What is the true origin of Sars-Cov-2? Facts and controversies (in Lancet)
Who and why in Lancet on February 19, 2020 reassured on the animal origin of Sars-Cov-2 excluding other hypotheses. The in-depth analysis of Presadiretta (Rai3) and the controversies on the conflicts of interest of some authors of the essay on Lancet with the Wuhan Institute of Virology
On February 19, 2020 , when the word " Covid-19 " began to enter the common lexicon, 27 scientists, among the most accredited, signed a letter in the Lancet in order to reassure the population about the new coronavirus. In the editorial of the prestigious scientific journal, the researchers reassured about the collaboration by the Chinese authorities and warned against disinformation circulating on various media and social media.
Antony Blinken: Concerned about WHO methodology and reporting process
Presadiretta , the broadcast of Rai 3, in its last episode of the season, started from that letter to return to talk about the report drawn up by the WHO after the trip of one of its delegations to China . During the week, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was "seriously worried about the methodology and the process", criticizing the results of the report which excludes any hypothesis of human intervention on the incipit of the pandemic. Secretary Blinken also suspects that the Chinese government put a hand in the final draft of the report and doubts that WHO members had access to all the data they needed.
Correspondence between Lancet experts
To the microphones of Rai 3 Colin Butler , honorary professor of epidemiology at the Australian National University , criticizes the tone of the Lancet letter which he considers overbearing. "Anyone who did not agree that the virus came from the animal world then had to be considered a conspiracy theorist," says prof. Butler. Gary Ruskin is the executive director of US Right to Know , an American association that protects freedom of information. Thanks to a request for access to the documents, he managed to obtain all the correspondence between the scientists before publishing the letter in the Lancet . Dr. Peter Daszak , president of EcoHealt Alliance and one of the most famous zoning experts, among the most interviewed this year for his long experience in the field. EcoHealt Alliance deals with the prevention of infectious diseases, is a body funded by the American government, responsible for 50 projects around the world and 17 million dollars.
EcoHealt funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology
In the correspondence accessed by Gary Ruskin's group, Dr. Peter Daszak stressed the importance of not bringing out any political color, or other type of belonging from that letter. This is to avoid possible insinuations about a conflict of interest. According to what Gary Ruskin told Presadiretta , the conflict of interest exists because the EcoHealt Alliance is financed by the American federal government and with those funds it supports, in turn, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Over the past 5 years EcoHeal Alliance, through the NIH (National Institute of Health), has financed the Wuhan Institute of Virology with 1.2 million dollars for three lines of research: study of new coronaviruses, population sampling in the south of China, study of population living in contact with bats.
The signatories linked to EcoHealt
Signatories linked to EcoHealt include Rita Colwell and James Hughes (board members), William Karesh (executive vice president of the health and policy group) and Hume Field (science and policy advisor). No mention is made of these partnerships in the Lancet letter, although the journal requires disclosure of all financial or personal relationships in which there is a potential or actual conflict of interest.
Failure to reply from Lancet
Lancet magazine belongs to the Elsevier group which also has numerous open-access publications funded by Chinese institutes. Presadiretta tried to contact Lancet but director Richard Horton declined to be interviewed. However, the Lancet sent a clarification in which it states that since the publication of the letter Lancet has created a task force chaired by Peter Daszak to evaluate all the hypotheses on the origins of the virus, including that of artificial origin.
WHO sends scientists to Wuhan
On January 14, 2021, the WHO team lands in China , including the president of EcoHealt Alliance Peter Daszak. After 15 days of quarantine on January 29 they begin to investigate. WHO researchers visit the Wuhan fish market, where the epidemic is imagined to have originated but no animal, alive or frozen, has ever been found positive for Covid-19 . They also visit, for just three hours, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where coronaviruses are studied, without finding anything inconvenient. The presence of Chinese politics was constant throughout the trip of the WHO delegation.
The doubts of WHO consultant Jamie Metzil
"In this negotiation, China has obtained the power of veto over the members of the commission of inquiry, ie who would participate and who would not – said Jamie Metzil , WHO consultant -. And he got the power to carry out the investigation and present his conclusions. The problem is that the WHO is controlled and financed by the states, the WHO is in a position to investigate the states that finance it ”. Furthermore, the presence of Peter Daszak is suspicious since EcoHealth Alliance funded the research of coronaviruses in bats of the Wuhan virology laboratory. “Since one of the theories to be explored is precisely that of the accidental escape of the virus from the institute of virology – continues the consultant Metzl -, any scientist who has been involved in this type of collaboration should not be part of the investigation.
Failure to investigate RATG13, a relative of Covid-19
The WHO delegation stopped in Wuhan, without deepening the research in the villages of Yannan , a region south of China on the border with Laos, where the RATG13 virus was found which shares 96.2 with Sars-CoV-2 % of DNA. Samuel Mcneil , an Associated Press journalist who wanted to go to the mines where large populations of bats live and where about 100 coronaviruses have been traced, 9 of which are potentially dangerous for humans, was blocked by the police. The suspicion of the broadcast is that China is hiding a lot of data.
The report of the WHO delegation
On February 9, 2021, the WHO international mission ends. All scientists agree on the all-natural origin of Covid-19 . Liang Wannian (Head of the Chinese delegation) says that Sars-CoV2 spread thanks to zoonotic transmission. Peter Ben Embarek (WHO Food Safety and Zoonosis Program Manager) adds all the work continues to focus on natural hypothesis. A few days after the Wuhan conference, WHO number two, Dr. Michael Ryan said that the WHO was not an investigation but a relationship with the cooperation of the Chinese sovereign state.
The doubts of the scientific community
Not all members of the scientific community agree with the conclusions reached by WHO experts. The CNRS of Marseille questions the hypothesis of natural origin of Sars-CoV2 because studies were being carried out in Wuhan to understand whether by inserting the spike protein into the virus it could be manipulated to understand if it could attack humans. Colin Butler , prof. Australian National University's honorary epidemiology, talks about sham investigation that could embarrass WHO in the future. Filippa Lentzos , biosecurity expert – King's College London, says that for a year the scientific community has been unsuccessfully searching for the intermediate animal between man and the bat that carries the virus. So one should ask whether this is still the most likely hypothesis. And about the WHO survey he says: “The WHO survey was not an independent survey. You understand this from the terms of the agreement and from the choice of the team ”. The professor. Ralph Baric , professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina, is more direct and bluntly says: “The questions still unanswered are undoubtedly to be sought in Wuhan. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has a large team looking for coronaviruses in bats, so they have a large collection of bat samples. It is difficult to convince people that he has not left the laboratory ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/sars-cov-2-ha-origine-animale-fatti-e-polemiche-su-lancet/ on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:42:50 +0000.