Hi my first and possibly last post here, but I don't want to invest a lot of time and find my posts deleted due to an over-aggressive moderator, as has happened with other sites. I will see if this post sticks then possibly post more later. Nice site btw, I perused your UFO forum. I'll try and keep this short but with my legal background that's going to be tough...
My background: couple of science degrees, I've done work in patent litigation, now retired, and I firmly subscribe to the Third Law of Litigation ("for every expert there's an equal and opposite expert"). In several decades of experience I have never seen a single litigation in technology, where enough money was at stake, for this law to be violated. E.g. if you are trying to prove the earth is stationary and the sun goes round the earth, which is of course absurd, in litigation you would find a highly distinguished astronomer expert witness, just a distinguished as the opposing counsel's expert witness, to say that indeed the earth is stationary, carefully worded, and possibly not run afoul of the US Fed rules of civil procedure on expert testimony, by saying that for simple navigation you can assume a Ptolemaic model (I believe in fact some maps and/or software still used for simple navigation make this assumption, or indeed after Copernicus, navigators continued to make this assumption since it was convenient to do so). And of course in a US jury trial hope an ignorant jury are not paying attention and/or opposing counsel botches their cross-examination, which happens roughly around 10% of the time regardless of the strengths or weaknesses of one's case (one reason people constantly litigate in the USA). Thus in my opinion in life there's no "Truth" but it's all a function of your priors.
Now on the claims that Covid-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) is a man made chimeric virus (note that's not redundant, since you can have a natural chimeric organism, see here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012160616300902 - 'bizarria' plant chimera from over 400 years ago; but for casual conversation 'chimeric' equals 'man-made' through recombinant DNA technology rather than artificial or natural selective breeding or other non-recombinant DNA lab methods)
[1]
Source: https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748
- hereinafter the Medium article, this is a the 'go-to' article on chimeric viruses and Covid-19. One purpose for posting today was to cite this article.
The hypothesis and stipulations advanced, in no particular order, from the Medium article, unless otherwise noted, are:
(1)(A) SARS-CoV-2 (the Covid-19 virus) is a Dr. Shi Zhengli (Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) director until early this year, when she was replaced by a Chinese military biotech officer, and a gag order on all talk about the origins of Covid-19 was ordered by the Chinese government) chimeric virus comprising of DNA from three sources: (i) the 2015 chimeric virus Dr. Shi et al created at the Univ of NC (Chapel Hill) with NIH funding, called the SARS-CoV virus (
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/), (ii) the RaTG13 bat coronavirus, very similar to the chimeric coronavirus of (i), which Dr. Shi allegedly discovered in the wild in either 2013, but curiously did not disclose until 2020, or in 2016, with the RaTG13 virus possibly being the same as the 2016 published putative natural bat coronavirus RaBtCoV/4991 (
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26920708), and (iii) a known naturally occurring pangolin coronavirus. See the Medium article on furin cleavage sites, spike proteins, and similarity in amino acid and genome nucleotide positions that shows the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be made from these three viruses with 100% certainty and/or match.
(1)(B) It's stipulated that it is impossible to determine with 100% certainty whether a gene sequence and thus an organism is natural or artificial. Recombinant DNA has been made joining plant DNA with animal DNA for example, which would clearly be deemed artificial, but analogous to the discovery of the platypus, a skilled designer can easily make an artificial DNA organism look natural (more on this later with the March 2020 Nature Medicine article by Kristian Andersen et al allegedly proving the Covid-19 virus was natural and not chimeric).
(2)(A) Dr. Shi and Dr. Ralph Baric, co-authors and co-inventors of the 2015 chimeric virus SARS-CoV, were engaged in a friendly or otherwise competition to design chimeric viruses. Dr. Baric is known as the father of chimeric viruses, and Dr. Shi is also a chimeric virus superstar, known affectionately as "Batwoman".
(2)(B) The WIV had in the fall of 2019 placed an advert for a position for a researcher in bat coronaviruses, as reported in ZeroHedge and elsewhere. This is not unusual since bat coronaviruses are the Drosophila or guinea pig for virus research. In fact, Google Patents lists over 200 hits with keywords "Wuhan", "coronavirus"(
https://patents.google.com/?q=coronavirus+Wuhan&oq=coronavirus+Wuhan )
(2)(C) Shi's lab may have raced to beat a December self-imposed deadline, and a chimeric virus escaped the lab, "haste makes waste".
