7-13-21 Rahalkar and Bahulikar bring to light a 2012 lethal pneumonia outbreak (5) that occurred among 6 miners in Mojiang, China, who were working in the same mine that RaTG13 was collected from following the outbreak (3). Bat fecal samples were taken from the mine by a team of researchers from WIV primarily because bat virus transmission was suspected as the cause of outbreak (3).
…addendum to the 2020 paper by researchers at the WIV that first reported sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 genome (8), states that WIV received 13 samples from 4 of the Mojiang, China miners in 2012 (3). They write that in 2012 they used PCR methods that target RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of SARSr-CoV Rp3 to test the samples and all four individuals showed negative results (3). The addendum by WIV researchers further states that they retested the samples in 2020 with their validated enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) against the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein and all tests were negative (3).
However, a Chinese PhD thesis published in 2017 by Canping Huang is mentioned in the Rahalkar and Bahulikar article and states that antibody testing conducted on the miners' samples revealed that four of the miners tested positive for “SARS virus IgG antibodies” (5). Due to observed robust cross- reactive neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 by serum antibodies from recovered SARS patients (9), it is particularly curious why the SARS-CoV-2 ELISA assay used by WIV did not show positive results with the presence of SARS virus IgG antibodies, as indicated by the PhD thesis. At the very least, those samples should have been analyzed for other SARS-like CoV viruses. Furthermore, Rahalkar and Bahulikar discuss a Master's thesis that was also published in Chinese, and that focused on analyzing the illnesses of the miners in great detail. The Master's thesis states that one of the patients tested positive for serum IgM by WIV, which can indicate viral infection, and concludes that the illness among the miners was likely caused by a SARS-like CoV virus of bat origin (7). The Master's thesis has since been translated into English2. Oddly, the addendum by WIV researchers (3) and the WHO-China report3 made no direct comments or acknowledgments on the important findings of the PhD and Master's theses, nor on other critical questions presented by Rahalkar and Bahulikar. As pointed out by Rahalkar and Bahulikar, the miners' symptoms were strikingly similar to Covid-19 symptoms (5).
Why was the outbreak not reported to WHO NOR mentioned by USAID’s PREDICT which was in Yunnan at the time, very close to Shi Zhengli, seeking dangerous viruses?????????????????????????????????? A new question to be addressed is why did the PhD thesis report SARS virus IgG antibody positivity for the miners' samples *** while the WIV reported negative tests? Another peculiarity is that the WIV made numerous trips to that distant mineshaft from 2012 to 2015 to collect and analyze viral samples (3), yet they report rather limited testing on the miners' samples that were thought to contain highly virulent pathogens and that have been in the lab's possession since 2012. Surely these samples would have been of interest to a lab specializing in coronavirus zoonosis, yet no sequencing has been reported!!!!!!!!!!!!!
***
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8313728/ (my emphasis added -r)
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10-20-20 A Master's thesis (in the Chinese language) was found on the cnki.net website which described in detail the severe illness in miners. The thesis concluded that a SARS-like CoV originating from Chinese horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus) was the predicted causative agent. The cases were remotely monitored by a prominent pulmonologist in China. Retrospective analysis of the pneumonia cases shows striking similarities with COVID-19. Bilateral pneumonia, vascular complications like pulmonary thromboembolism, and secondary infections are the main similarities. The treatment regimes were similar to the current treatments for COVID-19. We propose that the Mojiang mineshaft miners' illness could provide important clues to the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
The first mention was in an interview with Dr. Zhengli Shi, a principal scientist of WIV, in the Scientific American journal (2). In the interview Shi talked about a mineshaft in Mojiang where a lethal pneumonia-like disease occurred in six miners in 2012 (2). The discussion outlined that a diverse group of coronaviruses was discovered in the mine following the outbreak. These lethal pneumonia cases were also covered in news, including a more detailed article in Science magazine in 2014 (4). In April 2012, a pneumonia-like illness occurred in six miners who were cleaning bat feces from a copper mineshaft in Mojiang, Yunnan, in 2012, killing three of them (4). The Science article describes that a paramyxovirus, MojV was isolated from a rat sample in the same mine (4). Two further papers reported that no direct relationship between human infection and MojV could be established (4–6). In the Scientific American interview, Dr. Zhengli Shi outlines that fungus was responsible for pneumonia in the miners (2). However, no detailed information was elucidated in literature and the cause of the miners' illness remained a mystery.
