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From ... in Biology —

Wuhan Scientist Thrown Off Roof

STORY AT-A-GLANCE Over the years, it's become clear that science can be a very hazardous occupation.

Wuhan Scientist Thrown Off Roof

According to witnesses, a Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientist by the name of Zhou Yusen was thrown to his death off the lab's roof in May 2020, just three months after he'd filed a patent for a COVID vaccine. The timing of the patent filing is perhaps as curious as his death. According to some experts, the data included in the patent suggests he'd been working on the vaccine prior

to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, which authorities have insisted was a previously unknown virus of zoonotic origin. According to a June 18, 2023, report by The Sun:

“Zhou Yusen, 54, died in May 2020 while working for the People's LiberationArmy and alongside Wuhan scientists ... including Shi Zhengli — dubbed‘batwoman' for her work on coronavirus in bats ...U.S. investigators have now revealed that Zhou may have had knowledge of thelab leak long before it was released to the world. Vaccination experts toldinvestigators that it would have been ‘impossible' to generate the data Zhou hadin the patent for the vaccine unless he had been working on it for at least threemonths.This could mean scientists in Wuhan were working on a COVID-19 vaccinationin November, before news of the virus had left China. The first case of COVIDwas reported in Wuhan in December 2019 — but the World Health Organizationdid not declare a pandemic until March 11, 2020.It means the vaccine patent was filed just a short time after China first admittedthere was human-to-human transmission of COVID — and two weeks before apandemic was oficially declared.”

Basically, if Yusen worked on a COVID-19 vaccine no later than November 2019, that would further strengthen the claim that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab, and subsequently escaped from that lab. In addition to that, we also have new evidence linking SARS-CoV-2 to Chinese bioweapons research.

SARS-CoV-2 Linked to Bioweapons Research

According to an investigation by The Sunday Times' Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott published June 10, 2023, scientists at the WIV were working in close collaboration with the Chinese military to create a new mutant coronavirus shortly before the COVID pandemic began:

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“Investigators who scrutinized top-secret intercepted communications andscientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project ofdangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute ofVirology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.The U.S. investigators say one of the reasons there is no published informationon the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from theChinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuingbioweapons ... [Our] new investigation paints the clearest picture yet of whathappened in the Wuhan laboratory.”

According to Calvert and Arbuthnott, WIV researchers — and the Chinese military — obtained “cutting-edge virus manipulation techniques” from Ralph Baric, Ph.D., a leading U.S. coronavirus scientist. They also received funding for gain-of-function research from the U.S. government through the EcoHealth Alliance. The weaponization of a SARS-like virus appears to have begun in 2016, after miners died from a SARS-like respiratory infection. Chinese researchers subsequently discovered two new coronaviruses in a mineshaft in Mojiang, one of which is the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 found so far. According to The Times, this event sparked off a classified bioweapons program under which SARS-CoV-2 was eventually developed. This would explain why WIV researchers were also working on a COVID vaccine well before the initial outbreak in Wuhan.

Super-Lethal Coronavirus May Still Exist in Wuhan Lab

Disturbingly, the evidence shows WIV researchers also created a coronavirus far more lethal than SARS-CoV-2 — one with a 75% kill rate — and this research was in part funded by EcoHealth grant money from the U.S. government. We can count ourselves lucky that this wasn't the one that got out. That specific virus — a fusion of two coronaviruses found in the Mojiang mineshaft called WIV1 and SHC014 — was also highly infectious early in the illness, virtually

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guaranteeing that an outbreak would be impossible to contain. Vaccines and drugs developed against SARS were also ineffective against this extraordinary virus. While U.S. funding agencies knew about EcoHealth's work on bat viruses, the Chinese military may have been running a secret parallel bioweapons project that not even EcoHealth's president Peter Daszak, who worked closely with Shi, knew about. Calvert and Arbuthnott write:

“The root of this project goes back to an incident that allegedly drew theattention of the Chinese military to the work of scientists in Wuhan. In 2012, theWuhan institute's researchers investigated an abandoned copper mine with alarge bat colony in the Mojiang region of south China.Six men clearing out bat guano there were struck down by a mystery illness thatcaused fever, coughs and pneumonia. All the men required hospital treatmentand three died. Tests on the men for various illnesses came back negative butthey tested positive for antibodies to an unknown coronavirus.It has been possible, however, to piece together what happened from a master'sthesis by a medic at the hospital that treated the men and a PhD paper by astudent of the director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control andPrevention.The incident happened while the institute was working on EcoHealth's Predictprogramme, which was aimed at finding this type of virus crossover betweenanimals and humans. But the Wuhan institute withheld information about themine deaths from EcoHealth and the U.S. government.”

