WHITNEY WEBB ON CONVID-19

[Lauren Johnson]

ENGINEERING CONTAGION: AMERITHRAX, CORONAVIRUS, AND THE RISE OF HE BIOTECH-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

PART ONE: ALL ROADS LEAD TO DARK WINTER



A DARK WINTER DESCENDS
In late June 2001, the U.S. military was preparing for a “Dark Winter.” At Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland, several Congressmen, a former CIA director, a former FBI director, government insiders and privileged members of the press met to conduct a biowarfare simulation that would precede both the September 11 attacks and the 2001 Anthrax attacks by a matter of months. It specifically simulated the deliberate introduction of smallpox to the American public by a hostile actor.
The simulation was a collaborative effort led by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies (part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) in collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Analytic Services (ANSER) Institute for Homeland Security and the Oklahoma National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. The concept, design and script of the simulation were created by Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center along with Randy Larsen and Mark DeMier of ANSER. The full script of the exercise can be read here.
The name for the exercise derives from a statement made by Robert Kadlec, who participated in the script created for the exercise, when he states that the lack of smallpox vaccines for the U.S. populace means that “it could be a very dark winter for America.” Kadlec, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration and a former lobbyist for military intelligence/intelligence contractors, is now leading HHS’ Covid-19 response and led the Trump administration’s 2019 “Crimson Contagion” exercises, which simulated a crippling pandemic influenza outbreak in the U.S. that had first originated in China. Kadlec’s professional history, his decades-old obsession with apocalyptic bioweapon attack scenarios and the Crimson Contagion exercises themselves are the subject of Part III of this series.
 

The Dark Winter exercise began with a briefing on the geopolitical context of the exercise, which included intelligence suggesting that China had intentionally introduced Foot and Mouth disease in Taiwan for economic and political advantage; that Al-Qaeda was seeking to purchase biological pathogens once weaponized by the Soviet Union; and that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had recruited former biowarfare specialists from the Soviet Union and was importing materials to create biological weapons. It further notes that a majority of Americans had opposed a planned deployment of U.S. soldiers to the Middle East, which was also opposed by Iraq, China and Russia. The script also asserts that the soldiers were being deployed to counter and potentially engage the Iraqi military. Later, as the exercise unfolds, many of those Americans once skeptical about this troop deployment soon begin calling for “revenge.”
Amid this backdrop, news suddenly breaks that smallpox, a disease long eradicated in the U.S. and globally, appears to have broken out in the state of Oklahoma. The participants in Dark Winter, representing the National Security Council, quickly deduce that smallpox has been deliberately introduced and that this is the result of a “bioterrorist attack on the United States.” The assumption is made that the attack is “related to decisions we may make to deploy troops to the Mid-East.”
Not unlike what is unfolding currently with the Covid-19 crisis, in Dark Winter, there is no means of rapid diagnosis for smallpox, no treatments available and no surge capacity in the healthcare system. The outbreak quickly spreads to numerous other U.S. states and throughout the world. Hospitals in the U.S. soon face “desperate situations” as “tens of thousands of ill or anxious persons seek care.” This is compounded by “grossly inadequate supplies” and “insufficient isolation rooms,” among other complications.
Since this exercise occurred in June 2001, the heavy hinting that Saddam Hussein-led Iraq and Al Qaeda are the main suspects is notable. Indeed, at one point in one of the fictional news reports used in the exercise, the reporter states that “Iraq might have provided the technology behind the attacks to terrorist groups based in Afghanistan.” Such claims that Iraq’s government was linked to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would re-emerge months later in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and would be heavily promoted by several Dark Winter participants such as former CIA Director James Woolsey, who would later swear under oath that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. It would, of course, later emerge that Iraq’s connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks were nonexistent as well as the fact that Iraq did not possess biological weapons or other “weapons of mass destruction.”
Notably, this insertion into one of the Dark Winter news clips was not the only part of the exercise that sought to link Saddam Hussein and Iraq to biological weapons. For instance, during the exercise, satellite imaging showed that a “suspected bioresearch facility” in Iraq appeared to be expanding an “exclusionary zone” in order to limit civilian activity near the facility as well as a “possible quarantine” area in the same area as this facility. Previously in the exercise, Iraq was one of three countries, along with Iran and North Korea, who were “repeatedly rumored” to have illicitly obtained Soviet smallpox cultures from defecting scientists and Iraq was alleged to have offered employment to a leading smallpox scientist who had worked on the Soviet bioweapons program.
Then, at the end of the exercise, a “prominent Iraqi defector” emerges who claims Iraq had arranged the bioweapons attack “through intermediaries,” which is deemed “highly credible” even though “there is no forensic evidence to support this claim.” Iraq officially denies the accusation, but vows to target the U.S. in “highly damaging ways” if the U.S. “takes action against Iraq.” It is thus unsurprising that, as will be shown later in this report, key participants in Dark Winter would heavily promote the narrative that Iraq was to blame for the 2001 Anthrax attacks. Other participants, including Robert Kadlec, would then become involved in the FBI’s “sabotaged” investigation once the Bureau began to focus on a domestic, as opposed to an international source.
In addition, as part of Dark Winter, mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times and others, were sent anonymous letters that threatened renewed attacks on the U.S., including anthrax attacks, if the U.S. did not withdraw its troops from the Middle East. In this simulation, those letters contained “a genetic fingerprint of the smallpox strain matching the fingerprint of the strain causing the current epidemic.” During the Anthrax attacks that would occur just a few months after Dark Winter, Judith Miller – who participated in Dark Winter – and other U.S. reporters would receive threatening letters with a white powder presumed to be Anthrax. In Miller’s case, the powder turned out to be harmless.
Other aspects of Dark Winter appear more notable now than ever, particularly in light of recent pandemic simulations that were conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (Event 201) and the Trump administration (Crimson Contagion) in 2019, as well as the federal government’s current options for responding to Covid-19.
For instance, Dark Winter warns of “dangerous misinformation” spreading online selling “unverified” cures and making similarly “unverified” claims, all of which are deemed as posing a threat to public safety. Such concerns over online misinformation/disinformation and narrative control have recently surfaced in connection with the current Covid-19 crisis. Notable, however, is the fact that the “Event 201” simulation held last October, which simulated a global pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus, also greatly emphasized concerns about such misinformation/disinformation and suggested increased social media censorship and “limited internet shutdowns” to combat the issue. That simulation was co-hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is currently led by Dark Winter co-author Thomas Inglesby.
Dark Winter further discusses the suppression and removal of civil liberties, such as the possibility of the President to invoke “The Insurrection Act”, which would allow the military to act as law enforcement upon request by a State governor, as well as the possibility of “martial rule.” The Dark Winter script also discusses how options for martial rule “include, but are not limited to, prohibition of free assembly, national travel ban, quarantine of certain areas, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus [i.e. arrest without due process], and/or military trials in the event that the court system becomes dysfunctional.”
The exercise later includes “credible allegations” that those deemed “suspicious for smallpox” by authorities were illegally arrested or detained and that these arrests largely targeted low income individuals or ethnic minorities. In terms of current events, it is worth pointing out that U.S. Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice he leads have recently requested new “emergency powers” that are allegedly related to the current Covid-19 outbreak. That request specifically references the ability to indefinitely detain Americans without right to a free trial.
WEAVING A NARRATIVE

After examining Dark Winter, it then becomes important to examine the events the exercise seemingly predicted, namely the 2001 anthrax attacks. This is particularly crucial for two reasons: first, that the source of the anthrax was later traced to a domestic source, allegedly the USAMRIID lab in Fort Detrick; and second, the mode of attack and the initial narrative of those attacks were straight out of the Dark Winter playbook. Furthermore, key players in the government response to the anthrax attacks, including those with apparent foreknowledge of the attacks, as well as those who sought (falsely) to link those attacks to Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were also participants in Dark Winter.
Weeks before the first Anthrax case would be discovered, on the evening of September 11, 2001, then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff was told to start taking injections of the antibiotic Cipro in order to prevent Anthrax infection. In addition, at least one member of the press, journalist Richard Cohen – then at the Washington Post – had also been told to take Cipro soon after September 11 after receiving a tip “in a roundabout way from a high government official.” Who exactly in the Bush administration and in the Beltway began taking Cipro weeks prior to the anthrax attacks and for how long? Unfortunately, the answer to that question remains unanswered. Yet, it has since been revealed that the person who had told these officials to take Cipro was none other than Dark Winter participant Jerome Hauer, who had previously served for nearly 8 years at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), which oversees the USAMRIID lab at Fort Detrick.
Hauer, on September 11, 2001, was the managing director of Kroll Inc., a private intelligence and security company informally known as the “CIA of Wall Street,” a company that French intelligence had accused of acting as a front for the actual CIA. Kroll Inc., at the time of the attacks was responsible for security at the World Trade Center complex, yet Hauer was conveniently not present at his World Trade Center office on the day of the attacks, instead appearing on cable news. More on the series of “conveniences” that have followed Hauer throughout his career, especially over the course of 2001, and the massive amounts of money he stands to make off of the current Covid-19 epidemic will be discussed in detail in Part II of this series.
Then, on September 12, Donald Kagan of the neoconservative think tank the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose members populated key posts in the Bush administration, made an odd comment (for the time, anyway) about the September 11 attacks and anthrax. Speaking on Washington DC radio, Kagan – after suggesting that the U.S. should invade Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine in retaliation for September 11 – asks “What would have happened if they had anthrax on that plane?” That same day, James Woolsey, himself a PNAC member and also a Dark Winter participant, claimed that Iraq was to blame for September 11 during a cable news interview.
A week later, another PNAC member and advisor to the Bush White House– Richard Perle – told CNN that the next terror attack is likely to involve “chemical or biological weapons.” Soon after, Jerome Hauer re-emerges, claiming that the government now has a “new sense of urgency” regarding bioterrorist threats and asserts that “Osama Bin Laden wants to acquire these [biological] agents and we know he has links to Saddam and Saddam Hussein has them.” Of course, Saddam Hussein did not actually possess these biological weapons, although he did during the fictional Dark Winter exercise in which Hauer had actively participated. Just days after Hauer made these bold claims, ABC News reported that the alleged 9/11 hijackers may have intended to modify crop dusters to disperse Anthrax.
All of this took place several days before the first anthrax victim, photojournalist Bob Stevens, would even begin to show symptoms and over a week before doctors would even begin to suspect that his condition had been caused by anthrax poisoning.
On October 2, as Stevens’ health began to rapidly deteriorate, a new book co-written by journalist Judith Miller of the New York Times was released. Entitled “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War,” the book asserted that the U.S. faced an unprecedented bioterrorism threat from terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. It further alleged that such groups may have teamed up with countries such as Iraq and Russia. Miller, who had participated in Dark Winter months prior, had conducted numerous interviews with senior White House officials for the book, particularly Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Libby, although he had not personally attended Dark Winter, was greatly impacted by the exercise when he learned of it, so much so that he had personally arranged for Cheney to watch the video of the entire Dark Winter exercise on September 20, 2001. Cheney took the contents of Dark Winter to the National Security Council the very next day. It would later be reported in New York magazine that, “a few days after 9/11,” the principal authors of Dark Winter – Randall Larsen, Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby – would personally meet with Cheney and members of the administration’s national security staff about the exercise.
Larsen, who worked closely with Robert Kadlec throughout the 1990s, allegedly smuggled a test tube of weaponized Bacillus globigii, “almost genetically identical to anthrax,” into the meeting, according to that report. It is unclear when this meeting took place in relation to when Cheney had watched the video of the Dark Winter exercise.
The same day that Miller’s “Germs” was released, October 2, another odd occurrence took place. A former scientist at the USAMRIID lab at Fort Detrick, Dr. Ayaad Assaad, received a call from the FBI after someone who intimately knew Assaad’s work history and career in great detail (and who also claimed to have previously worked with Assaad) had anonymously accused him of being a “potential biological terrorist” with a deep-seated hatred of the U.S. government. At the time the letter was received by the FBI, neither the public nor the FBI were aware of any anthrax cases. Assaad, who was then working for the Environmental Protection Agency, told the FBI that he believed he was being framed by former co-workers. The FBI deemed this to be credible and never contacted Assaad in connection with the case again.
It later emerged in the Hartford Courant that Assaad had been the target of extensive harassment by a clique of co-workers at the USAMRIID lab in the early 1990s. One of those co-workers who had harassed Assaad would leave the lab disgruntled as a result of the controversy over Assaad’s harassment allegations. He would later return to the lab to conduct unauthorized, late night research on anthrax and be tied to several missing specimens of anthrax and other pathogens – Lt. Col. Philip Zack.
Zack, in 2001, was working for the U.S. biotechnology company Gilead Sciences. Though he first began working for Gilead in 1999, he was “handpicked” in 2001 to lead the establishment of “a new Project Management Department in conjunction with a complete restructure of R&D [Research and Development].” Donald Rumsfeld, another member of PNAC, became the chairman of Gilead Sciences in 1997 and he served as chairman of that company up until he became George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense in early 2001.
Rumsfeld would later announce on September 10, 2001 that $2.3 trillion had gone “missing” from the Pentagon’s budget. The Pentagon’s accounting office, whose staff was attempting to locate these missing trillions, would be destroyed on September 11, 2001. Though planes being flown into the Pentagon would later be described by government officials as “unimaginable” and “unthinkable” after the attacks, a simulation of planes being flown into the Pentagon had been conducted less than a year prior to September 11.
TERROR REDUX
On October 4, 2001, Bob Stevens’ anthrax poisoning diagnosis was made known to the FBI and CDC and the public was then informed via a press conference. The second anthrax case was declared soon after and was a co-worker of Stevens’, who had worked for the Florida-based newspaper, the Sun.
A day later, White House officials began to immediately pressure then-FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove that the anthrax attacks were linked to Al Qaeda, despite there being no evidence to make such a link. “They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” a then-senior FBI official would later tell the New York Daily News of the meetings.
Over the next few weeks, suspicious letters containing fine, white powder were sent to well-known American journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw and The New York Times’ Judith Miller, though the powder in the letter addressed to Miller was found to be harmless. Notably, Miller and other New York Times journalists wrote a total of 27 articles specifically about anthrax and its potential use as a bioweapon between September 12, 2001 and the day before Stevens was diagnosed with anthrax poisoning.
Letters containing anthrax were also received by Senators Tom Daschle, Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy, all of whom were – at the time – preventing the US Patriot Act from quickly passing through the Senate and who were resisting administration attempts to ram the legislation through with little to no debate. Several of the letters included the date “9-11-01” and the phrases “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is great” in neatly-printed block letters.
Soon after, a suspicious letter was found in the office of then-Congressman and current Vice President Mike Pence. Media Roots noted the following about Pence’s subsequent press conference in a 2018 podcast that examined the timeline of the 2001 anthrax attacks:

[i]“…Mike Pence, who once hosted an AM talk show describing himself as ‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf,’ conducts a press conference outside the Capitol proclaiming revenge and biblical style justice to whoever conducted the anthrax attacks. His family–with news cameras in tow–gets tested for anthrax at the hospital after it is allegedly found in his office.
No news outlets questioned his grandstanding or odd performance of going to the hospital with his family, and unlike Senators Daschle and Leahy in their press appearances, Mike Pence alluded to the anthrax letters being connected to the larger ‘war on terror.’”[/i]

As public panic swelled, more letters continued to be found, not just in the United States but around the world, with anthrax and/or hoax letters being found in Japan, Kenya, Israel, China and Australia, among others. Simultaneously, efforts to link the anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein and Iraq began to emerge and quickly grew in intensity and number.
The media push to link the attacks to Iraq began first with The Guardian and then was followed by U.S. media outlets like The Wall Street Journal. Those early reports cited unnamed “American investigators” and defense officials and largely centered on the false claim that alleged 9/11 mastermind Mohammad Atta had met with an Iraqi diplomat in Prague in late 2000 as well as similarly false allegations that members of Al Qaeda had recently obtained vials of anthrax in the Czech Republic.
 

