Slack / Private Message Drop — page 871

Virologyin February. Picture: AFP Inside 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 of Infectious 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, a laboratory director, a former commander and a research contractor -- have been involved with the Wuhan Institute of 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 on the origins of Covid-19, What Really Happened In Wuhan, to be published by HarperCollins. They include the extent of 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 an investigation into a possible laboratory origin for Covid-19 throughout 2020. This month, a group of international virologists, biologists and immunologists -- including the Wuhan Institute of Virology'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, but ventured 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 actually gathered a bunch of virologists together and it was the editorial board of the journal actually. They're all invited to come there and give presentations, interact with the students, things like that. I remember being in a place walking around, but I don't remember the details." Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Picture: AFP Trip to Mozambique Bavari joined USAMRIID in 2011 and became chief scientific officer in September 2014. His five-year term expired in 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 on the 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 any bells," 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 to another 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 it during their Wuhan visit earlier this year. Shi has claimed the virus database was taken offline after 3000 hacking attempts. 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: AFP Inside the Wuhan labs