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How China’s “Bat Woman” Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus
Scientific American ^ | March 11, 2020 | Jane Qiu

Posted on 03/26/2020 12:31:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway

Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there

The mysterious patient samples arrived at Wuhan Institute of Virology at 7 P.M. on December 30, 2019. Moments later, Shi Zhengli’s cell phone rang. It was her boss, the institute’s director. The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention had detected a novel coronavirus in two hospital patients with atypical pneumonia, and it wanted Shi’s renowned laboratory to investigate. If the finding was confirmed, the new pathogen could pose a serious public health threat—because it belonged to the same family of bat-borne viruses as the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a disease that plagued 8,100 people and killed nearly 800 of them between 2002 and 2003. “Drop whatever you are doing and deal with it now,” she recalls the director saying.

Shi—a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years—walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to 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?”

While Shi’s team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute raced to uncover the identity and origin of the contagion, the mysterious disease spread like wildfire. As of this writing, about 81,000 people in China have been infected.

(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Pets/Animals; Science
KEYWORDS: bats; china; coronavirus

1 posted on 03/26/2020 12:31:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

2 posted on 03/26/2020 12:32:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

No doubt there is an assortment of these “viruses” available in China. That sounds like a threat. Perhaps a complete quarantine for the next ten years is the answer to this vexing problem.


3 posted on 03/26/2020 12:39:08 PM PDT by txrefugee
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To: nickcarraway
Batwoman threads are useless without...


4 posted on 03/26/2020 12:40:06 PM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer)
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To: nickcarraway

“Scientific American” hasn’t been either for a long time.


5 posted on 03/26/2020 12:40:06 PM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: nickcarraway

Some bat species are considered endangered species around the globe, so why aren’t they in China...especially since they’re used as a food source.


6 posted on 03/26/2020 12:42:00 PM PDT by mass55th ("Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." ~~ John Wayne)
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To: mass55th

Does China even acknowledge species as being endangered?


7 posted on 03/26/2020 12:45:42 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway
"Does China even acknowledge species as being endangered?"

Probably not...but the Chinese peasant species should be number one on it. They've always been expendable. Pandas to the Chi-Coms are more valuable than humans.

8 posted on 03/26/2020 12:51:16 PM PDT by mass55th ("Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." ~~ John Wayne)
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To: nickcarraway

“If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”


Then she was gently reminded of Approved Thought by the Peoples’ Liberation Army, and she decided “no, they couldn’t have come from our lab.”


9 posted on 03/26/2020 1:08:47 PM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Buckeye McFrog

10 posted on 03/26/2020 1:11:55 PM PDT by Ouchthatonehurt
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To: nickcarraway
The article presents Shi Zhengli in a very favorable light.

The following lengthy and technical article in a journal called GreatGameIndia presents her and her Wuhan Institute of Virology lab in a very different light. It basically suggests that her lab was the source and creator of an engineered virus that escaped confinement. Other articles have made similar claims.

COVID19 Files – Scientific Investigation On Mysterious Origin Of Coronavirus

If that is true, Zhengli would be both a hero for her earlier work and a massive villain for accidentally unleashing this pandemic.

I don't don't understand the field nearly well enough to know whether the article presents a credible case. Perhaps someone else here with some actual expertise could weigh in.

11 posted on 03/26/2020 1:18:06 PM PDT by Jeff F
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To: nickcarraway

“Could they have come from our lab”?

I wonder if she’s still alive.


12 posted on 03/26/2020 1:22:14 PM PDT by deweyfrank (Nobody's Perfect)
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To: Boogieman

Wrongthink!


13 posted on 03/26/2020 1:38:05 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie
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To: nickcarraway

This was a very good read.


14 posted on 03/26/2020 1:49:09 PM PDT by longfellowsmuse (last of the living nomads)
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To: Jeff F

The article you posted from Great Game India is worth reading. It traces scientific reporting from Dec., 2019 through Feb. 2020 showing exactly how the Communist propaganda machine ramped up to destroy the truth that this bioweapon was released from their lab in Wuhan.


15 posted on 03/26/2020 2:14:35 PM PDT by The Westerner (Protect the most vulnerable: get the government out of medicine, education and our forests!)
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To: wastoute
“Scientific American” hasn’t been either for a long time.

Correct. This article could be entirely true or substantially false. Who knows?

16 posted on 03/26/2020 3:19:39 PM PDT by TChad (The MSM, having nuked its own credibility, is now bombing the rubble.)
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