A key person in disseminating that false Prague story was Dark Winter participant and PNAC member James Woolsey. It was also revealed in late October 2001 that Woolsey was serving as the personal emissary of Paul Wolfowitz, Iraq War “architect” and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense, in “investigating Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks and anthrax outbreaks.”
Beyond the Pentagon, foreign “experts” soon began to assert that there was a link between the anthrax attacks and Iraq, including former Israeli military intelligence officer Dany Shoham. Shoham recently resurfaced this past January after claiming that Covid-19 was developed by the Chinese government as a bioweapon.
These assertions were soon followed by a report from ABC News’ Brian Ross, who (again falsely) claimed that some of the anthrax used in the attacks had contained bentonite. Ross claimed that bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and that “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.” Ross asserted this information had come from three “well-placed but separate sources,” which later grew to four. Yet, no tests conducted during the Anthrax investigation ever found any bentonite at all, meaning the story was an invention from the very start. ABC and Brian Ross never retracted the story.
Glenn Greenwald, then writing at Salon, would state the following about Ross’ sources in 2008:

[i]“Ross’ allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really “well-placed,” one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted — Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.
It’s extremely possible — one could say highly likely — that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain — as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax — is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).”[/i]

Soon, media reports began noting the contradictory messaging of the U.S. government with regards to the anthrax attacks, messaging which has striking parallels to the Trump administration’s messaging on Covid-19. In one such report, written by Matthew Engel for The Guardian, states:

[i]“Those in charge have compounded the problems by sending out confused messages. Was the anthrax weapons-grade or not? Should Americans be alarmed or relaxed? Has President Bush himself been tested? The signals keep changing. Mr. Thompson suggested early on that Bob Stevens, the first anthrax victim, might have drunk from an infected stream.”[/i]

During the 2001 anthrax attacks, there was no shortage of contradictory actions either, such as the government’s failure to mandate that postal workers take Cipro or even take the simplest precautions even though members of the Bush administration had been taking Cipro weeks before the anthrax attacks were known to the FBI and the public. Even worse, the Bush administration waited an extremely long time to close post offices for anthrax testing, waiting until numerous postal workers had already become infected and some had already died. In addition, Ernesto Blanco – a Florida mail room worker who later recovered from Anthrax poisoning – and his family were left confused about the refusal of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to diagnose him with anthrax poisoning while he was in dire condition. Blanco’s family later claimed that his diagnosis had been kept a secret for political reasons.
BASIS FOR SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL
The contradictory response of the Bush administration to the anthrax attacks and the panic that ensued was also paralleled by an equally contradictory sensor system, one which had been installed just a few months before the anthrax attacks in thirty cities throughout the U.S. despite a dubious record of accuracy.
Just as the fictional scenarios proposed in Dark Winter were being written, American scientists were developing a sensor system for the detection of anthrax and botulinum toxin called BASIS (Biological Aerosol Sentry and Information Systems). Months before anthrax would cause extreme panic and target American Senators, scientists from Los Alamos and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were testing the biological sensing device at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, inside the Special Programs Division of what was once the site of the U.S. biological weapons program and where anthrax samples used at Fort Detrick are often produced.
It is worth noting that Dugway, not unlike Fort Detrick, has a longstanding issues with biosafety lapses that have resulted in numerous mishaps, such as their accidental shipment of live anthrax over 70 times to 86 different labs throughout the world from 2005-2015. Independent analyses conducted after the FBI closed its investigation into the attacks have suggested that Dugway may have been the source of the anthrax used in the attacks, as opposed to Fort Detrick.
Returning to BASIS, the results of the tests conducted on this new sensor system in 2001 showed that it was highly prone to generating false positives and was, therefore, worthless beyond the ability to “induce the very panic and social disruption it is intended to thwart“, according to the Livermore Laboratory, which nevertheless marketed BASIS as a tool to “guard the air we breathe.” Vice President Cheney, following his September 2001 briefing on Dark Winter, decided to install the system in the White House.
Days after Senator Tom Daschle’s press conference that revealed he had been targeted by the anthrax attacker, President Bush was in Shanghai attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit when he received a call from Dick Cheney on Airforce Two. Cheney delivered a chilling message — the President and Secretaries Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, who were with Bush in China, might have been exposed to the ultra-lethal botulinum toxin at the White House.
BASIS had returned two positive results for the deadly neurotoxin and – if the tests held true – three of the U.S.’ highest ranking officials were “toast.” Yet, once again, BASIS had lived up to its reputation as a great panic-inducing mechanism when the supposed botulinum toxin hits were determined to have been false positives. Apparently, this “unintended” feature was a real selling point, as proven by George W. Bush’s subsequent deployment of the system in thirty cities throughout the country under the auspices of the newly-minted Department of Homeland Security as part of a program called Bio-Watch.
Given the events described, it is noteworthy that BASIS relies on the CDC’s Laboratory Response Network (LRN) to identify the biological agents trapped by its sensors. The 150 state and local laboratories that make up the LRN use a polymerase chain reaction (PCR-based) analysis, which is ill-equipped to detect the aforementioned botulinum toxin. In addition, the Bio-Watch program is plagued by bureaucratic and logistical problems, which further undermine any potential public health benefits.
DHS was fully aware of the program’s limitations from the start and issued requests for proposals (RFPs) for the development of autonomous sensor technology that would eliminate the need for manual sample collection. The Bioagent Autonomous Networked Detector (BAND) program was then initiated by HSARPA (Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency) in September of 2003 and, in 2008, awarded a multi-year contract for its development to MicroFluidic Systems, Inc., a company founded by Allen Northrup. Northup is also co-founder of Cepheid, a diagnostic testing company that received FDA approval for a 45-minute Covid-19 test less than two weeks ago.
In tandem with the development of BASIS shortly before 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, DARPA was sponsoring a surveillance program to collect data on U.S. citizens without their knowledge or consent by using their medical records. The ostensible purpose of that program was to develop algorithms that could detect a bioweapons attack based on real-time data input. The Bio-Event Advanced Leading Indicator Recognition Technology, or Bio-ALIRT, is at the heart of what Dark Winter co-author, Dr. Tara O’Toole, calls the “information supply chain.”
“We need to have a disciplined flow of information during epidemics that goes to the people who need to know what they need to know,” O’Toole recently told Ira Pastor in an interview. “That’s different from this cosmic surveillance system, that captures all the possible information all the time and tells us, in advance when an epidemic is coming. We need a supply chain of information to manage the epidemic.” O’Toole, who now works for the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and her longstanding promotion of mass surveillance in the name of “public health” will be discussed in a subsequent installment of this series.
DARPA’s partners in this Orwellian endeavor were, perhaps unsurprisingly, recurring actors in the arena of biological attack simulations, from Johns Hopkins to the University of Pittsburgh – the Biosecurity centers of which were both previously run by O’Toole – and defense industry giants, General Dynamics and IBM.
Hovering over these draconian innovations floats the overarching narrative, which the 2001 anthrax attacks were supposed to activate in popular consciousness. Though the attacks would be pinned on USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins, the highly questionable investigative and prosecutorial methods employed in Ivins’ case, not to mention his timely pre-trial suicide, may instead offer clues regarding a botched false flag operation that had originally been designed to bolster the creation of a new geopolitical chessboard pitting the U.S. against its same perpetual enemies.
COVERING UP THE REAL CONSPIRACY

From its earliest moments, the FBI’s “Amerithrax” investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks was clearly botched, sabotaged and even farcical. For instance, the letter sent to Dr. Ayaad Assaad would obviously have been a clear starting point for any honest investigation, as whoever wrote it had obvious foreknowledge of the attacks, connections to USAMRIID and was attempting to frame someone else for a crime that – at the time it was sent – had yet to be committed. Yet, The Hartford Courant noted in late 2001 that “the FBI is not tracking the source of the anonymous letter, despite its curious timing, coming a matter of days before the existence of anthrax-laced mail became known.” Why would the FBI not be interested in who wrote that letter, when it presents a clear lead on someone who, at the very least, knew a bioterrorism attack would soon take place and that the attacker’s profile would fit that of Assaad (i.e. Muslim and a former USAMRIID scientist).
In addition, in the early days of the investigation on October 12, 2001 – just one week after the attacks had claimed their first victim, the FBI called the University of Iowa and demanded that they destroy their entire database on the Ames strain of anthrax, the strain that would later be revealed to have been the very strain used in the attacks.
Both the FBI and the university officially claimed that the database’s destruction was ordered in order to prevent its potential use by terrorists in the future and was thus a “precaution,” despite greatly hampering the capacity of the investigation to determine the origins of the anthrax used in the attacks. Dr. Francis Boyle, an American law professor who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, later asserted that the FBI’s decision to order the destruction of the Ames strain database was an “obstruction of justice, a federal crime,” adding that “…That collection should have been preserved and protected as evidence. That’s the DNA, the fingerprints right there.”
Can the destruction of the Ames strain database and the decision to not pursue any leads related to the anonymous letter framing Dr. Assaad be written off as merely “missteps” made in the earliest and arguably most crucial days of the investigation? The fact that the Bush administration, as previously mentioned, was strongly pressuring then-FBI Director Robert Mueller to find a connection to “someone in the Middle East” at the same time these decision were made instead suggests that the investigation was highly politicized and manipulated by top government officials from the very beginning.
The FBI investigation continued to be marred by similarly obstructive actions. For instance, the anthrax sample that was in the envelope addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy had been found to contain traces of human DNA, a crucial finding that the FBI laboratory deliberately concealed from the agency’s own investigators. The FBI lab then declined to search for a match to this human DNA sample, despite the fact that doing so would – in all probability – lead to the actual attacker.
Due to all the obstruction and deliberate sabotage that took place, the investigation progressed slowly as crucial clues were ignored or outright discarded, apparently in order to keep FBI investigators off of the real trail. After coming under political and media pressure at least name a suspect, the FBI began to focus on former USAMRIID researcher Stephen Hatfill.
Despite lacking any good reason to pursue Hatfill, the FBI – accompanied by TV crews – raided Hatfill’s apartment in biohazard suits and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft later publicly named him a “person of interest” in the case. The FBI pressured Hatfill’s then-employer to fire him and refused to clear his name years after the Bureau knew full well that he had no connection to the crime. Hatfill first sued the government in 2003 and the Department of Justice settled with Hatfill five years later, paying him $4.6 million in damages.
Though it was eventually settled, Hatfill’s lawsuit initially resulted in some odd claims from FBI investigators, with Richard Lambert – the FBI official in charge of the Amerithrax investigation, claiming that the lawsuit “could jeopardize the probe and expose national secrets related to U.S. bioweapons defense measures.” He also claimed it would “make public the vulnerabilities and capabilities of U.S. government installations to bioweapons attacks and expose sensitive intelligence collection sources and methods.” Lambert would later file a federal whistleblower lawsuit where he accused the Bureau’s Washington field office and FBI headquarters of having “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.”
The Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, would make a similar argument when Maureen Stevens, the wife of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens, sued the federal government over the lax security measures in place at the USAMRIID lab where the anthrax used in the attacks was alleged to have originated. Stevens’ lawyer said the lawsuit was also filed due to “the government’s stonewalling tactics,” which included “taking months to turn over an autopsy report, denying them access to DNA tests and even denying them money from the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund.” Citing “national security concerns,” federal attorneys sought to delay Stevens’ lawsuit, arguing that the litigation “would pose a significant risk of disclosing classified or sensitive information relating to the acquisition, development and use of weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax.”
In 2008, soon after Hatfill was cleared and the lawsuit with him settled, the FBI began to focus on another USAMRIID researcher, Dr. Bruce E. Ivins. Ivins, who had previously helped the FBI analyze the anthrax used in the letters sent to politicians, journalists and others, was aggressively targeted by the FBI through aggressive surveillance and what can only be described as extreme harassment.
As Glenn Greenwald noted in Salon in 2008, “the FBI investigation was so heavy-handed that it actually entailed showing gruesome photographs of the anthrax victims to Ivins’ adult children, telling them that their father is the one who did that, while trying to entice them to turn on him with promises of a reward.” It was also revealed that addiction counselor Jean Duley, whose restraining order against Ivins was used by the media as “proof” that he was deranged and a likely “lone wolf” terrorist, had actually been egged on by none other than the FBI to seek that very restraining order.
 

