Category: China
“Gain of Function research hasn’t protected us from this outbreak, hasn’t provided us with any effective treatments or vaccines to save hundreds of thousands of lives lost to CoV2, and if there is even a 0.1% chance GOF research caused the whole thing, that chance is too high”
Lab-Made? SARS-CoV-2 Genealogy Through the Lens of Gain-of-Function Research
CoV2 is an obvious chimera (though not nesessarily a lab-made one), which is based on the ancestral bat strain RaTG13, in which the receptor binding motif (RBM) in its spike protein is replaced by the RBM from a pangolin strain, and in addition, a small but very special stretch of 4 amino acids is inserted, which creates a furin cleavage site that, as virologists have previously established, significantly expands the “repertoire” of the virus in terms of whose cells it can penetrate. More...
WOW. Unexpected novel Merbecovirus discoveries in agricultural sequencing datasets from Wuhan, China
In this study we document the unexpected discovery of multiple coronaviruses and a BSL-3 pathogen in agricultural cotton and rice sequencing datasets. More...
Chile heads back into coronavirus lockdown despite massive vaccination campaign with Sinovac vaccine
Chile’s big coronavirus vaccine bet on China’s Sinovac shots. More...
Joint Statement on the WHO-Convened COVID-19 Origins Study signed by 14 countries
The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America, Australia, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.
WHO report on coronavirus pandemic origins published
Arguments in favour [of a lab leak] : Although rare, laboratory accidents do happen, and different laboratories around the world are working with bat CoVs. More...
WHO coronavirus leaked report “virus most probably jumped from bats into farmed animals, before spreading to humans”
The long awaited World Health Organization report on the origins of Sars-Cov-2 has concluded that a leak from a laboratory, while possible, is “extremely unlikely”. More...
Timing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus index case in Hubei province, China
“Consequently, the index case in Hubei likely contracted SARS-CoV-2 on or around 04 November 2019”. More...
WHO Investigators scrap plans for interim report on probe of coronavirus origins
WSJ: “The World Health Organization team investigating the origins of Covid-19 is planning to scrap an interim report on its recent mission to China amid mounting tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal from one international group of scientists for a new probe.” More...
WHO mission to Wuhan finds possible signs of wider original coronavirus outbreak in 2019
Investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) looking into the origins of coronavirus in China have discovered signs the outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019 than previously thought, and are urgently seeking access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples from the city that China has not so far let them examine. More...
Bats in Thailand found with coronaviruses similar to Sars-cov-2
Horseshoe bats carrying coronaviruses very similar to the one that causes Covid-19 have been found in Thailand
The study found a coronavirus in the horseshoe bat Rhinolophus acuminatus in Thailand that was 91.5 per cent similar to Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. More...