The Origins of Covid-19 By Chris Knight (Florida)

The Origins of COVID-19: An Investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, US Foreign Affairs Committee Minority Report, August 2021, has been buried by the mainstream media, and as far as I can see from internet research did not get discussed by the Australian media either. Yet, its claim that the Covid virus SARS-CoV-2 was a lab creation, leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, has displaced the bat soup, natural origin hypothesis. There has been much written by molecular biologists about this, but ignoring technicalities, it seems that unique features of the virus make its natural evolution highly improbable. The remaining question now must be: was this accident, or a deliberate release? China’s behaviour at the time, its secrecy, and actions to encourage transmission to the West, support the deliberate hypothesis. Yet today, the Chinese people are suffering even more acutely than people in the West did from their lockdowns, so there is indeed many layers to this plandemic. And, with the unfolding od adverse effects, well-discussed at the blog today, Covid’s ghost very much haunts us.

https://gop-foreignaffairs.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ORIGINS-OF-COVID-19-REPORT.pdf

“Last September, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Minority Staff,
under the direction of Ranking Member Michael T. McCaul, released a
report on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. That report highlighted
the possibility SARS-CoV-2 could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of
Virology (WIV). However, as we continued our investigation and uncovered
more information, we now believe it's time to completely dismiss the wet
market as the source of the outbreak. We also believe the preponderance
of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the WIV and that it did
so sometime before September 12, 2019.

This is based upon multiple pieces of evidence laid out in the report,
including:

The sudden removal of the WIV's virus and sample database in the middle
of the night on September 12, 2019 and without explanation;

Safety concerns expressed by top PRC scientists in 2019 and unusually
scheduled maintenance at the WIV;

Athletes at the Military World Games held in Wuhan in October 2019 who
became sick with symptoms similar to COVID-19 both while in Wuhan and
also shortly after returning to their home countries;

Satellite imagery of Wuhan in September and October 2019 that showed a
significant uptick in the number of people at local hospitals
surrounding the WIV's headquarters, coupled with an unusually high
number of patients with symptoms similar to COVID-19;

The installation of a People's Liberation Army's bioweapons expert as
the head of the WIV's Biosafety Level 4 lab (BSL-4), possibly as early
as late 2019; and

Actions by the Chinese Communist Party and scientists working at or
affiliated with the WIV to hide or coverup the type of research being
conducted at there.

Genetic Modification

This report also lays out ample evidence that researchers at the WIV, in
conjunction with U.S. scientists and funded by both the PRC government
and the U.S. government, were conducting gain- of-function research on
coronaviruses at the WIV, at times under BSL-2 conditions. Much of this
research was focused on modifying the spike protein of coronaviruses
that could not infect humans so they could bind to human immune systems.
The stated purpose of this work was to identified viruses with pandemic
potential and to create a broad-spectrum coronavirus vaccine. In many
instances, the scientists were successful in creating “chimeric viruses”
- or viruses created from the pieces of other viruses - that could
infect human immune systems. With dangerous research like this conducted
at safety levels similar to a dentist's office, a natural or genetically
modified vims could have easily escaped the lab and infected the community.

Committee Minority Staff has also identified scientists who are directly
tied to the WIV, and who worked on gain-of-function research in the
years prior to the start of the current pandemic, who had the ability to
modify genetically modify coronaviruses without leaving any trace
evidence. An American scientist. Dr. Ralph Baric, assisted in creating a
method to leave no trace of genetic modification as early as 2005. And
as early as 2016, scientists working at the WIV were able to do the
same. This makes it clear that claims by the scientific community that
SARS-CoV-2 could not be man-made because it has no genetic modification
markers are disingenuous.

We conclude there is ample proof that the virus could have been
genetically manipulated, and that it is vitally important we fully
investigate this hypothesis to determine if that happened here.

The Cover-Up

In the original report, we laid out many of the ways the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) went to
great lengths to cover up the initial epidemic, and how their cover-up
likely turned what could have been a local outbreak into a global
pandemic. The CCP detained doctors in order to silence them, and
disappeared journalists who attempted to expose the truth. They
destroyed lab samples, and hid the fact there was clear evidence of
human-to-human transmission. And they still refuse to allow a real
investigation into the origins. At the same time, the WHO, under
Director General Tedros, failed to warn the world of the impending
pandemic. Instead, he parroted CCP talking points, acting as a puppet of
General Secretary Xi.

