Covid-19 - Devastating Second Wave in India - Updates and Discussion

[Yongpeng Sun-Tastaufen]

It's certainly not Chinese. The laboratory that is working on it is certainly using humans or human material from South American countries. And that's the reason why this virus is proving itself so deadly against South Americans.
But these are just my thoughts, and I may be 100% wrong.

Makes sense.

 

[denel]

I will wait then.

The essence of the lab escape theory is that Wuhan is the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV), China’s first and only Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility. (BSL-4 is the highest pathogen
security level). The WIV, which added a BSL-4 lab only in 2018, has been collecting large
numbers of coronaviruses from bat samples ever since the original SARS outbreak of 2002-2003;
including collecting more in 2016 (Hu, et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018).
Led by researcher Zheng-Li Shi, WIV scientists have also published experiments in which live bat
coronaviruses were introduced into human cells (Hu et al., 2017). Moreover, according to an April
14 article in the Washington Post, US Embassy staff visited the WIV in 2018 and “had grave
safety concerns” about biosecurity there. The WIV is just eight miles from the Huanan live animal
market that was initially thought to be the site of origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
4
Wuhan is also home to a lab called the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control
(WCDPC). It is a BSL-2 lab that is just 250 metres away from the Huanan market. Bat
coronaviruses have in the past been kept at the Wuhan WCDPC lab.
Thus the lab escape theory is that researchers from one or both of these labs may have picked up a
Sars-CoV-2-like bat coronavirus on one of their many collecting (aka ‘”virus surveillance”) trips.
Or, alternatively, a virus they were studying, passaging, engineering, or otherwise manipulating,
escaped.

In 2014, just before the US GOF research ban went into effect, Zheng-Li Shi of WIV co-authored
a paper with the lab of Ralph Baric in North Carolina that performed GOF research on bat
coronaviruses (Menachery et al., 2015).
In this particular set of experiments the researchers combined “the spike of bat coronavirus
SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone” into a single engineered live virus. The spike
was supplied by the Shi lab. They put this bat/human/mouse virus into cultured human airway
cells and also into live mice. The researchers observed “notable pathogenesis” in the infected mice
(Menachery et al. 2015). The mouse-adapted part of this virus comes from a 2007 experiment in
which the Baric lab created a virus called rMA15 through passaging (Roberts et al., 2007). This
rMA15 was “highly virulent and lethal” to the mice. According to this paper, mice succumbed to
“overwhelming viral infection”.
In 2017, again with the intent of identifying bat viruses with ACE2 binding capabilities, the Shi
lab at WIV reported successfully infecting human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the
human ACE2 receptor with four different bat coronaviruses. Two of these were lab-made
recombinant (chimaeric) bat viruses. Both the wild and the recombinant viruses were briefly
passaged in monkey cells (Hu et al., 2017).
7
Together, what these papers show is that: 1) The Shi lab collected numerous bat samples with an
emphasis on collecting SARS-like coronavirus strains, 2) they cultured live viruses and conducted
passaging experiments on them, 3) members of Zheng-Li Shi’s laboratory participated in GOF
experiments carried out in North Carolina on bat coronaviruses, 4) the Shi laboratory produced
recombinant bat coronaviruses and placed these in human cells and monkey cells. All these
experiments were conducted in cells containing human or monkey ACE2 receptors.
The overarching purpose of such work was to see whether an enhanced pathogen could emerge
from the wild by creating one in the lab.

It is hard to overemphasize that the central logic of this grant was to test the pandemic potential of
SARS-related bat coronaviruses by making ones with pandemic potential, either through genetic
engineering or passaging, or both.
Apart from descriptions in their publications we do not yet know exactly which viruses the WIV
was experimenting with but it is certainly intriguing that numerous publications since Sars-CoV-2
first appeared have puzzled over the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds with
exceptionally high affinity to the human ACE2 receptor “at least ten times more tightly” than the
original SARS (Zhou et al., 2020; Wrapp et al., 2020; Wan et al., 2020; Walls et al., 2020; Letko
et al., 2020).
This affinity is all the more remarkable because of the relative lack of fit in modelling studies of
the SARS-CoV-2 spike to other species, including the postulated intermediates like snakes, civets
and pangolins (Piplani et al., 2020). In this preprint these modellers concluded “This indicates that
SARS-CoV-2 is a highly adapted human pathogen”.
Given the research and collection history of the Shi lab at WIV it is therefore entirely plausible
that a bat SARS-like cornavirus ancestor of Sars-CoV-2 was trained up on the human ACE2
receptor by passaging it in cells expressing that receptor.
[On June 4 an excellent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists went further. Pointing out
what we had overlooked, that the Shi lab also amplified spike proteins of collected coronaviruses,
which would make them available for GOF experimentation (Ge et al., 2016).]

Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020). The proximal
origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature medicine, 26(4), 450-452.
Bell, D., Roberton, S., & Hunter, P. R. (2004). Animal origins of SARS coronavirus: possible
links with the international trade in small carnivores. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1447), 1107-1114.
11
Duggal, A., Pinto, R., Rubenfeld, G., & Fowler, R. A. (2016). Global variability in reported
mortality for critical illness during the 2009-10 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic: a systematic
review and meta-regression to guide reporting of outcomes during disease outbreaks. PloS one,
11(5), e0155044.
Furmanski, M. (2014). Laboratory Escapes and “Self-fulfilling prophecy” Epidemics. Report:
Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. PDF available online.
Ge, X. Y., Li, J. L., Yang, X. L., Chmura, A. A., Zhu, G., Epstein, J. H., ... & Zhang, Y. J. (2013).
Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor.
Nature, 503(7477), 535-538.
Ge, X. Y., Wang, N., Zhang, W., Hu, B., Li, B., Zhang, Y. Z., ... & Wang, B. (2016). Coexistence
of multiple coronaviruses in several bat colonies in an abandoned mineshaft. Virologica Sinica,
31(1), 31-40.
Hu, B., Zeng, L. P., Yang, X. L., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, W., Li, B., ... & Luo, D. S. (2017). Discovery
of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of
SARS coronavirus. PLoS pathogens, 13(11), e1006698.
Huang, C., Wang, Y., Li, X., Ren, L., Zhao, J., Hu, Y., ... & Cheng, Z. (2020). Clinical features of
patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The lancet, 395(10223), 497-506.
Klotz, L. C., & Sylvester, E. J. (2014). The consequences of a lab escape of a potential pandemic
pathogen. Frontiers in public health, 2, 116.
Letko, M., Marzi, A., & Munster, V. (2020). Functional assessment of cell entry and receptor
usage for SARS-CoV-2 and other lineage B betacoronaviruses. Nature microbiology, 5(4), 562-
569.
Li, W., Shi, Z., Yu, M., Ren, W., Smith, C., Epstein, J. H., ... & Zhang, J. (2005). Bats are natural
reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses. Science, 310(5748), 676-679.
Lipsitch, M. (2018). Why Do Exceptionally Dangerous Gain-of-Function Experiments in
Influenza?. In Influenza Virus (pp. 589-608). Humana Press, New York, NY.
Lipsitch, M., & Galvani, A. P. (2014). Ethical alternatives to experiments with novel potential
pandemic pathogens. PLoS Med, 11(5), e1001646.
Menachery, V. D., Yount, B. L., Debbink, K., Agnihothram, S., Gralinski, L. E., Plante, J. A., ...
& Randell, S. H. (2015). A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for
human emergence. Nature medicine, 21(12), 1508-1513.
Nakajima, K., Desselberger, U., & Palese, P. (1978). Recent human influenza A (H1N1) viruses
are closely related genetically to strains isolated in 1950. Nature, 274(5669), 334-339.
National Research Council. (2012). Evaluation of the updated site-specific risk assessment for the
national bio-and agro-defense facility in Manhattan, Kansas. National Academies Press.
12
Piplani, S., Singh, P. K., Winkler, D. A., & Petrovsky, N. (2020). In silico comparison of spike
protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species; significance for the possible origin of the SARS-
CoV-2 virus. arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.06199.
Roberts, A., Deming, D., Paddock, C. D., Cheng, A., Yount, B., Vogel, L., ... & Zaki, S. R.
(2007). A mouse-adapted SARS-coronavirus causes disease and mortality in BALB/c mice. PLoS
Pathog, 3(1), e5.
Sheahan, T., Rockx, B., Donaldson, E., Sims, A., Pickles, R., Corti, D., & Baric, R. (2008).
Mechanisms of zoonotic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus host range expansion in
human airway epithelium. Journal of virology, 82(5), 2274-2285.
Simonsen, L., Spreeuwenberg, P., Lustig, R., Taylor, R. J., Fleming, D. M., Kroneman, M., ... &
Paget, W. J. (2013). Global mortality estimates for the 2009 Influenza Pandemic from the
GLaMOR project: a modeling study. PLoS Med, 10(11), e1001558.
Walls, A. C., Park, Y. J., Tortorici, M. A., Wall, A., McGuire, A. T., & Veesler, D. (2020).
Structure, function, and antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Cell, 180, 281-292.
Wan, Y., Shang, J., Graham, R., Baric, R. S., & Li, F. (2020). Receptor recognition by the novel
coronavirus from Wuhan: an analysis based on decade-long structural studies of SARS
coronavirus. Journal of virology, 94(7).
Weiss, S., Yitzhaki, S., & Shapira, S. C. (2015). Lessons to be Learned from Recent Biosafety
Incidents in the United States. The Israel Medical Association Journal: IMAJ, 17(5), 269-273.
Wertheim, J. O. (2010). The re-emergence of H1N1 influenza virus in 1977: a cautionary tale for
estimating divergence times using biologically unrealistic sampling dates. PloS one, 5(6), e11184.
Wrapp, D., Wang, N., Corbett, K. S., Goldsmith, J. A., Hsieh, C. L., Abiona, O., ... & McLellan, J.
S. (2020). Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation. Science,
367(6483), 1260-1263.
Zhan, S. H., Deverman, B. E., & Chan, Y. A. (2020). SARS-CoV-2 is well adapted for humans.
What does this mean for re-emergence?. bioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262
Zimmer, S. M., & Burke, D. S. (2009). Historical perspective—emergence of influenza A (H1N1)
viruses. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(3), 279-285.
Zhou, P., Fan, H., Lan, T., Yang, X. L., Shi, W. F., Zhang, W., ... & Zheng, X. S. (2018). Fatal
swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by an HKU2-related coronavirus of bat origin. Nature,
556(7700), 255-258.
Zhou, P., Yang, X. L., Wang, X. G., Hu, B., Zhang, L., Zhang, W., ... & Chen, H. D. (2020). A
pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. nature, 579(7798),
270-273.



