7-11-21 Scientists from multiple virology labs, including WIV, China’s Center for Disease Control and labs from Beijing, were called in to investigate the Mojiang mine in Yunnan, 2012. (For some reason the Chinese government did not report the incident to the World Health Organization at that time. The cases didn’t even make it into the official China CDC statistics. Why?)
What followed, however, was years of intense bat sampling missions. Within a few years, scientists from WIV had collected samples from thousands of bats from the site. More than half of the samples tested positive for coronaviruses. Multiple other viruses were detected in bats, and one of them was Ra4991, whose RdRp sequence is almost identical to SARS-CoV-2 (98.9%). The research was led by Shi Zhengli, who published the results in 2016 in the journal Virologica Sinica. However, she did not mention the cases of sick miners.
The study was funded by three NIH grants and the funds were channelled through EcoHealth Alliance. Shi Zhengli received the first of these grants in 2012 for Discovery, isolation, identification, distribution, genetic evolution, and pathogenicity of human pathogens carried by bats (Grant number 81290341). In 2013, just two months before Shi Zhengli sampled Ra4991 from the mine, she received another grant to Investigate Viral Pathogen Profiles in Some Natural Hosts and Vectors in China (Grant number 2013FY113500). In October the same year, Shi Zhengli published a scientific article in the journal Nature in which she showed for the first time that it is possible for SARS-like viruses to jump directly from the bat to humans, without the need for an intermediate host.
In 2014 one of Shi Zhengli’s students, Wang Ning, wrote an academic thesis in which the virus carried by bats in the infamous mine was investigated. It noted: “It’s likely that the six miners were infected with the pathogen carried by bats.” In the same year WIV received a renewal of funding from the NIH, specifically to work on the SARS-like viruses collected in South China—and to investigate the routes of infection to humans (Grant number R01AI110964). In June 2019 Yu Ping, a student of Shi Zhengli, full genome sequenced Ra4991, and characterised an entirely new lineage of SARS-like CoVs comprising nine coronaviruses from the mine closely related to SARS-CoV-2. …
The idea was to radically change the approach--move from a reactive strategy, to a proactive strategy that allows anticipating the next threats by characterising the viruses that can potentially jump to humans, with their declared goal being to design therapies and vaccines.
Moreover on September 1, 2019, just before the pandemic spread, a summary meeting of the CAS “Special Project” was held. The five research teams reported on the “achievements made in the past year, and key scientific issues in the future”. According to the researchers, “some influential and major scientific research results have been achieved”. This is where the trail fades. The project vanished into thin air, like, no trace at all….
it is important to note the type of experiments that were carried out in Wuhan. In a 2017 doctoral thesis, Reverse Genetic System of Bat SARS-like Coronaviruses and Function of ORFX, the Wuhan Institute of Virology pioneered the technique of creating chimeric coronaviruses “without leaving any trace sequences (e.g. incorporated enzymatic sites) in the recombinant viral genome”. In other words, they leave no signs of manipulation.
The study, in which the experiments were conspicuously done in BSL-2 labs, culminates by looking forward to newly emerging methods: “yeast recombination or in vitro recombination… applied to the reverse genetics of coronaviruses could develop a more efficient and economical method... for the development of antiviral drugs, for basic virology research, etc.”
From the 2018 project abstract itself we know that WIV was “experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.” just a year before the pandemic outbreak WIV obtained a patent for cages for "breeding bats in artificial conditions."
https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2021/07/01/what-exactly-happened-in-wuhan.html
……………………………………………..................................................................
Next clue in the mystery, Project 2013FY113500 was under review by China's MoST before a 30 September deadline, last year. Part of it was *state secret*
As per another MoST tender over 11 July-13 Sept 2019, winners were required to identify 5 major novel viral pathogens from wild animals and carry out a biosecurity risk assessment by testing them on small animals.
There was a tender for an "Emergency" purchase of virus detection kits in September last year. It contains orders for 40,500 PCR kits (including for Coronaviruses).
Two tenders by Wuhan CDC for disposing 2.5 Tons (2 + 0.5) of hazardous bio-chemical waste from their labs (it's a lot!!)
https://whcdc.org/index.php/view/11147.html…
https://whcdc.org/view/11192.html
There were multiple on-site lab safety inspections at Wuhan, during September last year.
http://archive.vn/sp7WR#selection-417.32-425.1
………………………………………………............................................
No comments:
Post a Comment