The FBI, as it ramped up its targeting of Ivins, leaked much of its evidence to media outlets, which – for the most part – uncritically reported it. However, it eventually became clear that the case was shoddy and would never hold up in court as it was built on circumstantial evidence and questionable scientific analyses.
It was then announced on July 29, 2008 that Ivins, whose life and career had been left in ruins by the FBI’s aggressive tactics, had committed suicide just as the federal government was set to charge him as the sole culprit behind the Anthrax attacks. Few chose to question the suicide narrative despite there being legitimate reasons to do so, such as the lack of a suicide note at the scene and the fact that no autopsy was ever performed on Ivins’ corpse.
Former FBI agent Richard Lambert’s whistleblower lawsuit would later reveal that the FBI had intentionally withheld a “wealth” of evidence that proved Ivins’ innocence and further charged that the DOJ and FBI had “crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt” that included “press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.”
After Ivins’ suicide, questions continued to arise regarding the FBI’s case against the deceased scientist, with several journalists and even Senator Patrick Leahy – who had been sent an Anthrax letter – insisting that the FBI’s case against Ivins, particularly the charge that he had acted alone, was implausible. A former co-worker of Ivins and one of the country’s top biowarfare experts, Richard Spertzel, asserted in The Wall Street Journal that Ivins couldn’t have been the culprit because Ivins did not know how to make anthrax of the quality used in the attacks as only 4-5 people in the entire country, Spertzel being one of them, knew how to do so. Spertzel asserted that one of those 4-5 people would have needed at least a year as well as a full lab and a staff dedicate to the task in order to produce the Anthrax used.
In an attempt to mollify mounting criticism, Mueller announced in September 2008 that a panel from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) would independently review the FBI’s “smoking gun” scientific analyses that had led them to accuse Ivins. However, the FBI abruptly closed the case in 2010, well before the panel could conclude its review, and stood by its controversial assertion that Ivins had acted as a “lone wolf” and that anthrax from a flask in Ivins’ lab was “conclusively identified as the parent material to the anthrax powder used in the mailings.”
When the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) did release its review of the FBI’s scientific findings a year later in 2011, it found that the Bureau’s “smoking gun” scientific evidence against Ivins was actually very inconclusive and they also identified several still, unresolved issues with the FBI’s analyses for which the Bureau could not provide an explanation.
However, because Ivins had died before the FBI’s scientific case could go to trial, the FBI’s claims would never be challenged in court. David Relman, vice chairman of the National Academy study committee, later told ProPublica that Ivins’ trial would have been the only way the FBI’s claims “could have been weighed and challenged by experts.”
The NAS study was not the only independent report that challenged the FBI’s case against Ivins after his apparent suicide. In 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its own analysis of the FBI investigation and concluded that the FBI’s approach lacked consistency, adequate standards and precision. The GAO report ultimately supported the NAS’ conclusion that the scientific evidence did not definitely prove Ivins to be the culprit.
The conclusions of both the NAS and GAO reports show that the FBI’s “smoking gun” against Ivins – its scientific analyses – were hardly a smoking gun as they were just as circumstantial as the rest of the Bureau’s evidence against the scientist. This, of course, makes the timing of the FBI’s decision to close the case, a year before any independent analysis of its evidence against Ivins could be completed, significant.
A FAMILIAR CAST OF CHARACTERS
Key players in Dark Winter would also end up playing a role in the FBI Amerithrax investigation and Bush administration efforts to link them to a foreign, rather than a domestic, source. For instance, as increasingly desperate efforts were made to link the anthrax attacks to Al Qaeda in early 2002, an “independent” team from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies argued that the anthrax attackers were linked to Al Qaeda, citing a diagnosis made by a Florida doctor in June 2001 that alleged 9/11 hijacker Ahmed al-Haznawi had a skin lesion that was “consistent with cutaneous anthrax.”
Yet, this team from Johns Hopkins was – in reality — far from independent, as it was led by Dark Winter co-authors Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby. However, their association with Dark Winter and their September 2001 meeting with Dick Cheney went unmentioned as media outlets ran with O’Toole and Inglesby’s assertion that al-Haznawi’s allegedly anthrax-related lesion “raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks.” Other scientists and analysts as well as the FBI challenged and rejected their claims.
Another Dark Winter figure involved in the Amerithrax case was current Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert Kadlec, who became an adviser on biological warfare to the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon in the days after 9/11. Kadlec’s official biography states that he “contributed to the FBI investigation of the anthrax letter attacks,” though it’s unclear exactly what those contributions were, beyond having met at least once with scientists at Fort Detrick in November 2001. Whatever his contributions were, Kadlec has long been an emphatic supporter of the official narrative regarding Bruce Ivins, who he has referred to as a “deranged scientist” and the sole culprit behind the attacks. Kadlec has also used the official narrative about Ivins to assert that bioweapons have been “democratized,” which he argues means that weaponized pathogens can be wielded by essentially anyone with “a few thousand dollars” and enough time on their hands.
Notably, Kadlec isn’t the only key figure in the current U.S. government response to Covid-19 to have ties to the botched FBI investigation as current HHS Secretary Alex Azar was also involved in the FBI investigation. In addition, Azar stated at a White House press briefing in 2018 that he had been “personally involved in much of managing the response [to the anthrax attacks]” as then-General counsel to HHS.
Yet, given that the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks and the government response to them were so disastrous and heavily criticized by independent and mainstream media alike, it is surprising that Azar and Kadlec would so proudly tout their involvement in that fiasco, especially considering that the scientific analyses used in that investigation were fatally flawed and, by all indications, led to the death of an innocent man.
While such credentials in a “normal” world would be grounds for exclusion from public service, they apparently have the opposite effect when it comes to post-2001 HHS policy and U.S. biodefense policy, which – especially following 2001 – has championed the interests and profits of corporate pharmaceutical companies and the apocalyptic vision of bioweapons held by war hawks and perpetual Cold Warriors. This latter category, of course, includes members of the now-defunct PNAC, who infamously referred to racially-targeted bioweapons as a “politically useful tool” in a now infamous 2000 document, and their ideological descendants.
As the next installment of this series will show, Dark Winter participant and 2001 anthrax attack insider Jerome Hauer epitomizes this merging of perpetual hawkishness and corporate pharmaceutical interests, as he has long held (and continues to occupy) key board positions of the very pharmaceutical company that not only sold tens of millions of anthrax vaccine doses to HHS following the 2001 anthrax attacks, but is now a partner in the development of the majority of vaccines, drugs and experimental treatments currently under development in the United States for the treatment of Covid-19.

[Lauren Johnson]

THE THREE COMPANIES BEHIND THE LEADING PROPOSAL TO BUILD A “NATIONAL CORONAVIRUS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM”, AN INITIATIVE SPEARHEADED BY JARED KUSHNER, BOAST DEEP TIES TO GOOGLE, INTELLIGENCE-LINKED VENTURE CAPITAL FIRMS AS WELL AS ONE OF LAST YEAR’S EERILY PREDICTIVE “PANDEMIC” SIMULATIONS.

On April 7, Politico reported that the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was spearheading an all-private sector taskforce that aims to build a “national coronavirus surveillance system” in order to “give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what.”

This proposed nationwide network, according to that report, would be used to better inform government decision-making regarding which parts of the United States may “safely relax social-distancing rules” and those that may not. Politico treaded lightly in its discussion of such a system’s likely effects on civil liberties, but did note that some critics have compared this proposed system “to the Patriot act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.”

According to Politico, three companies collectively sent out a memo on March 22 to three administration officials – Jared Kushner, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. The memo was “widely circulated” throughout the administration relative to other submitted proposals. Those companies – Collective Medical, PatientPing and Juvare – asserted in the memo that they could collectively “supply the government with information on where and how many patients are seeking care across 80 percent of the U.S. ‘in short order.’”

Two of those companies, Collective Medical Technologies and PatientPing, declined to comment on the memo and its contents. A representative from Juvare, however, stated that the company has “spoken with officials across several federal agencies including FEMA, HHS and the CDC about its various emergency preparedness and data tools.”

Though the article downplayed the privacy concerns such a system would create, it failed to note the direct and troubling ties of these three companies, not only to Silicon Valley giants with dubious records regarding data privacy and coordination with U.S. intelligence agencies, but also ties to controversial simulations that took place last year and seemingly predicted the current coronavirus crisis.

COLLECTIVE MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES
Utah-based Collective Medical Technologies is currently the nation’s largest “healthcare collaboration network” and was recently described by Forbes as having “conquered emergency rooms on a bootstrap.” Its current CEO, Chris Klomp, worked at the Mitt Romney-founded Bain Capital, whose alumni also include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and current CEO of Google’s YouTube Susan Wojicki.

One of Collective Medical’s largest investors is the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, which poured $47.5 million into the company in 2017. Kleiner Perkins, an early investor in both Google and Amazon, counts former Secretary of State Colin Powell among its “strategic advisors” and has managed a $200 million “pandemic and biodefense fund” since 2006 that has been coordinated in part with the World Health Organization. That same year, Dr. Thomas Monmath, former chief of the Fort Detrick bioweapon lab’s Virology Division and former senior science advisor to the CIA, also joined Kleiner Perkins to help “advance innovation” in relation to this specific fund. Dr. Monmath is also a former executive at an Emergent Biosolutions subsidiary.

Kleiner Perkin’s pandemic fund has heavily invested in companies that compose the Emergent Biosolutions-run Alliance for Biosecurity, such as BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, as well as NovaVax, which recently entered into a major partnership with Emergent Biosolutions to produce a coronavirus vaccine. Emergent Biosolutions, one of the most scandal ridden vaccine companies in the country with deep ties to the U.S. government and the Pentagon, is the subject of an investigation recently published by The Last American Vagabond.

PATIENTPING
Boston-based PatientPing is another company in this private sector triad lobbying to form a new national “health” surveillance system in the name of combatting the coronavirus epidemic. Founded by Jay Desai and David Berkowicz, PatientPing is a technology company focused on information-sharing in order to create a “healthcare collaboration network.” The company’s first lead investor was Google Ventures, often referred to in press releases and media reports simply as “GV.” Dr. Krishna Yeshwant of Google Ventures sits on PatientPing’s board and he also led GV’s investment in Editas Medicine, the CRISPR gene-editing start-up backed by Bill Gates and his former scientific advisor Boris Nikolic.

As its name suggests, GV is the venture capital arm of Google and over a third of its investments are in the “life sciences.” It frequently co-invests in companies with In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. The cooperation is hardly surprising if one is aware of Google’s history, as the technology behemoth was a beneficiary of In-Q-Tel funding in its early days.

Google’s use (or rather misuse) of private data is well-known and they have recently been in the news in relation to the coronavirus after giving the government broad access to the private location data of Android smartphone users to allegedly help track the virus’ spread. GV’s association with In-Q-Tel and their interest in a company like PatientPing is notable given that In-Q-Tel, particularly In-Q-Tel’s current Executive Vice President Tara O’Toole, has long promoted mass surveillance programs that utilize healthcare IT services just like those offered by PatientPing and Collective Medical Technologies. O’Toole is a key and recurrent figure in The Last American Vagabond’s “Engineering Contagion” series.

PatientPing’s other lead investor is the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz. Andreesen Horowitz is advised by former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, an associate of pedophile and intelligence asset Jeffery Epstein as well as billionaire Bill Gates. This same venture capital firm is also one of the lead investors in Toka, an Israeli intelligence-linked “start-up” founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was also a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. Toka describes its product portfolio as “empower[ing] governments, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies to enhance Homeland Security with groundbreaking cyber-intelligence and operational capabilities” by allowing government’s covert access to consumer electronic devices. Two members of Andreesen Horowitz, Jeff Jordan and Vijay Pande, sit on PatientPing’s board.

JUVARE
The last of the three companies poised to build a national coronavirus surveillance system is the emergency management software company Juvare. One of their key products is called EMTrack, which – according to Juvare’s website – provides its clients the ability to track “patients, people, pets and populations throughout any kind of event.” Its software, in general, relies heavily on Google-made or owned software.

Juvare boasts that its products have been used by the government to coordinate responses to mass shootings, such as the Las Vegas and Pulse Nightclub shootings, and past pandemic scares such as Swine Flu (H1N1), Bird Flu, Ebola and SARS. Juvare’s software products are used by 80% of state public health agencies and over 50 different U.S. federal agencies – including the FBI, the State Department and Homeland Security. It is also a contractor for the U.S. military. In Mid-March, it released a “free” software add-on for existing clients in government to track coronavirus cases including “presumptive cases” as well as the number of those under “mandatory and voluntary” quarantines.

Juvare was a notable private sector participant in the series of “Crimson Contagion” simulations that were conducted last year by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Crimson Contagion, overseen and designed by HHS Assistance Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Robert Kadlec (also a key player in the “Engineering Contagion” series), simulated the U.S. government’s response to a massive viral pandemic four times between last January and August. Those simulations involved both large and small-scale exercises that brought together 19 different federal agencies, 12 states and several private companies. One focus of those simulations, which preceded the coronavirus crisis by a matter of months, was the use of the surveillance in order to better enforce “social distancing” among Americans.

HERE TO HELP?
Though these private companies – as noted by Politico – are now offering their services of “surveillance” to the U.S. government “for free,” it is difficult to believe that their offer is altruistic in nature given their ties to companies and organizations that have long lobbied for or actively participated in mass surveillance for years, long before the current coronavirus came to dominate headlines and the public consciousness.

Much like the Patriot Act after 9/11, the current pandemic crisis is being used to expand mass surveillance programs, programs that are unlikely to end after the pandemic fades. To the contrary, if history is any indicator, such sweeping new surveillance systems will instead be further expanded.

It is also worth pointing out the significance of Jared Kushner’s involvement in leading this effort, as his wife Ivanka Trump – the President’s daughter – was one of the leading proponents of a controversial program last year called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA). HARPA seeks to create a new government “health” agency aimed at stopping mass shootings before they occur. This agency’s main program, called “Safe Home” (Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes), aims to develop an artificial intelligence-based system that would analyze data harvested from consumer electronic devices as well as information provided by health-care providers to identify those who might threaten others.

Though HARPA ultimately failed to gain traction, a similarly Orwellian mass surveillance system is now being promoted in its place, with coronavirus now replacing mass shootings as the official justification. The superficial re-branding of this new, far-reaching mass surveillance system aims to justify its imposition by framing it as a solution to whatever is currently inspiring the most fear among Americans, with the hope that something sticks. These transparent attempts to gain public consent for further expansion of unconstitutional surveillance strongly suggests that such a system is aimed at expanding authoritarianism and further reducing American civil liberties and has little to do with protecting “public health” and assisting the country’s response to coronavirus.

[David Guyatt]

A very curious document was published on 30 January 2020 well before Covid-19 became the all dancing and all consuming beast it is today in the West.  The original publication site is no longer, but the article still is available at a few other sites.  It is evident that the writer (who uses the alias Adrian Bond - along with a Bond type logo) is very knowledgeable about the subject matter and has taken a considerable amount of time to write this piece.  Although the article is listed as being "Part 1" it seems clear he/she/they are not going to come back out of the rabbit hole to post a follow up

Here goes: (Source: http://archive.is/F04r7) I add the source since the html is displayed and makes it difficult to read)

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Coronavirus Exposed, Part 1: Communist Coverup, or Pandemic Bioweapon of Mass Destruction?[/color]

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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Adrian Bond
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Follow[/color][/color]


[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Jan 27 · 51 min read[/color]
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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, able to enter and infect human cells’ ACE2 receptor via its spike protein.[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]The official story about Coronavirus 2019 nCoV is that it “appears to have originated in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, a Chinese city about 650 miles south of Beijing that has a population of more than 11 million people.” This tale has been officially reported as early as January 9th by CCP’s state-owned and operated news channel, Xinhuanet, [i]New-type coronavirus causes pneumonia in Wuhan: expert[/i], reported by local Chinese authorities to the US National Library of Medicine database, [i]Outbreak of Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology in Wuhan China: the Mystery and the Miracle[/i]and to the International Journal of Infectious Diseases database, [i]The continuing 2019-nCoV epidemic threat of novel coronaviruses to global health — The latest 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China[/i].[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Claims of surprise by Chinese scientists and State officials are arguably inauthentic[/b][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]But let’s take a deeper look at the glaring discrepancies in the official story to the underlying and background reality of coronaviruses, especially in the SARS-scarred land of China. [i]The Sun[/i] reports that the current consensus centers on the belief that the origin of the coronavirus outbreak is linked to bat soup sold at the market. However, the article states that experts “had thought the new virus wasn’t capable of causing an epidemic as serious as [previous deadly outbreaks of SARS and Ebola] because its genes were different,” something that simply isn’t true. In 2006, renowned virologist Professor Zhengli Shi co-authored the study, [i]Review of Bats and SARS[/i][i], [/i]concluding that “a SARS epidemic may recur in the future and that SARS-like coronaviruses (SL-CoVs) that originate from different reservoir host populations may lead to epidemics at different times or in different regions…. The recent discovery of a group of diverse SL-CoVs in bats support the possibility of these events….”[/color]

