3 ms·

SARS-CoV-2 isn't based on a SARS-CoV-1 backbone or spike or any known backbone or spike that would have been used in a lab. The closest known viral backbone is

SARS-CoV-2 isn't based on a SARS-CoV-1 backbone or spike or any known backbone or spike that would have been used in a lab. The closest known viral backbone is a few decades of random mutations away from SARS-CoV-2 and there's no evidence that WIV even tried to work with RaTG13 and did anything beyond sequencing it. And you have the usual Schroedingers-Information problem that plagues conspiracy theories. You have to assume that on the one had all that information you just cited would be available to you, while a fairly massive project involving forming a chimera from an unknown spike protein and unknown backbone would have been going on in perfect secrecy in 2019 before there was any reason to keep that information secret. In 2019 if they had sequences of those viruses they would have just published them, they certainly would have published them before going through the effort to create chimeras from them. They would have used those sequences to get justification to get grants to do studies. The idea that all of that happened in perfect secrecy, before there was a need for perfect secrecy is the idea that is fucking laughable. And nature creates "chimeras" and does "gain of function experiments" all the time on a massive scale using many billions of animals in the "lab". That is what recombination and serial passage does -- particularly as viruses burn through bioreactors in animal farms in close proximity to humans. And when it comes to the FCS, the PRRAR sequence is unlike any other known FCS. If humans engineered it they would have picked another one that they already knew worked. That sequence absolutely screams that it was zoonotic in origin. It was novel and never previously seen before. Nobody would have added that in a lab.

ckw 4y ago
> “We will use a large dataset of S protein sequences and full-length genomes generated from prior work and DEFUSE fieldwork to estimate SARSr-CoV substitution rate and its genome-wide variation.” (D1, p.15) > “Sub-Task 1.2 Collect monthly specimens from bats at cave sites in Yunnan, China for SARSr-CoV screening and sequencing. Oral, fecal, and blood sample collected from 360 Rhinolophus spp. bats per month using live- capture and non-invasive sampling. Specimens shipped to laboratory for analysis. Associated morphological, demographic, and physiological data for individual bats collected (EHA, consultant Zhu).”(D1, p.25) “Deliverables: Specimens from 3,240 bats and fecal pellets collected from high-risk reservoir populations which have been obtained with all proper permits and permissions and shipped to WIV for analysis; real-time telemetry and mark-recapture data uploaded and made available to DARPA collaborators; completed database maintained.” (D1, p.25)
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Most of that collected and sequenced virus will be dead. For samples like blood it would be very difficult to infect labworkers, it would need to be something like an accident with aerosolized fecal samples which were inhaled. But assuming there was any live virus in those samples the human exposure will be dwarfed by the workers in mines and those who collect bat guano for fertilizer without any PPE at all. There's many times more bat-human contact around rural China which doesn't involve labworkers and where there's no precautions (as we know from the Mojiang miners who died). And there's still a vast gulf from collection sampling to engineered chimeric viruses and gain of function experiments.
  - ckw 4y ago
    Except there was no gulf. The purpose of the proposed collection of novel bat coronaviruses was to facilitate gain of function experiments at WIV involving the alteration of spike proteins, including the introduction of ‘appropriate human-specific cleavage sites’. In a recent interview Jeffrey Sachs said that he spoke to one of the original reviewers of the DEFUSE proposal, who said ‘the research was done before the proposal went in.’ https://youtu.be/vtfIIG8iYIk https://youtu.be/vtfIIG8iYIk 32:10s So, researchers propose to create a novel corona virus with precisely the attributes of sars-cov-2 in 2018. At the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Having already secretly completed the research. And we are supposed to believe that sars-cov-2 originated naturally, despite no evidence of such an origin, as in sars-1 and mers, and after almost three years spent searching for the reservoir.

ckw 4y ago

> “We will use a large dataset of S protein sequences and full-length genomes generated from prior work and DEFUSE fieldwork to estimate SARSr-CoV substitution rate and its genome-wide variation.” (D1, p.15) > “Sub-Task 1.2 Collect monthly specimens from bats at cave sites in Yunnan, China for SARSr-CoV screening and sequencing. Oral, fecal, and blood sample collected from 360 Rhinolophus spp. bats per month using live- capture and non-invasive sampling. Specimens shipped to laboratory for analysis. Associated morphological, demographic, and physiological data for individual bats collected (EHA, consultant Zhu).”(D1, p.25) “Deliverables: Specimens from 3,240 bats and fecal pellets collected from high-risk reservoir populations which have been obtained with all proper permits and permissions and shipped to WIV for analysis; real-time telemetry and mark-recapture data uploaded and made available to DARPA collaborators; completed database maintained.” (D1, p.25)

lamontcg 4y ago
Most of that collected and sequenced virus will be dead. For samples like blood it would be very difficult to infect labworkers, it would need to be something like an accident with aerosolized fecal samples which were inhaled. But assuming there was any live virus in those samples the human exposure will be dwarfed by the workers in mines and those who collect bat guano for fertilizer without any PPE at all. There's many times more bat-human contact around rural China which doesn't involve labworkers and where there's no precautions (as we know from the Mojiang miners who died). And there's still a vast gulf from collection sampling to engineered chimeric viruses and gain of function experiments.
- ckw 4y ago
  Except there was no gulf. The purpose of the proposed collection of novel bat coronaviruses was to facilitate gain of function experiments at WIV involving the alteration of spike proteins, including the introduction of ‘appropriate human-specific cleavage sites’. In a recent interview Jeffrey Sachs said that he spoke to one of the original reviewers of the DEFUSE proposal, who said ‘the research was done before the proposal went in.’ https://youtu.be/vtfIIG8iYIk https://youtu.be/vtfIIG8iYIk 32:10s So, researchers propose to create a novel corona virus with precisely the attributes of sars-cov-2 in 2018. At the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Having already secretly completed the research. And we are supposed to believe that sars-cov-2 originated naturally, despite no evidence of such an origin, as in sars-1 and mers, and after almost three years spent searching for the reservoir.