.... NOTE THE targetting of receptor ACE2 receptor..... They were playing with human cells.

 

[masterchief_mirza]

I thought Indian people celebrate holi like this:

View attachment 732052

View attachment 732053

I was deceived my whole life.

Bhai, these pictures are of Indian burger pawrry hori hain. Real holi is a bit more carnal.

 

[Valar.]

So now we have "Indian virus" will the UK establishment "red list" India?

The level of silly geopolitics being played over the issue of pandemic is touching borderline lunacy. Having a lot of Indians in UK cabinet doesn't mean that country is left exposed to dangers coming from India.

Just today they broke their own record of highest cases in a day.

 

[fitpOsitive]

The essence of the lab escape theory is that Wuhan is the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV), China’s first and only Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility. (BSL-4 is the highest pathogen
security level). The WIV, which added a BSL-4 lab only in 2018, has been collecting large
numbers of coronaviruses from bat samples ever since the original SARS outbreak of 2002-2003;
including collecting more in 2016 (Hu, et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018).
Led by researcher Zheng-Li Shi, WIV scientists have also published experiments in which live bat
coronaviruses were introduced into human cells (Hu et al., 2017). Moreover, according to an April
14 article in the Washington Post, US Embassy staff visited the WIV in 2018 and “had grave
safety concerns” about biosecurity there. The WIV is just eight miles from the Huanan live animal
market that was initially thought to be the site of origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
4
Wuhan is also home to a lab called the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control
(WCDPC). It is a BSL-2 lab that is just 250 metres away from the Huanan market. Bat
coronaviruses have in the past been kept at the Wuhan WCDPC lab.
Thus the lab escape theory is that researchers from one or both of these labs may have picked up a
Sars-CoV-2-like bat coronavirus on one of their many collecting (aka ‘”virus surveillance”) trips.
Or, alternatively, a virus they were studying, passaging, engineering, or otherwise manipulating,
escaped.

In 2014, just before the US GOF research ban went into effect, Zheng-Li Shi of WIV co-authored
a paper with the lab of Ralph Baric in North Carolina that performed GOF research on bat
coronaviruses (Menachery et al., 2015).
In this particular set of experiments the researchers combined “the spike of bat coronavirus
SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone” into a single engineered live virus. The spike
was supplied by the Shi lab. They put this bat/human/mouse virus into cultured human airway
cells and also into live mice. The researchers observed “notable pathogenesis” in the infected mice
(Menachery et al. 2015). The mouse-adapted part of this virus comes from a 2007 experiment in
which the Baric lab created a virus called rMA15 through passaging (Roberts et al., 2007). This
rMA15 was “highly virulent and lethal” to the mice. According to this paper, mice succumbed to
“overwhelming viral infection”.
In 2017, again with the intent of identifying bat viruses with ACE2 binding capabilities, the Shi
lab at WIV reported successfully infecting human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the
human ACE2 receptor with four different bat coronaviruses. Two of these were lab-made
recombinant (chimaeric) bat viruses. Both the wild and the recombinant viruses were briefly
passaged in monkey cells (Hu et al., 2017).
7
Together, what these papers show is that: 1) The Shi lab collected numerous bat samples with an
emphasis on collecting SARS-like coronavirus strains, 2) they cultured live viruses and conducted
passaging experiments on them, 3) members of Zheng-Li Shi’s laboratory participated in GOF
experiments carried out in North Carolina on bat coronaviruses, 4) the Shi laboratory produced
recombinant bat coronaviruses and placed these in human cells and monkey cells. All these
experiments were conducted in cells containing human or monkey ACE2 receptors.
The overarching purpose of such work was to see whether an enhanced pathogen could emerge
from the wild by creating one in the lab.

