They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan

by Ben Reilly Sat May 29, 2021 11:42 pm

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) - a high security bio lab specalising in coronaviruses - is in the eye of the storm as questions rage whether Covid could have originally emerged from escaped from its campus.

China and the lab furiously deny any allegations, but a new study has suggested the virus appears to have been manipulated and US President Joe Biden has ordered his spies to "redouble" their investigations.

However, the story of Covid may go back the best part of a decade - potentially to a copper mine in the mountainous and forested region of Yunnan in April 2012.

A team of miners were given the job of cleaning out the abandoned shaft which was infested with roosting horseshoe bats.

The men found themselves shoveling knee-deep piles of guano - a repulsive combination of bat faeces and urine.

And within weeks, three of the men were dead.

The miners succumbed to a mystery infection which made them develop pneumonia-like symptoms, hacking coughs and high temperatures - chillingly similar symptoms to what we now know as Covid.

The fatal infection mostly flew under the radar beyond a smattering of reports in the West, such as an article in 2014 in Science which asked "New Killer Virus in China?".

The deaths didn't really get much attention beyond that, until suddenly Covid emerged as a once-in-a-century global pandemic that has so far killed 3.5million people.

Questions begun to be asked about where the new coronavirus came from as China reported the first cases in Wuhan to the World Health Organisation in December 2019.

And eyes quickly turned to the biosecurity level 4 lab, WIV.

It turns out virus samples from bats roosting in the cave were sent to WIV, and one of the nine viruses identified was a 96.2 per cent march for SARS-CoV2.

The virus - recovered from the anus of a horseshoe bat - is around ten mutations away from Covid, and is by far its closest known relative.

While nothing is proven as the politically mired investigation trudges on, it raises questions between the link between the Mojiang miners and Covid.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15105251/mystery-china-bat-cave-covid-wuhan-lab/

by eddie Sat May 29, 2021 11:47 pm

Need to keep an eye on this story...

by Syl Sat May 29, 2021 11:48 pm

More and more it's looking like blaming the wet market has just been a cover up.

by Maddog Sat May 29, 2021 11:58 pm

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/26/biden-orders-us-intelligence-to-intensify-investigation-into-covid-19-origins.html

by Ben Reilly Sun May 30, 2021 12:04 am

The scary thing is, the wet-market origin theory is still totally plausible, and another pandemic could very well originate from them in the future.

When Europeans started to settle the Americas, they brought diseases they themselves were immune to, but which had never been seen in the Americas -- and those diseases killed 90 percent of the people who lived in the Americas.

Whenever we go way off into the wilderness and capture animals that never come into contact with humans, we run the same basic risk -- that they're carrying a disease that has never infected human beings simply because people have never gone into those places before.

Back on the lab-leak theory, though -- there's a deep rabbit-hole you can go down if you want to. So many questions need to be answered -- did they do gain-of-function research on the bat viruses, trying to make them more capable of infecting humans? There's ample evidence they've carried out similar research on other viruses. There's also evidence that the lab in 2015 created a hybrid "super virus" capable of infecting humans.

If the miners' disease leaked from the WIV and became Covid-19, was it done on purpose or by accident?

by Syl Sun May 30, 2021 12:29 am

If it was manufactured rather than occuring naturally, it would have been insanity to release it before a vaccination was developed to treat it.

I doubt the whole truth will ever be proved.

by eddie Sun May 30, 2021 1:20 am

Syl wrote:If it was manufactured rather than occuring naturally, it would have been insanity to release it before a vaccination was developed to treat it.

I doubt the whole truth will ever be proved.

Not many huge “stories” are ever truly known by the public. That’s why I take every single thing that’s reported with a pinch of salt.

by Ben Reilly Sun May 30, 2021 1:43 am

Apparently, viruses are like photographs in that they can certainly be doctored, but they normally leave behind evidence of doctoring. Scientists say they've seen no obvious evidence of doctoring, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that someone was able to engineer the coronvirus in a very subtle way.

Viruses also have the ability to engineer themselves, in essence, because they replicate themselves so rapidly that their genetic code is always changing. Any fluke mutation can result in a new virus that can do something that its "parent" virus couldn't do.

To me, there are two possibilities that rank as the most probable -- either that WIV did little or perhaps nothing to the virus, and a lapse in security -- an accident -- let the virus into the wild, or that WIV deliberately made the virus more infectious and released it into the wild on purpose. I'm more inclined to accept the accidental release scenario than the deliberate release scenario, simply because it's really a strain on logic to link the few people who have benefited from the pandemic to the lab itself.

