No sooner had the World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday published its report into the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus, than the Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was making a public statement distancing the organisation from what observers are calling a “whitewash”.
The report, which had been conducted with heavy reliance on Chinese scientists and under pressure from Chinese authorities, concluded it was “extremely unlikely” that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped from a lab, claiming instead it was most likely the novel virus had passed from bats via an “intermediate animal host” before sparking an “explosive outbreak” in Wuhan in December 2019.
With a rare and welcome criticism of the Chinese Government, Dr Ghebreyesus said: “I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing” and insisted that “all hypotheses remain on the table”.
The United States, the UK and 12 other countries (Australia, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, South Korea and Slovenia) issued a joint statement echoing the Director General’s concerns: “It is equally essential that we voice our shared concerns that the international expert study on the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples.”
The European Union, more meekly, said that it regretted the delays and the “limited availability of early samples and related data”.
Dr Peter Ben-Embarek, head of the WHO mission at the centre of the controversy, defended his report, saying the “zoonotic origins” of the pandemic had been the agreed remit of the investigation rather than a potential laboratory accident. A defence which rather begs the question as to why the investigation was disbarred by design from looking into one of the key possibilities.
Dr Ben-Embarek, for reasons best known to himself, felt moved to offer a rather feeble defence of the Chinese Government’s lack of cooperation.
Of course there are areas where we had difficulties in getting down to the raw data, and there are many good reasons for that. In China, like in many other countries, there are restrictions on privacy laws that forbid the sharing of data, including private details to outsiders in particular. Where we did not have full access to the overall data, this has been put as a recommendation for future studies. So the idea is that, because we didn’t have time or because certain authorisation needs to be given before we could get access to the data, all that could be done in the second phase of studies.
Science journalist Matt Ridley aptly called it a “pure whitewash” when he appeared yesterday morning on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s show on talkRADIO. He pointed out that although the report concludes it’s very likely that an animal carried the virus to Wuhan, this conclusion is at odds with the 20-30 pages in the report which note that 45,000 animals in China have been tested for the virus and none have been found with it.
A lab escape was once dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Back on February 19th 2020, 27 prominent scientists declared in the Lancet: “We stand together to condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” Another group of experts, on March 17th, proclaimed in Nature Medicine: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
Now, though, it is very much regarded as a plausible hypothesis. Matt Ridley, who is writing a book on the subject, and Harvard medical geneticist Alina Chan explained why it is being taken seriously by experts in an eye-opening article in the Telegraph.
They write that, unlike SARS from 2003, SARS-CoV-2 was not found to mutate rapidly in early human cases, suggesting it was already well adapted to infecting human beings. Furthermore, in May 2020, the director of the Chinese CDC announced that none of the animal samples collected from the Wuhan wet market had tested positive for COVID-19.
Ridley and Chan write:
Yet there is little doubt that the pandemic began in Wuhan. All the early cases were in the city and the majority of the first recorded cases in other countries were among people who had travelled from Wuhan. Persistent attempts by the Chinese Government and scientists to play up possible origins in frozen-food imports and pre-Wuhan cases in Europe have been unpersuasive so far.
There is still no sign of an original animal source of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, or the rest of Hubei province. Horseshoe bats that live in the area have been extensively sampled for viruses for years without SARS-CoV-2-like viruses showing up. Therefore, the strongest connection between such viruses in Yunnan and the human outbreak in Wuhan is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the fact that it had collected SARS-like viruses from the Mojiang mine.
But this is circumstantial, not direct evidence. Although SARS leaked from a Beijing laboratory twice in 2004, infecting 11 people, there have been no public reports of an accident at the WIV. Moreover, RaTG13 is not SARS-CoV-2: there are significant differences between the viruses. This is why full transparency about all the viruses held in the WIV would be helpful, including all of the SARS-like viruses collected in the Mojiang mine.
Unfortunately, the Institute’s database of more than 20,000 viruses was taken offline around the time of the outbreak for “security reasons”, and the WHO team were not given access to it. The WIV is the foremost laboratory for studying these kinds of viruses in the world, and had collected large numbers of coronaviruses from hundreds of miles away. With no sign of a source in the wet market or animals, the coincidence that the outbreak began in the vicinity of such an institute is too great to be easily dismissed.
The theory was given a boost in January 2021 when the US State Department released a statement saying it had “reason to believe that several researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses”.
More worrying is the prospect that the virus might not just be an escaped sample of a naturally occurring bat coronavirus, but an engineered virus from gain-of-function research. This may explain, for example, why it was already well adapted to human-to-human transmission.
Ridley and Chan again:
We know from published work that Dr Shi and her colleagues were not only analysing the genomes of viruses, they were also manipulating them. This includes the creation of ‘chimera’ or hybrid viruses with genes taken from two different viruses. It also includes the testing of these viruses in ‘humanised’ mice, endowed with a certain human gene.
The practice of building chimera coronaviruses, sometimes leaving no trace of manipulation, is not new. Such experiments have been conducted in select laboratories such as the WIV for years, for the purpose of understanding how novel viruses could spill over into humans. The ultimate goal is to create a universal vaccine for all SARS-like viruses.
The scientists might find it unbearable if they instead caused a pandemic. But they did not find it unthinkable. In a 2015 article co-authored by Dr Shi these words appear: “Scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue… The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens.”
SARS-CoV-2 is not so deadly as the bat virus that killed three of the six miners who caught it directly from the bats in 2012. The WIV held samples of nine bat viruses sourced from that Mojiang mine, one of which, RaTG13 was noted (though without making the link) by WIV researchers themselves to be very similar to SARS-CoV-2.