It is hard to overemphasize that the central logic of this grant was to test the pandemic potential of
SARS-related bat coronaviruses by making ones with pandemic potential, either through genetic
engineering or passaging, or both.
Apart from descriptions in their publications we do not yet know exactly which viruses the WIV
was experimenting with but it is certainly intriguing that numerous publications since Sars-CoV-2
first appeared have puzzled over the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds with
exceptionally high affinity to the human ACE2 receptor “at least ten times more tightly” than the
original SARS (Zhou et al., 2020; Wrapp et al., 2020; Wan et al., 2020; Walls et al., 2020; Letko
et al., 2020).
This affinity is all the more remarkable because of the relative lack of fit in modelling studies of
the SARS-CoV-2 spike to other species, including the postulated intermediates like snakes, civets
and pangolins (Piplani et al., 2020). In this preprint these modellers concluded “This indicates that
SARS-CoV-2 is a highly adapted human pathogen”.
Given the research and collection history of the Shi lab at WIV it is therefore entirely plausible
that a bat SARS-like cornavirus ancestor of Sars-CoV-2 was trained up on the human ACE2
receptor by passaging it in cells expressing that receptor.
[On June 4 an excellent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists went further. Pointing out
what we had overlooked, that the Shi lab also amplified spike proteins of collected coronaviruses,
which would make them available for GOF experimentation (Ge et al., 2016).]

Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020). The proximal
origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature medicine, 26(4), 450-452.
Bell, D., Roberton, S., & Hunter, P. R. (2004). Animal origins of SARS coronavirus: possible
links with the international trade in small carnivores. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1447), 1107-1114.
11
Duggal, A., Pinto, R., Rubenfeld, G., & Fowler, R. A. (2016). Global variability in reported
mortality for critical illness during the 2009-10 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic: a systematic
review and meta-regression to guide reporting of outcomes during disease outbreaks. PloS one,
11(5), e0155044.
Furmanski, M. (2014). Laboratory Escapes and “Self-fulfilling prophecy” Epidemics. Report:
Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. PDF available online.
Ge, X. Y., Li, J. L., Yang, X. L., Chmura, A. A., Zhu, G., Epstein, J. H., ... & Zhang, Y. J. (2013).
Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor.
Nature, 503(7477), 535-538.
Ge, X. Y., Wang, N., Zhang, W., Hu, B., Li, B., Zhang, Y. Z., ... & Wang, B. (2016). Coexistence
of multiple coronaviruses in several bat colonies in an abandoned mineshaft. Virologica Sinica,
31(1), 31-40.
Hu, B., Zeng, L. P., Yang, X. L., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, W., Li, B., ... & Luo, D. S. (2017). Discovery
of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of
SARS coronavirus. PLoS pathogens, 13(11), e1006698.
Huang, C., Wang, Y., Li, X., Ren, L., Zhao, J., Hu, Y., ... & Cheng, Z. (2020). Clinical features of
patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The lancet, 395(10223), 497-506.
Klotz, L. C., & Sylvester, E. J. (2014). The consequences of a lab escape of a potential pandemic
pathogen. Frontiers in public health, 2, 116.
Letko, M., Marzi, A., & Munster, V. (2020). Functional assessment of cell entry and receptor
usage for SARS-CoV-2 and other lineage B betacoronaviruses. Nature microbiology, 5(4), 562-
569.
Li, W., Shi, Z., Yu, M., Ren, W., Smith, C., Epstein, J. H., ... & Zhang, J. (2005). Bats are natural
reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses. Science, 310(5748), 676-679.
Lipsitch, M. (2018). Why Do Exceptionally Dangerous Gain-of-Function Experiments in
Influenza?. In Influenza Virus (pp. 589-608). Humana Press, New York, NY.
Lipsitch, M., & Galvani, A. P. (2014). Ethical alternatives to experiments with novel potential
pandemic pathogens. PLoS Med, 11(5), e1001646.
Menachery, V. D., Yount, B. L., Debbink, K., Agnihothram, S., Gralinski, L. E., Plante, J. A., ...
& Randell, S. H. (2015). A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for
human emergence. Nature medicine, 21(12), 1508-1513.
Nakajima, K., Desselberger, U., & Palese, P. (1978). Recent human influenza A (H1N1) viruses
are closely related genetically to strains isolated in 1950. Nature, 274(5669), 334-339.
National Research Council. (2012). Evaluation of the updated site-specific risk assessment for the
national bio-and agro-defense facility in Manhattan, Kansas. National Academies Press.
12
Piplani, S., Singh, P. K., Winkler, D. A., & Petrovsky, N. (2020). In silico comparison of spike
protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species; significance for the possible origin of the SARS-
CoV-2 virus. arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.06199.
Roberts, A., Deming, D., Paddock, C. D., Cheng, A., Yount, B., Vogel, L., ... & Zaki, S. R.
(2007). A mouse-adapted SARS-coronavirus causes disease and mortality in BALB/c mice. PLoS
Pathog, 3(1), e5.
Sheahan, T., Rockx, B., Donaldson, E., Sims, A., Pickles, R., Corti, D., & Baric, R. (2008).
Mechanisms of zoonotic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus host range expansion in
human airway epithelium. Journal of virology, 82(5), 2274-2285.
Simonsen, L., Spreeuwenberg, P., Lustig, R., Taylor, R. J., Fleming, D. M., Kroneman, M., ... &
Paget, W. J. (2013). Global mortality estimates for the 2009 Influenza Pandemic from the
GLaMOR project: a modeling study. PLoS Med, 10(11), e1001558.
Walls, A. C., Park, Y. J., Tortorici, M. A., Wall, A., McGuire, A. T., & Veesler, D. (2020).
Structure, function, and antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Cell, 180, 281-292.
Wan, Y., Shang, J., Graham, R., Baric, R. S., & Li, F. (2020). Receptor recognition by the novel
coronavirus from Wuhan: an analysis based on decade-long structural studies of SARS
coronavirus. Journal of virology, 94(7).
Weiss, S., Yitzhaki, S., & Shapira, S. C. (2015). Lessons to be Learned from Recent Biosafety
Incidents in the United States. The Israel Medical Association Journal: IMAJ, 17(5), 269-273.
Wertheim, J. O. (2010). The re-emergence of H1N1 influenza virus in 1977: a cautionary tale for
estimating divergence times using biologically unrealistic sampling dates. PloS one, 5(6), e11184.
Wrapp, D., Wang, N., Corbett, K. S., Goldsmith, J. A., Hsieh, C. L., Abiona, O., ... & McLellan, J.
S. (2020). Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation. Science,
367(6483), 1260-1263.
Zhan, S. H., Deverman, B. E., & Chan, Y. A. (2020). SARS-CoV-2 is well adapted for humans.
What does this mean for re-emergence?. bioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262
Zimmer, S. M., & Burke, D. S. (2009). Historical perspective—emergence of influenza A (H1N1)
viruses. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(3), 279-285.
Zhou, P., Fan, H., Lan, T., Yang, X. L., Shi, W. F., Zhang, W., ... & Zheng, X. S. (2018). Fatal
swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by an HKU2-related coronavirus of bat origin. Nature,
556(7700), 255-258.
Zhou, P., Yang, X. L., Wang, X. G., Hu, B., Zhang, L., Zhang, W., ... & Chen, H. D. (2020). A
pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. nature, 579(7798),
270-273.



