From The Times UK:
What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted
Paywalled, but at the risk of infringing (lets call it an enticement to subscribe) I will include a couple quotes:
I have never understood the powerful resistance to at least entertaining what has seemed a very plausible explanation ever since the existence of the lab became public knowledge. Even now the US mainstream media seems to be studiously avoiding covering this story. Luckily the UK seems to be getting over this curious aversion.
Unfortunately, that story merely rehashes many of the other discussions that was held in this very thread. So its very hard to say there's anything new. On top of it, the writers appear to be poorly informed and reliant on bad information and bad science. A few points to illustrate these concerns:
Baric was aware this type of “gain of function” work, so-called because it can enhance virus potency, was controversial and could have a sinister application.
With one sentence, it is clear the authors have no idea what they are talking about. They are highlighting the development of mice engineered to have human proteins (like ACE2 the receptor for SARS-coronaviruses) or human-like tissue including mice grafted with lung tissue. Before those tools were available, coronaviruses could already be STUDIED IN HUMAN CELLS. Claiming that these tools suddenly unlock the opportunity to create adapted viruses is idiotic since that could be done before the tools existed. In addition, that isn't even gain of function research. It's really unfortunate these authors took the time to write a story but not even understand the important concepts involved.
The results of Baric’s experiment with the genetic sequence given to him by Shi were published in co-authored research in November 2015. The combined Sars copy and SHC014 virus was a potential mass killer.
This is another situation where the writers try to make something more scary that what really happened. What really happened was a
mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-1 virus was engineered to contain the spike protein of SHC014. The mouse adapted SARS-CoV-1 with its native spike or the SHC014 spike both caused disease in mice. That's it. It showed that a "bat" coronavirus has the potential to infect humans. They did not make somesort of super virus.
Most of this work was carried out in the institute’s biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) laboratories, which took only light precautions that have been compared to those used in a dental surgery.
Dental surgeons use
lab coats, gloves, eye protection, and perform their surgeries in biosafety cabinets? You would think the authors would read about what BSL-2 conditions involve before making an idiotic comparison. In fact, many human-infecting viruses qualify for BSL-2 conditions.
The scientists selected three lab-grown mutant viruses, created by mixing Sars-like viruses with WIV1, which had all been shown to infect human cells. These mutants were then injected into the noses of albino mice with human lungs.
Sad to see how badly the authors don't understand the experiment. This was previously discussed in this thread. The mice did not have human lungs.
The mice expressed the human receptor ACE2. That's it. No "human lungs" in mice. Furthermore, they purposely write certain terms to hide what was really performed. The researchers took a bat coronavirus and inserted different bat coronavirus spike proteins into it to see what would happen. More ACE2 mice died with a specific bat coronavirus spike.
The scientists had created a highly infectious super-coronavirus with a terrifying kill-rate that in all probability would never have emerged in nature.
More fearmongering based on ignorance. Perhaps the writers should read about
coronavirus recombination. Coronaviruses easily exchange genetic material and can combine into different hybrid viruses. Claiming that two coronaviruses that infect bats would never meet and never recombine... well, its all about their narrative. And remember, the "scary" virus they are referring to is a bat coronavirus combined with another bat coronavirus. This is not SARS-CoV-1 or SARS-CoV-2.
The experiment’s results suggested the new lab-made virus would be more difficult to stop if it leaked into the population, according to Ebright.
Nothing in the experiment explored how infectious the bat coronavirus would be. They didn't test it on humans. They didn't test it on human cells. They didn't test it in transmission experiments. But of course, the authors rely on a claim by someone without any evidence behind that claim.
One specific experiment involved inserting a furin cleavage site, a tiny section of a virus’s genetic order that makes them more infectious, into the pathogens. Daszak and the Wuhan laboratory say they did not go ahead with the work. But when Covid-19 emerged the following year, it was notable for being the first Sars-like coronavirus with a furin cleavage site.
Another point already discussed in this thread. You know what is purposely deceitful? They write it purposely to say "
the first Sars-like coronavirus with a furin cleavage site." Why is that deceitful? Many
other coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites.
As I also wrote in the
past: The furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 is
inefficient. If the virus is engineered, why would a group insert a crappy version of the furin-cleavage site into the genome when plenty of other optimal sequences were available? Furthermore, when the virus is grown in culture, the furin cleavage site is lost, found in two
different publications. So how would a lab created virus be propagated with the furin form of SARS-CoV-2 when it is eventually lost in cell culture?
Dr Monali Rahalkar, a microbiologist at the Agharkar Research Institute in Pune, India, swiftly tweeted: “Looks like cheating . . . May be they changed [the sequences] so people drop the trips to Mojiang mine.”
The authors have such a crappy list of people to cite, they have to rely on citing a tweet from an Indian researcher who performs sequencing on
bacteria and other microorganisms that live in water-environments. Yeah that's right. They couldn't find a virologist who focuses on viral evolution so instead they rely a tweet on someone who doesn't do virus research. What a shit-show.
Suspicion fell on him after the pandemic because he produced a patent for a Covid vaccine with remarkable speed in February 2020, little more than a month after the outbreak of the virus had first been admitted to the world by China.
This is extra stupid. Moderna had already generated their first vaccine candidate, produced in vials by the
first week of February 2020. And yet the authors try to make filing a patent as some extra scary nefarious idea when Moderna had already started vaccine work a month prior.
The investigators spoke to a Wuhan institute insider who alleged serial passaging experiments were being carried out on RaTG13. “Humanised mice with the serial passaging is a toxic combination,” said a source. “It speeds up the natural mutation process. So instead of taking years to mutate, it can take weeks or months. It guarantees that you accelerate the natural process.”
One final sentence I want to point out.
I've actually talked about how idiotic this claim is, yet the authors go ahead and make it. To mutate RaTG13 into SARS-CoV-2 takes approximately 1,000 mutations to occur. After 3 years of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in human populations, with probably 1+ billion infections, how many mutations have developed? Approximately 50 mutations. How in the world are you going to "serially" passage something, develop ~1,000 mutations, when SARS-CoV-2 couldn't develop more than a 100 mutations after a billion infections and circulating in humans for 3 years???
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