The Event
2004-2019: EcoHealth/WIV collecting - 15k+ bat (and other animal) viruses - trying hard to find the worst ones - taking them back to the lab - recombining them to turn non-contagious into contagious - creating the hottest of world hotspots right there in downtown Wuhan.
2008: Shi (WIV)/Linfa Wang (CSIRO, Aus) et al publish GoF paper demonstrating that ACE2-binding activity of SL-CoVs was easily acquired by the replacement of a relatively small sequence segment of the S protein from the SARS-CoV S sequence.
2012 Apr 26-27: Mojiang Cave workers admitted to First Affiliated hospital, Kunming Uni.
2012, Jul 1 -Oct 1: Shi Zhengli: (W)e received 13 serum samples collected from 4 patients (one of whom was deceased) who showed severe respiratory disease.
2013: Kunming Medical University paper: miners could have been infected with a SARS-like CoV.
Note: if it was, there is no evidence it was contagious - no other person was infected. Shi argued the miners' illness was caused by breathing in bat guano dust - not a SARS-like CoV. That’s quite possible. We don’t need to get hung up on RaTG13 - as Daszak says, WIV held about 50 that could cause SARS-like disease.
2012-2015: Shi Zhengli: Our group collected 1,322 samples .. in this cave ..of which 9 were designated betacoronaviruses. All nine are SARSr-CoVs, one of which (was) sample ID4991; renamed RaTG13. (96.3% identical to SARS-Cov-2)
Nov 2015: Baric/Shi bat virus GoF paper.
June 24, 2016: Daszak/Shi: RT-PCR was used to generate five amplicons containing the five mutations designed in the strategy. .. The development of different cell lines from the Rhinolophus bat, which is the reservoir host of SL-CoV, will facilitate this research in the future.
Nov 2017: Shi/Cui announced they’d found the building blocks for SARS-1 (i)n a remote cave in Yunnan province: They sequenced the genomes of 15 viral strains from the bats and found that, taken together, the strains contain all the genetic pieces that make up the human version. Changchun Tu says ..(h)e would like to see scientists demonstrate in the lab that the human SARS strain can jump from bats to another animal (Q: Did they try to rebuild SARS in the lab? Quite likely. Did they create/demonstrate infection capability with the all-new-improved Covid-model as a result?)
The researchers have isolated some 300 bat coronavirus sequences, most not yet published.
June 2017 - May 2019: (via White Coat Waste, FOI request): Viral DNA from bats and other high-risk species from Laos sent to Wuhan. Note: In Sep 2021, Banal-52, a coronavirus found in Lao bats, was discovered (96.8% match).
Mar 27, 2018: EHA submit their mad DEFUSE WIV collab project to DARPA. (Drastic Research exposee) (Funding was refused - but did it go ahead with WIV funding?)
May June, 2019: Ralph Baric .. worked with Gilead Sciences to develop the antiviral drug remdesivir and used virus strains that EcoHealth and its Chinese partners identified in the process, putting the United States ahead of the curve.
June 21, 2019: Baric: We developed multiple assays to further define the breadth of Remdesivir activity against the CoV family. (Did WIV have the prototype for Covid by May 2019? Did they entertain some unhinged DARPA-style project to test efficacy of Remdesivir or other drugs in the wild? They did entertain vaccinating wild bats using aerosolized viruses - but did they do it?)
Aug-Nov 2019: A super-contagious coronavirus emerges in Wuhan right-next-door to a lab engineering super-contagious coronaviruses
mid-Aug-Sep 5: Patient-Zero candidate date - see Sep 12 below. Bear in mind that an accidental lab-origin involves community spread. That necessarily entails:
a period of non-awareness from the patient/people at the lab he/she worked with
the longer the better (in terms of going viral)
(unless it was deliberate - or from nature - caused by climate change)
The question is how long did that period of non-awareness go for? What was the evolution of that knowledge?
We have patient-zero* - we also have aware-person-zero - who infects others with this terrible knowledge. The virus ran amok, we know that, but the knowledge of how it happened was contained within the cohort layers very well.
