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To date, no one has stated the urgent universal need to aggressively investigate the true origin of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, better than Karl and Dan Sirotkin in their August 12, 2020 article “Might SARS‐CoV‐2 Have Arisen via Serial Passage through an Animal Host or Cell Culture?” “Despite claims from prominent scientists that SARS‐CoV‐2 indubitably emerged naturally, the etiology of this novel coronavirus remains a pressing and open question: Without knowing the true nature of a disease, it is impossible for clinicians to appropriately shape their care, for policy‐makers to correctly gauge the nature and extent of the...

Ever since its outbreak in Wuhan, China back in December of 2019, scientists have been trying to look into the origins of COVID-19 with several theories as to where the virus came from. According to a leading scientist, the virus that is COVID-19 reportedly came from a military lab and not from a wet market. Express reports Dr. Li Meng Yan, a virologist at Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, who went to the United States, claimed that the coronavirus strain that is currently plaguing the world today actually came from a military lab in China. Speaking on a live...

Could the coronavirus that caused the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic evolve naturally?  Based on what is publicly known at this time, it probably could, but there is no scientific evidence that it actually has.  As of today, no animal has been found to carry the coronavirus that infected Chinese individuals in Wuhan with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019.  Yet the mass media and their so-called "fact-checkers" keep propagating the unproven speculation that the virus did not leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as if it were some kind of "settled science." A Washington Post article titled "State Department releases...

On the origin of the new coronavirus In the June update it was shown that renowned virologists consider a laboratory origin of the new coronavirus to be “at least as plausible” as a natural origin. This is due to some genetic peculiarities of the virus in the area of receptor binding, which lead to particularly high transmissibility and infectivity in humans.In the meantime, further evidence for this hypothesis has emerged. It was already known that the virus most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 was found in 2013 in southwest China. This bat corona virus was discovered by researchers from the Wuhan...

Guest post by Dr. Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D.After six months of exhaustive investigation, the global scientific community has been unable to identify the natural source of COVID-19, that is, the when, where and how it “jumped” from animals to humans. Some now imply that we may never know the natural origin of COVID-19.In a news article recently published by the international science journal Nature, the progress, or lack thereof, identifying the natural source of COVID-19 was reviewed. According to the article, COVID-19 probably originated in bats, specifically horseshoe bats, which host two closely related coronaviruses, named RaTG13 and RmYN02, whose...

China is determined to block investigations of where COVID-19 came from. But worse, influential American scientists are going along with censoring any inquiry. They're declaring their "solidarity with the scientists and health professionals of China." That's a deadly problem. Conquering this virus and devising a vaccine will require unbiased research, no matter where it leads. The best weapon to fight this virus is the truth. The biggest mistake is to limit scientific inquiry and pander to China. We need scientists to be scientists, not political censors. When Australia called for a formal inquiry into the pandemic's origins, China explicitly threatened...

The Wall Street Journal has published a piece today which highlights China’s conspicuous silence about its ongoing investigation into the origin of the coronavirus. This has been a sort of slow-motion story happening in the background for several months. As time passes, it is getting harder and harder to explain China’s reluctance to pin down where the virus originated. Around 1 a.m. on Dec. 31, Lu Junqing woke to a phone call from his boss at a local disinfection company. Get a team together and head to the Huanan market, he was told: “Bring your best kit.”Mr. Lu knew...

China will not invite international experts to investigate the source of Covid-19 until after securing the "final victory" over the virus, Beijing's UN ambassador in Geneva said Wednesday despite mounting calls for an independent probe into China’s handling of the outbreak. China's priority is first beating the pandemic -- and then countering what Chen Xu called the "absurd and ridiculous" US politicisation of the coronavirus crisis, he added in an online press briefing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it is waiting on an invitation from China to take part in its investigations into the animal origins of the virus,...

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said statements by senior officials about the origins of the CCP virus are “entirely consistent,” rejecting allegations that there were conflicting opinions within the administration about where it came from. “Every one of those statements is entirely consistent,” he said at a May 6 press conference. “Lay them down together, there is no separation. We are all trying to figure out the right answer. We are all trying to get the clarity. There are different levels of certainty assessed at different places. That’s highly appropriate.” He added that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark...

China has refused repeated requests by the World Health Organisation to take part in investigations into the origins of COVID-19, the WHO representative in China has told Sky News. "We know that some national investigation is happening but at this stage we have not been invited to join," Dr Gauden Galea said. "WHO is making requests of the health commission and of the authorities," he said. "The origins of virus are very important, the animal-human interface is extremely important and needs to be studied. "The priority is we need to know as much as possible to prevent the reoccurrence." Asked...

