Biological - SARS-CoV-2 - Origin

At present, the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains unknown. The pros and cons regarding the two alternative possibilities—first, that it arose in the field as a natural evolution, as many virologists maintain, or second, that it may have been the consequence of bat coronavirus research in one of the two virology research institutes located in Wuhan that led to the infection of a laboratory researcher and subsequent escape—are equally based on inference and conjecture. The points gathered in this paper can be no more than suggestive. There is no hard scientific evidence to support either position. Both are inferences from circumstantial evidence. The US administration’s political hectoring only assures that it will be very difficult if not impossible to ever find out which is true.

Summary
On this page we are linking to various material that have to do with our investigations of the origin and evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paper - The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2

This short peer-reviewed article in Nature Medicine summarizes our scientific investigations into the proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2. Due to constraints on article format, many references could not be included, and experimental details were limited. We deeply investigated both natural and artificial scenarios for the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Our analyses strongly support a natural origin of the virus and all the data are fully consistent with evolutionary processes having led to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in the human population.

Refuting the "Yan Report"
A report from Dr. Li-Meng Yan and colleagues came out in September 2020 proposing that SARS-CoV-2 had been created in the lab. This report is one of many examples of conspiracy theories circulating about lab-based scenarios for the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.

On the basis of our analysis, an artificial origin of SARS‐CoV‐2 is not a baseless conspiracy theory that is to be condemned[66] and researchers have the responsibility to consider all possible causes for SARS‐CoV‐2 emergence. The insertion of human‐adapted pangolin CoV RBD obtained by cell/animal serial passage and furin cleavage site could arise from site‐directed mutagenesis experiments, in a context of evolutionary studies or development of pan‐CoV vaccines or drugs.

March 23, 2020 Journal article Open Access
WUHAN COVID-19 SYNTHETIC ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION
Jean-Claude PEREZ
The main result of this updated release is the formal proof that 2019-nCoV coronavirus is partially a SYNTHETIC genome . . .  Finally, we ask ourselves the question of a possible artificial origin of this genome, in particular because of the presence of fragments of HIV1, HIV2 and SIV retroviruses.

Compelling Evidence That SARS-CoV-2 Was Man-Made
. . . Made in China or Made in the USA? . . .

The creation of the Wuhan laboratory in 2015 pales in comparison to Fort Detrick and its decades of activity in biological weapons and mind control. The only argument in favor of a Wuhan-engineered SARS-CoV-2 is the location of "patient zero", allegedly found in a Wuhan market in December 2019. This allegation was soon debunked by a paper suggesting that the Wuhan market was not the place of origin of the epidemics.

While there is no patient zero to be found in Wuhan, a series of mysterious epidemics near Fort Detrick predate, by months, the Wuhan outbreak.

On July 2nd, 2019, a mysterious respiratory epidemic struck Greenspring Senior Living community, located in Springfield, Virginia, which is only 50 miles from Fort Detrick. Retrospectively, the described symptoms are very close to those associated with SARS-CoV-2. The epidemiological statistics (for old people) are also similar to SARS-CoV-2; with 263 residents, 63 became sick and 3 died.

Laboratory tests conducted by the CDC did not identify a specific cause for the mysterious respiratory illness. Remember that, at the time, SARS-CoV-2 was unknown (therefore undetectable) since its official discovery was announced on January 9th, 2020 by the WHO.

Springfield was not an isolated case. Virginia reported an unusual increase in respiratory illnesses located in 16 geographic clusters that lasted, at least, until December 2019 and struck typical COVID-19 patients: "Most of the reports have occurred among older adults and those with chronic medical conditions in assisted living and long-term care facilities."

On July 26th, 24 days after the Springfield outbreak, another mysterious respiratory syndrome, quickly attributed to vaping, emerged in Illinois and Wisconsin, with 8 persons hospitalized due to symptoms that are, again, reminiscent of COVID-19: "Scans and X-rays showed inflammation or swelling throughout both lungs [...] The severity of health condition has varied, with some patients needing assistance in order to breathe."

The patients' lung scans showed the 'ground glass shadow' typical of COVID-19.

In the subsequent months, the 'vaping syndrome' spread rapidly to other US states. It reached 908 cases and 3 deaths as of September 20th. The exponential increase in cases is clearly evocative of a contagious disease:

It was in this context of mysterious respiratory epidemics striking the US in general, and the vicinities of Fort Detrick in particular, that 300 US soldiers arrived in Wuhan, China, for the World Military Games that lasted from October 18th to October 27th, 2019. Just before the trip, some of the US soldiers had trained in Fort Belvoir, 50 miles from Fort Detrick and 6 miles from Springfield, Virginia (the first cluster of the mysterious respiratory disease).

