The True Origin of SARS‑CoV‑2 (Covid-19)

michael59

Celestial

China shifts COVID origin blame after WHO abandons study into virus beginnings

The People's Republic of China is denying reports the government has not cooperated with the World Health Organization's study into the origins of COVID-19.

According to a report published in Nature Tuesday, the WHO has unceremoniously canceled the "second phase" of its investigations into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report cited key officials within the organization claiming China has proved too uncooperative to conduct the intended studies.

"There is no phase two," WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove told the outlet. "The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins."

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin pushed back on these assertions Wednesday in a press conference in Beijing.

"China’s position on the study of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is consistent," Wang said, when asked about China's transparency with the WHO. "We always support and participate in science-based global origins tracing. At the same time, we firmly oppose all forms of political manipulation."

The spokesman cited two previous envoys of WHO scientists allowed into the country, claiming this demonstrated China was "open" and "transparent" with the international community.

"China has shared more data and research findings on SARS-CoV-2 origins study than any other country," Wang said. "This fully demonstrates China’s open, transparent and responsible attitude and its support for the work of the WHO and SAGO. China will continue to support science-based global origins tracing and keep up communication and cooperation with the WHO."

The first phase of the investigation began in 2020, when a team of WHO scientists spent four weeks in China probing for evidence of the COVID-19's origins. This trip resulted in a report outlining four possible origins, with the most likely listed as a viral leap from bats to humans.

The WHO scientists said in an exit briefing it is "most likely" that the coronavirus was initially transmitted via a jump from animal to human, perhaps starting with a bat associated with the Wuhan seafood market, which was an early hypothesis.

From the time it was published, the WHO report received intense skepticism.

Wang shifted focus away from China during the press conference, claiming that "more and more clues from the international science community are pointing the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to sources around the world."

At once point, Wang specifically proposed a debunked theory of U.S. origin
, saying, "Many have raised questions and concerns about U.S. bio-military bases at Fort Detrick and around the world. The WHO and SAGO should take a close look at these clues, effectively cooperate with these relevant countries and share research findings with all parties in a timely way."

.
b0033 I hate to say it, but...


View: https://youtu.be/lsCoFwIDils


a0009
 

wwkirk

Divine

The Covid-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report from the U.S. Energy Department.

The report, which was included in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office, was recently provided to the White House and other lawmakers. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the updated assessment from the Energy Department is the result of new intelligence.

The Energy Department, which oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, made its judgment with “low confidence,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The assessment marks a change from 2021, when the department was undecided on how the virus originated.
 
Why the change in narrative now? Is it politically convenient? Since there are problems with China on the horizon, might as well bring this out too?

Let's say the lab leak theory is true. 6 800 000 people have died so far around the world, many others have gotten debilitations that will follow them for years if not indefinately. This has weakened many economies and put businesses out even. How is China going to carry the responsibility and be accountable? My prediction: they won't. At all. Like the banks at 2008 crash, too big to fail.
 
Last edited:

nivek

As Above So Below

This is the biggest scandal in American history

We are living through the largest, deadliest scandal in American history, but the elite media refuses to connect the dots and analyze it. COVID-19, a disease no one disputes came from Wuhan, China, has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and more than 38 million people worldwide. It has left millions of others with chronic health problems.

Because of the teachers’ unions and totally misguided, destructive public health policies, children who were under virtually no risk from COVID-19 have lost at least a year of education. Many children are suffering from depression and other mental health challenges from the forced isolation and lack of social contact.

Now, it is becoming more clear that much of this pain was avoidable – and the result of powerful government employees protecting themselves.

As Jarrett Stepman in The Daily Signal wrote:

In 2020, if you thought it was possible COVID-19 came from a lab in China you were labeled a conspiracy theorist, a peddler of misinformation, ‘bonkers,’ and a racist.
Facebook and other social media removed the lab leak claim from their apps or slapped ‘misinformation’ labels on it. Facebook did so in lockstep with the government.
So according to the standard set in 2020, the Department of Energy just came out as a racist purveyor of misinformation this week.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that, according to a classified intelligence report provided to the White House and Congress, the Department of Energy concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic likely came from a lab leak.
‘The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research,’ the Wall Street Journal report said."