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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Bowl of hot, delicious bat soup served at Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China.[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]A concurrent article published in the [i]South China Morning Post[/i] on January 22, 2020, entitled [i]Coronavirus weaker than SARS but may share link to bats, Chinese scientists say[/i] reports the latest findings on the coronavirus by scientists at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “The scientists’ findings, published on Tuesday, suggested that the danger posed by the pneumonia-like virus may have been underestimated by the research community.” However, Prof. Zhengli and her co-authors published a study early last year on March 2, 2019 entitled [i]Bat Coronaviruses in China[/i] which explicitly warned,[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]“During the past two decades, three zoonotic coronaviruses have been identified as the cause of large-scale disease outbreaks⁻Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome (SADS). SARS and MERS emerged in 2003 and 2012, respectively, and caused a worldwide pandemic that claimed thousands of human lives, while SADS struck the swine industry in 2017. They have common characteristics, such as they are all highly pathogenic to humans or livestock, their agents originated from bats, and two of them originated in China. [b]Thus, it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China[/b]. Therefore, the investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs, which in turn minimizes the impact of such future outbreaks in China” (emphasis added).[/i][/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]The [i]South China Morning Post[/i] article continues with the beguiling assertion, “Previously, most scientists believed the new virus could not cause an epidemic as serious as that of SARS because its genes were quite different. But the new study found that, like SARS, the virus targeted a protein called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).” Apparently, the virology scientific community not only failed to heed Prof. Zhengli’s explicit, recent dire warnings about the “high likelihood” that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks would originate from bats — they also ignored Zhengli’s incredibly pertinent report published ten years ago in July, 2010, [i]Identification of key amino acid residues required for horseshoe bat angiotensin-I converting enzyme 2 to function as a receptor for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus[/i]. The study’s abstract can’t be clearer on the immunological risks associated with protein ACE2, with its obvious liability for usurpation by viral agents with a little modified genome sequencing:[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]“Angiotensin-I converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is the receptor for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus (SARS-CoV). A previous study indicated that ACE2 from a horseshoe bat, the host of a highly related SARS-like coronavirus, could not function as a receptor for SARS-CoV. Here, we demonstrate that a 3 aa change from SHE (aa 40–42) to FYQ was sufficient to convert the bat ACE2 into a fully functional receptor for SARS-CoV. We further demonstrate that an ACE2 molecule from a fruit bat, which contains the FYQ motif, was able to support SARS-CoV infection, indicating a potentially much wider host range for SARS-CoV-related viruses among different bat populations.”[/i][/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]This old but remarkable study concludes that only a minor genome sequence change was required to convert a non-susceptible bat ACE2 protein into a functional receptor for SARS-CoV, something that could easily happen in nature. “Considering that there are more than 60 different horseshoe [bat] species around the world (Flanders et al., 2009; Rossiter et al., 2007), it is possible that one or some of them may serve as the natural reservoir of SARS-CoV and/or its progenitor virus(es).” Why is it that current State virologists are apparently ignorant of these essential discoveries of yesteryear?[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]The [i]South China Morning Post[/i] article cited above summarizes two primary known facts about the new coronavirus: first, that a “virus found in fruit bats is [the] common ancestor of the two strains [Coronavirus 2019-nCoV and SARS],” and that this “new strain has [an] unusually high ability to bind to a human protein.” And the new study on Coronavirus 2019-nCoV by the joint research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the People’s Liberation Army, and Institut Pasteur of Shanghai indeed found that, like SARS, the virus targeted the ACE2 protein. It’s just as Prof. Zhengli predicated a decade ago: “…the fact that an ACE2 protein from a megabat, the fruit bat Rousettus leschenaultia, can function as a receptor for SARS-CoV would suggest that the host range for SARS-CoV or SL-CoVs may be much wider than originally thought.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]So what happened — did the virology and surrounding scientific community drop the ball on these well-established findings and warnings, or what? After all, at least as February, 2008, they knew three key facts about ACE2:[/color][/color]

1. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by the SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which uses ACE2 as its receptor for cell entry. SL-CoVs and SARS-CoVs share identical genome organizations and high sequence identities, with the main exception of the N terminus of the spike protein, known to be responsible for receptor binding in CoVs.[/color]
   
   
2. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Whereas the SL-CoV spike protein was unable to use any of the three ACE2 molecules as its receptor, and the SARS-CoV spike protein failed to center cells expressing the bat ACE2, the chimeric spike protein the study created did gain its ability to center cells via human ACE, and[/color]
   
   
3. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]A minimal insert region (amino acids 310 to 518) was found to be sufficient to convert the SL-CoV S from non-ACE2 binding to human ACE2 binding, indicating that the SL-CoV S is largely compatible with SARS-CoV S protein both in structure and in function.[/color]
   

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]We know[/i] they knew these facts way back in 2008 because Prof. Zhengli published the findings of these facts in her report, [i]Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin[/i]. Therein the scientists concluded, “Knowing the capability of different CoVs to recombine both in the laboratory and in nature, the possibility that SL-CoVs may gain the ability to infect human cells by acquiring spike protein sequences competent for binding to ACE2 or other surface proteins of human cells can be readily envisaged.” Thus, it seems strange and perhaps even disingenuous that the new joint CCP government-joint Coronavirus 2019-nCoV task force is seemingly ignorant about coronavirus targeting the ACE2 protein, apparently pretending it’s only just now discovered this. After all, Zhengli’s 2008 report was quite clear about the role that this ACE2 protein would play in future pandemics: the study “strengthened our belief that ACE2 from certain bat species could be able to support SARS-CoV infection because of the predicted genetic diversity of bat ACE2 variants in different bat species.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]What is the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, where is it, and why is it pertinent?[/b][/color]

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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, the only P4 lab in China, headquartered at Wuhan Institute of Virology.[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]At any rate, the forgoing storyline is the official word on Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, manifesting itself somehow in a seafood market in Wuhan. But what else might be found in Wuhan? After all, Wuhan is the capital city of the Hubei Province, home to some 11 million Chinese citizens. Well, curiously underreported is the fact that China’s first high-level biosafety laboratory is located just 8.6 miles away. “Used to study class four pathogens (P4), which refer to the most virulent viruses that pose a high risk of aerosol-transmitted person-to-person infections,” Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is the darling, cutting-edge hi-tech baby of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is the only such lab in China where dangerous, highly communicable viruses such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, and assorted coronaviruses can be “safely” toyed with.[/color]

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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]China’s National Biosafety Laboratory, located at Wuhan Institute of Virology, is only 8.6 miles away from the claimed epicenter of the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak. Do you believe in coincidences?[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]What’s odd is that despite completing the decade-long construction and having the official inauguration of this P4 laboratory on January 31, 2015 — announced by the General Office of Hubei Provincial People’s Government, it wasn’t until 2 and 1/2 years later in January 2018, that the Chinese government announced that the lab was actually in operation. And ahead of the lab’s second opening in January 2018, biosafety experts and scientists from the United States expressly warned “that a SARS-like virus could escape,” much in the same way the SARS virus had escaped multiple times from a lab in Beijing.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]So what on earth could these scientists have been doing in their brand new, state-of-the-art biotech base for 2 and 1/2 years, if it wasn’t officially in operation? And what have they been doing since their second opening in 2018?[/color]

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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Scientists at Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory research coronaviruses, Ebola, and other deadly pathogens.[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Well, storing, researching, and experimenting with numerous fulminant disease pathogens, of course. After all, the lab is “preservation center for virus seeds, a fulminant disease pathogen storage facility, a reference laboratory of WHO, a node for disease network, and finally…a core in China’s emerging disease research network.” Basically, in all of China, Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is the [i]only[/i] place to store and experiment with the most lethal, most virulent, most rapidly-spreading disease pathogens known to humanity. The lab is in “the central region of Central China, with mountains at three directions, convenient transportation and relatively independent environment” [sic]. And convenient it is, as you can play with Ebola, SARS, Hantavirus, and assorted coronaviruses in the morning…and then hop in your car and have some bat soup for lunch at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on the other side of the Yangtze River. [i]Maybe BYOB — bring your own bat?[/i][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Once Wuhan Institute of Virology formally put their brand new Cellular Level Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory into operation, we can safely take their word that they followed up on their promise to “conduct research for natural focal viruses including Ebola virus and other emerging viruses, such as researches [sic] on rapid detection system, molecular epidemiology, infectious disease etiology, therapeutic antibody, vaccine and drug evaluation, and assessment on biological risk factors, thus building a biosafety platform in China for emerging and fulminant infectious diseases in terms of isolation and identification of pathogen, building of infection models, vaccine development, biological containment and research on mechanism of interaction between pathogen and the host.” And one thing we know they worked on is the [i]Origin and evolution of pathogenic coronaviruses[/i], pioneered by none other than the enormously qualified, highly-decorated, and widely-respected Professor Zhengli Shi, Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Who is Professor Zhengli Shi and what is her relevance to Wuhan Institute of Virology and the National Biosafety Laboratory?[/b][/color]

[/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Professor Zhengli Shi, Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator of Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory.[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]Do you believe in coincidences?[/i] Because it just so happens that Prof. Zhengli has been ardently researching and experimenting with coronaviruses for years at Wuhan Institute of Virology — even before ground was broken over a decade ago on the new P4 National Biosafety Laboratory. Interestingly, the scientist seems uniquely perfect for her role — like a “Neo” figure in a laboratory version of [i]The Matrix[/i]. In fact, Prof. Zhengli has been Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator of Wuhan Insititute of Virology for the last 20 years, initially starting as a Research Assistant in 1990 before upgrading to Research Scientist in 1993, serving in that role until 1995. Aside from a 5-year leave from 1995 to 2000 to get her PhD at University of Montpellier in France, she’s been at the Institute for an amazing 30 years.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Notably, starting in 2014, Prof. Zhengli began to win particularly large sums of grant funding for the express purpose of researching and experimenting with coronaviruses — often receiving numerous, overlapping grants for the same time period. What’s just as interesting is where a lot of this funding originated — the US government. On January 6, 2014, Prof. Zhengli received a US$665,000 grant from the National Institute of Health for a study named [i]The Ecology of Bat Coronaviruses and the Risk of Future Coronavirus Emergence[/i] (NIAID R01 AI1 10964) and then four days later on January 10, 2014, an additional US$559,500 grant from the United States Agency of International Development for research studied entitled [i]Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT 2_China[/i] (Project No. AID-OAA-A-14–00102).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]On top of these lucrative American grants she concurrently received similarly significant grants from the National Basic Research program of China, the Chinese Academy of Science, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and from the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences totaling over US$2,500,000 for researching interspecies transmission of zoonotic viruses, the identification, genetic evolution and pathogenesis of bat viruses, the genetic variation of pathogens in Africa, the evolution mechanism of the adaptation of bat SARS-related coronaviruses to host receptor molecules, the risk of interspecies infection, genetic evolution and transmission mechanism of important bat-borne viruses, and pathogen biology studies on novel swine coronaviruses.[/color]

[/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]In just the past five years alone, Prof. Zhengli Shi has almost US$10 million in grants to study coronaviruses.[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]We can quite safely conclude that when it comes to interspecies coronaviruses, Professor Zhengli Shi is a bona fide Jedi master. In fact, her Wikipedia page credits her and her colleague, Cui Jie, with the actual discovery that the SARS virus originated in bats. Her noted “Research Interests” on her C.V. include “Discovery of unknown viruses in wild animals especially bats, molecular epidemiology of emerging zoonotic viruses, and interspecies infection mechanism of zoonotic viruses.” Prof. Zhengli appears to be one of the world’s leading bat virologists — and most definitely the leading bat virologist in China. Indeed, her C.V. explicitly states,[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]“Prof. Zhengli Shi ’s researches focus on the molecular epidemiology and interspecies infection discovery and characterization of novel viruses in bats and other wildlife. She has gain [sic] rich expertise on pathogen biology of coronaviruses and other emerging viruses of bat origin, virus discovery, virus evolution, and development of diagnostic technologies for emerging viruses. Prof Shi has identified ultimately the animal origin of SARS, by discovering genetically diverse bat SARS related coronaviruses (SARSr CoV), isolating bat SARSr CoVs highly homologous to SARS CoV that are able to the same receptor [sic] as SARS CoV, and revealing the potential recombination origin of SARS CoV. She has discovered a large number of novel viruses from Chinese bat populations, including viruses with potential public health significance.”[/i][/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Unsurprisingly, Prof. Zhengli has been featured as a key presenter at over two dozen international virology conferences, the latest being [i]From SARS to SADS: predict of emerging infectious diseases[/i], held at UC Berkeley in the summer of 2018. Her presentations at the next five most recent conferences [i]all relate specifically to the genetic evolution and interspecies infection of bat coronaviruses. [/i]A complete list of Prof. Zhengli’s conference presentations may be found in Appendix B.[/color]

[/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Nearly all of Prof. Zhengli’s recent conference presentations relate to bat coronaviruses. Do you believe in coincidences?[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Prof. Zhengli has been or is currently a professional member of the Chinese Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2000–2016), the Chinese Society for Microbiology (2002-present), the American Society for Microbiology (2007-present), and the Scientific Committee of the DIVERSITAS ecoHEALTH Core Project (2014–2016). She has served on the Editorial Board of [i]Virologica Sinica[/i] (2016–2016), on the Editorial Board of Journal of [i]Medical Virology[/i] (2015–2017), and on the Editorial Board of [i]Virology[/i] (2017–2019). She was Associate Editor of [i]Virology Journal[/i] (2016–2018), and Editor-in-Chief of [i]Virologica Sinica[/i] (2017–2019). Prof. Zhengli is also the recipient of numerous, prestigious awards and honors, including the Natural Science Award of Hubei Province, China (First Prize and Second Prize), Outstanding Scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Outstanding Research Article on Natural Science (Grand Prize and Second Prize).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]OK, but how is Prof. Zhengli relevant to the current new outbreak of Coronavirus 2019-nCoV?[/b][/color]

[/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak in Wuhan, China — where the National Biosafety Laboratory is located — causes a massive quarantine of 11 million citizens.[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Chinese scientists, researchers, and doctors examining the emergent 2019-nCoV Coronavirus report that the new viral menace appears to be “a recombinant virus between the bat coronavirus and an origin-unknown coronavirus. The recombination occurred within the viral spike glycoprotein, which recognizes cell surface receptor.” But Prof. Zhengli appears to have worked with recombinant Coronavirus derivations involving viral spike proteins for over a decade at Wuhan Institute of Virology, all the way back to 2006 and up to as recently as December, 2019 — [i]the very month that 2019-nCoV Coronavirus was first reported as having infected visitors at Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market just down the road from her laboratory![/i][/color]

