Laboratory coronavirus: the “forbidden” hypothesis is enriched with new elements

23 March 20213 years ago babelfish

On Atlantico Quotidiano we have dealt on several occasions with an issue that continues to be indigestible in the Italian mainstream press: the possible accidental release of the coronavirus from one of the Wuhan laboratories. We did not do it to feed conspiracy theories (in our opinion the Chinese responsibilities in the global pandemic are in any case of the first order) but simply because it immediately seemed to us a trend worthy of the utmost attention, based on a consideration of departure dictated by simple common sense: the hypothesis that Sars-CoV-2 has begun to spread due to natural and independent causes a few kilometers from one of the most important virological investigation centers in the world, specialized precisely in the study of coronaviruses , continues to seem rather difficult to accept as a dogma. The search for the real causes of the pandemic is surprising, especially in Europe, as if it were a mere exercise in style and not the main guarantee of prevention of any future global health emergencies.

It should be remembered that even the of 'Mission World Organization of Health (WHO), who visited the epidemic places last month under close Chinese surveillance, could completely rule out the possibility of laboratory escape, merely to emphasize that in the absence certain evidence on the origin of the virus also remained an open option.

In the last days of the Trump presidency, the US State Department has been especially assertive on the subject, reiterating the line of Chinese responsibility in concealing information relevant to the international scientific community. In a document dated January 15, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to three main aspects not yet clarified by the Beijing authorities: the nature of the experiments carried out within the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), intended to increase the power and the transmissibility of coronaviruses ( gain of function ); collaborative projects with the Chinese armed forces; pathologies of some researchers at the center in the fall of 2019 already showing symptoms consistent with what a few months later would be known throughout the world as Covid-19.

The Australian newspaper The Australian returned yesterday to this last point, confirming the veracity of information on which the American intelligence and government have been working for some time: two months before the official announcement of the discovery of the Wuhan coronavirus , some WIV employees working in the trial chain had been hospitalized after feeling ill. The validation of this data, always denied by the Chinese managers of the laboratory but indirectly corroborated also by an envoy of the WHO, Marion Koopmans, could totally change the perspective prevailing up to now: if two months before the beginning of the epidemic they had truly recorded in the WIV cases of disease compatible with Covid-19 , the probabilities that the infection originated within the laboratory would increase exponentially, also in consideration of the fact that currently there is no alternative origin that can be proven with certain evidence.

It is likely that when Pompeo declared that he was in possession of " enormous evidence " on the responsibilities of the Wuhan laboratory he was referring, among other things, to these elements of fact, at the time still under study but currently given for confirmation by sources of the 'American intelligence . According to David Asher , former head of the State Department task force in charge of investigating the origin of the coronavirus , Sars-CoV-2 would have emerged in the course of experiments on vaccines to be used as an antidote in the event of attacks with biological weapons. The research would be promoted and funded directly by the People's Liberation Army , which would demonstrate the dual function of WIV as a civilian and military installation at the same time.

The safety problems of Chinese laboratories have been a matter of discussion and concern in the United States for years. Josh Rogin, a Washington Post reporter who has followed the trail of the accidental escape from the beginning, recently revealed that, as early as the end of 2017, a group of experts from the US embassy in Beijing visited the WIV and collected the concerns of some Chinese researchers on the level of preparation of technicians and on health guarantee protocols: " Scientists in Wuhan were asking for support to bring the laboratory to the highest standards ", explains Rogin, who adds: " The diplomats sent two dispatches to Washington (…) these two points – a group of particularly dangerous viruses, studied in a laboratory with significant safety problems – were to be interpreted as a warning about a potential public health emergency (…) But there was no response from the State Department headquarters and the dispatches were not never made public. And as tensions between the United States and China increased during 2018, American diplomats lost access to laboratories such as WIV ”.

In summary: accumulation of coronavirus samples in Wuhan Institute of Virology; manipulation of the same by inexperienced technicians; insufficient safety standards; processes of enhancement of the treated viruses; possible experiments to create antidotes in the event of a biological attack in collaboration with the Chinese armed forces; laboratory researchers infected and hospitalized two months before the official start of the pandemic; no trace of intermediate hosts in the passage of the virus from bats to humans. There is enough material to continue dealing with it.

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The post Laboratory Coronavirus: the "forbidden" hypothesis is enriched with new elements appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/rubriche/coronavirus-da-laboratorio-lipotesi-proibita-si-arricchisce-di-nuovi-elementi/ on Tue, 23 Mar 2021 05:01:00 +0000.