President Donald Trump called it "the Chinese Virus" and was intensely attacked. Somehow word "Chinese" was deemed racist. No one disputes that the virus originated in China. But calling it COVID-19 rather than the Chinese virus was more polite. (After all, it’s important to indicate an appropriate sensitivity to the totalitarian dictatorship that is trying to defeat the United States and become the world’s leading power).

We now know this censorship and speech silencing was part of a systematic effort of senior scientists to mislead the American people. When COVID-19 first became a threat in early 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci already knew the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had funded research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance. He knew the WIV was a subgrantee of EcoHealth Alliance – and that EcoHealth Alliance was not in compliance with its grant reporting. Specifically, the organization was out of compliance for a project that NIAID knew could potentially make novel bat-borne coronaviruses much more dangerous.

Fauci knew all this.

According to Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, on Feb. 1, 2020, "Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and at least eleven other scientists convened a conference call to discuss COVID-19. On the conference call, Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the WIV and may have been intentionally genetically manipulated."

The scientists decided to remain silent to avoid controversy (which would have ultimately fallen back on themselves).

So, the same experts who are paid by the American people and given tens of billions of dollars to invest in research decided that they would deliberately mislead the American people.

This perfectly captures the arrogance of the aristo-bureaucrats, who believe they are intellectually and morally superior to the people to whom they are supposed to be accountable. They believe they have the right and duty to censor what we think and say – and to feed us falsehoods in the name of some higher duty.

This scandal of many of our best professional researchers lying to the American people is compounded by the absolute failure of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Why there has not been a scathing and thorough investigation – and set of hearings on the absolute inability of the bureaucrats in Atlanta to do their jobs – and the general failure of the public health system across the country is a mystery to me. This lack of introspection or investigation should itself be a scandal.

Driven by the economic impact of the Chinese virus, the American government spent trillions of dollars propping up the economy, sparking inflation, massively increasing the national debt, and permitting hundreds of billions in theft and corruption.

Finally, there has been no serious effort to hold the Chinese Communist dictatorship accountable for the damage it has done around the world. There is ample precedent for holding governments responsible for the damage they have done to others (the Lockerbie bombing, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, 9/11, and other cases).

The Chinese Communists have continuously focused on stopping us from understanding the origins of the pandemic. As Dave Boyer reported in the Washington Times, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray confirmed his agency believes the COVID-19 pandemic likely started from a lab leak in Wuhan, China. He told Fox News on Tuesday that "the FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan… Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.

As Boyer reported, "Mr. Wray also slammed Beijing for stonewalling international efforts to find out what happened. ‘I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart, and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s unfortunate for everybody,’ he said."

Clearly there ought to be a mechanism for making the Chinese Communist dictatorship pay COVID-19 victims for the disaster it caused. One step might be a COVID-19 tariff on all Chinese imports (the proceeds of which would go into a COVID-19 Compensation Fund that every American family affected by the pandemic could apply to).

Other countries could be urged to establish similar tariffs. Then Xi Jinping and his dictatorship would learn that lying, covering up, and hiding the truth has enormous costs for those guilty of killing millions and forcing the spending of trillions.

This scandal is so large, and covers so many areas, it will be a major factor in politics and government for the next decade. It will go down in history as a turning point in our lives and the life of our country.

We just need to decide what direction we turn: toward clarity and accountability, or toward lies and chaos.

.
 

AD1184

Celestial
Why the change in narrative now? Is it politically convenient? Since there are problems with China on the horizon, might as well bring this out too?
I believe that the lab leak hypothesis is the most likely explanation of the pandemic origin, and the actions of many of those scientists who have tried to refute this hypothesis call their credibility into question. However, I think there are some geopolitical events that could have prompted a renewed effort to change narrative by the US government. We got early indications of a change of heart in 2021. I think the Biden administration made some remarks as to the possibility, and there may have been an intelligence report from one or more of the US alphabet agencies concluding that it was a possibility also. I believe Fauci himself made public remarks to the effect that a lab leak was a possibility, even though we can see from an email chain obtained under a freedom of information request that Fauci was involved behind the scenes in early 2020 in an attempt to poison the well of debate for those who would argue for the lab leak hypothesis.

