Wuhan coronavirus

Simomax wrote:

mw0uzo wrote:

Oh, looky what Wuhan Labs were up to in 2007
https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/82/4/1899.full.pdf

Only mixing up HIV with SARS and making it bind to human ACE2

I thought this was common knowledge now? There was some conspiracy about a Chinese scientist (female, can't remember her name) working for the US and she was sent to/posted at the Wuhan lab to perform research on the SARS-CoV virus. I don't really understand much when they get into the the scientific speak with regards to experimenting, but as far as I know, the work on the virus at the lab was funded by the US. I'll see if I can dig something up.

Yeah. just adding more evidence to the pile

I don't think this is the actual article I read re US funded Chinese scientists, but does mention it. I haven't read through it all, just grazed over the surface but appears to support that a scientist that was working on SARS was funded by the US as well as other countries.

Not only does Zhengli Shi provide a direct chain of expertise tying the already successful bio-engineering of a virulent bat-based coronavirus at UNC directly to the BSL-4 virology lab in Wuhan, but back in January 2014 she’d received a $665,000 grant from NIH for a study titled The Ecology of Bat Coronaviruses and the Risk of Future Coronavirus Emergence (NIAID R01 AI1 10964) as well as $559,500 more from USAID for a study titled Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT_2China (Project No. AID-OAA-A-14-00102). Beyond this American funding specifically into viral diseases zoonotically transferring from animals to humans which would slipped in just before the ban, over the years she’s also received around $3 million in grants to study these zoonotic viruses from China and other countries, and has served on the editorial board of several virological research magazines. More of her research into the intersection of coronaviruses like the Wuhan Strain and their epidemic potential was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Threat Reduction Agency, and U.S. Biological Defense Research Directorate of the Naval Medical Research Center.

https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/

I'm starting to be of the mind that this is a bio-weapon created in a lab. Maybe not even finished properly and it was accidentally released by the Wuhan lab. Now I don't think the lab actually just opened it's doors and it got out, I suspect a worker there brought it out by accident and maybe, just maybe, went to buy food from the market on their way home? I'm not sure we will ever hear the truth of it's origin but it is safe to say that virus was in that lab.

Numbers are in. Total confirmed cases are at 9529, with 1452 new cases. Deaths are 463, with 41 new deaths, down 46 from yesterday. Total tested this (24h) period, 6583.

That link I posted a couple of posts back is a really, really interesting read. A guy did a video on that (below - 30 mins long) which is also very good (if you can put up with the bike riding etc). He tells a less detailed version of that blog post with a little background also. The blog post goes into a lot of detail about how COVID-19 came about, how it was more than likely engineered, the people that worked on it etc. There are lots of links to sources within the post so makes for a lengthy read. I got about half way through but will finish tomorrow.
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/

Seems the MSM have decided the cause of the outbreak was from the market in Wuhan, which is possibly so. I think the market does play a part in the first cases of the outbreak, but after reading that blog and watching that video, I'm really of the mind that it escaped from the lab in Wuhan, whether accidentally or on purpose. From what I understand of that blog post the virus is part SARS from a bat and part HIV but there is little to no chance of that mutation happening naturally and for it become zoonotic and pass to humans. Its an almost impossibility for this to happen naturally. At the time of the outbreak in Wuhan the bats were hibernating and the market did not sell any bats or bat products. So we have a one in a billion chance that this virus started in a bat, mutated giving it AIDS like features and crossed species into a human virus.

Another peculiar characteristic is COVID-19’s similarities to HIV. And so although another since-retracted pre-print noted several very short genomic sequences in COVID-19’s spike-protein gene that look far more similar to sequences found in HIV than to other coronaviruses – critics quickly pointed out that the shared homology didn’t reach statistical significance. However a closer look at the data reveals that there were a few small shared genomic segments that, despite being physically separated from each other along each strand of DNA, all worked together to code for the Wuhan Strain’s protein-spike’s crucial receptor binding site. Something that is highly unlikely to have happened by chance. And despite most of its protein-spike being shared with SARS, these substituted segments weren’t shared at all – nor were they found in any other coronavirus. One possible but likely reason for these HIV-like segments is that they were meant to be epitopes, or molecular flags meant to mark intruders for a vaccine to target – meaning the Wuhan Strain was built as a monster for a specific vaccine to hunt. It is mathematically possible for this to happen in nature – but only in a ten-thousand bats chained to ten-thousand Petri dishes and given until infinity sense. Alternatively, this pattern could also be produced by infecting a room full of ferrets with a bespoke coronavirus and sifting through the wreckage for your genomic needle.

Critics have brushed off the Wuhan Strain’s shared homology with HIV as statistically insignificant, however clinical reporting indicates that the Wuhan Strain may be using this shared HIV homology to attack CD4 immune cells just like HIV does, as an unusually high percentage of patients are showing low white blood cell counts, especially the sickest ones. This pathogenicity may well be due to the unique HIV-live genomics of the Wuhan Strain, as one white-paper by LSU’s professor emeritus of Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology who’s also a Harvard-educated virologist with a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics notes: “This is the first description of a possible immunosuppressive domain in coronaviruses… The three key [mutations] common to the known immunosuppressive domains are also in common with the sequence from [the spike-protein]. While coronaviruses are not known for general immunosuppression of the style shown by HIV-1, this does not rule out immunosuppression at the site of active infection in the lung, which would prolong and potentially worsen infection at that site.” And early research has indicated that this unique region may make COVID-19 up to 1,000 times more likely to bind to human cells than SARS, which could be due to either this homology or to ADE, or some combination of these or other factors.

And so, the papers are saying that while there were no bats sold at the Wuhan market it could have infected chickens or other animals, then infected humans. So there we have two zoonotic infections increasing the chances by many orders of magnitude.

Bats were not sold at the Wuhan market but may have infected live chickens or other animals sold there.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1260550/coronavirus-cause-how-did-coronavirus-start-china
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/new-virus-china-covid-19-food-markets

I'm not doubting that the market in Wuhan played a part in the initial spread of this virus, but for it to start in bats, that are hibernating at the time and that are not sold on the market, cross into chickens or another animal, and then cross again into humans, is next to impossible. It is more likely the virus was taken there either premeditated or accidentally and it spread from there. That is if you believe what is in that blog post, and from what I have read of it, and the sources cited, it seems very plausible.

Chinese media saying the virus started out in Italy, before the outbreak in Wuhan.. I doubt this is true although I'm not ruling anything out. Maybe China is playing a blame game or simply to obfuscate it's origin to the Chinese people. A few days ago China were pointing the finger at the US, now at Italy.

Chinese state media links the origin of coronavirus with ITALY after Milan professor said doctors there remembered seeing 'very strange' pneumonia last year

Chinese media outlets have linked the origin of the coronavirus pandemic with Italy after a Milan-based professor said doctors there saw 'very strange' pneumonia cases as early as November.
Beijing is now rejecting the widely held assessment that the city of Wuhan is the birthplace of the global outbreak after the number of daily infections there dropped to zero but soared in Europe......

.......Professor Remuzzi, Director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, said in an interview last week that local doctors 'remember having seen very strange pneumonias [sic], very severe, particularly in old people, in December and even in November.'
He told American news organisation NPR: 'It means that the virus was circulating at least in Lombardy before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China.'
His comments were quickly seized by China's tightly controlled press, which used them to prove that the global health crisis did not start in China.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8150589/Chinese-state-media-suggests-coronavirus-pandemic-originated-Italy.html