WIV in 2019 are the most sensational revelation, but preceding this are a series of security incidents and protocol breaches.
Chen Zhu personifies the narrative of China's rise. Sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution he taught himself medicine, becoming a "barefoot doctor". Eventually he rose to become Health Minister.
Is Zhu central to the Covid cover-up?
🧵
Zhu is fluent in English and French. A Francophile, he did his PhD in France, supervised by a doctor who was a close friend of Jacques Chirac. During SARS he was Vice President of CAS (WIV's parent). When Institut Pasteur sent a scientific team to help, he saw an opportunity.
Zhu was the driving force behind the Wuhan P4, and became good friends with businessman Alain Mérieux, who promoted the project in France. The project was signed off by the Chirac government overruling warnings from French security forces about PLA interest in biowarfare.