Did ChiCom-19 Come From a Red Chinese Lab?

Guest “Cold Warrior-ing” by David Middleton

Those readers who either aren’t proficient in the English language and/or don’t remember the Cold War, may be unfamiliar with the acronym: ChiCom. It stands for Chinese Communist. In my never-ending effort to reject political correctness, I refer to everything related to the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 as ChiCom-19.

ChiCom = Chinese Communist

Sergeant Muldoon : From Red China: Chicom K-50 sub-machine gun… Chinese communist! SKS Soviet-made semi-automatic carbine… Russian communist! Ammunition, Czechoslovakian-made… Czech communist! No sir, Mr. Beckworth! It doesn’t take a lead weight to fall on me or a hit from one of those weapons to recognize that what’s involved here is communist domination of the world!

The Green Berets, 1968

Yeah, I know The Green Berets was historically, geographically and technically flawed… But, what other movie features A-1 Skyraiders dropping napalm and an AC-47 “Puff the Magic Dragon” clearing a field? Granted, the SPAD’s dropped napalm at night and Spooky rained 7.62 mm hell on the VC/NVA in daylight, the opposite of how the aircraft were generally employed… But it was the perfect mix of Cold War jingoism and John Wayne… And it provided a perfect hairpin segue to the central question of this post:

Did ChiCom-19 come from a Red Chinese virology lab?

What a difference 53 days can make…

Cell Phones, Cancer, And Coronavirus: Tucker Carlson Spreads Conspiracy Theories

By Alex Berezow, PhD — February 20, 2020

The Fox News host says cell phones cause cancer and the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) might have escaped from a biological weapons lab. Both claims are ridiculous.

[…]

The Wuhan Coronavirus Is Not a Bioweapon

Tucker then one-upped himself. He did another segment in which Bill Gertz, a Washington Times national security correspondent, hints that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) might be a biological weapon. “Is it human-caused, or laboratory-caused, or is it a natural phenomena?… Let’s get the debate going.”

Okay, let’s do that. The most likely explanation is natural phenomenon because Chinese markets allow potentially millions of humans to interact with potentially millions of live animals. That’s a recipe for disaster. SARS jumped from animals to humans in China in 2002 precisely for that reason.

Tucker then asks bluntly, “Is there any evidence as of tonight that this virus originated in a lab?”

The answer to that is “no,” but the guest said, “I don’t know.” He then mentioned that China’s only high-security biological lab is located in Wuhan. 

[…]

American Council on Science and Health
  • Tucker Carlson: “Is there any evidence as of tonight that this virus originated in a lab?”
  • Alex Berezow: “The answer to that is ‘no’…”

“The answer to that is was ‘no’…”

Best Evidence Yet That Coronavirus Came From Wuhan BSL-4 Lab

By Alex Berezow, PhD — April 13, 2020

No, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is not a biological weapon. But that doesn’t mean the virus didn’t escape from a laboratory. A growing body of circumstantial evidence indicates that very well may be what happened.

When the novel coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, emerged from China, conspiracy theorists — including a prominent cable news host — were quick to point out that Wuhan is host to a “biological weapons” lab. Thus, according to the conspiracy, the virus was a leaked bioweapon.

There are two gigantic problems with that theory. First, there is no reason to believe that the Wuhan laboratory is in the business of producing biological weapons. The lab is a high-security facility, known as biosafety level 4 (BSL-4), similar to the ones we have at the CDC in Atlanta.

[…]

American Council on Science and Health

I have the greatest respect for Alex Berezow and I usually agree with him on science/health matters. The only area in which I generally disagree with him is climate change – even then, my disagreements are usually matters of scale, context and magnitude, not the underlying science.

On this particular issue, Dr. Berezow started out with a straw man, reversed course and then double downed on the straw man.

Tucker Carlson asked, “Is there any evidence as of tonight that this virus originated in a lab?” On February 20, 2020, Dr. Berezow said, “No.” On April 13, 2020, Dr, Berezow said, “Yes”, but there’s no evidence that it’s from a bio-weapons lab. Mr. Carlson never said it was. He and Bill Gertz discussed the possibility that it might be a bio-weapons lab. Well, it might be. I doubt that it is a bio-weapons lab… But I don’t know… And it doesn’t really matter.

The global economic destruction caused by the Kung Flu has reaffirmed that we can’t trust Communist China and that we should begin the process of unwinding our economic ties with them. Even if this virus was inadvertently released from a ChiCom virology lab, they willfully obstructed the world’s ability to respond to it. They should be held financially, and possibly criminally liable for all of the damages related to it. The first step should be to seize their US Treasury holdings as a down payment on the economic damage that Red China has caused.

China should be legally liable for the pandemic damage it has done

April 10, 2020

The costs of the pandemic keep piling up. Hundreds of millions of Americans are on lockdown, a record 16.8 million have filed unemployment claims, nearly 15,000 Americans have died so far and the death toll is growing exponentially by the day. Congress has passed three coronavirus relief bills totaling $2.3 trillion, and more might soon be in the works.

Somebody has to pay for this unprecedented damage. That somebody should be the government of China.

No one can blame Beijing for a viral outbreak beyond its control. But the Chinese communist regime should be blamed — and held legally liable — for intentionally lying to the world about the danger of the virus, and proactively impeding a global response that might have prevented a worldwide contagion.

We now know that the first case of covid-19 appeared in China’s Hubei province on Nov. 17. By mid-December, Chinese officials knew that the virus was capable of human-to-human transmission because doctors and nurses were getting sick. But instead of alerting the world, they tried to cover it up and punished doctors who tried to sound the alarm. On Jan. 14, the World Health Organization tweeted that “Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” On Jan. 15, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared on state television that “the risk of human-to-human transmission is low.” These were lies, and Beijing knew it. More than 1,700 Chinese medical workers had been infected.

As China lied, it intentionally hampered US efforts to prepare for the virus’s arrival on our shores by refusing to share samples with us. US officials became so frustrated that they tried a back channel — asking the director of the biocontainment lab at the University of Texas, which had a research partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to see whether he could get samples.  Post reports that “At first, the lab in Wuhan agreed, but officials in Beijing intervened Jan. 24 and blocked any lab-to-lab transfer.” That intervention came one day after Beijing finally imposed a belated lockdown on Wuhan — which means even after Chinese officials finally publicly acknowledged they were battling a pandemic they were still obstructing the US response.

[…]

American Enterprise Institute

If ChiCom-19 was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or some other ChiCom laboratory, then Beijing can, and should be blamed “for a viral outbreak beyond its control”, because it started out in their control.

Day 28 of America Held Hostage by ChiCom-19

In local news… Fire Marshal Gump (Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins) is at it again…

Dallas County commissioners delay a vote on the pop-up hospital because it might not be needed after all
Whether Dallas County would use the hospital was the subject of a political squabble between County Judge Clay Jenkins and Gov. Greg Abbott.

Updated at 6:05 p.m.: This story has been revised to include comment from the military.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins was adamant last week that North Texas needed a pop-up hospital at the Dallas convention center in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, however, Jenkins changed his tune as the county has yet to see an expected surge in cases, topping off at about 100 per day.

[…]

About half the city’s hospital beds were open Monday, according to a tweet from Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson. Forty percent of the city’s beds in intensive care units were also available.

[…]

A spokesman for the military said it will continue to work with Dallas County and the state to determine the best location for military medical personnel and supplies.

“Northern Command and U.S. Army North continually evaluate the best use of all allocated military assets to meet FEMA’s priorities as the response to COVID-19 evolves,” said Charles G. Calio in an email. “Military capabilities are inherently flexible, allowing us to tailor and scale our response to best meet the requirement.”

Dallas Morning News

From the April 10 Dallas County Health and Human Services 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID‐19) Summary:

ChiCom-19 hospitalizations appear to have peaked below influenza hospitalizations.

Dallas County hospital admissions: Influenza vs ChiCom-19

Although, ChiCom-19 ICU admissions appear to have peaked a little higher than influenza ICU admissions:

Dallas County ICU admissions: Influenza vs ChiCom-19

The numbers reported at noon yesterday, pushed the Mendoza Line crossing out to November 14, 2034…

Dallas CountyCHICOM-19
PopulationCasesDeaths
2,637,7721,788321.8%
% of population with0.0678%0.00121%
% wth, rounded0.1%0.00%
% without99.9322%99.9988%
% without, rounded99.9%100.00%
Menodoza Line (.200)14-Nov-20340.200

Time to end the hostage crisis! Otherwise, at some point, the liability for this would shift from Red China to the Fire Marshal Gumps of the world.

Somehow… This Kinks song seems appropriate:

Featured Image

The Economist cover (Taiwan News)
0 0 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

368 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Vuk
April 14, 2020 2:11 pm

In the UK powerful Foreign Affairs Committee and it’s chairman Tom Tugendhat including some of senior Tory MPs accuse China of a corona virus ‘cover-up’ and demand an international investigation to find ‘patient zero’ .

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Vuk
April 14, 2020 5:36 pm

And apparently Trump had just announced defunding the WHO. I wonder if others will follow suit…

RockyRoad
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
April 14, 2020 6:03 pm

…pending review, I believe.

However, I have seen little evidence that would justify the $400 million the US gives the WHO each year!

Greg
Reply to  RockyRoad
April 15, 2020 1:58 am

Now what Bill Gates buy up shares in WHO to push his own vaccine program which was kicked out of Indian NAB for crippling tens of thousands with defective polio vaccinations and secretly slipping sterilisation drugs into the same “generous” charitable treatments as he did in Africa with typhoid jabs.

Gates is a eugenicist and should be in jail for what he is doing. Doubtless all justified by “saving the planet”.

A C Osborn
Reply to  Greg
April 15, 2020 3:19 am

For anyone in doubt watch this italian video from 2015 and ask yourself why would anyone modify the SARS virus to make it more dangerous.

https://rairfoundation.com/breaking-salvini-demands-answers-does-a-2015-italian-documentary-prove-the-coronavirus-was-created-in-a-chinese-lab-watch/

Robert W. Turner
Reply to  Greg
April 15, 2020 7:38 am

The more they say, “it’s a debunked conspiracy”, “there’s no evidence for that”, or “that’s a crazy idea”, the more it makes me think that the virus was definitely released from a lab.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

Besides, it’s a fact that SARS has been bioengineered to be exactly like Chicom-19 – live longer on surfaces and in water droplets. We did it, various labs in Europe did it, China did it, and others like Russia and Israel probably did it.

If you want a conspiracy theory, it’s not that the virus accidently got out of the Wuhan lab because that actually seems likely, it’s that some nefarious actor released the virus on purpose in Wuhan in order to cascade the world into socialist hell and have it blamed on China.

goldminor
Reply to  Greg
April 15, 2020 2:06 pm

Here were my top 4 choices for how this started, posted several days ago.