In this addendum, we have uncovered further evidence of how top
scientists at the WIV and Dr. Peter , an American scientist, furthered
that cover-up. Their actions include bullying other scientists who
questioned whether the virus could have leaked from a lab; misleading
the world about how a virus can be modified without leaving a trace;
and, in many, instances directly lying about the nature of the research
they were conducting, as well as the low-level safety protocols they
were using for that research.

These actions not only delayed an initial investigation into the
possibility of a lab leak costing valuable time, but provide further
proof the virus likely leaked from the WIV. These actions also call into
question the way in which U.S. government grants are used in overseas
labs and call for more oversight of those grants.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology

The WIV was founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory and has
operated under the administration of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
since 1978. The institute currently occupies at least two campuses - the
much-discussed Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory (WNBL) in Zhengdian
Scientific Park (see Figure 1), and the older facility (hereafter WIV
Headquarters) located in the Xiaohongshan park in the Wuchang District
of Wuhan (see Figure 2). The WNBL is a large complex with multiple
buildings that house 20 Biosafety Level II (BSL-2) laboratories, two
Biosafety Level III (BSL-3) laboratories, and 3000 square meters of
Biosafety Level IV (BSL-4) space, “including four independent
laboratories areas and two animal suites.” Construction was completed

Missing from the majority of public debates regarding the WIV is the
research conducted at the WIV Headquarters, the older location in the
Wuchang District of Wuhan. Located 12 miles northeast of the WNBL, in
the Wuchang District, this facility remains the administrative
headquarters of the WIV. In addition to the BSL-2 labs at this location,
the WIV constructed a BSL-3 laboratory at the facility in 2003.

It was here, in the center of Wuhan, that Dr. Shi Zheng-li and her team
conducted gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in the years
leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. [...]

New LeaderShip and PLA Involvement

The WIV's website indicates that Yuan Zhiming serves as the Dean of the
Wuhan Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the WNBL
BSL-4 lab. However, news posted on Weibo Douban, a PRC website,
on February 7th,

2020 stated that PLA officials were dispatched to assume control of the
response. The report says PLA Major General Chen Wei, an expert in
biology and chemical weapon defenses , was deployed to Wuhan in January
2020 and took control of the WNBL BSL-4 lab. The posting of this
information to Douban is significant given the website's history of
censoring posts critical of the CCP, including censoring words related
to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The post's survival on a heavily CCP
censored site confirms its legitimacy.

Committee Minority Staff have also received testimony from a former
senior U.S. official that Gen. Chen actually took control of the WNBL
BSL-4 lab in late 2019, not January 2020 as was publicly reported. Gen.
Chen taking over part of the WIV demonstrates the CCP was concerned
about the activity happening there as news of the virus was spreading.
If she took control in 2019, it would mean the CCP knew about the virus
earlier, and that the outbreak began earlier - a topic discussed further
in this section.

{p. 27} The PRC government recruited 236,000 volunteers for the games,
which required 90 hotels, three railroad stations, and more than 2,000
drivers. An archived version of the competition's website from October
20, 2019, lists the more than thirty venues that hosted events for the
MWGs across Wuhan and the broader Hubei province. The live website is no
longer accessible - it is unclear why it was removed.

During the games, many of the international athletes became sick with
what now appear to be symptoms of COVID-19. In one interview, an athlete
from Luxembourg described Wuhan as a “ghost town,” and recalls having
his temperature taken upon arriving at the city's airport. In an
interview with The Financial Post, a Canadian newspaper, one member of
the Canadian Armed Forces who participated in the games said (emphasis
added):

This was a city of 15 million people that was in lockdown. It was
strange, but we were told this was to make it easy for the Games'
participants to get around. [I got] very sick 12 days after we arrived,
with fever, chills, vomiting, insomnia.... On our flight to come home,
60 Canadian athletes on the flight were put in isolation [at the back of
the plane] for the 12-hour flight. We were sick with symptoms ranging
from coughs to diarrhea and in between.