I think it's important that WIV was the first lab in all of China to be granted permission to research deadly viruses. That tells me that China isn't very experienced in dealing with this sort of thing, and that it's quite possible that the people working at WIV weren't as qualified as they should have been.

by Maddog Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:51 am

And to further complicate this, the US taxpayers were sending money to these labs.

by Fred Moletrousers Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:52 pm

I am absolutely convinced that COVID-19 originated from an experiment that went disastrously wrong; some sort of breach in the safety or security systems at the Wuhan Institute laboratory.

And what’s more I firmly believe that the experiment involved research and development into a weaponised strain of coronavirus, probably a zoonosis that was first detected in either bats or pangolins.

by Maddog Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:48 pm

Fred Moletrousers wrote:I am absolutely convinced that COVID-19 originated from an experiment that went disastrously wrong; some sort of breach in the safety or security systems at the Wuhan Institute laboratory.

And what’s more I firmly believe that the experiment involved research and development into a weaponised strain of coronavirus, probably a zoonosis that was first detected in either bats or pangolins.

I'm leaning that way too. And I think that folks like Fauci had a good idea too. His recent email dump shows that colleagues of his gave him a heads up about it well over a year ago. I think they just didn't want to go there as the political ramifications of coming out saying that the Chinese basically screwed up and got millions killed would overshadow all of the efforts to defeat the nasty thing. I think Fauci and others have set themselves up for some plausible deniability in terms of knowing what really happened, while leaving the door cracked for others to figure it out now. It's an interesting moral dilemma. Announcing to the world, during a pandemic that was killing millions, that the Chinese were responsible may have been the most honest and transparent thing to do, but would it have set off a chain of events that only made things infinitely worse? Imagine Trump having proof that the Chinese were responsible, while he struggled with issues back home.

by Maddog Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:28 am

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21487

An interesting article from 4 years ago.

"But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says."

by Maddog Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:46 am

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, says a lab leak was never the subject of a “fair and dispassionate discussion of the facts as we know them.” Instead, tempers soon began to flare as those calling for a closer look at possible lab origins were dismissed as conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation. Election-year politics and growing Sinophobic sentiments only added to the tensions. Attacks on Asian-Americans had been escalating since the pandemic began, and with then-president Trump fuming about a “Chinese virus,” many scientists and reporters became “cautious about saying anything that might justify the rhetoric of his administration,” says Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Washington, DC–based Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/18/1021030/coronavirus-leak-wuhan-lab-scientists-conspiracy/

Kind of what I said. There were political problems with looking too hard at the Chinese while the election and pandemic raged on.

by Original Quill Sun Jun 06, 2021 6:11 pm

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, says a lab leak was never the subject of a “fair and dispassionate discussion of the facts as we know them.”

I gather that's why President Biden has insisted the intelligence agencies look into this. https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-calls-for-intelligence-report-on-origins-of-covid-19-11622049664

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:44 am

Original Quill wrote:
David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, says a lab leak was never the subject of a “fair and dispassionate discussion of the facts as we know them.”

I gather that's why President Biden has insisted the intelligence agencies look into this. https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-calls-for-intelligence-report-on-origins-of-covid-19-11622049664

Yes, but it should have been done earlier, but everyone was assured that is happened naturally, and if you challenged that view you got called Q anon supporter.

Now it's OK to think that way. That's the problem with politics mixing with science.

by Original Quill Mon Jun 07, 2021 4:06 pm

Maddog wrote:
Original Quill wrote:

I gather that's why President Biden has insisted the intelligence agencies look into this. https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-calls-for-intelligence-report-on-origins-of-covid-19-11622049664

Yes, but it should have been done earlier, but everyone was assured that is happened naturally, and if you challenged that view you got called Q anon supporter.

Now it's OK to think that way. That's the problem with politics mixing with science.

A lot of things should have been done earlier, but Trump was asleep at the wheel. The Trump administration wholly disbanded the federal Pandemic Response Team, with a 'game-plan' left by Obama to meet just such an pandemic emergency as this. https://khn.org/news/evidence-shows-obama-team-left-a-pandemic-game-plan-for-trump-administration/

Trump was all about deregulation, and he was derisively dismissive of these "costly", and so-called "wasteful" efforts. How short-sighted. Now look where we are! Were it not that Obama left our economy in such good condition, we would be facing another Great Depression...just as we did at the end of the last Republican administration.

