Former State Dept Lead Investigator Says COVID-19 Escaped From Wuhan Lab, May Have Been Bioweapons Accident

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[–]Comatoast 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-micro-020518-115759#_i41

Paragraphs 3-5 under Introduction, then check the dates at the bottom for the approval of the article.

[–]Zapped 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I don't understand why you are referencing the dates. I only saw the publish review date of June 21, 2019 and the citation note dates. I did read enough to learn they were infecting volunteers to study HCoV's and this paper talked about the use of genome editing.

[–]Comatoast 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Here's this at the bottom. I should have been more specific.

acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by Guangdong Natural Science Foundation grant 2018A030313472, and Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control grants MSDC-2017-05 and MSDC-2017-06, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.

While no cases of SARS have been reported since 2004, a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses was discovered in a cave in Yunnan, China, highlighting the necessity to prepare for future reemergence (50).

Importantly, a majority of alphacoronaviruses and betacoronaviruses were identified only in bats, and many coronaviruses phylogenetically related to SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV were discovered in diverse bat species (22). Therefore, emerging zoonotic HCoVs such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV likely originated in bats through sequential mutation and recombination of bat coronaviruses, underwent further mutations during the spillover to intermediate hosts, and finally acquired the ability to infect human hosts (22).

[–]Zapped 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

So, do you think this was one of those newly found strains that the lab was studying and manipulating, or do you follow this paper at face value in that it warned of future outbreaks?

[–]Comatoast 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

They saw it as the possibility for a potential outbreak, so as scientists it would be beneficial to research those specimens further under various conditions. There's no way for me to determine for sure, so I could only speculate that they already had the virus on hand. As far as whether or not it was purposely released as a bioweapon to further political agendas, or whether or not it was something released by accident, or even if it was simply a strain that rose naturally, I can't say for sure. I lean towards feeling there were more nefarious intentions, simply because of the entities attempting to pose as "helpful" being involved.

[–]Zapped 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for your view. I agree except I lean towards it being accidentally released. It seems as though the U.S. and Canada both had people over there and sent money there for years, so I lean towards vaccine research that got loose instead of biological warfare origins.

[–]Comatoast 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

It's hard (I'm being lazy) to format it on the phone.