Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate On Virus Origin

[applegrove]

Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate On Virus Origin

May 23, 2021 at 3:58 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 239 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2021/05/23/sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-virus-origin/

"SNIP.....

“Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.”

.....SNIP"

[roamer65]

1. Report from National Cancer Institute in Milan, Italy.

Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were found in Italy in September, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing/researchers-find-coronavirus-was-circulating-in-italy-earlier-than-thought-idUSKBN27W1J2

Could be that the lab workers picked it up from the general population.

We will never really know where this 🦠 came from.

[WHITT]

3. This Is Facinating

I saw this a while back, but it didn't really resonate until the WHO stated they could only document cases in China to early December, which tipped over the whole applecart.

[NH Ethylene]

4. That is stunning.

The virus could have arisen anywhere, and just come to light in Wuhan.

[WarGamer]

5. So just a coincidence that the Wuhan lab was researching Coronaviruses?

[FreeState]

9. Yes thats apophenia - lots of studies for years

https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirua+studiea+2018&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

Take your pick. Be careful of apophenia.

[WarGamer]

10. Maybe, maybe not.

But it's worthy of an unbiased investigation, unhampered by the CCP

[womanofthehills]

44. FINALLY - US top scientists write letter - "Investigaste orgins of Covid-19" - Science.Mag.org

Including Dr. Baric from UNC lab our top gain of function researcher. Why did it take them a year to write this????

On 30 December 2019, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases notified the world about a pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China (1). Since then, scientists have made remarkable progress in understanding the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), its transmission, pathogenesis, and mitigation by vaccines, therapeutics, and non-pharmaceutical interventions. Yet more investigation is still needed to determine the origin of the pandemic. Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable. Knowing how COVID-19 emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks.

In May 2020, the World Health Assembly requested that the World Health Organization (WHO) director-general work closely with partners to determine the origins of SARS-CoV-2 (2). In November, the Terms of Reference for a China–WHO joint study were released (3). The information, data, and samples for the study's first phase were collected and summarized by the Chinese half of the team; the rest of the team built on this analysis. Although there were no findings in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident, the team assessed a zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host as “likely to very likely,” and a laboratory incident as “extremely unlikely” [(4), p. 9]. Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration. Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident (4). Notably, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility (5).

As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general (5), the United States and 13 other countries (6), and the European Union (7) that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest. Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by independent experts

Finally, in this time of unfortunate anti-Asian sentiment in some countries, we note that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was Chinese doctors, scientists, journalists, and citizens who shared with the world crucial information about the spread of the virus—often at great personal cost (8, 9). We should show the same determination in promoting a dispassionate science-based discourse on this difficult but important issue.

SCIENTISTS WHO SIGNED LETTER
Letters
Investigate the origins of COVID-19

Jesse D. Bloom1,2, Yujia Alina Chan3, Ralph S. Baric4, Pamela J. Bjorkman5, Sarah Cobey6, Benjamin E. Deverman3, David N. Fisman7, Ravindra Gupta8, Akiko Iwasaki9,2, Marc Lipsitch10, Ruslan Medzhitov9,2, Richard A. Neher11, Rasmus Nielsen12, Nick Patterson13, Tim Stearns14, Erik van Nimwegen11, Michael Worobey15, David A. Relman16,17,*

1Basic Sciences and Computational Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.
2Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, MD 20815, USA.
3Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
4Department of Epidemiology and Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
5Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
6Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
7Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1A8, Canada.
8Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease, Cambridge, UK.
9Department of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06519, USA.
10Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
11Biozentrum, University of Basel and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Basel, Switzerland.
12Department of Integrative Biology and Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
13Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
14Department of Biology and Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
15Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
16Department of Medicine and Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
17Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

↵* Corresponding author. Email: [e-mail]

Hide authors and affiliations
Science 14 May 2021:
Vol. 372, Issue 6543, pp. 694
DOI: 10.1126/science.abj0016

[WarGamer]

56. this is big... tyvm

[NH Ethylene]

16. It is quite a coincidence, if so.

But if the virus was circulating in Italy months before it was found in Wuhan, then that could put the lab in the clear.

[WHITT]

24. You Seriously Think

that lab in that country is the only one researching coronaviruses?

[yardwork]

39. What truth? Scientists all over the world have been studying coronaviruses for years.

I'm not sure what you're insinuating here.

