Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A Chinese scientific paper has suggested careless biosecurity at a disease research laboratory just 280 yards from the market where the outbreak was originally detected was responsible for the Covid-19 Chinese Corona Virus.
Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory? Scientists believe killer disease may have begun in research facility 300 yards from Wuhan wet fish market
- Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that ‘the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan’
- It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology
- WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital
By ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 00:22 AEDT, 17 February 2020 | UPDATED: 03:00 AEDT, 17 February 2020
Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market.
A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province.
‘The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,’ penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats.
It also mentions that bats – which are linked to coronavirus – once attacked a researcher and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’
…
The abstract of the paper.
The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus
Botao Xiao 21.93 South China University of Technology
Lei XiaoThe 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. We briefly examined the histories of the laboratories and proposed that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory. Our proposal provided an alternative origin of the coronavirus in addition to natural recombination and intermediate host.
Original link (deleted): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
PDF Backup Copy: Click here
There have been suggestions that Wuhan was performing biological warfare research, a claim China strenuously denies.
The paper cited above does not go into detail about exactly what the Wuhan laboratory was doing with their infected animals, but careless biosecurity is a plausible explanation for what happened; researchers in constant close contact with infected mammals, obviously not wearing proper protective clothing to prevent injury or contamination, getting scratched and urinated on, not taking proper precautions, would have created plenty of opportunities for cross over and hybridisation between bat and human Corona viruses, and whatever else they were keeping in their cages.
If the claim of careless biosecurity is correct, the emergence of a dangerous hybrid virus capable of infecting humans was always a possibility. Through their carelessness, the virus researchers may have been inadvertently creating and incubating a stream of increasingly dangerous hybrid pathogens, until finally a potential pandemic escaped their laboratory.
Update (EW): h/t Danny Davis – Corrected the name John Hopkins -> Johns Hopkins and fixed the link to the Corona Virus dashboard in the top caption.
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Trump caused corona virus. The trade war stopped US soybean shipments to China. No soybeans, no pigs. No pigs, people start eating wild game. Bat virus spreads to people.
The pigs died of African Swine Fever, is how I heard it.
And China was not refused soybeans…they switched to buying them elsewhere, from Brazil I think, out of retaliation for Trump finally standing up to them ripping us off.
Somewhere along the line, the phrase “fair trade” acquired the meaning “the US gets the sh!t end of every stick).
What Trump actually proposes is that all tarrifs be eliminated both ways by everyone.
We have charged a fraction of what other countries do, and on a fraction of the products that other countries slap them on.
IOW…the US is flat out prevented from selling stuff into foreign markets, and they flood our shores with whatever they want and sometimes do it below cost.
O top of that, China went hog wild on IP theft and outrageous restrictions on US countries that wanted to open up shop in China. We had to share all technology with them, and let them be a partner in each business. We delivered stuff being sent from China to any address in the US at a lower price than someone 20 miles away could send it to that same address for. Etc.
The deal was negotiated when they were considered an undeveloped country, and the people making the deal on our side figured the US could afford any deal no matter how bad a deal it was for us.
That crap is now over…finally.
In the meantime, the US has gone from a manufacturing powerhouse…the manufacturing powerhouse of the entire world, to having large cities with nary an open factory left.
Whole sections of nearly every city in each of several states we call the rust belt have empty shells of homes by the tens and hundreds of thousands, and entire large regions with every factory shuttered.
Oops:
Should be “…outrageous restrictions on US companies…”
Two infection curves from 2 sources. One is exponential and credible the other is not.
The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001 caused a crisis in British agriculture and tourism. This epizootic saw 2,000 cases of the disease in farms across most of the British countryside. Over 6 million cows and sheep were killed in an eventually successful attempt to halt the disease.
———————–
All this blamed, officially, in a viral infection penetrating Britain through air, birds, from main land Europe or further way, plus also trade and exchange in life stock with main land Europe or further afield.