Here are my top best guesses for what happened. Number One which just came to mind yesterday, an accident occurred in the Wuhan lab. A contaminated lab tech/s went for lunch to the wet market. That was the start of the virus spread at the market. When informed about this the Chinese Govt immediately took actions to suppress what happened. Saw the obvious solution of blaming the wet market for the release of the virus.

Number two, a careless worker gets contaminated at work. The worker may have missed the mistake, or thought that it could be washed away. Goes to the wet market for lunch or dinner supplies. So the virus gets out, and no one is aware until the numbers infected become apparent.

Number three, a dissident group within the Chinese military who were crazy enough to think that this would benefit China in the long run.

Number four, the Chinese government itself decides this is the correct course of action for fighting Trump’s tariffs which had been choking China.

So after all of that a new thought came to mind which I would have to rate as top choice. There was an accidental release in the lab caused by human error. It could even be that no one in the lab was aware of the contamination. If they were aware and tried to clean up, then they did not do a good job. Then at lunch time, or at the end of the day the infected worker/s head to the local lunch counter, or get take home for dinner. They infect the workers at the end market.

Now as the sickness spreads and shows its face to where the government because aware of what happened, the government then decides that being that it was too late to bottle up the genie that they would then make use of the virus spread as an opportunity for China. China shut down all travel in China for 3 weeks while allowing many millions to leave China. This is the clue which strikes home to my mind. The question is how to interpret this as either China hiding info because they always hide info, or if they did that with intent of believing that China had a superior position, and would come out stronger as a result over other nations especially over the US.

niceguy
Reply to  Greg
April 17, 2020 5:07 pm

Old Nobel prize recipients (sad because everybody forgot them?) signed a petition about the risk of radiological terrorism, which is practically non existent (and all about regulations anyway: lifting the prohibition against exposure to radiations would make the problem go way). Also, they made Obama wreck the HEU industry which we should defend and promote, against fear of *phobia: I’m not OK with Iran having an HEU industry, I want France to have one.

But they never thought that transforming pathogens to make them more infectious was an issue?

LdB
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
April 14, 2020 6:08 pm

The Australian PM had already berated WHO for the decision to support re-opening of the Wet Markets so WHO isn’t going to get much support from us.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  LdB
April 15, 2020 12:46 am

As far as I can see, the WHO have been less than useless, probably exacerbating the original problem by downplaying it. From my experience in working for them, their main activity is bureaucracy and administration. They are not worth a tenth of what we pay them.

While we’re at it, the entire UN can take a hike. That will go a little way (but not much) to help pay for our enforced economic pain.

Greg
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
April 15, 2020 2:05 am

These tentacles of UN need permanent amputation. UN was set up from the League of Nations to prevent conflict. That on the whole has been beneficial.

It is now trying to become an unaccountable world govt. and has total immunity from prosecution anywhere in the world. That must stop now. Good move by Trump but needs a golfer’s “follow through”.

Why did BoJo just give 200 million to this worthless body when he can not even get masks into his own hospitals to protect those to whom he says he owes his life ??

John Tillman
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
April 15, 2020 8:54 am

Yes, WHO is worse than worthless. So since 1950 has been the whole UN.

Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
April 15, 2020 12:26 pm

The UN has helped prevent conflict? I think MAD has helped prevent conflict.

goldminor
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
April 15, 2020 2:09 pm

Just heard this morning that the WHO spent 200 million last year on first class air travel. That says it all. End the waste, the money is needed elsewhere.

dmacleo
April 14, 2020 2:17 pm

many people have mentioned symptoms matching the kungflu in late october early november (I personally know 3 of them) which is right after another set of economic sanctions from US went into effect.
very odd.
purposeful?
its a possible vs probable issue.
is it possible it was on purpose?
yes.
is it probable? this is where I have no answer.

and since people report online disctionaries used for editing posts try to steer towards political correctnes heres a little ditty I thought of:

All the dictionaries were KungFlu fighting;
those Wuhan Virus were fast as lightning.
Although the ChinaVirus is a little bit frightening;
Its the book of vaccines that you’re writing.

Crispin in Waterloo
Reply to  dmacleo
April 14, 2020 4:05 pm

The regular flu this season was really bad – much worse then a usual year. I was in China in October and there was no problem. I got the seasonal flu in Santa Barbara and coughed my guts out for 6 weeks.

Not COVID-19.

Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo
April 15, 2020 12:36 am

A GP colleague here in the U.K. noted the same thing and suspects that it may have been the first wave infection of CoViD19, in which case we are into the second wave.
I would not diagnose flu unless the following were present: temperature above 38, muscle and body aches, lethargy and feeling very unwell.
I had the persistent cough and low grade fever but I’d also had the flu inoculation.

Greg
Reply to  John
April 15, 2020 2:12 am

may have been the first wave infection of CoViD19

What real reason is there for that suggestion ? If we add “may have been” we can say anything.

With the average level of competence of GPs, I take anything they say with a large pinch of salt and try to double check it. GPs are pill-pushers for pharma an now seem to think speculative prescription of medication is a diagnostic tool !! No, I’m not joking or being sarcastic.

dmacleo
Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo
April 15, 2020 4:59 am

did you also lose sense of smell?
thats included when I say same symptoms.

Reply to  dmacleo
April 14, 2020 4:53 pm

++10

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Richard
April 14, 2020 5:38 pm

So, 11, then?

(software developer humour, sorry)

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
April 15, 2020 12:01 am

Only if the value of the variable “10” is 10 😉

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
April 15, 2020 12:31 am

Ouch, caught me there… 🙂

I’ll turn in my c++ humour licence

Greg
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
April 15, 2020 2:20 am

No, the value of “variable” 10 was already 11 since it was incremented before being de-referenced.

Also variable names must begin with a letter of the alphabet or an underscore. 😉

Turn in your developer’s license too 😉

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
April 17, 2020 8:33 am

I’m not a developer, just someone who programs for my own edification.

And you still didn’t know the original value of the mal-formed variable “10”, so you can’t say it was 11 at any point. It could now be -234.

Reply to  dmacleo
April 14, 2020 9:11 pm

My wife and I suffered from a condition I referred to at the time as “London cough”
https://billsticker.wordpress.com/2019/11/08/the-london-cough/
It began the first week November 2019, which, working on a 5 day incubation period, means that whatever we caught, it was during the last week of October in London UK.

We have not been tested for covid-19, but I would bet even money we’d both test positive for covid-19 antibodies.

Greg
Reply to  Bill Sticker
April 15, 2020 2:22 am

My names Brian and so is my wife.

Andyd
Reply to  Bill Sticker
April 15, 2020 4:24 am

If covid19 was rampaging in the west in late 2019 why weren’t we seeing deaths in the nursing homes then? Get a grip folks.

Reply to  David Middleton
April 15, 2020 6:02 am

Oh come on! if it was in the west in 2019 then why so few cases. Assume it arrived in mid jan 2020 then just look at the propagation rate. why did this not occur in2019?

Reply to  David Middleton
April 15, 2020 8:46 am

this is a list of who actions as I posted elsewhere.
The first case of covid 19 in usa was 21st Jan
on 12th Jan China releases genetic sequencing
on 13th Jan Thailand had first case outside china.

from who
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen
WHO responding to a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan
4 January 2020
WHO announced it would work across its 3 levels – country office, regional office and HQ – to track the situation and share details as they emerged.
WHO issues its first guidance on the novel coronavirus
10 January 2020
Developed with reference to other coronaviruses, such as SARS and MERS, WHO issued a tool for countries to check their ability to detect and respond to a novel coronavirus.
This information is to help with identifying main gaps, assessing risks and planning for additional investigations, response and control actions.
China makes genome sequencing of novel coronavirus publicly available
12 January 2020
China shares the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus, which will be very important for other countries as they develop specific diagnostic kits.
First case of novel coronavirus outside of China confirmed
13 January 2020
Officials confirmed a case of the novel coronavirus in Thailand. It was not unexpected that cases of the novel coronavirus would emerge outside of China and reinforces why WHO calls for active monitoring and preparedness in other countries.
WHO makes field visit to Wuhan, China

John Tillman
Reply to  David Middleton
April 15, 2020 9:05 am

Chinese New Year travel was key to its rapid, wide dissemination. This year it fell on January 25. Recent immigrants from Wuhan flew home and back to places such as NYC and Milan before and after that date.

First US case had beat the holiday rush to visit family, possibly to take advantage of lower fares, or because he couldn’t get off work later:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191

“On January 19, 2020, a 35-year-old man presented to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, with a 4-day history of cough and subjective fever. On checking into the clinic, the patient put on a mask in the waiting room. After waiting approximately 20 minutes, he was taken into an examination room and underwent evaluation by a provider. He disclosed that he had returned to Washington State on January 15 after traveling to visit family in Wuhan, China. The patient stated that he had seen a health alert from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the novel coronavirus outbreak in China and, because of his symptoms and recent travel, decided to see a health care provider.”

Thank God he saw the alert. His seeking examination alerted at least West Coast health care providers and authorities to the threat. WA suffered tragedy in the Kirkland nursing home, but OR and CA took prompt action. OR indeed has overdone it, with the same draconian rules enforced in counties (most of them) with no deaths or even cases, as in the stricken Willamette Valley.

Russ R.
Reply to  Bill Sticker
April 15, 2020 7:36 am

I would take that bet. It is much more likely you got:
1) a seasonal flu, or a cold
2) a respiratory issue due to London air problems,
3) a different COV that came from china, with different characteristics. Very low prob, but still higher that your bet.

If it was COV-19 there would have been a lot of people going to the hospital, which didn’t happen.
Some things will fly under the radar. That is not one of them.

Reply to  Russ R.
April 15, 2020 9:26 pm

The odds would not favour you, as even if what my wife and I contracted wasn’t an odd form of influenza. Probability is that we might well have contracted the milder form of covid-19 in the interim.

I’ve had a number of bouts of influenza, and this was nothing like it. There’s normally only one or two bouts of fever and this particular infection, whatever it was, was highly atypical. Having worked in primary healthcare at a clinical level, I’ve never come across its like before.

On the flight home, our cabin had a number of people with a similar hacking dry cough to our own. All I know was what happened. All else, failing tests, is merely conjecture.

Russ R.
Reply to  Bill Sticker
April 15, 2020 9:46 pm

It was still in the lab in Wuhan, China in the first week of November, 2019. It will come out over the next few days. Two weeks later it is possible but highly unlikely. So it is not a fair bet.

Jeffery P
Reply to  dmacleo
April 15, 2020 6:41 am

I’ve heard those reports of early possible Covid-19 infections in the US. Has anybody tracked down those possibly infected and test them for antibodies?

