By Jim
Geraghty
Tuesday,
April 18, 2023
By 2019
the Wuhan Institute of Virology had collected, at a minimum, approximately
20,000 bat- and other animal-virus samples from field expeditions conducted all
across China.
After
going into caves and other locations to collect the samples and, in some cases,
live bats,
researchers would take the samples back to Wuhan, where they “routinely
underwent initial evaluation in Biosafety Level 2 settings where they were
first evaluated, usually by graduate students, for the presence of SARS-related
beta coronaviruses. If viruses were present, researchers then attempted to
isolate and sequence the virus.”
This
information is in the full report on
the origin of Covid-19 released yesterday by the Senate Health, Education,
Labor and Pensions Committee. The report is 300 pages and has 1,570 footnotes.
The
information about the Biosafety Level 2 labs comes from a thesis on the
“Geographic Evolution of Bat SARS-related Coronaviruses” submitted to the
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences by Yu Ping, a graduate student
pursuing a degree of Master of Natural Science in Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology, supervised by Professor Cui Jie and Professor Shi Zheng-Li, which was
published in June 2019. You can read that thesis
here. You may
recognize the name Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed “Bat Woman”
for her work with that species, the one who told Scientific American early
in the pandemic that when she first heard about the virus spreading through
Wuhan, she initially wondered, “Could they have come from our lab?”
This is
significant because the safety standards at Biosafety Level 2 labs are not as
extensive and stringent as those at Biosafety Level 4 labs. Level 2 labs handle
bacteria and viruses such as Lyme Disease and the standard flu; Level 3 labs
handle more dangerous pathogens such as anthrax and HIV; and Level 4 labs
handle the most dangerous viruses, such as Ebola.
Last
week, the Washington Post published an
excellent report examining
the safety record of China’s government-run laboratories overall, not just
focusing on the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan Centers for Disease
Control. The opening anecdote is terrifying:
In the summer of 2019, a mysterious accident occurred inside a
government-run biomedical complex in north-central China, a facility that
handles a pathogen notorious for its ability to pass easily from animals to
humans.
There were no alarms or flashing lights to alert workers to the defect
in a sanitation system that was supposed to kill germs in the vaccine plant’s
waste. When the system failed in late July that year, millions of airborne
microbes began seeping invisibly from exhaust vents and drifting into nearby
neighborhoods. Nearly a month passed before the problem was discovered and
fixed, and four months before the public was informed. By then, at least 10,000
people had been exposed, with hundreds developing symptomatic illnesses,
scientific studies later concluded.
The events occurred not in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus pandemic
began, but in another Chinese city, Lanzhou, 800 miles to the northwest. The
leaking pathogens were bacteria that cause brucellosis, a common livestock
disease that can lead to chronic illness or even death in humans if not
treated. As the pandemic enters its fourth year, new details about the
little-known Lanzhou incident offer a revealing glimpse into a much larger —
and largely hidden — struggle with biosafety across China in late 2019, at the
precise moment when both the brucellosis incident and the coronavirus outbreak
were coming to light.
Perhaps
the most chilling quote in the article comes from biosecurity expert Robert
Hawley, “who for years oversaw safety programs at the U.S. Army’s
maximum-containment lab at Fort Detrick, Md.” Hawley told the Post he
saw “‘imprudent’ lab practices in inspection reports obtained by a
congressional oversight committee.”
“It is
very, very apparent that their biological safety training is minimal,” Hawley
said.
The
closest thing to a smoking gun in the full Senate report is the evidence that
researchers affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology began working on a
vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, before
almost anyone else in the world had heard of the virus:
November 2019 also appears to be the timeframe that PLA researchers
began development of at least two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) Professor Zhou Yusen, Director of the 5th Institute at the Academy of
Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), worked with the WIV, and possibly at the WIV,
episodically, for several years prior to the pandemic. Zhou or AMMS researchers
may have been working at the WIV no later than the Fall of 2019 conducting
research for a paper that he coauthored with two WIV researchers, Shi Zhengli
and Chen Jing, on a known adverse effect of SARS-related vaccines and antibody
treatments. There is reason to believe Zhou was engaged in SARS-related
coronavirus animal vaccine research with WIV researchers beginning no later
than the Summer or early Fall of 2019. Zhou submitted one of the first COVID-19
vaccine patents on February 24, 2020.
The patent includes mouse-derived serological data from vaccine-related
experiments which experts, consulted with during this investigation, assess
could not have been completed unless Zhou’s team began work on vaccine
development before the known outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in late December
2019. The research required both access to the sequence of and the live
SARS-CoV-2 virus. Several experts assessed that Zhou likely would have had to
start this vaccine development research no later than November 2019 to achieve
the February patent submission date. Zhou later published transgenic mouse
infection and vaccine challenge studies in mice, including humanized mice and
non-human primates. The location(s) where Zhou’s animal vaccine challenge
studies were performed was not disclosed. There is reason to believe that these
vaccine experiments were performed at the original WIV’s downtown Wuhan campus
and possibly at the Wuhan University Institute of Animal Models located
approximately a mile from the WIV.
