SARS-CoV-2 exhibits specific alterations that align so precisely with a research proposal that, combined with circumstantial evidence, they prove a laboratory origin beyond reasonable doubt.
Frage zu WA1 bzw. ersten registrierten Infektionen in USA und Kanada: Einige Studien ergaben, dass WA1 älter ist als die Wuhan-Markt-Sequenzen. Haslam argumentiert, dass Ausländer ein frühes SARS2-Exemplar in Wuhan aufschnappten und zurück nach USA/Kanada brachten (war aber Mitte Januar 2020). Andere sagen, das Virus war schon länger in Nordamerika. Wie sehen Sie das? Ist WA1 wirklich eine ältere Sequenz?
Sehr gute Frage. WA1 gehörte zur Lineage A, ist also enger mit Viren in Fledermäusen verwandt als Lineage B (siehe Grafik Punkt 6). Bis auf eine Probe von einem Handschuh gehörten alle Proben vom Markt in Wuhan zur Lineage B. Beide Lineages hatten die D614G Mutation da noch nicht, welche später in B auftauchte und zu noch schnellerer Ausbreitung führte.
Es gibt aber noch ältere sogenannte MRCAs (most recent common ancestors) für alle humanen Linien. Kandidaten sind hier die in Punkt 6 genannte Probe oder die sogenannte Lineage A0 (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10984623/), die auch in China gefunden wurde.
Was für einen frühen Ausbruch in den USA spricht, ist, dass da früh sehr viele verschiedene Linien gefunden wurden: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10984623/. Die Erklärung lautet hier, dass diese mehrfach unabhängig in die USA gebracht wurden.
Persönlich bin ich bei diesem Punkt unsicher. Klar ist, amerikanische Virologen wollten eine FCS in genau solche Viren einbauen und hatten wahrscheinlich schon "Baupläne", weshalb die Anzahl der DNA Segmente und das Enzym schon im DEFUSE Entwurf genannt wurden. Klar ist auch, dass alle nahe verwandten Viren damals erstmal ans WIV gebracht wurden, und dass es bei RaTG13 viele Ungereimtheiten gibt, für die das WIV verantwortlich war. Ich tippe auf Gemeinschaftsarbeit und einen ersten Ausbruch in Wuhan.
Wir wissen, dass Kommunistische Regime zB beim Sverdlovsk-Unfall oder auch bei Tschernobyl versucht haben, alles zu vertuschen. Gut möglich, dass einfach alle später gefundenen frühen Proben z.B. aus Blutkonserven oder medizinischen Proben einfach zensiert wurden, und es wirklich schon im September oder Oktober einen Ausbruch gab, der sich dann zB über die Military Games in die Welt verbreitete.
Absolutely excellent analysis, the best I've read anywhere. The world can really be grateful that there is someone with your world-class expertise who doesn't work for the "dark side".
You write "the only known location where both viruses from Laos and the recipient virus RaTG13 were present is a virology lab in Wuhan", but the USA may also have had excess, right? They collaborated with Wuhan and even did some field trips to Laos. And in Defuse, most of the engineering was meant to be done in the USA. But perhaps they outsourced it or the Chinese did it on their own.
At any rate the evidence you provide concerning contamination in Chinese sequencing facilities and Wuhan engineering fingerprints is quite compelling. Only someone with your level of expertise can put these puzzle pieces together into a coherent story of what happened.
I investigated the origin of COVID because it infuriated me how dishonest and negligent some fellow bioengineers/scientists behaved, because those who suffered deserve honesty, but also because I am scared that they might accidentally kill my family next time.