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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]The day before the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak, this report was published. Do you believe in coincidences?[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In fact, [b][i]on the day before[/i][/b] the new coronavirus would find its first victims just 8.6 miles away at the market on December 12, 2019, Prof. Zhengli and her team published the study entitled [i]Molecular mechanism for antibody-dependent enhancement of coronavirus entry on December 11, 2019. [/i]The abstract reads,[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]“Coronavirus spike protein mediates viral entry into cells by first binding to a receptor on host cell surface and then fusing viral and host membranes. Our study reveals a novel molecular mechanism for antibody-enhanced viral entry and can guide future vaccination and antiviral strategies. This study reveals complex roles of antibodies in viral entry and can guide future vaccine design and antibody-based drug therapy.”[/i][/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]And [b][i]immediately[/i] [i]after[/i][/b] this study was published — literally the following day — the first victims became infected with what would soon be named Coronavirus 2019-nCoV began to get infected…just a few miles away from Prof. Zhengli’s laboratory. And as [i]The Sun[/i] reports, victims of the new coronavirus are infected via a strong binding affinity to a human protein called ACE2,” in precisely the identical manner as Prof. Zhengli’s just-discovered “novel molecular mechanism” identified (or engineered) literally weeks if not days before. [i]Do you believe in coincidences?[/i][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Let’s say that’s just a coincidence Prof. Zhengli published a study or two specifically on bat coronaviruses. Have there been others?[/b][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]How much time you got?[/i] The above study, specifically relating to human host cell binding and entry of coronavirus infection, and published [i]the day before[/i]the first viral infections were reported at a location adjacent Prof. Zhengli’s laboratory, is [i]far[/i] from the only study in which she has directed on the subject. The scientist’s entire virology history is rife with hands-on experience with coronaviruses, with especial attention devoted to understanding their spike protein properties, as related to potentiality of human cell entry and infection. In June 2016’s study, [i]Bat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus WIV1 Encodes an Extra Accessory Protein, ORFX, Involved in Modulation of the Host Immune Response[/i] she writes that what was important was that bats “harbor genetically diverse SARS-like coronaviruses (SL-CoVs), and some of them have the potential for interspecies transmission.” She further states that her team created a “reverse genetics system” that would be helpful for “study of the pathogenesis of this group of viruses and to develop therapeutics for future control of emerging SARS-like infections.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In a letter to the editor of [i]SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences[/i] published in November, 2017, entitled [i]Cross-neutralization of SARS coronavirus-specific antibodies against bat SARS-like coronaviruses[/i], Prof. Zhengli warns that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) is considered to be an emerging zoonotic pathogen crossing species barriers to infect humans, and that the spike protein of the virus’ RNA genome plays a key role in human cellular entry.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In that same month, the results of a study Prof. Zhengli conducted, [i]Serological evidence of bat SARS-related coronavirus infection in humans, China[/i] indicated that some SARSr-CoVs may have high potential to infect human cells, without the necessity for an intermediate host.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In 2016, one of the Directors at Wuhan Institute of Virology posted the annual [i]Director’s Message[/i][i],[/i] of which the following finding was the top announcement: “The live SARS-like coronavirus SL-CoV-WIV1 has been isolated for the first time from the bat droppings; and such virus has been confirmed to invade the host cells through the ACE2 of human beings, civets and Rhinolophus sinicus. The research result has so far provided the most convincing evidence to the view that Rhinolophus sinicus is the natural host of SARS-CoV (Nature, 2013).” [i]Does this not sound precisely like Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, which invades the host cells through the ACE2 protein? [/i]At any rate, since Prof. Zhengli is Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator of both the Emerging Viruses Group and the National Biosafety Laboratory, this is squarely her turf; the current outbreak seems amazingly similar.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In a study conducted in September of 2015, [i]Two Mutations Were Critical for Bat-to-Human Transmission of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus[/i], Prof. Zhengli and team successfully achieved viral entry (bat-to-human transmission)of bat coronavirus HKU4 via its spike protein by performing two small mutations. Doing so also helped explain how MERS coronavirus was able to infect humans as well.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]It was in 2015’s study, [i]Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome[/i][i] Coronavirus[/i] that Prof. Zhengli and team highlighted “the likelihood of future bat coronavirus emergence in humans” by isolating a new bat coronavirus closer to SARS-CoV in genomic sequence, particularly in its spike gene. “Cell entry and susceptibility studies indicated that this virus can…infect animal and human cell lines,” they concluded.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]And in 2010’s [i]Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) proteins of different bat species confer variable susceptibility to SARS-CoV entry[/i] Prof Zhengli and her team of scientists “extended [their] previous study to ACE2 molecules from seven additional bat species and tested their interactions with human SARS-CoV spike protein using both HIV-based pseudotype and live SARS-CoV infection assays.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Even earlier in 2010, Prof. Zhengli published, [i]Bat and virus[/i], a keystone study identifying bats “as a natural reservoir of emerging and reemerging infectious pathogens,” emphasizing that an astonishing amount (more than 70, at the time) and genetic diversity of viruses isolated from the bat have been identified in different populations throughout the world. She stresses that many viruses were found in apparently healthy bats, suggesting that bats may have a particularly robust immune system or “antiviral activity against virus infections.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In 2009’s [i]Immunogenicity difference between the SARS coronavirus and the bat SARS-like coronavirus spike (S) proteins[/i], Prof. Zhengli and her team concluded “SARS-like coronavirus (SL-CoV) in bats have a similar genomic organization to the human SARS-CoV.” And notably, that this work “provides useful information for future development of differential serologic diagnosis and vaccines for coronaviruses with different S [spike] protein sequences.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Prof. Zhengli’s research in 2009’s [i]Differential stepwise evolution of SARS coronavirus functional proteins in different host species[/i] produced results that supported the hypothesis that “SARS-CoV originated from bats and that the spill over into civets and humans were more recent events.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Moving even further back in time to 2007, Prof. Zhengli worked on [i]Determination and application of immunodominant regions of SARS coronavirus spike and nucleocapsid proteins recognized by sera from different animal species[/i], producing assays that would be a “useful tool to trace the origin and transmission of SARS-CoV and to minimise the risk of animal-to-human transmission.”[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]It appears that 2006 was the year Prof. Zhengli first researched recombinant spike proteins along with other distinctive genome sequences resulting from the interaction of bat, palm civet, and human isolates. “Full-length genome sequences of two SARS-like coronaviruses in horseshoe bats and genetic variation analysis.” Basically, she is tremendously versatile and adept in her research whenever she encounters these recombinant spikes proteins in viral interactions.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Moreover, it’s not just coronaviruses from bats that she and her team have discovered and explored, but also diverse novel viruses/virus antibodies in bats, including adenoviruses, adeno-associated viruses, circoviruses, paramyxoviruses, and filoviruses. In fact, Prof. Zhengli has coauthored over an astounding 130 publications on viral pathogen identification, diagnosis and epidemiology — nearly all of which commandeered at Wuhan Institute of Virology where the National Biosafety Laboratory is located and where she reigns as Head of the Department. In fact, on the World Society for Virology website, Prof. Zhengli’s profile confirms that one of her great contributions was to “uncover genetically diverse SARS-like coronaviruses in bats with her international collaborators and provide unequivocal evidence that bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-CoV.” Thus, her adeptness in the specialized field of bat virology — especially where transmission to humans is concerned — is inarguable.[/color][/color]

[David Guyatt]

Source: http://archive.is/F04r7

Continuing (it's a long article)

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Such an expansive personal history of expertise into coronaviruses is not only impressive, but unique, and the bulk of her 30-year career at Wuhan Institute Virology seems to have been dedicated primarily to the examination and exploration of all facets of interspecies (though primarily bat) pathogenic infection of coronaviruses into human host cells. For reference, you can check Appendix A for the sum total of all her published (or otherwise unclassified or declassified) studies at the end of this essay. Prof. Zhengli’s absolute mastery of bat-to-human transmission of viruses via their spike protein binding with human cell receptors is virtually conclusive and unrivalled.
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Unanswered Questions About the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV Outbreak in Wuhan[/b][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In Prof. Zhengli’s March 2019 study, [i]Bat Coronaviruses in China[/i], she proves seemingly prophetic, writing that it was “highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China. Therefore, the investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs, which in turn minimizes the impact of such future outbreaks in China.” Just nine months later, 2019-nCoV rears its viral head, less than 10 miles from her labatory: [i]how did Prof. Zhengli know?[/i][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]The Sun[/i] cited a [i]Nature.com[/i] report voicing warnings given back in 2017 “that a deadly SARS-like virus could escape from lab [sic] in Wuhan set up to study some of the world’s deadliest diseases.” The worries surrounding Wuhan’s laboratory surfaced almost an entire year before the Chinese government announced its official commencement of operation in January, 2018. And likely with good cause, as the “SARS virus [had] escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey.” However, the article in [i]The Sun[/i] exaggerates the distance from Wuhan’s National Biosafety Laboratory to Huanan Market, erroneously claiming that it’s 20 miles away, instead of 8.6 miles, and also states that Dr. Ebright reportedly said “at this point there’s no reason to harbor suspicious that the facility had anything to do with the outbreak.” [i]Seriously? Does Dr. Ebright believe in coincidences?[/i][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Another new article from [i]The Sun[/i] published January 23, 2020, reports a “new study was carried out jointly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the People’s Liberation Army and Institut Pasteur of Shanghai, revealing that the coronavirus has a strong binding affinity to a human protein called ACE2.” But Zhengli and her team mates have been aware of the susceptibility of ACE2 to SARS and coronavirus infection for at least the last ten years, publishing their studies with the US National Library of Medicine and with other prominent industry repositories.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]So we are left with the following pressing, unanswered questions about Prof. Zhengli, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, and the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak in Wuhan:[/color][/color]
[/color]

1. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Why are the Chinese authorities seemingly ignoring the Wuhan Institute Virology’s contemporaneous coronavirus study (culminating in a Dec. 11, 2019 report, published[i] the day before[/i] the outbreak) conducted at the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, located just 8.6 miles distant from the claimed epicenter of pandemic origin, Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market? [i]Why is the media not reporting this?[/i][/color]
   
   
   
2. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Why are most media reports covering the coronavirus still misreporting the source of the virus’ genome sequence as snakes instead of bats?[/color]
   
   
   
3. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Since the Wuhan Institute of Virology has already isolated live, novel SARS-like Coronavirus SL-CoV-WIV1 from bat droppings in 2016, and such virus has been confirmed to invade the host cells through the ACE2 of human beings just like the new, emergent Coronavirus 2019-nCoV — have the two coronaviruses been compared with each other? [i]Was there a vaccine developed from Coronavirus SL-CoV-WIV1 that can be tested on victims of the latest outbreak?[/i] After all, it’s been about four years now.[/color]
   
   
   
4. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Has any formal investigation been launched into any role the Wuhan Institute of Virology (and specifically, its Classification P4 Biosafety Laboratory) may have played in the pandemic outbreak?[/color]
   
   
   
5. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Did the new coronavirus penetrate the biosecurity measures of Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory? Did some bats mount a successful escape?[/color]
   
   
   
6. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Did any scientists, researchers, professors, observers, students, or other staff persons working at or visiting the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory visit the Huanan Seafood Market in the first twelve days of December, 2019?[/color]
   
   
   
7. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Since the original technology for viral confinement at the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory was developed in France, and since most of its actual, functional equipment was imported from France — has the laboratory received ongoing certification inspections from French officials, given its lengthy, ongoing activities using Class 4 pathogens (P4) — the most virulent viruses that pose the highest risk of aerosol-transmitted person-to-person infections? If so, where are the certification test results?[/color]
   
   
   
8. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Has the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory been regularly inspected and audited by Chinese government health officials, especially by Li Bin, minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission? If so, where are the inspection and audit results?[/color]
   
   
   
9. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Could there have been either a staff person or visitor who smuggled out the coronavirus from the laboratory? (After all, a Chinese national was just arrested at Harvard University for attempting to smuggle research vials back to China at the same time when the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak started.)[/color]
   
   
   
10. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]At any time did Prof. Zhengli Shi — who simultaneously currently holds the multiple titles of Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator, Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Director of BSL-3 Labatory, Director of the Committee of Biosafety, Director of Chinese Academy Sciences (CAS) Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, and Vice Director of BSL-4 Laboratory at Wuhan Institute of Virology, CAS — ever work directly or indirectly for the CCP military services or military intelligence community?[/color]
    
    
    
11. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Did Prof. Zhengli previously or does she currently co-conduct, coparticipate, collaborate, or collude with CCP military service members or military intelligence members?[/color]
    
    
    
12. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Do members of the CCP military services or military intelligence contribute or participate in any manner or conduct viral research at the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory?[/color]
    
    
    
13. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Why did the US National Institute of Health (NIH) grant Prof. Zhengli $665,000 in 2014 to fund her study, [i]The ecology of bat coronaviruses and the risk of future coronavirus emergence[/i]? What did the US receive in return?[/color]
    
    
    
14. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Why did the United States Agency of International Development grant Prof. Zhengli $559,500 to fund her study, [i]Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT 2_China[/i]? What did the US receive in return?[/color]
    
    
    
15. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Why did Prof. Zhengli receive funding from U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (the agency which deals specifically with [b]Weapons of Mass Destruction[/b]), the U.S. Biological Defense Research Directorate of the Naval Medical Research Center, and the Department of Atomic of the Government of India?[/color]
    
    
    
16. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]What other professional relationships with U.S. defense agencies does Prof. Zhengli have currently, or previously, in any capacity?[/color]
    
    
    
17. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]When Prof. Zhengli received a visa to the United States to present at the [i]Cell Symposium: Emerging and Re-emerging Viruses 2017[/i] conference in Arlington, Virginia, did she visit the Pentagon or meet with Pentagon officials, since it was less than a mile away?[/color]
    
    
    
18. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]When Prof. Zhengli received a visa to the United States to present at the US-China Workshop on Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases conference at UC Berkeley in 2018, did she visit Federal research facility, Lawrence-Berkeley-Livermore Laboratory — in particular, the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute — or meet with government officials, since it was only a mile and a half away?[/color]
    
    
    
19. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Of Prof. Zhengli’s 130 published scientific studies, 5 of them are not to be found anywhere. Why are they not public? [i]Are they classified?[/i][/color]
    
    
    
20. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Has Prof. Zhengli (or any other staff, resident or guest scientists, researchers, students, visitors, or others) at the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, or at Wuhan Institute of Virology in general, collaborated, participated with, colluded with, or in any way professionally acted in concert or collusion with, or in any way worked with or for, the World Economic Forum, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Pilbright Institute, the European Commission, the World Health Organization, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, or the John Hopkins Center for Health Security?[/color]
    
    
    
21. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Prof. Zhengli recently (January 23, 2020) claimed to know very little about the latest epidemic outbreak, including basic biology, animal source, or any specific treatment, and indicated she doesn’t know if ACE2 targeting drugs could treat Coronavirus 2019-nCoV infected victims. How can this be the case, given that she has studied human ACE2/coronavirus interaction for many years — even most recently in her study immediately preceding the outbreak — as reported in Prof. Zhengli’s study published the day immediately preceding the outbreak? “The full-length genes of MERS-CoV spike (GenBank accession number 415 AFS88936.1), SARS-CoV spike (GenBank accession number AFR58742), human DPP4 416 (GenBank accession number NM_001935.3) and human ACE2 (GenBank accession 417 number NM_021804) were synthesized (GenScript Biotech).”[/color]
    
    
    
22. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Considering Prof. Zhengli is the recipient of millions of dollars in grants and salaries, commands one of the world’s leading, most advanced biosafety laboratories, has performed innumerable research studies into coronaviruses for three decades and counting — what vaccines, to date, has she successfully produced? [i]Has she produced any successful coronavirus vaccines at all? If so, where are they and how have they been publicly administered?[/i][/color]
    

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Summary, conclusion, and just a wee bit of speculation[/b]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]The facts presented herein compel an alternative theory as to the origin of the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak. The truth remains to be formally investigated whether infected viral bio-matter from the National Biosafety Laboratory at Wuhan Institute of Virology — the only lab of its kind in all of China and under expressed safety concerns for almost a year — somehow escaped. And, if so, it also remains to be seen whether such a viral release and subsequent viral infection was accidental or intentional. In any event, the following observations and concerns seem to place considerable suspicion on the laboratory — and its Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator, Prof. Zhengli Shi — and its contemporaneous coronavirus research activity at the exact time of the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak officially reported at a location conveniently just 8.6 miles distant at Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, just across the Yangtze River:[/color][/color]
[/color]

1. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]The National Biosafety Laboratory at Wuhan Institute of Virology is the [i]only[/i] high-level P4 facility of its kind in all of China, literally the [i]only[/i] place where high contagious and infectious pathogens and diseases such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, and assorted coronaviruses can be “safely” studied, mutated, and engineered.[/color]
   
   
   
2. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]The professional background, experience, and qualifications of the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory’s Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator — Professor Zhengli Shi — is nonpareil. She has commandeered, produced and/or co-authored over 130 scientific studies, including dozens of reports specifically on coronaviruses. So specialized and talented is she that the even the United States has granted her over $1 million for her research conducted in China.[/color]
   