At Least Nine Relatives of SARS-CoV-2 Exist

Shi and her team reportedly spent four years collecting bat samples from the Mojiang mine. Among the pathogens found were 293 coronaviruses. In 2016, Shi published a paper describing a coronavirus found at the site that was from a lineage of SARS scientists had never seen before. She called it RaBtCoV/4991.

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She left out some crucial facts, however. She made no mention of the miners who died after getting infected at the collection site, nor did she mention that she'd found eight other SARS-related coronaviruses from the same previously unknown family as RaBtCoV/4991. Early in the COVID pandemic, RaBtCoV/4991 was identified as the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, but there were also eight others from that same family, the existence of which has been kept secret. Once the WIV was forced to admit they had the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 in their freezers, they tried throwing researchers off the trail by changing the name of RaBtCoV/4991 to RaTG13. This way, the virus could not be easily linked to the mine and the dead miners.

Shadow Project

Calvert and Arbuthnott continue:

“As the world emerged from lockdown, US State Department investigators weregiven access to secret intelligence on what had been happening in China in themonths and years before COVID emerged.More than a dozen investigators were given unparalleled access to ‘metadata,phone information and internet information' from intercepts collected by theU.S. intelligence services.The investigators' report was published in early 2021. It made two assertions:that Wuhan scientists were conducting experiments on RaTG13 from theMoijang mine, and that covert military research, including laboratory animalexperiments, was being done at the institute before the pandemic ...The Sunday Times has spoken to three members of the team. The intelligencethey saw suggests the types of risky experiments undertaken on the Shitou
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cave SARS viruses were also conducted in secret on RaTG13 and the otherCOVID-19-like viruses from the mine.‘They were working with the nine different COVID variants,' one of theinvestigators said. They believe one virus at the Wuhan institute was an evencloser match to COVID-19 than RaTG13. ‘We are confident they were working ona closer unpublished variant — possibly collected in Mojiang,' the source added.The investigators spoke to two researchers working at a U.S. laboratory whowere collaborating with the Wuhan institute at the time of the outbreak. Theysaid the Wuhan scientists had inserted furin cleavage sites into viruses in 2019in exactly the way proposed in Daszak's failed funding application to DARPA.The investigators also saw evidence that the institute was conducting ‘serialpassaging' experiments on at least one of the mine viruses ... Dr. Steven Quay, aU.S. scientist who advised the State Department on its investigation ... believesCOVID-19 was created by inserting a furin cleavage site into one of the mineviruses and then serial passaging it through humanized mice.He submitted a statement to the US Senate explaining the process. ‘You infectthe mice, wait a week or so, and then recover the virus from the sickest mice.Then you repeat. In a matter of weeks this directed evolution will produce avirus that can kill every humanized mouse.' This explains why from thebeginning of the outbreak, he says, the pandemic virus was so remarkably welladapted to infect humans.One of the reasons there is no published information on such work, accordingto all three investigators, is because the shadow project on the mine viruses atthe Wuhan institute was being funded by the Chinese military.”