Master's Thesis by Li Xu on the “Mojiang Miners Pneumonia” Illness
In 2013 Li Xu published a Master's thesis (7) that described in detail the symptoms suffered by six pneumonia patients. This thesis was found by a twitter user (@TheSeeker268), who emailed us the link after reading our pre-print (8) (on May 20, 2020). The thesis was found on the cnki.net website which is the official website for Master's and Ph.D. thesis in China and therefore considered to be a valid source. The original thesis is in Chinese (7) and we translated it using google translation. Currently, a professional translation of the thesis has been made available online by a research agency (https://bioscienceresource.org/) that is currently examining the Master's thesis (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6981198-Analysis-of-Six-Patients-With-Unknown-Viruses.html).
According to the Master's thesis: in April 2012 six miners were given a job of clearing bat waste and bat feces from a copper mineshaft in Tongguan, Mojiang, Yunnan. After working for ~14 days in the case of four miners, and 4–5 days in the case of the last two miners, they started facing breathing problems, cough, and fever which required immediate admission to the Kunming hospital in late April and early May (7). Three of the miners died in the course of ~100 days and three survived (Table 1A). The thesis featured medical reports, radiological images such as CT scans, and detailed information regarding the diagnosis and treatment of the miners (7). (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6981198-Analysis-of-Six-Patients-With-Unknown-Viruses.html).
The details of the course of illness and diagnosis for individual patients are summarized in Supplementary Information A. Radiography showed interstitial pneumonia, ground-glass opacities, and severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in the first four patients who also required a mechanical ventilator (patients 2–4). Some patients (1, 2, and 4) showed clotting complications such as pulmonary thromboembolism or thrombosis and elevated D-dimer values. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a doctor for respiratory diseases and a national advisor for the SARS and COVID-19 epidemic, had provided remote consultation for patients 3 and 4, the most serious patients. Patients 3 and 4 remained in the hospital for more than 100 days. Four patients (1–4) a very low oxygenation index and classified as ARDS (Berlin criteria, 2012). Dr. Nanshan's diagnosis for patients 3 and 4 were interstitial pneumonia (primarily of viral origin), with a possibility of secondary infection (invasive pulmonary aspergillosis). He requested swab testing and SARS antibody testing (to be carried in WIV). He also asked the hospital staff to confirm with the Kunming Institute of Zoology for the type of bat. The radiological findings were diffuse ground-glass opacities and areas of peripheral consolidation. The thesis concluded that the pneumonia cases were due to viral pneumonia, primarily from SARS-like coronaviruses originating from horseshoe bats. The percentage of lymphocytes, T, B, and NK cells decreased significantly after the admission of the patients, which indicated that the immune system of the patients was seriously damaged by a viral infection. Later after the consultation of Dr. Zhong Nanshan, (~after June 19, 2012), blood samples were sent to WIV for antibody testing. A chapter in a Ph.D. thesis by Canping Huang (supervised by Dr. George Gao, present Director China CDCP) also highlights these cases (9) (a translation of Chapter 3 is provided as Supplementary Material). According to the translation of the Ph.D. thesis (Lines 283–285, page 9), the “blood test results of four cases showed that: four people carried SARS virus IgG antibodies, of which two were discharged with higher antibody levels (patients 5 and 6) and two which were hospitalized had lower antibody levels (patients 3 and 4) (Wuhan, Chinese Academy of Sciences) Virology Institute)”. Xu's Master's thesis, Huang's Ph.D. thesis, and Ge et al. (10), all report the dominance of Chinese horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus sinicus and Rhinolophus affinis) in the mine. The Kunming Institute of Zoology also confirmed that the six patients were exposed to Chinese horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus species). Rhinolophus species harbor SARS-like coronaviruses (11). The blood biochemical analysis from the pneumonia patients indicated elevated markers such as Serum Amyloid A (SAA) with a normal range of PCT (procalcitonin), which suggested that the patients had a viral infection. The treatment given to the pneumonia patients included antivirals (ganciclovir, acyclovir injections), steroids (methylprednisolone), antibiotics (meropenem, vancomycin, etc.), antifungals (caspofungin, fluconazole) and anti-thrombotic medicines (warfarin, low molecular weight heparin). The thesis concludes that severe pneumonia in miners was due to SARS-like CoV from horseshoe bats. Dr. Nanshan's conclusion that the Mojiang miners pneumonia appeared to be primarily viral and that it was most probably due to bat-related coronaviruses, is noteworthy.
