The Case Is Building That COVID-19 Had a Lab Origin
I LOVE Organic Consumers! Here are excerpts from three recent blogs, pointing to the probability that the new Coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhon. (And the wet markets were a ruse). If that is true, then it does not negate that the release of the virus may have been, if not planned, then accidental. (I have thought it was probably released by some insider who was paid). As you know, there are theories that Americans were involved in its creation, (and China certainly blamed the USA military). So, it makes sense to keep our minds open:
Pandemic Reporting-Is the Media Getting It Wrong? -
PT: Even as more evidence emerges to support the idea of a laboratory leak, resistance to that idea is becoming more entrenched, at least I think so, in the media as the days and weeks go by. So those who color outside the lines even a little bit are really taking a beating at the moment.
SH: Well, it largely comes from sectors of the scientific establishment surrounding the U.S. government... There are other ways that it could have come out of a lab, other than being technically genetically engineered. So I think that a lot of media, from USA Today, to the Washington Post, to ABC News, to the whole dominant mainstream narrative, have highlighted that [theory]. And I think it's rippled into a lot of so-called progressive media.
The unfortunate reality is that a large section of the U.S. right, around Fox News, largely starting with allegations made by Tom Cotton and then picked up by the more hawkish elements of the Washington Post, have highlighted that indeed it is possible that [the virus] came out of a lab in Wuhan. It's sort of Russiagate squared, where progressive forces are rallying around a position, based on empirical suppositions, that may end up being wrong and having long-term detrimental consequences. I think that large numbers of people, particularly in the U.S. progressive community, are very short sightedly just picking a side because they don't want to see U.S.-China tensions escalate. And they think that the way to not have that happen is to pretend that it's inconceivable that the lab in Wuhan, or any other lab, was the source for this.
COVID 19: The Spike and the Furin Cleavage -
After months of insisting that COVID-19 originated in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, stated that no viruses were detected in animal samples at the market...
This is consistent with the multiple studies showing that the COVID-19 virus was circulating in Wuhan before any person was infected at the seafood market.2,3
So where did it come from? Most governments and scientists are sticking with the official story put out by the Chinese Communist Party and most of the international mass media that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has a natural origin, even though after months of searching, no natural host has been found. So far there is zero evidence for this, only data-free assumptions. As the well-respected scientist and critic of GMOs, Jonathan Latham points out:
“If the [Wuhan] lab has anything to hide, it is not only the Chinese Government that will be reluctant to see an impartial investigation proceed. Much of the work was funded by the U.S. taxpayers, channeled there by Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance. Virtually every credible international organisation that might in principle carry out such an investigation, the WHO, the US CDC, the FAO, the US NIH, including the Gates Foundation, is either an advisor to, or a partner of, the EcoHealth Alliance. If the Sars-CoV-2 outbreak originated from the bat coronavirus work at the WIV, then just about every major institution in the global public health community is implicated.”
The increasing body of evidence is showing that the most likely scenario is that SARS-CoV-2 was made in a lab and escaped.
The Case Is Building That COVID-19 Had a Lab Origin
“Take a bat coronavirus that is not infectious to humans, and force its selection by culturing it with cells that express human ACE2 receptor, such cells having been created many years ago to culture SARS coronaviruses and you can force the bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein, which would have the effect of increasing the strength of its binding to human ACE2, and inevitably reducing the strength of its binding to bat ACE2.
Viruses in prolonged culture will also develop other random mutations that do not affect its function. The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus. Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.”
For all these reasons, a lab escape is by far the leading hypothesis to explain the origins of Sars-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic. The sheer proximity of the WIV and WCDCP labs to the outbreak and the nature of their work represents evidence that can hardly be ignored. The long international history of lab escapes and the biosafety concerns from all directions about the labs in Wuhan greatly strengthen the case. Especially since evidence for the alternative hypothesis, in the form of a link to wild animal exposure or the wildlife trade, remains extremely weak, being based primarily on analogy with SARS one (Bell et al,. 2004; Andersen et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, on April 16th Peter Daszak, who is the President of the EcoHealth Alliance, told Democracy Now! in a lengthy interview that the lab escape thesis was “Pure baloney”. He told listeners:
“There was no viral isolate in the lab. There was no cultured virus that’s anything related to SARS coronavirus 2. So it’s just not possible.”