Could SARS-CoV-2 be an engineered version of those viruses, perhaps made less deadly but ready for human-to-human transmission? It’s one possibility, but without further access to samples and data, repeatedly denied by the Chinese authorities, scientists have no way to find out.
It’s very important we find out soon, though, so we can know exactly what we’re dealing with and what lessons we should learn.
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quite right too. vaccines are low risk and work great.
No, quite wrong! Nobody, especially concerning those of an age that the virus poses little risk to, should be coerced into having an experimental gene therapy that may pose more of a risk than the virus itself. I don’t know what planet you are in but I hope that it’s not the same one that I am on!
to slw infections, you can use lockdown or vaccine, yet you’ll always get the stubborn fellows who reject both and then wind up with both, serves the buggers right in a funny sort of way!
Why slow infections? Better to let it spread and allow the young and invulnerable to get immunity when young just like you do with chicken pox.
It would be madness to replace that natural immunity with blod clot causing gene changing experimental therapy that doesnt even work.
“to slw infections, you can use lockdown or vaccine”
No substantive evidence of that, Rip van Winkle.
You’d best go back to sleep.
*Distaval can be given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without adverse effect on mother or child … Outstandingly safe Distaval has been prescribed for nearly three years in this country”
That’s from a contemporary advertisement for thalidomide, which was aggressively marketed at the time.
Outstandingly safe, mRNA vaccines have been prescribed for nearly three months in this country….
… and thalidomide was much more tested than the snake oil.
Do you not want students to learn that being healthy is your best immunity? I would have thought universities, as the ‘great seats of learning’, should be encouraging that, not a vaccine which removes all personal responsibility for one’s health. This also shows that universities are no longer places where a plurality of views are tolerated. That is the most disturbing element about this. University = how to fit into compliant culture (including cancel culture).
Biggest numpty in the world award goes to …
Glad to see them author use the word “coerce.”
Presumably they’ll be happy to payout compo for any serious side effects, and therefore happy to sign a liability statement to that effect prior to the students getting vaccinated.
Not just in the USA, but Canada too. My 17 year old niece has been awarded a scholarship to the University of Guelph for September 2021 and has now been informed that in order to attend she must have a covid vaccine! My brother and sister in law are incredibly upset and my niece is now being coerced in to doing something she doesn’t want to do nor needs.
She should tell them where to go
But the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmiss…
…oh never mind, there’s no point in using logic or reason now that we are in the Age of the Endarkenment.
That’s a bare faced lie: one dose halves tranmission, two doses more that halves transmission.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56904993
A very questionable study!
Go right ahead and have your vaccine, Fon, it’s your choice! In fact, have mine too. Whether the vaccine works or not, the point is that no one should be coerced into getting one
You’re linking to the BBC?
I can’t decide from your posts whether you just like winding people up or genuinely believe what you write.
I would really like you to change my mind on these vaccines so give it your best shot (pun intended). Here’s a clue, citing the BBC isnt going to do it.
https://khub.net/documents/135939561/390853656/Impact+of+vaccination+on+household+transmission+of+SARS-COV-2+in+England.pdf/35bf4bb1-6ade-d3eb-a39e-9c9b25a8122a?t=1619601878136
Feel free to go to the source material. It’s a significant analysis. You want Figure 2.
Mmmm … Source : Public Health England.
‘Infection’ definition? : “confirmed cases using PCR-based SARS-CoV-2 through national reporting systems”
Not an RCT.
Intra-household transmission normally only 17% according to other research.
“http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/“
I laughed so hard, the tears ran down me leg. Could explain a lot if you’re getting your misinformation from there!
Elbow in the middle. Arse further down.
You have no idea at all what you are talking about. No Covid vaccine prevents you catching or spreading Covid. You are so stupid the article you link to even states it:
“University of Warwick epidemiologist Mike Tildesley said the findings were significant but pressed people to continue to take up vaccination offers.
“We need to remember these vaccines are not 100% effective either at preventing severe symptoms or at allowing yourself to be infected ….”
By what measure, their extensive trials and PCR tests?
The whole shit-show is rigged. The tests are bollocks, the questions posed in the trials for the Lemsips were inadequate and still yet to be completed and the BBC are a bunch of bare faced cunts. You’re in good company.
Heavens, being young doesn’t look so inviting nowadays!
Last I checked, there had only been five specific cases of American college students who have died from or with COVID. There are approximately 20 million American college students, which means the odds of a college student dying from COVID over the past 14 months are 1-in-4-million.
As I keep posting, the probability a random American will get struck by lightning this year are 1-in-700,000.
Do colleges still teach statistics and probabilities? If so, why?
Some might say that the solution is to coerce college students into wearing a lightning conductor.
You’re quoting the BBC?
I can’t decide from your posts whether you just like winding people up or are incredibly thick.
Nothing says he can’t be both. See also, Marianna Spring
Our youngest son is currently ‘zooming’ a PHD at Denver University, a private Uni. He was given no choice, have a jab or you can’t continue course and therefore can’t fulfil your visa requirements, therefore will be thrown out of the country. Nice!
He had it, he is early 30s. He has been brainwashed , even though he is usually intelligent, so he has talked as if he didn’t mind. I don’t really know what he really thinks, its a bit difficult having that conversation via a phone link.
Bastards!
For those new to the poster named “fon” please be aware he is of 77 Brigade and not very bright.
Best to ignore him or tell him to:
F. #ck O. ff N. ow