No Chicom Virus antibodies means no infection. Positive results cannot show when the infection started.

niceguy
Reply to  dmacleo
April 17, 2020 5:22 pm

Most symptoms of Kung Flu are highly generic, so…

JEHILL
April 14, 2020 2:18 pm

I now live in the Dallas County area. I love the name of Fire Marshall Gump. I started my new job the day all this house attesting began.

Hopefully we can vote this guy out office soon.

April 14, 2020 2:24 pm

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wuhan-death.html
By Amy Qin and Javier C. Hernández
Published Jan. 10, 2020
Updated Jan. 21, 2020

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

HONG KONG — Chinese state media on Saturday reported the first known death from a new virus that has infected dozens of people in China and set off worries across Asia.
The Xinhua news agency cited the health commission in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the illness first appeared, in reporting the death. The health commission said the patient, a 61-year-old man, died on Thursday night.
Forty-one people have been found to have the new virus, a coronavirus, and seven patients are still in severe condition, the health commission said, according to the Xinhua report. Two patients have been discharged, it said.
There is no evidence that the virus can be spread between humans, according to the commission. The initial cases were linked to workers at a market that sold live fish, birds and other animals. More than 700 people who had close contact with patients, including 419 medical workers, have been put under observation, the commission said, adding that no additional cases have been found.

Vuk
Reply to  David Middleton
April 14, 2020 2:41 pm

Blame Deng Xiaoping who introduced the one-child policy to curb China’s rapidly growing population. China ended with too many old unproductive people taking up resources while it aims to become no.1 world’s economic power, hence a virus that mostly eliminates old and infirm. Has China antidote, and is the ‘chloroquine cure’ just another cover-up story? /sarc ?

Reply to  David Middleton
April 14, 2020 2:42 pm

“lies?” ………Your evidence Middleton?

Russ R.
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 14, 2020 3:08 pm

Henry – The dates of Published Jan 10 and updated Jan 22. By that time it was well established that medical workers had been infected with the virus from patients they had seen. Taiwan reported to the WHO that they had indications of person-to-person transmission in Dec.
This was a cover-up. A poorly run one, but what they lacked in foresight and intelligence they made up for in intimidation, missing people, and tenacious adherence to “the story” regardless of evidence disputing it.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 4:01 pm

I suspect the cover-up was intended not to hide the existence of the virus (it couldn’t be hidden for long), but to destroy evidence of its laboratory origins.

Bryan A
Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 7:41 pm

You get a Gold Star

Greg
Reply to  Russ R.
April 15, 2020 2:42 am

I suspect the cover-up was intended not to hide the existence of the virus (it couldn’t be hidden for long), but to destroy evidence of its laboratory origins.

This is the most convincing evidence that Chinese govt. knew it was a laboratory leak. The severe repression of the doctors who first trying to notify the existence of a new flu outbreak means there was something they ALREADY knew about it that they were intent on suppressing knowledge of.

There would be no reason to refute the existence of a new flu strain, let alone start arresting doctors and forcing them to sign gagging orders.

When these doctors end up being linked to the same WIV, it gets only clearer.

Also work at that lab where they repeatedly infected mice with bat coronavirus until they achieved species jump is FACTUALLY recorded evidence. We do not need speculation that this all MAY have happened naturally on a random market stall. How long after that did they get it to jump to human cells in vitro. After all they were not doing work in that lab because they were worried about the health of bats.

When ever someone wheels out “conspiracy theory” as though it was a counter argument itself usually means that they do not have any factual counter argument to offer.

SMC
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 14, 2020 3:31 pm

Have you been paying attention to the news, Pool? Any news organization will do. You just have to follow the shifting narratives to realize somebody is lying. Since much of the MSM was parroting ChiCom talking points, it’s not hard to deduce, it was, and still is, China that is and has been lying.

Reply to  SMC
April 14, 2020 6:46 pm

You are correct, somebody is lying. Biggest liar is our POTUS. “Anybody that needs a test gets a test.”

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  SMC
April 15, 2020 12:02 am

Still butt-hurt, eh Henry?

Rah
Reply to  SMC
April 15, 2020 7:18 am

Anyone that hates Trump more than the communist Chinese that are responsible this pandemic that’s killed 100,000s really needs to step back an take a long hard look in the mirror. Henry.

Goldrider
Reply to  SMC
April 15, 2020 8:55 am

As per Sheryl Atkisson in her recent book “The Smear,” just about anytime someone attempts to discredit a line of inquiry by labelling it “conspiracy theory,” you can bet there’s some fire under that smoke. The very phrase is a “tell.” Another “tell” is when suddenly every publication medium on earth starts using the exact same phrase or semantics simultaneously. “We’re all in this together” comes to mind. Learn to recognize the “smell” of manufactured and disseminated VIRAL propaganda. A constantly shifting group of global dot-orgs. churn out most of it, same as with CAGW, likely for the same purpose.

ex-KaliforniaKook
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 15, 2020 11:03 am

The lie is that there was no known human-to-human transference. Chicom doctors were already publishing findings that there was plenty of evidence for it. They were silenced, and their findings were removed from the net.

Short memory, Mr. Pool?

John Endicott
Reply to  ex-KaliforniaKook
April 15, 2020 3:15 pm

When one has TDS, they have no memory beyond their hatred of all things Trump.

Reply to  David Middleton
April 14, 2020 4:27 pm

Chi Com Starter Kit David: One Child policy slaughtering tens of millions of baby girls, stealing all the technology they can, harvesting organs, shutting down internet sites, exporting fentanyl, suppressed Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong, Spratly Islands, flouting international trade pacts, flouting international pacts on bioweapons (French were approached after SARS 2004-05… and built P4 bioweapons lab in Wuhan- Chinese were found to have been lying about their bioweapons research for 20 years), Belt and Road, Hong Kong, the Uighurs, no worker protections, no environmental protections, accounting for half the world’s coal consumption, a surveillance state that makes the entire country an open air prison…now the corona virus…if I need to go on, you haven’t been paying attention…they are worse than Russia, Iran and N Korea combined. (Oh yeah, and they eat dogs and cats…)

BFL
Reply to  Jim Felton
April 15, 2020 10:14 am
Latitude
Reply to  David Middleton
April 14, 2020 4:45 pm

and now the media talking point…..”China’s lack of transparency”

bullcrap….trying to sugar coat China’s flat out lying

China flat out lied…and they can’t even say it

Can you believe our own citizens, politicians, and news media is doing that?

Peter Buchan
Reply to  David Middleton
April 15, 2020 1:49 am

Mr Middleton, are you suggesting that the US doesn’t lie?

Should the world have turned its back on the USA after…oh wait, sorry, so many lies, false flags, military & diplomatic misadventures on false premises, and such countless prevarications I can’t even begin a meaningful list here lest CTM blocks the post for sheer length.

The point is this: it really hasn’t taken much to tease out the flag-waving atavism in a number of supposedly “wise men of science” here on WUWT, with you and the Laird leading from the front all cherry-faced; cheeks bulging and lips pressed firmly into your revisionist cavalry bugles.

Lest you think my criticism … or rather disappointment … stems from some progressive outrage to do with “racism” or “name calling”, let me restate that I have no special affinity or allegiance towards China, Russia or anywhere else for that matter. After all there are no more “governments”to speak of, only elite enclaves with little real connection to the ants below. I’ve just become more skilled at spotting dyed-in-the-wool expediency – and hypocrisy – as my time on this earth unfolded.

Observing you and Monckton’s righteous, puerile and spittle-flecked flailing – stapled to hastily selected, grossly incomplete “data” – is made all the more entertaining by the existence of reports such at this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick-biohazard.html. Which makes it as clear as day Sir: the breakout of any organism in this interconnected age of hyper-specialization and scale, is a statistically probable non-linearity. I’ll clarify further: even if the virus DID originate in China (no one “knows” that yet…except you and Monckton) it’s irrelevant because, and you should know this as a Man of Science, it could easily have started and/or propagated elsewhere; the slope was avalanche ready.

Anyway, this is not to say I won’t (still) avidly read your work in future. I do respect much of your work. I guess I’ve just grown allergic to flag-waving for it’s own sake. Perilous times Mr Middleton, and jingoism has little place when the world is this close to a serious confrontation – even if it is second nature across the Atlantic. It’s rather ironic that the America you promote and seek to defend probably no longer exists.

William Astley
Reply to  Peter Buchan
April 15, 2020 11:20 am

In reply to: …are you suggesting that the US doesn’t lie?

Do you have the understanding of a Child? Do you know anything about the thing that runs China and how our government works?

This about the deadly/dangerous uncontrolled ‘thing’ that runs China. Not the Chinese people. …. this has zero to do about ‘racism’.

The thing that runs China has a nice friendly face, except if you say or do anything that the thing does not want. There is no choice.

And there is no protection if the thing starts to go in an evil direction.

The US/President/CDC/CNN/FOX/Congress/PBS/Breitbart and so on would never lie about whether a virus is or is not deadly. We have checks and balances in our system.

The US is all of us. We are more than our government.

We have laws that make it impossible for a President to develop and use a deadly virus. And we have a free press and congress to provide additional levels of protection.

In our system people are important. In the US, we have checks and balances to stop our country from building and using evil things.

When a country becomes too big and too powerful and there are no checks and balances. There starts to be deadly infighting. And the country can do evil things.

The thing in China has killed and tortured their own people, in the name of efficiency. We know that. China has illegally militarized coral reefs to take over the ‘China’ Southern sea.

The below is just a short list of the ‘lies’ which the Chinese thing pushed out.

Why did the thing in China lie? This is a deadly virus.

China said this covid virus could only spread from animal to human contact.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/22/who-covers-for-china-amid-virus-outbreak-not-contagious-among-humans

China stopped all China internal flights from and to the affected province and then lobbied the/forced the WHO to continue to allow fights from all countries and to all countries the affected province…

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/03/18/chinese-media-wuhan-coronavirus-the-u-s-and-europes-new-chernobyl/

China waited until January 12 to provide the US with a map of the covid virus.

Martin557
April 14, 2020 2:25 pm

A world wide boycott of all products that say {Made in China} is in order.

harrowsceptic
Reply to  Martin557
April 14, 2020 3:03 pm

There wouldn’t be much left in the shops in that case

SMC
Reply to  harrowsceptic
April 14, 2020 3:34 pm

True but, we need to work back toward the time when China’s most valuable export was rubber doggie doodo. And then find another supplier for that.

posa
Reply to  SMC
April 14, 2020 5:51 pm

Ridiculous. China could shut down the entire US Pharmacy industry overnight. And virtually every other key industry. They hold all the cards. So yeah. You show ’em!