.... NOTE THE targetting of receptor ACE2 receptor..... They were playing with human cells.

Very well researched post.
Some observations:
Most of these papers have some non-Chinese co-author as well.
I suspected some papers may be published around 2014 on Corona virus. Seems like I was right. I also mentioned that in some of my posts.
You mentioned " Hu, et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018 ". I couldn't find these papers. Can you please post the full link to these papers?
A part from the non-verifiable information, As it is clear from all the papers, Chinese were doing research along side, or along with researchers from other countries.
The paper posted in last of your post are mostly from 2019, 2020. Too late to conclude any thing.

But a big question: Who other non-Chinese scientists were working on Corona virus between 2005 to 2015? The real culprits can be traced from there.

 

[denel]

Very well researched post.
Some observations:
Most of these papers have some non-Chinese co-author as well.
I suspected some papers may be published around 2014 on Corona virus. Seems like I was right. I also mentioned that in some of my posts.
You mentioned " Hu, et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018 ". I couldn't find these papers. Can you please post the full link to these papers?
A part from the non-verifiable information, As it is clear from all the papers, Chinese were doing research along side, or along with researchers from other countries.
The paper posted in last of your post are mostly from 2019, 2020. Too late to conclude any thing.

But a big question: Who other non-Chinese scientists were working on Corona virus between 2005 to 2015? The real culprits can be traced from there.

correct. US banned any such research in 2014; but there are further papers from WIV on ACE2 work; that is the binding that has caused this bug to latch on even more tightly

 

[Dalit]

Indians are screwed. Corona numbers are imploding in Modi's Hindustan.

 

[masterchief_mirza]

The essence of the lab escape theory is that Wuhan is the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV), China’s first and only Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility. (BSL-4 is the highest pathogen
security level). The WIV, which added a BSL-4 lab only in 2018, has been collecting large
numbers of coronaviruses from bat samples ever since the original SARS outbreak of 2002-2003;
including collecting more in 2016 (Hu, et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018).
Led by researcher Zheng-Li Shi, WIV scientists have also published experiments in which live bat
coronaviruses were introduced into human cells (Hu et al., 2017). Moreover, according to an April
14 article in the Washington Post, US Embassy staff visited the WIV in 2018 and “had grave
safety concerns” about biosecurity there. The WIV is just eight miles from the Huanan live animal
market that was initially thought to be the site of origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
4
Wuhan is also home to a lab called the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control
(WCDPC). It is a BSL-2 lab that is just 250 metres away from the Huanan market. Bat
coronaviruses have in the past been kept at the Wuhan WCDPC lab.
Thus the lab escape theory is that researchers from one or both of these labs may have picked up a
Sars-CoV-2-like bat coronavirus on one of their many collecting (aka ‘”virus surveillance”) trips.
Or, alternatively, a virus they were studying, passaging, engineering, or otherwise manipulating,
escaped.

