Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2020 at 9:09pm:


Do you find the presence of a major virology lab being at the epicentre of the outbreak to be just a coincidence that bears not scrutiny?

School of Medicine
Department of Neurobiology

J. J. (Jay) Couey
Research Assistant Professor

https://neurobio.pitt.edu/people/j-j-jay-couey

Excellent video on the origins of this Kung Flu by a Professor of Biology which makes him a scientist.

Quote:

Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Mar 27^th, 2020 at 9:47am:


I don't think anyone believes an unemployed leftist dim wit like you who fritters his life away in this forum outranks anyone.

February 2020

Botao Xiao1,2* and Lei Xiao3

1 Joint International Research Laboratory of Synthetic Biology and Medicine, School
of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology,
Guangzhou 510006, China   
2 School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan
430074, China
3 Tian You Hospital, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430064,
China

The 2019-nCoV has caused an epidemic of 28,060 laboratory-confirmed infections in human including 564 deaths in China by February 6, 2020. Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences from patients were almost identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus. It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed onto human. An article published on The Lancet reported that 27 of 41 infected patients were found to have contact with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 meters from the seafood market.

The bats carrying  CoV  ZC45  were originally  found  in Yunnan or Zhejiang province,
both of  which were more than 900 kilometers away  from  the seafood market. Bats were
normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated
district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the
bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents
and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the
market.   

Was there  any  other  possible  pathway?  We  screened the  area  around the  seafood
market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280
meters  from  the  market,  there  was  the  Wuhan  Center  for  Disease  Control  &  Prevention
(WHCDC) (Figure  1,  from Baidu and Google maps).  WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories
for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4-
6.  In  one  of  their  studies,  155  bats  including  Rhinolophus affinis were  captured  in  Hubei
province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in  collection
was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting
viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that
he was once  by  attacked  by  bats and  the blood of  a  bat  shot on  his skin.  He  knew  the
extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident,
he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing
a bat carrying a live tick 8.   

Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for
DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing 4, 5. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes
were  source  of  pathogens. They  were  only  ~280  meters  from  the  seafood  market.  The
WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group
of doctors  were infected during this  epidemic. It is plausible  that the virus leaked around
and some of them contaminated the  initial  patients  in  this  epidemic,  though  solid  proofs
are needed in future study.   
The second laboratory was ~12 kilometers from the seafood market and belonged to
Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences 1, 9, 10. This laboratory
reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) which caused the 2002-3 pandemic 9.
The principle investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, and reported the potential for human
emergence 10. A direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from
the laboratory.




https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https:/www.researchgate.net/publicati...

Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats.The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.


What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.


“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.

As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.

“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”

The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.

“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.

There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved

Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems.

The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.”

Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak.