WHO Chief Faults Covid Report, Urges Study of Possible Lab Leak

[DonViejo]

Source: Bloomberg


By Thomas Mulier and Corinne Gretler

March 30, 2021, 10:28 AM EDT Updated on March 30, 2021, 11:00 AM EDT

Investigators were frustrated by difficulties in getting data

Tedros asks for samples from at least September 2019

The World Health Organization’s chief said a mission to study the origins of the coronavirus in China didn’t adequately analyze the possibility of a lab leak before it concluded that the pathogen probably spread from bats to humans via another animal.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said even though the international team of scientists determined that a leak is the least likely hypothesis for the origin of the pandemic, it requires further investigation. He said he’s ready to deploy additional missions involving specialist experts as he doesn’t believe the assessment was extensive enough. He made the comments in a briefing to WHO member countries Tuesday.

Although Tedros has consistently said all options remain on the table and the WHO wouldn’t shut down any lines of inquiry, Tuesday’s comments mark the first time he’s openly speculated about the possibility of a leak. The WHO chief was criticized by Trump administration officials for being too deferential to China in the early days of the pandemic.

The origin report was published Tuesday, confirming what researchers said in mid-February at the conclusion of their four-week mission to Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the first Covid cases emerged at the end of 2019, and in subsequent interviews.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-30/who-chief-critiques-covid-report-says-lab-leak-study-needed

[The Magistrate]

1. I Am Inclined To Agree, Sir

Though a couple of points need to be made first.

It is likely this will filter through the inanities of current journalism and emerge as 'lab leak not investigated' and 'wasn't it really a lab leak after all?'. That is not what the gentleman says. He thinks it could stand a bit more examination. It is quite likely Chinese cooperation in investigating lab protocols and such could have been better.

It is also likely this will filter through the inanities of modern journalism to emerge as 'this might have been engineered in the lab', which while a popular view on the racist right, is as far from what the gentleman says as is lightning from a lightning bug. Infection of a lab worker or workers owing to shoddy design or performance being a point of entry to humanity for the virus is simply an accident, and a sort of accident that does happen on occasion.

[OhZone]

3. Again - did they have a sample of the virus before the outbreak or not?

Is anyone asking that?

To me that's pretty important.

[The Magistrate]

5. My Understanding, Ma'am

Is that the Wuhan laboratory did study corona viruses originating in bats. There have been some small instances of contagion from same near rural caves and disused mines. Whether this exact virus was present I cannot say. And it is possible a mutation occurred after an initial infection by a similar virus. Damn bad luck if such a chance event turned into what confronts us now. But ill fortune is a consistent presence in life....

[OhZone]

7. Thanks, Magistrate - So you think they don't know if they had a sample of the SPECIFIC corona virus?

Wouldn't they have cataloged them?

Wouldn't they say, oh here's a new coronoa virus, lets compare to the ones we've discovered so far?

Hmmmm.

The refusal to confirm or deny thing bothers me.

Or did they deny it?

[The Magistrate]

8. I Do Not Know What Was There, Ma'am

I presume they do.

[torius]

9. they say the samples do not match

read drs. vincent raccianello, angela rassmussen, fauci, all said samples do not match the virus matching as well there is evidence of natural origin as well as there is a lack of evidence of lab leak.

[OhZone]

11. Cool -

That's the level of information I like to see.

[stopdiggin]

12. information pointed to has been there all along

(Dr. Fauci is hardly obscure, or difficult to access) and yet -- as Magistrate is so gently pointing out -- some people will be determined to 'filter' this through a lens of "unresolved" and "isn't it possible?" Not really the message that WHO was trying to impart here -- but you do you.
----- -----

[OhZone]

13. Hey don't blame me if they bury the lead! Ha!

Ha


If the lead says, "After extensive checks, the Wuhan lab says they did not have posession of the new virus, before the outbreak, but some still claim that the lab may have been a source of the outbreak," that's different that ...

Some still claim that the lab may be the source of the outbreak.

[stopdiggin]

14. some still claim

that Bill Gates is microchipping the vaccine ....
But I tend not to promote -- or pursue ....
----- --- --- -----

[OhZone]

15. I hear the radiation from my two phones, work and personal -

destroys the tracking chip.

Good thing you can reach me by those phones. HA

[OhZone]

2. Again, with all this speculation about a lab leak -

the question to me is -

Did the lab know they had a sample of the virus before it exploded in Wuhan?

Or is that not how things are done?

Alternate question - is there any validity to the studies of old sewage samples and antibody studies in Europe that indicated the virus was there long before the Wuhan outbreak?

If it was in Italy in September 2019... maybe it didn't even start in China.



"

Research suggests the virus was in Italy in the fall of 2019

italy coronavirus
A COVID-19 patient is transported by nurses inside a biological containment stretcher in the Da Procida Hospital in Salerno, Italy, April 8, 2020. Ivan Romano/Getty Images

Italy recorded its first official coronavirus case in Lombardy on February 21, 2020. Yet a recent study found coronavirus antibodies in blood samples collected from 23 Italians in September 2019 and 27 in October 2019.