In 2014, just before the US GOF research ban went into effect, Zheng-Li Shi of WIV co-authored
a paper with the lab of Ralph Baric in North Carolina that performed GOF research on bat
coronaviruses (Menachery et al., 2015).
In this particular set of experiments the researchers combined “the spike of bat coronavirus
SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone” into a single engineered live virus. The spike
was supplied by the Shi lab. They put this bat/human/mouse virus into cultured human airway
cells and also into live mice. The researchers observed “notable pathogenesis” in the infected mice
(Menachery et al. 2015). The mouse-adapted part of this virus comes from a 2007 experiment in
which the Baric lab created a virus called rMA15 through passaging (Roberts et al., 2007). This
rMA15 was “highly virulent and lethal” to the mice. According to this paper, mice succumbed to
“overwhelming viral infection”.
In 2017, again with the intent of identifying bat viruses with ACE2 binding capabilities, the Shi
lab at WIV reported successfully infecting human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the
human ACE2 receptor with four different bat coronaviruses. Two of these were lab-made
recombinant (chimaeric) bat viruses. Both the wild and the recombinant viruses were briefly
passaged in monkey cells (Hu et al., 2017).
7
Together, what these papers show is that: 1) The Shi lab collected numerous bat samples with an
emphasis on collecting SARS-like coronavirus strains, 2) they cultured live viruses and conducted
passaging experiments on them, 3) members of Zheng-Li Shi’s laboratory participated in GOF
experiments carried out in North Carolina on bat coronaviruses, 4) the Shi laboratory produced
recombinant bat coronaviruses and placed these in human cells and monkey cells. All these
experiments were conducted in cells containing human or monkey ACE2 receptors.
The overarching purpose of such work was to see whether an enhanced pathogen could emerge
from the wild by creating one in the lab.

It is hard to overemphasize that the central logic of this grant was to test the pandemic potential of
SARS-related bat coronaviruses by making ones with pandemic potential, either through genetic
engineering or passaging, or both.
Apart from descriptions in their publications we do not yet know exactly which viruses the WIV
was experimenting with but it is certainly intriguing that numerous publications since Sars-CoV-2
first appeared have puzzled over the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds with
exceptionally high affinity to the human ACE2 receptor “at least ten times more tightly” than the
original SARS (Zhou et al., 2020; Wrapp et al., 2020; Wan et al., 2020; Walls et al., 2020; Letko
et al., 2020).
This affinity is all the more remarkable because of the relative lack of fit in modelling studies of
the SARS-CoV-2 spike to other species, including the postulated intermediates like snakes, civets
and pangolins (Piplani et al., 2020). In this preprint these modellers concluded “This indicates that
SARS-CoV-2 is a highly adapted human pathogen”.
Given the research and collection history of the Shi lab at WIV it is therefore entirely plausible
that a bat SARS-like cornavirus ancestor of Sars-CoV-2 was trained up on the human ACE2
receptor by passaging it in cells expressing that receptor.
[On June 4 an excellent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists went further. Pointing out
what we had overlooked, that the Shi lab also amplified spike proteins of collected coronaviruses,
which would make them available for GOF experimentation (Ge et al., 2016).]

Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020). The proximal
origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature medicine, 26(4), 450-452.
Bell, D., Roberton, S., & Hunter, P. R. (2004). Animal origins of SARS coronavirus: possible
links with the international trade in small carnivores. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1447), 1107-1114.
11
Duggal, A., Pinto, R., Rubenfeld, G., & Fowler, R. A. (2016). Global variability in reported
mortality for critical illness during the 2009-10 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic: a systematic
review and meta-regression to guide reporting of outcomes during disease outbreaks. PloS one,
11(5), e0155044.
Furmanski, M. (2014). Laboratory Escapes and “Self-fulfilling prophecy” Epidemics. Report:
Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. PDF available online.
Ge, X. Y., Li, J. L., Yang, X. L., Chmura, A. A., Zhu, G., Epstein, J. H., ... & Zhang, Y. J. (2013).
Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor.
Nature, 503(7477), 535-538.
Ge, X. Y., Wang, N., Zhang, W., Hu, B., Li, B., Zhang, Y. Z., ... & Wang, B. (2016). Coexistence
of multiple coronaviruses in several bat colonies in an abandoned mineshaft. Virologica Sinica,
31(1), 31-40.
Hu, B., Zeng, L. P., Yang, X. L., Ge, X. Y., Zhang, W., Li, B., ... & Luo, D. S. (2017). Discovery
of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of
SARS coronavirus. PLoS pathogens, 13(11), e1006698.
Huang, C., Wang, Y., Li, X., Ren, L., Zhao, J., Hu, Y., ... & Cheng, Z. (2020). Clinical features of
patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The lancet, 395(10223), 497-506.
Klotz, L. C., & Sylvester, E. J. (2014). The consequences of a lab escape of a potential pandemic
pathogen. Frontiers in public health, 2, 116.
Letko, M., Marzi, A., & Munster, V. (2020). Functional assessment of cell entry and receptor
usage for SARS-CoV-2 and other lineage B betacoronaviruses. Nature microbiology, 5(4), 562-
569.
Li, W., Shi, Z., Yu, M., Ren, W., Smith, C., Epstein, J. H., ... & Zhang, J. (2005). Bats are natural
reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses. Science, 310(5748), 676-679.
Lipsitch, M. (2018). Why Do Exceptionally Dangerous Gain-of-Function Experiments in
Influenza?. In Influenza Virus (pp. 589-608). Humana Press, New York, NY.
Lipsitch, M., & Galvani, A. P. (2014). Ethical alternatives to experiments with novel potential
pandemic pathogens. PLoS Med, 11(5), e1001646.
Menachery, V. D., Yount, B. L., Debbink, K., Agnihothram, S., Gralinski, L. E., Plante, J. A., ...
& Randell, S. H. (2015). A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for
human emergence. Nature medicine, 21(12), 1508-1513.
Nakajima, K., Desselberger, U., & Palese, P. (1978). Recent human influenza A (H1N1) viruses
are closely related genetically to strains isolated in 1950. Nature, 274(5669), 334-339.
National Research Council. (2012). Evaluation of the updated site-specific risk assessment for the
national bio-and agro-defense facility in Manhattan, Kansas. National Academies Press.
12
Piplani, S., Singh, P. K., Winkler, D. A., & Petrovsky, N. (2020). In silico comparison of spike
protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species; significance for the possible origin of the SARS-
CoV-2 virus. arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.06199.
Roberts, A., Deming, D., Paddock, C. D., Cheng, A., Yount, B., Vogel, L., ... & Zaki, S. R.
(2007). A mouse-adapted SARS-coronavirus causes disease and mortality in BALB/c mice. PLoS
Pathog, 3(1), e5.
Sheahan, T., Rockx, B., Donaldson, E., Sims, A., Pickles, R., Corti, D., & Baric, R. (2008).
Mechanisms of zoonotic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus host range expansion in
human airway epithelium. Journal of virology, 82(5), 2274-2285.
Simonsen, L., Spreeuwenberg, P., Lustig, R., Taylor, R. J., Fleming, D. M., Kroneman, M., ... &
Paget, W. J. (2013). Global mortality estimates for the 2009 Influenza Pandemic from the
GLaMOR project: a modeling study. PLoS Med, 10(11), e1001558.
Walls, A. C., Park, Y. J., Tortorici, M. A., Wall, A., McGuire, A. T., & Veesler, D. (2020).
Structure, function, and antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Cell, 180, 281-292.
Wan, Y., Shang, J., Graham, R., Baric, R. S., & Li, F. (2020). Receptor recognition by the novel
coronavirus from Wuhan: an analysis based on decade-long structural studies of SARS
coronavirus. Journal of virology, 94(7).
Weiss, S., Yitzhaki, S., & Shapira, S. C. (2015). Lessons to be Learned from Recent Biosafety
Incidents in the United States. The Israel Medical Association Journal: IMAJ, 17(5), 269-273.
Wertheim, J. O. (2010). The re-emergence of H1N1 influenza virus in 1977: a cautionary tale for
estimating divergence times using biologically unrealistic sampling dates. PloS one, 5(6), e11184.
Wrapp, D., Wang, N., Corbett, K. S., Goldsmith, J. A., Hsieh, C. L., Abiona, O., ... & McLellan, J.
S. (2020). Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation. Science,
367(6483), 1260-1263.
Zhan, S. H., Deverman, B. E., & Chan, Y. A. (2020). SARS-CoV-2 is well adapted for humans.
What does this mean for re-emergence?. bioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262
Zimmer, S. M., & Burke, D. S. (2009). Historical perspective—emergence of influenza A (H1N1)
viruses. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(3), 279-285.
Zhou, P., Fan, H., Lan, T., Yang, X. L., Shi, W. F., Zhang, W., ... & Zheng, X. S. (2018). Fatal
swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by an HKU2-related coronavirus of bat origin. Nature,
556(7700), 255-258.
Zhou, P., Yang, X. L., Wang, X. G., Hu, B., Zhang, L., Zhang, W., ... & Chen, H. D. (2020). A
pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. nature, 579(7798),
270-273.



.... NOTE THE targetting of receptor ACE2 receptor..... They were playing with human cells.