[womanofthehills]

52. And now - more labs than ever are studying coronaviruses

Very worrisome as many are stealth labs. Scientists have NO idea how many labs are out there. Could it be more than hundreds?

[FreeState]

6. How long after being exposed do antibodies

Become measurable?

[WarGamer]

8. Milan has a steady flow of workers coming to/from the Wuhan region because they work there

in the Fashion Industry...

In Leather factories, etc...

If anything this points to Wuhan involvement late Summer of 19.

[FreeState]

13. It was likely everywhere and mutated

My partners infectious disease doctor* suspects he was exposed to it in LA in the fall of 19 with a less lethal variant (was in the hospital for ever a week with COVID like symptoms - on oxygen etc.)

*He has a team trying to figure out what made him sick. No concrete answers still, but they have ruled out 50+ possibilities.

[WarGamer]

14. I remember my Uncle was sick AF at Christmas in 2019...

Someday I hope we learn the truth.

[roamer65]

17. No one ever will know exactly where it started.

That is the nature of a natural zoonotic transfer of a virus.

But if we want to engage in complete conjecture, I think we need to see the entire list of laboratories working with corona viruses.

Including ALL military laboratories...worldwide. Then we can see what countries are breaking treaties on biological warfare agents.

[womanofthehills]

27. What treaties? There are no regulations on these labs

In fact, no one even knows all the labs working on gain of function in the world. Many secret labs. Probably hundreds. The US has labs all over the world too - besides in US. I think we have 14 to 16 labs in the Ukraine alone besides labs in Africa, Asia, etc.

[roamer65]

45. ..

https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/bwc

[womanofthehills]

49. On paper only - the WHO researchers could not even get into the Wujan Lab

What about the hundreds of secret Bio 3 labs that no one even knows where they are located?

[phylny]

36. My father, who died this past January at age 93,

was deathly ill with Covid-like symptoms in January of’ 2020. On oxygen, lost sense of taste and smell, no flu, breathing treatments, low pulse ox. He never fully regained his physical strength and was baffled and frustrated by it. He went from living alone, shopping, driving, etc. to having to sell his house and living with my brother and his wife and my husband and me.

The doctors on Long Island had “never seen a chest x-ray like this.”

[WarGamer]

55. 1st, I'm sorry for you loss.

Sure sounds like he had C19...

[róisín_dubh]

64. My mother was sicker than she's ever been in her life...

while visiting me in Europe in November 2019. She flew from NY to London and became sick about 5 days into her trip. Couldn't breathe, basically could barely function (but refused to see a doctor). Neither her partner nor I got sick...but then in early January 2020, after returning from London and spending a week or so in NYC, I caught a "flu". Never had the flu in my life, had been vaccinated two months earlier. I ran a fairly high fever (103) and had a cough that lasted weeks. I had no energy or anything.

I'll always wonder. I had an antibodies test 6 months later, but it was negative.

[NH Ethylene]

19. There was an unusual amount of severe "flu" among my high school kids late Nov./Dec.

They'd be out for a week and a half, come back looking pretty peaked, then be absent again for another week or two.

I'd never seen it like that before.

I also lost my sense of smell for a few days back then. I only realized it because the other teachers were complaining about the horrible fish smell in the faculty lunch room. And I couldn't smell a thing. It scared me. I (briefly) thought I had a brain tumor.

[WarGamer]

22. interesting... thanks

[Tree Lady]

59. I was sick Dec-Jan 2019-2020 5-6 weeks with worst flu of life

Cough, chest, fever, sick to stomach. Never had anything like it and cough remained for over a month.

Felt like I was dying at one point could barely move, stayed in bed for weeks. And I had my flu shot.

[NH Ethylene]

61. That sounds horrific. If it was Covid, you're lucky to be alive.

I wonder if there was an uptick in pneumonia cases around that time, before Wuhan. It would be easy to investigate that, and to do autopsies on those who died earlier than the official arrival of Covid to look for the telltale signs.

[Tree Lady]

62. I caught whatever I had on a Thanksgiving trip

To Napa. We easily could have picked up a virus from tourists there. If it was covid I am glad I didn't know. I deal with some anxiety and the fear might have made it worse.

[NH Ethylene]

31. That's interesting that there is a strong Wuhan & Italy connection.

That does seem to further implicate Wuhan as the source.

[Pobeka]

11. Were those samples handled properly, cross contaminated with more recent samples?

All it takes is a lab with poor protocols to produce a "surprising" result. Not saying it happened in this case, but can't rule it out either.