Daszak made very similar claims on CNN’s Sixty Minutes: “There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China.” Instead, Daszak encouraged viewers to blame “hunting and eating wildlife”.
Pandemic Reporting-Is the Media Getting It Wrong? -
PT: Even as more evidence emerges to support the idea of a laboratory leak, resistance to that idea is becoming more entrenched, at least I think so, in the media as the days and weeks go by. So those who color outside the lines even a little bit are really taking a beating at the moment.
SH: Well, it largely comes from sectors of the scientific establishment surrounding the U.S. government... There are other ways that it could have come out of a lab, other than being technically genetically engineered. So I think that a lot of media, from USA Today, to the Washington Post, to ABC News, to the whole dominant mainstream narrative, have highlighted that [theory]. And I think it's rippled into a lot of so-called progressive media.
The unfortunate reality is that a large section of the U.S. right, around Fox News, largely starting with allegations made by Tom Cotton and then picked up by the more hawkish elements of the Washington Post, have highlighted that indeed it is possible that [the virus] came out of a lab in Wuhan. It's sort of Russiagate squared, where progressive forces are rallying around a position, based on empirical suppositions, that may end up being wrong and having long-term detrimental consequences. I think that large numbers of people, particularly in the U.S. progressive community, are very short sightedly just picking a side because they don't want to see U.S.-China tensions escalate. And they think that the way to not have that happen is to pretend that it's inconceivable that the lab in Wuhan, or any other lab, was the source for this.
COVID 19: The Spike and the Furin Cleavage -
After months of insisting that COVID-19 originated in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, stated that no viruses were detected in animal samples at the market...
This is consistent with the multiple studies showing that the COVID-19 virus was circulating in Wuhan before any person was infected at the seafood market.2,3
So where did it come from? Most governments and scientists are sticking with the official story put out by the Chinese Communist Party and most of the international mass media that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has a natural origin, even though after months of searching, no natural host has been found. So far there is zero evidence for this, only data-free assumptions. As the well-respected scientist and critic of GMOs, Jonathan Latham points out:
“If the [Wuhan] lab has anything to hide, it is not only the Chinese Government that will be reluctant to see an impartial investigation proceed. Much of the work was funded by the U.S. taxpayers, channeled there by Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance. Virtually every credible international organisation that might in principle carry out such an investigation, the WHO, the US CDC, the FAO, the US NIH, including the Gates Foundation, is either an advisor to, or a partner of, the EcoHealth Alliance. If the Sars-CoV-2 outbreak originated from the bat coronavirus work at the WIV, then just about every major institution in the global public health community is implicated.”
The increasing body of evidence is showing that the most likely scenario is that SARS-CoV-2 was made in a lab and escaped.
The Case Is Building That COVID-19 Had a Lab Origin
“Take a bat coronavirus that is not infectious to humans, and force its selection by culturing it with cells that express human ACE2 receptor, such cells having been created many years ago to culture SARS coronaviruses and you can force the bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein, which would have the effect of increasing the strength of its binding to human ACE2, and inevitably reducing the strength of its binding to bat ACE2.
Viruses in prolonged culture will also develop other random mutations that do not affect its function. The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus. Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.”
For all these reasons, a lab escape is by far the leading hypothesis to explain the origins of Sars-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic. The sheer proximity of the WIV and WCDCP labs to the outbreak and the nature of their work represents evidence that can hardly be ignored. The long international history of lab escapes and the biosafety concerns from all directions about the labs in Wuhan greatly strengthen the case. Especially since evidence for the alternative hypothesis, in the form of a link to wild animal exposure or the wildlife trade, remains extremely weak, being based primarily on analogy with SARS one (Bell et al,. 2004; Andersen et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, on April 16th Peter Daszak, who is the President of the EcoHealth Alliance, told Democracy Now! in a lengthy interview that the lab escape thesis was “Pure baloney”. He told listeners:
“There was no viral isolate in the lab. There was no cultured virus that’s anything related to SARS coronavirus 2. So it’s just not possible.”
Daszak made very similar claims on CNN’s Sixty Minutes: “There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China.” Instead, Daszak encouraged viewers to blame “hunting and eating wildlife”.