The broadcast media in the UK are so anti-Trump that they are missing the really important facts about coronavirus. In doing so they are putting you and me at risk.
The current Covid-19 pandemic is 90% likely to have come from the Wuhan Virology Institute. This has been suspected for weeks, as those who read this blog will know. Patient zero was very probably Huang Yanglin, a technician at the Institute who probably died of Covid-19 last December. The global media are beginning to accept that there is increasingly persuasive evidence for Covid-19 starting as a laboratory escape (See for instance Fox News).
The Chinese authorities went to great lengths to suppress any information about the outbreak for over a month, whistleblowers were "disappeared" and the Wuhan doctor who triggered the general alarm in January was threatened and reprimanded before he died. The WHO was instructed by the Chinese to tell the world that human to human transmission did not occur and on January 12th stated that "WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travellers" despite it being obvious that such transmission was occurring.
The big issue now is whether or not Covid-19 was a bioweapon. There is strong evidence that the virulence of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, is due to genetic manipulation as a result of "Gain of Function" experiments using genetic material from another SARS virus but this does not prove it was changed as part of a bioweapons program. The smoking gun for the virus being a bioweapon would be if it contained genetic material from unrelated and deadly non-SARS viruses.
At the beginning of the outbreak a paper was published, Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag, which suggested that HIV had also been used as a source for some of the genetic material in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The paper met with a storm of protest from Chinese academics and was withdrawn. A Chinese group almost immediately produced a paper which is now referred to as a comprehensive rebuttal but on close examination is nothing of the sort and it actually confirmed that HIV inserts had been made in SARS-CoV-2 - see Note 1.
Professor Luc Montagnier, the winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering HIV says: “With my colleague, bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus,”.."in order to insert an HIV sequence into this genome, molecular tools are needed, and that can only be done in a laboratory."
Now that China is rich it exerts enormous soft power. As an example the much retweeted and circulated Science Daily article that declared that SARS-CoV-2 was entirely natural was based on a paper from the Scripps Institute which has received $50-100 million of Chinese support. Even apparently independent Western criticism of the paper on HIV inserts in SARS-CoV-2 had Chinese connections, for instance Professor Ioannidis of Stanford who critiqued the article is supported by Amway which has billions of dollars of business in China and even supported the Chinese Olympic Team.
There are three main interpretations of the data. Covid-19 could have been a natural phenomenon. There is no evidence for this. Covid-19 could have been a laboratory escape. The epidemiology is very suggestive of this, the poor safety record of Chinese labs supports this idea and the lead researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had collected and even synthesised deadly viruses. Covid-19 could have been a bioweapon that was either accidentally or deliberately released.
The Chinese response of coverup, misinformation and encouraging international spread has three interpretations: the first is that they desired the rest of the world to be crippled by Covid-19 in the same way as they might be crippled, the second is that it was capitalising on the accidental release of a virus that could function as a bioweapon and the third is that the cover up etc. was the protocol to deliberately to spread a bioweapon. None of these alternatives reflect well on China.
How do you release a bioweapon? It is unthinkable in the West that you might use your own population as the vector but communist states do not regard the individual as being of any consequence. The history of communist states, especially China, is full of genocides and the planned murder of whole sectors of society. China banned all internal flights from Wuhan at an early stage in the epidemic but allowed international flights to continue. If Covid-19 is a deliberate attack on the global economy and Western power then China has been unimaginably ruthless. On balance an intentional attack on the world by China using a deliberate local release is unlikely and it is more probable that China merely took advantage of the possibilities opened up by the release of a virus that could function as a bioweapon.
The head Coronavirus researcher at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli, was part of an American team in 2015 that was publicly reprimanded in the scientific journals for performing genetic enhancement of coronaviruses. This is a fact. Shi Zhengli's team were performing "Gain of Function" experiments at the Wuhan Virology Institute. This is a fact. If the HIV insertions were made the lab was probably developing bioweapons and the use of HIV inserts is a reasonable conjecture given the evidence. If China were developing a coronavirus bioweapon it would be highly infectious but cause relatively few deaths, it would be designed to cripple enemy economies rather than cause megadeaths and would be spread by human to human contagion. Once the epidemic started China told the world that Covid-19 did not spread from human to human and continued international flights, so guaranteeing spread. These are known facts.