[womanofthehills]

50. If you research online, you will see the Wujan lab had lab violations 2-3 yrs ago

many labs do - including our labs. The US was concerned about this lab being run badly and not having enough money before the virus broke out.

[Tree Lady]

26. I read somewhere that they have a bunch of people

Traveling constantly from China to Northern Italy, can't remember for what job so that is how they think Italy got hit so bad.

[OneGrassRoot]

38. Upthread someone mentioned the fashion industry. n/t

[WHITT]

2. Wuhan Lab

Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report...

Funny, I knew about it. There was an interview with the the lab director a while back, who said the three employees had normal medical conditions, none of them infected with SARS-CoV-2.

[WarGamer]

7. Problem #1

Any investigation will be clouded by politics.

One side wants it to be a CCP mistake that it got out and the other side wants it to be a naturally occurring virus that crossed species.

We may never know because no one is telling the truth.

[maxrandb]

42. NIH funding is a Rand Paul conspiracy fantasy

No, despite all the bullshit, the NIH did not fund the Wuhan Lab, and no, Dr Fauci is not responsible for the deaths of millions.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2021/02/09/covid-dr-anthony-fauci-did-not-fund-research-tied-creation/4450338001/

I thought the Mods had removed Peter Navarro's posting privileges.

[womanofthehills]

46. Actually, the NIH did fund research in an around about way - NIH gave money to EcoHealth Alliance

and EcoHealth Alliance funded the bat research.

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/05/the-wuhan-lab-and-the-gain-of-function-disagreement/

EcoHealth ultimately received $3.7 million over six years from the NIH and distributed nearly $600,000 of that total to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a collaborator on the project, pre-approved by NIH.

The grant cancellation came at a time when then-President Donald Trump and others questioned the U.S. funding to a lab in Wuhan, while exaggerating the amount of federal money involved.

[FakeNoose]

12. What about the infected bat?

Chinese people cook and eat bats - at least some do. The first story I heard was that an infected bat transferred the Coronavirus to humans as food. Is that theory gone now?

[AZLD4Candidate]

15. Actually, mostly, they do not. After being there for 12 years and living and traveling all over the

country, I can say under good authority they don't because it is beyond illegal to sell it. The meat market in Wuhan was an illegal Meat Market and Cheng Guan, unless bribed (SOP) would have shut them down, as they would all unlicensed street vendors that don't "put incense in the pot."

[FakeNoose]

18. Forgive this devil's advocate question

... because I really don't know. A person could catch, kill and eat their own bat, am I right? Just like Pennsylvanians (among others) hunt, kill and eat deer, and maybe it's only quasi-legal to purchase deer meat from a friend, but some do it. Some butcher their own deer, even though it's supposed to be done by licensed butchers.

[hatrack]

20. Wouldn't have to be eating the bat . . . .

What about droppings?

What about aerosols from animals from dozens of species jammed cheek-by-jowl in wire cages in live markets?

Plenty of ways for a jumper to make its move, all else being equal (transmissibility, suitable host organisms, etc.).

[janterry]

34. I just wrote downthread that the researcher

that I've been listening to thought it was highly unlikely because this virus spread so quickly. To jump species naturally - it would have needed a long time to adapt.

This was highly contagious to humans right out of the gate - it seemed. So, they have long said that it was unlikely from an animal.

[mainer]

21. Bat guano is harvested in areas near wuhan

Farmers use it for fertilizer, and some Chinese researchers theorize that harvesters breathed in aerosolized virus in caves. We know that spelunkers can get rabies just from breathing in cave air, so why not SARS?

[WHITT]

23. The Original Assumption

was it went from a bat, to an intermediate animal, then to a human. But that seems moot.

[janterry]

33. The researcher I've been listening to said it was nearly impossible

to conceive of a bat and that on his listserv(s) - no one thought it was likely. This is not because something can't jump species. But the fact that this virus was so infectious and so readily adaptable to humans - no one he knew in the field thought this was plausible.

Had the virus mutated slowly - over time - then yes.

But the picture they saw of this virus - they all thought it came from a lab.

I think the better question is why the bat theory was the only thing reported on. When many thought otherwise.

[FakeNoose]

43. OK that's a plausible explanation

It was the media that jumped all over it, just for the sensation of it. Also it's a theory that puts the Chinese culture in a bad light.