But in the end of the day, the patient zero, the farm where and when all this originated from, happened to be a “back to back” neighbor with a high tech biological lab, extensively dealing with experiments on such as virus at that time in point then.
Confirmed and validated to a point that the possibility of a leak of the virus from that laboratory to environment, very much considered as a possibility.
But you see, nothing to see here, move along, still fault of nature, birds or maybe also man’s negligence in simple trade and market affairs…
And still no such thing impacted either main land Europe or the rest, just Britain…
And still all blamed in the nature of all things there, in regard of the rest of the world, with any no wrong whatsoever in consideration of Britain and their own schist.
Oh, maybe my memory does not serve me well…
cheers
Really really sorry boys.
Very big mess in me part.
My comment, as for my comment and my words as per above addressing a wrong outbreak, the 2001 one, when actually meant for the 2007 one.
Maybe I could seek shelter in the consideration of this being a simply British routine… 🙂
Simply, what my comment supposed to have addressed is some like this;
—–
“A contained four-site outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom was found by regular livestock testing by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), namely in August 2007 three times, and once the following month, all in the west of Surrey, England.
The first diagnosis took place in a field of Normandy, Surrey; the second was three days later in a cattle-rotation field of the farmer in Elstead, and the following day nearby, a third infection within a quickly-established protection zone around the first incidence. One month and ten days after the first diagnosis a final incidence of 2007 was identified and dealt with 13 miles (21 km) north of the first diseased animal. The source of the strain released and contained in Surrey in 2007 was the advanced effluent pipes from either the Institute for Animal Health or the similar vaccine researching and producing Merial Animal Health laboratory near to Pirbright village in the county – the pipes were too old and/or insufficiently inspected given their importance. An inspection of the effluent pipes and manholes carried out for the HSE investigators showed deficiencies and the independent investigation of Professor Brian Spratt concluded that it was very likely that they occasionally leaked still-infectious effluent at the time of the outbreak. Both laboratories, either of which may have been the cause, upgraded and repaired their effluent treatment systems to continue operation. The UK Government provided compensation for the farmers directly involved.
These interrelated and contained events prompted precautionary measures of restricted-access containment zones in three counties where suspected infections were reported and major international trading partners such as Canada and the Republic of Ireland placed temporary restrictions on meat and dairy exports. ”
———–
Well, hopefully this clarifies my point…
Still, mea culpa in the consideration of the info mess there…..really sorry.
cheers
I don’t believe a single thing from ZeroHedge. Complete garbage. The posts here are FAR more reliable.
Zerohedge seems to push pretty hard on this. It makes one suspect they have large short positions that they can clean up on disaster with.
When it was collected about 15 years ago from a nearby bat cave they took the samples to that facility… look at the prevailing winds.
Accidently posted this on the wrong thread earlier today:
Some assertions I have checked on and found to not be true or not so likely to be just as asserted.
Hibernation of bats:
– Some bats have a sort of hibernation, called torpor. Fruit bats do not hibernate. Many do not migrate.
Nearest known location of bats with virus similar to COVID19 is Zhousan, about 500 miles due east of Wuhan.
This does not mean this is the closest location of that species, or the closest location of bats with that virus.
It means that in 2018 bats were found in that place and had coronavirus taken from them, and that viral genome is in the stored genome files of whoever keeps those files, and that virus has been found to be a 88% genetic match for the new virus.
It does not mean that the new virus came from those bats.
It does not mean those bats are not in the Wuhan area.
It does not mean that those are the only bats with that 88% similar virus.
It does not mean that there are not other bats in other areas that may have an even more similar virus, or that there are not bats in the immediate area of Wuhan that do not have that virus or even ones more similar.
All it means is that in the limited database of bat corona viruses which have been sampled and catalogued, that is the closest KNOWN match.
What percentage of bat populations have been tested and all virus in them catalogued?
