The Pangolin Connection

  

 A deeper look at the pangolin connection: 

 Prox O: Malayan pangolins illegally imported into Guangdong province contain coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 (ref 21) .. Although RaTG13 .. remains the closest to SARS-CoV-2, .. some pangolin coronaviruses exhibit strong similarity to SARS-CoV-2. .. This clearly shows that the SARS-CoV-2 .. is the result of natural selection. 

 I checked their ref for the illegally imported pangolin - it's this paper . Published Feb 20, 2020 Authors: Tao Zhang, Qunfu Wu, Zhigang Zhang, Chinese Academy of Science, Kunming, Yunan 

 Interestingly, Garry says Prox O draft was finished by Feb 1 - so their key pangolin claim is reffed to a paper that hadn't been published at that stage - which suggests some communication with the above authors.  Nothing wrong with that - just registering it. 

 But the above paper is still not the source for illegally imported pangolin. In turn, that paper refs a previous paper which conducted tests on 11 dead pangolin seized by customs. Authors: Ping Liu, Wu Chen 2 and Jin-Ping Chen (Institute of Zoology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou) 

 Received: 30 September 2019 / Revised: 21 October 2019 / Accepted: 21 October 2019 / Published: 24 October 2019 The dates are interesting. Nobody was studying pangolin viruses - the authors talk about how neglected they were as a topic - suddenly a paper appears - right in the Covid-emergence-timeframe. 

 Jin-ping Chen et al: Recently, the prediction of viral zoonosis epidemics has become a major public health issue... Malayan pangolins could be another host with the potential of transmitting the SARS coronavirus to humans. 

 Remember, this is Oct 21, 2019, pre-Covid's emergence being public. 

 Either they were incredibly prescient - to the point that the Covid outbreak happened within days of their prediction, or .... this was part of the set-up. 

 Then there's this: Jin-Ping Chen had previously collabed on this paper in 2014: Evidence for Retrovirus and Paramyxovirus Infection of Multiple Bat Species in China Pub: 2014 

 Get a load of the authors on that: 

 Lihong Yuan, Min Li, Linmiao Li, Corina Monagin, Aleksei A. Chmura , Bradley S. Schneider , Jonathan H. Epstein , Xiaolin Mei, Zhengli Shi , Peter Daszak , and Jinping Chen 

 Three are from EHA, plus Schneider, a frequent EHA collaborator - with Shi Zhengli from WIV. 

 What does that prove? Not much, apart from what we already knew - the Bat Pack behind Prox O and The Lancet statement are as thick as thieves.  It's another tantalizing coincidence.  We know Prox O was purpose written to counter the conspiracy theorists coz the authors tell us that straight out. 

 In the desperate scramble to create a zoonotic narrative, was this orginal pangolin paper also purpose written - or more likely, co-opted and re-edited - to fit the scenario?