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jimnyc
04-03-2020, 12:33 PM
I know it's only a conspiracy to say so right now. But hell, 2 Chinese scientists released a paper claiming that's the most likely reason, and the blamed bat is at least 600 miles away, and not sold at that filthy market. The hospital where it all started is right across the street from the lab, and 280 meters from the market. Nothing new in any of that, but more and more are getting in the wagon on this one.

Bat nowhere in sight in area, not even in market, but IS in lab right there. I don't know. And even if every single person there in that lab came out and claimed it definitely came from there - they would disappear quickly. Do you think China would ever tell anyone this was their fault in any way? I sure don't. And what about 'ol Shi Zhengli, and the change of heart? Any influence there? Nahhhhh. She's now swearing on her life it didn't come from there.

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Coronavirus Expert Says Virus Could Have Leaked From Wuhan Lab


Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist who has been quoted as a coronavirus expert by The Washington Post and MSNBC, said Thursday that it’s possible that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab.
Shi Zhengli, China’s leading virologist on bat-borne viruses, said in March that she lost sleep worrying that the virus could have leaked from her lab in Wuhan after she first learned of the virus in December.
Shi now tells those who share the concerns she once had to “shut their stinking mouths.”


A molecular biologist who has been quoted as a coronavirus expert by The Washington Post and MSNBC said Thursday in no uncertain terms that the novel coronavirus could have been unleashed due to a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

China’s top virologist on bat-borne viruses, Shi Zhengli, has sworn on her life that the virus did not leak from her Wuhan lab, saying that its spread was “nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits.”

But Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday that there is a real possibility that the virus entered the human population due to a laboratory accident.

When asked specifically if he believes the virus could have leaked from Shi’s lab in Wuhan, Ebright said: “Yes.”

“A denial is not a refutation,” Ebright said. “Especially not a denial based on ‘nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits.'”

And while Shi now tells those who question whether her lab could be connected to the release of the coronavirus to “shut their stinking mouths,” she previously said she lost sleep worrying about the possibility that her lab in Wuhan could have been responsible for the virus’s release.

Shi, known by her colleagues as the “bat woman” because of the 16 years she has spent hunting for viruses in bat caves, told Scientific American in March that she frantically searched for any evidence that her laboratory’s records were mishandled upon learning of the virus’s outbreak in Wuhan in late December.

“Could they have come from our lab?” Shi recalled thinking.

“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,” she noted, saying that her studies had shown that southern China posed the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping from animals to humans.

Shi said she breathed a sigh of relief when results came back showing that the sequences of the coronavirus did not match the viruses she and her team had sampled from bat caves.

“That really took a load off my mind,” Shi said. “I had not slept a wink for days.”

Shi and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology reported in early 2017 that after five years of surveying they had discovered 11 new strains of SARS-related viruses in horseshoe bats from China’s Yunnan Province. The virologist said at the time that the 11 strains contained all the genes to make a SARS coronavirus similar to that of the 2003 outbreak.

Shi contributed to a study published in February reporting that the novel coronavirus is 96.2% identical to a viral strain that was detected in horseshoe bats from the Yunnan Province.

However, two Chinese researchers noted in a separate paper in February that the horseshoe bats that are known to carry the nearly-identical viral strain live 600 miles away from Wuhan. The researchers also cited testimonies from nearly 60 people who lived in or visited Wuhan saying that the bat “was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.”

“The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan,” the two Chinese researchers noted in their paper, which was uploaded to Research Gate on Feb. 6.

The paper was removed from Research Gate on Feb. 14 or 15, according to internet archives.

“The content was uploaded to ResearchGate by a user who later removed it from the platform. Beyond this, we cannot disclose information about individuals who use our platform,” Research Gate spokesman Dan Noyes told the DCNF.

The paper’s lead researcher, Botao Xiao, didn’t return the DCNF’s emails on Thursday seeking comment.

Ebright, the Rutgers University molecular biologist, told Beijing-based news outlet Caixin Global in February that while there is “no basis to suspect the virus was engineered,” the available data indicates that the virus’s introduction into human populations could be attributed to either natural causes or to a laboratory mishap.

The Washington Post and MSNBC have quoted Ebright saying that theories about the virus being a bioweapon should be “firmly excluded,” but neither outlet included his belief that the possibility that the virus entered the human population through a lab accident “cannot–and should not–be dismissed.”

Shi has furiously denied that the novel coronavirus could have leaked from her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory,” she wrote on a Chinese social messaging app in early February, according to Caixin Global. “I advise those who believe and spread rumors from harmful media sources … to shut their stinking mouths.”

Deadly viruses have a history of escaping from Chinese laboratories.

The SARS virus escaped twice from the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing in 2004, one year after the virus was initially contained.

The Chinese government has been widely criticized for misleading the world about the novel coronavirus outbreak from its earliest stages.

One of the first doctors in Wuhan to raise the alarm about the spread of a SARS-like virus in the city was detained by police in December and told to “stop making false comments.”

That doctor, Li Wenliang, died from coronavirus in February.

Rest - https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/02/coronavirus-leaked-wuhan-institute-virology-richard-ebright-shi-zhengli/

Kathianne
04-03-2020, 05:27 PM
More on same:

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/04/03/additional-evidence-coronavirus-accidentally-released-chinese-lab/


Additional Evidence The Coronavirus Could Have Been Accidentally Released By A Chinese Lab
JOHN SEXTONPosted at 4:41 pm on April 3, 2020

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 from the market.


