President Trump at his
latest White House media conference on April 30 told the assemble press corps
he had “seen evidence” to
substantiate the hitherto unproven theory that the coronavirus originated at the
Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The President added “We’re going to see where it comes
from. We have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people,
intelligence people, and others. We’re
going to put it all together. I think we will have a very good answer
eventually..”
“Trump claims to have evidence coronavirus
started in Chinese lab but offers no details,” Maanvi Singh and Helen Davidson, April 30; www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/cia-pushes-back-at-trump-efforts-to-link-coronavirus-to-chinese-laboratories )
The Guardian diplomatic editor,
Patrick Wintour, added that Trump had said, when pressed to explain what evidence he had
seen that the virus originated in a Chinese lab: “I can’t tell you that. I’m
not allowed to tell you that.” (“US intelligence agencies under pressure to link coronavirus to Chinese
labs,” May 1; www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/cia-pushes-back-at-trump-efforts-to-link-coronavirus-to-chinese-laboratories)
Meanwhile, US
intelligence agencies’ revealed presently their conclusion that the virus was
“not manmade or genetically modified”.
So, what evidence could the
US Intelligence community have obtained; and from where?
We know US
virologists from the Galveston National
Laboratory (GNL) on Infectious Disease
Research for Global Health Security collaborated with their Chinese colleagues on
joint projects, having helped establish the Wuhan high security virology laboratory
in 2017.( https://www.utmb.edu/gnl)
In a media release on April 16 GNL stated: “Through our Biosafety Training Center, UTMB has provided laboratory safety and security
training for scientists and operations personnel in more than 70 countries,
including China. The relationship with Wuhan Institute of
Virology and the GNL dates back to 2013 and has been facilitated through an
ongoing dialogue co-sponsored by the Chinese
Academies of Science and U.S.
National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, with cooperation
from the Chinese CDC and others. (https://www.utmb.edu/gnl/news/2020/04/16/the-galveston-national-lab-and-wuhan-institute-of-virology
GNL is led by Dr Kenneth Plante,
who is the Curator, World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and
Arboviruses.( ksplante@utmb.edu)
GNL
describes itself as “a sophisticated high containment research facility that
serves as a critically important resource in the global fight against infectious
diseases. The GNL is located on the campus of the University of Texas Medical Branch and operates under the umbrella
of UTMB’s Institute for Human Infections
and Immunity.”
GNL is internationally known for high level expertise working with pathogens
including Ebola and Marburg, emerging infectious diseases like MERS, and
mosquito borne viruses like Zika and Chikungunya.
It
adds: “The National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) provides funding for the BSL4 laboratories
and operations at the GNL, and the lab’s top priority is research to develop
diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines to combat the most dangerous diseases in
the world”.
BSL4 (
biosecurity laboratories level 4 ) Labs, including the Wuhan Virology Research
Lab, are the globally the most secure and are certified by the World Health Organization
(WHO).
GNL has collaborated with
China’s virology research community, which has been has been heroic and innovative in its
extraordinary research done on the coronavirus.
But hey have been marginalised
and temporarily silenced by their own Government in Beijing, unable to make public
their increasing concerns in late 2019, over a fugitive viral spread in Wuhan.
Tthe Chinese Government
in Beijing did inform the WHO of a viral break out on 31 December, but this
warning came after the nationalist Government in Taiwan said they
reported this to both International Health Regulations (IHR) -a WHO ‘framework
for exchange’ of epidemic prevention and response data between 196
countries, and Chinese health authorities - on December 31.
Taipei said many of its
doctors had heard from mainland colleagues that medical staff were getting ill
— a sign of human-to-human transmission- during December 2019, weeks before the
wet food market in Wuhan had been identified as possible cause of the fugitive
viral escape. But the warning was not shared with other countries.
The IHR’s internal
website provides a platform for all countries to share information on the
epidemic and their response. But none of the information shared by Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control was posted,
because the WHO does not recognize the international status of Taiwan as a
separate nation.
In 2018, the Chinese
state Nanjing Military Research Institute
published details research on a new bat virus they had found near Zhoushan
city, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang.
Building on this, the
celebrated female virologist, Dr Zhi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology
Research Institute (WVRI) did complex research on ‘splitting’ the Sars
virus, producing four key papers [published in Western science journals], that
looked into the possibility of developing self-replicating synthetic
coronaviruses ( assessing the c so-called “S” protein)
One key paper from WVRI
virologists, published in the UK medical journal, The Lancet on 24
January 2020, explains from their micro-analysis of early reported Covid cases,
that 14 out of 41 (ie around a third) examined could not be traced at all to
the wet food market.
Two days later, the
United States’ Government Centers for Diseases Control published a paper
on viral transfer from bats. Nature journal followed this up on 3
February with an analysis of the link to bats of the coronavirus by now
spreading widely worldwide
They found the new virus
– whose full ‘genome sequence’ had been published by the Chinese
Government on 10 January - was not one found in the kind of bats
sometimes on sale at the Wuhan wet food market.
Five weeks ago, the youngest new MP in
Parliament, Nadia Whittome, representing Labour in Nottingham
East, asked the department of health if it would initiate research
into the security control of viruses under investigation at the Wuhan State
Institute of Virology, only to be dismissed bluntly by heath minister Jo Churchill with: "We have no plans to authorise
research into the security control of viruses under investigation at the Wuhan
State Institute of Virology." (Written answer, 26 March 2020; Number 29268)
Which leaves the
unanswered question: what was the original source of the fugitive virus in
Wuhan, if not the market?
No comments:
Post a Comment