Cube
Reply to  posa
April 14, 2020 7:31 pm

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Or, you can sit around making snarky comments while they eat your lunch for you.

John Endicott
Reply to  posa
April 15, 2020 3:04 am

Our “key industry” should not be exclusively in foreign hands for that very reason. S0, all the more reason to get away from our dependence on China, so that they won’t be able to so much as threaten to do so going forward.

Russ R.
Reply to  posa
April 15, 2020 7:57 am

All the cards?
You may want to re-think that.
It is easy to overestimate or underestimate, if you are not in the estimation business.

Boycotting is not a strategy, it is a temper tantrum. It is better to work towards an attainable goal, on a specific timescale. I would say identify key industries and provide incentives to produce domestically, and disincentives to import. Then modify as needed to achieve the goal.

posa
Reply to  posa
April 15, 2020 8:22 am

It will take years to replace the industries that the US Predator Class sent to China. You’re a fool to think it can be done overnight. So any abrupt move will leave the US high and dry. And while you’re working on rebuilding 20th century production, the Chinese are surging ahead with 21st century innovations.

John Endicott
Reply to  posa
April 15, 2020 9:40 am

You mean stealing the innovations & IP of others.

And yes, it will take some time to accomplish “replacing industries”, but not nearly as long as you seem to think. After all look how long it took Ford and GM to switch from building cars to building medical equipment – mere weeks. It’s a lot easier to start manufacturing a known item than it is to “innovate” something completely new. (it’s also not an B&W all now or not at all situation. Like the oil industry, we’d likely move in desired direction slowly, over time, while continuing to reduce the reliance on imports on a diminishing basis as time goes on until we get ever closer to the goal of independence).

And China does not hold “all the cards”, contrary to what you wrongly believe.

In a trade war the buyer has a lot of leverage. With few exceptions, buyers can more easily find other sources to buy from than sellers will have finding replacement buyers (particularly when it’s their largest buyer they need to replace). The US is China’s largest customer. If the US completely stopped buying from China, it would hurt China every bit as much if not greatly more so than it would the US (As I said, the buyer can go elsewhere, much of what we get from China we can easily get from elsewhere, it’d be more expensive, which is why we haven’t been doing so, but it can be done relatively easy and what we can’t source from elsewhere we could start making ourselves, not right away, and not as cheaply, but also not in too long a time either. Finding a buyer for *all* the stuff we use to buy from them, on the other hand, not anywhere near as easy to accomplish).

“A world wide boycott” of China even more so (not that either scenario is likely to happen for a myriad of reasons).

Derg
Reply to  harrowsceptic
April 14, 2020 3:35 pm

That is ok. There is time to learn.

William Astley
Reply to  Martin557
April 15, 2020 2:04 pm

That is an interesting strategy to get the ‘thing’s’ attention.

The ‘thing’ that controls China, is about money and control.

Absolute, scary control. In China the entire population uses face recognition technology for all purchases. China tracks the faces and what the faces do.

China blocks what the faces can see on the internet. China makes faces disappear for any criticism of the thing that runs China ….

April 14, 2020 2:28 pm

Thanks for clarifying “ChiCom”.

This whole episode has given a new meaning to “pandemic”, … by re-designating what the “pan” part of that word means — “panic”.

“Pandemic”, thus, in this case, is a shortened form of “Panicdemic”.

That’s as constructive a comment as I can muster at this time. I need to go touch my face some more now.

sycomputing
Reply to  Robert Kernodle
April 15, 2020 4:14 pm

That’s as constructive a comment as I can muster at this time.

Speaking of constructive comments Bob, what about the onesies? Where did the onesies go???

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/12/more-good-news-about-the-chinese-virus-and-the-easter-funny/#comment-2965447

AndyL
April 14, 2020 2:30 pm

Don’t be distracted by Chinese labs. It was 5g I tell you. 5g!

Reply to  AndyL
April 15, 2020 12:20 pm

Ahh
Chinese fruggggging labs. Sorted.

Auto

April 14, 2020 2:31 pm

March 30, 2020 by comprehensivecommunism
COVID-19 and China’s reactions in the early days
In December 2019, an outbreak of apparently viral pneumonia of unknown etiology emerged in the city of Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei.
On December 31, 2019, The World Health Organization said that Chinese health officials in Wuhan revealed a “cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause.”
On January 9, 2020, the Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the discovery of a novel coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, which was confirmed as the agent responsible for the pneumonia cases. On January 10, 2020, the first death and 41 clinically confirmed infections caused by the coronavirus were reported.
Over the weekend of January 11-12, the Chinese authorities shared the full sequence of the coronavirus genome, as detected in samples taken from the first patients.
On January 24, 2020, the central government of China imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province in an effort to quarantine the centre of an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Many cities, districts, and counties across mainland China implemented similar measures in the days following, including Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Harbin, and the whole of Jiangxi Province.
On January 30, 2020, researchers at the Institut Pasteur in France obtained and shared the full genome sequence of the virus. It took them just 3 days, but by their own admission the process may take up to 10 days.
https://comprehensivecommunism.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/covid-19-and-chinas-reactions-in-the-early-days/

davidgmillsatty
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 6:30 pm

On the 5th of January Chinese scientists submitted the genome to the NCBI which is a subdivision of the NIH. It was first published on the 12th of January and several updates were made till January 18, when updates stopped. Here is the NCBI link:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.1

There have been claims by many people that this was a bioweapon based upon something called “gain of function.” But no one has been able to prove any gain of function whatsoever. If the virus was man made then presumably it would have had some kind of “gain of function” to enhance its ability to infect people. The experts are clear that it could have been much worse. It could have taken a shorter time for an infected person to infect someone else. Infected people could have been contagious for longer. Many more people could have been critically ill. Many more infected people could have died. It is more contagious than SARS 1, but not nearly as deadly. It is more contagious than MERS which was far deadlier. This was a virus that virologists feared if one became much more contagious than SARS 1 or MERS. But it could have been far worse. So no experts are saying this was a man made “gain of function.” It is what the experts were expecting at some point in the future.

The article is a crock.

John Tillman
Reply to  davidgmillsatty
April 14, 2020 7:29 pm

The US government was so worried about the danger posed by gain of function research at UNC and Wuhan lab by the Bat Lady, Shi Zhengli, and her American colleagues, such as virologist Ralph Baric, that in 2014 federal funding for the risky experimentation was pulled.

Insanely, they were repeatedly infecting ferrets, whose lungs model humans’, with bat CVs related to SARS. They were getting close to gaining the function of easily breaking into human cells.

After losing US support, Shi returned to Wuhan and continued her work on creating what could only be an offensive bioweapon, rather than investigation of biodefense.

You could look it up, but here, I’ll help you:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/11/moratorium-risky-virology-studies-leaves-work-14-institutions-limbo

davidgmillsatty
Reply to  John Tillman
April 15, 2020 8:30 am

That is obviously one interpretation and a nefarious one.

The other interpretation, which is quite benign or even positive, was that these researchers knew, like so many other virologists, that it was only a matter of time before there was a natural coronavirus epidemic which was much more contagious than SARS or MERS and would kill far more people than either one of them had. The ability to quickly make vaccines and treatments for an emerging virus like that, is crucial, and it is beneficial to mankind to have a headstart.

The only way to figure out how to make vaccines and other treatments is to make viruses in the lab that might be similar to a contagious natural one and begin to test what vaccines and treatments might work on them. If they and others had not done that, we might be many more years down the road to having a vaccine or treatments. Since researchers like them did what they did, we are much closer to rolling out a vaccine in the near future. And Baric’s study was allowed to continue and finish. He was not shut down.

This kind of work is controversial to be sure and that is why it was shut down. But you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

As I said, there are two interpretations of the intentions of these scientists. At this point there is no evidence that this virus had a gain of function and without it there is no proof that these scientists had the nefarious intentions that the author of this article claims.

And one other thing this virus is proving. Bioweapons like this will not really work. Once in the public domain you lose complete control over them. If this was China’s bioweapon it backfired on China. If it was ours it backfired on us. Now that we know that bioweapons of this kind do not work, perhaps research like this in the future will not be as controversial.

Reply to  davidgmillsatty
April 15, 2020 12:22 pm

If the bat lady did return to Wuhan then there is no reason not to suspect the Communists in China from wanting to do nefarious things with her research – even if the bat lady didn’t want to join in – even if they let the bat lady continue to do benign research.

I have two words for anyone who wastes even a moment hesitating to distrust the loathsome Communists tyrannizing China: Falun Gong.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 8:38 pm

“On January 30, 2020, researchers at the Institut Pasteur in France obtained and shared the full genome sequence of the virus.”

On January 31, 2020, Trump imposed a travel ban on China. The day after the outside world gets a look at the Wuhan virus for the first time, Trump imposes a travel ban. The Democrats want to claim he was late in taking action. While Trump is taking action, the Democrats are focused on impeachment and on casting scorn on Trump’s China travel ban saying it was an overreaction and a sign of Trump’s racism.

Let’s vote these fool radical Democrats out of office come November 3. That would be *such* a good thing for the nation and the world. We could put our house back in order.

Jørgen F.
April 14, 2020 2:33 pm

…It’s the the geopolitical timing, US election year and an unresolved trade war, and the fact that the virus appears to be most efficient/damaging in the countries not using the BCG vaccine – namely the US.
If it’s a lab virus – it’s war.
If I was the chinese government not about to start a war – I would really really make an effort to dispute the allegations – prove them wrong.
But do they?

Jeffery P
Reply to  Jørgen F.
April 15, 2020 7:02 am

It’s war only if the virus was deliberately unleashed by the ChiCom government. Incompetence and carelessness is not an act of war.

However, we’ve been in a Cold War with China for the last 3 decades. It’s time we woke up to that,

John Tillman
Reply to  Jeffery P
April 15, 2020 9:17 am

Is it just a coincidence that the ChiCom regime and the US signed a trade pact on January 15, which included a clause insisted upon by the communists that the deal would be voided by an act of God, such as a pandemic?

Red China has not so secretly been at war with the US for at least over a decade. The CCP didn’t make a formal declaration, but its internal memos, military journal articles and propaganda make it clear. Trump’s playing hardball on trade moved up the conflict schedule.

The regime has covered up both the origin of the ChiCom virus and whether it was released accidentally or intentionally. Can’t be proved beydond a shadow of a doubt of course, but there is good circumstantial evidence for the latter, as an economic bioweapon against the democracies.

Not just the trade pact timing, but the Hong Kong revolution and election in Taiwan accelerated plans to attack sooner rather than later.

