# Virus Hotspot **Background:** EcoHealth loved making [hotspot maps](http://formosahut.com/forum/index.php?id=2426) of where they thought a zoonotic virus spillover would occur. The one place that doesn’t appear on any of these maps is: Wuhan. It should have been, though - with the darkest most foreboding red shading at the location of Wuhan Institute of Virology. Severe storm warning. From 2004-2019, EcoHealth-CSIRO-UC Davis-WIV were collecting bat viruses from around the world like they were going out of style. Many were [shipped back to WIV](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10226681/US-documents-scientists-Wuhan-lab-studying-viral-samples-Laos-bats.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus&fbclid=IwAR02AoBzHWA1TPQT_1IdDUSX3FRRDzSSbuCjYPgsEAxpbIFOuf_HJPVkQVk). Daszak’s [*grandiose*](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/will-see-outbreaks-inevitable-warning-worlds-famous-virus-hunter/) plan was to: *catalogue the majority of coronaviruses throughout the world -* for* - one or two billion dollars.* Why? [Daszak:](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/suspicion-of-wuhan-lab-ensnares-new-york-nonprofit-testing-bat-coronaviruses/2020/05/12/22d0d642-8f3c-11ea-8df0-ee33c3f5b0d6_story.html)* (T)o find out which of the viruses in the wild even possibly could infect people so we know where they are and we can stop them from emerging.* How about you leave well alone? Before the Anthrax biodefense funding explosion - i don’t remember being terrorized by the common cold virus *It’s a little bit like if you ****listen to phone calls**** from Afghanistan. * Oh, really? *To ****find the terrorists****, you have to listen to ****all*** *the phone calls. Only when you’ve heard the phone call do you then go in and find out who these people are and ****disrupt*** *those networks.* It’s hard to know if your talking about the common cold or conspiracy theorists. Even Andersen thought the idea was [*preposterous*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/suspicion-of-wuhan-lab-ensnares-new-york-nonprofit-testing-bat-coronaviruses/2020/05/12/22d0d642-8f3c-11ea-8df0-ee33c3f5b0d6_story.html). He/Holmes/Rambaut had a 2018 [paper in Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05373-w), arguing, convincingly, that it was a silly waste of time and money. (Their alternative - *real-time surveillance of human populations *- is equally problematic due to ethical/privacy-rights concerns.) Funny then that they would come to be bound together so tightly on the natural-origin offensive a year later. Dazza’s *phone call listening* operations took place mainly in SE Asia (incl. Yunnan, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia). Samples were [shipped to WIV](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10226681/US-documents-scientists-Wuhan-lab-studying-viral-samples-Laos-bats.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus&fbclid=IwAR02AoBzHWA1TPQT_1IdDUSX3FRRDzSSbuCjYPgsEAxpbIFOuf_HJPVkQVk) - amongst other places - UC Davis? - The Pasteur Institute, Cambodia. (PREDICT report - [huge PDF file](https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PBAAF347.pdf)) Daszak: *I *[*visited the labs* (in Wuhan)* frequently*](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445)* … over 15 years. ..(paraphrased by NPR) *[*The team and its collaborators at WIV*](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/29/847948272/why-the-u-s-government-stopped-funding-a-research-project-on-bats-and-coronaviru)* have collected about ****15,000 samples from bats**** (and) .. ****identified**** ...****about 50**** (that) fall into a category that caused COVID-19 (including) some that ..are capable of infecting a human cell in a petri dish. (*[Especially when GoFed-up](https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985).) So: a bunch of glorified bug-hunters scouring the world on the public dime to gather up all the world’s bat viruses and store them at WIV. Where their [*building blocks*](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9) can be reassembled through GoF/serial passaging to create a super-bug - in order to: *develop therapeutics for *[*future control of emerging SARS-like infections*](https://jvi.asm.org/content/90/14/6573) ...to keep us safe.