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Origin of Covid — Following the Clues
PeteS in CA:
Origin of Covid — Following the Clues
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
--- Quote ---The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain: the political agendas of governments and scientists have generated thick clouds of obfuscation, which the mainstream press seems helpless to dispel.
In what follows I will sort through the available scientific facts, which hold many clues as to what happened, and provide readers with the evidence to make their own judgments. I will then try to assess the complex issue of blame, which starts with, but extends far beyond, the government of China.
By the end of this article, you may have learned a lot about the molecular biology of viruses. I will try to keep this process as painless as possible. But the science cannot be avoided because for now, and probably for a long time hence, it offers the only sure thread through the maze.
The virus that caused the pandemic is known officially as SARS-CoV-2, but can be called SARS2 for short. As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped. It matters a great deal which is the case if we hope to prevent a second such occurrence.
I’ll describe the two theories, explain why each is plausible, and then ask which provides the better explanation of the available facts. It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction. And having inferred that direction, I’m going to delineate some of the strands in this tangled skein of disaster.
--- End quote ---
This is a VERY long article, and it goes into a lot of details. I'll try to give its conclusions regarding certain key questions:
* Spread from the wild or escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab? Most likely escaped from the lab.
* Virus from the wild escaped or gain-of-function virus escaped? Most likely a gain-of-function virus escapee.
* Gain-of-function for scientific research or for military research? Not answered or conjectured.
Why most likely from the lab? No natural source or chain of crossover has been discovered. Wuhan's SARS/MERS research was being done in a somewhat minimal safety measures environment.
Why is SARS2 most likely created by gain-of-function experimentation? No natural source has been discovered. Gain-of-function research was being done in Wuhan (as well as elsewhere). The SARS2 virus spike protein has characteristics unlike any known coronavirus.
Why no conclusion or conjecture regarding civilian vs. military? Gain of function is, potentially, dual use. Both civilian and military research was being done in Wuhan, but whether the military was in any way involved in gain-of-function research is a closely guarded secret not likely to become known.
The article is well worth the 3/4 - 1 hour read. My summary does very poor justice to its wealth of details.
BassWrangler:
@PeteS in CA - thanks for posting this. Looking forward to reading it tonight.
BassWrangler:
--- Quote --- Dr. Daszak was possibly unaware of, or perhaps he knew all too well, the long history of viruses escaping from even the best run laboratories. The smallpox virus escaped three times from labs in England in the 1960’s and 1970’s, causing 80 cases and 3 deaths. Dangerous viruses have leaked out of labs almost every year since. Coming to more recent times, the SARS1 virus has proved a true escape artist, leaking from laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and no less than four times from the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing.
--- End quote ---
I think about how sloppy and the utter disregard for customers that most Chinese manufacturing companies have. You have to watch them like a hawk - not just during ramp up of production, but afterwards. You can literally have them producing a great product with great QC, but then look away for a month and they will start replacing genuine components with counterfeit ones, cutting corners, etc. They just have a different standard of morals than Americans (at least those of my generation and generations prior). To give a country like this the technology to produce novel, lethal viruses, and then expect them not to f*ck it up is just insane.
Smokin Joe:
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
ttps://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
Note these two authors: Xing-Yi Ge is from
--- Quote ---Xing-Yi Ge
Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
--- End quote ---
and Zhengli-Li Shi
--- Quote ---Zhengli-Li Shi
Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
--- End quote ---
The research was carried out at UNC Chapel Hill in 2014, and written up in 2015, after the research had been moved to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Funding by NIAID (under Dr. Fauci) continued for the project in China.
From the abstract of the Article:
--- Quote ---Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.
--- End quote ---
This pretty much describes the effects of and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2, the active agent in COVID-19.
This is old information, posted on this site a year or so ago. It never was "conspiracy theory", and I never have said whether the release from the lab was intentional or accidental, just that it sure was well timed for the PRC and PLA interests, not to mention a tailor made crisis (no pun intended) for the Democrats to use.
We have to look at the wider picture, and I believe we are fully involved in asymmetric warfare with the Chinese, whether we know it or not. They do, and they are kicking the world's butt, with the help of the quislings in the West and elsewhere.
libertybele:
--- Quote from: Smokin Joe on May 06, 2021, 04:41:47 am ---A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
ttps://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
Note these two authors: Xing-Yi Ge is from and Zhengli-Li Shi
The research was carried out at UNC Chapel Hill in 2014, and written up in 2015, after the research had been moved to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Funding by NIAID (under Dr. Fauci) continued for the project in China.
From the abstract of the Article:
This pretty much describes the effects of and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2, the active agent in COVID-19.
This is old information, posted on this site a year or so ago. It never was "conspiracy theory", and I never have said whether the release from the lab was intentional or accidental, just that it sure was well timed for the PRC and PLA interests, not to mention a tailor made crisis (no pun intended) for the Democrats to use.
We have to look at the wider picture, and I believe we are fully involved in asymmetric warfare with the Chinese, whether we know it or not. They do, and they are kicking the world's butt, with the help of the quislings in the West and elsewhere.
--- End quote ---
Fauci's involvement and the timing of Biden's nomination around the time the pandemic was discovered is all that's needed to connect the dots.
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