USN carrier Roosevelt docked in Da Nang in order to send a message to the Beijing dictatorship over its illegal actions in the South China Sea. Sadly, that decision has led to the death of one older sailor and sickening of hundreds of healthier younger crew. The skipper went ahead and docked, with shore leave for some, and taking on stores, because at the time the virus was said to be limited to the northern part of Vietnam. Maybe it had already made its way to the central region, or ChiCom agents made sure that crew members and supplies were infected.

Loydo
April 14, 2020 2:35 pm

ChiCom-19?

Red-baiting still? I thought that was a 60s thing, or is it just garden variety xenophobia we’re dealing wiith here? Fear does strange things to some people.

Craig from Oz
Reply to  Loydo
April 14, 2020 3:24 pm

Appeasement does stranger things.

Also, spoiler, appeasement is a short term solution for when one does not currently own a big stick. At any other time if is a fancy way of saying “please take everything I own just don’t hurt me” every day for the rest of your life.

Bullies only respect safecspaces if they know they can’t get in.

You want my take? China is not communist. They are fascist. They are at best your neighbour, not your friend. They screwed up royally in allowing Wuhan Virus to infect their own people and then decided their best scenario was to allow, even encourage, it to spread as an economic warfare attack on the crest of the world.

China is your neighbour.

DKR
Reply to  Craig from Oz
April 14, 2020 5:44 pm

Fascist, totalitarian, communist, evil, take your pick they all work

William Astley
Reply to  Craig from Oz
April 15, 2020 12:08 pm

China has the power of capitalism without the rule of law and checks and balance.

I totally agree. The issue is not Communism vs Capitalism.

The thing that runs China was no limits and it controls what people see and hear in China.

China cut of the Hubei province from the rest of China on Jan. 23 and still allowed flights in and out of the Hubei from the rest of the world.

This thing stinks.

“Niall Ferguson’s latest column (paywall) notes that on Jan. 23 the Chinese cut off Hubei province from the rest of China — but they didn’t cut it off from the rest of the world. Direct flights out continued. Trump’s travel restrictions kicked in only a week”

later.ttps://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2020/04/09/Coronavirus-Critics-ask-why-China-allowed-flights-out-of-Hubei-during-outbreak

Reply to  Loydo
April 14, 2020 3:58 pm

I don’t detect any fear, just a resignation to reality that the experiment of bringing China into the WTO to civilize the country has failed, they have instead used the wealth generated to try and impose their viewpoint on the rest of the world.
It’s our own fault if we let them.

Anyone who defends that government at any time reveals themselves

Reply to  Loydo
April 14, 2020 4:33 pm

Lloydo
Yes racism is back.
The Chinese are the new “yellow peril”.
Russians and Iranians are also eternal racial enemies of the American master race.
Anything with dark skin is still a holy cow however – we need some currency for moral licensing.
Welcome to post normal.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Phil Salmon
April 14, 2020 8:46 pm

“the American master race”

I think it would be useful to point out that the American master race is made up of members of all races, from every nation and place on Earth. The American master race is the human race.

Latitude
Reply to  Loydo
April 14, 2020 5:16 pm

god works in strange ways…..it didn’t start in Niger

we would all be calling it the niger virus

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Latitude
April 14, 2020 7:15 pm

Why would that matter? I’d hope you’re not confusing the word with another word containing two g’s?

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Latitude
April 15, 2020 12:07 am

“god works in strange ways”

Biggest cop-out ever.

Latitude
Reply to  Latitude
April 15, 2020 6:23 am

you guys need to get a sense of humor….and got off the high horse

Graemethecat
Reply to  Loydo
April 15, 2020 1:39 am

You have a problem with baiting the CCP? Wow…

Greg
Reply to  Graemethecat
April 15, 2020 2:54 am

Baiting? I doubt Chicom are taking much interest Mr. Middleton’s opinions. Having a bigoted rant is generally non productive and distracts from what would otherwise have been an important discussion.

China has some serious questions to answer and an objective look at what indications there are of this being a lab leak would be a very good idea.

That would have worked a lot better without the frankly juvenile jingoism.

The article was generally good in bringing up the subject, could have done without the silliness.

sycomputing
Reply to  David Middleton
April 15, 2020 7:10 pm

Amen to that!

Michael Spurrier
Reply to  Greg
April 15, 2020 5:38 am

I’m with you on that……actually surprised it was published.

I’m very much in the side of not being politically correct……but this verges on blatant racism.

Reply to  Michael Spurrier
April 15, 2020 12:44 pm

I’m surprised your lazy, patronizing comment was published, so there’s that.

Reply to  Greg
April 15, 2020 12:41 pm

“Jingoism” Noun; Used by Leftists allergic to the word patriotism.

Reply to  Matthew Schilling
April 15, 2020 1:16 pm

So, you’re saying you’d like a Jingo Jingle?

April 14, 2020 2:38 pm

On January 24, 2020, the French Ministry of Health confirmed the first three cases of patients affected by the Wuhan coronavirus. On January 29, 2020, the Institut Pasteur, which is responsible for monitoring respiratory viruses in France, sequenced the whole genome of the coronavirus known as “2019-nCoV,” becoming the first institution in Europe to sequence the virus since the start of the outbreak. The virus was sequenced at the Institut Pasteur’s Mutualized Platform for Microbiology (P2M), which performs genome sequencing on bacterial, viral, fungal and parasite strains received by National Reference Centers and World Health Organization Collaborating Centers for the purpose of infectious disease surveillance.
In December 2019, an outbreak of apparently viral pneumonia of unknown etiology emerged in the city of Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei.
On January 9, 2020, the Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the discovery of a novel coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, which was confirmed as the agent responsible for the pneumonia cases.
Over the weekend of January 11-12, the Chinese authorities shared the full sequence of the coronavirus genome, as detected in samples taken from the first patients. “Sequencing the genome of pathogens is crucial for the development of specific diagnostic tests and the identification of potential treatment options,” explains Sylvie van der Werf, Director of the National Reference Center (CNR) for Respiratory Viruses at the Institut Pasteur.
Friday January 24, 2020. Detection of the virus confirmed in France
On Friday January 24, late in the morning, the Institut Pasteur received samples of three suspected cases (two patients in Paris and one in Bordeaux). “Using the samples taken from these patients, we detected the novel coronavirus,” says Sylvie Behillil, Deputy Director of the CNR at the Institut Pasteur.
From Friday January 24, 2020. Viral genome sequenced at the Institut Pasteur
That same Friday evening, scientists launched the process of sequencing the viral genome based on the samples. The CNR prepared the material for sequencing, ready for P2M to begin work immediately the following Monday. The sequencing run was completed by early evening on the Tuesday, and the scientists used data analysis to obtain the sequence of the whole genome in two of the first three confirmed cases in France. “This proves the efficacy of the CNR’s process of analysis based on viral sequencing,” continues Vincent Enouf.
Thursday January 30, 2020. The Institut Pasteur obtains and shares the whole sequence of the virus
The P2M platform (see below) currently performs at an extremely high level; the average time taken to produce sequences ranges from three days (for emergencies) to a maximum of ten days. In this case, it took just three days for the whole sequence to be determined: “We performed data analysis during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, then corroborated the results on Wednesday with counter analysis,” explains Vincent Enouf. “The whole sequence was confirmed in just three days.”
What can we learn from it? “The sequences were identical in all our samples. One member of the couple must have contaminated the other, as the virus is the same.” The two full sequences of the virus isolated in two of the first French cases were submitted to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) platform, which was initially developed to share sequences and monitor the genetic evolution of influenza viruses, a process that is vital to determine the composition of the influenza vaccine. A special “coronavirus” tab has been created so that the scientific community can work together and advance at a quicker pace.
“Around twenty other sequences of the novel coronavirus genome have been obtained worldwide, and if we compare them with ours, we can see that they are all very close; there is not much diversity in the viruses analyzed, which suggests that coronavirus 2019-nCoV did not need to mutate in order to adapt and spread,” continues Vincent Enouf.
The National Reference Center (CNR) for Respiratory Viruses at the Institut Pasteur in Paris is one of WHO’s reference laboratories for coronavirus 2019-nCoV.
A total of eight people from the CNR and two from the P2M sequencing platform have been working on the virus this week and will continue to monitor the outbreak in France.
P2M, a state-of-the-art mutualized platform for microbiology also open to external CNRs
P2M is also available to external CNRs for sequencing. In 2019 it worked with four CNRs based outside the Institut Pasteur. The platform sequences bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi. Thanks to experience gained over the past five years (since 2015), P2M today offers a highly efficient service, as shown by a first-pass success rate (i.e. a high-quality sequence providing comprehensive information on the entire genome) of more than 95% in 2019. Sequence production takes between three days (for emergencies) and ten days at most.
In 2019, P2M sequenced around 25,000 pathogens. Genome sequencing increases the sensitivity threshold for outbreak detection. Early identification of outbreaks by the Institut Pasteur’s scientists (clustered cases in a short space of time caused by the same pathogen) enables epidemiologists to get to work immediately to determine the origins of the outbreak, and the authorities to coordinate the public health response.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200131114748.htm

Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 3:59 pm

Working overtime?

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 4:09 pm

I saw a post somewhere that said the Covid-19 strands containing [bat ?] sequences showed evidence of the latter having been neatly trimmed and inserted. Natural mutations would look different. Did anyone else see that post? I can’t find it.

davidgmillsatty
Reply to  jorgekafkazar
April 14, 2020 7:11 pm

Whatever you saw was wrong. There have been lots of posts like this and they are all false. Much of the support for these claims started from some research posted on line by an Indian research team in February who noticed that some of the proteins looked like they might have been taken from HIV. Their research paper was roundly criticized by doctors from all over the world who knew that these proteins were common in many other corona viruses. MERS has them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/02/02/no-coronavirus-was-not-bioengineered-to-put-pieces-of-hiv-in-it/#3b86be8256cb

And just recently a team of scientists has shown that Covid -19 can attack T cells causing immunodeficiency similar to HIV. The difference is that in HIV the virus replicates; with Covid -19 it just destroys the T cells without replication.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0424-9

Not only is Covid -19 attacking the lungs it is also attacking the heart and vascular system. The reason Trump’s drug, hydroxychloroquine, is showing some effectiveness is because Covid – 19 is attacking blood cells and effecting hemoglobin in much the same way as the malaria parasite does.

This is not the flu even if the death toll turns out to be similar.

But I also think that lockdowns could have been much more judicious.

Disputin
Reply to  davidgmillsatty
April 15, 2020 2:20 am

Just a (very) nasty thought: What if Covid-19 also attacks some part of the reproductive systems? We wouldn’t find out for another 3-6 months.