Patient zero was very probably a lab technician from the Virology Institute. This initial spread was probably accidental but the Chinese response was to capitalise on this accidental release by operating the protocols for a deliberate release.
16/04/2020
Note 1: The leading paper that rebuts the idea of HIV being part of the "Gain of Function" experiment is: HIV-1 did not contribute to the 2019-nCoV genome
by a group of Chinese researchers, published on 14th February, a mere 12 days after the article linking SARS-CoV-2 to HIV was published. Strangely the conclusion of the "rebuttal" is a declaration that the authors could not see how the HIV inserts could have occurred naturally and hence was unlikely to be man made. This is the same argument as was used in the Scripps' paper that "proved" that the virus must be natural because it was so improbable. Of course, a highly improbable virus is most likely to be man made. Here is an excerpt from the "rebuttal" paper:
"We do not see any selection benefit or rationale for 2019-nCoV to obtain and mix structurally unrelated parts of HIV-1 to generate a unique structure for its enhanced receptor binding as indicated by the authors [of Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag] [8] . How the three bat CoV viruses obtain those inserts remains unknown. For any virus to obtain additional insert sequences from other organisms, it requires that it has direct interactions with other organisms,most likely through homologous or non-homologous recombination [11]. For bat CoV viruses to gain the gene fragments from HIV-1, it will require both viruses to co-infect the same cells. Because the host cells for bat CoV viruses and HIV-1 are different, the chance for both to exchange genetic materials is negligible. On the contrary, these motifs are widely present in various mammalian cells and so it will be more likely for bat CoV viruses to gain those motifs from the genomes of their infected cells if recombination indeed occurs. How-ever, extensive studies of more CoV viruses in wild and domestic animals are warranted to address this question."
The current Covid-19 pandemic is 90% likely to have come from the Wuhan Virology Institute. This has been suspected for weeks, as those who read this blog will know. Patient zero was very probably Huang Yanglin, a technician at the Institute who probably died of Covid-19 last December. The global media are beginning to accept that there is increasingly persuasive evidence for Covid-19 starting as a laboratory escape (See for instance Fox News).
The Chinese authorities went to great lengths to suppress any information about the outbreak for over a month, whistleblowers were "disappeared" and the Wuhan doctor who triggered the general alarm in January was threatened and reprimanded before he died. The WHO was instructed by the Chinese to tell the world that human to human transmission did not occur and on January 12th stated that "WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travellers" despite it being obvious that such transmission was occurring.
The big issue now is whether or not Covid-19 was a bioweapon. There is strong evidence that the virulence of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, is due to genetic manipulation as a result of "Gain of Function" experiments using genetic material from another SARS virus but this does not prove it was changed as part of a bioweapons program. The smoking gun for the virus being a bioweapon would be if it contained genetic material from unrelated and deadly non-SARS viruses.
At the beginning of the outbreak a paper was published, Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag, which suggested that HIV had also been used as a source for some of the genetic material in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The paper met with a storm of protest from Chinese academics and was withdrawn. A Chinese group almost immediately produced a paper which is now referred to as a comprehensive rebuttal but on close examination is nothing of the sort and it actually confirmed that HIV inserts had been made in SARS-CoV-2 - see Note 1.
Professor Luc Montagnier, the winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering HIV says: “With my colleague, bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus,”.."in order to insert an HIV sequence into this genome, molecular tools are needed, and that can only be done in a laboratory."
Now that China is rich it exerts enormous soft power. As an example the much retweeted and circulated Science Daily article that declared that SARS-CoV-2 was entirely natural was based on a paper from the Scripps Institute which has received $50-100 million of Chinese support. Even apparently independent Western criticism of the paper on HIV inserts in SARS-CoV-2 had Chinese connections, for instance Professor Ioannidis of Stanford who critiqued the article is supported by Amway which has billions of dollars of business in China and even supported the Chinese Olympic Team.
