Connect with us

Coronavirus

Austrian Study Finds ‘Sign Of Human Intervention’ In Coronavirus

Virus was cultured to attack human cells, according to research.

Published

3 years ago

on

Getty Images

A scientific study in Austria has found that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that has led to a pandemic, was likely created in a lab, barring some “remarkable coincidence” that led to the virus naturally evolving to be optimised to attack human cells.

The study was led by Nikolai Petrovsky, a vaccine researcher at Flinders University. The scientists in his team discovered that the coronavirus is optimized for penetration into human cells, rather than animal cells, which means that the theory that it emerged from an animal market and jumped to humans naturally is unlikely.

Lifesite News reports that the scientists “used a version of the novel coronavirus collected in the earliest days of the outbreak and applied computer models to test its capacity to bind to certain cell receptor enzymes, called “ACE2,” that allow the virus to infect human and animal cells to varying degrees of efficacy.”

“They found that “the novel coronavirus most powerfully binds with human ACE2, and with variously lesser degrees of effectiveness with animal versions of the receptor.”

The authors believe this means that the virus “became specialized for human cell penetration by living previously in human cells, quite possibly in a laboratory.”

The Study notes that  “a virus would be expected to have highest affinity for the receptor in its original host species, e.g. bat, with a lower initial binding affinity for the receptor of any new host, e.g. humans. However, in this case, the affinity of SARS-CoV-2 is higher for humans than for the putative original host species, bats, or for any potential intermediary host species.”

It continues, noting that a “possibility which still cannot be excluded is that SARSCoV-2 was created by a recombination event that occurred inadvertently or consciously in a laboratory handling coronaviruses, with the new virus then accidentally released into the local human population.”

Dr Petrovsky added in a statement that, rather than being rapidly genetically spliced and mutated, the virus shows signs of being  ‘cultured’ to evolve over time.

“Our and other analyses of the genomic sequence of the virus do not reveal any artificial gene inserts that would be the hallmark of a gene jockey, genetic engineers who manipulate or even create viruses by splicing in artificial inserts into their genome.” Petrovsky said.

“These are generally easily recognisable and hence clear signatures of human intervention in the creation of a virus. The fact that these artificial inserts are not present has been interpreted by some to mean this virus is not the result of human manipulation.” he added.

“However, this logic is incorrect as there are other ways in which humans can manipulate viruses and that is caused by natural selection,” he continued, adding that “you can force [a] bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein,” after culturing it for a few years.

“The result of these experiments, according to the doctor, would be “a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus.”

If all of this sounds familiar, it is because this is exactly what the scientists inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology were doing with bat borne coronaviruses.

From Live Science:

The WIV lab, along with researchers in the U.S. and Switzerland, showed in 2015 the scary-good capability of bat coronaviruses to thrive in human cells. In that paper, which was published in 2015 in the journal Nature Medicine, they described how they had created a chimeric SARS-like virus out of the surface spike protein of a coronavirus found in horseshoe bats, called SHC014, and the backbone of a SARS virus that could be grown in mice. The idea was to look at the potential of coronaviruses circulating in bat populations to infect humans. In a lab dish, the chimeric coronavirus could infect and replicate in primary human airway cells; the virus also was able to infect lung cells in mice.

That study was met with some pushback from researchers who considered the risk of that kind of research to outweigh the benefits. Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was one of those scientists. Wain-Hobson emphasized the fact that this chimeric virus “grows remarkably well” in human cells, adding that “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” Nature News reported.

In an email to LifeSite, Dr Petrovsky said that his study suggests that “there are some highly unusual features, including optimal human adaptation, that in the absence of identification of a close to identical virus in an animal population from which COVID19 could have arisen, would point in the direction of human intervention at some point in the evolution of COVID19.”

He added that scientists have been unable to find any evidence of this coronavirus strain present in animals, which would support the natural evolution theory.

“If an animal vector and virus could be found then of course this would resolve the matter completely,” Petrovsky noted, adding “One would have thought that the Chinese would be intensively sampling all conceivable animals trying to find such a virus to exonerate their labs. If no such intense search is going on (which I don’t know one way or the other) then the inference could be that they are not looking because they already know what they might find.”