A C Osborn
Reply to  Disputin
April 15, 2020 7:26 am

This suggests that it does, it reduces gonad function in men.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.20037267v2

I don’t think that this is the same report that was rescinded earlier in March.

kendo2016
Reply to  jorgekafkazar
April 15, 2020 3:44 am

I t hink this reference may be from a u tube video by a Dr Rashid Buttar .it seems to have been removed since .

LdB
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 7:47 pm

Now do the exact same thing with WHO releases … start here
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200125-sitrep-5-2019-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=429b143d_8

You also have informal ones from it’s chief
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1ZX1H3
Apparently we are all racists and the spread of the virus is “minimal and slow”

This stupid prat still has his job when even by your own evidence above what he said was either corrupt or he is mentally defective … either way he shouldn’t be in the role.

F4F111col
April 14, 2020 2:38 pm

I applaud your decision to be “non-PC” David. From where I sit, that movement, if it can correctly be called that, has generated a lot of fuzzy thinking.

April 14, 2020 2:39 pm

You need to do two thing Mr. Middletown. First, with regards to seizing the assets of a foreign government you need to find a court that exercises something called jurisdiction to get that done. You should review the 14th Amendment also in association with your investigation of said jurisdiction and seizure. Secondly, you need to investigate the status of the Rome Treaty as it applies to the ICC, unless you know of a different criminal court that would have jurisdiction in the criminal matter.

Alex
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 14, 2020 3:40 pm

The Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition.(cue dramatic music)

SMC
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 14, 2020 3:53 pm

What does the 14th Amendment have to do with it? As for the ICC, the USA isn’t a party to the ICC. Should we determine who is right the old fashion way and have a war?

Reply to  SMC
April 14, 2020 6:52 pm

SMC, Section 4: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Good luck trying to cancel, invalidate, or nullify Chinese Tresury holdings.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  David Middleton
April 15, 2020 12:09 am

Ignore Henry, he’s just TDS butt-hurt. Poor little guy.

Reply to  David Middleton
April 15, 2020 5:28 am

You can’t “seize” them, they are liquid, marketable securities. You’d have to “seize” each one physically.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 14, 2020 4:12 pm

Invoking the jurisdiction of a world court invites that same court to try the US for its CO2 emissions. Maybe not the best idea.

A C Osborn
Reply to  jorgekafkazar
April 15, 2020 10:58 am

What?
Do you mean for reducing them unlike most of the rest of the world?

Flavio Capelli
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 15, 2020 12:13 am

Letters of marque and reprisal.

“We are altering the deal”.

April 14, 2020 2:40 pm

Theories of SARS-CoV-2 origins
It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for binding to human ACE2 with an efficient solution different from those previously predicted7,11. Furthermore, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used19. However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone20. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer; and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage could have given rise to SARS-CoV-2.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

Posa
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 2:53 pm

If you refer to the Nature Medicine article of 17 March 2020, that was a laughable piece of work, largely discounted in science circles. First, it’s premised on a menagerie of critters being housed at the Wuhan Seafood Market. There’s no evidence that bats, pangolins or other exotics were sold at the market. No fancy sequencing needed on that point.

Second, the authors of the Nature Medicine piece can’t tell readers the genomes they found in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. All the authors do is spitball it suggesting the virus could have come from bats or pangolins or both or just from human transmission.

Third, the self-elected high priests use a strawman argument to discount lab origins of the COVID virus; namely a bespoke virus assembled nucleotide by nucleotide. However, these guys are well aware that Gain Of Function (GoF) research entails serial infections of animal models until the right mutations appear in the host animal. At least eight years ago researchers upgraded the SARS virus to make it highly transmissible through aerosols in the lung tissue of various animals.

Tim Collins
April 14, 2020 2:40 pm

biological weapons site? If this was anything other than faked news then they would not have released it until after they had a vaccine.

rickk
Reply to  Tim Collins
April 14, 2020 3:02 pm

The story goes that they were monkey’ing around with SARS1 virus and somehow CRISPR’d some components from HIV virus as it has a great ‘in’ to the human cell. Further, it was remarked that McDonald’s has better safety protocols than that Wuhan virology lab so something was bound to get out. This SARS2 thing just happened to be the culprit. As we now know, it’s a rather infectious/contagious little bugger but not a good ‘bioweapon’ as upwards of 90% of those infected are asymptomatic or mildly affected.

Glenn
Reply to  rickk
April 14, 2020 5:05 pm

Could bioweapons be used to damage economies? The US is trillions deeper in debt, with possibly bad days ahead. Resources are being expended. Congress is gone. This scare could end up being more disruptive and costly than 9/11.
Is China experiencing anything like this? Will international trade balances be shifted? Is China more or less liable to suffer more than the US as a result of this pandemic, either short or long term?

Reply to  rickk
April 14, 2020 6:07 pm

The story goes…

Well, the story I heard was…

The Chicoms were working on a vaccine (hopefully) or a weapon (possibly) which involved laboratory animals, and various inferior strains of various viruses existed in various lab animals, which needed to be disposed of. An underpaid lab worker disposed of the animals at the meat market, hoping to make some extra cash on the sly.

The original reason for the Chicoms trying to hide the evidence was because they hoped to hide what their lab was working on. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Things have gotten completely out of hand now, and, if any spy vs. spy stuff is involved, our side will be just as secretive as their side.

…….or that’s what I heard.

Craig from Oz
Reply to  Tim Collins
April 14, 2020 3:10 pm

Oh I see your logic.

We must have a cure in case they attack us some more.

By this logic Britain – who was grossly understrenght at the time – should not only not declared war against Germany on September 3rd, but also tell their media that there was nothing to see in Poland.

Reply to  Tim Collins
April 14, 2020 3:15 pm

That’s right. No vaccine for a disease that preferentially kills those as old as the Chinese Politburo? They didn’t intend this to happen.

And also if anyone wanted to start biological warfare surely they would go big.
There are viruses that are airborne, that hit people of working age preferentially and that are far more lethal.

Better yet, hey could have tried starting biological warfare in a country that is not their own.

Eric McCue
Reply to  M Courtney
April 14, 2020 6:14 pm

In 2009 the U.S. government launched a program to hunt for unknown viruses that can cross from animals to humans and cause pandemics. The project, called PREDICT, was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and it worked with teams in 31 countries, including China.

Indeed, in September 2019, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic began, USAID announced it would end funding for PREDICT.

EcoHealth researchers and their partners, including a team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, had identified numerous SARS-related coronaviruses in bats and were following up with laboratory experiments on several of them. But, he adds, how and where the SARS-CoV-2 spillover occurred is not known for certain. There was an early suspicion that the initial outbreak could have started at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, which was closed on January 1.

But “we don’t know if the spillover happened outside the market and then began spreading after it was brought there,” Olival says. It is also unclear if there was an intermediate animal host between the disease-carrying bats and humans.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-coronavirus-slipped-past-disease-detectives/

Jit
Reply to  M Courtney
April 15, 2020 1:10 am

M Courtney

If a new virus appeared in your country and I accused you of accidentally releasing a bioweapon, then pulling a vaccine out of your back pocket would not necessarily convince me otherwise, right?

John Endicott
Reply to  M Courtney
April 15, 2020 3:07 pm

And also if anyone wanted to start biological warfare surely they would go big.

Depends on what the goal of the alleged biological weapon release was. If they wanted to generate fear and panic enough to get countries to implement policies that would cripple their own economies, a virus like this would work a treat, as we’ve seen.

But again, you are working from a false premise. That the virus might have came from a lab (and given the proximity of the lab to the source of the initial outbreak, not to mention China’s lack of rigorous safety standards, that’s a possibility that can’t be dismissed out of hand.) does not mean it was deliberately released as an act of biological warfare.

Reply to  John Endicott
April 16, 2020 12:57 pm

But once it was released there is an opportunity to exploit the fear it generated to china’s advantage – using all their well developed propaganda techniques

John Endicott
Reply to  enthalpy
April 17, 2020 10:03 am

Indeed. Closing off internal to China travel but allowing international travel to continue does point to that possibility.

John
April 14, 2020 2:44 pm

ChiCom-19 sounds like a crap Chinese movie company that failed 18 times ;0)

Reply to  John
April 14, 2020 2:59 pm

chicom is here:
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Chicom_CQB
has 36 rounds apparently!!

All these different names, so much easier to use one that everyone understands – covid-19

Greg Goodknight
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 4:08 pm

All these different names stem from the WHO going out of their way to ignore past naming conventions to protect the CPC, who championed the selection of their chair.

The name of the virus was already known as SARS-CoV-2, accepted by the WHO. They didn’t have the power to rename the virus, so they gave an altogether different name to the disease: SARS is out, COronaVIrus Disease-2019 was in, further shortened to COVID-19.

This malady would have been known as Wuhan SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome) were it not due to fancy footwork at the top of the WHO.

Reply to  John
April 14, 2020 3:06 pm

No, it sounds like the name of a crap military special ops unit in a bad movie.

ChiCom-19: The Day of Conquering
Chicom-19: Warriors of Destiny
Chicom-19: Day the Earth Stood Still

… and other such sequels.

John
Reply to  Robert Kernodle
April 14, 2020 3:59 pm

ChiCom-19, Herd mentality run amuck

Not coming to a theater near you soon

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  John
April 15, 2020 12:13 am

Or run amok.

John
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
April 15, 2020 5:57 am

Amuck sounds less dignified ;0)

Russ R.
April 14, 2020 2:45 pm

The answer to your question is: Yes, the Wuhan Plague started by the ChiCom virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It was a virus created by Shi Zhangli who spliced sections of HIV virus into a SARS like caronavirus discovered in caves in and around the Shitou Cave in South China, 900 km from Wuhan.
Shi has published many papers related to her study of these viruses and their ability to infect bats, and other mammals, including humans.
But the original virus did not have the correct properties to spread from human to human, so she modified it to get it to bind properly with human cells. An examination of the RNA of the ChiCom19 virus shows it to be identical to her original bat hosted virus, with four sections replaced with exact sequences from an HIV virus.
So this virus did not originate in the market. And everything the CCP has been saying about it is untrue. In fact if you assume every statement from the CCP is a lie, you will find the truth rather easily because the whole sequence of events is a logical progression from that starting point.
I don’t want to indict the Chinese public in this because they are just as much victims as the rest of the world. But the CCP has shown a wanton disregard for the lives and health of the people of the Earth.
They are a criminal organization. And from this point forward those who aid and abet their actions are tainted by the stench of their behavior.

Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 3:01 pm

care to share your sources for this outstanding piece?

Russ R.
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 3:44 pm

Research the papers by Shi Zengli. You will find what you want right up until 2 years ago, when her work became non-public. About when she moved from mice to primates. Look for a SHC014 backbone with a GP41 protein added to the S protein.
And you might want to look into her research student Hauang Yanling while you are at it. Nice little story there.
I am not going to do all the work. If you want answers start digging, and find them yourself. Your not going to believe what I found. I can’t believe it myself.