I'm afraid there is nothing unusual or malevolent here. You seem to be inferring that by manipulating a family of viruses (Corona viruses aren't new, in fact they are one family of viruses that have caused the common cold for millennia) well known to mankind, China has somehow been reckless or has "played God". Every single scientifically inclined nation on earth studies viruses in this way, even testing what to the untrained eye seems like a form of their "weaponisation" in a manner of speaking, but this is not done (necessarily) to weaponise them, but rather to come up with defensive measures against them and to understand how they evolve. You focus on the targeting of certain receptors on certain cells called ACE receptors. You should know then that viruses have often been used in an inactive form to deliver life saving medications directly to cells or receptors of value. This is why research into making viruses target certain human receptors is done, not - as some conspiracy theorists would have us believe - because someone is engineering viruses to target humans and make humans ill.

Coronaviruses as Vectors: Position Dependence of Foreign Gene Expression

Coronaviruses are the enveloped, positive-stranded RNA viruses with the largest RNA genomes known. Several features make these viruses attractive as vaccine and therapeutic vectors: (i) deletion of their nonessential genes is strongly attenuating; (ii) the genetic space thus created allows...

jvi.asm.org

"The ability to genetically modify viruses not only has led to extraordinary advances in the understanding of their biology but also has opened a broad new field in which viruses are engineered for use as vaccine vectors and therapeutic agents. The insights in the biological properties of viruses are beginning to allow investigators to rationally modify their pathogenic properties, to provide them with new genetic information, and to retarget them to new cells, tissues, and hosts. Whereas many striking examples have already demonstrated these principles, the true potential of viruses as tools for medical applications has yet to be established. Obviously, the actual prospects will be different for different viruses since these prospects are ultimately determined and limited by the specific features of each virus."

China is not the only nation to experiment with corona viruses. What you've listed isn't even suggestive of neglect or negligent research, let alone some deliberate plot. Indeed, I see a whole bunch of transparency and responsible research in the fact that the papers are published in reputable journals.

Here's an American company that specialises in vector based research using viruses to deliver genetic material into cells. If you browse their services, you will note how they too can target ACE receptors using Corona viruses. They also target cells with Lentiviruses and other families.

Human ACE2 (Gene ID: 59272) vectors - Lentivirus, AAV, shRNA & CRISPR I VectorBuilder

Human ACE2 (Gene ID: 59272) vectors (from $99), available in lentivirus, AAV, adenovirus, shRNA, CRISPR & many other formats from VectorBuilder.

en.vectorbuilder.com

There's nothing sinister here.

 

[fitpOsitive]

correct. US banned any such research in 2014; but there are further papers from WIV on ACE2 work; that is the binding that has caused this bug to latch on even more tightly

Actually I am illiterate on biological issues. Pardon my negligence.

 

[Taimoor Khan]

Just today they broke their own record of highest cases in a day.

View attachment 732153

I do feel that UK establishment in their hate for Pakistan is playing with fire with no "red list" for India. Only matter of time if curbs are not introduced that "Indian virus" will be imported in UK, if UK own variant was not enough to deal with (Which btw is the sole reason of third wave in Pakistan) !

 

[beijingwalker]

India suffers vaccine shortages as virus surges
Thu, 8 April 2021, 11:32 pm

Vaccination centres in parts of India, including Mumbai, turn people away and large parts of the country reportedly run low on doses, just as infections rise at their fastest rate since the pandemic began.

India suffers vaccine shortages as virus surges

Vaccination centres in parts of India, including Mumbai, turn people away and large parts of the country reportedly run low on doses, just as infections rise at their fastest rate since the pandemic began.

sg.news.yahoo.com

 

[xeuss]

It was more important to send vaccines to foreign countries so that Modi can line up his foreign trips later this year than to save their own people.

But who cares - SaffronNazis don't need no stinking vaccine to survive. All they need is hate.

 

[Bambi]

Poor liberandus, low life trolls.
View attachment 732450

So much shortage.
View attachment 732448

I tried to get the source but the oldest one was from dawn

The only news I can find on TOI is this

Covid-19: India has vaccine stocks for 5.5 days, 1 more week’s in pipeline - Times of India

Data collated from the Union health ministry shows that states have on average just over five days of vaccine stocks remaining at their current levels of vaccination, and an additional week’s supply is in the pipeline. In some states like Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, however, current stocks are for...

m.timesofindia.com

 

[HostileInsurgent]

I tried to get the source but the oldest one was from dawn

The only news I can find on TOI is this

Covid-19: India has vaccine stocks for 5.5 days, 1 more week’s in pipeline - Times of India

Data collated from the Union health ministry shows that states have on average just over five days of vaccine stocks remaining at their current levels of vaccination, and an additional week’s supply is in the pipeline. In some states like Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, however, current stocks are for...

m.timesofindia.com

Production is going and is not stopping. Now Sputnik-V is being manufactured in India and now Johnson and Johnson single dose vaccine is going to be manufactured in India under QUAD.

Not to forget 2 more indigenous vaccines will be ready for production in India by the end of the year.

 

[xeuss]

Poor liberandus, low life trolls.
View attachment 732450

So much shortage.
View attachment 732448

Are you sure they all got the Covid vaccine??

Three women given rabies vaccine instead of COVID-19 jab in U.P.

District Magistrate orders inquiry into incident

www.thehindu.com