   
   
3. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]It cannot be overstated the importance and implication of the short distance between the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory and the reported epicenter of Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak — the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market — of only 8.6 miles. With a total area of 3.8 million square miles, and a breadth of about 3,000 miles, these two locations are relatively-speaking right next to each other. Even before the lab’s government-announced formal operational opening, American scientists and biosafety experts had expressed their concerns for the laboratory, especially its proximity to the relatively large population of Wuhan, capital city of Hubei province.[/color]
   
   
   
4. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]At the time of the new coronavirus outbreak, or immediately preceding it, Prof. Zhengli was actively conducting coronavirus experiments and research at the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory. Notably, the [b][i]very next day[/i][/b] following the publishing of her coronavirus study on December 11, 2019, the first victims of Coronavirus 2019-nCoV were reported, as confessed by Prof. Zhengli herself in her most recent, latest report, posted online on January 23, 2020: “The epidemic, started from December 12th, 2019, has caused 198 laboratory confirmed infections with three fatal cases by January 20th, 2020.”[/color]
   
   
   
5. [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Most alarming is the apparent, glaring disingenuousness of Prof. Zhengli’s latest report, which is the only public statement since the official Chinese acknowledgement of Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak in Wuhan. On January 23, 2020, she published the report with the allegedly misleading statements:[/color]
   

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]“Finally, based on our results, it should be expected and worth to test if ACE2 targeting or SARS-CoV targeting drugs can be used for nCoV-2019 patients. At this stage, we know very little about the virus, including basic biology, animal source or any specific treatment. The almost identical sequences of this virus in different patients imply a probably recent introduction in humans, thus future surveillance on viral mutation and transmission ability and further global research attention are urgently needed.”[/i][/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]However, other Chinese scientists reported on January 22, 2020, “Results obtained from our analyses suggest that the 2019-nCoV appears to be a recombinant virus between the bat coronavirus and an origin-unknown coronavirus. The recombination occurred within the viral spike glycoprotein, which recognizes cell surface receptor.” Our findings suggest “that homologous recombination within the spike glycoprotein may contribute to cross-species transmission.” Although this other scientific team incorrectly attributes the originating species as reptilian (snake) instead of bats, they at least rapidly identified the coronavirus as a recombinant virus with one of the contributors being a bat coronavirus, and also discerned in what manner the genetic recombination occurred to allow for human infection: in a viral spike protein which recognized the cell surface receptor. But as shown previously, this precise area of coronavirus study involving spike protein and cell surface receptor was the focus of Prof. Zhengli’s contemporaneous December 2019 study published the day before the epidemic started. “Coronavirus spike protein mediates viral entry into cells by first binding to a receptor on host cell surface and then fusing viral and host membranes,” she wrote. [i]Why would she feign ignorance about this?[/i]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Even more concerning, on October 31, 2019, Prof. Zhengli had published a report entitled [i]Filovirus-reactive antibodies in humans and bats in Northeast India imply zoonotic spillover[/i], curiously funded by the [b]U.S. Department of Defense[/b], the [b]U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency[/b], the [b]U.S. Biological Defense Research Directorate of the Naval Medical Research Center[/b], and the [b]Department of Atomic Energy[/b] of the Government of India, and edited by a microbiologist employed by the [b]U.S. Center for Disease Control[/b].[/color]

[/color]
[/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency? Can viruses from bats be used as weapons of mass destruction?[/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Of note is the fact that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering [b]weapons of mass destruction[/b]. [i]Why would they be funding this project? Could it be that these coronaviruses with filovirus reactive antibodies are being weaponised? Are they really that dangerous?[/i] [i]Could they actually be employed as a weapon of mass destruction?[/i] Well, let’s a take a look at what Prof. Zhengli was studying, filovirus surface glycoproteins:[/color]
[/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][i]Bats are reservoirs for several zoonotic pathogens, including filoviruses. High risk activities at the bat-human interface pose the threat of zoonotic virus transmission. We present evidence for prior exposure of bat harvesters and two resident fruit bat species to filovirus surface glycoproteins. Our results indicate circulation of several filoviruses in bats and the possibility for filovirus transmission from bats to humans. Filoviruses, including ebolaviruses and marburgviruses, are pathogens with [b]epidemic potential[/b]. They were previously detected in bats and have caused disease outbreaks in humans with a high case fatality rate. Our findings suggest bats in South Asia act as a reservoir host of a diverse range of filoviruses and filovirus spillover occurs through human exposure to these bats.[/i][/color][/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Thus, it’s readily apparent that just from this single project that Prof. Zhengli was quite aware that pathogenic viruses from bats could transmit from bats to humans via filovirus surface glycoproteins, with potentially epidemic consequences. Could our brilliant, pioneering, decorated Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator of the only Level P4 Biosafety Laboratory in China be feigning ignorance presently to deflect discovery of her connections to four major defense agencies and her possible stewardship of a brand-new bioactive weapon of mass destruction? At this point, only speculation is possible…[i]but if we’re going to speculate, let’s take one step more, shall we?[/i]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Could there be a another study previously spearheaded by Prof. Zhengli whose findings may have attracted multiple American defense departments for such a project with epidemic potential? Perhaps we can find the answer in the study, [i]Discovery of Novel Bat Coronaviruses in South China That Use the Same Receptor as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus[/i], a seemingly important and relevant 2018 project where Prof. Zhengli provided evidence of a Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) “derived from the great evening bat that uses the same host receptor as human MERS-CoV. This virus also provides evidence for a [b]natural recombination event[/b] between the bat MERS-related CoV and another bat coronavirus, HKU4” (emphasis added). The purpose of this study was “the prevention and control of the spread of MERS-CoV to humans.” It pertains precisely to the implications presented by the current Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, which were identified by the other group of Chinese scientists as a bat-involved, recombinant virus with a viral spike protein, recognizing cell surface receptor and so able to infect human cells.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]And yet another highly relevant study with the potential to capture the attention of biowarfare officials in United States defense departments is [i]Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat SARS-related Coronaviruses Provides New Insights Into the Origin of SARS Coronavirus[/i], published in November 2017, where Prof. Zhengli and her colleagues conducted cell entry studies which “demonstrated that three newly identified SARSr-CoVs [SARS-related coronaviruses] with different [spike] protein sequences [b]are all able to use human ACE2 as the receptor[/b], further exhibiting the close relationship between strains in this cave and SARS-CoV. This work provides new insights into the origin and evolution of SARS-CoV and highlights the necessity of preparedness for future emergence of SARS-like diseases” (emphasis added).[/color][/color][/color]

[David Guyatt]