Mojiang Mine and RaTG13
After the outbreak WIV conducted longitudinal surveillance of the bat coronaviruses in the Mojiang mine (10). The mineshaft had six bat types of which the highest number of Rhinolophus sp. (horseshoe bats) were sampled. Sample collections were done four times between August 2012 and July 2013. A total of 150 alphacoronaviruses and only two betacoronaviruses, of which only one was SARS-like betacoronavirus (CoV/4991), were detected (10). The same virus 4991 was renamed as RaTG13, which is the next genetic relative of SARS-CoV-2 (12). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606707/
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5-7-20 USAID's 10-year, $200 million investment in PREDICT has provided a foundational understanding of the risk presented by the spillover of zoonotic diseases into humans, and positioned the Agency to make a careful technical shift to building national capacity to deal with this challenge. https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/may-7-2020-investments-global-health-security-us-agency-international
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Come on! The abandoned mine where RaTG13 was sampled in 2012/2013 was widely known to be linked to a viral pneumonia outbreak that killed 3 out of 6 infected miners. That is why scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were called in to test the bats that lived there. https://twitter.com/peterdaszak/status/1265666628844507136
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3-1-21 an obscure Master’s thesis from 2012, translated from Chinese in 2020, is now an integral key for unravelling the puzzle of the global controversy about the mechanism and origins of Covid-19. The Master’s thesis by a doctor, Li Xu [1], “The Analysis of 6 Patients with Severe Pneumonia Caused by Unknown Viruses”, describes 6 patients he helped to treat after they entered a hospital in 2012, one after the other, suffering from an atypical pneumonia from cleaning up after bats in an abandoned copper mine in China. Given the keen interest in finding the origin of the 2002–2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, Li wrote: “This makes the research of the bats in the mine where the six miners worked and later suffered from severe pneumonia caused by unknown virus a significant research topic”. He and the other doctors treating the mine cleaners hypothesized that their diseases were caused by a SARS-like coronavirus from having been in close proximity to the bats in the mine.
Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson, scientists at the Bioscience Resource Project in Ithaca, decided Li Xu’s master’s thesis was important enough to translate from Chinese.
The evidence it contains has led us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also led us to theorise a plausible route by which an apparently isolated disease outbreak in a mine in 2012 led to a global pandemic in 2019. (-Latham & Wilson 2020)
Times of London July 4, 2020: subtitle: ‘The world’s closest known relative to the Covid-19 virus was found in 2013 by Chinese scientists in an abandoned mine where it was linked to deaths caused by a coronavirus-type respiratory illness’. For a long time it was one of the only articles on the mysteries that came to light with this Master’s thesis.
1. The Mojiang Mine
The Times authors set the scene: In the monsoon season of August 2012 a small team of scientists travelled to southwest China to investigate a new and mysteriously lethal illness. After driving through terraced tea plantations, they reached their destination: an abandoned copper mine where — in white hazmat suits and respirator masks — they ventured into the darkness. Instantly they were struck by the stench. Overhead, bats roosted. Underfoot, rats and shrews scurried through thick layers of their droppings. It was a breeding ground for mutated micro-organisms and pathogens deadly to human beings. There was a reason to take extra care. Weeks earlier, six men who had entered the mine had been struck down by an illness that caused an uncontrollable pneumonia. Three of them died.
Evidence seen by The Sunday Times suggests that a virus found in its depths — part of a faecal sample that was frozen and sent to a Chinese laboratory for analysis and storage — is the closest known match to the virus that causes Covid-19. (-London Times)
The lab to which the sample was sent was the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), home of a world renown site for bat coronavirus research, led by Shi Zhengli. The pneumonia the miners were suffering from was deemed sufficiently serious and unusual to immediately call in an acclaimed virologist, Professor Zhong Nanshan, who had led China’s efforts against the first SARS, referred to now as SARS-CoV-1 to distinguish it from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19….