PLA AMMS Major General Wei Chen led a second, separate, effort to
develop another candidate COVID-19 vaccine. Chen collaborated with the China
state-owned biopharmaceutical company SinoPharm. Chen’s vaccine experiments
with humanized mice, ferrets and non-human primates occurred at the Harbin
veterinary research facility BSL-4 laboratory in northern China.124 Human
clinical trials began in mid- March 2020. Chen submitted a patent for her
vaccine March 18, 2020 Based on this timeline, experts believe Chen would have
had to begin her vaccine efforts no later than early December 2019. Chen’s
vaccine candidate was also dependent on the availability of SARS-CoV-2’s
genetic sequence that would not be published until January 11, 2020. However,
unlike Zhou, there is no evidence that Chen’s vaccine efforts were associated
geographically or temporally with the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
This is
further evidence that the Chinese government knew it was dealing with a
contagious virus and deliberately
lied to the rest of world that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human
transmission” up until January 20, 2020.
This is
one of the many maddening aspects of this matter. Even if this all traces back
to a natural transmission of someone ordering bat soup or grilled pangolin in a
seafood market, or as Jon Stewart memorably characterized it, “Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of
a turkey and then it sneezed into my chili,” the Chinese government was still
lying when the world needed the truth and lives were at stake. We all had
years of our lives taken away from us because the Chinese government refused to
acknowledge that there was a contagious virus spreading around their country
and the world. In the month
of January 2020, more than 1,300 flights from China arrived at 17 U.S. airports, carrying roughly 381,000
passengers.
When did
the Covid-19 pandemic start? The Senate HELP committee report indicates that
people in Wuhan were starting to notice an abnormal rate of viral infections in
October and November:
Eyewitness accounts, media reports, epidemiological modeling and
additional academic studies further support October 28 to November 10 as the
window of emergence. Diplomats stationed at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan
have attested to observations of what they believed at the time to be the early
onset of a ‘bad flu’ season. The Deputy Consular Chief recalled: “By
mid-October 2019, the dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan
knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually
vicious flu season. The disease worsened in November.” These observations were
reported to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during this period.
By one
measure, the argument about the lab-leak theory, which has gone on for about
three years, is effectively over. Those of us who suspect human error is the
cause of one of the world’s greatest modern calamities have persuaded an
overwhelming majority of the American public of that.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in March showed 64
percent of Americans think the pandemic was “caused by a laboratory leak” and
just 22 percent believe it was “caused by a natural transmission from animals
to humans.” Another poll taken a week earlier by Economist/YouGov showed an even stronger split in favor of a
lab leak: 66 percent to 16 percent. If I were a meaner person, I would
characterize the zoonotic origin as a fringe theory.
That
Senate report also acknowledges the potential for a “zoonotic spillover” —
after all, either this virus or its evolutionary precursor had to be in a bat
at some point — but points out the frustrating lack of conclusive evidence:
To date, China has not acknowledged the infection or positive
serological sample(s) of any susceptible animal prior to the recognized
outbreak. Genetic analysis of published SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the early
outbreak does not show evidence of genetic adaptation reflecting passage
through a susceptible animal species such as a palm civet, raccoon dog or mink.
To this end, no intermediate host has been identified.
Despite these facts, three data points do present themselves to support
the zoonotic origin theory. First, approximately 33 percent of the earliest
known human COVID-19 cases (with symptom onset dates in mid- to late-December
2019) were associated with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Second, several
animal species susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were sold live and in poor animal
welfare conditions at the market. Finally, the identification of genetic
sequences of raccoon dogs in samples taken from the market in early 2020
confirm that this susceptible intermediate host was at the market at the time
of the outbreak. As noted, “there is no data . . . associating SARS-CoV-2 with
the presence of any of these animals.” These data themselves, however, do not
explain the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This
Senate committee report was overseen by the now-retired North Carolina GOP
senator Richard Burr. Back in November, the Charlotte
Observer editorial
board thundered
that “Richard Burr, who typically keeps a relatively low profile, seems to be
playing games on his way out of office.” The board referred to the lab-leak
theory as “a Covid conspiracy,” contending that the interim report “fueled the
fire of disinformation that has been blazing since the pandemic began. It also
gives the COVID conspiracy theorists a new bone to chew on.”
Because
Burr is usually “low profile” and isn’t a bomb-thrower, a frothing-at-the-mouth
demagogue, or an unhinged conspiracy theorist, shouldn’t the editorial board
sit up and take notice when he is putting his name behind a contention like
this?
FBI director
Christopher Wray is
not a wide-eyed conspiracy theorist. The U.S. Department of Energy, and
in particular the
Livermore Labs’ “Z Division,” is not full of guys who believe lizard people walk among us
and who insist they saw Elvis at their local convenience store. Former CDC
director Robert Redfield is not some nut who believes in healing crystals and werewolves.
In the
face of the biggest and most consequential mystery in modern history, some of
us looked at the remarkable coincidence of a novel coronavirus most like those
found in bats emerging near not one but two laboratories doing gain-of-function
research on novel coronaviruses found in bats — going back to
April 3, 2020, I remind you. And in response, we’ve gotten name-calling, sneers, and smears.
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