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0VJLYRhPHg
From the comments: "Gen Li @Sebastian K Have you read the genetic analysis in the NEJM? I have. The report makes this theory have a great deal of credence. The ACE2 receptor coronavirus matches the pre-pub announcements of the Wuhan lab [in the fall of 2019]. They were rushing research for a big conference [in December 2019]"
(3) (A) China has been the source of leaks from their biotech labs in the past. Specifically, twice with SARS-CoV in 2004 (Beijing). Other countries labs have also leaked the SARS virus (Singapore, Taiwan), and in the US the biotech / bioweapons lab of Ft. Detrick, MD has been sanctioned last year for having a potentially leaky lab (
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ak-ebola-anthrax-smallpox-ricin-a9042641.html) (Note nearly all countries subscribe to the 1969 convention against bioweapons but nevertheless advance such bioweapons under the cover of 'defensive' medicine to create a vaccine, the WIV undoubtedly being no exception). This stipulated fact is to show that a bioweapons-grade or otherwise chimeric virus could indeed escape the WIV, a BSL-4 lab, as is the Ft. Detrick, MD lab.
(3) (B) China in 1977 accidentally released a strain of H1N1 virus that infected Russians at their border; the virus was lab created (selected or attenuated in strength) and was, as is common with lab viruses, temperature sensitive. The Covid-19 virus is also temperature sensitive.
(4)(A) a widely published scientific paper allegedly rebutting that the Covid-19 virus is man-made is the Andersen et al. March 2020 Nature Medicine article, key passage here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9#ref-CR20 (March 17, 2020) "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" by Kristian G. Andersen et al - "While the analyses above suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may bind human ACE2 with high affinity, computational analyses predict that the interaction is not ideal7 and that the RBD sequence is different from those shown in SARS-CoV to be optimal for receptor binding7,11. Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."
This article is astonishingly weak yet widely cited. Essentially it is saying that the Covid-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) is not as optimal at infecting humans as the chimeric virus SARS-CoV that Dr. Shi, Dr. Baric and others invented in 2015 in the Univ of NC (Chapel Hill), hence, being sub-optimal in infecting humans, it cannot be the design of a competent gene jockey. But a moment's reflection should indicate, even to somebody unversed in science, that a competent bioweapons lab creating an infectious chimeric virus would not want to create exactly the same virus as before, the SARS-CoV virus of 2015, for fear of the virus being found to be clearly man made. In particular since this 2015 chimeric virus was so controversial that the US NIH, a sponsor, sanctioned the authors, and extended a ban on such "gain of function" (i.e. radical jumps in genetic structure not usually occurring in nature) chimeric viruses for a full two years afterwards, until 2017. Understandably after such sanctions by the NIH, chimeric virus scientists are naturally reluctant to promote any theory that the Covid-19 virus is chimeric, for fear of future sanctions. IMO this is clearly driving the debate from the experts point of view. It's analogous to asking lawyers to reform the legal profession to make it so you don't need lawyers. To put it mildly, it's not going to happen easily. Further, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has in fact been highly successful at infecting humans, even if it is indeed sub-optimal at infecting humans compared to its predecessor virus, the chimeric SARS-CoV virus of 2015 invented by Shi et al.
(4)(B) - appeals to authority are common when dealing with technical issues, as I can personally attest from years of litigation. Again, the Third Law of Litigation. Mental shortcuts are common with most people outside their area of expertise. So read the below passage criticizing the Andersen et al Nature Medicine article, keeping in mind the scientist criticizing is of the opinion that the Covid-19 virus is not man made. Nevertheless, the scientist indicates the Andersen et al authors made numerous assumptions that, in a litigation setting, would not go as unchallenged as they have in the popular press:
"Professor Richard Ebright of Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology, a biosecurity expert who has been speaking out on lab safety since the early 2000s, does agree with the Nature Medicine authors' argument that the new coronavirus wasn't purposefully manipulated by humans, calling their arguments on this score strong"
"Ebright points out that scientists in Wuhan have collected and publicized a bat coronavirus called RaTG13, one that is 96 percent genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2. The Nature Medicine authors are arguing "against the hypothesis that the published, lab-collected, lab-stored bat coronavirus RaTG13 [RaTG13 is similar to SARS-CoV, within 3-4% of SARS-CoV-2 - RL] could be a proximal progenitor of the outbreak virus." But, Ebright says, the authors relied on assumptions about when the viral ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 jumped to humans; how fast it evolved before that; how fast it evolved as it adapted to humans; and the possibility that that the virus may have mutated in cell cultures or experimental animals inside a lab. "
Note Ebright is saying the Andersen et al authors made assumptions, assumptions that can be easily challenged. In fact, the Covid-19 virus has a "gain of function" of four, usual for a natural virus (but not impossible to achieve) and a genetic drift that indicates it would take 25 to 50 years for the Covid-19 virus to occur naturally (numerous cites online). So 18 years after SARS broke out, and only 5 years after SARS-CoV was artificially created, we are to believe that the Covid-19 virus occurred naturally? Possibly, but, it leads to the next and final point.