The detailed description of 6 Mojiang miners symptoms and disease progression in the Master’s thesis exactly echoes what we now see in those with Covid-19: high fevers, coughs, difficulty in breathing, and many of the treatments tried are also in sync with those used today, including one found to be one of the most successful: steroids.
Shi Zhengli was in the midst of researching bat caves around 200 miles from the Mojiang mine when her team was alerted to the miners. Given their main research focus is SARS-related coronaviruses, especially from bats, this was clearly of great interest to them. So they immediately turned to investigate the Mojiang mine.
Over the next year the scientists took faecal samples from 276 bats. The samples were stored at minus 80 C in a special solution and dispatched to the Wuhan institute, where molecular studies and analysis were conducted. (-London Times)
One, from a horseshoe bat was of special interest because it was considered a brand new strain of a SARS-related virus. In a February 2016 article that Shi co-authored, the bat sample was named RaBtCoV/4991. Oddly the paper, titled “Coexistence of multiple coronaviruses in several bat colonies in an abandoned mineshaft,” makes no mention of the reason the whole study took place: no mention of the miners or the fact that three died from pneumonia contracted from bats in the mine where the sample was found (Mystery #1). Shi, when asked about the miners (in an interview in the March-April 2020 issue of Scientific American, hereafter SA 2020) averred the miners were killed by a fungus and not a virus (Mystery #2).
Shi describes the mine as “a flying factory for new viruses” due to finding that often “multiple viral strains had infected a single animal.” While claiming it was a fungus that killed the miners “she says it would have been only a matter of time before they caught the coronaviruses if the mine had not been promptly shut” (SA 2020).
2. The genomic sequence of the virus, eventually named SARS-CoV-2, was 96 percent identical to that of a coronavirus the researchers had identified in horseshoe bats in Yunnan. Their results appeared in a paper published online on February 3 2020 in Nature. (SA 2020) They dubbed it coronavirus RaTG13. In this 2020 article, co-authored by Shi they write: RaTG13 is the closest relative of [SARS-CoV-2] … The close phylogenetic relationship to RaTG13 provides evidence that [SARS-CoV-2] may have originated in bats.…On the basis of these findings we propose that the disease could be transmitted by airborne transmission, although we cannot rule out other possible routes of transmission. (-Zhou, Yang,…Shi, Nature 2020 article)
But wait, let’s go back. Why a sigh of relief that SARS-CoV-2 is only 96% identical to one of the bat samples? What about the numerous specimens taken from the Mojiang miners? How close are they to SARS-CoV-2? Frustratingly to this day we’re never told. (Mystery #3) Moreover, while RaTG13 is described as being found in a cave in Yunnan, there is no mention of BtCoV/4991. Nor is there a citation of the initial 2016 article describing BtCoV/4991, even though it was co-authored by Shi (Mystery #4). It turns out that RaBtCoV/4991 is identical to RaTG13! However, it required independent groups to sleuth this out [2]. (Mystery #5).
In fact researchers in India and Austria have compared the partial genome of the mine sample that was published in the 2016 paper and found it is a 100% match with the same sequence for RaTG13. The same partial sequence for the mine sample is a 98.7% match with Covid-19 virus. (-London Times)
Why would the 2020 paper describing the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 fail to mention that it is one and the same as the virus unearthed from the mine where 3 people died, and had already been cited in the 2016 paper, both with Shi as co-author? It’s one thing to rename it, but to fail to note this goes against typical publishing norms….Information mysteriously was being hidden by research groups being funded (by the U.S.) precisely to provide surveillance and monitoring about pandemics.
So what did the WIV research group do with RaBtCoV/4991 in the ensuing years between finding it in 2013 (2016 article) and the revelation in the early pandemic (2020 article)? According to them, not much: it was said to have been stowed away in a freezer and only taken out after cases of Covid-19 appeared in Wuhan at the end of December 2019.
Other scientists find the initial indifference about a new strain of the coronavirus hard to understand. Nikolai Petrovsky, professor of medicine at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, said it was “simply not credible” that the WIV would have failed to carry out any further analysis on RaBtCoV/4991, especially as it had been linked to the deaths of three miners. ‘If you really thought you had a novel virus that had caused an outbreak that killed humans, then there is nothing you wouldn’t do — given that was their whole reason for being [there — to get to the bottom of that, even if that meant exhausting the sample and then going back to get more,’ he said. (-London Times)
So it seems the WIV research group failed at “their whole reason for being” there, since the sample simply sat in a freezer for 6 years (supposedly! -r). Maybe if they had investigated RaBtCoV/4991 in relation to the virus the miners died of they might have prevented (or started! -r) the pandemic the world is now struggling under.
