Article Lays Out Circumstantial Evidence Coronavirus Came from Wuhan Lab
Here is a long, but interesting read from Australia’s Daily Telegraph about a leaked document supposedly prepared by western governments about the possibility of the coronavirus being unintentionally released from the Wuhan lab:
China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.
The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.
It states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.
Daily Telegraph
You can read more at the link, but even though there is no direct evidence yet that it was unintentionally released from the lab, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing that way laid out in the article. Unfortunately it appears that circumstantial evidence is only relevant depending on ones politics.
The Chinese acted about the virus just like the Democrats are acting about Joey Fingers
Looks like a great story! (PS, previous posts as “TC” were mine, somehow it bumped me to my wordpress account which is fine, I don’t know why it did that. I’ve been reading this site for some time).
I did my own reading and came up with this, all from public sources and most not crackpot. The probability that the disease came from an animal is as about as likely as that bat turning into Count Dracula 🙂
Summary of Circumstantial Evidence Supporting Lab/synthetic Origin
Wuhan, China is the pandemic starting point.. Wuhan Institute of Virology was known to work on the synthetic virus. It is the only BSL-4 facility in China, thus presumably the only repository of chimeric viruses. As real estate agents say, “Location, location, location.”
[Credible] The U.S. halted funding for chimeric virus research in 2014, specifically for “gain of function” research that increased infectivity of respiratory viruses including SARS and recommended a voluntary halt to such research due to the risks. Funding was resumed in 2017. I don’t have the details.
[Unverified] Such research continued at Wuhan, even with some US funding, apparently the only location in the world to do so. Presumably only Wuhan had the synthetic, whether just in storage or in active experimentation unknown. If true, after the outbreak, this would explain the Chinese’s cover-up attempts.
Authorities’ hostile actions against the Lab, personnel, and other acts to suppress information early in the outbreak is logically inconsistent with the claim of origin in the wet market. It is consistent with “guilty” behavior, of a cover-up.
COVID-19 displays traits (at least two, perhaps more) that are consistent with the “gains of function” (new features) that researchers had added to the synthetic: enhanced infectivity in mammals of a respiratory virus, ACE-2 receptor and treatment resistance. (This part gets highly technical, I’ll leave the details to experts. For example, the ACE-2 affinity may be what gives the greater virulence.)
Documented sloppy lab procedures increase odds of accidents (US officials visited in 2018, sent cables to Washington complaining about failings at lab.)
[Post-outbreak cover-up] Worldwide academic-commercial-government-medical complex has vested interests in promoting “wild virus” claim; proof of a lab leak would likely have catastrophic effects on them, beginning with widespread banning of any remotely dangerous research (GOF), regardless of its scientific merit.
” Batwoman” and perhaps other researchers connected to Wuhan had collected bats as far back as 2013. Bay or perhaps the Pangolin we’re sources of SARS viruses that were highly similar (96% or better) to the current covid-19 virus. The details get complex, but a combination of passing through lab animals and possible gain-of-function manipulation presumably resulted in the predecessor to the covid-19 virus. It is partly a question of how you define artificial, but we stay obviously started with natural viruses, and then study under laboratory conditions for an unknown period of time. The viruses would naturally change under laboratory conditions. I do not know if they were directly genetically modified but there is experimentation that does just that. Appears the virus RaTG13 was the “closest match” on hand at Wuhan; it would have to be shown how they changed it into the synthetic.
[weakens my case] At least a couple claims that weaken the market hypothesis are. One The bats that were studied or the viruses from the bats are from nowhere near Wuhan, they were collected hundreds of miles away. Another source claimed bats are not sold in Wuhan.
[weakens my case] critics noted that there are a huge number of Chinese that would routinely be exposed to bats and there the natural viruses. These humans might be intermediates for the “jumps.” Compare that to the tiny number of employees at Wuhan. Plausible, the comparison is valid only if natural viruses are available. The hypothetical synthetic would already have the GOF that would make it far more infectious to the lab worker.
Biological weapons being made at the lab, illegal (?) synthetic got loose. This is an even more nightmare case than a legitimate GOF experiment getting out. In fact, this is an excellent conspiracy hypothesis: It would better explain both China’s delay in notifying the world, its secrecy, and its desperate clean-up at the lab and months into the pandemic, still refusing inspections of the lab.
Conclusions
The COVID-19 pandemic started, most likely, by the accidental escape of a synthetic virus from the lab in Wuhan, probably one or more employees unknowingly exposed about November 20, 2019. The research was completely legitimate, was done with International cooperation and funding, although it was controversial due to its risky nature. A more unsettling conjecture (“conspiracy theory”) is the lab was working on a military weapon (pathogen); this would also better explain the extreme secrecy, evidence destroying, and continued refusal to allow international inspections of the lab.