“Whilst the facts cannot be known at this time, the nature of this event and its proximity to a high-risk biosecurity facility at the epicentre of the outbreak demands a full and independent international enquiry to ascertain whether a virus of this kind of COVID-19 was being cultured in the facility and might have been accidentally released,”  Petrovsky concluded.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Comments

Coronavirus

Entire US Congress Votes To Declassify COVID-19 Origins Intel

Published

1 week ago

on

12 March, 2023

Zero Hedge

HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images

100% of lawmakers in the House on Friday voted to pass a bill requiring the Biden administration to declassify intelligence related to investigations into the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and Covid-19.

The Covid Origins Act of 2023, sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Mike Braun (R-IN), passed by a vote of 410 to 0, after clearing the Senate by unanimous consent last week.

“Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the country with almost every household feeling its effects. The United States death toll from this virus has surpassed one million people. Although concrete data is hard to lock down, millions of people are suffering from the long-term effects directly attributed to this virus. It is becoming increasingly clear that school-aged children face hurdles because of long-term school closures. The American people need to know all the aspects, including how this virus was created and specifically, whether it was a natural occurrence of the result of a lab-related event,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) in a floor speech.

Next stop, President Biden’s desk.

And while Biden has officially said he hasn’t “made that decision yet” over whether to sign it into law and release the intelligence, we can’t imagine he won’t, lest he defy the entirety of Congress.

So, what will we get? Probably what’s already known; that the FBI and the Energy Department believe with ‘moderate’ and ‘low’ confidence respectively that Covid-19 likely arose from a laboratory leak – while four other agencies and a national intelligence panel continue to believe that the pandemic was likely the result of zoonotic spillover.

Will the disclosure point to door #1 – that Dr. Anthony Fauci offshored previously-banned Gain-of-Function bat covid research in a scientific collaboration on Chinese soil where it escaped (intentionally or otherwise)?

Or door #2 – that bats from a cave 450 miles away with a strain of Covid 96.8% similar to Covid-19 infected an intermediary species, of which either (or both) emerged with Covid-19 at a Wuhan wet market across town from the aforementioned Fauci-funded lab where they were infecting ‘humanized’ mice with Covid strains? A relatively rare occurrence according to the WIV in 2018.

Or Door #3, that China went rogue, stole Peter Daszak’s crazy plans (which DARPA turned down), and started going bat-covid crazy?

What we do know is that there were ‘humanized’ mice being bred in China in mid-2019, long before the outbreak in Wuhan. As Vanity Fair noted almost two years ago – a May 2020 Chinese research paper describing mice which had lung tissue that approximated a human’s (via National Review):

Using the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, the researchers had engineered mice with humanized lungs, then studied their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. As the NSC officials worked backward from the date of publication to establish a timeline for the study, it became clear that the mice had been engineered sometime in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic even started. The NSC officials were left wondering: Had the Chinese military been running viruses through humanized mouse models, to see which might be infectious to humans?

And as journalist Josh Rogin wrote in Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century (again, via National Review):

After consultations with experts, some U.S. officials came to believe that this Beijing lab was likely conducting coronavirus experiments on mice fitted with ACE2 receptors well before the coronavirus outbreak — research they hadn’t disclosed and continued to not admit to. That, by itself, did not help to explain how SARS-CoV-2 originated. But it did make clear to U.S. officials that there was a lot of risky coronavirus experiments going on in Chinese labs that the rest of the world was simply not aware of. “This was just a peek under a curtain of an entire galaxy of activity, including labs in Beijing and Wuhan playing around with coronaviruses in ACE2 mice in unsafe labs,” the senior administration official said. “It suggests we’re getting a peek at a body of activity that isn’t understood in the West or even has precedent here.”

And how much of that was done with knowledge, funding or collaboration from entities outside of China?

China contacted Hawley’s office on Wednesday to object to the bill, telling him that its only purpose is to “politicize and stigmatize China.”

“The move by the U.S. Congress just shows that the U.S. is going further and further down the wrong path of political manipulation. The so-called traceability report by the U.S. intelligence agency is an attempt to ‘presume guilt’ on China. It is an attempt to shift the blame from its own failure to fight the epidemic to China,” wrote government attorney Li Xiang.