Continuing 3

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]All of the studies cited here appear related and interconnected, and considering the involvement of American defense agencies — in particular, the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency which deals exclusively with matters pertaining to weapons of mass destruction and threat networks — there seems ample reason to be gravely concerned. And that concern remains whether there’s reason to suspect coronaviruses could be used by others as bioweapons of mass destruction, or that rogue, Deep State operatives within our own defense departments — colluding with Communists — are developing or have already developed a bioweapon of mass destruction.
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]In conclusion, though admittedly much investigation remains to be performed (especially into the numerous unanswered questions posed in this essay), it seems the likeliest source of origin for Coronavirus 2019-nCoV is the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Further, it appears to me that, at best, there may be concerted efforts to conceal the precise nature of the virus, its source, and the parties responsible, or that, at worst, the dissemination of the epidemic coronavirus is intentional. Could the actual RNA genome source, sequencing and recombination of the coronavirus already be known, and could its vaccine have already been developed? Could it already be patented? [i]Essentially, is this latest global pandemic threat a Communist cover-up, or a pandemic bioweapon of mass destruction developed by the global Deep State?[/i]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Appendix A: Professor Zhengli Shi’s published scientific papers[/b][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]1. Zhou, P., # Fan, H., # Lan, T., # Yang, X-L, Shi, W-F, Zhang, W., Zhu. Y., Zhang, Y-W., Xie, Q-M., Mani, S., Zheng, X-S., Li, B., Li, J-M., Guo, H., Pei, G-Q., An, X-P., Chen J-W., Zhou, L., Mai, K-J., Wu, Z-X., Li, D., Anderson, D.E., Zhang, L-B., Li, S-Y., Mi, Z-Q., He, T-T., Cong, F., Guo, P-J., Huang, R., Luo, Y., Liu, X-L., Chen, J., Huang, Y., Sun, Q., Zhang, X-L-L., Wang, Y-Y., Xing, S-Z., Chen, Y-S., Sun, Y., Li, J., Daszak, P.*, Wang, L-F.*, [b]Shi, Z-L.[/b]*, Tong, Y-G.*, Ma, J-Y.* (2018). Fatal swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by an HKU2-related coronavirus of bat origin. Nature, 556 (7700): 255–258.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]2. Xie, J.Z., Li, Y., Shen, X., Goh, G., Zhu, Y., Wang, L-F., Cui, J., [b]Shi, Z-L[/b].,* Zhou, P.* (2018). Dampened STING-dependent interferon activation in bats. Cell Host Microbe, 23(3): 297–301 e4.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]3. Li, W., Wang, B., Li, B., Zhang, W., Zhu, Y., [b]Shi, Z. L. [/b]& Yang, X. L*. (2018). Genomic Characterization of a novel hepatovirus from great roundleaf bats in China. Virol Sin 33 (1), 108–110.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]4. Luo, C. M., Wang, N., Yang, X. L., Liu, H. Z., Zhang, W., Li, B., Hu, B., Peng, C., Geng, Q. B., Zhu, G. J., Li, F*. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*[b]. [/b](2018). Discovery of novel bat coronaviruses in South China that use the same receptor as Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. J Virol 92 (13). 10.1128/JVI.00116–18.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]5. Luo, Y., Li, B., Jiang, R. D., Hu, B. J., Luo, D. S., Zhu, G. J., Hu, B., Liu, H. Z., Zhang, Y. Z., Yang, X. L. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*. (2018). Longitudinal surveillance of betacoronaviruses in fruit bats in Yunnan province, China during 2009–2016. Virol Sin 33 (1), 87–95.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]6. Wang, B., Li, W., Zhou, J. H., Li, B., Zhang, W., Yang, W. H., Pan, H., Wang, L. X., Bock, C. T., [b]Shi, Z. L., [/b]Zhang, Y. Z*. & Yang, X. L*. (2018). Chevrier’s field mouse (Apodemus chevrieri) and Pere David’s vole (Eothenomys melanogaster) in China carry orthohepeviruses that form two putative novel genotypes within the species orthohepevirus C. Virol Sin 33 (1), 44–58.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]7. Wang, N., Li, S. Y., Yang, X. L., Huang, H. M., Zhang, Y. J., Guo, H., Luo, C. M., Miller, M., Zhu, G., Chmura, A. A., Hagan, E., Zhou, J. H., Zhang, Y. Z., Wang, L. F., Daszak, P. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*[b]. [/b](2018). Serological evidence of bat SARS-related coronavirus infection in humans, China. Virol Sin 33 (1), 104–107.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]8. Hu, B., Zeng, L.P., Yang, X.L., Ge, X.Y., Zhang, W., Li, B., Xie, J.Z., Shen, X.R., Zhang, Y.Z., Wang, N., Luo, D.S., Zheng, X.S., Wang, M.N., Daszak, P., Wang, L.F., Cui, J.*, [b]Shi, Z.L[/b]*. (2017). Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus. PloS Pathogens 13(11): e1006698.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]9. Waruhiu, C#., Ommeh, S#., Obanda, V., Agwanda, B., Gakuya, F., Ge, X. Y., Yang, X. L., Wu, L. J., Zohaib, A., Hu, B. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*[b]. [/b](2017). Molecular detection of viruses in Kenyan bats and discovery of novel astroviruses, caliciviruses and rotaviruses. Virol Sin. 32 (2), 101–114.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]10. Zhang, Q., Zeng, L.P., Zhou, P., Irving, A.T., Li, S., [b]Shi, Z.L.[/b]*, Wang, L.F. (2017). IFNAR2-dependent gene expression profile induced by IFN-α in [i]Pteropus alecto [/i]bat cells and impact of IFNAR2 knockout on virus infection. PloS One. 12(8):e0182866.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]11. Wang, B., Cai, C.L, Li, B., Zhang, W., Zhu, Y., Chen, W.H., Zhuo, F., [b]Shi, Z.L.[/b], Yang,[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]X.L.* (2017). Detection and characterization of three zoonotic viruses in wild rodents and shrews from Shenzhen city, China. Virol Sin. 32(4):290–297.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]12. Zeng, L.P., Ge, X.Y., Peng, C., Tai, W.B., Jiang, S.B., Du, L.Y.*, [b]Shi, Z.L.[/b]* (2017). Cross-neutralization of SARS coronavirus-specific antibodies against bat SARS-like coronaviruses. Sci China Life Sci. 60(12):1399–1402.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]13. Wang, B., Yang, X. L., Li, W., Zhu, Y., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, L. B., Zhang, Y. Z., Bock, C. T. & [b]Shi, Z. L.[/b]* (2017). Detection and genome characterization of four novel bat hepadnaviruses and a hepevirus in China. Virol J. 14:40.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]14. Liang, J., Yang, X.L., Li, B., Liu, Q., Zhang, Q., Liu, H., Kan, H.P., Wong, K.C., Chek, S.N., He, X., Peng, X., [b]Shi, Z.L.[/b], Wu, Y.* & Zhang, L.* (2017). Detection of diverse viruses in alimentary specimens of bats in Macau. Virol Sin. 32(3):226–234.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]15. Ge, X.Y., Yang, W.H., Zhou, J.H., Li, B., Zhang, W., [b]Shi, Z.L.[/b]* & Zhang, Y.Z.* (2017). Detection of alpha- and betacoronaviruses in rodents from Yunnan, China. Virol J. 14:98.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]16. Waruhiu, C., Ommeh, S., Obanda, V., Agwanda, B., Gakuya, F., Ge, X.Y., Yang, X.L., Wu, L.J., Zohaib, A., Hu. B., [b]Shi, Z.L.[/b]* (2017). Molecular detection of viruses in Kenyan bats and discovery of novel astroviruses, caliciviruses and rotaviruses. Virol Sin. 32(2):101–114.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]17. Tan, B., Yang, X. L., Ge, X. Y., Peng, C., Liu, H. Z., Zhang, Y. Z., Zhang, L. B. & [b]Shi, Z. L.[/b]* (2017). Novel bat adenoviruses with low G+C content shed new light on the evolution of adenoviruses. J Gen Virol. 98(4):739–748.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]18. Yang, X. L., Zhang, Y. Z., Jiang, R. D., Guo, H., Zhang, W., Li, B., Wang, N., Wang, L., Waruhiu, C., Zhou, J. H., Li, S. Y., Daszak, P., Wang, L. F. & [b]Shi, Z. L.[/b]* (2017). Genetically Diverse Filoviruses in [i]Rousettus [/i]and [i]Eonycteris [/i]spp. Bats, China, 2009 and 2015. Emerg Infect Dis. 23(3):482–486.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]19. Tan, B., Wu, L.J., Yang, X.L., Li, B., Zhang, W., Lei, Y.S., Yang, G.X., Chen, J., Chen, G.,Wang, H.Z., [b]Shi, Z. L.[/b]*. (2016). Isolation and characterization of adenoviruses infecting endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys ([i]Rhinopithecus roxellana[/i]). Virol J. 13:190[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]20. Zeng, L. P., Gao, Y. T., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, Q., Peng, C., Yang, X. L., Tan, B., Chen, J., Chmura, A. A., Daszak, P. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*[b]. [/b](2016). Bat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus WIV1 Encodes an Extra Accessory Protein, ORFX, Involved in Modulation of the Host Immune Response. J Virol 90 (6), 6573–6582.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]21. Tan, B., Yang, X. L., Ge, X. Y., Peng, C., Zhang, Y. Z., Zhang, L. B. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*. (2016). Novel bat adenoviruses with an extremely large E3 gene. J Gen Virol., 97, 1625–1635.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]22. Ge, X. Y., Yang, W. H., Pan, H., Zhou, J. H., Han, X., Zhu, G. J., Desmond, J. S., Daszak, P., [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*[b]. [/b]& Zhang, Y. Z*. (2016). Fugong virus, a novel hantavirus harbored by the small oriental vole (Eothenomys eleusis) in China. Virol J., 13, 27.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]23. Pan, X., Cao, Z., Yuan, J., [b]Shi, Z[/b]., Yuan, X., Lin, L., Xu, Y., Yao, J., Hao, G. & Shen, J. (2016). Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Dicistrovirus Associated with Moralities of the Great Freshwater Prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii. Inte J Mol Sci., 17.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]24. Yang, X.-L., Hu, B., Wang, B., Wang, M.-N., Zhang, Q., Zhang, W., Wu, L.-J., Ge, X.-Y., Zhang, Y.-Z., Daszak, P., Wang, L.-F. & [b]Shi, Z.-L[/b]*[b].[/b](2016). Isolation and[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. J Virol., 90, 3253–3256.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]25. Wang, M. N., Zhang, W., Gao, Y. T., Hu, B., Ge, X. Y., Yang, X. L., Zhang, Y. Z. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*[b]. [/b](2016). Longitudinal surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats by quantitative real-time PCR. Virol Sin., 31, 78–80.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]26. Ge, X. Y., Wang, N., Zhang, W., Hu, B., Li, B., Zhang, Y. Z., Zhou, J. H., Luo, C. M., Yang, X. L., Wu, L. J., Wang, B., Zhang, Y., Li, Z. X. & [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*[b]. [/b](2016). Coexistence of multiple coronaviruses in several bat colonies in an abandoned mineshaft. Virol Sin., 31, 31–40.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]27. Hu, B., Ge X., Wang, L. F., [b]Shi, Z[/b]*[b]. [/b](2015). Bat origin of human coronaviruses. Virol J., 12(1): 221.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]28. Liang, Y. Z., Wu, L. J., Zhang, Q., Zhou, P., Wang, M. N, Yang, X. L, Ge, X. Y, Wang, L. F, [b]Shi, Z. L[/b]*. (2015). Cloning, expression, and antiviral activity of interferon beta from the Chinese microbat, [i]Myotis davidii[/i]. Virol Sin., 30(6):425–432.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]29. Yang, X. L., Tan, B., Wang, B., Li, W., Wang, N., Luo, C. M., Wang, M. N., Zhang, W., Li, B., Peng, C., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, L. B.,[b]Shi, Z[/b]*[b].[/b](2015). Isolation and identification of bat viruses closely related to human, porcine, and mink orthoreoviruses. J Gen Virol. 96(12):3525–3531.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]30. Wang MN, Ge XY, Wu YQ, Yang XL, Tan B, Zhang YJ,[b]Shi ZL[/b]*. 2015. Genetic diversity and temporal dynamics of phytoplankton viruses in East Lake, china. Virol Sin, 30: 290–300.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]31. Wang Y, Sun Y, Wu A, Xu S, Pan R, Zeng C, Jin X, Ge X, [b]Shi Z, [/b]Ahola T, Chen Y, Guo D*. 2015. Coronavirus nsp10/nsp16 methyltransferase can be targeted by nsp10-derived peptide in vitro and in vivo to reduce replication and pathogenesis. J Virol, 89: 8416–8427.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]32. Yang Y, Liu C, Du L, Jiang S, [b]Shi Z, [/b]Baric RS, Li F*. 2015. Two mutations were critical for bat-to-human transmission of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. J Virol, 89: 9119–9123.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]33. Menachery VD, Yount Jr BL, Debbink K, Agnihothram S, Gralinski LE, Plante JA, Graham RL, Scobey T, Ge X-Y, Donaldson EF, Randell SH, Lanzavecchia A, Marasco WA,[b]Shi Z-L[/b], Baric RS*. 2015. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nat Med 21:1508–1513.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]34. Mazet JK., Wei Q, Zhao GP, Cummings DT, Desmond JS, Rosenthal J，King CH., Cao WC, Chmura AA, Hagan EA, Zhang SY, Xiao XM, Xu JG, [b]Shi Z, [/b]Feng F, Liu XP, Pan WQ, Zhu GJ, Zuo LY & Daszak P. (2015). Joint China-US Call for Employing a Transdisciplinary Approach to Emerging Infectious Diseases. EcoHealth, DOI:10.1007/s10393–015–1060–1.[/color]
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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]110.Corbel, V., Zuprizal, [b]Shi, Z.[/b], Huang, C, Arcier, J.M and Bonami, J.R. (2001) Experimental infection of European crustaceans with white spot syndrome virus (WSSV). J Fish Dis 224: 377–382.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]111.Huang, C., [b]Shi, Z., [/b]Zhang, L., Xie, Y., Zhang, L., Chen, D. and Wu, Q. (2001). Homology comparison of white spot syndrome baculovirus (WSSV) from Penaeid shrimp. Virol Sinica 16: 81–84. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]112.[b]Shi, Z.[/b], Huang C., Zhang J., Chen D. and Bonami J.R. (2000). White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) experimental infection of the freshwater crayfish [i]Cherax quadricarinatus[/i]. J. Fish Dis 23: 285–288.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]113.[b]Shi, Z.[/b], Durand S. and Bonami J.R. (2000). Screening of DNA polymerase gene from white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) by using degenerated oligonucleotides. Virol Sinica 15: 302–307. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]114.[b]Shi, Z.[/b], Huang, C., Chen, D., Durand, S. and Bonami J.R. (1998). Partial cloning of the genome of non-occluded baculovirus from [i]Penaeus chinensis [/i]and preparing the probe for detection. Virol Sinica 13: 263–267. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]115.Huang, C., [b]Shi, Z[/b]. Zhang, L., Xie, L., Zhang, L., Chen, D. and Wu, Q. (2000). Study of white spot syndrome baculovirus infection process in [i]Penaeus monodon [/i]by in situ Hybridization. Chin J Virol 16: 242–246. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]116.Zhao, Y., [b]Shi, Z., [/b]Huang, G. and Wang, X. (1999). Blue green algae viruses (cynoaphages). Virol Sinica, 14(2):100–105. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]117.Huang, C., [b]Shi, Z. [/b]Zhang, J., Zhang, L., Chen, D. and Bonami, J. R. (1999). Establishment of a model for proliferating white spot syndrome virus in vivo. Virol Sinica 14: 358–363. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]118.Huang, C., [b]Shi, Z[/b]., Zhang, L., Wang, B. and Li, H. (1997) Cytopathic changes of [i]Penaeus chinensis [/i]infected by two kinds of viruses and immunogold labelling. Virol Sinica 12: 171–177. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]119.Huang, C., Zhang, J., Gao, W. and [b]Shi, Z[/b]. (1997) Observation and analysis of histo-and cyto-pathological changes of diseased shrimp with light and electron Microscopy. Virol Sinica 12 (4): 364–370. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]120.Zhao, Y. and [b]Shi, Z. [/b](1996). Virus and virus-like particles of eukaryotic algae. Virol Sinica 11(2): 93–102. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]121.[b]Shi, Z[/b]., Xiao, L. and Chen, D. (1996). Immulogical detection of two shrimp viruses. Virol Sinica 11: 365–368. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]122.[b]Shi, Z.[/b], Xiao, L., Gao, W. Zhang, L. and Chen d. (1996). Immunological detection of two kinds of viruses from [i]Penaeus chinensis[/i]. Virol Sinica 11(4): 368–371. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]123.Xiao, L., [b]Shi, Z., [/b]Gao, W., Zhang, L., Chen, D. (1995) Isolation, purification of [i]Penaeus chinensis [/i]parvovirus and analysis of its nucleic acid and protein. Virol Sinica 10: 356–361. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]124.Li, Y., [b]Shi, Z. [/b]and Chen, D. (1994). A Study on some biochemical characteristics of Nuclear Polyhedrosis virus of [i]Ectropis grisescens [/i]Warren. Virol Sinica 9(3): 266–271. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)]125.[b]Shi, Z. [/b]Zhang, L. and Chen, D. (1992) Immunity studies on the [i]Euproctis pseudoconspersa [/i]nuclear polyhedrosis virus. Virol Sinica 7(3): 276–282. (English abstract).[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Appendix B: Professor Zhengli Shi’s Conference Presentations[/b][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2018) From SARS to SADS: predict of emerging infectious diseases. US-China Workshop on Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases. University of California, Berkeley, June 27–29, 2018.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2018) Risk assessment of bat coronavirus spillover and prevention strategy. Sino-Germany symposium “Globalization-Challenge and Response for Infectious Diseases” September 5, 2018, Hamburg, Germany.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2018) Coronaviruses associated with human and animal diseases in China-From SARS to SADS. U.S. China Dialogue on the Challenges of Emerging Infections, Laboratory Safety and Global Health Security. January 17, 2018, Galveston, USA.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2017) SARS coronavirus may have originated from frequent recombination events between SARS-related coronaviruses in a single horseshoe bat habitat. Cell Symposia: Emerging and Re-emerging Viruses 2017. October 1–3, Arlington, USA.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2017) Genetic evolution and interspecies infection of bat SARS-like coronavirus. International Advisory Board Meeting and Coronavirus Mini-Symposium for the Theme-based Research Scheme Project on MERS Coronavirus. September 11–12, Hong Kong.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2017) SARS coronavirus may have originated from frequent recombination events between SARS-related coronaviruses in a single horseshoe bat habitat. 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Virology (Germany). March 22–25, 2017, Marburg, Germany.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2016) Prevalence, animal origins and diagnosis of MERS-CoV. Devising Strategies to Control Emerging Viral Hemorrhagic Fever in Pakistan. November 14–16, 2016, Lahore, Pakistan.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2015) Emerging viral zoonosis in China. Annual meeting of Sino-Germany Society for Medicine. October 2–3, Berlin, Germany.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2015) Bat coronaviruses associated with human diseases. CAS-NAS Workshop on the Challenges of Emerging Infections, Laboratory Safety, and Global Health Security. September 29–30, Beijing, China.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2015) The animal origin of SARS coronavirus; from genome to receptor usage. Annual meeting of Hubei Society for Microbilogy. August 22–23, Enshi, China.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi. Z[/b]. (2015) New evidence in support of bat origin of SARS coronavirus. In “workshop on Coronavirus and Arterivirus, Special lecture”, ASV2015, July 5–12, London, Canada.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2015) The animal origin of SARS coronavirus; from genome to receptor usage. The 3rd annual “host pathogen interaction in biodefense and emerging infectious diseases” conference. Feb. 12, Manassas, Virginia.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b] et al. (2014) Isolation and identification of bat mammalian orthoreovirus from Chinese bats. The 6th International Symposium on Emerging Viral Diseases. October 29–30, Wuhan, China.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z,[/b] et al., (2013) New evidence further supports bats as natural reservoirs of SARS coronavirus. The 5th Wuhan International Symposium on Modern Virology. Oct. 30–31, Wuhan, China.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z.[/b] (2013) Bat borne viruses. CSIRO-CAS Biosecurity Workshop. 13–15 June 2013, Cairns, Australia.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b].(2012) Bat viruses detected in China, 31th annual ASV meeting. Jul 21–25, Madison, USA.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b].(2011) Virome in Bat Intestinal Tract, Implication of Important Roles Played by Bats in Ecosystem, XVIth International Union of Microbiological Societies 2. Sep 12–16, Sapporo, Japan.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2010) Novel hantavirus detected in Yunnan Red-backed Vole, [i]Eothenomys miletus[/i]. Infectious Disease Genomics and Global Health. Sep 11–15, Hinxton, UK.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2008) Antibodies to Nipah or Nipah-like viruses among bats in mainland China. The 3rd International Symposium on Emerging Viral Diseases. Oct. 26–28, Wuhan, China.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi Z. [/b](2008) Genetic Evolution of SARS coronavirus. The 179th forum of Young Scientists of China Association of Science and Technology. Nov 1–2, Lijiang, China.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b], et al. (2008) The angiotension converting enzymes-2 of bats display different susceptibility to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Annual meeting of Hubei Society for Microbiology. June 26–29, Hohhot, China.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z. [/b](2007) [i]Macrobrachium rosenbergii [/i]nodavirus ([i]Mr[/i]NV) and its associated satellite virus. Aquaculture 2007, Feb. 28- Mar. 2, San Antonio, USA.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z[/b]. (2007) Functional analysis of structural envelope proteins of white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) and prevalence of WSSV and other shrimp viruses in china — a review. Aquaculture 2007, Feb. 28- Mar. 2, San Antonio, USA.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z. [/b](2007) Evolution on SARS Coronavirus. The First Mexico-China Scientific Cooperation Conference. Aug. 27–29, Mexico City, Mexico.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z. [/b](2006) Bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses. France- China Medical Symposium. Oct. 23–24, Paris, France.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi, Z. [/b]et al. (2006) Genetic diversity of bat SARS-like coronavirus and its interaction with ACE2. The 8th Session of the International Congress « Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics of Infectious Diseases » (MEEGID VIII). Nov. 30 — Dec. 2, Bangkok, Thailand.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.843137)][b]Shi Z[/b]. (2006) Biology and molecular genetics of white spot syndrome virus. Society for Invertebrate Pathology 39th Annual Meeting. Aug. 27 to Sept. 1, Wuhan, China.[/color]
[/color]


[/color]
[/color]

• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Coronavirus[/color]
  
  
  
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Wuhan[/color]
  
  
  
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Epidemic[/color]
  
  
  
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Bioweapon[/color]
  
  
  
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.541176)]Vaccines[/color]
  

[David Guyatt]

Then there is the following Youtube clip by Prof Francis Boyle that was (but no longer is) on Youtube, where he points to a passage in a scientific paper which says there "may provide a gain of function" to the 2019 n-CoV.  Boyle points out that this gain of function refers to the weaponisation of Covid-19.  I am not a scientist or technically minded and have no idea if this is factually correct.  However, I do assume he is.

I took the decision to copy and download this Youtube video as I felt sure it would soon disappear of the Youtube portal, as it now has.  However, I can find no way to upload it.  Professor Boyle claims this "gain of function" statement is the "smoking gun" in bio speak to mean the weaponisation as stated above.  I also took the trouble to download the paper he referred to and check for accuracy and, indeed, he is accurate.  The paper can be downloaded and read HERE.

Prof. Boyle goes to considerable length in all his video's and interviews to finger China and the Wuhan Laboratory for Coronavirus.  And yet all the related publications and authors quoted in the foregoing paper are Western. As Prof Boyle points out in his now missing Youtube clip, the scientific research he quotes from was by three French and one Candian scientists.  