Trump was of the opinion that herd immunity would happen naturally, and no medical or scientific effort needed to take place to meet a crisis. It was the beginning of the politicization of the scientific effort to combat a plague. So many mistakes, so little time...

We would know a whole lot more today, if Trump had not suppressed the truth while coddling up to the Chinese in a myopic attempt to get a trade deal. The minute he figured out the Chinese were playing him, he reversed himself and commenced to berate the Chinese in racist terms. Now, Republicans are again kissing his ass...will wonders never cease?

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:22 pm

Original Quill wrote:
Maddog wrote:

Yes, but it should have been done earlier, but everyone was assured that is happened naturally, and if you challenged that view you got called Q anon supporter.

Now it's OK to think that way. That's the problem with politics mixing with science.

A lot of things should have been done earlier, but Trump was asleep at the wheel. The Trump administration wholly disbanded the federal Pandemic Response Team, with a 'game-plan' left by Obama to meet just such an pandemic emergency as this. https://khn.org/news/evidence-shows-obama-team-left-a-pandemic-game-plan-for-trump-administration/

Trump was all about deregulation, and he was derisively dismissive of these "costly", and so-called "wasteful" efforts. How short-sighted. Now look where we are! Were it not that Obama left our economy in such good condition, we would be facing another Great Depression...just as we did at the end of the last Republican administration.

Trump was of the opinion that herd immunity would happen naturally, and no medical or scientific effort needed to take place to meet a crisis. It was the beginning of the politicization of the scientific effort to combat a plague. So many mistakes, so little time...

We would know a whole lot more today, if Trump had not suppressed the truth while coddling up to the Chinese in a myopic attempt to get a trade deal. The minute he figured out the Chinese were playing him, he reversed himself and commenced to berate the Chinese in racist terms. Now, Republicans are again kissing his ass...will wonders never cease?

Your missing the point to make an irrelevant one. Scientists shouldn't alter their investigation because an orange buffoon is bloviating.

by Original Quill Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:38 pm

Maddog wrote:Your missing the point to make an irrelevant one. Scientists shouldn't alter their investigation because an orange buffoon is bloviating.

The scientists had no choice. When most of the research resources come from the medical institutions of government, and the orange buffoon is in charge of those institutions, and cutting off funds, the scientists have a hobson's choice: less science, or no science.

The Pandemic Response Team was a White House controlled project, under direct supervision of the Executive Department. When Trump said shut down, there wasn't much room for the scientists to continue their work, unaltered or otherwise. They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan 2190311264

They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan 2190311264

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:41 pm

Original Quill wrote:
Maddog wrote:Your missing the point to make an irrelevant one. Scientists shouldn't alter their investigation because an orange buffoon is bloviating.

The scientists had no choice. When most of the research resources come from the medical institutions of government, and the orange buffoon is in charge of those institutions, and cutting off funds, the scientists have a hobson's choice: less science, or no science.

The Pandemic Response Team was a White House controlled project, under direct control of the Executive Department. When Trump said shut down, there wasn't much room for the scientists to continue their work, unaltered.

"Instead, tempers soon began to flare as those calling for a closer look at possible lab origins were dismissed as conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation."

As always, you miss the point to make your own irrelevant one.

by Original Quill Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:54 pm

Maddog wrote:
Original Quill wrote:

The scientists had no choice. When most of the research resources come from the medical institutions of government, and the orange buffoon is in charge of those institutions, and cutting off funds, the scientists have a hobson's choice: less science, or no science.

The Pandemic Response Team was a White House controlled project, under direct control of the Executive Department. When Trump said shut down, there wasn't much room for the scientists to continue their work, unaltered.

"Instead, tempers soon began to flare as those calling for a closer look at possible lab origins were dismissed as conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation."

There was no internal deliberation. The only questioning came from the right-thinking Democrats, and they were the ones who were dismissed as "the enemy".

Trump ran an autocracy, not a democracy. Even today, he insists all that was needed was an injection of Clorox. As far as the Wuhan Lab was concerned, he never even got that far. He was still being teased and courted by the Chinese government on the potential trade deal.

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 7:29 pm

"Instead, tempers soon began to flare as those calling for a closer look at possible lab origins were dismissed as conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation."

Maybe you will read it this time and it will sink in.

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 7:31 pm

And this problem extended beyond the US.

Globally, the powers that be jumped on anyone that didn't shut up and tout the official line.

by Original Quill Mon Jun 07, 2021 8:38 pm

Maddog wrote:"Instead, tempers soon began to flare as those calling for a closer look at possible lab origins were dismissed as conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation."