Does Congress ever do things unanimously?

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

Continue Reading

Coronavirus

Video: Fauci DEFENDS Gain Of Function, Mocks Lab Leak Censorship

“The whole scientific community feels that you have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms”

Published

2 weeks ago

on

10 March, 2023

Steve Watson

Screenshot

In a remarkable interview Thursday, Anthony Fauci had the gall to defend dangerous gain of function research, which in all likelihood was the direct cause of the COVID pandemic, and mocked the idea that a lab leak is being covered up.

Appearing on Fox News, Fauci told anchor Neil Cavuto “If you shut off all gain of function research. Did you get the flu shot this year, Neil? If you did, and you got it from an influenza vaccine, that was gain-of-function that made that influenza vaccine. That’s what people don’t understand.”

Fauci twice suggested that he should be “taken out of this,” reasoning that “I’m a charged person,” and went on to argue the case for gain of function research, which makes pathogens more deadly.

“The whole scientific community feels that you have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms,” Fauci claimed, adding “When you do it, you have to do it carefully and under very controlled conditions.”

All the while, Fauci was again careful not to define exactly what gain of function is, having previously changed the definition to cover his own culpability.

When asked if the research serves any value, Fauci stated “It depends on what your definition of gain of function is,” going on to say “Look at a whole array of virologists and scientists who do research that is absolutely critical for the health of the country. Some of that involves manipulating organisms. You want to call it gain of function. It really is not, in many respects, but it needs to be very well-regulated.”

Fauci also mocked the idea that discussion of a potential Wuhan coronavirus lab leak was dismissed and suppressed, after Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that Fauci bribed scientists into silence on the matter with a $9 million grant.

Jordan was referring to testimony earlier this month by Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins, who charged that two scientists who believed that COVID-19 leaked from a lab changed their minds after receiving the $9 million grant from Fauci.

“I almost have to laugh at that, Neil. That’s totally bizarre,” Fauci responded, going on to explain “First of all, I wasn’t leaning totally strongly one way or the other. I’ve always kept an open mind. As the data evolved and evolutionary virologists looked at the data, it looked more likely it was a natural occurrence from an animal reservoir.”

“I have always kept a completely open mind that it could be one or the other. Quite frankly, the evidence weighs more likely towards one, namely a natural occurrence,” Fauci claimed.

“The other absolutely preposterous thing that Jim Jordan said was that we gave the investigators $9 million bribe to change their mind. Is he kidding me?” Fauci further stated.

He continued, “They put in a grant about a year and a half before this all happened. The grant was reviewed by a peer review and put before an independent council and approved before the meeting even took place.”

“So to assume that they were getting a $9 million grant because of the fact that we tried to get them to change their mind is beyond ludicrous. Beyond ludicrous,” Fauci asserted.

Earlier this week, Senator Rand Paul accused Fauci, along with other scientists working with him at the National Institutes Of Health of engaging in an “elaborate cover-up” of the lab origin of the coronavirus pandemic in order to hide their own involvement.

Video: Rand Paul Accuses Fauci Of “Elaborate Cover-up” Of COVID Lab Leak

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube:

Follow on Twitter:

———————————————————————————————————————
Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/ PJW Shop

ALERT! In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch.

We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here.

Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

Also, we urgently need your financial support here. ———————————————————————————————————————

    • Continue Reading

    Coronavirus

    Govern Me Harder, Daddy!

    The most enthusiastic bootlickers.

    Published

    2 weeks ago

    on

    9 March, 2023

    The biggest age group to think the government wasn’t *authoritarian enough* during lockdown is young people aged 18-24.

    What the hell has happened to the ‘rebellious’ youth? They’re all bootlickers now.

    Please share this video! https://youtu.be/RTiGO9OqbPM

    SUBSCRIBE on YouTube:

    Follow on Twitter:

    ———————————————————————————————————————

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    PJW Shop

    ALERT!

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch.

    I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here.

    Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

    Get early access, exclusive content and behind the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    ———————————————————————————————————————

    Continue Reading

    Trending

    Privacy Policy Cookie Policy

    Copyright © 2020 Summit News