(5) no intermediate host or prior to a human host has been found for the Covid-19 virus. No animal save man is known to have the Covid-19 virus; not bats, not pangolins. This is not true of other deadly viruses, like H1N1 (pigs are the host), Ebola virus (bats are the host), MERS-CoV virus (camels are the host) or SARS (civet cats are the host). In fact, in all the prior virus outbreaks, the animal host prior to human infection was quickly found. Such is not the case with the Covid-19 virus. Quite possibly, it's because no such animal exists. Covid-19 is a man made virus.
(6)
https://project-evidence.github.io/ is concerned with a natural release of the Covid-19 virus, so it belongs to the other thread in this forum, but the passage below supports the assertion that WIV could have created a "lab virus" simply by selective breeding of bats, allowing the coronaviruses to mutate inside the bats rather than using a test tube and recombinant DNA technology. As per stipulation (1)(B) above, that's about the same thing, functionally.
From the paper on the site: "While the phrase "laboratory-based scenario" is abstract, given prior context, we will assume this again refers to the "Manipulated Virus" theory. It remains plausible for a lab animal to have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, either prior to arriving at the lab or as part of a spillover event occuring in the lab, afterwards spreading the virus to human Patient Zero. From the layman's explanation of Paper 1 we remember that: Multiple coronaviruses can infect the same bat (coinfection) Coronaviruses like to mix their genes together (recombinate) If two coronaviruses infect the same bat and recombinate, they can potentially result in a novel (never before recognized) coronavirus It only takes a few changes ("exchange of a relatively small sequence segment") between two coronaviruses to result in a third coronavirus that can infect other animals ("host-switching")
The odds of this happening are pretty good! Indeed, wouldn't it be far more likely for such a recombination event to occur in a laboratory housing many bats in close quarters, such as the WHCDC, rather than anywhere else in Wuhan?"
Final thoughts:
I could include facts about the destruction of the Wuhan wet market (destruction of evidence that, if it was done in a US litigation after commencement of a lawsuit, would result in a default judgement in favor of the party not destroying evidence, here, the China skeptics); about the alleged patient zero (either a senile old man at the wet market or an employee at WIV who allegedly has disappeared); about the alleged adjunct biotech laboratory not many kilometers form the Wuhan wet market, as is the WIV, but a mere couple of hundred meters away which allegedly was removed from Google Maps and has also been closed; how neither bats nor pangolins were sold at the Wuhan wet market, which in any event are found many thousands of kilometers away from the Wuhan wet market, the directive by CHN president Xi Jinping in early January that tightened safety protocols of biotech laboratories in China, which long-time China observers say is a clear signal a breach of safety occurred (
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0VJLYRhPHg
), the stories (
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/wuhan-laboratory-most-likely-coronavirus-source-us/) that WIV was very lax with their bio-safety protocols, even allegedly selling experimental animals after experiments and even, astonishingly, cooking and eating eggs that were used in experiments (heat inactivates viruses but that's one egg I would not want to crack), the rumors that Dr. Shi in January was upset on social media that her lab may have been responsible for the outbreak, or that she was removed as director of WIV after the outbreak--if that's not a demotion then what is it?--and replaced by a military general and a gag order against Covid-19 origin talk. Further, not just US president Trump is calling for an investigation but also the more neutral EU, reference [*] below.
In US law, the numerous circumstantial evidence surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19 points to a coverup, and of a lab created virus. Without question it would be sufficient to get a grand jury indictment in a criminal case. Whether it would be enough for a conviction is debatable (from a competent jury, I'm not referring to the well-known to US litigators 10% rule that I reference above). Personally, if I was offered 100:1 odds that the Covid-19 virus was chimeric, or even 10:1 odds, I would bet serious money that it is.
The above is not copyright, feel free to cut and paste anywhere without attribution.
--RL
[*] Ursula von der Leyen said the international community should investigate how the coronavirus pandemic started |
The Commission chief says studying the outbreak's origins is necessary to set up an 'early warning system.'
By LAURENS CERULUS 5/1/20, 12:00 PM CET Updated 5/1/20, 12:19 PM CET
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the international community should investigate how the coronavirus pandemic started in order to be better prepared for future outbreaks. In an interview with U.S. news channel CNBC published Friday, von der Leyen suggested the international community needed to study the coronavirus outbreak in order to set up an "early warning system." "You never know where the next virus is starting so we all want that, for the next time, we have learned our lesson and we have established a system of early warning that really functions," she said, adding "the whole world has to contribute to that." Von der Leyen's suggestion comes after the Swedish health minister called for an "international, independent investigation" into the origins and the spread of the virus. It also follows a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump, who suggested he had seen evidence that the virus originated in a Chinese scientific lab