Chinese Military Targeted Coronaviruses for Bioweapons Study

The pair also cite a 2015 book written by People's Liberation Army researchers, published by the Chinese military academy, which stated that SARS viruses represent a “new era of genetic weapons” that can be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed.” According to one of the investigators interviewed by Calvert and Arbuthnott, the Chinese military started conducting secret experiments on RaTG13 (formerly RaBtCoV/4991) in 2016, one year after the publication of that book, in which the authors — one of whom has collaborated with WIV scientists on several occasions — detailed how SARS could be weaponized by fusing it with other viruses and then using serial passaging to make it more dangerous to humans. Is that a coincidence? The investigators Calvert and Arbuthnott spoke to don't think so, in part because the Chinese military was also working on a vaccine for this newly created virus:

“The investigators believe the Chinese military had taken an interest indeveloping a vaccine for the viruses so they could be used as potentialbioweapons. If a country could inoculate its population against its own secretvirus, it might have a weapon to shift the balance of world power.The PLA had its own vaccine specialist, Zhou Yusen, a decorated militaryscientist at the academy, who had collaborated with the Wuhan scientists on astudy of the MERS coronavirus and was working with them at the time of theoutbreak.Suspicion fell on him after the pandemic because he produced a patent for aCOVID vaccine with remarkable speed in February 2020, little more than amonth after the outbreak of the virus had first been admitted to the world byChina ...One of the U.S, investigators said testimony from scientists connected to theWuhan institute's collaborators suggested COVID-19 vaccine work was going onat the laboratory before the outbreak.
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In May 2020, aged just 54, Zhou appears to have died, a fact mentioned only inpassing in a Chinese-media report and in a scientific paper that placed the word“deceased” in brackets after his name. Witnesses are said to have told the U.S.investigation that Zhou fell from the roof of the Wuhan institute, although thishas not been verified.”

Patient Zero Identified

In related news, tireless sleuths have also produced evidence showing that Patient Zero was a Chinese doctor named Ben Hu, who had received funding from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to conduct research on novel bat coronaviruses, including research to assess the pathogenicity of bat coronaviruses on transgenic mice with human ACE2 receptors. As reported by the White Coat Waste Project (WCW), a transparency advocacy organization, in mid-June 2023:

“Scientific and intelligence authorities and most Americans now believe that alab leak in Wuhan caused COVID. Still, finding Patient Zero remains key todefinitively determining what prompted the pandemic.A WCW Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) investigation and 2021 lawsuit —paired with other newly-leaked U.S. intelligence — further points to the Wuhananimal lab as ground zero ...[In] January 2021, the State Department reported that white coats at theWuhan lab who were working on coronavirus animal experiments fell ill inNovember 2019 with COVID-like symptoms, before the first case of COVID waseven reported.A few months later, reports detailed that in November 2019 three Wuhan labexperimenters became so sick that they had to be hospitalized. Another reportindicated that the wife of a Wuhan white coat died in December 2019 from aCOVID-like illness.
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The identity of the sick Wuhan animal lab staffers has been kept a secret byU.S. and CCP authorities ... until now. A new report based on a U.S.government source identifies the three sick Wuhan lab staffers as Ben Hu, YuPing, and Yan Zhu. The source confirmed their identities with ‘100%' certainty.”

Patient Zero Was Involved in Risky Coronavirus Research

According to the WCW, the three lab employees all worked on bat coronaviruses on humanized mice, and Hu is named as the lead for NIAID-funded gain-of-function research on SARS-like coronaviruses. The WCW recapped its findings:

“U.S. taxpayer-funded Wuhan white coats collect wild coronaviruses from batsin remote caves in China without adequate protective gear, transport the virusesto a lab in a major metropolitan area, do gain-of-function animal experiments tomake the viruses more contagious and deadly to humans, and then fall ill withCOVID-like symptoms and their identities and medical histories are covered-up.Thanks to WCW's investigations and advocacy and work with lawmakersincluding Waste Warrior Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), we're getting closer tofinding the smoking gun that establishes where COVID came from.”

One of the key features that makes SARS-CoV-2 so unique (and so infectious to humans) is the presence of a furin cleavage site (FCS). And, according to Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Patient Zero may have been responsible for the insertion of that specific feature. Ebright told The Intercept:

“The significance of the fact that ‘patient zero,' Ben Hu, received U.S. fundingfrom NIH and USAID in 2018-2019 is that NIH and USAID support to Hupotentially directly funded the insertion of FCS sequences into SARS-likecoronaviruses that had been proposed in EcoHealth's/WIV's unsuccessful 2018DARPA grant application.
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Just as USAID and NIH support to Shi potentially funded the insertion of FCSsequences into SARS-like coronaviruses that had been proposed inEcoHealth's/WIV's unsuccessful 2018 DARPA grant application.”