The US team stayed at the Wuhan Oriental Hotel, which is just 300 meters from Wuhan's Huanan Seafood market:

Unexpectedly, the US team did not perform very well at the games: "The U.S. team, known for their competitive skills, did terribly; only 172 participated, almost half didn't even compete in their events." Despite having the largest military in the world, ten fold, the US came in 35th behind nations like Iran, Finland and Slovenia.

It seems that the mysterious infectious outbreak that occurred around Fort Detrick a few weeks previously may have infected participants of the World Military Games. Five "foreign" athletes were hospitalized for an undetermined infection. Many foreign athletes from France, Belgium, Germany Italy, Sweden, Luxembourg have revealed that they fell ill at the World Military Games, and thought, retrospectively, that what they had was COVID-19.

The first real COVID-19 case among Wuhan locals appeared on November 2, only six days after the end of the military games. Coincidentally or not, 42 employees of the Oriental Hotel (where the US delegation stayed) were diagnosed in November with COVID-19, becoming the first cluster in Wuhan.

Conveniently, Fort Detrick received a cease-and-desist order from the CDC and was shut down on July 15th 2019, just 13 days after the beginning of the nearby mysterious respiratory outbreak in Springfield, VA. A senior scientist described the atmosphere in Fort Detrick at the time as one of 'fear and mistrust' . Fort Detrick re-opened in April 2020, at the tail end of the pandemic.

France, where more than 25,000 people have died from COVID-19 since March 1, confirmed its first three cases on January 24.

But Professor Yves Cohen, the head of the intensive care unit at a Paris suburban hospital, made a surprising discovery when his team checked old test samples of patients with pneumonia in December and January. Out of 24 patients, one patient's sample from Dec. 27 twice tested positive for COVID-19 -- Amirouche Hammar’s.

First case of coronavirus in Belgium confirmed by Tim Pearce, Breaking News Reporter | February 04, 2020 04:38 PM

Belgium has confirmed its first case of coronavirus, making it the 25th country to report a case of the mysterious disease within its borders.

Belgium’s health ministry announced Tuesday that one of nine people the Belgian government had repatriated from Wuhan, China, had contracted the disease, according to the Associated Press. The coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan in January.

COVID-19 pandemic in Germany From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from 2020 coronavirus outbreak in Germany)

The COVID-19 pandemic in Germany is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). On 27 January 2020, the first case in Germany was confirmed near Munich, Bavaria.[6]

COVID-19 antibodies in cancer screening trials

In November 2020, research from Milan's National Cancer Institute (INT), had also found evidence of COVID-19 antibodies in patients from samples taken in September 2019, suggesting the virus was circulating at that time.

The research showed that 11.6 percent of nearly 1,000 healthy volunteers taking part in the lung cancer screening trial back in September, had developed coronavirus antibodies before the disease was officially detected in Italy.

The COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden is part of the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus was confirmed to have reached Sweden on 31 January 2020, when a woman returning from Wuhan tested positive.

A 55-year-old individual from Hubei province in China may have been the first person to have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus spreading across the globe. That case dates back to Nov. 17, 2019, according to the South China Morning Post.

Former CDC Director Says COVID-19 Escaped From Wuhan Lab
by Tyler Durden
Friday, Mar 26, 2021 - 09:45 AM

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield says that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, did not originate from a wet market in Wuhan, China, and instead escaped from a nearby lab which was performing gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses to make them more easily infect humans.

"I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human," Redfield told CNN's Sanjay Gupta in an interview set to air Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET. "Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonot to human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more & more efficient in human to human transmission."

. . . Redfield, a virologist picked by former President Trump to lead the Centers for Disease Control, said he believes that the pandemic began as a localized outbreak in Wuhan in September or October of 2019, earlier than the official timeline, and that it spread to every province in China over the ensuing months.

China plays down ‘leaked documents’ showing it discussed weaponising coronavirus in 2015
Chinese state media calls reports in Australia ‘embarrassing’ and a ‘smear’ tactic
Namita Singh, Monday 10 May 2021 12:50

China has attempted to play down the so-called “leaked documents” which have been used to suggest that its scientists discussed the weaponisation of coronavirus five years before the Covid-19 pandemic began.

While officials are yet to issue a statement on the matter, the state-run Global Times newspaper lashed out at The Australian for their report calling it “an embarrassing article that smears China over the origins of Covid-19”.

Earlier on Friday, The Australian published a news report based on a “leaked document” titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons.

Written by Chinese scientists and health officials in 2015, the paper reportedly argued that coronaviruses are a “new era of genetic weapons” that could be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human-disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before”.

The document was originally obtained by the US State Department during its probe into the origins of Covid-19 and is reported to be a part of an upcoming investigative book What Really Happened in Wuhan by Australian journalist Sharri Markson.