Perhaps it was to downplay the fact that they fell down on the job that they opted for a name switch (from RaBtCoV/4991 in 2016 to RaTG13 in 2020) and lack of citation of the 2016 paper. There is apparently no way to study the sample of RaTG13 further, since it it is said to have disintegrated upon being sequenced. 8 other SARS-related bat coronaviruses from the mine remain unpublished, to my knowledge.
3. More Mysteries
Not only is it incredible that no work had been done on RaTG13 in the ensuing years between its discovery and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, it turns out to be false! Alina Chan, who describes herself as a molecular biologist turned detective (into origins of SARS-CoV-2), “pointed to an online database showing that the WIV had been genetically sequencing the mine virus in 2017 and 2018, analyzing it in a way they had done in the past with other viruses in preparation for running experiments with them.” (Boston Magazine) (Mystery #6)
But now that we know RaTG13 was sequenced and experimented upon in 2017 and 2018, we are still struck with the mysteries/(blatant lies -r) as why they had claimed only to sequence it after the world is hit with the Covid-19 pandemic, and why her close collaborator, Peter Daszak, who for years has funneled money from NIH grants (and much more from USAID and Pentagon -r) to support the WIV bat coronavirus research, was reporting that the sample was ignored in a freezer for 6 years.[3] Only after the earlier sequencing was revealed did Daszak admit he was wrong. Likewise it took considerable pressure on Nature before the appearance of a December 2020 addendum to the 2020 article where they admit the earlier experimentation. All very mysterious given that such experimentation would have been expected, since their charge was to investigate specimens with pandemic spillover potential, and since RaTG13 was described by them as having such potential in 2016. So what kind of research were they engaged in?
Some of the experiments — “gain of function” experiments — aimed to create new, more virulent or more infectious strains of diseases in an effort to predict and therefore defend against threats that might conceivably arise in nature. (NY Magazine)…
Money from U.S. agencies are funneled through Daszak’s organization, the EcoHealth Alliance, to the WIV research team. [The latest award was cut in April 2020, then restored in August 2020.]
Those engaged in such research aver that it is necessary to provide disease surveillance systems to alert us if viruses with pandemic potential are making the jump to humans. Maybe so. But the 2016 paper hid the main details that might have been of use for this. The question isn’t whether this kind of gain of function research could theoretically be useful but rather whether a specific research group, here WIV-EcoHealth research, has shown itself to be committed to the transparent behavior necessary to warrant support. It has not.
4. Falsifying the hypothesis of trusted research
…The evidence that falsifies their being good faith stewards to whom we may look to inform, surveil and help prevent future pandemics is ample. The onus would be on the WIV-EcoHealth research group to come forward with explanations–something one would expect them to be keen to do in order to support the continued research into bat coronaviruses. Until and unless they do, we can’t trust much of the key data coming out of the group.
Here’s what we know about the value of the WIV-EcoHealth research when it comes to preventing and informing about actual pandemics. We find out that deaths which it turns out they knew from the start were due to a virus–“We suspected that the patients had been infected by an unknown virus” (2020 Addendum)–are not broadcast and in fact there’s a news blackout about the case. A published paper on bat viruses found (2016) does not mention the deaths. Then when a real honest-to-God pandemic from a SARS-like coronavirus comes to light in the city that does major research in the area, the virus is sequenced but given a new name with no mention of the earlier name, let alone the connection with the miners. No it’s worse, there is confusion or prevarication amongst researchers as to when it has been sequenced, when it has crumbled, and deliberate attempts to conceal records, including taking the central WIV database offline, preventing further checks. In each case there are denials that only later, after revelations by independent sleuths, result in about-faces. But having declared one thing it doesn’t ameliorate the situation when the opposite is conceded only in the face of undeniable demonstrations of its falsity. We are still left with conflicting declarations and no explanation for the earlier, opposite stance.