Curious George
Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 4:24 pm

“I am not going to do all the work.”
Actually, I am not going to do any work at all.

Astrocyte
Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 8:27 pm

But, but… Shi Zengli swear on her life that Hauang Yanling isn’t dead nor that she is infected.

Russ R.
Reply to  Astrocyte
April 14, 2020 10:41 pm

She could be patient 0, she could be a saboteur, she could be patsy, she could be a spy…etc. Right now it is unknowable.
What is logical is that the CCP would produce her if they could. It seems they couldn’t clear her web presence entirely, but Shi did not know that and originally when asked said she didn’t know her. That is a lie. Then that she left in 2015. At least a partial lie, she appears in a group photo from 2018. If she left the Virology lab in 2015 when she got her MS degree, the CCP would know where she went next. She had Top Secret Clearance to work there. They don’t want her working for anyone they don’t control. They don’t even want her dating anyone they don’t approve of.
Statistically she is unlikely to die if infected. She could have got infected unknowingly, then spread the virus at the seafood market. The CCP finds out and she is the scapegoat and disappears. It also serves to silence anyone in the lab that may be tempted to talk.
It may have been her job to sample the animals, and when they take samples there is always a chance of an accident.
Her disappearance is a problem that is going to stay that way without further info. Highest probability she is ashes. Second highest she is hiding from CCP. Third CCP is hiding her.

Astrocyte
Reply to  Russ R.
April 15, 2020 12:34 pm

Anyone still denying the fact that they were shoehorning human ACE2 compatibility into the spike protein of SARS-like virus coming from horseshoe bats should read this study:

Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin
https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899

For their defense they were experimenting at the time on HIV pseudoviruses but I wonder if the procedure at making real SARS like is similar.

Russ R.
Reply to  Astrocyte
April 15, 2020 4:30 pm

Well this nut is finally cracking..There is an indication she was patient 0, didn’t know she was infected, went with her boyfriend to the seafood market and infected people there, in addition to the boyfriend. Still speculation, but sounds like it is ready to crack..

The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

Asked by Fox News’ John Roberts about the reporting, President Trump remarked at Wednesday’s coronavirus press briefing, “More and more we’re hearing the story…we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-china-compete-us-sources

Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 3:08 pm

Dude,
If you think corona virus spreads between humans in the same way that HIV does you’re confusing tissue paper with condoms.

Russ R.
Reply to  M Courtney
April 14, 2020 6:15 pm

I am looking at it from the view of understanding it better because it is a puzzle. And I am good at logical analysis. And this COV-19 story did not work from that perspective. And analyzing it has been a trip down the rabbit hole. But it started coming together about a week ago, when I started looking at this line of research. And since then everything has confirmed this scenario, and nothing solid conflicts with it.
Published on Dec 2015, add a year for delay between experimentation and publication it is four years old. Four years to manipulate this. I doubt it took anyway near that long. They were already most of the way there:

An international team of scientists published this research: we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.

Although our study does not invalidate the other emergence routes, it does argue for a third paradigm in which circulating bat CoV pools maintain ‘poised’ spike proteins that are capable of infecting humans without mutation or adaptation (Fig. 4c). This hypothesis is illustrated by the ability of a chimeric virus containing the SHC014 spike in a SARS-CoV backbone to cause robust infection in both human airway cultures and in mice without RBD adaptation. Coupled with the observation of previously identified pathogenic CoV back-bones3,20, our results suggest that the starting materials required for SARS-like emergent strains are currently circulating in animal reservoirs. Notably, although full-length SHC014-CoV probably requires additional backbone adaption to mediate human disease, the documented high-frequency recombination events in CoV families underscores the possibility of future emergence and the need for further preparation.

Pseudotyping experiments were similar to those using an HIV-based pseudovirus, prepared as previously described10, and examined on HeLa cells (Wuhan Institute of Virology) that expressed ACE2 orthologs. HeLa cells were grown in minimal essential medium (MEM) (Gibco, CA) supplemented with 10% FCS (Gibco, CA) as previously described24. Growth curves in Vero E6, DBT, Calu-3 2B4 and primary human airway epithelial cells were performed as previously described8,25. None of the working cell line stocks were authenticated or tested for mycoplasma recently, although the original seed stocks used to create the working stocks are free from contamination. Human lungs for HAE cultures were procured under University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institutional Review Board–approved proto-cols. HAE cultures represent highly differentiated human airway epithelium containing ciliated and non-ciliated epithelial cells as well as goblet cells

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

Gerald
Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 4:23 pm

Yeah I also read that story but..also this one……..

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/bats-behind-the-pandemic/

I think we will never know for sure, what we do know though is the Chinese can never be trusted.

rickk
April 14, 2020 2:46 pm

Well the good thing about this Chi-Covid virus, if I interpret your graphs right, is it appears to cure influenza 😉

April 14, 2020 2:47 pm

Analysis of the genome of the virus shows that the majority of cases here in the USA originated from Europe and not from China. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/most-nyc-covid-19-cases-came-from-europe-genome-researchers-say

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 14, 2020 5:33 pm

Where from did the European cases come?

Reply to  John F. Hultquist
April 14, 2020 6:54 pm

Europe

John Tillman
Reply to  John F. Hultquist
April 14, 2020 8:30 pm

Direct flights from Wuhan to Milan, where so many Chinese immigrants work in the leather goods industry.

Fabio Capezzuoli
Reply to  John Tillman
April 15, 2020 12:43 am

Genetic sequencing does not support this tiresome simplistic view.
The strain(s) of Wuhan coronavirus found in Italy are more closely related to those present in Hong Kong and Singapore.

John Tillman
Reply to  Fabio Capezzuoli
April 15, 2020 9:41 am

RNA viruses mutate rapidly. Early in the pandemic, Iceland alone found 44 mutations in the viruses circulationg there.

They all came originally from the same lab in Wuhan. For that matter, different strains could easily have been engineered from the start, with greater virulence for foreign spread.

It appears that NYC was infected from Europe, while the US West Coast direcctly from Wuhan.

Simple indeed.

Posa
April 14, 2020 2:48 pm

The Science Establishment high priests insist that the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged by zoonotic transfer and natural selection, dismissing possibilities of a lab origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

Unfortunately, as the seminal Nature article shows, these researchers haven’t a clue which genomes are involved and merely handwave with an improbable array of exotic possibilities they claim all to be found at the Wuhan Seafood Market. As Rogin explains, neither bats, pangolins, civets, ferrets or unicorns were sold at the Wuhan Seafood Market.

The self-elected high priests use a strawman argument to discount lab origins of the COVID virus; namely a bespoke virus assembled nucleotide by nucleotide. However, these guys are well aware that Gain Of Function (GoF) research entails serial infections of animal models until the right mutations appear in the host animal. In these cases, the targets are ACE-2 receptors in ferret bronchial tissue. Ferret ACE-2 receptors are extremely analogous to human ACE-2 receptors in lung tissue. This kind of research was perfected at US labs, such as Ralph Baric’s UNC lab, where Zhengli Shi and another Wuhan colleague developed these GoF techniques.

In a 2015 paper, the UNC team stated that: “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.” In other words, Baric’s lab at UNC adapted the SARS bat virus to bind tightly to receptors in the lungs of mice. That made the SARS virus transmissible by airborne routes.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 Note, Zhengli Shi is co-author of this paper, right next to Baric’s name.

Laboratory origins of the SARS-CoV-2 is definitely on the table. Every day as more information emerges, the BSL-4 lab looks to be the source of this virus.

Reply to  Posa
April 14, 2020 4:24 pm

I don’t see the USA being so careless as to let this pandemic’s virus loose. Of course I can’t be sure USA doesn’t have any clandestine virus research.

Among 15 co-authors of 2015 research are 2 from Key Laboratories of Special Pathology and Biosafety WUHAN Institute of Virology Chinese Academy of Sciences WUHAN. The USA team was not fools & included someone from the Department of Cancer Immunology & AIDS.

Funding was by National Natural Science Foundation of CHINA & USA N.I.H. What I am not inclined to rule out is a ChiCom’s directive to apply experience gained in 2015 to fiddle back in WUHAN with what became this pandemic’s novel 2019 coronavirus.

My surmise is it is false that “… BSL-4 lab … [is] … source of this virus.”

Furthermore, that idea seems to be something encouraged by ChiCom electronic keyboard disinformation posters – aiming to get it picked up on electronic media to support the party line this pandemic is a USA plot that backfired.

posa
Reply to  gringojay
April 14, 2020 5:49 pm

Your comments are very confused and disordered, gringo. Labs in China and the USA used bat SARS as the backbone for their chimeric virus experiments. No one country has the power to control these experiments.

Reply to  gringojay
April 14, 2020 6:19 pm

I mis-understood “BSL-4 lab” to be a reference to a USA lab. So wish to correct my mistaken surmise it is not the source of the pandemic virus.

My apologies, as well, to Posa for skewing any content of their comment.

April 14, 2020 2:49 pm

So you think climate scientists should not use the terms like “possible”, “probable” and, in my view, even worse “Did xxx Come From xxxx”

Then you use the same here – just so strange.

Let me try you on some
it is possible that the virus originated on a comet?
Did aliens seed Wuhan with the virus?
probably the us military dropped a vial of virus on wuhan

Derg
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 3:46 pm

I agree. Never trust China. The US learned the hard way as President after President curried kickbacks as America’s mfg left for China. Heck Ol’ Joe Biden’s son was able to somehow get a billion dollar investment from China back in the Obama days…crazy. China is not dumb and are very patient. I doubt they saw Trump happening but they will bide their time until a more amiable stooge takes office.

Michael Jankowski
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 4:00 pm

The author didn’t use the terms “possible” or “probable” with regard to science.

The closest to it was, “They should be held financially, and possibly criminally liable for all of the damages related to it,” which is in a legal context and nothing of the sort you are whining about. Oh, and, “He [Tucker Carlson] and Bill Gertz discussed the possibility that it might be a bio-weapons lab,” which again has nothing to do with what you are whining about.

“Let me try you on some…it is possible that the virus originated on a comet?”

Lol. There are bots who write better. Just so strange.

“…Did aliens seed Wuhan with the virus? probably the us military dropped a vial of virus on Wuhan…”

Zero evidence of that. Researchers in China, however, concluded that the virus was spread from a lab in Wuhan. There’s more evidence that the virus originated in Wuhan than there is evidence the people you called mom and dad were actually your parents.

