Private channel session 1437
34 messages over 2h 4m, 2021-05-25 – 2021-05-25.
A “conversation” here is an activity session — a run of messages with under 60 minutes of silence inside it. The channel had no native conversation boundaries.
-
This is actually a good point from Peter - but, of course, he'd lie about it. [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-05-25 at5.25.29 PM.png]
-
I'm sick, so I might not be reading this correctly.
-
American scientists caught in Wuhan web of intrigue Senior US personnel have been involved with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even visiting coronavirus research labs, an investigation by The Australian has revealed. By SHARRI MARKSON Members of a World Health Organisation team investigating the origins of Covid-19 arrive at the Wuhan Institute ofVirologyin February. Picture: AFPInside America's highly secretive biological research site at Fort Detrick, Maryland, are biosafety level-four laboratories.Soldiers guard the premises that house America's bio-defence agency, the US Army Medical Research Institute ofInfectious Diseases. It's the last place on Earth you would expect to have developed ties with Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who, in turn, are engaging in secret Chinese military activity.An investigation by The Australian has revealed senior personnel at USAMRIID -- its chief science officer, alaboratory director, a former commander and a research contractor -- have been involved with the Wuhan Instituteof Virology, even visiting its laboratories where risky research on coronaviruses took place. China's attempts to deflect attention from the Wuhan laboratory by claiming Covid-19 arrived in the city through frozen food or originated in a US military laboratory have been denounced as false conspiracy theories.Revelations about US scientific links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology feature in an upcoming investigative book onthe origins of Covid-19, What Really Happened In Wuhan, to be published by HarperCollins. They include the extentof the scientific community's ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which, according to declassified intelligence released by the US, was conducting secret projects for the Chinese military. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci has come under pressure for providing$US13m in funding to a not-for-profit organisation, EcoHealth, with $US598,500 funnelled through to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The institute also had strong ties to Australia's level-four laboratory in Geelong.The emergence of various scientific links have shed light on the reticence in the scientific community to call for aninvestigation into a possible laboratory origin for Covid-19 throughout 2020.This month, a group of international virologists, biologists and immunologists -- including the Wuhan Institute ofVirology's Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases director Shi Zhengli's closest American collaborator, the University of North Carolina's Ralph Baric -- were signatories to a letter calling for an inquiry to examine both natural genesis and an accidental laboratory leak.USAMRIID's former chief scientific officer, Sina Bavari, sits on the editorial board of Dr Shi's virology journal,Virologica Sinica, and has visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology for a board meeting. Bavari said he didn't go into the BSL-4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was not open at the time of his 2015 visit, butventured inside the lower-security, level-three laboratory where Shi was conducting coronavirus research. Asked about the biosafety standards inside the laboratory, Bavari said: "Oh, my God, that was like seven years ago,so I don't remember a darn thing. I was jet lagged and I got there two days after I was supposed to get there because of some screw ups with my flights and so on. So I don't really remember much about that trip. They actuallygathered a bunch of virologists together and it was the editorial board of the journal actually. They're all invited tocome there and give presentations, interact with the students, things like that. I remember being in a place walkingaround, but I don't remember the details." Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Picture: AFPTrip to MozambiqueBavari joined USAMRIID in 2011 and became chief scientific officer in September 2014. His five-year term expiredin September 2019, according to his CV. Before he left, Bavari had agreed to attend an emerging infectious diseases conference with Shi in September 2019, in Tofo, Mozambique. Shi was a speaker and Bavari, who sat onthe scientific committee, was planning to give a talk. Bavari had paid for his flights and organised his Mozambique visa when he withdrew from the conference 10 days before, emailing organisers to apologise and offer to give his lectures by FaceTime or WhatsApp.Bavari originally told The Australian he did attend the conference, saying Shi gave a presentation on bat coronaviruses and that he hadn't noticed anything unusual about her that week. "There was nothing that rang anybells," he said. Five days later, Bavari said he remembered that he had attended in 2018, not 2019. It does not appear that Shi flew to Tofo in 2018.Shi did attend the 2019 conference, held from September 1 to 5. She gave a coronavirus presentation, according toanother conference participant, who described her as friendly and sociable.A week later, on September 12, the Wuhan Institute of Virology virus database was taken offline. It has not been published since and has not been made available to World Health Organisation investigators, who did not ask for itduring their Wuhan visit earlier this year. Shi has claimed the virus database was taken offline after 3000 hackingattempts.Last Friday, the Wuhan Institute of Virology disclosed the genomic sequences of eight new viruses that were the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight and ninth genetically closest viruses to SARS-CoV-2. Their full sequences were only disclosed on May 21, even though the viruses were obtained from a mine in Mojiang in 2015 -the same mine where RaTG13, a virus that shares a 96 per cent sequence identity with Covid-19, was found. Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan. Picture: AFPInside the Wuhan labs Bavari wasn't the only senior figure from USAMRIID to visit the Wuhan Institute of Virology.In October 2018, a senior USAMRIID laboratory director flew to the institute to give a presentation on ebola in thefacility's No. 1 conference room. The laboratory director was presented with a commemorative medal on behalf of the institute, according to awrite-up of the visit. And at a hotel in central Wuhan in May 2017, a former commander at USAMRIID participated in a workshop with theinstitute's top scientists. The workshop was called the "Second China-US Workshop on the Challenges of Emerging Infections, Laboratory Safety and Global Health Security". Gain-of-function research, laboratory risks and gene editing were key topics during the conference held from May17-19. Shi and George F. Gao, the director at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, gave presentationsat the conference hosted by China's Academy of Sciences and attended by the director of Wuhan Institute ofVirology BSL-4 laboratory, Yuan Zhiming.A meeting report stated that the US commander "discussed the evolution of biosecurity thinking in the US, noting only one accidental death -- and not from a true select agent -- is associated with the US Select Agent program (and three deaths before 1969 when the US offensive biological program was halted)"."He compared that to more than 700,000 hospital-acquired infections and 400,000 deaths due to medical mistakesin recent years," the report said. The commander said there was no single solution to eliminating bio-safety incidents but international collaboration would help. Stanford University professor David Relman, who also attended this conference, said they visited the newly built BSL-4 laboratory but it "was not yet active, and there were no experiments taking place with BL3/BL4agents"."These discussions were cordial and useful insofar as they provided an opportunity to develop at least somesuperficial working relationships," Relman said. "I didn't hear about anything in particular that concerned me, but that wasn't surprising since the presentations and comments on both sides were somewhat pre-planned and a bitorchestrated."The virus journal The editorial board of Shi's journal consists of People's Liberation Army members, a virologist who was kicked out ofCanada for security breaches, the director of China's Centre for Disease Control, many esteemed international scientists and two employees at USAMRIID. Bavari sits on the editorial board, as does Jens Kuhn, the virology lead at Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a contractor under Fort Detrick's "Integrated Research Facility Leadership and Scientists" program. Gao, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention director, is also on Shi's journal board, along with Yong-Zhen Zhang, the scientist responsible for sharing the gene sequence of Covid-19. Another member isconnected to the PLA. Yi-Gang Tong was previously director of the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Science, which sits under the PLA.Pathogens in the mail One concerned member of the editorial board is award-winning virologist Xiangguo Qiu, who was escorted out of aCanadian laboratory in July 2019 after being caught sending deadly virus samples back to the Wuhan Institute ofVirology. Qiu, her husband Kedin Cheng and her students from China were removed from Canada's only BSL-4 laboratory amid an official investigation. Four months earlier, a shipment containing highly virulent viruses -- ebola and nipah -- were sent from her laboratory to China. It was reported that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had requested the shipment.Chemical and biological warfare specialist Dany Shoham, from the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, wrotean article claiming Qiu had made at least five trips over the academic year 2017-18 alone to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.Qiu had also done joint research with USAMRIID on ebola, which was received by Nature in October 2018.Bavari denied there was any connection between USAMRIID and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. "US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where I was the chief science officer there, has no connection whatsoeverto Wuhan Institute of Virology or any other institute in China," Bavari said. "Being on an editorial board of a journal is not the same as helping a Chinese institute of this and that to dosomething. They're just two different things."He also played down the visits by other researchers to the Wuhan Institute of Virology."So at the institute they may have friends there, OK, they're Chinese, so absolutely, that (visits) had happened, Ihave no doubt," he said. "But officially, to say that USAMRIID itself was actually collaborating, for example, with Chinese Institute of Virology, or Wuhan Institute, that's just not true. We absolutely had no connection to them whatsoever. Not under my watch."In collaboration with Gilead Sciences of Foster City, they had success in 2015 with a treatment that blocked the ebola virus's ability to replicate. The treatment was an antiviral compound called GS-5734 that became known asRemdesivir. Bavari was one of the scientists behind this antiviral treatment. The drug was touted as a potential treatment option for Covid-19 five years later. The patent for commercial use of Remdesivir was filed in China. The application was made by the Wuhan Institute ofVirology.The institute lodged the patent application on January 21, 2020 -- one day after China confirmed human-to-human transmission of the virus, The Daily Mail reported. Asked about this, Bavari said he was not aware the Wuhan Institute of Virology had lodged the patent forRemdesivir.USAMRIID did not respond to requests for comment.
-
I think that wins the most deranged article of the whole pandemic. Published in The Australian.
-
Is there something wrong with the formatting? Because _*none*_ of this makes any sense whatsoever.
-
It honestly reads like a really terrible Google translation of a Chinese document. Hmmmm :thinking_face:
-
It's missing the pictures. Try this: [shared file(s): Re Ugh.pdf]
-
Nope - still the same. Total gibberish. I love the subject line of that email - "Ugh" indeed.