These strange and unscientific actions have obscured the origins of the closest viral relatives of SARS-CoV-2, viruses that are suspected to have caused a COVID-like illness in 2012 and which may be key to understanding not just origin of the COVID-19 pandemic but the future behavior of SARS-CoV-2.” (-Latham and Wilson)
If it weren’t for the Master’s thesis, the admissions that have come forward might never have occurred.
A co-author of an expert guide to investigating outbreak origins, Dr. Filippa Lentzos, said, We also need to take a hard look in the mirror. It is our own virologists, funders and publishers who are driving and endorsing the practice of actively hunting for viruses and the high-risk research of deliberately making viruses more dangerous to humans. We need to be more open about the heavily vested interests of some of the scientists given prominent platforms to make claims about the pandemic’s origins. [Chan and Ridley 2021]
The WIV research group has gained the knowledge of how to make a virus more transmissible.[4],[5] One of the existing patents, I read, are for methods that could result in turning a SARS-related coronavirus into SARS-CoV-2. That knowledge hasn’t helped the world control SARS-CoV-2. Good faith sharing of earlier research would at least have shown the commitment to transparency and ethical research norms. When it comes to the question of the trust necessary to endorse future research, the known facts here are actually more troubling than previous cases of lab leaks that were openly admitted and followed by the adoption of improved methods and clear oversights.
Notes
[1] His supervisor, Professor Qian Chuanyun, worked in the emergency department that treated the men. Other details were found in a PhD thesis by a student of the director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. The full Master’s thesis can also be read in Latham and Wilson 2020 (No paywall).
[2] Details were filled in by independent sleuths throughout the world and “an anonymous Twitter user known as ‘The Seeker268’ and a group going by the name of DRASTIC (Ridley and Chan (2021)). One of the first articles to delineate a possible lab leak is Sirotkin, K. & Sirotkin, D. (2020) https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202000091.
Rossana Segreto et al. (2020), who identified the identity of RaTG13 and 4991, write: In late July 2020 Zhengli Shi, the leading CoV researcher from WIV, in an email interview asserted the renaming of the RaTG13 sample and unexpectedly declared that the full sequencing of RaTG13 has been carried out as far back as in 2018 and not after the SARS‐CoV‐2 outbreak, as stated in [her own joint article in February of 2020].
[3] Daszak runs a non-government group called EcoHealth Alliance which disburses funds for research into coronaviruses and other pathogens from U.S. agencies to labs throughout the world. A portion of these grants go to his outfit and he’s one of the most vocal supporters for their continuation. We might even call the research group the WIV-EcoHealth Alliance research group. Understandably many scientists find conflicts of interest in having Daszak leading enquiries into possible Covid lab leak. But he continues to be a key player. https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19538-scientists-outraged-by-peter-daszak-leading-enquiry-into-possible-covid-lab-leaknk: .
[4] Another important name at the cutting edge of gain of function work on bat coronaviruses is Ralph Baric (from UNC). He was perhaps the first to show how to transfer viruses from one species to another. “Not only that, but they’d figured out how to perform their assembly seamlessly, without any signs of human handiwork. Nobody would know if the virus had been fabricated in a laboratory or grown in nature. Baric called this the “no-see’m method.” (New York Magazine).
An eye-opening, excellent (< 10 min) video from leading coronavirologists who know directly of the gain of function experiments. English subtitles. https://twitter.com/learnfromerror/status/1365124271786369025?s=20
[5] Latham and Wilson theorize that the initial virus evolved in the miners themselves during the months-long infection suffered by some of the miners, mimicking the process of serial passaging: This is a standard virological technique for adapting viruses to new species, tissues or cell types. It is normally done by deliberately infecting a new host species or a new host cell type with a high dose of virus. This initial viral infection would ordinarily die out because the host’s immune system vanquishes the ill-adapted virus. But in passaging, before it does die out a sample is extracted and transferred to a new identical tissue where viral infection restarts. Done reiteratively this technique … intensively selects for viruses adapted to the new host or cell type. ….We propose that, when frozen samples derived from the miners were eventually opened in the Wuhan lab they were already highly adapted to humans to an extent possibly not anticipated by the researchers. One small mistake or mechanical breakdown could have led directly to the first human infection in late 2019.
https://errorstatistics.com/2021/03/01/falsifying-claims-of-trust-in-bat-coronavirus-research-mysteries-of-the-mine/
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