Initially, discussion of this topic was treated as a conspiracy theory because some people suggested, absent any evidence, that the virus might be an escaped bio-weapon. As I wrote here, experts strongly dispute that possibility. However the possibility of an accidental release of the virus from a lab is starting to get a bit more attention.


Fauci: I don't understand why every state hasn't shut down yet


Yesterday the Washington Post published a column by David Ignatius titled “How did covid-19 begin? Its initial origin story is shaky.” Ignatius reviews much of the same material that Carlson had mentioned and concludes that an accidental release of the virus is a genuine possibility:


Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?


Richard Ebright, a Rutgers microbiologist and biosafety expert, told me in an email that “the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident,” with the virus passing from bat to human, possibly through another animal. But Ebright cautioned that it “also could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with, for example, an accidental infection of a laboratory worker.” He noted that bat coronaviruses were studied in Wuhan at Biosafety Level 2, “which provides only minimal protection,” compared with the top BSL-4.


Ebright described a December video from the Wuhan CDC that shows staffers “collecting bat coronaviruses with inadequate [personal protective equipment] and unsafe operational practices.” Separately, I reviewed two Chinese articles, from 2017 and 2019, describing the heroics of Wuhan CDC researcher Tian Junhua, who while capturing bats in a cave “forgot to take protective measures” so that “bat urine dripped from the top of his head like raindrops.”


Today, National Review’s Jim Geraghty has more in a piece titled “The Trail Leading Back to the Wuhan Labs.” Geraghty directs his attention to a YouTube video released this week by a documentary filmmaker who has lived in China for 10 years. The video points to several job listings which appeared on the website for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a separate lab located a few miles from the market. The job listings indicate the lab was researching bat viruses very similar to the coronavirus at the time it began to spread:


On December 24, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology posted a second job posting. The translation of that posting includes the declaration, “long-term research on the pathogenic biology of bats carrying important viruses has confirmed the origin of bats of major new human and livestock infectious diseases such as SARS and SADS, and a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified.”


The video, which you can watch below, also discusses virologist Shi Zhengli who was called “bat woman” for her extensive research on viruses in bats. She was called in late December when the virus began to spread and her first thought was that it might have been released from her lab [emphasis added]:


Shi—a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years—walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”


After reviewing her logs she says she was relieved to find that her lab had never studied the exact coronavirus spreading in Wuhan. But the filmmaker notes that another researcher at the lab is believed by some to have been patient zero. Her photo and profile were removed from the lab’s website and the government posted a statement denouncing rumors that she had died. But so far she has not been located.


Finally, here’s a bit of that retracted Chinese research paper on the likely origin of the virus:


The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan [area] of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market. There was possible natural recombination or intermediate host of the coronavirus, yet little proof has been reported.


Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~ 280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention. WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province…


In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.


None of this is conclusive but it’s also not a wide-eyed conspiracy theory. In any case, we’d be crazy to take the CCP’s denials on it. Having blamed the origin of the virus on the U.S. and Italy at various points, the Chinese government has no credibility on this topic. That said, the conclusions drawn here are far from proven. The wet market origin of the virus may still turn out to be the truth in which case its proximity to two labs studying bats may be just an amazing coincidence.

Hot Dogger
04-03-2020, 07:36 PM
Maybe it escaped from Ft. Detrick? Or some other bioweapons lab? Russia? Israel? Iran? Thank goodness for our immune systems and chicken soup.

NightTrain
04-03-2020, 08:06 PM
Maybe it escaped from Ft. Detrick? Or some other bioweapons lab? Russia? Israel? Iran? Thank goodness for our immune systems and chicken soup.

Well, if it had emerged and ravaged Maryland, Moscow, Jerusalem or Tehran first, you might have something.

We're gonna need a bigger needle.

NightTrain
04-03-2020, 08:11 PM
I'm glad that there is more interest developing as to the labs in Wuhan... as I said a couple of weeks ago, there's a LOT of coincidence - and we certainly can't trust the Commies to tell the truth here.




...

Tye contends that that posting meant, “we’ve discovered a new and terrible virus, and would like to recruit people to come deal with it.” He also contends that “news didn’t come out about coronavirus until ages after that.” Doctors in Wuhan knew that they were dealing with a cluster of pneumonia cases as December progressed, but it is accurate to say that a very limited number of people knew about this particular strain of coronavirus and its severity at the time of that job posting. By December 31, about three weeks after doctors first noticed the cases, the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization and the first media reports about a “mystery pneumonia” appeared outside China.


Scientific American verifies much of the information Tye mentions about Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed “Bat Woman” for her work with that species.


Shi — a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years — walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals — particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-trail-leading-back-to-wuhan-labs/

High_Plains_Drifter
04-04-2020, 09:06 AM
The chinese are LYING about EVERYTHING right now. I'm sure they feel very vulnerable right now, so their disinformation campaign is in HIGH GEAR.

They kicked out all foreign correspondence and have literally QUIT reporting infected cases and deaths.

That to me just screams GUILTY.

Gunny
04-04-2020, 04:22 PM
Call it a conspiracy or not. Fact is, Trump just bent China over the trade barrel and Congress saw fit to meddle in China's Hong Kong issue. Asians and ME's have one thing in common we don't - patience. If they can screw us over in the long term, they're fine with it. They don't need an in your face, right this minute response.

So China loses a million people to the flu? Probably helps its government more than hurts. A million Chinese (that is an abstract number) against the damage the Chinese flu has caused the rest of the World? I'd call that a win if I was China.

Conspiracy theory or no, it's hardly outside the realm of possibility.