More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has happened. Russia has been pushed firmly into the arms of China, thanks to western mismanagement of relations with the country after the fall of the Soviet Union. The balance of opinion in the "international community" (Europe west of Russia and half-a-dozen or so countries outside of Europe) is in favour of Ukraine and against Russia. However, the rest of the world is not especially moved by Ukraine's plight, and many of them are leaning towards the Russia-China axis. There are a number of reasons for this, such as the United States' sequence of foreign military escapades since the end of the Cold War, typically ending in disaster: Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. Outside of the bubble of the "International Community", the US and its allies look extremely hypocritical in condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The US has realized belatedly that it has been generating an enormous amount of bad will around the world while their adversaries have been doing the opposite, likely because its establishment is informed of the country's international reputation only from within the western bubble. They have been listening to their domestic media and political classes' urgings to launch into the next disastrous invasion before they have even repaired the damage of the previous one in a cycle for the past three decades.

It would be a lot of work to generate some international goodwill in disaffected countries, but if they could generate a lot of bad will for the other side... Thus, if the global narrative could be changed to point the finger of blame for the entire pandemic onto China (although there seems to have been some US involvement in any putative lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, genetically modified or not), then that might do something to weaken the soft power advantage that China has been building around the globe in recent years, and thus that of the China-Russia axis as a whole.

This opinion piece in the Spectator points out that China and Russia were able to pull off a diplomatic master-stroke with their vaccine diplomacy during the pandemic. While the western nations were greedily gobbling vaccine doses in quantities several multiples of what they needed, and while simultaneously refusing to give patent waivers that would allow mass production of supplies for third-world countries, China and Russia were generously giving out their own vaccines (although they were not particularly effective in comparison to western equivalents, the gesture went a long way in terms of international esteem for the two countries).

Is Putin winning? The world order is changing in his favour (Behind paywall, but monthly free article allowance.)
Is Putin winning? The world order is changing in his favour | The Spe… (This link circumvents the paywall, if you have used up your monthly allowance and do not have a subscription.)

The whole affair shows what rotten instincts western liberal establishments have. They are quite happy to drag the reputations of their own countries through the muck, and then to lambast strategic efforts to combat the soft-power efforts of the other side, only to then find themselves in a situation where they could have benefited from listening to their domestic political opponents earlier on, such as in the war in Ukraine.
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Bombshell emails show Dr. Fauci commissioned a February 2020 paper to disprove COVID leaked from a Wuhan lab - weeks before pretending the study had nothing to do with him at a White House press conference

Dr Anthony Fauci commissioned and edited the report he cited to disprove the lab leak theory, House Republicans found. He stood next to then-President Donald Trump at a press conference and cited that very paper as evidence that the idea of a lab leak was implausible. Many media outlets then started to dismiss the lab leak theory, only to later suggest the lab leak theory is possible. And in January, a government watchdog agency blasted the NIH for failing to keep tabs on US-sponsored virus experiments in China.

(More on the link)

.
 

wwkirk

Divine
MSM, particularly, CNN, didn't want to know the truth, and by extension, didn't want the the public to know either.

In the article, the lab-leak theory was deemed a "Trump talking point." But prohibiting investigation doesn't imply confidence he was wrong. Rather, they hated possibly having to admit he was right.
 