{p. 28} At least four countries who sent delegations to the MWGs have
now confirmed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 cases within their
borders in November and December 2019, before the news of an outbreak
first became public.

Italy. In February 2021, researchers from Italy published a research
letter in the CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal describing a
case involving a 4-year-old boy from Milan. A retrospective analysis of
samples taken in 2019 identified the boy, who developed a cough on
November 21, 2019, as having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 three months
before Italy's first reported case. The boy had no reported travel
history.73

Brazil. A March 2021 article by researchers in Brazil examined
wastewater samples from October to December 2019. Previous studies have
confirmed that humans infected with the virus can experience prolonged
viral shedding via their gastrointestinal tract. A sample from November
27th tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, confirming the virus was
circulating in Santa Catarina, Brazil months before January 21, 2020,
when the first case in the Americas was reported.

3. Sweden. Sweden's Public Health Agency said it is likely that
individuals in the country were infected with SARS-CoV-2 as early as
November 2019.75

4. France. Researchers in France also re-tested samples from late 2019
in an effort to identify early COVID-19 cases. They identified a
42-year-old male who presented to the emergency room on December 27th
with an influenza-like illness. He had no connection to the PRC and no
recent travel history. Upon re-testing, the patient's samples were
positive for SARS-CoV-2. It should be noted that one of his children
also had similar symptoms before the man became sick, suggesting that
the first case in France was likely earlier than December 27th.

As stated above, athletes from France, Italy, and Sweden also complained
of illnesses with symptoms similar to COVID-19 while at the MWGs in
Wuhan. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 in four countries, on two separate
continents, suggests a common source. If, as presumed, SARS-CoV-2 first
infected humans in Wuhan before spreading to the rest of the world, the
2019 Military World Games in Wuhan appears to be a key vector in the
global spread - it other words, potentially one of the first “super
spreader” events.

[...] In 2014, Shi and Daszak coauthored two more joint WIV-EcoHealth
Alliance papers. The lead author for one of the papers, entitled
“Detection of diverse novel astroviruses from small mammals in China,”
was Ben Hu, a WIV researcher who was a coauthor of earlier Shi/Daszak
papers. Shi is listed as the corresponding author, and the paper was
again jointly funded by the PRC government (including grant no.
2013FY113500) and USAID's PREDICT program.

The next year, in 2015, Shi provided Ralph Baric and other researchers
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with spike protein
sequences and plasmids of SCH014, one of the viruses Shi, Daszak, and
WIV researchers identified in bat feces samples in 2013. American
researchers used those samples to create “a chimeric virus expressing
the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV
backbone.” In other words, they removed the spike protein from SHC014
and inserted it into a SARS coronavirus that was genetically manipulated
to better infect mice. This work was done under BSL-3 conditions. The
newly created virus was then shown to bind to ACE2 in humans, replicate
“efficiently” in primary human airways cells, and withstand antibodies
and vaccines. Researchers concluded that the work “suggests a potential
risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat
populations.” This research was funded by NIAID and the NIH under
multiple awards (nos. U19AI109761, U19AI107810, AI085524, F32AI102561,
K99AG049092, DK065988), USAID's PREDICT program via EcoHealth Alliance,
and the PRC government. Baric was the corresponding author.

2015 also saw the publication of another Shi/Hu/Wang/Daszak paper.
Entitled “Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus
Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome Coronavirus,” it was published in the Journal of Virology. Nine
of the twelve authors were WIV researchers, including Hu and Shi, who
was the corresponding author. Here the WIV reported the successful
isolation of a second novel coronavirus, WIV 16. The SARS-like
coronavirus was isolated from a single sample of bat fecal matter
collected in Kunming, Yunnan Province of the PRC in July 2013. Like
previous papers, this work was supported by a NIAID grant (no. R01 All
10964) and by grants from the PRC government (including grant no.
2013FY113500).

In addition to her aforementioned work with researchers at UNC Chapel
Hill, Shi also provided them with additional bat coronavirus sequences
and plasmid of WIVl's spike protein. The resulting paper, “SARS-like
WIVl-CoV poised for human emergence,” was published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in
March 2016. While neither Shi nor Daszak (nor any WIV researcher) are
listed as coauthors, Baric was the corresponding author.