My own suspicions lean more towards the curious closing down of the US premier biowarfare lab at Fort Detrick last July by the CDC for a number of dangerous breaches - including a member entering 3 and 4 level labs without wearing the essential personal protection equipment during dissection of a dead primate.  Plus a number of other breaches as well.  President Trump later personally ordered the Fort Detrick lab to be re-opened.

Approx., 60 miles from Fort Detrick is Fort Belvoir where the US Army Athletes trained for the Army Games held in Wuhan, China in October 2019.  Curiously, a Chinese government official claimed a few weeks ago that Coronavirus was brought to China by some of these visiting US Army athletes, five of which had to undergo hospitalisation for what later turned out to be Coronavirus (as I recall the charge anyway).  Russia and Iran have also joined China in blaming the US for the dissemination of this deadly virus to China - and later the world.  Well, they would, wouldn't they.  Or would they?  Normally, China is very reserved in diplomatic statements and this one by the government diplomat was out of the ordinary in finger pointing at the USA, and it was only after this that President Trump began his "Chinese flu" and Wuhan virus" taunts.  By all means make up your own mind.

But before you do, you might want to just skim an eye over the below report by the Jason Group drawing from from a 2002 book.  The paper is titled "Next Generation Bioweapons - Genetic Engineering and Biological Warfare" which purports to be about what future "terrorists" might do but which very clearly - given the nature and complexity and cost of the research involved - is rather more focused towards nation states and what the US itself might be doing - or planning.  The report is HERE.

The report speaks of many things including, for example, "Natural versus Biologically Engineered Pathogens", "Designer Genes" and "Gene Therapy as a Weapon" to name but a few.  It proceeds to:

Stealth Viruses 109

The concept of a stealth virus is a cryptic viral infection that covertly enters human cells (genomes) and then remains dormant for an extended time. 

 

However, a signal by an external stimulus could later trigger the virus to activate and cause disease. 

 

This mechanism, in fact, occurs fairly commonly in nature. For example, many humans carry herpes virus which can activate to cause oral or genital lesions. Similarly, varicella virus will sometimes reactivate in the form of herpes zoster (shingles) in some people who had chicken pox earlier in life. However, the vast majority of viruses do not cause disease.

As a biological weapon, a stealth virus could clandestinely infect the genome of a population. Later, the virus could be activated in the targeted population, or a threat of activation could be used as blackmail.

Oncogenes are segments of DNA that, when switched on, can initiate wild cellular growth and misbehavior—the hallmarks of cancer. Some viruses have segments of DNA that can mimic oncogenes and directly, or perhaps through bioregulators or host genes, cause cancer.

Next on the list is "Hot-Swapping Diseases" and again is carefully couched in terms of reckless terrorists (but I doubt too many can be fooled by this artifice or projection?):

Host-Swapping Diseases 111

As previously stated, the vast majority of viruses do not cause disease. In nature, animal viruses tend to have narrow, well-defined host ranges. Unlike bacteria, viruses often infect only one or just a few species. 

 

When a virus has a primary reservoir in an animal species, but is transmissible to humans, it is called a zoonotic disease. Animal viruses tend to have a natural animal reservoir where they reside and cause little or no damage. 

 

Examples of reservoirs include birds for the West Nile Virus, water fowl for Eastern equine encephalitis and rodents for hantavirus. The bat is thought to be the reservoir for Ebola virus, and the chimpanzee is thought to have been the original reservoir for the HIV virus that causes AIDS. 

 

When viruses “jump species” they may occasionally cause significant disease. These examples illustrate that manageable infectious agents can be transformed naturally into organisms with markedly increased virulence.112

When this happens naturally, the process results in an emerging disease. If it were to be induced by man, it would be bioterrorism. In the laboratory of inspired, determined and well-funded bioterrorists, an animal virus may be genetically modified and developed specifically to infect human populations. 

 

Emerging diseases could have serious implications for biological warfare or terrorism applications.

In conclusion, I note again that this was from 2002, 18 years ago.  I also note again what Prof. Francis Boyle said about "gain-of-function".  Not least I note that in the months running up to the outbreak of Coronavirus in China, the US stock and bond market were, once again (the thir time in 18 years... first on 9/11, second in 2008 and now in 2020) in complete collapse that has now required a simply massive bailout of Wall Street and Corporations teetering on the brink of collapse and bankruptcy.  Few outside of finance and related disciplines seem to be really aware just how dangerous this third systemic collapse of the US financial system actually was and how dangerous the entire entire US economic system was imperilled by continues greed and rashness of Wall Street and the US corporate sector.  This was 4 months before China's first Coronavirus case was reported (see HERE).

Wall Street’s Crisis Began Four Months Before the First Reported Death from Coronavirus in China; Here’s the Proof

[b]By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2020 ~[/b]
[/url]

[img=150x0]https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/New-York-Stock-Exchange-150-pix.jpg[/img]

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Wall Street pundits are all over cable news, repeating the mantra that “this is nothing like the last financial crisis,” while seeking to lay the blame for all of the newly-announced bailout measures for Wall Street at the feet of the coronavirus. But in terms of Wall Street [url=https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatizing-profits-and-socializing-losses.asp]privatizing profits and socializing losses, this is [i]exactly[/i] like the last financial crisis.

[David Guyatt]

Of interest, Peter Dale Scott has just posted the following

As in 2008, Bad business gambles are being rescued by the Fed. The Covid crisis is being used to resolve a credit crisis.

Fed to Buy Junk Bonds, Lend to States in Fresh Virus Support

This follows up on an earlier post by him that he concludes that Covid-19 was a "deep event".

[David Guyatt]

Regarding my earlier post concerning the probability that it was US Army athletes that took Coronavirus with them to the Army Games held in October 2019 in Wuhan, China, the following article by Scott Ritter nails the science that establishes this.  It is typically ignored by the US government and the media. See HERE. Ritter makes the point that meetings where such intelligence would normally be shared were all treated as "classified events".

Thus it is evident that the first known case of Coronavirus as detailed by Ritter was 1 October 2019 based on the study of characteristics of 27 genomes of Covid-19.  It was further confirmed by an investigation by the Joint Field Epidemiology Investigation Team of the Chinese CDC that Covid-19 did not originate via animal to "human transmission in the Hunan Seafood Wholesale Market but by human to human transmission entirely unrelated to the operation of the market."

The Staggering Collapse Of U.S. Intelligence On The Coronavirus
An agency tasked with tracking future bio threats fell down on the job, causing us to wonder what else we don't know.
[img=724x0]https://2qkhyt1u78lw1ll02a1kxrzq-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/covid-19.jpg[/img]Shutterstock/Gajus
MARCH 24, 2020
|
12:01 AM
[/url]SCOTT RITTER


The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the United States unlike any other event in recent history, proving to be far more disruptive to American society, and far most damaging to the U.S. economy, than even the events of 9/11. 


The U.S. response is something [url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51955450]President Trump has likened to a “war,” going so far as to label himself a “wartime President,” leading the U.S. against “the toughest enemy” in a struggle in which he vows “total victory.” If the fight against the coronavirus is a war, then the virus clearly took the U.S. government by surprise. “Certainly we didn’t get an early run on it, Trump noted in a press conference on March 17. “It would’ve been helpful if we knew about it earlier.”

It is the job of the U.S. intelligence community to provide senior U.S. government policy makers, including the president, with advance warning about potential crises. The U.S. taxpayer pays a premium for this service; in 2020, the budget for the National Intelligence Program, which includes all programs, projects and activities of the U.S. intelligence community, was $62.8 billion. 

Included in this budget is a small, specialized intelligence unit known as the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), which operates as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The mission of the NCMI is to serve as the lead activity within the Department of Defense (DoD) “for the production of medical intelligence,” and to prepare and coordinate “integrated, all-source intelligence for the DoD and other government and international organizations on foreign health threats and other medical issues to protect U.S. interests worldwide.”

For a small agency, the NCMI packs a large punch in terms of the overall impact of its product. For example, in April 2009—two months prior to when the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially declared the global outbreak of H1N1 influenza a pandemic, NCMI published an intelligence product, known as an “Infectious Disease Risk Assessment,” which predicted that a recent outbreak of the Swine Flu (H1N1) would become a pandemic. 

The positive work done by the NCMI in relation to the H1N1 outbreak contributed to the creation of the 2012 “National Strategy for Biosurveillance,” designed to help facilitate a full-time institutionalized process for obtaining timely and accurate insight on current and emerging biological risks. President Obama himself noted the critical role played by “accurate and timely information” during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic that enabled decision makers, including himself, to “develop the effective responses that save lives. 

“The sooner we can detect and understand a threat,” Obama wrote in the introduction to the first National Strategy for Biosurveillance, “the faster we can take action to protect the American people.”

Providing this early detection of a threat is the mission of the NCMI. When it comes to diseases like H1N1 and the coronavirus, this task falls under the remit of the NCMI’s Infectious Disease Division, whose baseline requirement, according to a former commanding officer, Air Force Col. (Dr.) Anthony M. Rizzo, “is to understand the risk of every type of [endemic] infectious disease in every country.” 
“When we think of the word biosurveillance, we think of the kinds of things that the public health community does—collecting cases, taking cultures, deciding which disease is which,” Rizzo said. “But we in the intelligence community are looking way before that to determine [if there are] threats on the horizon.” 

The NCMI’s job, Rizzo noted, is predictive in nature—not to explain what is happening, but rather “what we believe is going to happen.” To do this, NCMI has access to the resources of the totality of the intelligence community, including intercepted communications, satellite imagery, and sensitive human intelligence, including covert sample collection.

The coronavirus was clearly part of the NCMI’s remit. And yet its first Infectious Disease Risk Assessment for COVID-19 was issued on January 5, 2020, reporting that 59 people had been taken ill in Wuhan, China. This report was derived not from any sensitive intelligence collection effort or independent biosurveillance activity, but rather from a report issued to the WHO by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, dated January 5, 2020.

The next day the CDC warned American citizens to take precautions if traveling to China, followed a day later with the activation of a COVID-19 incident management team within the CDC Emergency Management System. This, however, is not the kind of predictive analysis that U.S. policymakers needed if they were going to get ahead of the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike 2009, when the NCMI provided a full two months heads up about the threat of a Swine Flu pandemic, in 2020 the Trump administration was taking its cues from the WHO, which waited until January 30, 2020 to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The NCMI had been relegated to a mere observer, having failed in its mission to provide timely, predictive analysis of pending epidemiological threats.

Almost everything the NCMI knew about the current situation in Wuhan came from the WHO, which had been working very closely with Chinese authorities from the Chinese Center of Disease Control (CCDC) to determine the origin and nature of the coronavirus outbreak. While a great deal of attention has been paid to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan, which sells live poultry, fish, and several kinds of wild animals to the public, a detailed investigation by the Joint Field Epidemiology Investigation Team, a specialized task force working under the auspices of the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CCDC), found that the COVID-19 epidemic did not originate by animal-to-human transmission in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as originally believed, but rather human-to-human transmission totally unrelated to the operation of the market. 
 
Moreover, by analyzing the characteristic of some 27 genomes of the COVID-19 virus provided by the Chinese and published by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GSAID), research scientists were able to determine that the “most recent common ancestor” for the coronavirus could be dated back to as early as October 1, 2019. 

The importance of this date as it relates to the NCMI is that in mid-October 2019 a delegation of 300 U.S. military athletes arrived in Wuhan to participate in the 2019 Military World games. China has suggested that these personnel might have introduced the coronavirus infection to Wuhan, citing their own research thatsuggests that the virus was introduced into China from elsewhere, and Japanese and Taiwanese studies that point to the U.S. as the likely source of the virus. There is, however, no independent evidence to support these allegations. 

The importance of the U.S. military athletes rests in the fact that the NCMI is responsible for conducting threat briefs for all deployments of military personnel world-wide, which meant that a Wuhan-specific Infectious Disease Risk Assessment would have necessarily been prepared in support of this deployment. Infectious Disease Risk Assessments are the bread-and-butter intelligence product produced by the NCMI’s Infectious Disease Division, one in which the totality of the medical intelligence collection and analytical capabilities would be utilized. 

The production of a Wuhan-specific Infectious Disease Risk Assessment would have created a window of opportunity for the NCMI to have collected the kind of medical intelligence that could have provided early warning about the existence of the coronavirus. Moreover, these athletes should have been subjected to screening upon return as part of the national biosurveillance program, providing yet another opportunity for early detection of the coronavirus if anyone had been exposed to it during their travel.
The CDC has recently acknowledged, during a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on March 11, that its biosurveillance program has uncovered evidence that Americans who had previously died to what had been originally diagnosed as influenza have, through post-mortem testing, been found to have actually have perished from the coronavirus. Normally, the details obtained from this kind of biosurveillance would be widely shared to better understand the scope and potential spread of the infection, as well as to better pin down the source and timing of the infections. 

However, the initial meetings regarding a national-level coronavirus response conducted under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, where intelligence gathered as a result of any such biosurveillance activity would logically be discussed, were all treated as classified events, under orders from the National Security Council. As a result, many people who otherwise would have been present were excluded, and those who did attend these meetings were precluded from discussing what occurred. This lack of transparency on the part of the Trump administration only fuels speculation about the reasons for meetings normally conducted in the open suddenly being classified, as well as precisely what information is being hidden from the public. 

The sufficiency and efficacy of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic remains to be seen. As President Trump noted on March 17, however, it would have been helpful to have had advance warning. That was the job of the NCMI, and they failed. This failure may have been a result of complacency, incompetence, or just a byproduct of circumstance. Regardless of the reason, the NCMI needs to learn from this experience, and reexamine the totality of the intelligence cycle—the direction, collection, analysis and feedback loop—associated with its failure to adequately predict the coronavirus pandemic. This reexamination should ensure that the U.S. will not be caught flat-footed the next time around, because there will be a next time around.

[David Guyatt]

By far the best round-up of the Coronavirus story is James Corbett's report: 'was There Foreknowledge of the Plandemic" linked below.  I very much recommend viewing each one of the articles and documents used in his video that establish that Covid-19 was almost certainly engineered in a lab with gain-of-function properties to make a deadly bioweapon.

Corbett spends a fair part of his presentation discussing the recent THIRD bailout of Wall Street in 18 years (the first was 9/11, the second 2008 and now again in 2020) when the US Treasury basically took over control of the Fed who authorised Blackrock to use US government finances to purchase 80% of the stock and bond market in a truly massive support operation.  The implication is that (besides bankers being congenitally unable to operate honestly) Covid-19 was used as a smoke screen for this rescue.  That 1,300 US CEO's resigned in 2019 (and more in 2020) and many went on to cash in on their stock options suggests they had foreknowledge of the fact that Wall Street was about to collapse, yet again. What remains to be seen, therefore, is whether Covid-19 escaped from a lab as a result of hideously poor containment enforcement - or whether the virus was escaped to eclipse the coming crash and rescue of Wall Street?  Another alternative is the one presented by "Adrian Bond" in his essay published above, that a "global deep state" was involved?  To the extent that corporations have financed and were well aware of developing gain-of-function to SARS Covid-19 this is not an unreasonable question to pose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD0NR_NZ...oUuMvS92b4

Show notes with links to all documents/article

https://www.corbettreport.com/was-there-...rbett-059/

[David Guyatt]

Jump to 12:30 approx on the below Youtube vid interviewing Dmitry Orlov.  

We are way beyond being simply through the looking glass.  The old neoliberal world committed suppuku through repeated bouts of uncontrolled and ideologically driven greed and it destroyed itself.  The word just changed and it will not revert back to what it was.