The question who did it is tricky. I am pretty sure WIV collected RaTG13 and a Banal52 cousin for the RBD. But in DEFUSE, Baric was supposed to do the cloning, he wanted to add FCSs, the specific FCS in SARS2 was described at UNC, and the cloning strategy is very elegant, much better for high-throughput screening than what the WIV had made in 2017. Baric has the track record of innovating reverse genetic systems, and they needed a new design for a DEFUSE-like project. Also, the DEFUSE drafts are insanely specific, they mention BsmBI and the use of 6 segments. On the other side, Ben Hu used the same enzymes in 2017. Still, I'd guess Baric or someone he trained designed or helped design SARS2 based on WIV-collected sequences, and I guess they did that before DEFUSE, in 2017 or 2018. It would then make sense to order the fragments in China (cheaper) and assemble them there into a virus (WIV was clearly able to that) rather than shipping such a virus, unless they also wanted to do some experiments at UNC. So the whole thing smells like a collaboration project, but who then actually put it together is a question for investigative journalists, hackers or spies.
Yes it could very well have been a collaboration project, which would explain why neither side has had an interest in exposing the truth. Asking Daszak to "investigate" it is highly suspect anyway. There is also the Singapore/Duke aspect. Does anybody know why Linfa Wang suddenly resigned on January 10, 2020, the day the SARS2 sequence was first released? https://jimhaslam.substack.com/p/5-one-professor-honorably-resigns
I re-read Jesse Bloom's discussion on Twitter of the Hungarian paper about the Antarctica sample. The evidence seems to be a bit weaker than I had assumed: the sequencing was probably done in January not December, it also contained later mutations, the "ancestral mutations" don't have to be chronologically older, and they were also found in later patient samples. So it really could be contamination from sampling after the Wuhan outbreak.
You may remember the anthrax letters from 2001, they claimed it was anthrax from Iraq but then a private US lab checked the DNA and found it was US anthrax and they had to drop the Iraq story. Experienced and independent researchers really can make a difference.
Regarding the Antarctica samples: yes, it remains a bit of a mystery. They contained both very early and fairly late mutations (some that did not even circulate in Jan. 2020 IIRC). Passaging experiments could explain these. Another key question for me is: if this was a contamination in Jan 2020, how likely is it to contaminate a sample with a lineage way more ancestral than anything in circulation in Jan? And where is the publication?
Frage zu WA1 bzw. ersten registrierten Infektionen in USA und Kanada: Einige Studien ergaben, dass WA1 älter ist als die Wuhan-Markt-Sequenzen. Haslam argumentiert, dass Ausländer ein frühes SARS2-Exemplar in Wuhan aufschnappten und zurück nach USA/Kanada brachten (war aber Mitte Januar 2020). Andere sagen, das Virus war schon länger in Nordamerika. Wie sehen Sie das? Ist WA1 wirklich eine ältere Sequenz?
Sehr gute Frage. WA1 gehörte zur Lineage A, ist also enger mit Viren in Fledermäusen verwandt als Lineage B (siehe Grafik Punkt 6). Bis auf eine Probe von einem Handschuh gehörten alle Proben vom Markt in Wuhan zur Lineage B. Beide Lineages hatten die D614G Mutation da noch nicht, welche später in B auftauchte und zu noch schnellerer Ausbreitung führte.
Es gibt aber noch ältere sogenannte MRCAs (most recent common ancestors) für alle humanen Linien. Kandidaten sind hier die in Punkt 6 genannte Probe oder die sogenannte Lineage A0 (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10984623/), die auch in China gefunden wurde.
Was für einen frühen Ausbruch in den USA spricht, ist, dass da früh sehr viele verschiedene Linien gefunden wurden: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10984623/. Die Erklärung lautet hier, dass diese mehrfach unabhängig in die USA gebracht wurden.
Persönlich bin ich bei diesem Punkt unsicher. Klar ist, amerikanische Virologen wollten eine FCS in genau solche Viren einbauen und hatten wahrscheinlich schon "Baupläne", weshalb die Anzahl der DNA Segmente und das Enzym schon im DEFUSE Entwurf genannt wurden. Klar ist auch, dass alle nahe verwandten Viren damals erstmal ans WIV gebracht wurden, und dass es bei RaTG13 viele Ungereimtheiten gibt, für die das WIV verantwortlich war. Ich tippe auf Gemeinschaftsarbeit und einen ersten Ausbruch in Wuhan.
