COVID19 Origin Mystery & Solution Role of China, USA & France.
The reader may appreciate a combined reading of various sources and their relevance to the problem and the solutions presented
Who made my world RED? Nature or an error in a research lab?
China announced the first COVID19 death on January 11, 2020. As of today, the worldwide deaths crossed 154,209. For the same period, an estimated 8.02 Million deaths are occurring due to infections like T.B, HIV, Malaria, Hepatitis C, Cholera, and Measles, etc.,
How is COVID19 different?
More than the death, the suffering, the fear of getting infected is on the minds of billions in the world. It has put breaks on human relations and development. COVID 19 is a shock to all the people in the world.
I live in New York City. I am a biomedical scientist. I have been getting calls every day since the epicenter of COVID19 shifted from Wuhan, China, to Elmhurst, New York, to enquire about my welfare. Initially, I considered COVID 19 virus as a natural part of the evolution of Nature. I kept giving information in plain simple terms to those asked and assured them that this shall pass, and it will become another flu-like virus
Common Man’s Question
One Recurring question for which I have no simple answer is, How come scientists could not predict, detect, alert, and avert this danger?
There are 11,329 research organizations in the world working in this area. They spend over $200 billion annually for their research. But they failed the people when a tiny nanometer-size virus showed up to challenge humans.
There is a lot of information coming out every day on COVID19. One documentary — Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus by Joshua Phillip of The Epoch Times, New York, made me sit up and research.
Now the world is blaming China for its study on the Corona virus research that could be a potential source of COVID19. Why?
Dr. Zheng-Li Shi ‘ Bat Women’ and her Research
Scientists write a grant proposal with a specific aim to improve human health and prevent diseases. Governments and funding agencies give money to carry out the proposed projects based on the merit and need for society.
Dr. Zheng-Li Shi has been researching the area related to COVID19. She is a bat Coronavirus scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan, China. She received her Ph.D. from France. Also, she is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, USA. Her work involves viruses that could easily be aerosol-transmitted within the laboratory and cause severe to fatal disease in humans for which there are no available vaccines or treatments. Therefore, this work is done in Biosafety Level 4 lab — a lab with the highest level of biosafety precautions. This facility in Wuhan, China, was built in collaboration with the French Government.
She published some of her research in collaboration with scientists from the USA. For this research National Institute of Health (NIH) provided funding directly and indirectly. This kind of financing is a part of $171.2 Million USA funding since 1985, for research given to China directly.
In 2013 she established that SARS-like Bat Carona viruses use Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme II (ACE2) rectors to enter cells. Therefore, they can infect humans.
In 2014 The White house office Science and Technology Policy, under President Obama administration Dr. Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health, announced a funding pause on certain types of Gain of Function research, similar to what Dr. Zheng-Li Shi is doing. But Dr. Ralph Baric, a scientist associated with this work from the University of North Carolina, Chapell Hill, NC, probably convinced NIH that this project was underway before the moratorium was announced and NIH let it continue.
In 2015 this team published bat Carona virus show potential for infecting humans. This work demonstrated in their own words — ‘ we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.’
In 2015 Dr. Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory.” This was published in Nature, one of the top scientific journals in the world.
In 2015 Mr. Bill Gates warned the world that “ we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic “ in his Ted Talk.
In 2015 Dr. Dany Shoham published an article ‘China’s Biological Warfare Programme: An Integrative Study with Special Reference to Biological Weapons Capabilities, in which he mentioned in P4 biosafety lab in Wuhan, China.
In 2018 State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses, as reported by Washington Post.
In 2019 First case of COVID19 virus patients were admitted to designated hospitals in Wuhan, China.
By January 30th, 2020, a total of 9,976 cases had been reported in at least 21 countries.
On March 12th, 2020, WHO announces the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. By then, there are 128,200 cases of COVID19 are reported worldwide.
On March 26th, 2020, a publication in The New England Journal of Medicine by a big team of Chinese scientists and doctors show that a 3rd of COVID19 patients do not have a link with the Wuhan Seafood market.
On January 29th, 2020, Dr. Zhengnli Shi published a paper, ‘A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin, as the COVID19 has 96% genome level identity leaving 4% of other sequences. It also confirmed that COVID19 uses the same cell entry receptor as she published before, the ACE2.
From this research work, it is clear that the COVID19 is from bats.
Chinese government maintained that the Seafood Market of WUHANis the source of COVID19. BUT Bats are not a common food source in the city of Wuhan, and bat meat is not sold in the Wuhan Seafood market. Then can COVID19 be coming from Pangolin, Pangolins, or scaly anteaters, are mammals. The sequence analysis of the Pangolin coronavirus and COVID show it has only 73% coverage and 91% sequence identity to the 2019-nCoV genome, less than that of bat’s. Therefore between these two, there are more chances of a bat as a source for COVID19.
Dr. Bishwajit Kundu and his team at Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi found that the COPVID19 sequence has 4 unique inserts, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1, AIDS virus, The identified unique insert sequences are needed for infecting the host cell. But this report was shown as retracted, as Dr. Zheng-Li Shi contested it. The authors said they would come back with work on their paper.
How the PATIENT ONE got COVID 19 is a Mystery?
Dr. ZhengLi Shi published that they ‘reverse engineered’ and made ‘chimeric’ bat coronaviruses that can infect ‘human airway cells.’ Did it by mistake infect Dr. Huang Yan Ling working in the lab, due to lapses in the safety measures?
Dr. Judy Mikovits, former director of the lab of Antiviral mechanisms at National Cancer Institute, says even at the USA P4 labs that is possible.
The Red Flag in the origin of COVID19 Mystery
Further, Dr. Zhengli Shi herself expressed the same doubt when her boss, the director of The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, wanted her to test a novel coronavirus detected in two Wuhan hospital patients with atypical pneumonia. An excerpt from the article by Jane Qiu on March 11th, 2020, published in Scientific American raised a red flag
“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Said Dr. Zheng-Li Shi. Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals — particularly bats. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?” Said Dr. Zheng-Li Shi. “Bat-borne coronaviruses will cause more outbreaks,” she says with a tone of brooding certainty. “We must find them before they find us.” She has decided to retire from the front line of virus-hunting expeditions.
A possible Solution
To find out, if they have come from her lab, we should compare ALL the reverse engineered, synthetically re-derived infectious full-length recombinant virus made by Dr. Zheng-Li Shi in collaborative research and COVID19 that caused the pandemic in the world. If there are no similarities between these two, COVID19 is undoubtedly not an engineered one. Until this is established clearly, there is no choice but to doubt that the engineered virus of Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at Wuhan Institute of Virology, China, as the cause of the COVID19 pandemic.
If it is not an engineered one, how did the bat virus jump to humans? Is there enough evidence for the Pangolin coronavirus to jump into humans and become COVID19? To get answers to these questions, experts in the field should do forensic level research to establish the facts. They are the most important clues for predicting, detecting, alerting, and averting future viruses that may cause an outbreak or epidemic or a pandemic. At the same time, a thorough review of all potentially dangerous projects researchers are conducting is needed in the interest of world health and economy.
The Need of the Hour
“Silence at this time has consequences for the health lives of billions of people in the world,” says Joshua Phillip, the Epoch Times, New York.
Blaming China alone is not right! The USA, France, and several other collaborators of Dr. Zhegli Shi’s bat Carona virus research over the years also have the responsibility. Instead of a blame game, sincere effort is required by all concerned, and a political wing should be established with knowledgeable people in the respective areas to allot funding for research needed for the survival of humanity.
They all must come together with the utmost transparency to find a solution to the Mystery and make sure that another COVID 19 like event does not reoccur!
