Another Look at Wuhan, an insider's view -

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-27/did-covid-come-from-a...

The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out

Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute.

The long and short of it is that said scientist says escape from this lab is very improbable, though such things are always possible, that lab was definitely up to snuff and not defective or sloppy in equipment or procedures, highly unlikely to have been doing gain of function, and that she knows of no employees who got sick (and none such have been named by those asserting that such happened) and that the scientists hung out together and had conferences such that many more than 3 would've been infected, including her.

Worth a read.

be well and have a good one

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CB's picture

Despite the availability of the German test kit made public on January 13 the first American tests were considerably delayed:

WIKI
...
By February 27, fewer than 4,000 tests had been conducted in the U.S.[10] Although academic laboratories and hospitals had developed their own tests, they were not allowed to use them until February 29, when the FDA issued approvals for them and private companies.[10][11]

From February 25, a group of researchers from the Seattle Flu Study defied federal and state officials to conduct their own tests, using samples already collected from flu study subjects who had not given permission for SARS-CoV-2 testing. They quickly found a teenager infected with SARS-CoV-2 of unknown origin, newly indicating that an outbreak had already been occurring in Washington for the past six weeks. State regulators stopped these researchers' testing on March 2, although the testing later resumed through the creation of the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network.

Due to lack of timely testing, we have little to no information when COVID-19 first started circulating in the US.

Another question is why was the Wuhan lab given American research funding in the first place, especially for gain of function research?

Why Would the US Have Funded the Controversial Wuhan Lab?
...
According to Newsweek, funding for the WIV occurred in two phases. The first took place from 2014 to 2019, through a $3.7 million project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses. This work was largely led by Dr. Zhengli Shi, known to many as “batwoman” for her years investigating caves in search of new bat viruses. The second phase began shortly after, with another $3.7 million. Unlike the first, this project appears to have included work on “gain-of-function”: research that investigates how a virus can gain the ability to infect a new type of animal.
...

Was this an elaborate sting operation to set up China to take the fall?

The Covid BioWeapon: Made in the USA, Aimed at China
...
"Given our ongoing military and geopolitical confrontation with China, America seems the likely source of the attack… The most likely suspects would be rogue elements of our national security establishment, probably some of the Deep State Neocons whom Trump had placed near the top of his administration.

This small handful of high-level plotters would have then drawn upon the resources of the American national security apparatus to actually carry out the operation. The virus and its dispersal devices might have been obtained from Ft. Detrick and CIA operatives or members of special forces would have been sent to Wuhan to release it…. In effect, what happened was a Dr. Strangelove-type scenario, but brought to real life.”
...

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enhydra lutris's picture

@CB
way it does is anybody's guess.

Funding: First round could've been a legitimate interest, to the extent that the US ever has any such, in trying to understand all the myriad bat virii and how to contain them or prevent their spread and or prevent them from infecting humans.

Phase 2, assuming it happened could be the same. Gain of function research is little more than an unconfirmed rumor. The person in the piece linked here says she knew of none, ever, at Wuhan. A different source a while back ( http://dilyana.bg/project-g-2101-pentagon-biolab-discovered-mers-and-sar... ) noted that the US was running both civil and military projects in multiple labs, mostly in former SSRs and said in part:

Peter Daszak, president of Eco Health Alliance, told Democracy Now that he had collected bat samples with Chinese colleagues but the Wuhan laboratory did not house the culture of bat viruses but rather their genetic sequencing. If the viruses were not stored in the Wuhan lab in China, then where were they transported and stored?

This is not the only US-funded project under which Eco Health Alliance collected bats and coronaviruses in China. The US scientists studied bats in Eastern Asia (mainly China) and Africa from 2009 to 2019 under the $200 million USAID Predict program whose primary objective was to exactly predict pandemics.

(my emphasis)

In 2016 Eco Health Alliance, US scientists and USAID launched the The Global Virome Project. The ambitious project was estimated to cost at least $1.6 billion for 10 years. Its main objective is to identify emerging diseases lurking in the wild that could spread to humans and become pandemic.

also my emphasis

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

snoopydawg's picture

even tho no one has determined that it DID escape from a lab, but let's just go with Wuhan since it fits the current narrative that China is bad and a threat to us. Lots of human rights abuses go unpunished if they make money for the PTB, but the Uighur are (....) and must be protected even though we have no problem killing Muslims elsewhere and calling them our enemies.

If it did escape from a lab I think people should be looking closer at home, or where our scientists are creating vile viruses and worse just in case we need to take people out without it looking like we did. 3 can play that game. China wants us to look to make sure nothing else escaped from Fort Detrix...

Since Covid needs to be corralled asap it is good to see that the powerful nations won't get vaccines to all nations until the end of 2021 or even 2022 because of the greed of big pharma. That too tells its own story as do the countries that are supplying anyone who wants them. That is if the USA approves them to do so. Biden denied Brazil getting the Russian VAX and they are close to surpassing us on the death toll. All lives matter, just some much more than others. AmIright?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

CB's picture

@snoopydawg
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjYPei_jfXg]

Some Uyghur musicians to entertain you:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXL1Usqsrpw]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svr_Efo7Qyg]

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enhydra lutris's picture

@snoopydawg
telling move.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows

They first found the virus was present in Barcelona on Jan. 15, 2020, 41 days before the first case was officially reported there.

Then they ran tests on samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019 and found the presence of the virus genome in one of them, collected on March 12, 2019.

We (the public at large) will never know the exact origin of or date of first human infection, whether by design or by incompetence. No one working in level four labs who has any intention of continuing in that line of work would risk their career by leaving any room for doubt about the bio security of the labs, or the competence and integrity of those running or working in them.

The assurances in the Bloomberg article do not rise to the level of evidence of anything, whether someone ate with the corona virus team and trusted them or not.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

enhydra lutris's picture

@ovals49

evidence of anything, especially relating to this pandemic. Did Spain really find it in Barcelona? Was there an equally early find n Italy? Who knows?

be well and have a good one

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8 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

interview article. Exactly what discerning readers over the past year would expect.

Anderson is correct (to 99%+) in that the Wuhan Lab would have become a hot spot if it were the source of a lab leak. A strange illness in even one worker in such a lab wouldn't go unnoticed. (The same logic applies to the July 2019 unexplained illness in VA nursing home residents. (and VA isn't all that close to Ft Detrick as many continue to assert.))

Looks as if we're now into an actual second wave with the Indian Delta variant. Countries that effectively contained the original covid-19 (ie Vietnam, Taiwan, and Cuba) are having difficulty with this. Taiwan: as of 3/31/2021, cases 955 and death 9. as of 6/28/2021, cases 14,694 and deaths 635. Daily new cases peaked on 5/31 and have been declining since then. Active cases in Vietnam have yet to begin to decline.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Marie

information and insight.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --