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Vancouver Sun
WHO advisor: COVID-19 pandemic likely started via lab leak
World Health Organization advisor Jamie Metzl is calling the wet market origin story a lie
Author of the article:Jane Stevenson
Publishing date:Jan 23, 2021 • 1 day ago • 2 minute read
One year after the pandemic started, World Health Organization advisor Jamie Metzl wants China to come clean about the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
The Kansas City-born, New York-based Metzl, who served as Deputy Staff Director of the Foreign Relations Committee under then Senator Joe Biden (2001-2003) and before that on the National Security Council (1997-99) and the State Department (1999-01) under President Bill Clinton), theorizes it was most likely an accidental lab leak in Wuhan.
“There’s no irrefutable evidence,” said Metzl, who was appointed to the WHO’s expert advisory committee on human genome editing in 2019 and is also the author of Hacking Darwin.
“There’s just more evidence and as more evidence arrives, the case for accidental lab leak, in my view, increases.”
We caught up with Metzl down the line from San Miguel de Allende:
What about the original theory that this all started in a wet market in Wuhan?
That was a lie. And the Chinese government knew very early on that that was a lie. And so in the face of overwhelming evidence in May of last year, the Chinese government shifted its position.
Do you get the idea of scary viruses being created in a lab may seem a little sci-fi?
It may feel like sci-fi to people but what’s happening is sci. There is a field of study called “gain of function” research, which is highly controversial in which some scientists amplify the virility of viruses. We know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in gain of function research on bat coronaviruses.
Is it because this specifically started in China that we still don’t know how COVID-19 started?
If there had been an outbreak in Congo or some country in Africa and that country, in the earliest days of the pandemic, prevented World Health Organization investigators from going onto the scene of the outbreak, for nearly a month, the world would have gone berserk.
Will a change of the U.S. administration help find an answer?
Biden will be tougher on China than President Trump because President Biden is very smart and strategic and he understands that American power and American strength doesn’t rest on bluster, it rests on principles, it rests on partnerships, and alliances and accountability. And the Trump administration unfortunately gave China a pass by over politicizing the question of the origin of the virus by alienating America’s partners and allies.
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Watch the video:
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Scientists at Wuhan lab admit being bitten while collecting samples in cave which is home to Covid-infected bats
PUBLISHED: 01:01 GMT, 17 January 2021 | UPDATED: 01:03 GMT, 17 January 2021
Scientists at the Wuhan lab admitted being bitten while collecting samples in a cave which is home to coronavirus-infected bats.
One researcher said one animal’s fangs went through his rubber gloves ‘like a needle’.
Staff inside the top-secret facility were also shown handling bats without gloves and working on ‘live viruses’ without masks in apparent breach of strict World Health Organisation safety rules on PPE, according to footage captured by a Chinese TV crew and broadcast in 2017.
The revelations will raise further questions for the WHO team which is investigating the origins of Covid-19 following months of wrangling with Beijing over access to the Wuhan site.
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Scientists at Wuhan Virology Lab Had CCP Virus-Like Sickness in Autumn 2019, State Department Says
BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV
January 15, 2021 Updated: January 16, 2021
Several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with symptoms similar to those caused by the CCP virus in the Autumn of 2019, contradicting claims by a senior researcher from the institute who said there were no infections among the staff scientists.
The revelation is part of a fact sheet released by the U.S. Department of State on Jan. 15 which slams the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for obsessive secrecy around the origin of the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.
The Chinese Center for Disease Control reported a cluster of pneumonia-like cases of unknown origin on Dec. 21, 2019. But months later, new evidence emerged suggesting that Chinese authorities were aware of the first CCP virus case on Nov. 17. The United States government wasn’t informed about the virus until Dec. 30 from Taiwan.
Little has been known about the first patients who caught the virus and the CCP has never admitted to a connection to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which is located not far from the seafood market which was initially believed to be the origin of the outbreak.
“The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses,” the State Department fact sheet reads. “This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was ‘zero infection’ among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.”
For more:
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The WHO investigation team finally arrives in Wuhan…
Posted on January 5, 2021 by weehingthong
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New cover-up fears as Chinese officials delete critical data about the Wuhan lab with details of 300 studies vanishing – including all those carried out by virologist dubbed Batwoman
- Chinese government facing fresh accusations of cover-up after data is deleted
- Deletion of evidence reignited fears China is trying to whitewash investigation
- China has been accused before of suppressing vital evidence about virus origins
By JONATHAN BUCKS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 22:06 GMT, 9 January 2021 | UPDATED: 22:07 GMT, 9 January 2021
The Chinese government is facing fresh accusations of a cover-up after officials deleted crucial online data about the laboratory suspected of being the source of Covid-19.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that hundreds of pages of information relating to studies carried out by the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology have been wiped.
Details of more than 300 studies, including many investigating diseases that pass from animals to humans, published online by the state-run National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) are no longer available.
The deletion of key evidence has reignited fears that China is trying to whitewash the investigation into the origins of the virus.
It comes after President Xi Jinping last week blocked investigators from the World Health Organisation entering the country in a move that drew international condemnation. Meanwhile, state media outlets have published hundreds of stories claiming that the virus did not even originate in the city of Wuhan.
As part of the NSFC’s purge of online studies, it has deleted all reference to those carried out by Shi Zhengli, the Wuhan-based virologist who has earned the nickname Batwoman for her trips to gather samples in bat caves.
Studies key to any investigation into the source of the virus, including one into the risk of cross-species infection from bats with Sars-like coronaviruses, and another looking at human pathogens carried by bats, have also disappeared.
Last night, former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said The Mail on Sunday’s revelations were another example of a Chinese cover-up.
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It is not the first time that China has been accused of suppressing vital evidence about the origins of the virus.
Days before the WHO was alerted to the outbreak of Sars-like pneumonia cases in Wuhan in December 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology began altering its database of viral pathogens.
The Wildlife-borne Viral Pathogen Database was unique because it included information on virus variants in other wild animals.
Among the changes, which experts believe were made to throw investigators off the scent, keywords such as ‘wildlife’ or ‘wild animals’ were deleted.
The title was changed from Wildlife-borne Viral Pathogen Database to Bat And Rodent-borne Viral Pathogen Database. The term ‘wild animal’ was replaced with ‘bat and rodent’ or ‘bat and rat’.
Other terms connecting the database with the outbreak were also wiped. ‘Emerging infectious diseases’ and ‘cross-species infection’ were used in the original version.
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Coronavirus could have been rampant in Wuhan THREE MONTHS before Beijing claims, reveals leaked hospital files
- Patients with new, mysterious form of pneumonia were treated in eight hospitals
- Records show that 40 patients were treated with this previously unseen illness
- Hospital records show outbreak could have begun early as September 25 2019
By ABUL TAHER SECURITY CORRESPONDENT FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 22:09 GMT, 9 January 2021 | UPDATED: 00:56 GMT, 10 January 2021
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CNN: Nearly half a million people may have had Covid-19 in Wuhan, study shows. That’s almost 10 times the official figure…
Posted on December 29, 2020
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