Reply to  Michael Jankowski
April 14, 2020 7:23 pm

Diseases from Space is a book published in 1979 that was authored by astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, where they propose that many of the most common diseases which afflict humanity, such as influenza, the common cold and whooping cough, have their origins in extraterrestrial sources. The two authors argue the case for outer space being the main source for these pathogens- or at least their causative agents.

comet Africano perihelion 2019-09-05

Sweet Old Bob
Reply to  ghalfrunt
April 14, 2020 5:42 pm

“probably the us military dropped a vial of virus on wuhan”
Do the CHICOMs pay you well ?

April 14, 2020 2:52 pm

One more thing Mr. Middleton regarding criminal prosecution. China does not have an extradition treaty with the USA.

April 14, 2020 2:53 pm

Damn I forgot 5G uhf frequencies emitted from masts all over large cities cause the virus and it is probably encoded into the signal by Huawei

Walter Sobchak
April 14, 2020 2:57 pm

State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

By Josh Rogin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/
April 14, 2020

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.

* * *

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.)

* * *
As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.

* * *

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.

* * *

“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said.

As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats.

* * *

We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he said.“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.”

Stevek
Reply to  Walter Sobchak
April 14, 2020 3:52 pm

Good post. As we learned from Chernobyl communist governments are prone to disasters because people are afraid to speak up, whistleblowers are not protected, there are no public hearings, no freedom of the press.

Russ R.
Reply to  Walter Sobchak
April 15, 2020 1:25 am

I like this report also. They have no incentive to lie about this (a rarity in this mess). It gives us a good idea on how it would have got out of containment. I have seen similar accounts of the lax security at these facilities. I couldn’t believe it. But with an official report I have changed my view. The stupidity is epic.
The origin question is pretty solid. There is only one sample virus has a close phylogenetic relationship to nCOV-19 and that is a RaTG13 sample at the Wuhan lab.

We then found a short RdRp region from a bat coronavirus termed BatCoV RaTG13 which we previously detected in Rhinolophus affinisfrom Yunnan Province showed high sequence identity to nCoV-2019. We did full-length sequencing to this RNA sample. Simplot analysis showed that nCoV-2019 was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 (Fig. 1c), with 96.2% overall genome sequence identity. Thephylogenetic analysis also showed that RaTG13 is the closest relative of the nCoV-2019 and form a distinct lineage from other SARSr-CoVs . The receptor binding protein spike (S) gene was highly divergent to other CoVs, with less than 75% nt sequence identity to all previously described SARSr-CoVs except a 93.1% nt identity to RaTG13. The S genes of nCoV-2019 and RaTG13 S gene are longer than other SARSr-CoVs. The major differences in nCoV-2019 are the three short insertions in the N-terminal domain, and four out of five key residues changes in the receptor-binding motif, in comparison with SARS-CoV . The close phylogenetic relationship to RaTG13 provides evidence for a bat origin of nCoV-2019. We rapidly developed a qPCR detection based on the receptor-binding domain of spike gene, the most variable region among genome. Our data show the primers could differentiate nCoV-2019 with all other human coronaviruses including bat SARSr-CoV WIV1, which is 95% identity to SARS-CoV

It almost certainly came from RatG13, unless they had a fully formed COV-19, that got out. Then they deleted the records. If they are going to clean up one, why not both? RaTG13 only needed minor changes to morph into nCOV-2019. That could have happened through grafting and replicating in the lab. I don’t see a reason to delete one but not the other, unless it was overlooked.

The story behind obtaining these samples is that it is very difficult. The bats are infected by a virus and produce antibodies and eliminate the virus. Just like us. So you have to catch one after it is infected, but before it clears the virus. Tough to do. They spent the better part of a year catching bats with no virus. Until they started antibody testing the bats. That leads you the right caves, then you sample bats in bulk and process samples in bulk and start looking through hundreds sample and sorting hundreds of coronavirus’, until you find some SARS virus strains. Not easy to do.

Not statistically probable to find a bat with active virus, 500 miles away from the tropical conditions they live in, in the winter, in a seafood market, that didn’t sell bats, that was the wrong kind of bat for eating (microbat). Does not meet the threshold for possible consideration.

April 14, 2020 3:05 pm

China has put their research centres for viruses near where the bats that carry viruses live.

Why would they put the research centres anywhere else? Why would they transport that dangerous material any further than they have to.

This is a classic case of “Correlation does not equal Causation”.

Russ R.
Reply to  M Courtney
April 14, 2020 4:13 pm

The put it in Wuhan because the one they had in Beijing had a breach with the SARS virus. Killing two people.
All the caves with bats that carry corona viruses are in the South. In and around Shitou Cave. Remote areas where few people live.
Here are words of someone that worked at the lab in Wuhan:

“I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”

So in this case the correlation you speak of does not exist. But a much more powerful one does, that the person at the center of this let slip out of her conscience.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Russ R.
April 14, 2020 9:07 pm

“All the caves with bats that carry corona viruses are in the South. In and around Shitou Cave. Remote areas where few people live.”

The bats live about 500 miles from Wuhan. They are not the kind of bats that are normally sold in a market, being very small.

So, there is a good chance that this virus infected someone working at one of these Chinese labs, and that’s how it got out. The carrier may not even have known they were infected.

I doubt the initial infection of the Chinese population was done deliberately, but China’s leaders deliberately infected the rest of the world with it, by encouraging international flights in and out of China even though they knew they had an infectious virus spreading all over.

John Tillman
Reply to  M Courtney
April 14, 2020 8:40 pm

Wuhan is a long way from the bat caves of Yunnan. And from Guangdong, whence prior Chinese viral pandemics have originated.

John Endicott
Reply to  M Courtney
April 15, 2020 3:46 am

Why Am I not surprised the M Courtney is a china apologist pushing fake news about China. As others pointed out the bats that carry the viruses inhabit caves hundreds of miles away from Wuhan. Care to try a different line of Chi-Com propaganda M?

Reply to  John Endicott
April 15, 2020 8:49 am

Just being rational.
Loonies who think this was done deliberately make all the real sceptics look bad too.

It would help if the “China is evil do they must have meant this to happen brigade would actually provide some evidence. Or at last confront the obvious reasons why you are wrong.

1) The virus isn’t lethal enough. It’s not airborne and it doesn’t kill everybody. Why go big enough to cause offence but not big enough to win.
2) It hit China first. That is an own goal by any standards.
3) It preferentially kills those who are too old to work. That means it actually reduces costs to affected countries in the long-term. Why ot release a virus that attacks the workers preferentially?
4) The Chinese leadership are not the workers. They are the elderly. Why would thy attack themselves?
5) Many other reasons that sensible people think of for themselves…

Until you confront reality and stop the ad homs you will continue to bring scorn your side. Scorn which then rubs off on sensible people like real sceptics.

John Endicott
Reply to  John Endicott
April 15, 2020 9:59 am

Fight strawmen often do you? No wonder you love Chinese propaganda so much.

It would help if the “China is evil do they must have meant this to happen brigade

read the comments with some comprehension. Most are not claiming China meant this to happen. As Alex Berezow points out, just because it might have come from a Chinese lab, doesn’t mean it was done so deliberately. It would help if china apologists, like you, would confront the obvious reasons why you are wrong!

1) The virus isn’t lethal enough

So? that does not preclude it from having originated in a lab.

2) It hit China first

Again, does not preclude it coming from a lab. Indeed, the fact that it hit China first in the area *NEAR THE LAB* kind of points to the possibility of accidental release from the lab. AS Tucker and his guest were discussing, as Alex Berezow eventually admitted.

3) It preferentially kills those who are too old to work

Again you are running from the false presumption that China released it deliberately as a bioweapon, a position most no one is actually taking. Not Tucker Carlson, Not Alex Berezow, not David Middleton, Not myself, not Russ R, not Tom Abbott, nor jus about everyone else in this thread except *you* with your strawman.

4) The Chinese leadership are not the workers

See answer to 3

5) Many other reasons that sensible people think of for themselves

Well, that leaves you out then. There’s no thinking for yourself when you are busy attacking strawmen that most no one here is arguing.

Until you confront reality and stop the ad homs you will continue to bring scorn your side

Pot meet kettle. Get your head out of your socialist/communist loving backside and confront the reality that the possibility this virus started in a lab is very real. much more real than your communist propagandized brain is willing to accept.

(and it hasn’t gone unnoticed that you ignored all the points against your previous wrong propaganda laden post about Wuhan being near where the bats that carry viruses live)

Reply to  John Endicott
April 15, 2020 3:17 pm

If your argument is that this purely a muck up that could have happened to anyone then I see no reason to argue.
China does research viruses. So do we in the West.
But how does the argument that “This is bad luck in a lab” really differ from “This is bad luck that has happened occasionally anyway throughout history”?
Loonies talk about this as though it was all a CONSPIRACY but under pressure you admit that this just one of those things that happens.
Congratulations. You have learnt.

John Endicott
Reply to  M Courtney
April 16, 2020 3:52 am

You say “I have learnt” as if I was ever pushing a different position. I wasn’t, my position on this remains the same. *You* are the one that was railing against a position no one here was holding. And clearly you have *NOT* learnt, as you can’t even admit that you were arguing against a strawman of your own making here. So no congratulations to you for having learned nothing.

John Endicott
Reply to  M Courtney
April 16, 2020 3:59 am

Also, you ask But how does the argument that “This is bad luck in a lab” really differ from “This is bad luck that has happened occasionally anyway throughout history”?

The answer is in China’s response. They initially tried to hide it, cover it up and lie about it. Why? Well if they realized it started in their labs, it looks extra bad on them, so they’d want to cover up that little fact. Whereas if it was just “bad luck that happens throughout history” as you put it, there’s less of a rational reason for their behavior (beyond institutional incompetence and corruption, as is typical of the communist system you so adore, which obviously can’t be ruled out either).

Tom Abbott
Reply to  M Courtney
April 16, 2020 5:48 am

“Loonies talk about this as though it was all a CONSPIRACY”

There are two parts to this story. One is the virus was introduced into the Chinese population accidentally.

The other is the part where the Chinese leadership knew they had an infectious disease spreading all over and the Chinese leadership shut down air traffic from Wuhan within the nation on Jan. 24, 2020, yet the Chinese leadership kept promoting international air travel in and out of Wuhan until almost the end of February. So for over a month after they knew they were spreading an infectious disease,, the Chinese leadership continued to promote internatonal flights in and out of China.

This is not a conspiracy theory, it is all documented. All these things happened.

The Chinese leadership is responsible for all the lives lost and all the economic damage in the world caused by the Wuhan virus and its export by the Chinese leadership. Pushback is coming.

I see where Trump lit a fire underneath the World Health Organization and all its supporters. Here’s the solution for the World Health Organization: Announce the immediate resignation of WHO head Tedros, and commit to reforming the organization. This is what Trump wants. Give it to him or else.

1 2 3