Origin of Covid — Following the Clues | Medium - Nicholas Wade:
May 2, 2021 - "Ever since virologists gained the tools for manipulating a virus’s genes, they have argued they could get ahead of a potential pandemic by exploring how close a given animal virus might be to making the jump to humans. And that justified lab experiments in enhancing the ability of dangerous animal viruses to infect people, virologists asserted.... These enhancements of viral capabilities are known blandly as gain-of-function [GOF] experiments....
"Virologists started studying bat coronaviruses in earnest after these turned out to be the source of both the SARS1 and MERS epidemics. In particular, researchers wanted to understand what changes needed to occur in a bat virus’s spike proteins before it could infect people. Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by China’s leading expert on bat viruses, Dr. Shi Zheng-li or “Bat Lady”, ... 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....In ... November 2015 they created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus (known as SHC014-CoV)....
"The SHC014-CoV/SARS1 virus is known as a chimera because its genome contains genetic material from two strains of virus. If the SARS2 virus were to have been cooked up in Dr. Shi’s lab, then its direct prototype would have been the SHC014-CoV/SARS1 chimera.... 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. These laboratory mice, a cheap and ethical stand-in for human subjects, are genetically engineered to carry the human version of a protein called ACE2 that studs the surface of cells that line the airways.... Dr. Shi returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells.
"How can we be so sure? Because, by a strange twist in the story, her work was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). And grant proposals that funded her work, which are a matter of public record, specify exactly what she planned to do with the money. The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, Dr. [Peter] Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Dr. Shi.... The lab escape scenario for the origin of the SARS2 virus, as should by now be evident, is ... based on the specific project being funded there by the NIAID....
"There are four degrees of [biolab] safety, designated BSL1 to BSL4, with BSL4 being the most restrictive and designed for deadly pathogens like the Ebola virus. The Wuhan Institute of Virology had a new BSL4 lab, but its state of readiness considerably alarmed the State Department inspectors who visited it from the Beijing embassy in 2018.... Before 2020, the rules followed by virologists in China and elsewhere required that experiments with the SARS1 and MERS viruses be conducted in BSL3 conditions. But all other bat coronaviruses could be studied in BSL2.... Yet a [GOF] experiment conducted in BSL2 might produce an agent more infectious than either SARS1 or MERS. And if it did, then lab workers would stand a high chance of infection, especially if unvaccinated. Much of Dr. Shi’s work on [GOF] in coronaviruses was performed at the BSL2 safety level, as [she] stated ... in an interview with Science magazine.... 'The coronavirus research in our laboratory is conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories'....
"'It is clear that some or all of this work was being performed using a biosafety standard — biosafety level 2, the biosafety level of a standard US dentist’s office — that would pose an unacceptably high risk of infection of laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2,' says Dr. [biosafety expert Dr. Richard] Ebright [of Rutgers University]. 'It also is clear,' he adds, 'that this work never should have been funded and never should have been performed'....
"According to a fact sheet issued by the State Department on January 15,2021, 'The U.S. government 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.'. David Asher, a ... former consultant to the State Department, provided more detail.... Three people working at a BSL3 lab at the institute fell sick within a week of each other with severe symptoms that required hospitalization. This was 'the first known cluster that we’re aware of, of victims of what we believe to be COVID-19.' Influenza could not completely be ruled out but seemed unlikely in the circumstances, [Asher] said....
"[Section revised 18 May 2021] From June 2014 to May 2019 Dr. Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance had a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to do [GOF] research with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Whether or not SARS2 is the product of that research, it seems a questionable policy to farm out high-risk research to foreign labs using minimal safety precautions. And if the SARS2 virus did indeed escape from the Wuhan institute, then the NIH will find itself in the terrible position of having funded a disastrous experiment that led to the death of more than 3 million worldwide, including more than half a million of its own citizens."
Read more: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Also read: Where did the SARS-Cov-2 virus originate? (1)
Note: These two excerpts from Nicholas Wade's article only scratch the surface: he goes into scrupulous detail to support claims and examine arguments, most of which I cut for the sake of brevity. And these excerpts do not even deal with the most fascinating part of his article, "Comparing the Rival Scenarios of SARS2 Origin," which weighs the alternative origin theories on a balance of probabilities. I urge everyone interested in reading more about the subject to begin with the original version of his article on Medium (link above). - gd.
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