Thursday, December 21, 2023
Is this the smoking gun for the Covid lab leak? Blueprint for creating a 'SARS-CoV' virus with an altered spike protein in Wuhan was published in 2018, bombshell new records show
A newly-uncovered trove of documents detailing plans to create a Covid-like virus in China months before the pandemic make the 'lab leak almost certain', experts say.
The records - obtained now by FOIA requests - lay out a plan to 'engineer spike proteins' to infect human cells that would then be 'inserted into SARS-Covid backbones' at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018.
Just a year later, in late 2019, the Covid-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic.
The proposal was made by the now-notorious EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit that channels US government grants abroad to fund these types of experiments.
Ultimately, the application was denied by the US Department of Defense, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a 'blueprint' for how to create Covid, and inadvertently start a pandemic.
The documents also show how EcoHealth deliberately tried to mislead the Pentagon on how risky the experiments were to secure funding.
Sen Rand Paul - who has been a vocal supporter of the lab leak theory - added the documents further support of the 'deception' used by players tied to the Wuhan lab.
Matt Ridley, a biologist and science writer who has written extensively about the potential lab leak in the past, said: 'This latest [document] leak makes the case for a lab leak almost certain.
'A reckless experiment, known at the time to be reckless, probably caused the death of millions of people. 'Scientists and the media conspired to conceal the evidence. Let that sink in.'
The documents were obtained by nonprofit public health research group US Right to Know, which has previously been accused of fueling anti-vaccine sentiments.
The grant proposal was entitled Project DEFUSE: Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses.
It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as the original SARS to preempt a human spillover and develop vaccine technology and strategies.
The team sought to synthesize spike proteins with furin cleavage sites that had been designed to bind to human receptors more easily.
The furin has been one of the focal points of debate about Covid-19's origin, with some experts claiming it could only have been acquired through lab experiments.
The grant then proposed attaching the furin to coronavirus strains and infecting mice to see how ill it would make them.
The plan was then to use drugs and vaccines to treat the disease.
Dr Richard Ebright, a chemical biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told DailyMail.com: 'These revelations are important because the experiments in the grant proposal likely - indeed highly likely - led to the creation and release of SARS-CoV-2.'
The grant proposal has raised concerns and some say it serves as further support of the Covid lab leak theory - that the virus was borne out of gain-of-function research bankrolled by the US taxpayer through Dr Anthony Fauci's former department, a theory the FBI and other government agencies now subscribe to.
The principal investigator on the project is listed as Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, a now-notorious health agency that uses US government money to sponsor there's types of experiments abroad.
Other team members listed on the proposal include researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School, University of North Carolina, the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, Palo Alto Research Center and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab where Covid is believed to have originated from.
The proposal listed Professor Shi Zhengli - been dubbed the 'bat lady' for her extensive work on bat coronaviruses at the WIV - as the lead on the project in Wuhan.
Additionally, Dr Ralph Baric was listed as a subcontractor on the project. Dr Baric is a known expert in making recombinant coronaviruses.
The documents show the experiments were proposed to take place at the WIV, which has fewer safety precautions for working with pandemic-potential specimens than the US, which was advertised to the DoD as cost-saving.
The American scientists concealed the lack of safety precautions from DARP in order to avoid national security concerns about conducting high-level biosafety research in China.
In initial proposals for DEFUSE, the lab work was to be done in a biosafety-level 2 lab, which researchers said would appeal to DARPA grant-makers as 'highly cost effective' despite the fewer safety precautions taken in lower-level labs
Dr Baric acknowledged in an edited version of the proposal US researchers would 'freak out' if they knew novel coronavirus engineering and testing was being done in a BSL-2 lab.
Similar experiments in the US are conducted in BSL-3 labs.
A later version of the proposal changed BSL-2 to BSL-3.
Biosafety levels range from one to four, with four being the strictest and experimenting on the most dangerous pathogens.
Dr Baric wrote: 'In the US, these recombinant SARS-CoV are studied under BSL3, not BSL2, especially important for those that are able to bind and replicate in primary human cells.'
BSL-2 labs feature ventilated safety cabinets and researchers must wear surgical masks and lab coats. Experts say pathogen with the possibility of being transmitted through the air should be, at a minimum, performed in a BSL-3 lab, which has researchers in more protective respirators.
Dr Ebright told DailyMail.com: 'The new documents reveal that EcoHealth Alliance planned to use US Department of Defense funds to perform high-risk virus experiments at WIV at a biosafety level that was inadequate for research with a potential pandemic pathogen.'
He added: 'The new documents also reveal that EcoHealth Alliance deliberately concealed these plans - both the plan to perform high-risk experiments at WIV and the plan to perform them using inadequate biosafety protections - from the US Department of Defense in order to improve the chances of receiving funding.'