There are three main interpretations of the data. Covid-19 could have been a natural phenomenon. There is no evidence for this. Covid-19 could have been a laboratory escape. The epidemiology is very suggestive of this, the poor safety record of Chinese labs supports this idea and the lead researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had collected and even synthesised deadly viruses. Covid-19 could have been a bioweapon that was either accidentally or deliberately released.
The Chinese response of coverup, misinformation and encouraging international spread has three interpretations: the first is that they desired the rest of the world to be crippled by Covid-19 in the same way as they might be crippled, the second is that it was capitalising on the accidental release of a virus that could function as a bioweapon and the third is that the cover up etc. was the protocol to deliberately to spread a bioweapon. None of these alternatives reflect well on China.
How do you release a bioweapon? It is unthinkable in the West that you might use your own population as the vector but communist states do not regard the individual as being of any consequence. The history of communist states, especially China, is full of genocides and the planned murder of whole sectors of society. China banned all internal flights from Wuhan at an early stage in the epidemic but allowed international flights to continue. If Covid-19 is a deliberate attack on the global economy and Western power then China has been unimaginably ruthless. On balance an intentional attack on the world by China using a deliberate local release is unlikely and it is more probable that China merely took advantage of the possibilities opened up by the release of a virus that could function as a bioweapon.
The head Coronavirus researcher at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli, was part of an American team in 2015 that was publicly reprimanded in the scientific journals for performing genetic enhancement of coronaviruses. This is a fact. Shi Zhengli's team were performing "Gain of Function" experiments at the Wuhan Virology Institute. This is a fact. If the HIV insertions were made the lab was probably developing bioweapons and the use of HIV inserts is a reasonable conjecture given the evidence. If China were developing a coronavirus bioweapon it would be highly infectious but cause relatively few deaths, it would be designed to cripple enemy economies rather than cause megadeaths and would be spread by human to human contagion. Once the epidemic started China told the world that Covid-19 did not spread from human to human and continued international flights, so guaranteeing spread. These are known facts.
Patient zero was very probably a lab technician from the Virology Institute. This initial spread was probably accidental but the Chinese response was to capitalise on this accidental release by operating the protocols for a deliberate release.
16/04/2020
Note 1: The leading paper that rebuts the idea of HIV being part of the "Gain of Function" experiment is: HIV-1 did not contribute to the 2019-nCoV genome
by a group of Chinese researchers, published on 14th February, a mere 12 days after the article linking SARS-CoV-2 to HIV was published. Strangely the conclusion of the "rebuttal" is a declaration that the authors could not see how the HIV inserts could have occurred naturally and hence was unlikely to be man made. This is the same argument as was used in the Scripps' paper that "proved" that the virus must be natural because it was so improbable. Of course, a highly improbable virus is most likely to be man made. Here is an excerpt from the "rebuttal" paper:
"We do not see any selection benefit or rationale for 2019-nCoV to obtain and mix structurally unrelated parts of HIV-1 to generate a unique structure for its enhanced receptor binding as indicated by the authors [of Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag] [8] . How the three bat CoV viruses obtain those inserts remains unknown. For any virus to obtain additional insert sequences from other organisms, it requires that it has direct interactions with other organisms,most likely through homologous or non-homologous recombination [11]. For bat CoV viruses to gain the gene fragments from HIV-1, it will require both viruses to co-infect the same cells. Because the host cells for bat CoV viruses and HIV-1 are different, the chance for both to exchange genetic materials is negligible. On the contrary, these motifs are widely present in various mammalian cells and so it will be more likely for bat CoV viruses to gain those motifs from the genomes of their infected cells if recombination indeed occurs. How-ever, extensive studies of more CoV viruses in wild and domestic animals are warranted to address this question."
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