Maybe you will read it this time and it will sink in.

I didn't see any tempers flaring. I saw obstinance on the part of Republicans and the Trump administration. Republicans have abandoned the concern for the USA, in favor of their own interests. They have no agenda or platform except for what is bad for the nation. The rest of the country simply shrugged, and voted the lot of them out of office.

There really has been no temper-flaring. There was, however, a bit of a lag to be made up. We have now made up for the Trump lapse of responsibility, in a relatively short time, and now four months into the Biden administration we are turning our attention to questions of origins.

The prior administration's response to the "origins" question, was to start an anti-Asian race war along the lines of their white supremacist's anti-black and anti-Hispanic campaigns. Maybe that is what you mean by "conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation". We can bypass all that and go directly to the heart of the matter: was there any weaponizing of viruses?

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 8:49 pm

Original Quill wrote:
Maddog wrote:"Instead, tempers soon began to flare as those calling for a closer look at possible lab origins were dismissed as conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation."

Maybe you will read it this time and it will sink in.

I didn't see any tempers flaring. I saw obstinance on the part of Republicans and the Trump administration. Republicans have abandoned the concern for the USA, in favor of their own interests. They have no agenda or platform except for what is bad for the nation. The rest of the country simply shrugged, and voted the lot of them out of office.

There really has been no temper-flaring. There was, however, a bit of a lag to be made up. We have now made up for the Trump lapse of responsibility, in a relatively short time, and now four months into the Biden administration we are turning our attention to questions of origins.

The prior administration's response to the "origins" question, was to start an anti-Asian race war along the lines of their white supremacist's anti-black and anti-Hispanic campaigns. Maybe that is what you mean by "conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation". We can bypass all that and go directly to the heart of the matter: was there any weaponizing of viruses?

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, saw it from the inside.

Perhaps you should learn to listen to the experts and stop pretending you are one, eh?

You sound a bit like that arrogant orange buffoon, who couldn't shut the fuck up and listen and learn.

by Original Quill Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:00 pm

Maddog wrote:
Original Quill wrote:

I didn't see any tempers flaring. I saw obstinance on the part of Republicans and the Trump administration. Republicans have abandoned the concern for the USA, in favor of their own interests. They have no agenda or platform except for what is bad for the nation. The rest of the country simply shrugged, and voted the lot of them out of office.

There really has been no temper-flaring. There was, however, a bit of a lag to be made up. We have now made up for the Trump lapse of responsibility, in a relatively short time, and now four months into the Biden administration we are turning our attention to questions of origins.

The prior administration's response to the "origins" question, was to start an anti-Asian race war along the lines of their white supremacist's anti-black and anti-Hispanic campaigns. Maybe that is what you mean by "conspiracy theorists spouting misinformation". We can bypass all that and go directly to the heart of the matter: was there any weaponizing of viruses?

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, saw it from the inside.

Perhaps you should learn to listen to the experts and stop pretending you are one, eh?

You sound a bit like that arrogant orange buffoon, who couldn't shut the fuck up and listen and learn.

Haha...fortunately, this isn't about me. From your abrupt change of subject, I take it that you concede the point.

That is well. From what you were saying, it appeared that you were trying to make a mountain out of the mole hill that was the quiet determination with which the Biden administration went about correcting the Republican disaster.

There were no tempers flaring, just a quiet, but determined course correction from everything that Trump got wrong.

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:21 pm

Original Quill wrote:
Maddog wrote:

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, saw it from the inside.

Perhaps you should learn to listen to the experts and stop pretending you are one, eh?

You sound a bit like that arrogant orange buffoon, who couldn't shut the fuck up and listen and learn.

Haha...fortunately, this isn't about me. From your abrupt change of subject, I take it that you concede the point.

That is well. From what you were saying, it appeared that you were trying to make a mountain out of the mole hill that was the quiet determination with which the Biden administration went about correcting the Republican disaster.

There were no tempers flaring, just a quiet, but determined course correction from everything that Trump got wrong.

No, it's not really about you, except that you ignore experts like, David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University.

In light of his thoughts, yours are about as worthless as Trump's.

by Maddog Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:22 pm

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University vs Quill/Trump.

What a quandary I face. Cool

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They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan

They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan

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Re: They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan

Re: They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan

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Re: They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan

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Re: They died of a disease similar to Covid-19 nine years ago. Then, samples of the virus that killed them were sent to a lab in Wuhan

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