Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China's biowarfare program

Washington Times ^ | Sunday, January 26, 2020 | By Bill Gertz

[a fool in paradise]

The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, said an Israeli biological warfare analyst.

Radio Free Asia last week rebroadcast a Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory, known the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.

Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program.

“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” Mr. Shoham told The Washington Times.

Work on biological weapons is conducted as part of dual civilian-military research and is “definitely covert,” he said in an email.

...Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-controlled media that initial signs indicated the virus originated from wild animals sold at a seafood market in Wuhan.

One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that false rumors circulating on the Chinese internet claim the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons. That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter any charges that the new coronavirus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories.

The WHO is calling the microbe novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV... (Thursday) the organization stopped short of declaring a public health emergency of international concern.

China has deployed military forces to Wuhan to halt all travel out of the city of 11 million people in an effort to contain the outbreak of the virus, which causes pneumonialike symptoms...

[a fool in paradise]

Mass graves?

Aren’t there whole cities or at least shopping malls that have been built in China that are empty? Why not triage patients in one of those places?

[DuncanWaring]

Andromeda Strain reference?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Maybe, but I think the more prevalent explanation is the more likely one - the practice of people in China to eat just about any animal. Apparently the open-air market in Hunan was selling dogs, wolves, civet cats, and otters (both alive and dead) for consumption - no checks for disease or cleanliness. The Chinese government has now closed it down.

[WildHighlander57]

HighSierra5 wrote:

“What was that video of all those excavators digging in a field all about? The media said that they were constructing a hospital to take care of the corona cases. What?”

Hospital.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/china-building-hospital-coronavirus

[a fool in paradise]

I didn’t post it to the extended or front page side bars but it is worth discussion.

There are Chinese discussions that the US did it.

[jetson]

Chinese population control. The government has the antivirus?

[a fool in paradise]

The ZPG crowd are for anything that will knock off billions from the world population.

[MD Expat in PA]

2015 Tianjin explosions

On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions killed 173 people and injured hundreds of others at a container storage station at the Port of Tianjin. The first two explosions occurred within 30 seconds of each other at the facility, which is located in the Binhai New Area of Tianjin, China. The second explosion was far larger and involved the detonation of about 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. Fires caused by the initial explosions continued to burn uncontrolled throughout the weekend, repeatedly causing secondary explosions, with eight additional explosions occurring on 15 August. The 1st explosion occurred and registered as a magnitude 2.3 earthquake and the second explosion registered as a magnitude 2.9 earthquake. One month after the explosion, the casualty report was 173 deaths, 8 missing, and 797 non-fatal injuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions

[raccoonradio]

I believe The Omega Man and Last Man On Earth were both based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend.. which was also filmed under that title.
Stephen King’s The Stand had the superflu that wiped out most of the world’s population.King has said the writer that most influenced him was Matheson.

[Redmen4ever]

I didn’t bring up the fellow’s name. He committed suicide while awaiting trial. Because of the interest in this matter beyond criminal justice, investigation continued following the suicide.

A review of the government’s scientific evidence by the National Academy of Science said that the scientific evidence was not, by itself, definitive. This finding did not exonerate him. It merely said that more evidence was needed to make a definitive determination.

Additional evidence included connecting him to the anthrax via his obsession with a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and an attack on them. There is also a history of mental problems, as developed in the book The Mirage Man: Bruce Ivins, the Anthrax Attacks, and America’s Rush to War.

Another source of evidence is that following his arrest (and subsequent suicide), the anthrax attacks stopped.

No, I did not know this person and have no inside information. I am sorry he committed suicide which deprived us the opportunity for a jury to either put this matter to rest or, by acquitting him, to reveal that we should continue investigating the matter.

[a fool in paradise]

Compare and contrast to North Korea where the people are starving and will eat any animal. Same in some other places.

We don’t see mass outbreaks of such diseases in other countries.

[Salamander]

The animal rights wackos have been feverishly importing “meat dogs” to the US as pets.

/and yeah, I see what I did there

[nuconvert]

fwiw

[Reily]

Was this Stephen Hatfil?

[CodeToad]

“may have”

Well that’s what I call responsible and accurate journalism. /s

[null and void]

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.

[grey_whiskers]

I don’t have the link on my phone, but there was a video on LiveLeaks from a 23-year-old US woman teaching school over there (I think English but I didn’t check) which says the stores are being stocked, but people are basically self-quarantined / mass house arrest / sheltering in place otherwise...

[grey_whiskers]

I think the anthrax one, the mad scientist was a patsy.

[TheNext]

China needs to continue their research into a Whites Only Virus.

[a fool in paradise]

Did Barack Obama ever say what kind of a dog he ate?