There are hundreds of species of bats in China, and dozens of species very closely related to the bats with that 88% virus. The 88% virus bats have a huge range, and individual bats may range far and wide and may even be somewhat nomadic or interbreed with bats in overlapping regions. Further, those viruses are able to infect a wide range of mammalian species.
Ordinary house cats were found to have been widely infected with SARS during that outbreak, and it is unknown if cats were able to pass it back to people. And that is just a single example.
Those viruses are numerous and infect a wide range of species, and those species are all over the place.
It is entirely possible that in the coming months and years the reservoir for this strain of virus will be found to exist all around that region.
Bats are not in Wuhan because it is Winter there and they are hibernating, and bats do not inhabit cities.
This is false, false, false, and misleading on top of false.
Bats are known to be widespread in cities.
Average temp in Wuhan in February is the high low range 38-51°F
But the virus was already widely circulating in people in late December.
December climatology for Wuhan is 37-51°F, November is 46-62°F, October is 58-74°F
Yes, AVERAGE high in October is 74 degrees fahretheit, which is not at all cold, and that is average.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/china/wuhan/climate
Bats live in cities, and may prefer a warm UHI in a city to outlying regions which may be colder agricultural areas.
And it is not at all hard to see that if the virus was widespread in December, the initial cases could have been 8 weeks prior or more. We see how long this virus incubates, and that spreading events seem spotty…sometimes spreading easily, other times slowly.
That cruise ship is a good example…for over 10 days the numbers of new people was moderate, and then it rose fairly quickly, and was uneven. If each patient incubates for a week to two weeks and spreads to 3 or 4 people, how long from initial case to thousands?
And the number in January may have been many many thousands if reports are to be believed.
And besides for that, are reports that there was an intermediate host.
This article from Lancet has several passages that bear on assertions made here in this thread.
Relating to an intermediate host:
“Although our phylogenetic analysis suggests that bats might be the original host of this virus, an animal sold at the seafood market in Wuhan might represent an intermediate host facilitating the emergence of the virus in humans”
“Recombination has been seen frequently in coronaviruses.1 As expected, we detected recombination in the Sarbecoviruses analysed here. Our results suggest that recombination events are complex and are more likely occurring in bat coronaviruses than in 2019-nCoV. Hence, despite its occurrence, recombination is probably not the reason for emergence of this virus, although this inference might change if more closely related animal viruses are identified.
In conclusion, we have described the genomic structure of a seventh human coronavirus that can cause severe pneumonia and have shed light on its origin and receptor-binding properties. More generally, the disease outbreak linked to 2019-nCoV again highlights the hidden virus reservoir in wild animals and their potential to occasionally spill over into human populations.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext#seccestitle180
All of this talk about spike protein substitutions and bats hibernating and not existing near that market are not exactly true, not exactly the relevant factors, or not especially compelling as to the likely origin of the virus.
These things are rarely figured out quickly, in terms of details.
The way this virus spreads, all of the people who came down very sick in December may have been infected by someone who worked at that market and had mild symptoms.
Between genetic drift and possible recombination events in some coinfected host, there is no reason to think that there is necessarily anything unusual about the particulars of this virus.
At least not that has been pointed out in any reputable publications.
There is no shortage of people in this field all over the world who will be looking at this closely.
I for one will not be jumping to any conclusions based on what amounts to internet rumormongering
How then to explain only 7 deaths , at least one of them a woman, among 1,716 infected Chinese doctors and nurses?
sorry, accidental and misplaced duplicate reply to:
Alex February 17, 2020 at 11:16 pm
Here is the reference for you:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1.full?fbclid=IwAR3_sXIqB6gjrGC2Sx8FcWLZUs0dt8DlSYuol5In404-appJXB1cjnN9_fo
This is weird , I like to post Wattsup with that on FB page so friend can see it. This works until today when i tried to post about the virus could have come from a Chinese Lab. Curious