AD1184

Celestial

Bombshell emails show Dr. Fauci commissioned a February 2020 paper to disprove COVID leaked from a Wuhan lab - weeks before pretending the study had nothing to do with him at a White House press conference

Dr Anthony Fauci commissioned and edited the report he cited to disprove the lab leak theory, House Republicans found. He stood next to then-President Donald Trump at a press conference and cited that very paper as evidence that the idea of a lab leak was implausible. Many media outlets then started to dismiss the lab leak theory, only to later suggest the lab leak theory is possible. And in January, a government watchdog agency blasted the NIH for failing to keep tabs on US-sponsored virus experiments in China.
It's interesting that the Daily Mail, in an article released today, describes these as "newly released emails" when the actual date of release was in the middle of 2020. Coincidentally, the actions of Dr. Fauci that they are talking about in the article are exactly what I was referring to in my last post in this thread where I wrote:
I believe Fauci himself made public remarks to the effect that a lab leak was a possibility, even though we can see from an email chain obtained under a freedom of information request that Fauci was involved behind the scenes in early 2020 in an attempt to poison the well of debate for those who would argue for the lab leak hypothesis.
i.e. He prompted the writing of a paper designed to discredit the lab leak hypothesis, even though the email chain clearly shows that this circle of influential correspondents thought that the lab leak hypothesis had merit. I wrote this yesterday, because I have known about it for nearly three years now.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
TrumpHate is an amazing phenomenon. Literally a reimagining of 'cut off your nose to spite your face'.

It's the fertilizer from which covid paranoia and wokeism grew and the reason we have an embarrassing doddering figurehead, and even more mortifying spare figurehead. Ugh. DT brought this on himself by being incapable of intelligent public speech.
 
Last edited:

nivek

As Above So Below

Ex-CDC director says Fauci deliberately shut him out to QUASH lab leak theory and conceal US gain-of-function research in Wuhan: Rep. Jim Jordan rips Fauci for deceiving Americans and 'trying to cover his backside'

Dr. Jamie Metzl, a former Biden staffer and self-identified Democrat, said he favored the lab leak theory because 'the Chinese government has done everything in its power' to stonewall investigations. Metzl then said China had an 'incentive' to find the animal where Covid-19 had originated while pushing the animal-to-human transmission theory, but hadn't done so. 'Given that the Chinese government has every incentive to find intermediary host, it's very significant that hasn't been found,' Metzl said. 'I think it's very telling after three years we haven't found it.' Dr. Paul Auwaerter, an infectious disease expert invited by Democrats on the committee, pointed out it took years to find the intermediary hosts after outbreaks of SARS and MERS.



.
 

wwkirk

Divine

Ex-CDC director says Fauci deliberately shut him out to QUASH lab leak theory and conceal US gain-of-function research in Wuhan: Rep. Jim Jordan rips Fauci for deceiving Americans and 'trying to cover his backside'

Dr. Jamie Metzl, a former Biden staffer and self-identified Democrat, said he favored the lab leak theory because 'the Chinese government has done everything in its power' to stonewall investigations. Metzl then said China had an 'incentive' to find the animal where Covid-19 had originated while pushing the animal-to-human transmission theory, but hadn't done so. 'Given that the Chinese government has every incentive to find intermediary host, it's very significant that hasn't been found,' Metzl said. 'I think it's very telling after three years we haven't found it.' Dr. Paul Auwaerter, an infectious disease expert invited by Democrats on the committee, pointed out it took years to find the intermediary hosts after outbreaks of SARS and MERS.



.
Remember how revered and trusted Fauci was among much or most of the population? He was almost like an Albert Schweitzer figure.
 

wwkirk

Divine
Appears Fauci is close to opposite of what people thought he was.

Redfield testified he did not know he was excluded from a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call with other health care bureaucrats until a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application revealed such some time later. "I was quite upset as the CDC director that I was excluded, excluded from those discussions. Why would they do this? Because I had a different point of view and I was told they made a decision that they would keep this confidential until they came up with a single narrative," Redfield said.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
If Biden vetoes this I think it will seal his fate in any hopes of reelection...Most Americans who give a crap about covid origins want to know what their government knows...

...

House Dems, GOP vote unanimously to declassify COVID origins intel, send bill to Biden

House lawmakers made it clear Friday that it’s time for the Biden administration to come clean on what it knows about COVID-19’s origin.

Republicans and Democrats voted unanimously – 419-0 – to require the Biden administration’s director of national intelligence to declassify all intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and possible links to the origins of the COVID-19 virus. That release would be required 90 days after the bill is signed into law.