This paper is significant because the authors discuss moving from
disease surveillance to creating chimeric viruses as a means of pandemic
preparedness; “this manuscript describes efforts to extend surveillance
beyond sequence analysis, constructing chimeric and full-length zoonotic
coronaviruses to evaluate emergence potential.”

During this work, researchers produced chimeric viruses created by
inserting the spike protein from WIV1 into a strain of SARS-CoV adapted
to infecting mice. They subsequently tested this chimeric virus in human
airway epithelial cells as well as in mice. In addition to standard
BALB/c mice (a strain of albino, lab-breed house mice used in
experimentation ), researchers genetically manipulated the mice to
create a strain of mice expressing the human ACE2 (hACE2) receptor.
While hACE2 was found primarily in the lungs of the mice, it was also
present in the brain, liver, kidneys, and gastrointestinal tract. The
WIV1 chimeric virus was then tested in these hACE2 expressing mice,
proving that the chimeric virus could infect humans. This work was
funded by NIAID and NIH awards (nos. U19AI109761, U19AI107810,
AI1085524, F32AI102561, K99AG049092, DK065988, AI076159, and AI079521).

In 2016, Shi and Daszak also coauthored two additional papers focused on
infectious diseases that year. One, entitled “Bat Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus WIV1 Encodes an Extra Accessory
Protein, ORFX, Involved in Modulation of the Host Immune Response,” was
coauthored by Wang and represents a major step forward in the WIV's
work. While working on this project, WIV researchers created a reverse
genetics system and used it to genetically modify WIV1, the live
coronavirus that was successfully isolated in 2013 and that UNC
researchers manipulated months earlier. WIV researchers created multiple
versions of this virus by deleting or adding genetic information to the
virus' RNA. According to the paper, all experiments with live virus for
this paper were done under BSL-2 conditions, which does not require
respirators or biological safety cabinets. Nine of the eleven authors
are WIV researchers, and Shi is the corresponding author. The
experimentation for the paper was supported by a grant from NIAID (no.
R01 All 10964) and funding from the PRC government.u

The following year, Ben Hu was the lead author of a paper entitled
“Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses
provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.” As with
previous papers, the overwhelming majority (14 out of 17) of the authors
worked at the WIV. Daszak, Shi, and Wang are all listed as coauthors. Hu
is the lead author and Shi is one of two corresponding authors. Daszak
is credited for “funding acquisition.”

Additionally, using the reverse genetics system they debuted the
previous year, WIV researchers created eight separate chimeric viruses
by inserting the spike protein of various SARS-like coronaviruses into
WIV1. Two of these chimeric viruses (WIVl-Rs4231S and WIVl-Rs7327S), and
one natural virus, Rs4874, all replicated within hACE2 expressing cells.

To reiterate, WIV researchers created chimeric coronaviruses able to
infect humans in 2017, before the WNBL BSL-4 lab became operational.
This work was jointly funded by NIAID (no. R01 All 10964), USAID's
PREDICT program, and the PRC government (including grant no. 2013FY113500).

[...] The WIV's sequence library was taken offline in September 2019 and
is not “accessible for people to check.” Given the previously discussed
undisclosed coronavirus research and military activities at the WIV, it
is obvious that not “all” of the WIV's work has been published. Daszak
confirmed this in an interview with Nature: “we have data that we've
gathered over 15 years of working in China — 5 years under a previous
grant from the NIH — which haven't been published yet.”

[...] WIV Disinformation Campaign Involving Peter Daszak

As we have previously explained, Peter Daszak was heavily involved in
the gain-of-function research taking place at the WIV, including
research that was done at BSL-2 levels and that was done while the
United States had a moratorium in place on funding gain-of-function
research. In addition, we have uncovered strong evidence that suggests
Peter Daszak is the public face of a CCP disinformation campaign
designed to suppress public discussion about a potential lab leak.
Emails obtained by a third-party organization show that Daszak organized
a February 19, 2020, statement in the Lancet “condemning] conspiracy
theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”