"Our results indicate that SARS-CoV-2 circulated in Italy earlier than the first official COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in Lombardy, even long before the first official reports from the Chinese authorities, casting new light on the onset and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic," the authors wrote. (SARS-CoV-2 is the clinical name of the virus.)

"

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-circulated-europe-china-before-wuhan-outbreak-2020-12

[lagomorph777]

4. Interesting.

I wonder whether other nations can go into blood sample archives and find early traces...?

I know here in VA (USA) in fall 2019, we had people (even young people) mysteriously and suddenly dying of something that, in retrospect, sounds a whole lot like COVID.

[OhZone]

6. Yes I've heard that from a few sources -

And I saw one post from a tech group that was getting items over-nighted from China complaining that they all got sick with a similar illness after an overnight delivery.

[Rural_Progressive]

17. I am at a loss to understand why the World Military Games

that were held in Wuhan from Oct 18 thru the 27th are rarely mentioned as a leading candidate for the spread of this disease.

Representatives of the Italian military were there, in fact they did quite well. The timing of the discovery of the antibodies in blood samples from Italy and a world gathering of individuals who live in quarters quite conducive to the spread of a disease seems to demand being investigated with much more energy than much of what is being pursued.

https://prospect.org/coronavirus/did-the-military-world-games-spread-covid-19/

[OhZone]

19. Oh that's interesting!

And since there is a little evidence from the review of old blood samples in Italy from Sept. 2019, wouldn't it horribly weird if Italy brought it to Wuhan and elsewhere rather than the other way round.

[BadGimp]

10. A writer I know just published this free PDF - part of his current book project

"True Story: How the novel coronavirus escaped Wuhan, China and terrorized the world

- I still have yet to read it but it has some pretty deep insights in it.

https://michaeltchong.com/PDFs/LOCKDOWN_Preview_210121.pdf

FYI: I created and still maintain coronovirus.topichubs.com (no promoting as it's a passion project that produces no income for anyone)

[ForgoTheConsequence]

16. A professional "Innovation and Trends Speaker"

He should leave the epidemiology up to the epidemiologists.

[Backseat Driver]

18. While I am "willing" to accept the official report(s) that it was originally in Chinese bats

and linked through the "product" animals sold at that market, I have suspicions because of this published "gain of function" research that was allowed to go forward in which the researchers created a chimera virus from a SARS-CoV virus "currently circulating among local Chinese bats."

Bolded at the beginning of the article published here: VOLUME 22 | NUMBER 4 | APRIL 2016 nature medicine, one can read

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV underscores the threat of cross-species transmission events leading to outbreaks in humans. Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.

Sometime later, some of the Chinese researchers returned to their labs "with gifts." Somewhere I also later read that inspectors went to labs and found faults that could have promoted accidental entry in the general population. (Sorry, unable to quickly find link). Ahh...https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8218817/State-Department-warned-2018-Wuhan-lab-cause-new-SARS-like-pandemic.html - but, then consider this suspect due to the US admin at the time...

Well, I consider that that former guy is guilty of mass murder for doing nothing at all useful to stop the deadly spread of CoVid-19, and it's too late for the deceased; no amount of legal settlement/apology will bring those around the whole world back, but we sure know where to point the finger in this country...paraphrased as "It will all just go away."

Perhaps further study will reveal useful information or not...I thank scientists for their best practices to prevent the spread while they hunted for a "vaccine." If we'll need boosters or new formulations in the future...we'll see. Got my appointments as soon as eligible and got the Pfizer ones, the last in late February. Thank you, Joe, for your committment." The more we know, the more questions scientists will ask! In the meantime, good luck lunatic and political CT kooks!!!

Sorry for all the edits!

[torius]

22. The gain of function

would show genetic manipulation on inspecting the virus, so scientists have ruled that out since the virus shows no manipulation.
It's not that hard to find online, look up Dr. Angela Rassmussen

[JohnnyRingo]

20. In the newspaper today that it jumped from bats

That was according to WHO.
So now they want to look closer to see if it "escaped" from a lab?
Am I reading that right?

[womanofthehills]

21. Our national intelligence is not ruling it out - plus China's Sars labs were flagged for yrs

U.S. still hasn't ruled out lab accident origin for Covid because China hasn't been transparent
U.S. officials haven't shown any evidence pointing to a lab escape, and scientists call the scenario unlikely. The U.S. wants China to share information.


WASHINGTON — Despite a finding by the World Health Organization that the Covid-19 outbreak in China most likely first infected humans through an animal host, the United States is still not ruling out the possibility of a laboratory accident, as officials continue to sort through intelligence about the Chinese government’s initial handling of the outbreak, American and Western officials told NBC News.

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told NBC News the agency is standing by a public statement it issued in April, which said that American intelligence agencies "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."


https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2021/03/10/17-brenham-nursing-home-residents-contract-covid-19-after-getting-shots/