Scientists rebuff Coronavirus conspiracy theories; Their analysis suggests that the virus evolved in a manner that would have been difficult to reproduce in a lab

Inkstone News ^ | 02/22/2020 | Simone McCarthy

[SeekAndFind]

A team of researchers has hit back at rumors that the coronavirus that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year was engineered.

In a paper posted on Monday on the scientific online forum Virological, the scientists – who include top epidemiologist W. Ian Lipkin from Columbia University; Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney; and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research – said crucial genetic clues indicate that the coronavirus was not created in a laboratory.

Despite scientists’ repeated efforts at debunking conspiracy theories, rumors about the still-unknown origins of the virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, have been rife.

Most are based on the idea that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers have built one of the world’s biggest databases of bat-related viruses. The institute was the first to identify the new coronavirus as directly related to a wild strain found in bats.

The speculation prompted the institute’s lead researcher, Shi Zhengli, to say in a post on the social media platform WeChat: “I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab.”

But that has not stopped the rumors, including in the United States, where Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, suggested in a Fox News television broadcast on Sunday that the virus could have come from a “biosafety level-4 super laboratory” in China.

The senator later clarified on Twitter he did not say the new coronavirus was an “engineered bioweapon,” but that there were several hypotheses about its origins that needed to be further explored.

[SeekAndFind]

FROM University of Queensland professor Roy Hall, who researches viral protein structures and was not involved in the study:

“If this was a genetically engineered virus, they [researchers] would be taking a virus that we know infects humans and causes disease and using the same genetic structure. But we haven’t seen [these features] before, so they’ve evolved naturally, separately in nature. No one has seen them before so they wouldn’t be genetically engineered that way,”

[Secret Agent Man]

Oh well, the guy swears it wasn’t created in their warfare lab.

OK then. /s

[a fool in paradise]

it has been wild all this time but only now became a worldwide sensation

[Jim Noble]

I read their preprint and I found it quite convincing.

[Crucial]

Who says you have to use a genetically modified virus to wage biological warfare? And who says that this wasn’t the intent, to use this strain and then modify it, but it was mishandled? It could be it came from eating exotic food like bat stew. This the danger of eating bush meat or exotic game. My guess is that we’ll never know exactly how this virus originated. What we do know, is that the Chinese authorities can’t be trusted.

[SeekAndFind]

On the other hand, we have this study:

Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory? Scientists believe killer disease may have begun in research facility 300 yards from Wuhan wet fish market

SEE HERE:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronavirus-originate-Chinese-government-laboratory.html

EXCERPT:

Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market. A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province. ‘The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,’ penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats. It also mentions that bats - which are linked to coronavirus - once attacked a researcher and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’

[neverevergiveup]

I remain open to their conclusions, but need to see the data. Anyone bioengineering a weaponized virus would want to hide the genetic manipulations that would raise suspicion. Stealth would be part of the weaponization process.

[SeekAndFind]

For those interested in the Scientific Paper written by two Chinese researchers from the South China University of Technology,

Here is the PDF for the study:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus

TITLE: THE POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE 2019-nCov CORONAVIRUS

by BoTao Xiao and Lei Xiao

ABSTRACT:

The 2019-nCoV has caused an epidemic of 28,060 laboratory-confirmed infections in human including 564 deaths in China by February 6, 2020. Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences from patients were almost identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus. It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed onto human. An article published on The Lancet reported that 27 of 41 infected patients were found to have contact with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.

We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 meters from the seafood market. We briefly examined the histories of the laboratories and proposed that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory. Our proposal provided an alternative origin of the coronavirus in addition to natural recombination and intermediate host.

[SeekAndFind]

Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory? Scientists believe killer disease may have begun in research facility 300 yards from Wuhan wet fish market

• Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology concludes that 'the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan'
• It points to research on bats and respiratory diseases carried by the animals at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology
• WCDC is just 300 yards from the seafood market and is adjacent to the hospital

By Ross Ibbetson For Mailonline

Published: 08:22 EST, 16 February 2020 | Updated: 06:11 EST, 18 February 2020

[Salamander]

“Workers in protective gear carry a bag containing a giant salamander that was reported to have escaped from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province in January”

Whoa, now!
We had nothing to do with this!

[Billthedrill]

Soooo...it was you all along...

[SeekAndFind]

FROM THE PAPER PUBLISHED BY THE CHINESE RESEARCHERS:

[Salamander]

For 20 years I’ve been telling all of you that someday, you’d bend the knee.

:D

[stormhill]

What? I'm gonna believe two whores in lab coats over common sense? But of course! After all, that's science speaking, donchaknow.

Look, the conditions they claim created the virus existed a hundred years ago. Why did it finally choose to come into existence now? Furthermore, why did it choose to emerge precisely in a city that contains a biosafety level-4 super lab in the first place? What am I, a four year old child? These dern people think they can just lie to us and we're supposed to accept it without question!

[null and void]

For 20 years I’ve been telling all of you that someday, you’d bend the knee.

Know Kneed to rub it in...

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[bigbob]

Scientists have been known to say a lot of crap.

[Hostage]

> “A team of researchers ...”

A team of dunces.

Here’s a real researcher who knows what’s up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALHm8WTGOkA&t=3s

[neverevergiveup]

Thanks for the info.

To me, the biggest indication that this might be a bioweapon that has escaped the development laboratory is the response of the Chinese government. Over the past few years there has been the emergence of human meta-pneumovirus as a pathogen, and It can be very dangerous to the elderly, immunocompromised people, or those with other medical conditions. Nonetheless, there has been no dramatic response to the increased number of cases of infection with this virus (even though it also can cause viral pneumonia) - as there was with the Chinese Coronavirus.

It is very believable that the Chinese government became very alarmed, because they knew where this virus came from and what it was capable of.

[Cold Heart]

Doesn’t mean the virus didn’t come out of a lab.