The vote followed new assessments from the Department of Energy and the FBI that a lab leak in China was the most likely source of the pandemic that killed millions of people around the world. After those assessments were revealed, the Senate unanimously passed the GOP bill last week, and the House followed with its own unanimous vote a little more than a week later.

On the House floor, Republicans made it clear they believe the information that’s still classified points to the Wuhan lab as the source of COVID.

"The American public deserves answers to every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic, including how this virus was created and specifically, whether it was a natural occurrence of was the result of a lab-related event," said House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio.

"The House intelligence committee, which oversees our intelligence community, is aware of classified information that could help inform the public why COVID-19 as a lab leak theory is not just a possibility, but approaches the idea that it is likely."

Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., said he believes Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, knew it came from the Wuhan lab and tried to cover it up.

"In January of 2020, Dr. Fauci received emails that promulgated that COVID-19 looked engineered and not from the wild," Murphy said. "Yet three weeks later, to save his own skin, he commissioned a scientific paper which ‘debunked’ the lab theory. He was academically and intellectually dishonest."

"The truth is that Dr. Fauci and his institution funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to promote dangerous gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology without proper guardrails," Murphy charged.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, said his view of the classified information he’s seen is that it’s still unclear where COVID came from, and noted that intelligence community agencies are still split on the question. He also dismissed Murphy’s theory by saying, "there’s not one iota of evidence for any of that."

"The chairman [Turner] and I have seen all of the classified information on this, and we don’t know," Himes said. "We don’t know the origins of the COVID pandemic. So whatever is ultimately declassified, I would hope that my colleagues and the American people would approach that information with the humility, the intellectual humility that we need to approach something as serious as a pandemic and how we behave as citizens in a democracy."

But Himes said he still believes it’s best to declassify all the information held by the government so people can make up their own minds. He said this step is particularly important given how reluctant China has been to assist the U.S. in its investigation – China publicly has continued to argue COVID may have come from a U.S. lab.

"At every juncture, the PRC government has obfuscated and obstructed legitimate inquiries and investigations into the origins of the disease," Himes said. "China’s approach has been deeply irresponsible and dangerous to global public health."

Passage of the bill by both the House and Senate sends the bill to President Biden, whose signature on the bill is now irrelevant – it becomes law if he signs it, and if he were to veto it, both chambers have shown they easily have the two-thirds vote necessary to override his veto.


.
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Warning over worldwide boom in labs designed to handle deadliest pathogens - as top scientists fear 'leak' from poorly-ran sites in Asia

Fears were today raised over the boom in labs designed to handle the world's most dangerous pathogens in the wake of Covid.

More than 100 facilities tasked with storing and experimenting on viruses like Ebola and bird flu now exist globally.

But leading scientists are alarmed about the lack of oversight of the labs, saying lax biosafety rules are particularly an issue in Asia.

A lab leak is one of the top theories regarding Covid's origin, with China accused of covering up the possibility that the virus escaped a high-security site in Wuhan, the city where the pandemic began.

The coalition of UK and US scientists behind today's report claimed there are now 69 Biosafety Level (BSL) 4 facilities.

This is up from 59 just two years ago.

Famous BSL-4 labs include Porton Down here in the UK and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, central to the Covid 'lab leak' theory.

Experiments inside these labs can include what some commentators consider as gain-of-function, a hugely controversial branch of science that seeks to manipulate pathogens. Some can end up deadlier.

Of the current BSL-4 labs, about 75 per cent are in urban areas.

The report warns this may 'exacerbate' the potential impact of an accidental release with the labs holding pathogens like arbor pathogens like smallpox, Ebola and Lassa fever.

Experts are now also gravely concerned about the rise of a new kind of lab they call BSL-3+, with 57 identified across the world.

Most are in Europe, with 80 per cent in urban areas. These facilities are carrying out research on viruses like avian influenza, without the stricter biosecurity procedures of BSL-4 labs.

Additionally, as more BSL-3+ labs are located in urban environments with a densely packed population, the risk of any potential pathogen leak is heightened.

The findings come from the Global BioLabs Report 2023, released by Kings College London.