Dr Ebright tweeted: 'At this point, there is sufficient evidence to conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, that SARS-CoV-2 entered humans through a lab accident.'
While people who believed and promoted the lab-leak origin were initially accused of being xenophobic and pushing a conspiracy theory, the FBI and several other governmental agencies ascribe to this theory.
The formal DEFUSE grant proposal states the engineering of the coronavirus spike protein would be carried out by Dr Baric in North Carolina.
However, in an earlier comment on the proposal, Daszak said WIV will actually be doing most of the work but this fact was left out of the proposal to make DARPA more 'comfortable' with the details.
Dazsak said in an email: 'If we win this contract, I do not propose that all of this work will necessarily be conducted by Ralph, but I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team.
'Once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, and I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan as well.'
In another comment, however, Daszak reiterates his desire to stress the US-focus of the project.
He wrote: 'I am planning to use my resume and Ralph's [Baric]. Linfa/Zhengli, I realize your resumes are also very impressive, but I’m trying to downplay the non-US focus of this proposal so that DARPA doesn’t see this as a negative.'
In a statement Tuesday, EHA called the documents ' incomplete' and said the 'allegations are false based on misunderstanding of edits and comments on the document, and based on misleading out-of-context quotations and a lack of understanding the process by which federal grants are awarded.'
Justin Goodman, president of The White Coat Waste Project, a watchdog group fighting to stop sending American tax dollars overseas to fund dangerous virus research, told DailyMail.com the documents prove US tax dollars have 'footed the bill for the shady EcoHealth Alliance and their comrades at the reckless Wuhan lab to supercharge coronaviruses in dangerous gain-of-function experiments.'
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High Incidence of Long COVID in Africa, but NOT Among Black Ethnic Groups
Although the continent of Africa was spared much of the fatality rates experienced by other continents, a recent comprehensive review of previous studies and analysis tracking a total of 29,213 people, about 50% of the COVID-19 cases in Africa involves residual long COVID cases. A substantially higher number than in America, for example, which is about 10%, but some studies show higher. With improved ability to track long COVID, this review of the evidence suggests long COVID represents a far bigger problem than previously understood.
Does long COVID emerge as a far bigger problem in the African continent than elsewhere? While estimates of long COVID varied from 2% in Ghana to 86% in Egypt, the most recent study Prevalence and risk factors for long COVID and post-COVID-19 condition in Africa: a systematic review - The Lancet Global Health published in The Lancet Global Health reports the incidence of COVID-19 is in fact, underestimated. With 12 million documented cases and likely, many more un-documented cases, the German and Africa-based study team looks into the evidence on prevalence, associated risk factors for long COVID, and systemic or sociocultural determinants of reporting long COVID.
The Study
Conducting a systematic review incorporating data from PubMed, the Living Overview of Evidence platform, and grey literature sources for publications from Dec 1, 2019, to Nov 23, 2022, the authors included articles published in English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese that reported on any study type in Africa with participants of any age who had symptoms for 4 weeks or more after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection.
The authors excluded secondary research, comments, and correspondence. The study protocol called for two reviewers to both screen and extract data. Extracting summary estimates, such as sociodemographic factors, medical history, prevalence of persistent symptoms, and symptoms and associated factors, the authors performed a descriptive analysis registering the whole investigation on the results which were analyzed descriptively. The study was registered on the Open Science Framework platform.
Findings
Out of 294 articles, (including 24 peer-reviewed manuscripts) the fully vetted patient count equaled 9712 patients from eight African countries.
Out of the entire set of studies, one investigation focused exclusively on children, and one other study included children as part of their study population.
The authors report a low risk of bias associated with the selected studies. The findings suggest an extremely low prevalence of long COVID in the West African nation of Ghana (2%) to extremely high incidence in the northern African nation of Egypt (86%).
What are some indicators of a higher frequency of Long COVID?
Female sex
Age
Non-Black ethnicity
Low level of education
Severity of COVID-19 infection
Underlying Co-morbidity
Interestingly, HIV and tuberculosis were not pegged as factors.
Importantly, other studies have also demonstrated the lack of COVID-19 incidence in sub-Saharan Africa, a fascinating ongoing observation further validated in this study. No one can be certain why, but explanations range from the younger average age in sub-Saharan Africa to different microbiome dynamics to mass exposure to ivermectin at least in some countries (part of anti-parasitic regimen program).
To broaden African observations in this study, the factors influencing reporting included absence of awareness, inadequate clinical data and diagnostics, and little access to health-care service.
Regardless, this study advances the collective knowledge somewhat as to long COVID and the African continent.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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