Wir wissen, dass Kommunistische Regime zB beim Sverdlovsk-Unfall oder auch bei Tschernobyl versucht haben, alles zu vertuschen. Gut möglich, dass einfach alle später gefundenen frühen Proben z.B. aus Blutkonserven oder medizinischen Proben einfach zensiert wurden, und es wirklich schon im September oder Oktober einen Ausbruch gab, der sich dann zB über die Military Games in die Welt verbreitete.
Absolutely excellent analysis, the best I've read anywhere. The world can really be grateful that there is someone with your world-class expertise who doesn't work for the "dark side".
No doubt at all it's a lab virus, but I'm still wondering though who did what. Was it all China? Just this week former CDC director Redfield stated openly he believes it may have been engineered by Baric: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14094755/Trump-former-CDC-director-makes-bombshell-COVID-claim.html
You write "the only known location where both viruses from Laos and the recipient virus RaTG13 were present is a virology lab in Wuhan", but the USA may also have had excess, right? They collaborated with Wuhan and even did some field trips to Laos. And in Defuse, most of the engineering was meant to be done in the USA. But perhaps they outsourced it or the Chinese did it on their own.
At any rate the evidence you provide concerning contamination in Chinese sequencing facilities and Wuhan engineering fingerprints is quite compelling. Only someone with your level of expertise can put these puzzle pieces together into a coherent story of what happened.
I investigated the origin of COVID because it infuriated me how dishonest and negligent some fellow bioengineers/scientists behaved, because those who suffered deserve honesty, but also because I am scared that they might accidentally kill my family next time.
The question who did it is tricky. I am pretty sure WIV collected RaTG13 and a Banal52 cousin for the RBD. But in DEFUSE, Baric was supposed to do the cloning, he wanted to add FCSs, the specific FCS in SARS2 was described at UNC, and the cloning strategy is very elegant, much better for high-throughput screening than what the WIV had made in 2017. Baric has the track record of innovating reverse genetic systems, and they needed a new design for a DEFUSE-like project. Also, the DEFUSE drafts are insanely specific, they mention BsmBI and the use of 6 segments. On the other side, Ben Hu used the same enzymes in 2017. Still, I'd guess Baric or someone he trained designed or helped design SARS2 based on WIV-collected sequences, and I guess they did that before DEFUSE, in 2017 or 2018. It would then make sense to order the fragments in China (cheaper) and assemble them there into a virus (WIV was clearly able to that) rather than shipping such a virus, unless they also wanted to do some experiments at UNC. So the whole thing smells like a collaboration project, but who then actually put it together is a question for investigative journalists, hackers or spies.
Yes it could very well have been a collaboration project, which would explain why neither side has had an interest in exposing the truth. Asking Daszak to "investigate" it is highly suspect anyway. There is also the Singapore/Duke aspect. Does anybody know why Linfa Wang suddenly resigned on January 10, 2020, the day the SARS2 sequence was first released? https://jimhaslam.substack.com/p/5-one-professor-honorably-resigns
I re-read Jesse Bloom's discussion on Twitter of the Hungarian paper about the Antarctica sample. The evidence seems to be a bit weaker than I had assumed: the sequencing was probably done in January not December, it also contained later mutations, the "ancestral mutations" don't have to be chronologically older, and they were also found in later patient samples. So it really could be contamination from sampling after the Wuhan outbreak.
You may remember the anthrax letters from 2001, they claimed it was anthrax from Iraq but then a private US lab checked the DNA and found it was US anthrax and they had to drop the Iraq story. Experienced and independent researchers really can make a difference.
I don't know why Wang resigned.
Regarding the Antarctica samples: yes, it remains a bit of a mystery. They contained both very early and fairly late mutations (some that did not even circulate in Jan. 2020 IIRC). Passaging experiments could explain these. Another key question for me is: if this was a contamination in Jan 2020, how likely is it to contaminate a sample with a lineage way more ancestral than anything in circulation in Jan? And where is the publication?