Posted on 05/07/2021 2:35:38 PM PDT by consult
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain: The political agendas of governments and scientists have generated thick clouds of obfuscation, which the mainstream press seems helpless to dispel.
In what follows I will sort through the available scientific facts, which hold many clues as to what happened, and provide readers with the evidence to make their own judgments. I will then try to assess the complex issue of blame, which starts with, but extends far beyond, the government of China.
By the end of this article, you may have learned a lot about the molecular biology of viruses. I will try to keep this process as painless as possible. But the science cannot be avoided because for now, and probably for a long time hence, it offers the only sure thread through the maze.
The virus that caused the pandemic is known officially as SARS-CoV-2, but can be called SARS2 for short. As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped. It matters a great deal which is the case if we hope to prevent a second such occurrence.
I’ll describe the two theories, explain why each is plausible, and then ask which provides the better explanation of the available facts. It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction. And having inferred that direction, I’m going to delineate some of the strands in this tangled skein of disaster.
A tale of two theories. After the pandemic first broke out in December 2019, Chinese authorities reported that many cases had occurred in the wet market — a place selling wild animals for meat — in Wuhan. This reminded experts of the SARS1 epidemic of 2002, in which a bat virus had spread first to civets, an animal sold in wet markets, and from civets to people. A similar bat virus caused a second epidemic, known as MERS, in 2012. This time the intermediary host animal was camels.
The decoding of the virus’s genome showed it belonged a viral family known as beta-coronaviruses, to which the SARS1 and MERS viruses also belong. The relationship supported the idea that, like them, it was a natural virus that had managed to jump from bats, via another animal host, to people. The wet market connection, the major point of similarity with the SARS1 and MERS epidemics, was soon broken: Chinese researchers found earlier cases in Wuhan with no link to the wet market. But that seemed not to matter when so much further evidence in support of natural emergence was expected shortly.
Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses. So the possibility that the SARS2 virus had escaped from the lab could not be ruled out. Two reasonable scenarios of origin were on the table.
From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. These statements were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in the Lancet on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” they said, with a stirring rallying call for readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.
Contrary to the letter writers’ assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: They were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.
It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”
For more see link. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
I’ll never believe that many died from the virus. Flu cases dropped to almost zero. They blamed everything on the virus no matter what people died of as long as they tested positive.
Then there were governor’s who intentionally put infected people into nursing homes.
1. Natural covid virus probably from bats but perhaps not.
2. Taken to Wuhan Lab for gain of function genetic modification which actually means making it more virulent and fatal.
3. Peoples Republic Communist Army was also involved with this research.
4. This gain of function research can be legitimate for scientific reasons or can be used for biological warfare.
5. Gain of function study was banned in the United States because it was so dangerous. An accidental escape from the lab could be catastrophic. Oddly it was banned under Obama.
6. The DR OF DEATH, also known as Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases, then subsidized the Wuhan Lab to continue the gain of function research.
7. Why in the hell would we subsidize a lab controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army?
8. Once the disease was unleashed in China they instilled extreme lock downs and quarantines. That did not work and the Chinese are lying about their success.
9. When China realized they would be hit by the virus, they decided to unleash it on the world. There were restrictions on internal flights and travel by land from Wuhan to the rest of China. There were no restrictions on international flight from Wuhan. That was an act of biological and economic warfare.
All the above is proven fact. THE ONLY THING THAT IS NOT PROVEN IS WAS IT AN ACCIDENTAL RELEASE OR INTENTIONAL. I have no proof but suspect the release was a lab accident. THE SPREAD OF THE DISEASE WAS 100% INTENTIONAL ONCE THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is a liar. Dr. Anthony Fauci is a virologist of extreme skill and knowlege. Dr. Anthony actions are driven by political ideology (and to save his ass) and not by rational science. HIS ACTIONS HAVE KILLED MANY BY DENIGRATING DRUGS THAT WORKED AND WERE BANNED until recently. He was once an advocate of HCQ in the past for SARS also a corona virus but not so for this corona virus.
Dr. Mingle did research that was most evil in the extreme and horrid to even think about. Oddly Dr. Mingle was doing research in pursuant of science but in most evil and barbaric and inhumane ways. He rots in hell today. Dr. Mingle’s Death toll is but a fraction of Dr. Fauci. Both are evil in the extreme. Fauci is the most evil of the two as his death toll is far higher.
I suspect Dr. Fauci will be roommates with Dr. Mingle one day if Mingle can stand him.
They all have "Stockholm Syndrome" or is it "Wuhan Amnesia?"
I find it taxing to believe that “Nature”, randomly developed an invasive virus, that Humans with super computers and gene splicing technology, failed to have done.
I’ll take One world government people for $500, Alex.
People made the virus and released it. Biological warfare.
People ARE part of nature.
The real question is did people deliberately cause this to come about or did it come on without human encouragement?
The answer is certain people encouraged it to come about, deliberately.
Great article! Thanks for posting!
Do you have references for what you say in 7?
Re 12 codon insert.
That is 36 bases.
Can you post the sequence of this 36 base insert here.
The first anomaly is just a function of time. Wade apparently does work that doesn't require shrill dishonesty and craven political bias smelling up his every sentence. How could he ever have written for the NYT? There's an answer: There was a time when the NYT was capable of hiring and keeping columnists who were not practicing Stalinists--without doxxing and sacrificing them publicly. I read Mr. Wade's work there for years with much interest. But that, of course, was in another century.
Possibly more amazing is that this article is from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists--which used to be a shill publication for Soviet sympathizers who wanted to blame the U.S. for the danger to humanity posed by Soviet aggression. I believe it was founded by Einstein (a genius, but a Leftist) and several others. The graphic on the cover of the magazine for decades showed a clock, ticking toward midnight, i.e., the end of the world, assumed largely to be Our Fault.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists now tolerates, or even promotes objective science? This is a miracle sincerely to be celebrated. I guess has been a core of scientists and editors involved who were there for the science. Good for them.
There is very little nature occurring in a big skyscraper city like Wuhan. Historically natural viruses first appear in areas where many humans mix with many animals, like a large pig or chicken farm. This is the very first city virus to show up first near a large virus laboratory. It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to see the obvious. Behind every step of this unfolding sequence of tragedy is the Hitleresque CCP.
I didn’t see it; sorry.
Have you tried the link in the original article? It’s appeared several places; so maybe the version here has a link, with the sequencing information, that wasn’t in the version I read a couple of days ago.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539923/
This is a review that describes it. 4 aa insertion PRRA
TNSPRRAR|SVA
Thanks.
That’s not the sequence.
The insertion is PRRA, four amino acids, and it is 4 codons, not 12.
Nothing strange happened in Wuhan but if you go around asking questions, you get tortured and thrown in prison for 4 years. https://t.co/2JZFV9QRp3— Alina Chan (@Ayjchan) December 28, 2020
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