-
The story seems to be that an editor of Virologica Sinica who worked at the USAMRID once went to WIV for a journal meeting. I particularly like the bit about Jens Kuhn also being on the editorial board....if Jens were in chargeof WIV they'd have all their viruses beautifully classified by now.
-
Sharri is totally deranged. Off the scale.
-
Completely off the scale. How this gets past editorial, I just don't understand - they must be desperate for anything lab leak related.
-
I would have thought China would be delighted to see USAMRID mentioned.
-
Here's an S gene tree with Weifeng's and Shi's new sequence (green). Clearly a distinct lineage. [shared file(s): RAxML_bipartitions.SpikeNT_MSA_tidy.pdf]
-
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/25/politics/biden-shut-down-trump-effort-coronavirus-chinese-lab/index.html
-
Reading... Separately, Marc is going to regret getting on Twitter today...
-
He made the mistake of bringing up a few specific points (while criticizing our paper) and he's absolutely getting his ass handed to him for being so darn naive. I hope he learns from the experience.
-
Is he suggesting they got directly infected from tissue in the freezer?
-
Yup, he just brought that up
-
I called it a "very specific version of natural emergence" (and hence hugely unlikely). He didn't like that very much.
-
He's being absolutely swarmed at the moment though, so not really fair to him - but I gotta say, boy oh boy is the stuff he says naive.
-
Look at the last tweet in that thread too. Bringing up bacteria... ANYBODY with a little bit of knowledge would look atthat and say "wait, what, he doesn't even understand the basics"?Unreal. I really respect Marc a lot - as in, a lot. But this is uninformed and naive. [shared file(s): Screen Shot2021-05-25 at 7.19.25 PM.png]
-
Isolating bacteria in live animals? WTF?
-
Yeah - that's what SARS-CoV-2 did. It jumped out of a tube and into a person. And then it caused a super spreading event at a wet market. And then the pandemic. Simple, really.I was kinda hoping Alex would go in for the kill... Good thing Andrew is asleep.
-
Just supreme arrogance. The other question is where this will all end? Will China seriously allow another, more detailed investigation? I think not. SLACK_001089
-
Of course they will Eddie - don't be daft. They'll welcome us with open arms and Zhengli will head the welcome committee.
-
Just had a long talk (70 minutes) with Carl Zimmer - brought up some of these points.
-
Good. Let's hope this can get back on track - but I'm not hopeful in the short term.
-
Zimmer writes with Gorman so could go anywhere.
-
No chance in the short-term
-
Key. https://twitter.com/acritschristoph/status/1397409973257179138?s=20
-
https://unherd.com/2021/05/what-if-there-was-a-lab-leak/ This tells you all you need to know: "The latest _Wall Street Journal_ story, for example, about three Wuhan researchers allegedly falling suspiciously sick in November,builds on facts revealed by David Asher, former lead investigator for the State Department, in interviews two months ago with both the Australian journalist Sharri Markson and myself."
-
BTW- really "fair and balanced" reporting from Birrill.
-
shared file(s): Fwd: [whcanyt] Statement by President Joe Biden on the Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19
-
My response to Carl same question. Thanks Carl and I too enjoyed the chat. When the WSJ ran their article last Sunday I revisited the reports of the 2-3 sick WIV workers. I need to go off the record for a bit: is a FSO and until last July worked directly with Secretary Pompeo. It was a difficult post -- she's now in ie Knows and has worked with David Asher who is responsible for the intelligence on the 2-3 lab workers and Miles Yu China expert - both are now at the Hudson Institute. It's fair to say in the case of both that their take on Lab Leak is driven by a strong Anti-China bias. Back on the record. The intelligence about the 2-3 lab works being sick and checking into hospital has been disputed. It's also been reported that these workers tested negative for SC2 antibodies. Marion Koopsman a member of the WHO teamcharacterized the cases as no big deal. The WSJ report needs to be considered in the context that there was a major influenza surge at the same time inWuhan. Having a couple of people with flu would be expected. This surge of flu cases probably obscured some ofthe early C19 case finding. More important if there were in fact 2-3 cases of C19 at the WIV that were ill enough to get checked into a hospital, then there would have had to be 100s of cases of less severe disease at the WIV. Either that or you believe that everyone that got infected got very sick. I do not think it is plausible that large numbers of cases were covered up.Bottom line: I do not find the reports on 2-3 sick workers with "possible" COVID to be credible. Nevertheless I dowelcome the investigation and I hope the Intel agencies take some of the scientific information into consideration. The Biden Administration should declassify this information ASAP, because it is being used to create uncertaintyabout C19 origins. At the same time I do not believe that the answers to the origins of SC2 lie in any type of forensicor intelligence gathering operation surrounding the lab - this is a distraction. Rather, it's imperative that weinvestigate the wildlife chain and find the reservoir of SC2. We also need an international effort to identify other CoVs that may become the next pandemic virus.