Coronavirus Contains "HIV Insertions", Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon
by Tyler Durden Saturday, Feb 01, 2020 - 10:49 AM

The theory is that the virus, which was developed by infectious disease experts may have originated in the Wuhan-based lab of Dr. Peng Zhou, China's preeminent researcher of bat immune systems, specifically in how their immune systems adapt to the presence of viruses like coronavirus and other destructive viruses. Somehow, the virus escaped from the lab, and the Hunan fish market where the virus supposedly originated is merely a ruse.

Now, a respected epidemiologist who recently caught flack for claiming in a twitter threat that the virus appeared to be much more contagious than initially believed is pointing out irregularities in the virus's genome that suggests it might have been genetically engineered for the purposes of a weapon, and not just any weapon but the deadliest one of all.

In "Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag", Indian researchers are baffled by segments of the virus's RNA that have no relation to other coronaviruses like SARS, and instead appear to be closer to HIV. The virus even responds to treatment by HIV medications.

Fauci Emails Reveal Damage Control Scramble After ZeroHedge Spotlights Man-Made COVID-19 Theory
by Tyler Durden Tuesday, Jun 01, 2021 - 07:22 PM

In January, 2020, when the World Health Organization insisted that COVID-19 wasn't transmissible between humans, and Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the risk to the American public from the virus was "low," officials at the National Institutes of Health were scrambling to perform damage control after a controversial - and now withdrawn - study suggested that there were HIV-like 'insertions' included in SARS-CoV-2.

The study, "Uncanny similarity of unique inserts on the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag," posited that segments of the virus's RNA had no relation to other coronaviruses such as SARS, and instead appeared to be closer to HIV.

. . . Fauci is looped in - with Sir Jeremy Farrar forwarding Zero Hedge's article after mentioning how World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom and the organization's cabinet chief were in 'conclave' - ostensibly on how to manage the narrative - noting "If they do prevaricate [bullshit the public], I would appreciate a call with you later tonight or tomorrow to think how we might take forward."

'Rare' genome sequencing almost certainly proves Covid WAS deliberately made in a Chinese lab
By Andrew Court For Dailymail.com  Published: 00:05 EDT, 7 June 2021 | Updated: 06:14 EDT, 7 June 2021

Two U.S. experts have penned a damning essay saying the genome sequencing of COVID-19 strongly suggests that the virus was manufactured inside a Chinese laboratory.  

Dr. Stephen Quay and Richard Muller, a physics professor at the University of California Berkeley, made the claim in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, amid growing speculation that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

'The most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science,' the experts wrote, stating that 'COVID-19 has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus.'

Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective cells, warn scientists
Published: 5:30am, 12 Apr, 2020 Updated: 7:12am, 15 Apr, 2020
. . . Researchers in China and the US find that the virus that causes Covid-19 can destroy the T cells that are supposed to protect the body from harmful invaders
. . . One doctor said concern is growing in medical circles that effect could be similar to HIV
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could kill the powerful immune cells that are supposed to kill the virus instead, scientists have warned.

The surprise discovery, made by a team of researchers from Shanghai and New York, coincided with frontline doctors’ observation that Covid-19 could attack the human immune system and cause damage similar to that found in HIV patients.

. . . In February, Chen Yongwen and his colleagues at the PLA’s Institute of Immunology released a clinical report warning that the number of T cells could drop significantly in Covid-19 patients, especially when they were elderly or required treatment in intensive care units. The lower the T cell count, the higher the risk of death.

This observation was later confirmed by autopsy examinations on more than 20 patients, whose immune systems were almost completely destroyed, according to mainland media reports.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Apr 7;106(14):5871-6.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0809524106. Epub 2009 Mar 24.
Activation of the SARS coronavirus spike protein via sequential proteolytic cleavage at two distinct sites
Sandrine Belouzard 1 , Victor C Chu, Gary R Whittaker

. . . Here, we identify a proteolytic cleavage site within the SARS-CoV S2 domain (S2', R797). Mutation of R797 specifically inhibited trypsin-dependent fusion in both cell-cell fusion and pseudovirion entry assays. We also introduced a furin cleavage site at both the S2' cleavage site within S2 793-KPTKR-797 (S2'), as well as at the junction of S1 and S2. Introduction of a furin cleavage site at the S2' position allowed trypsin-independent cell-cell fusion, which was strongly increased by the presence of a second furin cleavage site at the S1-S2 position. Taken together, these data suggest a novel priming mechanism for a viral fusion protein, with a critical proteolytic cleavage event on the SARS-CoV S protein at position 797 (S2'), acting in concert with the S1-S2 cleavage site to mediate membrane fusion and virus infectivity.