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A thread (18 tweets) on Nicholas Wade's story on the 'Origin of Covid'- a natural origin or a lab leak. Nicholas has covered science for @nytimes for 30 years. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Two Theories - 1) It was a natural virus that had managed to jump from bats, via another animal host, to people. 2) A leak from a Lab possibly the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Natural Origin Theory - In Feb 2020 @Lancet published a letter by a group of virologists stating - "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.' A letter organized and drafted by Peter Daszak.
Who is Peter Daszak? He is the president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Another letter which had enormous influence in shaping public opinion, was published in March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine. Its authors were a group of virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute.
“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” A study based on old methods not considering the new ways of manipulating genome.
Doubts about natural emergence - The Chinese had no evidence to offer the WHO commission (which also included Dr. Daszak) in support of the natural emergence theory. This was surprising as both the SARS1 & MERS viruses had left copious traces in the environment.
Dr. Shi Zheng-li or “Bat Lady” led a team of researchers in WIV mounted frequent expeditions to the bat-infested caves of Yunnan in southern China and collected around a hundred different bat coronaviruses.
Dr. Shi teamed up with Ralph S. Baric, an eminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina. Their work focused on enhancing the ability of bat viruses to attack humans so as to “examine the emergence potential of circulating bat CoVs [coronaviruses].”
Dr. Baric had developed, and taught Dr. Shi, a general method for engineering bat coronaviruses to attack other species. The specific targets were human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice.
A Twist - All this was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) through a contractor - Dr. Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance!!
Safety Arrangements at Wuhan Institute of Virology - These experiments were conducted at a Biosafety Slandered level - BSL2 or BSL3. BSL2 is the biosafety level of a standard US dentist’s office!!
The Safety concerns were highlighted by US, "The U.S. gov has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
Conclusion: The US government shares a strange common interest with the Chinese authorities: neither is keen on drawing attention to the fact that Dr. Shi’s coronavirus work was funded by the US National Institutes of Health.
No mainstream media has done an in-depth news story of the lab escape scenario, The virologists’ omertà is one reason. When their sources (virologists) won’t help, these journalists are at a loss.
After all, the more months pass without the natural emergence theory gaining a shred of supporting evidence, the less plausible it may seem. People who are confined to their homes for the last year might like a better answer than their media are giving them.
Take out time to read this article, I have missed a lot of scientific facts mentioned by Nicholas which provide an even deeper connection to the virus been lab generated. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Also, read the 'acknowledgments' part, so many studies by renowned virologists are pointing towards the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This is in fact a Chinese Virus spread from a lab in Wuhan.
#WuhanLabVirus
#WuhanLabVirus