After spending weeks attempting to obscure the origin of the coronavirus, the government of China has now issued an order that all research papers on the topic must pass through China’s Education Ministry before they can be submitted to journals. The directive was supposed to remain quiet but was published online by at least two Chinese Universities. The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives and sickened 1.7 million people worldwide since it first broke out...

Earlier this week Tucker Carlson did a segment on the origin of the coronavirus. Carlson, who has been pretty aggressive in his coverage of the virus, pointed out a Chinese research paper (since pulled by the author) which claimed the virus could not have arisen at the Wuhan wet market because the horseshoe bats where the virus arose were not for sale at the market. In fact, the bats are not naturally found anywhere within 900 miles of the market. However, bats were being studied for viruses they carried in two labs including one just a few hundred meters...

Walter Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, known as a “virus hunter,” revealed in an interview on Fox Business Network that he has tested positive for the CCP virus on March 24. Lipkin is the director of Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity, and has earned the reputation of a “virus hunter” for his efficiency and innovative methods of identifying new viruses. In the past 30 years, he has been involved in the epidemic control of almost all major contagions in the world, including West Nile virus and SARS. In addition, he has discovered and identified more...

Conspiracy theories claiming COVID-19 was engineered in a lab as part of a biological attack on the United States have been gaining traction online in recent weeks, but a new study on the origins of the virus has concluded that the pandemic-causing strain developed naturally. An analysis of the evidence, according to the findings first published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine, shows that the novel coronavirus "is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," with the researchers concluding "we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible." Researchers concluded that the novel coronavirus is...

The beautifully preserved remains of a 47-million-year-old, lemur-like creature have been unveiled in the US. The preservation is so good, it is possible to see the outline of its fur and even traces of its last meal. The fossil, nicknamed Ida, is claimed to be a "missing link" between today's higher primates - monkeys, apes and humans - and more distant relatives. But some independent experts, awaiting an opportunity to see the new fossil, are sceptical of the claim. And they have been critical of the hype surrounding the presentation of Ida. The fossil was launched amid great fanfare at...

Infectious Evolution: Ancient virus hit apes, not our ancestors, in the genesMarch 5 Bruce Bower A vicious virus infected ancestral chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa between 4 million and 3 million years ago. Not only did it kill a great many of these primates, but it also infiltrated the surviving animals' genomes, altering the course of evolution. That's the picture emerging from a new analysis of modern-primate DNA. Around 1.5 million years ago, this virus of the class called retroviruses also infected ancestors of modern baboons and macaques, two African monkeys, reports geneticist Evan E. Eichler of the University of...

The teeth, found in Germany, provoked one observer to suggest human history may need to be rewritten. Some experts, however, remain very skeptical. In a paper shared at the social networking site ResearchGate, Herbert Lutz and his team say they discovered “a new great ape with startling resemblances to African members of the hominin tribe.” The "plausible age” of the fossils — an upper left canine tooth and an upper right first molar — is 9.7 million years, they say. If confirmed, that would make the teeth around 6 million years older than fossils for the early-human, African ancestor Australopithecus...

A 9.7-million-year-old discovery has left a team of German scientists scratching their heads. The teeth seem to belong to a species only known to have appeared in Africa several million years later. A team of German archaeologists discovered a puzzling set of teeth in the former riverbed of the Rhine, the Museum of Natural History in Mainz announced on Wednesday. The teeth don't appear to belong to any species discovered in Europe or Asia. They most closely resemble those belonging to the early hominin skeletons of Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) and Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus), famously discovered in Ethiopia. But these new...

* This may be the most intact primate fossil skull ever discovered. * The fossil comes from a little-known period of primate evolutionary history. Source: Fred Spoor This is Alesi, the skull of the new extinct ape species Nyanzapithecus alesi (KNM-NP 59050). ================================================================================================================================ A group of scientists have found what may be the most intact fossilized primate skull ever discovered, and the find could shed light on the common evolutionary heritage shared by apes and humans. The lemon-sized skull was discovered in Kenya by an international team of researchers, and was dated to the middle of the Miocene era, a...

Dr Moya-Sola with colleagues discovered the fossil specimen of Pierolapithecus in Spain in 2002. They estimated that the hominid lived about 11.9 million years ago, arguing that it could be the last common ancestor of modern great apes: chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, gorillas and humans... the shape of the specimen’s pelvis indicates that Pierolapithecus lived near the beginning of the great ape evolution, after the lesser apes had started to develop separately but before the great ape species began to diversify... “The ilium – the largest bone in the pelvis – of the Pierolapithecus is wider than that of Proconsul nyanzae,...