Dr Filippa Lentzos, an expert in international security at King’s College London, said the boom in labs was concerning, especially in parts of Asia, given the general lack of biorisk management policies in the region.

She said: 'We’re seeing rapid expansion of max containment labs in Asia but many of these countries score poorly on biorisk management.

'There's been a global boom in construction of labs handling dangerous pathogens.


(More on the link)

.
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Is this more proof that Beijing hid COVID truth from the world? Doctors believe German man had illness in December 2019 - days BEFORE China raised the alarm

Covid could have been spreading in Germany in 2019, according to fresh evidence which casts more doubt over China's origin timeline.

Beijing didn't alert the world about the mysterious virus circulating in Wuhan — the city at the centre of the pandemic — until New Year's Eve 2019.

Yet a catalogue of studies have since poked holes in claims that Xi Jinping's regime blew the whistle as soon as it became aware a new disease was circulating. Experts have uncovered numerous signs that Covid was already in Europe before alarm bells were raised.

MailOnline has now unearthed a fascinating medical report which further discredits China's official version of events.

Doctors in Berlin treated a 71-year-old man who had what they now suspect to be Covid, exactly one day before news broke of a cluster of Chinese patients were struck down with a SARS-like virus.

Medics from Charité–Universitätsmedizin re-examined his case now armed with the knowledge of tell-tale signs of Covid that might have been glossed over at the time.

They wanted to see whether the virus was circulating prior to Germany's first official case recorded in January.

The man, who wasn't identified, was admitted to hospital with pneumonia of an unknown cause on December 30, 2019. He was in a 'poor' condition, with an elevated heart rate, blood pressure and a fever. Medics noted he was overweight, a smoker, and had previously suffered a stroke.

CT scans of his lungs indicated a potential viral infection of unknown origin, with tests for pathogens capable of causing pneumonia coming up negative.

But these scans show a pattern of damage now familiar to millions of medics across the world, a 'crazy-paving' style in his lungs typical of Covid.

The authors wrote: 'Considering the chest computed tomography (CT) findings, it is likely that our patient is one of the earliest cases of Covid in Germany.

'This case suggests that Covid was already spreading in Germany in December 2019.'


(More on the link)

.
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Now even CHINESE scientists claim Covid did not jump to humans inside infamous Wuhan market in blow to natural animal origin theory

Covid's natural origin theory was today seemingly dealt a huge blow — by China's very own scientists.

In a fresh twist to the never-ending saga, Beijing-affiliated researchers ruled there was no proof to definitively say the virus jumped from animals to humans at a now-infamous market in Wuhan.

Swathes of patients struck down at the start of the pandemic visited or had links to its stalls, which sold bats, raccoon dogs, pangolins and other exotic species either proven to harbour similar coronaviruses or thought to.

As such, top virologists agreed with the Chinese government's argument that Covid likely emerged naturally inside the busy market.

However, in one of the most eagerly-awaited papers on the topic, experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said: 'The evidence provided in this study is not sufficient to support such a hypothesis...

'The possibility of potential introduction of the virus to the market through infected humans, or cold chain products, cannot be ruled out yet.'

The explosive paper, sharing data that scientists across the world have demanded ever since the pandemic kicked off, suggests the virus was prevalent at the Huanan Seafood Market when the outbreak began.

But the researchers argued that people could have brought the virus to the market, which then acted as a super-spreader in December 2019.

To understand the market's precise role in the origins of Covid, the team, including the former head of the Chinese CDC Dr George Gao, looked at samples taken from the site after the outbreak was first detected.

This included 923 samples from in and around the market and 457 from animals — including strays, their faeces and meat kept in fridges and freezers.

The paper, published in journal Nature, states that 73 of the samples taken from the market (7.9 per cent) tested positive for Covid.

While most of were concentrated in the West of the market, the virus was detected on stalls selling a range of products — from wildlife to vegetables.

The researchers said this suggests Covid 'may have been circulating in the market' for 'a while' in December 2019, leading to 'extensive distribution', which may have been facilitated by crowds.


(More on the link)

1680724168875.png

.
 
Top