What was the response? Were frantic efforts made to reel it in? Or was it already too late? Throw the switch to cover-up.
*Technically could be two patient zeros - with two different technicians getting infected at the same lab - same as SARS-1.
Sep 12, 2019: Drastic (PDF, p1): (T)he main database of samples and viral sequences of the Wuhan Institute of Virology went offline.
(p2) Note: Batvirus.whiov.ac.cn (already had) a password protected section for .. viruses not yet sequenced and sequences of viruses not yet published.
Daszak: We have an ongoing collaboration, we have data that we’ve gathered over 15 years of working in China — 5 years under a previous grant from the NIH — which haven’t been published yet. (still haven’t)
Drastic: p7 There are estimated to be at least 100 unpublished sequences of bat betacoronaviruses in Batvirus.whiov.ac.cn
Why Sep 12?
- WIV explanation: Yuan Zhiming (via Demaneuf): Shi Zhengli’s team have been subjected to a large number of malicious attacks, the database is currently shared within the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Prof Shi has also faced questions about why the WIV's online public database of viruses was suddenly taken offline.
She told the BBC that the WIV's website and the staff's work emails and personal emails had been attacked, and the database taken offline for security reasons.
Rating: Plausible. If US intel was aware of chatter around a GoF breakthrough with biowarfare potential, you’d be trying to hack that shit. Same way Chinese cyberwarfare experts would be trying to hack Fort Detrick’s BSL-4 lab. It’s naive to think that doesn’t go on. Would mean US intel knows more about Covid’s origin than they are letting on.
In responseResponse to a patient-zeroleak?leak: Which, allowing for incubation/show symptoms (5) + a window for community spread/WIV-awareness (2&½), would be about Sep 5.- at the earliest. Could be longer if the person was showing mild symptoms.
Rating: Possible-to-Plausible. It’s a long lead-in to Oct 14 (Nov 14 minus 1 mth)in Fits with the Military Games.
anainternalGoF break-through -the creation of a bat viruswith bioweaponizingpotential?potential: The realization of that. What if the bio-terrorists got hold of it. We can’t publish that!
Rating: Possible-to-Plausible. Would mean very small window between discovery/realization and a lab-exit. You’d think security would be even more vigilant - it’s already BSL-4. Accidents tend to happen when complacency creeps in.
Mid-Sep: Dr. John Brownstein, the Harvard: (we) observed a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019 . (late Aug- earlySep)
ABC: At Wuhan Tongji Medical University, the spike in car traffic was found to have occurred in mid-September 2019.
Sep 18: Xinhua (via VanDongen): (T)he Executive Committee of the Wuhan Customs Joint Military Games held an emergency response exercise ..at Wuhan Tianhe Airport. In the form of actual combat, the exercise simulated .. the entire process of handling a case of new coronavirus infection found in an airport. .. The exercise included epidemiological investigation, medical investigation, and temporary quarantine.
Oct 7-24: A private analysis of cellphone location data .. says there was no cellphone activity in a high-security portion of the Wuhan Institute of Virology from Oct. 7 through Oct. 24, 2019, and that there may have been a "hazardous event" sometime between Oct. 6 and Oct. 11.
October 9, 2019 – EcoHealth Alliance ..announced today the award of a U.S. Agency for International Development grant for the One Health Workforce–Next Generation. .. to fight public health emergencies globally .. and respond to threats of zoonotic disease. It’s led by a consortium which includes the University of California, Davis; Columbia University; EcoHealth Alliance; and other public-private partners.
Oct 10: Harvard Medical School study: On Oct. 10, 2018, there were 171 cars in the parking lot of Wuhan’s Tianyou Hospital, one of the city’s largest. A year later, satellites recorded 285 cars -- a 67% increase.
Brownstein: Something was happening in October. Clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic
Oct 24, 2019: Pangolin paper, authored by EHA associate, Jin-Ping Chen - later used as basis for Prox O’s pangolin claim. Submitted Sep 30, revised, then pub Oct 24: The Sendai virus showed a close relationship between the Malayan pangolin and the strain isolated from humans, whereas Coronavirus sequences showed a high species diversity.
Oct 18-27: Military Games held in Wuhan. Numerous athletes reported Covid-like symptoms. (not definitively Covid to my knowledge)
Jacqueline Brock, German volleyball:. After a few days, some athletes from my team got ill, I got sick in the last two days. I have never felt so sick, either it was a very bad cold or COVID-19, I think it was COVID-19.*
Oct?-Nov-Dec? : Last Foreigner to Work at WIV (on Ebola), Danielle Anderson (Aussie/Duke/WIV, (2018-19) - there was nothing strange from my point of view going on at that point. .. Her most recent stint ended in November 2019.
SMH: Anderson’s work at the facility, and her funding, ended after the pandemic emerged.
(Same article, conflicting reports. Her stint ended in Nov, but Covid emerged in Dec - so she was still there? Back in Singapore by late-Dec for a conf.)
Nov ?: WSJ (paywall): Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.
Leaked, unverified US intel report, no specific date given. Seek hospital care - don’t know about China, but Taiwan - you need to see a doctor - you go to the hospital. Clinics are not popular. So sought medical treatment? Which is still significant - if it’s true.
Knock-you-down flu is rarer than we think. I’ve had one in my life - my brother asked me the question - he thinks he’s never had one. How many you had?
Warranting further investigation/funding: Why is pivotal info about a global illness (a) classified (b) leaked to Wall Street Journal?
Assuming it’s true - it would involve hacking hospital records as well as records of employees at WIV? Or more likely having intel relationship with Taiwan - who have the skillset.
If there was that level of penetration - then for sure they were hacking WIV DB. Especially if there was chatter of a GoF bioweapon breakthrough.*
* These are potentially incompatible dates - reports of Military Games illness predates Nov WIV illness. Would mean WIV-person-zero was mild or asymptomatic. If athletes were infected via lab-exit, then it occurred in early Oct.
Nov 6, 2019: Farrar/Koopmans: (I)t will be a challenge to persuade countries to invest in a new surveillance system .. before its general effectiveness has been demonstrated at a country level.
Nov 14: Shuangsuo Dang, Department of Infectious Diseases, Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University: During the period from Nov 17, 2019 to Dec 30, 2019 (44 days), WeChat Index spiked or increased for the keywords Feidian, SARS, coronavirus, novel coronavirus, shortness of breath, dyspnea, and diarrhea.
Baidu is the dominant Chinese Internet search engine. Baidu Index (https://index.baidu.com), .. can show how frequent a keyword has been queried over a time period from a region. The keywords related to the SARS-Cov-2 disease as mentioned above were also explored through Baidu Index for Hubei province.
Curiously, there’s no further mention of the exploration of Hubei. It would be interesting to see a comparative chart for Hubei and the whole of China.
The report is a sanctioned CCP one - so we can assume it’s not designed to bring down 100 years of Communism.
The start date, Nov 17, is - suspiciously - right where chatter is descending from a rise. Data is not available before then. Why not?
fig. Spike above begins for SARS Nov 30 here. But it depends where you start the graph.
If you started the study on Dec 4 you’d think SARS didn’t spike until Dec 30 - the date the CCP announced it.
What’s it look like if you start the survey on Nov 14? Is the cut-off start point cutting out a peak before the one shown. You can deduce it is. Are there other peaks behind that? How about if we started Sep 1?
SARS is a sensitive topic in China, but how many people need to be infected for it to go viral social-media-style? Remembering 5-days a pop for each new case in the nascent stages with an RO of 2. One case won’t do it - nor will 2 - or 3. 1000? How long do you need to go from zero to 1000 cases? My (questionable) math says 40 days. Nov 15 - 45 days = Oct 1
Nov 27: Scripps announces Shenzhen Bay Lab deal - joint China facility