I mean, the scientists and medical researchers in China are just as intelligent and careful as ours. The virulence of this virus would have - and did - baffle our guys as much as theirs. There was no need to point fingers at the Chinese, but of course our government and media did it anyway.

I'm actually relieved to know that the "bat theory" has been shit-canned. Thank you!

[womanofthehills]

48. This past week top US Scientists asked the same question in a letter to Science top magazine

Only 4 pages of WHO report related to lab leak with over 300 pages on natural origins.

[janterry]

65. Paul Graham noted some edits in VOX to Cover Their You-Know-What

Link to tweet

The fact that trump is/was an idiot and attempted to politicize this does not (imho) excuse the media for their poor reporting (truth is truth). And even if we gave them a pass on their past behavior (no way was it a lab!) and thought they were just following the science at the time then they would NOT be scrubbing their reporting now.

That's a disgrace and says something about the state of our journalism.

FWIW, I've told my daughter it probably came from a lab since December - but also told her not to say a word to her friends because they all believed that was a conspiracy theory. I'd been following discussions by researchers.

[womanofthehills]

51. And why did it take top US scientists until last week to speak up about how one sided the WHO

report was. I think more research is now available online about the research studies at Wujan and our top gain of function scientist Dr. Barik is getting ahead of the info. There is a tape of Dr.Barik being interviewed saying his lab can modify a virus and leave no footprint as to where it was made. This is an old tape from before the pandemic.

[womanofthehills]

53. Polio can be caught by eating something contaminated, but this virus usually caught thru the air

Not caught by eating a bat, but breathing in a bat virus in a cave would be more like it.

[mshasta]

25. Covid was Runing in october

[Ani Yun Wiya]

30. Traces of the virus were found in Barcelona waste water samples, early 2019 samples

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science-idINKBN23X2HQ

[NH Ethylene]

32. Wow! If true, it must have mutated over the months to become a deadly disease.

Otherwise it would have been noticed much sooner.

[LisaL]

35. It's not deadly to all affected.

Many show no symptoms of cold-like symptoms. Such a disease could go unnoticed for a while. That said, I am not convinced of all that supposed early covid showing up in water tests.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

41. Then there is this item about Brazillian waste water samples

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140731v1

[yardwork]

54. Not necessarily. It takes a while for a pandemic to catch fire.

COVID doesn't affect everybody the same way, and even the most extreme symptoms can be mistaken for symptoms of other diseases. Until lots of people got sick at once, it was not noticed.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

63. This article points to some "smoldering"

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msab118/6257226

[maxrandb]

37. Thank God CNN had Maggie Haberman on to discuss this story

[uponit7771]

47. IKR !?

[torius]

57. Going to a hospital there

isn’t like in the U.S., as another article pointed out. People can go to a hospital as if it’s an urgent care clinic or PCP’s office if no PCP is available.
A lot of treatment is IV’s. People go when they don’t feel well, they wear masks too but Americans know that, so truthers don’t scream conspiracy about mask wearing. China’s universal health insurance doesn’t cover serious illnesses so if they were very sick, unless they were highly paid or had family help I doubt they got serious treatment. There are no details about why they went, but it was cold and flu season. I remember reading they all had to take blood tests and nothing showed up (don’t know what kind of tests as presumably there were no covid tests then. Jumping on the words ‘hospital” and “hospitalization” (there’s no details about whether they stayed there) is projecting our medical system onto theirs.
I’m writing this out of spending a lot of time in China but here’s some more specific info about going to hospitals there—and other article (can’t remember where the article was but large MSM site) pointed out that if a PCP is not nearby then people go to a hospital. https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/2w5jy9/eli5_why_so_many_iv_drips_in_china/

[Tree Lady]

58. This is going to fuel more asian hate from the right

They do need to find out if true and figure out what we can possibly do.

[ecstatic]

60. Bottom line: The origin is not settled

I don't understand why some people get so angry and tunnel-visioned when it comes to this important topic.

The more important point, at least for me, is that trump gutted the safeguards we had in place to quickly respond to deadly viruses both here and abroad. The entire world was depending on the US to prevent an epidemic from becoming a pandemic. I really hope those teams/agencies have been fully restored and funded.

[Mr. Sparkle]

66. Wouldn't the people in the hospital get sick too and turn into super spreaders ?

if i recall correctly, the first case was found at the end of December meaning roughly there was 2 months in between. This new theory does not add up, imho !