The DARPA grant application Ebright is referring to was a proposal by Shi, Baric and Daszak, to insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to make it capable of infecting mammalian cells. They already had proof-of-concept research showing it could be done. DARPA rejected the proposal, but it appears this experimentation took place anyway, at the WIV, under a secret bioweapons research program, with U.S. funding.

Ending Gain of Function Research Is the Answer

The primary contention now is whether China does, in fact, have a secret bioweapons program. As reported by The Conversation:

“The Sunday Times article claims to present new data, but it is not indisputable.And even merely bringing up the issue of biowarfare with China would bediplomatically contentious and rufie a lot of political feathers.As such, the international community will not want to take the dispute overCOVID-19 forward unless they have definitive evidence of a Chinese biowarfareprogram. But, given the nature of biological research, we may never be able toget that certainty.”

The Conversation reviews the potential avenues political leaders could take, such as filing an oficial complaint through the United Nations that China may have violated the 1972 biological weapons convention. The UN secretary-general also has a mechanism for investigation of alleged use of biological weapons that would force an investigation. The problem with focusing on whether SARS-CoV-2 was intentionally developed as a biological weapon is that China is hardly the only country in violation of the bioweapons convention. The best answer, I think, would be to ban all forms of gain of function research globally, including low-tech techniques such as serial passaging, which doesn't involve genetic engineering.

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Nature would never concoct the kinds of souped-upchimeras we now find in labs around the world, andmost if not all serious pandemics are traceable back tolabs, not zoonotic spillover.

Even if China was successfully charged with violating the bioweapons convention, it would do nothing to stop mad scientists from experimenting on pathogens to make them more lethal. There are any number of justifications for doing such research, including the overused and wholly false idea that we need to stay ahead of nature. The fact is, nature would never concoct the kinds of souped-up chimeras we now find in labs around the world, and most if not all serious pandemics are traceable back to labs, not zoonotic spillover. That certainly goes for COVID-19 as well. At present, there's no evidence whatsoever to support zoonotic spillover. Everything points to SARS-CoV-2 being created in a lab and then, somehow, getting out. U.S. authorities clearly also helped cover up the lab leak, probably because they helped fund it.

White House Slow-Walks Lab Leak Investigation

Still to this day, the Biden administration seems to be more concerned about protecting China-U.S. political relations than getting to the truth, as it's delaying planned restrictions on investment in China to force it to declassify and share data related to the origin of COVID. The White House has even overlooked blatant Chinese espionage over the U.S. mainland, ostensibly to “improve” relations with Beijing. On top of that, the director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, failed to make public “all information relating to the origins of COVID-19” by the deadline, June 18, 2023, as ordered by Congress in March this year. As reported by NBC News, June 16, 2023:

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“The Biden administration has delayed punitive economic measures againstChina and played down Beijing's intensifying intelligence-gathering to avoidjeopardizing its efforts to revive diplomatic talks between the two governments,according to former U.S. oficials, congressional aides, Western diplomats andregional experts ...‘They want to calm the waters with China,' said a former U.S. oficial withknowledge of the administration's deliberations ... Administration oficials haveprovided no public update since a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed theU.S. before being downed by an American fighter jet in February ...A recently completed investigation of the balloon's debris found that Beijing'scapabilities are far more sophisticated than the U.S. had believed, said a currentsenior U.S. oficial and a former senior U.S. oficial briefed on the findings.‘Their capabilities are significant,' one of the oficials said, ‘better than wethought they were' ...The administration is also poised to miss a congressional deadline that expiresSunday [June 18, 2023] to declassify documents related to the origins ofCOVID-19. Republican lawmakers have accused the White House of draggingits feet on the issue.They say that the administration's approach is misguided and that China is notholding back on retaliatory measures against the U.S., including imposingsanctions on the U.S. tech firm Micron Technology ...An administration oficial said the Ofice of the Director of National Intelligenceis currently carrying out a ‘careful declassification process' and that ‘getting tothe bottom of the origins of COVID-19 remains a priority for the President andthe United States.' They did not say when the administration will declassify thedocuments.”

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